Interview with Lead Designer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper on Game Update 63: SKYSHRINE

Banditman wrote:

If the concern is pulling your own weight in a group, then put the restriction on heroic content. Right now we are talking about increasing the level cap by two levels, but it will eventually creep higher. You may not be barring people from solo content yet, but if this becomes a trend, then you will be.
Put the restriction on heroic content, not the solo content, not on levelling.

I disagree that this will be barring people from solo content because it's probably going to be months before we see another level increase so there is no reason at all that you can't get 280 AA's and level 92 before that happens.

let me start by saying, I'm a casual player and have always had fun levelling up when new levels were introduced.
I've been playing EQ2 from the beginning, and have only amassed about 216AA, which I've ALWAYS felt was alternate, ie-an option. Many of the AAs are nice and provide definite advantages in combat, but I never felt it was something that was absolutely needed. From my point of view... getting 91 and 92 will mean I have to GRIND AA, which is going to be a total pain. (I don't like grinding anything, sorry guys)
I'm sure there are alot of hotshots out there that will say i'm wrong and that we all need this minimum powerbase to do content at the higher levels. feh... different people play with different styles and preferences. Many of my levels were earned when AA was not available (ie-pre-AA) so for characters like mine, getting more AA is an annoyance... and something that makes the game less fun.
To the point: Tying levels to AA is a mistake. For What It's Worth, it's bad idea and it will alienate casual players.
In a free-to-play world, there are many casual players. Do you really want to just go ahead and alienate a bunch of them?

Elmandar wrote:

AAs are an option. So are levels. I would prefer they restricted instances instead of levels at this point, but understand completely why they'd want to do something like this for zone balancing.

I just read 18 pages of people crying about how they are too lazy to grind AA, they do not want to go back and do old content, they made their characters pre-aa's, and I can't help but laugh. I have six level 90 characters five of which have 320AA. I am both a casual player, and raider. It is so easy to attain both levels and AA's at this point!!!! I have three characters that were created in 2005, all of them have max AA. If you feel you "deserve" to get level 91+ but you are not even willing to meet a prerequisite you are wrong. Ironic as it is some of you are even complaining that you have to earn thoes extra two levels AND you have to get more aa?!?!? I am willing to bet some of you who are complaining are the "casual players" who sit in the guild hall and chat all day instead of actually going out and experiencing the content offered. You might be amazed at how quickly you gain thoes ever so illusive AA's if you actually try.

Elmandar wrote:

There will be no solo designed content, from either the stuff that existed prior to this LU, or the stuff which is introduced with the LU, that you will not be able to do at level 90.
You don't need to grind AA becuase you don't NEED to level to 92 to do the stuff designed for you. In that way you can just consider these "alternate" levels that don't affect you in the slightest.
As a matter of fact, you will benefit MUCH more in the content that is designed for you by getting those 64 extra AA (up to 280) than by simply having two levels.

I have two level 90 adventurers. One is maxed in everything except adorning, the other is maxed in everything except adorning (I have a non-90 who is 400+ in adorning) and AA.
My non-AA maxed is Rijacki whom I play casually and kinda haphazzardly and who was started on the very first day of EQ2's launch. She's been more of a tradeskill character and my personna than a character with whom I adventure
At the beginning of the weekend she was 220 AA. One the weekend, I went to one instance, partially, the Kael contested with my boyfriend and another friend, the TSO Everfrost instances with my boyfriend two-boxing with mercs, and then soloed a bit. On Monday night in the hour I played her, she got to 231 AA. I didn't spend even one dime on the Marketplace for potions (and won't). I did consume vet XP bonus potions, when I remembered, while we were in Kael and the Everfrost missions (2 of the 3 Rijacki hadn't been in yet *laugh*). I don't use vet potions while doing solo stuff 'cause I know the bonus only affects kill XP and overland (solo stuff) the kill XP is laughably low.
On Rijacki, I still have more than 1/2 of the DoV solo quests still undone and solo quests in SF and TSO which aren't done as well as solo and heroic quests in a lot of lower level stuff, too. Even though she did oodles of quests before AA were added (I have gone through phases of quest-ocd on her and other characters) and was at level cap before AA were added and was at level cap at least once before it was raised (not for DoV's increase, though, I had been adventuring with other characters more), with the addition of more and more and more quests that have occured since AA were added, there are a plethora of quests she still hasn't done, including many HQ and SQ quests (I am missing most HQ and SQ on Rjack, 90/90/320/450/450/??).
I will likely hit 280+ AA on Rijacki before the GU.
My other characters range in levels from 20s to 87. All the ones below 80 (which is all but 4 of my characters) have their adventure XP throttled so I can play them casually and not have them outlevel stuff too quickly so I can enjoy the journey with them. On each of them, I don't do -all- the quests possible, usually one one or two areas of a level range before moving on (varying which character does what content). When I see 100% new quest lines that weren't there when I first went through there as Rijacki (or another character) while at that level range years ago, I note it for potentially using mentored down if I run out of stuff higher level, it has rarely happened in the cycle of an expansion. This is why I find it so utterly ridiculous the allegation that there's not enough quests and content without getting "credit" for quests pre-AA.
Unless you disable adventure XP (disable, not use the slider to convert it) and AA XP, it really is hard to not obtain AAs doing regular stuff in the game, not grinding mindlessly.
But... since 91 and 92 are going to be prestige levels for adventuring, I hope that, for adventuring only, the 'max level' bonus remains at 90 (it won't affect me much either way since I have so few adventure 90s).

Rijacki wrote:

How about a Prestige bonus that is atleast double or more that of that regular bonus

I know no one agrees with me, but I still believe that this game should be doing things to 'encourage' grouping, and not yet again splitting the player base.
This is critmit part deux.

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

I am hopeful that this will encourage Pugging. Since you will know that a level 91 or 92 has at least most of the good AA's. I think people will be more inclined to group than the currently.
You should have to deal with fewer people who are so under AAed for the zone that they hold the team back rather than help it.

akin99 wrote:

I think this will help the DF to be slightly more useful and may also encourge more grouping for that reason.
With this change it can go:
>90 and queued for random zone? >>> zones a, b, c, d, etc...
=90 and qued for random zone? >>>>> zones l, m, n, o, etc...
Although it won't be perfect, it should allow the DF to better group people according to how "well suited" they might be to the zones.

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

Only way to fix that would be to rip apart there current system and lock all AA levels to XP levels and make only 1 xp-bar and slow xp down to a crawl for rebalance, thats it and every level you get so many AA and at your max level your max AA ect moves exactly the same with all levels for all players so if two players are level 44 they would always have the exact same AA level ect

akin99 wrote:

Absolutely wrong, just got 2 bars to divide the men from the boys, if people are not above 90 then they will know your hurting in AA and look for some 1 else or call it not to mention sony could and may proble set this as a minimum requirement for some of the dungeon finder instances ect, this will really make a bigger divide then critmit but not as bad as critmit since you won't have to be a raider to achieve it, which is very nice for once about time! lol

akin99 wrote:

I, too, think/hope it will return PUGing, especially for 91 and 92 since you will have a more reliable way to ascertain the relative strength of a character.
Crit Mit was used as a survivability gauge, yes, but wasn't useful as anything more than that because of how easy it was to obtain CM (and not just through SLR). The requirements PUGs put on CM was higher than any dungeon required only because there is no 'checkable' hint a character is 90 with more than 250 AA or 90 with fewer than 200 AA. Unlike CM, though, obtaining AA is 100% in the hands of the player at any playstyle no matter the balance in the character or player's bank. With the CM requirements PUGs would arbitrarily demand, a player could use the excuse of not raiding or abhorence to SLR and other such (mechanicswise, even at the solo playstyle with no SLR, a character could obtain enough CM the appropriate zones really required). Obtaining AA is 100% in the hand of the player without any blathering excuses of 'not enough money', 'not raiding', etc. (even though there are still those who try to use those empty excuses).

Peogia wrote:

Actually incorrect.

GU63 instances and their drops, in their current design, are pretty much going to invalidate any loot from current DOV zones, so there no longer is a reason to run them for gear. And the GU63 instances require you to be lvl 92 to run (I believe?). So PUGing the new instances WILL be better because you know everyone running them must have at least 280 AAs since thats what is needed to be at that level in the first place.

Geothe wrote:

Of course, if you aren't only focused upon gear (iow, you run zones for gear, but you also run zones to enjoy the content, look for the shineys you don't already have, etc.), then you may still have reasons to run it. Granted, there are some zones that aren't really fun for anyone, and those, understandably, will be skipped over.
As far as the rest of it, it looks like you and Peogia are saying roughly the same thing, but throwing different words at it. Peogia is basically saying that after the update goes live, anyone that wants to pug and is lvl 90 or less will be assumed to have less than 280 aa. You state that everyone will know that a lvl 92 has at least 280 AA because they can't level past 90 without it. Those are two sides of the same coin.
Granted, the assumption that people make could be wrong. I've got a lvl 50-ish SK with over 200 AA, and I'm not unlocking him until he hits at least 250. Some of it has been grinding, but most of his AAs are from level locking and doing all the quests + hitting all the dungeons at a specific range before unlocking till he gets to the next range. Nets plenty of AA, plus I get to experience content that I haven't seen in a while.
That isn't everyone's cup of tea, nor should anyone expect that. I personally think it would be useful to add AA to the list of possible /who delimiters. That way, if you (or anyone else, for that matter) were running a non-current zone for the heck of it, but want to make sure that you get a healer that is lvl 90 with 250AA, for example, all that would be necessary is to type /who all healer 90 250+. I'm not sure how much of a coding headache that would be, but it would allow those that min/max or want to faceroll the zone to do so, and those that believe that the point is the journey instead of the destination would be able to experience it their way.
Well, that's my 2cp.
Rotherian Facepalmer

What about TS alts? Does that mean I have get all my alts to 280+ AA's for tradeskilling past 90?
Also, I suspect the 92 cap means that all vet bonuses increase to 92 as well... is that correct?

1/ no, you can level TS without 280 AA
2/ no official word on that

*comes back a week later and sees people tearing apart what she said 3 pages ago*
Last time i checked; AA = ALTERNATE Advancement. The fact we now MUST GAIN 280 to continue leveling past 90, no longer means this is a alternante form of advancement. SOE, please rip "Alternate" out of the name please, if you really wish to go down this route. I simply don't have the leisure to dedicate 3 hours a night to grinding content just to get my AAs to 280 on 6 characters so that I can continue to level them. I have more important things to worry about, a medium attention span, and other games I play along side EQ2 which are geared for casual play.
In the end, only dedicated raiders, min/maxers, and OCD peeps will be able to enjoy endgame content with such barricades. And yes they are barricades, for people who don't have lots of time to waste on the same boring effortless repetative unfun thing over and over. This doesn't get people to play older content. Stop kidding yourselves. You know everyone will just grind endgame dungeons over and over because it's more conveniant. Doing the same thing you've already done over and over gets boring. You all know this. It's why many of you always demand new content every year or else you you threaten to leave to some other game.
"it's you who is forcing yourself to grind". This is completely wrong. It's being told I have to gather 280 ALTERNATE advancement points on 6 characters because someone at SOE thought it was a good idea to change the role AAs play. If SOE wishes to keep their customers, decisions like this, and that last one to sell the european customers to some shady garage company, are the worst ideas to engage in. There is a lot of competition in the MMORPG market these days, and SOE cannot afford to make anymore mistakes. Especially with their track record of making so many mistakes already.
"Veteran bonus will still be at 90". I'd like a red-name to confirm this please. Anyone got a quote? I'm not trying to doubt the person who said this earlier, but I need it in official writing to ease my worries. If I didn't like this game, I wouldn't be worried. I wouldn't here arguing the definition of AAs. I wouldn't be putting my heart soul and monthly fee into this game. I wouldn't be stating my opinion on why I feel it's wrong to demand players jump through hoops to do a simple task like leveling up. Adventure EXP should be enough. Sorry if my casual gameplay style bothers some of you, but remember that EQ2 is not just for you. It's gotta work for everyone who likes it.

Shoulda just made them hell levels rather than a 280 aa req, but I garuntee people would still be complaing if it took them a month to gain 2 levels.

Meube@Splitpaw wrote:

I won't mind it taking a month to gain 2 levels, if there are a month full of different things to do.