Update: Further Clarification on Recent AA Changes

In the March game update, we removed the following AA ranks due to the removal of static level cap requirements, which resulted in those ranks having no functional improvements over previous ranks. This change will not result in any refunded AA points for the removed ranks. However, you will not need to re-buy your AA ranks to the equivalent new rank and your spent AA totals will remain the same. The AA ranks removed are the following:
• Gift of Mana 4 - 13
• Focus of Arcanum 5 - 8
• Gracious Gift of Mana 2 - 4
• Fear Storm 7 - 17
• Improved Familiar 4 - 5, 7 - 8, 11 - 12, 15 - 17, 19 - 21

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Wait, I just barely spent AAs on Gift of Mana and literally like 2 days later you make it irrelevant and don't refund the AAs?

Well, that's a big waste of time. Why would you not refund this?

So people don't expect to get thousands of AA back when they revamp the Focus lines later. Get all the outrage out of the way over a few hundred AA and let people expect it in the future when refunding thousands for some classes would cause large issues.

Don't worry, I'll walk you through this:

1. People buy AAs to get "functional improvement over previous ranks" (Especially the wizard familiar)
2. Daybreak removes some kind of cap, which makes a bunch of ranks useless now
3. You spent a lot of time putting AAs into those ranks which are useless now
4. The ranks are useless now
5. You get your AA refunded so you can spend it on things you otherwise would have been buying, had they not decided to "pull the rug out" from under you

I hope you learned something.

That...doesn't make any sense. Just do the fix right the first time so we don't spend months or years with forum complaints because this was done halfway. If the AA's are removed, the AA's should be returned. It's really that simple, and the only way to avoid bad PR on this.

Yes

Either I don't understand, or what Daybreak has done doesn't make any sense (or both).

To me this reads like the removal of static level cap requirements resulted in a number of my purchased ranks being non-functional. Then those ranks were removed. Your logic seems to be that since the removed ranks were non-functional, there is no need to refund the AA.

But when I purchased the ranks, they were functional. Daybreak's weird order of operations here doesn't negate the fact that I spent AA points on functional ranks, those ranks don't exist anymore (as part of a two-step process), but the AA points have not been refunded.

This feels like some weird sleight of hand where the players knows something has disappeared, but Daybreak is promising that it didn't, even though multiple players have detailed the exact nature of the problem.

Now, there's nothing stopping Daybreak from just saying "Too bad, so sad; you aren't getting your AAs refunded even if you can prove that you should." That is surely Daybreak's prerogative. It is really poor PR/CS though.

I think the window of "this was an unintentional oversight" is closing. If Daybreak is intentionally shorting players their spent AAs (their spent time), then please stop talking past us and admit it so we can stop beating this dead horse.

If a player (non-Daybreak) can walk me through this and show me how I'm misunderstanding, maybe that would help me here.

AA consolidation is good. You didn't lose any functionality at all. In fact you gained functionality because now low level spells can proc GoM level infinity. This whole idea that you're "entitled to a refund" is the same backwards logic that certain people apply in real life any time a process is improved or a price is lowered.

I paid $400 for a 50 disc CD changer back in 1998. Now spotify has made that a waste of money. Things improve. Nobody is a victim here. Take the improvement in stride like an adult and move on.

People really will complain about anything.

You're forgetting that in this game, there are literally years worth of precedent of purchased Aa's that were removed or consolidated being refunded back to the player.

You're also forgetting that the Test patch notes said *refunded*.

Your comparison to that time you walked into Circuit City has no relevance here.

That logic doesn't really apply. Last week I purchased several ranks to become current and be able to use Gift of Mana with current spells. I spent more than what was necessary to cap the ability after this change, and it was a week ago, not 25 years ago. effectively yeah, I have the same functionality but now I am out of additional time and effort spent with nothing to show for it. Players will always complain about losing things that they worked for.

Did they come take your 50 disc CD changer? Kind of a bad analogy you made. I would expect to get some money back if Spotify came and took my player. This technology did not change its still EQ.

Devs be careful, you already made a bunch of us Quit Live, due to the revamp that was done years ago. AA changes used to be granted back. Why are these people not getting them granted back again?

1. Players ask for caps to be removed.
2. Devs remove caps because players asked for it.
3. Players complain that some of the AAs are now worthless because the caps don't matter.
4. Devs remove AAs that are worthless because players asked for it.
5. Players complain that the changes they asked for also didn't reward them free AAs,

No, did they take your Gift of Mana ability away? Or did they actually improve it?

Here's a hypothetical for you. Let's say this patch added a brand new rank to GoM, and it cost 30 AA to buy. When you buy this rank, it gives all level spells the ability to proc an infinite level Gift of Mana. You could cast a level 65 spell and then cast a level 120 spell for 1 mana off that GoM proc. Wow, sounds amazing! You'd buy that rank and you'd be happy about the improvement to your character. I know I would.

Instead, they made the change automatic, costing you a grand total of zero AA. And this has the side benefit of removing the level calculation from Gift of Mana, which is another step in the right direction of reducing computational lag in EQ.

All the pitchfork wielders complaining about their "lost" AA would have zero complaints if this change (read: improvement) were simply packaged in a different way. But you're so short sighted you can't see past the simplicity of "I spent AA that I didn't need to spend."

Try looking at the big picture.

The ability literally functions better now (you can proc an infinite level Gift of Mana by casting a low level spell). It also removes another constant calculation EQ is doing in an effort to reduce lag. The functionality has improved in multiple ways, both on the front end (the ability is stronger now) and the back end (the ability functions more fluidly and with fewer constant calculations going on behind the scenes).

You've lost nothing that you worked for. You still have everything you had before, and in fact it works objectively better now.

This is just the age old human tradition of complaining when something you put effort into becomes effortless for others later due to improved processes. It's a childish look, but I expect the complaining posts to continue to pour in!

Nah. You're forgetting what the term "test patch" means though.

Why do the right thing by your customers and refund the AAs? Especially the TLP folk where it still takes some actual time to earn those AAs that were just hand-waved into oblivion.

Customer service died a long time ago, and the corpse has already poofed.

This example is kind of weird because of the direction you took it. We're not talking about stuff from 25 years ago. We're talking about stuff we bought just the other day (affects plenty of TLP servers). A much better example would have been price protection, which is a feature several (maybe all, tbh) of my credit cards come with; if I pay one price for something one week, and the price drops the next week, I can get the difference refunded. This is a service I've used before, not something I'm just making up. If you're unfamiliar with it, either Google it, or I can provide some links for you.

They did not, and you don't see anyone asking to have the old GoM mana refunded to them. What they did take away (when we pressed "Buy All" or "Train") was the AAs we spent on the no-longer-existent GoM; that's why we're asking for that to be refunded. It doesn't need to be a full refund; just the difference between the old AA price and the new AA price.

I don't have the AA points anymore that I spent on AA ranks which no longer exist. At this point you're just gaslighting.

The only age-old human tradition of complaining I see in this thread is that of paying customers asking a merchant to correct a mistake when all the details and math have been laid out for why a decision needs to be reversed. "Don't complain" is some of the worst advice on the planet.

I'm tempted to comment on the "childish look" remark, but frankly that's a personal attack that you (alone, apparently) are leveling at all the other players collaborating here to highlight a problem. I would appreciate it if you would not refer to our level-headed conversation as childish, when clearly we are just trying to work with Daybreak to find a better solution than what's been implemented so far. It will cost you zero dollars and zero time for us to have this situation addressed and improved.

You spent an awful lot of time dissecting analogies, but no time at all addressing the crux of the discussion. Here, I'll repeat it for you. What's your response to this?

Also nobody is gaslighting LOL... literally nobody lost any abilities they had pre-patch, and the abilities that were affected actually work better than they did before. If they'd left this stuff completely untouched, you and everyone else would be worse off than you are today. GoM works BETTER now (both in terms of the performance from the player side and the number of constant calculations EQ has to do to keep up with it). There are zero drawbacks and only improvements from this change. Not sure how else to explain it more clearly!

Although I had anticipated AA refund, I can understand not giving back. And, for a more condensed AA line, I can also understand if the cost per level is higher now, anyway.

What has me condused is that Improved Familiar is still rank 22/22, but I was expecting this to have been modified to account for removal of levels.