Leadership againFollow

You're right that they mentioned something was changing with it soon.

I haven't seen the official actual details, but it could be out there (I try and avoid the Official boards).

One version (not confirmed to my knowledge) is that they aren't moving them at all... just making them a game feature every character has.

Understood, and thank you for your input.

It's just that I don't feel being docked AA for something I already spent experience to earn is a very good thing. If they 'give' you something and then dock AA, they are not 'giving' it, you're paying for it. With the target window, I had toons that had all slots, got docked 40 aa when the thing became free, so essentially I was charged twice for it, once for getting the slots with AA, then once for getting them free. I am just concerned that this same twisted accountancy will occur with Leadership, where there is a heck of a lot more aa equivalency involved if you have well maxed out abilities already. If they are going to dock me for these AA (which I already paid for with experience) then give me the AA back so I can re-spend them on something else. Otherwise I am being charged twice for the same thing, once for the earning, and once for the moving.

Somehow, paying again for something I already earned is hairbrained, who came up with this idea for the target window? Are they planning to do it with Leadership as well?? Just flat move them to 'paid for AA' status and cancel the old skills that I have earned by sacrificing leveling. But please don't charge me for them a second time.

And I would also like to get back the AA from the target window double charge, as well, but as they say, "fat chance!"

More ideas/discussion are welcome, I am not being contentious, just concerned. Maybe I shouldn't rant until it happens, but by then, of course, it is too late. And if nobody else cares about this, then again, fat chance.

good hunting, all.

You're right of course, the 'lost' time getting keys and planes access, Howling stones, quibbling over this trivial experience does seem petty doesn't it. And they are autogranting AA anyway, so those of us that were proud of our multi-K AA balances will now no longer have anything to point to, it could all be autogrant. And you're right about fun, but I WAS having fun getting AA and experience, building a tough character, learning to overcome tougher and tougher content. 40 points doesn't seem like much, and now, of course, it isn't. And as for experience, once upon a time, it was tough to get, an AA or a yellow was a precious thing, 2% was a gold mine. Time to get my head out of my......memories and get with the new EQ. On the other hand, it wasn't so much the tremendous number of AA, as the principle of the thing, 'grinding' aa only to log on and find them gone. But again, you're right, a little swarming or a good group, 40 aa is trivial anymore. How is it a grind any more, really?

I did a few betas, and I remember what it is like to sit down with a 85+, 90+ toon and a passle of AA, then try to learn to play such a toon against awesum mobs. It was a tough switch for me, used to starting with nothing and hand carving a toon to take on all that it could, knowing intimately its limitations and advantages, what to fear, how to push the envelope. Now it will be a completely different challenge, trying to work with people in that condition, or trying to fit myself in, not completely understanding the consequences of a passle of new AA I have that I am not familiar with. On the other side, struggling for AA will be pointless waste of time, when they could be free. Very similar to the key-access thing, isn't it: the challenge was there, now it's nothing. But it's free! What's your problem? So's welfare.

My FUN WAS to climb the exp/AA ladder, to breathe free at a new level, take on badder and badder content. Now the badder and badder content has become more like a package tour. My fun was taking on the challenge to survive, to overcome the content, to be able to take pride in a badass toon, hand carved, ably played.

So I drop out of this thread. The only two comments have been of the nature, "Quit whining." So I will.

Thanks again for the input. But even with all this free stuff and the radical nature of the change of the game, I still somehow find it all irritating, like an excess or unfair charge on your credit card or tax bill. Another sign of the modern times, you don't have to like it, just live with it, it's small potatioes, so what if it's crooked or stupid? You can't do anything about it, so keep smiling, have fun. Don't adjust the reality, adjust your attitude.

LOL, good hunting, all.



Edited, Feb 9th 2014 9:26pm by Numantic

- Leadership AAs have been converted to standard abilities. You no longer need to earn separate leadership experience to obtain these abilities. To learn more about the change, you can press 'L' in-game.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=33856


Edited, Feb 19th 2014 11:27am by Larth

~
As someone who mainly solos, seeing mob buffs is handy. I always wished I'd grouped more to get that one feature -- of real use, though, is not so much buffs a mob has, but seeing if my own spells are on the mob is priceless. Trying to manage my warder, keep an eye on one of 3 windows for resist checks/fizzles/interupts, and toggle through 3-4 mobs making sure they're all slowed has just become a hella lot easier.

I know EQ was hardcore, so, not knowing what a mob may or may not have on it -- detrimental or not -- was part of that charm, but man, I may have stayed longer and been away less with just this one little change.

Logged in today to look at this.

1st off... love that they kept the default "L" key as a window that explains the changes. Well done on the devs part.

2nd... I really like the changes and don't bedrudge the wasted time on my most recent druid that half-finished these leadership abilities before this change.

3rd... all the stat/health ones got combined and turned into an early 50s AA. Pretty slick in my mind, as having them at lower levels would have been "a bit hasty" (sorry reading lord of the rings lately).

Health of target's target is there in the action window for everyone to make a hotkey of. Pretty much everything else is either part of the find window (if you don't want to type commands to trigger) or innate. I really like spell awareness being innate now.

Edited, Feb 21st 2014 5:45pm by snailish

Yup, yup. Gotta love making the game so much easier to play.

Next step: boost every player to 100, max AA's, Rank III's of all spells and a full complement of Tier 4 raid gear. Then think of the fun!

/sarcasm off

Not picking on anyone here, just expressing my opinion. Boy, the game sure has changed over the years. I'd say "evolved" but usually evolution is for the better and I don't see that here. But I guess the devs figure this is necessary for the survival of EQ and that IS a hard argument to oppose.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2014 6:31am by Sippin

I've said I agree this change is probably necessary to keep the game we all love alive and thriving... well, alive, at least.

The problem I see is that they're taking the shortcut of "leveling" the playing field rather than injecting more interesting content for lower level players.

I've spent time in recent months on the progression server and on the emu-server-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-here. In both "worlds" I started at level 1 in darn HARD versions of the game which required a lot of time and effort to advance. I ran across players who were already level 50 (the cap) or close to it. I never felt jealous of their accomplishment, or that the game devs should make it easier for me to "catch up" with them. The reason being I was willing to do the work to earn that level 50 AND there was enough interesting content for my toon at its lowly level, and enough other players to share that low-level playing experience with, that I didn't feel "deprived" that I wasn't being handed an easy path to the top.

I do agree it isn't all that fun to have to solo your way from 1-UP, particularly when on top of achieving as many as 100 levels you need thousands upon thousands of AA points to really develop your character. But that's because many players below the cap don't seem willing or able to enjoy the game as available to them at lower levels. And a major part of the reason for this is that the game doesn't encourage players to stick around "mid-level" to experience those challenges, so there are few people to group with, or raid with, sub-100.

Personally I understand this frustration fully. This is why elsewhere I proposed instances for lower-level toons which kick out rewards useable by high-level mains on the same account. Think how much fun it would be to be able to group in Crushbone, Nurga, Kurns Tower, Karnors, ,Kael Drakkel (lotta K zones in EQ, have you noticed??)Plane of Fear, Plane of Fire, Akheva Ruins, Wall of Slaughter, The Devestation, Valdeholm, Vergalid Mines, Field of Scale, Pellucid Grotto, Morell's Castle, etc., etc. Don't know some of these zones? That's probably because they're lower level zones and unless you were grouped back in the days when they were current content you never had the occasion to enjoy them in a group.

Handing out a free level 85 and/or 4000 AAs to players is not going to enhance their enjoyment of these zones unless your idea of fun is rampaging solo thru a zone full of greys and greens slaughtering everything in sight. That contributes nothing to the social grouping aspect of the game which USED to be its core source of enjoyment.

I'm sorry if I came across as "venomous". That's not my intention at all. And any ire I express is more toward the short-sighted quick-work approach the game devs are taking to boost the player base, at the cost of undermining the heart and soul of the game to the point where its extinction is probably accelerated. Why do you think the guys who designed the emu vehemently ban multi-boxing (to the point where you can get banned for a first offense) and preserved every component of the original game which made PLing and fast leveling difficult to impossible? Because they know that the heart and soul of the game as originally conceived involved grouping with other "real" players and making the always tedious process of leveling a toon and acquiring necessary gear and abilities a secondary "side effect" of playing the group game. Yeah, making it real easy for everyone to get their toons up "to the top" I guess enhances the chance players will be able to group, since evidently today it's considered that only level 100 players can only find a group. But then what's the point? It's like a Olympics where we skip all the difficult contests and just rush all the contestants to the award stands and hand everybody out a gold medal just for showing up!

Last 2 posts are too long to quote... but worth the read and I like them both.

This discussion has turned into a "state of the game" kind of thread, which is alright.

I think the live server game needs to continue to evolve and have the content balance become much more top heavy, even though I haven't played above 80 ever (and love the low content). But... I do like the idea of low level content offering rewards useful to account. I see the challenge in making this work without Vox/Naggy style level-locking way more stuff I don't see how they can do it though that it is actually compelling. Considering there is so little low-level group play I'm not sure it really works on regular servers. However, revamping old content on live servers (in my view) to be high level would make the nostalgia incentive factor of playing on progression servers stronger, while making people like me that would rather fight in Najena a reason to level up (if Najena is now level 95-100).

I also think they need to keep rolling out special "niche" ruleset servers. They are willing to run Trakanon with almost no population, and Zek isn't much better. Vox is decent (probably ranks at worst among the lower pop oldest servers... but might even be stronger than 2-3 of them). Vulak is light, Fippy sounds like it still has a decent crowd. I mention this because if it came down to "tough choices" there is some server merging that could occur to free up servers. However, I think they have some hardware to spare (Vanguard server... cough). Up to me I would:

1. Move the current Progression servers from "preferred" status and allow nongold accounts access.

2. Launch a new progression server (with all the fixes they have done this would be very smooth) with the raid unlocks and timer for the next expac more like it was for Combine/Sleeper. So the server where the (or a) top guild sets the pace. AND launch a new progression server where there is no server leaderboard for raid kills and they have nothing to do with the pace. This 2nd server would be on a leisurely 6 months per expac timeline. These would be gold-sub only.

3. If I was Sony the Brave, I would do a sullon-zek style PVP progression server based on raid unlocks. Top guilds can kill each other to do the unlocks. I'd move all current zek names to this server pre-launch. (I think current Zek is going to need to merge out of red status sooner rather than later...). With all 3 of these prog rulesets launching at the same time the playerbase would be able to really dial-in how they want to play. You want fast unlocks? Don't play on the 6-month timed server. You don't want a guild full of SK's taking all the raids, go PVP and PK the villains!

4. If I was Sony the Experimental, I would relaunch a roleplaying server with the main rule that made the nodrop exceptions make sense: 1 character per account. Most of the other original quirks are long-gone from FV. On a new one, I wouldn't bother with the language or chat channel restrictions since the workarounds people did on FV weren't any more immersive than just leaving it as is. If it fails... merge it to FV no harm done.

5. Move Vox down to regular server status. Not allowing moves in is still alright, but it is time for a new regular server launch. Fresh start economy on a server with nothing done has appeal to many that don't want to do it progression style, and sitting in preferred status it is nice for it to be a fresher server (and Vox has been around a bit now).