EQ1 and AAs

Nanfoodle

Do you want to see this make the list of Pantheon? I hope it does, I loved the endless content it gave to my char. In a sense I could almost become epic on a level that people would get to know you by name. I loved having guilds fight over me because of what I could bring to a raid over some casual gamer that didnt take the time to round out their char. Maybe its an outdated system with MMOs focusing so much on casual players. What do you think?

Krimzin

I absolutely love the AA system. It gave you a reason to play your main character even when you weren't doing Raids. Most other MMO's.. you level a fresh toon, get it geared and its just as good as another character whose been playing long term. 

Sinist

Nanfoodle said:

Do you want to see this make the list of Pantheon? I hope it does, I loved the endless content it gave to my char. In a sense I could almost become epic on a level that people would get to know you by name. I loved having guilds fight over me because of what I could bring to a raid over some casual gamer that didnt take the time to round out their char. Maybe its an outdated system with MMOs focusing so much on casual players. What do you think?

I am all for any and all forms of character development. The more the better, the more complex the better, etc... Basically, I want a 500 page manual on how to develop my character that takes a lifetime of play to master.

My only request is that they pay close attention to the AAs they allow as some of the biggest class war tantrums began from poor implementation of AA abilities.

Sinist

Krimzin said:

I absolutely love the AA system. It gave you a reason to play your main character even when you weren't doing Raids. Most other MMO's.. you level a fresh toon, get it geared and its just as good as another character whose been playing long term. 

Exactly. Combine that with very slow leveling and nobody was at cap. I remember when SoL came out with the AAs and I was still only around 58 at the time (cap was 60). It was such a killer as I was constantly torn whether I should focus on a given AA or continue to level to 60.

That was the beauty of EQ. People weren't at cap two weeks after release. I think I only remember a couple people in all during the game that were ever at cap with levels and AA's at any given time.

Mendel

I loved some of the ideas behind AAs, but there were a lot of issues with some classes.

Enchanters, for instance, got a large number of AAs that were only a duplicate function of one of their spells.  Sure, you didn't have it on your active spell bar, but if you didn't have it on the spell bar, was it really all that useful to you?

The other problem was the melee characters.  They essentially needed all of the damage avoidance and mitigation AAs, plus all the HPs and AC increases in order to function as a group tank in pickup groups.  This was especially evident for any non-top-of-the-line tank.  Not only was there equipment to get, there was a huge AA curve that tanks needed to tackle to do their basic job.

Clerics were great without AAs, but the AAs they had made them magnitudes better.  A wizard, a magician, a druid or a necromancer could manage with just their spells.  Melee DPS could work with weapons only.  In most of these classes, the AA system was great, adding efficiency and occasionally additional functionality to the characters.

I wouldn't mind another AA system, as long as it was better developed.

Sinist

Mendel said:

I loved some of the ideas behind AAs, but there were a lot of issues with some classes.

Enchanters, for instance, got a large number of AAs that were only a duplicate function of one of their spells.  Sure, you didn't have it on your active spell bar, but if you didn't have it on the spell bar, was it really all that useful to you?

The other problem was the melee characters.  They essentially needed all of the damage avoidance and mitigation AAs, plus all the HPs and AC increases in order to function as a group tank in pickup groups.  This was especially evident for any non-top-of-the-line tank.  Not only was there equipment to get, there was a huge AA curve that tanks needed to tackle to do their basic job.

Clerics were great without AAs, but the AAs they had made them magnitudes better.  A wizard, a magician, a druid or a necromancer could manage with just their spells.  Melee DPS could work with weapons only.  In most of these classes, the AA system was great, adding efficiency and occasionally additional functionality to the characters.

I wouldn't mind another AA system, as long as it was better developed.

AAs should be required eventually in content. If they aren't a required, they are meaningless. So while I understand there were some issues with AAs (I was a monk who was the center of the controversy of this issue during its release), but that was idiots developing it who should have been flipping burgers rather than making games (Yeah Smed, I am talking about your idiot team of moron developers, remember Monkly Business? Thought so.)

That said, I have no problems with the example you gave on melee. You want to tank, then focus on your AAs that allow you to do content that requires it. I mean, if not, what is the point of progression?

Nanfoodle

I didnt like the balance of Tank and Healers needed twice an many AAs to get in the same team/raids.

PurplePoloPlayer

@Nanfoodle For us uninitiated peoples, what is an AA?

Sinist

PurplePoloPlayer said:

@Nanfoodle For us uninitiated peoples, what is an AA?

It is called "Alternate Advancement" and it was a form of character progression in EQ that allowed a character to improve in ability with using traditional levels. It contained all kinds of increases in abilty ranging from basic linear aspects such as avoidance and mitigation, to special abilities, to enhancements, to caster meditation, to existing ability enhancements, etc...

Zarriya

I would love to see an AA system again. It gives me something to do that invests in my character and I can still play on level with my more casual friends.

PurplePoloPlayer

Sinist said:

PurplePoloPlayer said:

@Nanfoodle For us uninitiated peoples, what is an AA?

It is called "Alternate Advancement" and it was a form of character progression in EQ that allowed a character to improve in ability with using traditional levels. It contained all kinds of increases in abilty ranging from basic linear aspects such as avoidance and mitigation, to special abilities, to enhancements, to caster meditation, to existing ability enhancements, etc...

That sounds excellent indeed.  I hope we see a form of this in Pantheon.  Thanks for the reply!

Sinist

PurplePoloPlayer said:

Sinist said:

PurplePoloPlayer said:

@Nanfoodle For us uninitiated peoples, what is an AA?

It is called "Alternate Advancement" and it was a form of character progression in EQ that allowed a character to improve in ability with using traditional levels. It contained all kinds of increases in abilty ranging from basic linear aspects such as avoidance and mitigation, to special abilities, to enhancements, to caster meditation, to existing ability enhancements, etc...

That sounds excellent indeed.  I hope we see a form of this in Pantheon.  Thanks for the reply!

Sure thing! It was a good development system, it added quite a bit (though it was poorly balanced by the SoE team at the time) and it resulted in consistent character development options between content releases. In fact, I think in the couple of expansions that it was first released (that is as long as I played heavily), there were only a couple people who even maxed out the progression (it was insanely hard and time consuming to) which means for pretty much most of the players, there was always something to progress while you were waiting on new content (which waiting on new content was only something the top 1% of the player base did).

trilloeq

it also added alot of QoL improvements as well, mana/hp regen, move speed, mass AoE buffs etc

Amathe

I very much liked the AA system in EQ. Of course, I like most things that offer me an opportunity to individualize my character by making choices. 

Nanfoodle

Ya I have not seen any game system that added as much depth to classes since. Going back to EQ1 this past week I forgot how much more depth it had after years of playing cookie cutter classes, that when I got to end game there was little option to advance my char other then gear. 

Rattenmann

I am all for AA System like EQ 1... but PLEASE not the one from EQ2, that was no fun at all. Restricted,... basically like bloaded skill trees. Bah.

Everquest AAs? Hell yeah! Bring it!

Dullahan

I believe something like this is already going to be in place in a way. They've already told us that only some of a character's class abilities will be available at a trainer. The rest you have to discover. You could basically expand this indefinitely, and there are many ways to rank up abilities as you would with AAs.

As for the classic AA system, I like the premise but with a few modifications.

First, I would like the system to exist outside of the UI. I'd like to see players learn or upgrade abilities by interaction with the game world and its inhabitants. Maybe by way of quests, dropped abilities or by actually fighting mobs that use abilities ala Vanguard. An emu based on EQ named Shards of Dalaya had a tome based system (rare drops), and I thought it was just an all around better experience than simply checking boxes in a user interface.

It may sound silly, but the second request for such a system would be moderation. I felt the EQ1 AA system went overboard with some abilities. I'd like to see classes stay true to their role, and not create overlap giving a class too much utility.

Utinni

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't AA's initially based off of a lower level than cap, level 52 if i remember correctly? This allowed you to either group the hardest content and gain aa's somewhat swiftly, kill easier content and still progression without the best gear/aa's, or solo even easier stuff for certain classes. This really helped spread some of the population out since there weren't instances. It also helped replayability for a lot of content  (I solo'd seb/KC basement for aa's even at 65 I believe).

hercules

i liked AA hen it came out in eq1 but then it became another grind form causing the game to feel like evergrind

Nanfoodle

Utinni said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't AA's initially based off of a lower level than cap, level 52 if i remember correctly? This allowed you to either group the hardest content and gain aa's somewhat swiftly, kill easier content and still progression without the best gear/aa's, or solo even easier stuff for certain classes. This really helped spread some of the population out since there weren't instances. It also helped replayability for a lot of content  (I solo'd seb/KC basement for aa's even at 65 I believe).

Each AA was like doing level 50 again but doing level 60-70-105 level content exp. So a few hours of game play you can knock off 5-30 AAs depending on what you were doing. So they never felt overly grindy but they did deeply impact your class in the end even though each click into your AAs only added a minor increase.

Sinist

Nanfoodle said:

Utinni said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't AA's initially based off of a lower level than cap, level 52 if i remember correctly? This allowed you to either group the hardest content and gain aa's somewhat swiftly, kill easier content and still progression without the best gear/aa's, or solo even easier stuff for certain classes. This really helped spread some of the population out since there weren't instances. It also helped replayability for a lot of content  (I solo'd seb/KC basement for aa's even at 65 I believe).

Each AA was like doing level 50 again but doing level 60-70-105 level content exp. So a few hours of game play you can knock off 5-30 AAs depending on what you were doing. So they never felt overly grindy but they did deeply impact your class in the end even though each click into your AAs only added a minor increase.

You are right, that really depended on what you were doing and that level of AA gain was either in later content with a full group (or a high level mob being solod) or done thorough special groups. For instance, to gain anywhere near 30 AAs in a couple of hours, it was usually an enchanter AoE group in Fungus Grove or similar areas where they could pull groups of mobs and kill them down quickly at the same time (during the release of AAs with SoL).

Later when PoP came out, a good exp zone with solid pulls might produce 2-3 AAs an hour for the average group in the early zone, though that was the big thing as guilds who were able to flag to the later PoP zones had access to the really good exp zones.

That was one of the things about PoP that was annoying. EQ went from a group social game with raids to a raid game with grouping options for the raiders in off time, it was like a membership country club. Heck, GoD was pretty much a high end raiding expansion where you couldn't do anything unless you were a raid who flagged to progress (all the zones you could group in were behind raid flags). I am all for raiding, but that design was nothing short of a sell out to the players. That is where EQ started to lose a lot of its subs. First with PoP and its dumbing down as well as overly gating content with key flags from raids and then with entire expansions that said if you weren't a guild with a 100+ people, don't bother logging in.

Hmm... it appears I got off on a little tangent here.

Nanfoodle

Sinist said:

Nanfoodle said:

Utinni said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't AA's initially based off of a lower level than cap, level 52 if i remember correctly? This allowed you to either group the hardest content and gain aa's somewhat swiftly, kill easier content and still progression without the best gear/aa's, or solo even easier stuff for certain classes. This really helped spread some of the population out since there weren't instances. It also helped replayability for a lot of content  (I solo'd seb/KC basement for aa's even at 65 I believe).

Each AA was like doing level 50 again but doing level 60-70-105 level content exp. So a few hours of game play you can knock off 5-30 AAs depending on what you were doing. So they never felt overly grindy but they did deeply impact your class in the end even though each click into your AAs only added a minor increase.

You are right, that really depended on what you were doing and that level of AA gain was either in later content with a full group (or a high level mob being solod) or done thorough special groups. For instance, to gain anywhere near 30 AAs in a couple of hours, it was usually an enchanter AoE group in Fungus Grove or similar areas where they could pull groups of mobs and kill them down quickly at the same time (during the release of AAs with SoL).

Later when PoP came out, a good exp zone with solid pulls might produce 2-3 AAs an hour for the average group in the early zone, though that was the big thing as guilds who were able to flag to the later PoP zones had access to the really good exp zones.

That was one of the things about PoP that was annoying. EQ went from a group social game with raids to a raid game with grouping options for the raiders in off time, it was like an membership country club. Heck, GoD was pretty much a high end raiding expansion where you couldn't do anything unless you were a raid who flagged to progress (all the zones you could group in were behind raid flags). I am all for raiding, but that design was nothing short of a sell out to the players. That is where EQ started to loose a lot of its subs. First with PoP and its dumbing down as well as overly gating content with key flags from raids and then with entire expansions that said if you weren't a guild with a 100+ people, don't bother logging in.

Hmm... it appears I got off on a little tangent here.

Ya with my Necro last night I got 8 AAs solo in PoP in about 2hrs. But, again, thats the fun of being a Necromancer =-)

Mendel

Sinist said:

<snip>
That was one of the things about PoP that was annoying. EQ went from a group social game with raids to a raid game with grouping options for the raiders in off time, it was like a membership country club. Heck, GoD was pretty much a high end raiding expansion where you couldn't do anything unless you were a raid who flagged to progress (all the zones you could group in were behind raid flags). I am all for raiding, but that design was nothing short of a sell out to the players. That is where EQ started to lose a lot of its subs. First with PoP and its dumbing down as well as overly gating content with key flags from raids and then with entire expansions that said if you weren't a guild with a 100+ people, don't bother logging in.

Hmm... it appears I got off on a little tangent here.

This sort of expands on the issue I touched on in my initial response in this thread.  But, I'll see your tangent and raise you a mini-rant and a partial thread-jack.

Gates of Discord (GoD) was the first of EQ's real problems.  First, this expansion was released out of order.  GoD was supposed to be a follow-up to Omens of War (OoW), but somehow was ready before it and SOE made the decision to release it anyway.  GoD was indeed a raid-heavy expansion, and many of the 'basic' things were targeted for 69 and 70th level characters; OoW was the expansion that increased the level cap from the PoP-era max of 65 to 70.  This had the effect of effectively reducing GoD to guilds that were well-geared with PoP gear, leaving most casual players unable to function in the zones.  GoD got this guild-only reputation honestly, but was never really able to shake it.

The second problem occurred with the Dragons of Norrath (DoN) expansion.  This expansion was the first massive AA and armor gap that tanks faced.  The DoN expansion essentially required tanks to have a relatively good selection of OoW and GoD raid gear, plus about 1000 more AAs that non-tank characters.  This expansion put casual tanks almost completely out of business, as few pick-up groups could function with a tank without at OoW raid gear (as a minimum).  The only role for the casuals was as secondary tanks / DPS, which wasn't a priority for most pick-up groups.

Later expansions (up until House of Thule) eased up a bit on the gaps with drastic gear + AA requirements.  It's always good to have a selection of raid gear from the previous expansion, but it wasn't as necessary.  But some of the newer expansions have reintroduced the problem, causing SOE to implement the automatic granting of AAs at every level, now to 90th level.  So, there is no need for tanks to spend 100s of hours more playing time to earn AAs so they can perform their class roles in newer zones.  Today, there's only the matter of equipment, and that's enough extra work, thanks.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

Sinist

Mendel said:

This sort of expands on the issue I touched on in my initial response in this thread.  But, I'll see your tangent and raise you a mini-rant and a partial thread-jack.

Gates of Discord (GoD) was the first of EQ's real problems.  First, this expansion was released out of order.  GoD was supposed to be a follow-up to Omens of War (OoW), but somehow was ready before it and SOE made the decision to release it anyway.  GoD was indeed a raid-heavy expansion, and many of the 'basic' things were targeted for 69 and 70th level characters; OoW was the expansion that increased the level cap from the PoP-era max of 65 to 70.  This had the effect of effectively reducing GoD to guilds that were well-geared with PoP gear, leaving most casual players unable to function in the zones.  GoD got this guild-only reputation honestly, but was never really able to shake it.

The second problem occurred with the Dragons of Norrath (DoN) expansion.  This expansion was the first massive AA and armor gap that tanks faced.  The DoN expansion essentially required tanks to have a relatively good selection of OoW and GoD raid gear, plus about 1000 more AAs that non-tank characters.  This expansion put casual tanks almost completely out of business, as few pick-up groups could function with a tank without at OoW raid gear (as a minimum).  The only role for the casuals was as secondary tanks / DPS, which wasn't a priority for most pick-up groups.

Later expansions (up until House of Thule) eased up a bit on the gaps with drastic gear + AA requirements.  It's always good to have a selection of raid gear from the previous expansion, but it wasn't as necessary.  But some of the newer expansions have reintroduced the problem, causing SOE to implement the automatic granting of AAs at every level, now to 90th level.  So, there is no need for tanks to spend 100s of hours more playing time to earn AAs so they can perform their class roles in newer zones.  Today, there's only the matter of equipment, and that's enough extra work, thanks.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

Excellent points. One thing I want to be very clear, so people don't misunderstand your point  due to the definition change of the word over the years. Casual back in EQ meant a player who played anywhere from 3-4 hours 3-4 times during the week and 6-10 hours over the weekend. A casual player would put in 15-20+ hours a week of play reasonably.

The truly "hardcore" players of EQ put in 8+ hours a day, 12-14 hour runs a few times during the week, and were on constant call for contested raid content. They were usually the top percent of players who were doing the cutting edge content.

When SoE kicked players in the teeth over these issues, they weren't being reasonable, they were catering to a very very small percent of the top end players in the game who could spend ridiculous amounts of time in play.

It always used to baffle me when I started playing WoW because I would hear people whine and moan, going on about how they work, how they don't have time to show up to a scheduled raid on meet for a 3-5 hours when it could be set way ahead of time (unlike EQ where a call to assemble for a raid mob could happen at any moment the guild was on). They would go on about how they were a casual player and only had like maybe an hour or two during the week to play, and maybe another couple of hours on the weekend, how that was casual, and how everyone else who could pay more were hardcore.

I was dumbfounded because that wasn't casual, that was.. occasional, on the verge of non-existent. I mean, if I had that little time to play a game, I wouldn't even bother with these types of games. In fact, I would rule my life too busy to toy with this crap and this is coming from a person who spent 50+ hours a week working while playing EQ back in the early days. It was like these people just wanted to show up and win! /boggle

Adamantine

SOE kept saying they wanted to implement AA in Vanguard, but they never came around to it, so I've never actually seen it for real.

From what I read in this thread, I can only persume its a major issue with balancing raid content ? Like a maxed out AA character will have gained massively compared to a non-maxed out one.

Sinist said:

AAs should be required eventually in content.

Can you explain how thats ever possible for a damage dealer ?!?

For raid content and timed encounters, sure. But for general adventuring ? The dps of the group will be lower, and killing will be slower ... meh.

Thats how it was in Vanguard:

Tanks need 100% best gear, that caused HUGE differences.

Healers need good healing stats from their gear.

DD ? Can play in rags.

I dont see how an itemfocused game can really avoid that.

Sinist

Adamantine said:

SOE kept saying they wanted to implement AA in Vanguard, but they never came around to it, so I've never actually seen it for real.

From what I read in this thread, I can only persume its a major issue with balancing raid content ? Like a maxed out AA character will have gained massively compared to a non-maxed out one.

Sinist said:

AAs should be required eventually in content.

Can you explain how thats ever possible for a damage dealer ?!?

For raid content and timed encounters, sure. But for general adventuring ? The dps of the group will be lower, and killing will be slower ... meh.

Thats how it was in Vanguard:

Tanks need 100% best gear, that caused HUGE differences.

Healers need good healing stats from their gear.

DD ? Can play in rags.

I dont see how an itemfocused game can really avoid that.

  It took AAs and gear to achieve such. AAs alone could not make that difference... well, the AA problem Mendle mentioned was poor design by SoE. The general avoidance and mitigation AAs should have never been accessible to all classes. That is what resulted in the problems as it was a bone headed design implementation. It is a long story, but those AAs essentially allowed anyone to play the role of a tank, even casters because all someone had to do was be able to survive a single round of combat and be able to hold agro. The DoN adjustment was a way to correct that problem (when they should have just removed the AAs from non tank classes, but you know... people would have thrown tantrums).

The point of AAs is to layer on additional time based progression content. That is, keep people chasing carrots other than gear progression.