Improving Our Alternate Advancement (AA) System

Thank-you! Very nice change.

a lot of aa at low level isn't something new. Nearly all of my alts have 200+ aa by level 20. I have NEVER hit the 280 brick wall that so many complain about.

I have toons locked at various lvls, does this mean we cannot spend all the aa's again,

What I would like to see is a revamp of how we can reassign AAs if we want to try a different line of abilities. As it is currently, resetting means everything is cleared -- we either have to pick a preselected profile (e.g. "solo" or "group") -- or we must sit there re-spend each point, one by one, all the way up to 300 or whatever our current max is.

My suggestion would be to allow us to simply right-click and "un-buy" an ability/rank, and then re-spend those points.

I really hope the Developers on Everquest 2 never remove the Alternate Advancement System and replace it with a more dumbed down and simplified system like Blizzard did with World of Warcraft: Mist of Pandaria, and now what Bioware is doing following what Blizzard/Activision is doing with their Starwars the Old Republic. It is the very reason why I left those two games and no longer play them anymore because they are too dumbed down and simplified. I hope Everquest 2 continues to at least keep this game indepth and interesting without following what every other development company is doing out there. There are still gamers out there who like to use their brains when working on their classes, characters and not be hand held by cookie cutter MMORPG's like WoW were everyone of the same class, has the same exact gear, the same skills and pretty much the same build with only a few differen't skills. This is one of the only games left out there that is still indepth. I really hope the developers read this and I hope they remember that what made this game so unique compared to the others was how indepth it is. You will never find a MMORPG now a days that has books for collection quests, be able to create a library full of books in your own house, and be able to craft at a crafting table were you actually see your own character doing this because most of the crafting in MMORPG's is so dumbed down now.. its simply just a crafting window and you click craft with no crafting tables or anything.

I'm a 34 year old Canadian and the crafting, the depth, the lore, the things you can do in it just do not even compare to Everquest 2. Much love from Canada to my American friends and I really hope this game keeps doing what it has done so well for these past 10 years. Imo it amazes me more people do not play this. It has so much more to offer then any themepark MMORPG out right now. period.

Me neither. Though I'm not as strict as Pauly, I like to keep a ratio of around 3-4 AA per level (so slider at 70%) to hit 90 with 300+ AA

Its clear to a lot of people that the AA ui is terrible and I have no doubt there would be much rejoicing in Norrath if it were rewritten entirely. Having said that, this is wonderful change and I think it's important to separate the AA ui from the AA system and mechanics (which are great!).

Makes me lol. You take away some stuff for being too easy, then do stuff like this. Find a ground and stick to it.

AA was something I made sure I was on top of, always. Now do nothing get AA. Brilliant.

Let's try this again:

xD Feldon, sorry, everyone seems totally irrational today, and incapable of mental cognition. Your charts are wasted. Plenty of emotional cognition though, so try a Carebears video instead

Yep, totally agree with you on that. AA was kind of the only thing that was something of a challenge in the leveling process, at least as free to play with my play style.

I mean it is a nice change and I like it and this compared to the DM changes is really apples vs. oranges. They effect the game in different ways. But yeah, they need to decide if they want the game easier or harder.

So if my L20 has 300AA already, won't he be penalized in that he won't be auto granted anything? I spent a long time developing him including various starter zone questlines Why change what ain't broke?

PS, we still get L100 players that can't play their class, but that has little to do with how they levelled, and more to do with reading up on their class...

Earning 300AAs at level 20 is completely unnatural gameplay. You are of course welcome to do it, but it's completely outside the scope of what anyone would consider "normal" leveling procedure. Remember AAs weren't even introduced to EQ2 until level 50 and the amount of points was only increased to 100 at level 70 and 140 at level 80.

Hitting a brick wall at level 90 was broken. Leveling has never really been hard. Grinding 280 AAs was just slow and unpleasant and not any kind of accomplishment. This fixes that.

So you have no problem with leveling being faster then. Essentially this makes it so I can level from 1-90 (a fast process if my AA conversion slider is at 0% or even 50%) and presto I will have 280 AAs.

I do think people who recently bought an AA bauble have cause to request a Refund.

Really?

So anyone who put in any work BEFORE this change pretty effectively gets smacked down and gets diddly.

For example. My level 39 with 141 aa gets exactly nothing at all for this while someone else who did exactly nothing extra as they leveled up gets 100 aa points for free?

(for the record I set my aa slider to anywhere from 75-85% and then just play normally and do crafting & holiday stuff, no locking & grinding for aa at any point on anyone of my dozens of characters).


Gee, thanks I guess.

It should be an across the board change. If you get X amount of aa for leveling up to X level it should not matter how many aa you already have.

This is probably the most disappointing news I've heard from SOE since they announced Vanguard was being sunsetted.

Yeah, asking for a Refund for this, and the 1500 SC purchase to create dungeons for DM is actually very logical. The problem is, most people are not making refund requests, they're being irrational and raging over "loss of a playstyle" instead XD.

Yes. And you'll still continue to earn more AA's (5 on your next level up in fact) until you are at 280 AA's, since you're already halfway there you probably won't even need 90 to reach this mark

TBH, if people already grind AAs easily, it's just makin their job easier. I fail to see how this is bad news, let alone dissapointing news.

And those of us that just bought one of those AA potions with in a month. Would have been good to know this before wasting the SC. Thanks.

you guys should leave the PVP server out of this, we like grinding out our aa the old fashioned way, all you pve server people start crying and we get crapped on.

Even though I only have one character out of 30 who is under 280 AAs (and that one sits at about 240 at level 83), I still think this is a great change. lt's the AA grind that will kill you in EQ2, not the leveling curve, no doubt.

I expect that percentage-wise there just weren't too many people over 90, so the newer expansions have not been selling as well. The AA grind really hung over our heads for years. Like others, I'm glad this game hasn't been dumbed-down to the point where there are no skill choices or trees left (like WoW, which has been on a one-way slide to becoming a Facebook game since Cataclysm and has finally succeeded fully with Warlords of Draenor).

So....thanks SOE, for making it easier on the newer players and those with newer alts. Even though I'm not one of those, it's still nice to think there will be more players to team with in the higher levels soon.

Actually, this will be especially good for new players coming to Nagafen, what with all the locked twinks they'll be up against who have been frozen at L39 since forever, with 340 AAs, all mastered and geared, blah blah.