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[Nullyn Void]

This is going to be a long post so apologies ahead of time for that.  Before I get into the meat of this post however I want to make one point: This thread is mainly for trying to help Hateborne with a solution to the AA problem he is stuck with attempting to resolve and is being posted on the forums instead of PMed directly to him in an attempt to get discussion on the idea put forth so that everyone can give their opinions on the idea.  Also, Hateborne mentioned in previous threads "to hell with it" basically since people were complaining about him trying to solve the problem, so hopefully if we can keep this constructive we can attempt to persuade him to keep AAs relevant in EZ. 

Ok, with that out of the way lets get into this! 


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. 

THE PROBLEM IS
1) With the rate AA xp is currently going Hateborne cannot do anything with AAs because with the rate we get them if they were any higher/faster we would LOSE them instead of GAINING them.  There IS a cap on how much xp a single event can give before it rolls over into a negative number or 0.  We all experienced this with aggro roll over in the past and know how much that sucked.  2) We burn through the current ___ Of the Ages series too quickly and putting in more items to the series would make them either too easy to obtain or require astronomical amount of AAs that made them impossible for the majority of people to ever realistically achieve. 3) Big XP buffs break the leveling process somehow

The problem IS NOT!!!!!
Hateborne doesn't like how fast we gain things in the game so wants to take our ball away and push us in the mud.

Nor is it that he does not have ideas on ways for us to spend our AAs beyond what we currently have and need more AA sinks implemented into the game that he can't come up with ideas for.

MY PROPOSED SOLUTION
   I know when people see things getting changed their initial reaction is to be against it, its human nature.  With that said, I think people were a bit overzealous when they saw Hateborne say he wanted to cap XP buffs at 350% because all they saw was they only get 1/3 the power they once had.  My idea is (hopefully) one that other players as well as Hateborne will both support.  Let me preface this by saying this proposal SHOULD have almost no negative effects on gameplay, while making Hateborne's job a hell of a lot easier.

Solution
Leave XP mask and reward XP items how they are
Make AAXP 10% of their current rate
Make AA cost of EZ custom items 10% of their current rate
Make AA crystals 10% of their current value

BEFORE PEOPLE FREAK OUT!!! let me give you a bit of math to illustrate how this will make everything work EXACTLY THE SAME as it does right now.

I just did an hour grind in Anguish with Rymo's 835% buff on my UW10 warrior.  I gained 14 AA per kill. In that hour I gained roughly 18k AA which at my current level of RoA (627) would give me 9 ranks of the RoA (2k per level).

With the change: 1 hour in Anguish with Rymo's 835% buff on my UW10 warrior.  I would gain 1.4 AA per kill.  In that hour I would gain roughly 1.8k AA which at my current level of RoA (627) would give me 9 ranks of the RoA (200 per level).

As you can see this would make numbers MUCH more manageable for Hate, as well as give him the freedom to make higher tiers actually give decent xp, without breaking the server.  But for those who need a bit more convincing...

Before and After Values

ROA
                                 Before                   |      After
1-100: 100 per rank 2k Hell Levels         | 10 per rank 200 HL
101-200: 250 per rank 5k Hell Levels     |  25 per rank  500 HL
201-300: 500 per rank 10k Hell Levels   |  50 per rank 1k HL
301-400: 750 per rank 15k Hell Levels   |  75 per rank 1.5k HL
401-500: 1k per rank 20k Hell Levels      | 100 per rank 2k HL
501-600: 1.5k per rank 25k Hell Levels   | 150 per rank 2.5k HL
601-700: 2k per rank 30k Hell Levels      | 200 per rank 3k HL
701-800: 2.5k per rank 35k Hell Levels   | 250 per rank 3.5k HL
801-900: 3k per rank 40k Hell Levels      | 300 per rank 4k HL
901-1k: 3.5k per rank 45k Hell Levels     | 350 per rank 4.5k HL
TOTAL:    2,367,600 AA                          |  236,760 AA

EoA

                    Before      |      After
1-49: 20K AA per rank |  2k AA per rank
50:   50k AA per rank   |  5k AA per rank
Total: 1,030,000 AA     | 103,000 AA

AA Crystals

          Before      |      After
Minor: 2K AA      | 200 AA
Lesser: 4k AA     | 400 AA
Greater: 10k AA | 1k AA
Major: 20k AA    | 2k AA


Kills to max RoA

Just to give a bit of math to show to people still hesitant that the results in game will be the same under both conditions.
Currently:
2,367,600 AA to max / 14 AA per kill = 169,115 kills (rounded)

Propsed:
236,760 AA to max / 1.4 AA per kill = 169,115 kills (rounded)

Values being only 10% of what they currently are will do nothing to players in game but make the numbers on the screen scrolling by smaller.  But for Hateborne on the development side these changes would:
1) Prevent rollover
2) Allow double xp weekends (something he mentioned wanting to be able to do for us)
3) Allow zones higher than t6 to give proportional xp to the difficulty
4) Give Hateborne room to create new items that use AA with higher difficulty than current items that wouldn't take a year to get a single rank
and more I'm sure that I'm not thinking of currently.

Issues this could cause and solutions to said issues.

Now, I do know this idea does not come without flaws of its own,  I have however thought of several of the potential issues that could arise and come up with several solutions to them.  I personally can't think of any other issues this may bring up but I am sure it is possible so if there are any feel free to point them out and we can try to address them.

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

Solution: Cap XP buffs on toons below lvl 70 at 100%.  Simple.  Done.  Leveling here is easy enough that 100% faster is plenty and will not hinder a low level toon not having it be even quicker.

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

Solution: This problem can be handled several ways that I have thought of, some of them may not be possible though so thats why I have given multiple possibilities depending on what is do-able by Hate.
1) Take current banked AAs and reduce them to 10% of what they already are the next time a toon logs in.  Not sure if Hate can edit this in a table somewhere, or put in a piece of code that the firs time a toon zones after this change they lose 90% of their AA.
2) Put in an NPC previous to this change going live that allows toons to talk to them and trade AAs for No Trade AA Crystals.  My thoughts on this were either 1k AA for a 100 AA crystal, or 5k for a 500 AA crystal for those with a lot banked.
3) This is my least favorite option of them all, but if none of the above would be possible do like Hunter did when the RoA for AA was first implemented:  Next purchase of either RoA, EoA, or Mask will give you the next rank and reset AA count to 0. 

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?!???!?

Solution: Again, a couple different ways this could be handled some of which are better than others.
1)  Allow the Level Up Wench (or other NPC) to also grant all ranks of AAs for their current level up to a certain cut-off, I personally was thinking 74 since by then they will get the vast majority of their AAs and be able to grind Anguish to gain the rest fairly easily.  Before old timers complain, we all know how easy it is to get a toon max AA so they can start using them on items, giving them a little bit for free isn't going to drastically impact anything as AA are maxed by time people leave qvic anyway.
2) Provide a quest or item that can be obtained (perhaps a new mini of PoTime difficulty) that a toon can then use to be granted all of their AA up to their current level.
3) Again, my least favorite option but if none of the above is possible: Let them grind it out, yes it will be harder than it is now, but the xp buffs won't be nerfed, and double xp weekends will be possible so it still shouldn't take very long to grind it out... especially with half of them being useless like +stats anyway.


TL:DR
Proposal to Hate to try to fix the AA rates, and not nerf anything for the players. 

Would love feedback on this from players, what do you guys like? What don't you like?  Did I miss any possible problems this could cause?  Lets keep this constructive and try to work this out,  I don't know about the rest of you but I'd really be bummed if Hate decided to not use the AA system for future items but I wouldn't blame him with how things went the first time he suggested this.

[Fuzzypoodle]

I am not a coder/programmer but it seems easy ... max exp bonus 350% server wide ... not sure if its possible. That would resolve the crazy bonus.  

But what would help with all the farming needed in game is to have some zones I cam farm lower tier ess but take raid along for aa's.  Sure would minimize some pain but across the board to allow raids to gain aa's together.  

Anyways, here some numbers for me in anguish 48k AA's per hr w/ 1k bonus. Raid has 500% and they get about 24k per hr.  With the 1k clicky and 10 hours straight it will take me 47 days to max the mask ... I still don't see me maxing it out anytime soon .. man that 470 hours of grind time .. lets get real most wont finish it and if they do its long time of unless they want the prestige of having the 1k mask.

So as I look at me team .. once I have all roa 1k and 1.03 mil banked, I will have about a 650% mask.  That would be my final rank since there would be no reason to long the raid in til t8 t9 farming days.

Lets see  ... Belt of the Ages, Shoulders of the ages .. that would be 4 items ranking up with aa's .. that would eat up a bunch....  I am 3 items that rank like the roa, would use the aa's up quick and for some time with a 350% server wide cap.

IDK .. just some thoughts, ideas and info

ALso, I don't use the 2hdr so if I messed around with setup I might be able to go 55k ish per hr or so

[Warbash]

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)

[Nullyn Void]

@Warbash

The Problems that you quoted were not problems that currently are in the game, they were problems that would be come present if Hateborne were to use my idea of reducing the rate AAs are gained and the worth of AAs, because if AA rates were changed but we kept our current amount of AAs, people would be able to jump up hundreds of ranks of RoA just from what they currently have banked.



Also, the reason the use of AA as a "currency" of sort for items is a positive thing and IMO should not be removed, is because no matter what you do, you'll gain AA... if you're bringing up a new toon to put in your group, farming UWs, progressing... everything gives AA, it is a nice little benefit just for playing the game to be able to work on long term items like the RoA, sure people can just sit and grind AA as efficiently as possible to max it, but you dont HAVE to which is a very big boon.  There is already so much stuff you have to work on SPECIFICALLY on this server that being able to work on ANYTHING and get a little bit better even if you didnt get what you were after is good for the server.  just my opinion

[Warbash]

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

[Kruciel]

I was able to get 45k an hour roughly with 800% mask buff. But like Fuzy said, there's been no pushing reason to farm AA once you're done, which is the real reason people aren't finishing masks left and right. Once you finish RoA 1k on the team and Ear 50 on the tank, there's no reason to run around "AA hunting". So to recap:

1) The AA spikes are from Warriors with maxed out Ult Weapons who one day become bored of farming Essences and UC3's and say "I think I feel like doing the Ear" Running Anguish with that much gear and the current EXP buffs is producing a maddening spike of AA's.

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.

3) Once you have a Mask above 400% on your raid permanently in the current state of EZ, you earn massive amounts of AA's really just doing anything (aside from t7-t8)

But in the end, all that matters is this: the EQ engine is unable to understand values as big as EZ is scaling towards. We've already seen Threat rolling over the cap, which has since been fixed. EXP is already hitting that point, as is the maximum damage spells can hit for. When the Shield of the Ages focus effect kicked on last week, upon using an AA to increase my warrior's spell critical blasts, he started hitting things for negative damage amounts.

Changes are on the horizon, it's best we discuss on how to make them as smooth as possible, instead of saying "don't nerf my exp, let's just use more bandaids" Ask yourself how it can be done, instead of rejecting it which isn't really an option at this point. Saying "well don't increase AA's anymore, just leave the masks alone" is what some have said. Hate's response is "ok fine, then no more AA items" This is not where the majority want to see things go, I promise you.

[Fuzzypoodle]

Well said Kruciel.  I agree.  I also like hate's idea for the reward items for grp permanent, would only hope that the exp would scale across the slope to max.

Also, another look .. if hate said ok lets add 500 more ranks to the RoA. At the current cost per 100 ranks (previous 100 ranks of aa's + 68000) those 500 ranks would be 3.3mil.  I sure would love another item that would rank 1k for 3.3mil than 500 ranks for 3.3mil...

Deep thoughts from Fuzy...

[Warbash]

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?

[Waraesh]

I like the 10% idea.  Seems like a pretty simple solution and can be applied across the board.  Not sure how the logistics would work, but as a shotgun fix (maximum effect, minimum aiming) it seems reasonable.  I don't mind having an AA component for the __ of ages quests, it is something else to celebrate while grinding away on other goals in game.  At the end of the day, I leave it in Hate's hands.  I trust him to make the best decisions for the server moving forward and am more than willing to lend a sympathetic ear to those impacted in a negative way.  This just seems like a rock and a hard place situation atm for Hate.

[Kruciel]

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.

AA is not the limiting factor. I've earned over 2 million AA's since finishing my warrior and haven't even come close to being able to field the amount of GSoA required for even one additional ear. It would require 837 more GSoA's for me to max Earrings on my raid. In the time it takes to acquire that, I could achieve mask 1000's (22 mil AA's) on every single character and still have more than 1 mil left over for the Earring after. GSoA = bottleneck, not AA   My monk right now has 300k AA just waiting on GSoA, my Zerker had 900k but I gave up caring and dumped it all into a mask before it rolled over to 0 from reaching the 1 mil cap.

[Fuzzypoodle]

Thought cap was 10 mil these days? I know its not 1 mil just had 2mil for mask 500

[Warbash]

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.

AA is not the limiting factor. I've earned over 2 million AA's since finishing my warrior and haven't even come close to being able to field the amount of GSoA required for even one additional ear. It would require 837 more GSoA's for me to max Earrings on my raid. In the time it takes to acquire that, I could achieve mask 1000's (22 mil AA's) on every single character and still have more than 1 mil left over for the Earring after. GSoA = bottleneck, not AA   My monk right now has 300k AA just waiting on GSoA, my Zerker had 900k but I gave up caring and dumped it all into a mask before it rolled over to 0 from reaching the 1 mil cap.

For you yes maybe, for me the AA would be more painful lol.

[Kruciel]

I understand that AA is more painful for some than others, but there is no way you're finding 51 GSoA before you get 1 mil AA xp, even with a level 100 mask buff only. That is what I meant hehe

[clbreastmilk]

The proposed scaling idea looks solid to me.  It lets the #'s be scaled down without messing with peoples reward items to achieve the same goal.  I wonder how easy it would be to make the scaling a reality?  Maybe Hate/Akk know the answer.

[Phah]

so... Yes, the mask rebalance (I refuse to call it a nerf) would affect 'the little guys' the most. I'm one of those guys. I have RoA 324 on my tank, sitting in the mid-to-high 100s (150-190) on my toons. I have a rank 38 mask. I run three groups, and i'm working on T5 right now. Any major change to the mask would affect me, mainly in how fast I can farm up my RoAs.

So what? I'm pretty sure even with the rarity of rainbows, that rainbows have contributed more to my tank's RoA than actual farming exp has. I still remember the first crystal I got, it boosted my warrior's ring by a full 25 levels. All of a sudden I was tankier. I recently gambled ~30 crystals, got some number back, and boosted my ring to where it is now... it was a pretty impressive jump. Even when I get a rymo super-buff,  my best bet is to run into HoH real quick and try to clear that twice before the buff runs out. And then I make 3-5k in that one hour, and I'm super happy. Then I realize thats only 4-6 levels on my ring, except I'm at a hell level, so its maybe 30% of a level. I can't pull T6 (can't even enter it), so the readjustment of massive gains from there doesn't affect me.

What I'm trying to say is, in the end it might take a few more rainbows to get me to the top. But game balance is more important. Having an actually good game is more important. I will (probably) never be rymo or kruciel levels of power... I just don't put in the time. Maybe I'll never get the RoA1000... or the mask1000... or the EoA50... or the newest ages item. I'd still rather see Hate fix the issue, even if it slows me down, than dustball it entirely.

Personally, I really liked the idea of having the first, say, 50 or 100 levels of mask be the same, with diminishing returns following. But realistically, I don't care, so long as the game becomes better.

/shrug, my rambling 2cp

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