Improving Our Alternate Advancement (AA) System

You must be very grumpy this time of year, with all the specials and promotions that pop up that you just missed out on. And what kind of behavior am I encouraging? Offering better deals? Giving people more for their money even if I didn't get it at the right time?

There are two different baubles.

The first bauble was granted as part of the CoE expansion pack. Originally that bauble was only usable at level 90 and set a character to 280 AAs. That one is being changed to be usable at level 10, but will still grant 280 AAs.

The second bauble is available on the market place. This bauble is currently usable at level 10 and sets your character to 280 AAs. This one will remain usable at level 10 but will set your character to 320 AAs.

Windstalker mentioned both of these in the original post:

I have an alt with Combat XP disabled and she runs through all the quests and zones, got her AA set to 60%. She STILL outlevels the zones and needs to mentor down. Leveling hasn't ever been super hard, but it required strategy and patience to balance out the AA if you didn't want to grind it later. I'm not going to threaten to stop playing or paying, but this whole trend of making things easier in order to force, sorry *encourage*, people into end game is disappointing for those of us who really super want to enjoy the game as a whole. I guess I could turn off *another* kind of xp on top of the Combat disable, but that seems like a very silly thing to ask people to do in order to enjoy the game to the full. Maxing out levels and mentoring down to hit old school zones for questing and revisiting good content is ... I dunno, my higher levels can breathe and everything in Runneyeyeye or Fallen Gate or even Permafrost falls over, and with the whole DM changes getting the PLers and grinders into these contested zones to wipe for quick xp makes it even less enjoyable to spend time in them. It's no fun if there's no challenge, and watching a bunch of mentored 85+s killing by running through the dungeons I'm trying to quest in isn't fun either.

Whatever, I'm glad SOE is doing stuff even if I don't agree with it. I appreciate the effort and will continue hoping that people of my gaming attitude will get some more time in the spotlight.

If we have 280 AA at lvl 48 when we log in on 18th do we continue to gain AA per lvl or does that stop when we hit 280AA.

It stops when you hit 280 AA. However, you will be able to continue to earn additional AAs on your own.

To me this change falls into the "It hasn't broken, but we're going to fix it anyway" category.

I've only been back in the EQ worlds a very short time, but I really liked the way you could set your own goals and develop your characters as you wished by defining how your character "grew" through their alternate advancement. I'm trying to understand the motivation for such a major change, but I come up with anything yet. Why are you essentially forcing people to play by a set of rules someone has decided to lay on top of, and over, a system which I have never heard anyone complain about? Apart, of course, from those who want everything given to them immediately, for free, and who usually lose interest as soon as they get whatever it is they demanded.

I've always seen AA as a way we can customize our characters. I must also ask you why you've decided to keep things as they were post level 90? That seems very like you are saying there is one set of rules for lower level characters, and another for higher level. And yet again, I find myself wondering why?

The old fashioned way? Like repetitively dying to a guard over and over to get xp debt then questing? ...or the not as old fashioned way of locking at 14ish and rerunning FMG over and over behind a mentored high level? ...or the new fashioned way of running DMs for plat? Which "old fashioned" way are you talking about? ;P

This is a good change. Thank you SOE. Now please revamp (without dumbing down) the AA trees to remove the wasted slots.

Wanted to write a lengthy answer to some other post, but nah...

IMHO a great and very welcome change. Lets me play the way I want without having to keep an eye on my AA all the time.

They did away with experience debt a long time ago.

I have skimmed through all this AA stuff and I did not see this question raised : For those toons that actually go up to 280 on the 18th are all their Trees going to be wiped out ? So you have to put all your AA points back on them ? It would be good to know ahead of time so I can makes notes on those I will have to reset. Thanks for any help you can provide.

I'm not sure where the idea that trees will be wiped is coming from? I just see that additional AA is going to be granted for those below 280 AA. Since none of the trees are being changed, I don't think they'd need to wipe them.

If you're concerned though, save the AA tree for your chars to your hard drive. When you save a layout, there's a button that looks like an old 3.5 floppy disk - use that and it saves to your drive. Then if the tree does get wiped, you can reload the saved layout.

Great, just bought 3 AA potions for alts a few weeks ago, what a waste of $.

Oh, yes they did used to do that with AA changes. I'm glad I read your reply, I will go save my AA now.

I'm entirely unsure how you think this change is forcing any change in how you build & customize your character.

Secondly, the reason they kept the post-90 game unchanged is the reason for the change. You need 281 AAs to advance to level 91. This change will ensure that by the time you get to level 90, you will probably have your 281 AAs, so you don't need to worry about grinding out the last 10 or whatever.

You're acting like this is a gigantic imposition, & I'm just not seeing your issue.

seems like that encourages people to skip game content at the early levels in favor of getting the 280aa for doing absolutely nothing but raising adv level.

I also predict a huge amount of players will complain when the free aa stops at 280. New players perspective will be 'hey, aa is easy to get'... then at 280 it will require effort. They will call this another 'brick wall' or 'hell levels'.. whatever.. making the game dead *** easy won't fix it.

I had my AA bar slid over to 70% and was leisurely making my way through content. I'll admit, when I heard this announcement, I pushed it to 0% and i'm just powering through it all.

xD To be fair, every AA after 280 is just a "bonus" at this point really, since so many classes have useless abilities scattered between the trees atm. At about 280, if the spend-specific caps were removed, you could easily have all the AA's you actually want/need .

Part of why we need them to clean AAs up

I know...I was pointing out that no matter how "old school" you went, it wasn't "normal". =P

I like the changes and you cannot please all the people all the time. But, would you please change the AA's so we can move them around and select/deselect them at random. Having to back out 30 AA's because you forgot to add one here or there is so annoying and time consuming. I know a couple others have voiced that request I'm right there with them...
Thank you!!

Thank you, that was a stupid exploit.

Now, for years I wanted a new server where you only gain experience by questing. Can that happen? Also, I want my solo quests to not require a raid at the end. I have 9 signature quests that are at the end, I can't raid it.