AAs became a must in EQ at certain times. I remember groups wouldn't accept my Beastlord if I didn't have my kitty crack buff. Most areas/ guilds required 300+ AAs for a certain time period after I quit. Anything that betters your character stat wise is vertical progression. That's the simple truth. So now you may think AAs in terms of your character being able to do more things....this leads to homogenizing your class. Anything that makes your character better can be considered vertical and thus necessary, while expanding leads to homogenizing classes. AAs are a tough one to get right. But AAs in most games are definetly vertical and not horizontal progression. Just because you don't increase a level doesn't mean horizontal in the slightest.
It's funny how times change. I remember when PoP and Luclin released AA's came out and it seemed like there was a mass exodus of people. But my favorite things about EQ were AA's and raiding Luclin was a lot of fun it had a ton of raid content.
I am a huge fan of AA's. It was the main and only reason for me to log in on off nights to enjoy time building my character with a group of guild mates burning through mobs for AA's
I really hope for AAs or some meaningfull way to progress a Character even at max lvl beside gear grinding. Aquiring only new Gear just isnt fun to me..once i maxxed out a char and he cant get anything beside better gear i loose interest in a game. Recently i played eqprogression server for a few months till i got sick of the powermongergoldselleraspect of it these days. And i soo missed AAs i had to create a new char each time i hit max lvl on a character since i got bored. But all i wished for was to play my favorite char to higher heights kinda. (AAs werent in eq in early expensions thats why i couldn get them).
Been playing original Eq since start for about 7 years till the item spiral got just too out of hand. Only reason i did it for so long was AAs.
dorotea said:((Having the system tied to things you do in game, rather than distributing points, allows for more organic growth. Many players will simply grow into their choices based on their preferred playstyle. Sure, some people will overanalyze it and min/max it and decide that they need to level up using a two-handed sword and scale armor because that's going to get them the "best" numbers in the end, but as long as things are designed so that there are several different options in each choice and each of those is equally viable at the time, it won't be as clear-cut. The result would be a more diverse world, more uniqueness among characters, and more respect for individual choices.))
May the Gods (that means VR) grant us such a system.
Agreed, that would be awesome!
Moloka said:It's funny how times change. I remember when PoP and Luclin released AA's came out and it seemed like there was a mass exodus of people. But my favorite things about EQ were AA's and raiding Luclin was a lot of fun it had a ton of raid content.
I am a huge fan of AA's. It was the main and only reason for me to log in on off nights to enjoy time building my character with a group of guild mates burning through mobs for AA's
Yep exactly in truthe that was considered extra content, it gave you a reason to log on other than to just raid!
Ondark said:I really hope for AAs or some meaningfull way to progress a Character even at max lvl beside gear grinding. Aquiring only new Gear just isnt fun to me..once i maxxed out a char and he cant get anything beside better gear i loose interest in a game. Recently i played eqprogression server for a few months till i got sick of the powermongergoldselleraspect of it these days. And i soo missed AAs i had to create a new char each time i hit max lvl on a character since i got bored. But all i wished for was to play my favorite char to higher heights kinda. (AAs werent in eq in early expensions thats why i couldn get them).
Been playing original Eq since start for about 7 years till the item spiral got just too out of hand. Only reason i did it for so long was AAs.
I agree as well, this is why I stated either VR would have to release content at a reasonable/fast pace (which being crowd funded and smaller company idk how realistic that would be) or give end game players something else to do. Take WoW for example, PVE is your interest so what do you do? :
Hit max level
Grind heroic dungeons to gear for raids (or LFR since its watered down now)
Do Raids for better gear then you have the option of Heroic/Mythic raiding. Or create another toon.
Now say you are a Mythic raider you are maxed out BiS gear there isn't really much to do right? I guess you could Rep grind, do the whole AH thing. But other than that you sit there waiting for the next content patch. Now I was never into mythic raiding as it didnt really interest me unless there was an extra boss to do but have done plenty of Heroic Raiding and cleared content. And even with a AAA company like blizzard I still get bored because clearing the same raid over and over until there is no point is boring for me.
PvP suffices some of that thirst but only to an extent.
And I think EQ hit the nail on the head with how they handled AA's, at least for as long as I played. Current content now in EQ I couldn't tell ya what its like.
Ondark said:I really hope for AAs or some meaningfull way to progress a Character even at max lvl beside gear grinding. Aquiring only new Gear just isnt fun to me..once i maxxed out a char and he cant get anything beside better gear i loose interest in a game. Recently i played eqprogression server for a few months till i got sick of the powermongergoldselleraspect of it these days. And i soo missed AAs i had to create a new char each time i hit max lvl on a character since i got bored. But all i wished for was to play my favorite char to higher heights kinda. (AAs werent in eq in early expensions thats why i couldn get them).
Been playing original Eq since start for about 7 years till the item spiral got just too out of hand. Only reason i did it for so long was AAs.
Seems a bit odd, no? No interest in better/different gear or pushing deeper into challenging content of different types? What is the point of mindlessly grinding out AAs if not for miniscule power boosts over time, the same as slowly upgrading and sidegrading gear? All journeys eventually come to an end (or a stall until new content/expansions) for a character. It sounds to me that if ones only reason to log in is to keep grinding out AAs then the actual content of the game has failed. I think it should be healthy for someone to reach a point in which if they have no interest in alts they are encouraged to take a break and play/do other things for a time, otherwise is it not just preying on human psyche like daily quests to keep logging in?
I think the real key is ensuring the leveling journey is very long and feels meaningful/fun/challenging the whole way. To quote ol' Gary Gygax:
By requiring players to work for experience, to earn their treasure, means that the opportunity to retain interest will remain.
...When it is difficult to survive, a long process to gain levels, when there are many desired items of magical nature to seek for, then a campaign is interesting and challenging. Think about how much fun it is to have something handed to you on a silver platter — nice once in a while but unappreciated when it becomes common occurrence. This analogy applies to experience and treasure in the D & D campaign.
Glad to see this much input on this thread already =)
As long as it's not over-complicated, i'd be ok with it. in EQII i was a little overwhelmed by it for some classes... also, it led to a 'copy-paste', "must build" in order to have specific abilities in order to fill a very specific need, and without that covered, then it would render said class underpowered or a tad broken... I remember it causing much confusion, & a fair bit of uncertainty... having to re-work what choices I had made every time there was a patch was a bit tedious, and opinions differed endlessly, which was a bit tiresome... like being told by X class whom didn't play Y class, to redesign their AA tree to suit X classes needs for Z encounter, was a source of mild annoyance >.<
i totally value streamlined stuff & would hope that an Expansion would mean: more Lore,+areas to explore, maybe a smaller level cap (5Lvs?), but not something that would make a game unstable and numbers get completely whacky... endless AA's feel like how there's a billion options and make-believe words on a Starbucks menu, an over-whelming amount of choices to enable the customer feel like they made a special choice, when at the end of the day, its just some hot water and some f***ing espresso beans lol... maybe milk ;p
I honestly have faith in VR to handle it appropriately, i just hope it's not too silly & suddenly the ranger looks nothing like the class it was at the start of the game etc.
I came late to the EQ party and AA's meant something different for me as it wasnt about improving my already maxxed character, I came in at trilogy and Velious came almost too soon.
Anyways
From my player perspective, coming in green, reading nothing on how to advance, just taking it all in and relying on my wits alone, even though I knew of places like safehouse- I realized I had to get a bit higher in levels just to make it anywhere safely.
I wanted to travel. I did all my nice faction quests in my home town and I wanted to experience other cultures and go to other newbie towns, do quests- because at the time there wwere no newbie armor quests in erudin. Set up bases if you will, and expand out from various areas as I came to them. But to get to them I needed to get through hogher end areas. To get through higher end areas I needed to be higher level.
Starting on a TLC server this made leveling and keeping an eye on leveling very important even at low levels because I didnt want to get too high to not be able to do those neat quests. for instance I was a mage and met a halfling with a wee harvester, I thought one of those would be nifty even though I could summon food, it was a clicky and would save time and mana but I had to get to rivervale. Kithicor even by day was too high and runnyeye via gorge was out of the question at level 9, by level 15 that wee harvester would be trivial.
Likewise the ring of mithaniel Marr where you had to go to halas and back and qeynos hills to make a dog cough up a fish. Fun quest but... only way to halas was through blackburrow and I couldnt see and didnt have invis, so, seeing a wizard with that ring at level 5 and realizing by the time I got to level 10 where I had the invis spell the quest might be trivial.....
Made me wsh I had AA's sooner to quell the tide of leveling so I could get stronger in some ways but still be able to make it to those places to do those quests in all the newbie cities before they went trivial and then once done... move on to regular leveling. Imagine the time I would have spent in Oggok getting faction for the stein, it would have been wonderful, my PoV would have changed from Cities like Qeynos and Erudin to Rathe mountains and Deserts of Ro.
Manouk said:I came late to the EQ party and AA's meant something different for me as it wasnt about improving my already maxxed character, I came in at trilogy and Velious came almost too soon.
Anyways
From my player perspective, coming in green, reading nothing on how to advance, just taking it all in and relying on my wits alone, even though I knew of places like safehouse- I realized I had to get a bit higher in levels just to make it anywhere safely.
I wanted to travel. I did all my nice faction quests in my home town and I wanted to experience other cultures and go to other newbie towns, do quests- because at the time there wwere no newbie armor quests in erudin. Set up bases if you will, and expand out from various areas as I came to them. But to get to them I needed to get through hogher end areas. To get through higher end areas I needed to be higher level.
Starting on a TLC server this made leveling and keeping an eye on leveling very important even at low levels because I didnt want to get too high to not be able to do those neat quests. for instance I was a mage and met a halfling with a wee harvester, I thought one of those would be nifty even though I could summon food, it was a clicky and would save time and mana but I had to get to rivervale. Kithicor even by day was too high and runnyeye via gorge was out of the question at level 9, by level 15 that wee harvester would be trivial.
Likewise the ring of mithaniel Marr where you had to go to halas and back and qeynos hills to make a dog cough up a fish. Fun quest but... only way to halas was through blackburrow and I couldnt see and didnt have invis, so, seeing a wizard with that ring at level 5 and realizing by the time I got to level 10 where I had the invis spell the quest might be trivial.....
Made me wsh I had AA's sooner to quell the tide of leveling so I could get stronger in some ways but still be able to make it to those places to do those quests in all the newbie cities before they went trivial and then once done... move on to regular leveling. Imagine the time I would have spent in Oggok getting faction for the stein, it would have been wonderful, my PoV would have changed from Cities like Qeynos and Erudin to Rathe mountains and Deserts of Ro.
There weren't level requirements for quests, they never became trivial...and there really weren't many "newbie" quests beyond a scattering of turn ins for patchwork armors and such. I don't think newbie quests/armor quests were added until the Ykesha expansion.
You could have still ground faction across the world to do the stein quest, the reward was no less useful or valuable just because one "outleveled" the quest.
Part of why item levels and gear treadmills from WoW onward have been such a negative.
@Iksar I can see Manouk's point though. One of the things that I actually really liked about EQ's AA implementation is that I could use it to throttle my experience gain. This was super helpful if I was doing something like camping a quest drop (or a gear drop) in a mid-level dungeon because that way I didn't outlevel the fights along the way.
Sure, quests in EQ may not have had level limits but at the same time, the encounters and monsters and areas you faced did have level ranges. Thus, if you had to go back and farm something far below your level for a quest drop or objective, it just wasn't a great experience.
All that said, I don't think a massive freeform AA system is the right way to handle throttling experience gain and allowing people to stick around content that they're enjoying longer. I'd rather see people have the option to reduce or stop their vertical experience gain all up, alongside a more organic system for horizontal progression and differentiation.
Nephele said:@Iksar I can see Manouk's point though. One of the things that I actually really liked about EQ's AA implementation is that I could use it to throttle my experience gain. This was super helpful if I was doing something like camping a quest drop (or a gear drop) in a mid-level dungeon because that way I didn't outlevel the fights along the way.
Sure, quests in EQ may not have had level limits but at the same time, the encounters and monsters and areas you faced did have level ranges. Thus, if you had to go back and farm something far below your level for a quest drop or objective, it just wasn't a great experience.
All that said, I don't think a massive freeform AA system is the right way to handle throttling experience gain and allowing people to stick around content that they're enjoying longer. I'd rather see people have the option to reduce or stop their vertical experience gain all up, alongside a more organic system for horizontal progression and differentiation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORubPN2f-c
so i edumicated myself on aa.
if the vision to more about exploration and acclimation, i do not want an aa system.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2019_august_behind_the_design/
like in the newsletter to the e back in pve.
hell i'd even say that acclimation is a superior version to aa for both the player and developer.
just a prethought but the eq aa has an expanding gate(meaning the longer the game exists the more of a gap happens making it impossible for new players to reach the endgame)
whereas with acclimation if a new expansion is released or whatever and a new player wants to jump in, level to 50, then work on acclimating to the zone. no matter what how long the game has be running i could be relavent as a new player.
(disclaimer: these claims are based on what i've seen. i have never played eq, messed with aa)
also i wanted to add that aa is going to bump heads with las12. thank you.
OGTomkins said:Moloka said:It's funny how times change. I remember when PoP and Luclin released AA's came out and it seemed like there was a mass exodus of people. But my favorite things about EQ were AA's and raiding Luclin was a lot of fun it had a ton of raid content.
I am a huge fan of AA's. It was the main and only reason for me to log in on off nights to enjoy time building my character with a group of guild mates burning through mobs for AA's
Yep exactly in truthe that was considered extra content, it gave you a reason to log on other than to just raid!
It really was. And that's what you want in a game I would think wouldn't you? A reason to log in? I don't want to be sitting there trying to figure out what to play after I am max level in Pantheon and have nothing else to do. I like alts as much as the next guy, but to me I have that one character I like more than any others and I want to play them too, even when they are max level. I like seeing that raid drop I got last week make a big difference on my character grouping up. Or that spell I got that does 5% more damage to the mob than the previous one I had. Just raiding and getting higher gear and only using it for raiding isn't all that rewarding.
On a side note I like to think this game will have an excellent community and one we can build friendships in and group with people that to me is one of the funnest aspects of the game. The community and building relationships makes a game last not just content levels. And the best time to do that is on an off raid night grouping up with some buddies and having some fun. Doesn't neccesarily have to be AA"s either but some kind of progression system that moves your character along after you have reached max level.
Moloka said:Just raiding and getting higher gear and only using it for raiding isn't all that rewarding.
On a side note I like to think this game will have an excellent community and one we can build friendships in and group with people that to me is one of the funnest aspects of the game. The community and building relationships makes a game last not just content levels. And the best time to do that is on an off raid night grouping up with some buddies and having some fun. Doesn't neccesarily have to be AA"s either but some kind of progression system that moves your character along after you have reached max level.
It's good then that raiding is not intended to be the absolute apex in Pantheon, there should be plenty of extremely challenging and equally rewarding single group content to work toward.
