2) If Exp bonuses become nerfed without rescaling the amount of AA required to upgrade the Rings, a massive gap is created between the top and middle tiered players, which is extremely bad. Honestly I left the Ear out of this statement on purpose, the GSoA are more of a bottleneck to that line than the AA even if it took 3 times the amount of AA.

I think Ear is still affected just as much as GSOA drop a little better and can purchase if really grinding hard. AA is the limiting factor.

I also worry about this too but like someone else said just increase the AA crystal drop rates slightly in tiers t6 and below. I would then make a 15k and 25k no drop aa crystal in say t8 +. That should counter act gap created by the exp item bonus nerf no?

I know I responded with my position on your thoughts on the potential problems.
Good dialogue though.

[THE CURRENT PROBLEM]

Nice to see different input.

I don't see it completely the way you do, but hey its just my opinion.

THE CURRENT PROBLEM

   There are several points I wish to cover in this post, but the first and most important of which is the actual problem.   When Hateborne first brought this issue to people's attention all they saw was "I want to reduce the XP mask/XP reward items" and people instantly started shooting it down because they didn't want the current grinds to take longer.  So let me try to word it a bit differently so that hopefully people can see the actual problem and not just what Hateborne had in mind to fix it. 

I personally didn't see it this way. Hate was clear that there was AA roll over issue and if he was to give more exp as you progressed in tiers, the current buffs would cause roll over and other complications.

I cant speak to others views, other than what I read on the posts, but my concern was that I have a 250% exp reward item that I felt was going to be less than it was before if the exp rate was nerfed. Hence, I asked if a refund would be a possibility. This was arguably an emotional response and based on too little data from Hates initial post. It was a little slim on the problem, cause and remedy but later more was added. If the way I understand his fix would have worked, if the aa exp rate in t7 + was improved. At those levels the exp amount would have been similar to current exp rate in t6 with exp buff. cool with me

I also personally felt that to have such an impact on the RoA and Earring / Mask quests was a bit unfair to those that are doing it currently and those coming behind as I thought that it would have been that much harder for them to get. Honestly though the pioneers get the benefit of these pre nerf changes for working hard to get them completed so I am just whining .

Problem #1
This doesn't address the problem caused by giant AA buffs being cast on low level players. 

I don't agree that this is really a problem and if hate addressed the exp buffs and the aa exp rate as tiers advance, this is a non issue.

Problem #2
What to do with AAs currently banked on toons

This imo is not a problem either, the current quests gobble up the aa's and will eventually consume the banked AA's and have little impact

Problem #3
But wait!  If we do all this to change it so we can spend tons of AAs on items what about the newbies that start here and need them to buy actual AAs the way everquest intended?!???!?

This may be a small issue, to me as the items that AA to advance get mudflated out, they are going to have less of an impact on the game.


I also will say that something good came out of all this. Hate stating that future items will not be using AA to advance. I don't think we need more items use AA, why do we have to do anything with the AA. The current 3 items will consume a lot of AA and keep toons busy for a long time. Future special items should be quested at tier appropriate levels or something else, not AA.


tdlr;

fix the aa buffs, scale the aa exp gained as tiers advance and address the exp reward item holders with some sort of compensation (selfish I know since I have one)

Yeah Hate,
Fix the exp items we support you. I like the idea of the exp reward items going group as a fair compromise or maybe being allowed to sell the item back at a 50% reduction.

Floor 7 myth busted, tested twice so far once by myself and once by Watchyoudie. New characters must click on all mirrors to add all keys to the keyring to avoid being booted off floor 7. So if you're enjoying this new group teleport feature, take some time to get all of your characters to click the mirrors some day   because group teleport only saves the keys to the clicker's keyring.

I fuggin told you so

YAY! :p

/clap! Hate you the man

Floor 7 still booting toons without tes key.... my new toon never even made it to the first set of traps and got the boot...I was still in the first roundish room before the split for traps....so tofs7 is not possible for new players atm...


back to essence farming for me!

even if you key to 7 pull TS to ent and loot TS key it still wont let you port a new char up to 7 :/

Hope we can get it figured out working a group through tofs now would like to farm Ts, Resists and V2's on 7.

Thanks Kru I know they are not related directly but the server issues and my eqbc and just general login issues has coincided conveniently.

In theory, if the server is spazzing out it could be sending spam packets to end user causing an oveoad on their bandwidth no? That would make sense given the above issue.

Puts tinfoil hat on "we are under attack"

I dont want to get you off track, but that very same thing has been happening to me since all this server lag has started. I have no clue how it's related or why but 60% of my toons won't connect. I use the IP address of the server and lock it down so it does not change. I never had good luck with the generic 10.0.0.27 or what ever.

Thanks Hate. Maybe when this next board comes in and has a manual it will be better on the install....wonder how much better gameplay will be with 32 ram over 16....kinda excited about that!  I have played 12 with no issues and have run 14 at once w/o issues....

Currently I am running 18 with no issues on 32 GB ram and of course my other components help. I also feel I could run 24 easy if I wanted to run more later down the road.

I had lots of lag with 18, have 32gb mem i7 sandy and SSD. I split the toons between 3 hard drives and that cured it.

[Hate]

I believe this is the end of the constructive feedback. As a result, locking the thread to prevent further pissing.

tl;dr - AAXP will only work for AAs, Ring of the Ages, Mask of the Ages, and Earring of the Ages. New ___ of the Ages will use different systems/forms of progression as AAXP is simply not viable for meaningful gains outside of explosively large values (which, like our HP/Damage situation, is not good).

-Hate

Hate,
Our explosively large values are what makes this server so much fun yes it's harder to deal with I can imagine but that was hunters vision as I saw it.
Thanks for keeping the server going with new content and stuff as well as fixing these issues.
I think krucial hit on why this thread turned into what it did, people are seeing nerf as that's really what was discussed more so than the problem at hand and solutions.

I know your time is valuable but maybe in a different thread you could show a simplified example of the current exp scaling and how the exp buffs and reward items are currently effecting AAEXP. Then show how it would scale properly with the new AAEXP from mobs and the lowered AA buff values.

[Hate]

Warbash,

You are wanting me to refund you the cost of an item, you got plenty of use of, at full price. My issue isn't that you aren't thrilled with the changes. I'm TOTALLY fine with discourse and discussion, but basically you're saying that because you made a donation to help keep this ship sailing, you are entitled to keeping an item(s) locked in time, regardless of how absurdly problematic it may be.

Potentially, we could compromise on this. Would you be interested if the Easy Experience items became a GROUP buff (not MGB friendly, I'm not that insane...) instead of a self only? I would have to attach a cooldown of sorts, but it could be group usable AND persist through death.

Thoughts?


-Hate

That is a totally reasonable compromise:) won't do me much good as mask is at %180 but totally fair.
Thanks for listening sir

[Hate]

why not put a cap on lvls that can get the xp buff have to be 71 to get 100+ 72 to get 300+ etcs ... i agree that having a huge amount of aa req for next of ages item should be what happens. i think it should be rk 1-100 like roa get it close to t7 then make it like 100k per rank and a gsoa every 25 and 500k aa ranks up to 1k
make it worth the farm but a dread to get. then you can choose to dump in mask or new item (i hope wrist). where as many have not gotten much past 350% rymo has been at it for 6+ months and he still has tons more aa's to get even with his bonus. rymo's mask may break low lvl server but you can fix that by putting a lvl require to receive the buff.

Sadly, there isn't a way to do the bonus cap without some possibly lag-adding "features". Given the current source issue(s), more lag is not quite what we want. I understand Rymo has been rocking out like a monster and he will still be a good bit ahead of the rest even after a change.

As it stands, RoA and EoA cost will need to go up or EXP bonuses will need to go down. It's simply too high. I understand this seems sudden and out-of-the-blue, but this came with me more diligently checking logs and seeing some breaking 80k AAXP a day (without crystals and with ~500-600% exp bonuses). Once some get 750-1000% bonuses, it is going to be MUCH higher. :-(


-Hate

Hate,
That's a bit of an extreme response to a reasonable question I think.
Look at it this way, you purchase a thing said to do xyz. Then that thing will no longer do what it was said to do when purchased. True you got the promised result for a certain period of time but that was with the expectation of that said result for the duration of ownership.
If you want to strip the AA's I got for having it, be my guest. I'd rather have the credits back. If you do, please calculate all the AA crystals I have used to level my ring and the amount of times I have died and forgot to rebuff it etc...

And to those saying you could grind out roa1k in 50 hours, I don't have a 1k exp and don't find mindless grinding in Anguish to be very rewarding. I don't have server numbers but I'd hazard a guess that those doing that are the exception not the rule. So what if you can get roa 100 easy, it's hardly game breaking.

im just worried about the exp reward item V3. it has allready seen changes. i spent 1k cred on it and now it costs... 750? if it gets nerfed in exp bonus to...

Will those with the exp reward be able to sell back for credit?

Nice post
Thank you guys, crazy what you do for free and to keep hunters memory alive.