Producer Letter: About Heroic Characters...

This is a bit on and a bit off topic, but inquiring minds will want to know Although according to the official statements I would not be affected by the concept of a household for the purpose of a free 85, the following questions immediately come to mind:

1) Does limiting free 85s to Households mean we are getting linked accounts?
2) How could you possibly enforce the concept of a household?
3) Are unrelated college roommates considered a household? After all they have the same address and internet access.
4) Will I be able to link my 2004 account with my 2007 account and get a vet reward upgrade for my second account?
5) And if not, why not? This is something folks have repeatedly asked for.

Did you not notice that the link is in small type and in almost the same color as the other text? It is VERRRY hard to see and I can completely understand passing over it.

I didn't see anything about the household in the FAQ, but it was explained on this post https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2...-heroic-characters.539674/page-3#post-5969278

According to the faq "Once you purchase or upgrade an existing character to a Heroic character, you will have 280 AA available and the ability to earn a maximum of 320 AA." normally to get 320 aa you have to buy Aod, as the base without is 300. Does this mean Heroic characters do not have to buy Aod for those last 20 or are All characters getting those extra free 20 aa's . If it is just heroic characters then I would consider upgrading one of my 95's to Heroic to get those extra AA's

My attitude to this is remarkably simple: If this is how people want to play the game, fine. It's their loss. Newcomers that have adopted this method will be pretty much immediately recognisable anyway so I don't believe they'll gain a great deal (just my opinion for what its worth).

What does concern me is this quote from the original post:

"HEROIC HOTBARS!
We also have a new mode for Heroic Character hotbars to help returning players adjust to the number of combat arts/spells. It starts with one hotbar of core spells and/or combat arts to help you quickly learn and get into the swing of things. We add hotbars one at a time soon thereafter after to help you ramp up. Expert players can quickly get out of this mode at any time by modifying their UI."

Given SOE's past performance at introducing changes like this, can I please ask that sufficient testing is carried out to ensure that when I login after the update with my existing toons (ie non-heroic!) I am not confronted by a simplified hotbar which will then take days of repeated updates to fix.

It would be nice to think that those of us that have played a while and don't need the simplified hotbar will not see any changes to the current UI when we login but I'm not holding my breath!

This might just be the shot in the arm that poor, long-abandoned Nagafen needs!

I think the concept and the implementation really don't match up very well.

On the one hand you have lets get all these new people trying the game and old veterans returning to the game and instantly being able to group and actually playing an MMO. Great idea honestly. But then you made them start at 85 where there are no grind groups because a level restriction of 90 was put on even zoning into Skyshrine. So you have new players starting at 85-86 still soloing or expecting them to pay 35$ to go onto the grouping stage.

I think allowing the free trial to go at least to 90 would at least give it a chance of working as intended.

I think that a side-effect of heroic characters will inevitably be that there now WILL be quite a lot of grouping action at 85-94 due to the fact that everyone in game is now going to have a toon in that range.


Separate question... are these going to come with their epic weapons done? Level 80 is when the epic quest is supposed to be finished, so if these characters are skipping over that content, it would make them quite **** to not have their epics done (assuming you want to give people a fully functional level 85).

The only reason I can think of to not let people try for free up to level 90 is that they aren't confident people will still like the game/characters after level 86. I don't see why they would think that, but I guess they have a very low opinion of their own game.

I can see that some players would ask for this and why SOE would sell it at this price, the people asking for it will pay it. That said I think options for players is always a good thing. I won't begrudge someone paying for something as long as there is a way to earn similar by in-game means.

That said...

I think overall this is a bad idea for new players as it robs them of the experiences that some higher content is based upon such as learning languages, completing L&Ls, Heritage quests, learning the geography and location of various zones, how to play their characters, etc.

I wonder what impression a new player will get of the game and it's community when met with the inevitable warm welcome of veterans chastising them for playing an insta-win toon and casting them to second-class citizenry immediately for it. This was, after all, the reason F2P was released on as single server to begin with, was it not? Like the like minded stick to themselves?

I would have liked to see this as an unlocking option whereby you could earn a token that provided a level 85+ and the 100-280 AA points for each character you max leveled to current cap. After max leveling the first character you would only have to level the last tier of each subsequent one which is sufficient to learn an alt class as a typical rule once you have learned at least one the "hard way". I think this should be included as an option for all players regardless and not sold. We do get tired of leveling characters to play alt classes after a while.

That's the way I understood the no restrictions bit. Simply no restrictions on the character not the account. So their initial gear, spells etc will be unlocked to a certain point anything after that will have to be unlocked.

While i can understand the move, as the lower tiers almost dead, i see hard times coming ^^ So many level 95 chars (more then now) which didnt understand when to press which pictures or what it does.... i know, we got those already ^^

Couldn't have just made some changes so the 1-94 game is relevant/worth doing again?
Maybe cross server dungeon finder so low level peeps can actually find groups of all level ranges?

I seem to remember more people over the years asking for something like those suggestions, I don't ever remember seeing anyone asking for instant lvl 85 characters.

Congratz on making the 1-85 content even more obsolete than it was before?

hrmm... =\

As you can gain easily up to 50 in one day.... on the second 80, there is even not much worth in spending any to get to 85 ^^ (but then... im so lazy when it comes to games ^^)

I actually got 2 of my crafters to 95 an 88 carpenter and 65 provi. was going to work on an third but a friend wanted soem help leveling his adventurer.

Regarding the household issue, reread the original post not the faq:

First, for a limited time, players can create a Heroic Character for free. Oct. 1 until Oct. 15 is our “Hero’s Call” event which invites new players to create one free new Heroic Character per household. Existing accounts can create or upgrade to a Heroic Character for free too!

It is referring to the freebie ones you can get.

Edit: Looking at the phrasing I'm not even certain a currently existing account will be able to make a free heroic toon.

I have no doubt that itll count the accounts not the persons behind those... if so.... hard times soe... hard times ^^

Anyone that has multiple accounts is not in their target audience and really has no need for multiple heroic characters. If you have multiple accounts, odds are you can already do the PLing yourself. People already fuss over having to upgrade expansions for each account. I don't see anyone being the least bit interested in spending up to 35 or 45$ (full price char slot included) on another character.

Thats not the point ^^
But does it make sense, upsetting peeps who are willing to pay for 3 accounts (or more) per month?
Despite of the fact, that none should be let out with free goodies anyways but i think soe does need some cash to get things up and running so ^^ they should think twice (need or not, just as have to.... new class and so you know ^^)

No one gets free level 85 Channellers...the free season will be long gone by the time ToV is released.