Game Update 61: Huge Nerf for Level Lockers
A History Lesson (Optional Reading)
- Introduced with the Kingdom of Sky expansion 5 years ago, the “Class” tree served its original purpose of giving players options well, but despite the best efforts of a succession of mechanics developers, it has not kept up with 5 years of rapid game design changes.
- 9 months later, the Echoes of Faydwer expansion added the “Subclass” tree. Although it was perceived as overly complex in its arrangement, and even though it required the expenditure of many points to reach endline abilities, it was very specific in structure and layout for each class. Some classes had 3 endline abilities, while others had 4 or 5.
- The Shadow Odyssey took an interesting approach by adding a new Shadows tree with General, Archetype, Class, and Subclass abilities. All players were able to draw some benefit from this new tree including crafters. The irony is, by leaving the first two rows of the Shadows tree so generic, players were allowed to customize their characters a little bit depending on their play style.
- Of course there have been tweaks along the way to all of the trees. Sentinel’s Fate in particular amended the bottom of the Class and Subclass trees to provide unique class-defining abilities.
- And finally, Destiny of Velious added the Heroic tree, providing attractive and powerful endline abilities for each Class.
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Comments (37)
Aethn
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PVP drives many improvements to games — likely this is one of the main reasons for this change was to eliminate the super twinks at T4, something that drove more players AWAY from Battlegrounds then into them. The old system artificially created characters that was far more powerful then intended at that level in both PvE and PvP. Overall, these are great changes, and in the end, the only upset people will be a very vocal yet super small minority of the game.
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urgh
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Does this mean toons that are locked at lvl 39 get a total of 200 AA points instead of the current 160? Just no access to Shadow line?
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XK
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I don’t care about battlegrounds. I don’t care about PVP.
But, as Feldon points out, this impacts more than just battlegrounds. It’s a real issue for a number of classes that rely upon getting aas in the subclass trees early (sks, necros, and all melee priests), and a real issue for crafters that have been able to previously buy the first row of the shadow aas to help in their harvesting and questing.
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Green Armadillo
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Didn’t they announce at FF that they were going to split off the crafting AA’s to a separate crafting tab? Perhaps that part of the overhaul isn’t done yet? This would solve the problem for crafters.
That said, I generally take run (or mount) speed and double harvests over 2.5% HP/power for most of my leveling characters in any case. If these things are going away from the general tier of the shadows AA tab, that is going to make those first 10 required points in that tree much less interesting.
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Kruzzen
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To me this is just another point of the devs saying this is how you are supposed to play our game. They still miss the point that it is the players who make there game in the first place.
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XK
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@Green Armadillo, they did split off the crafting-specific aas to another tab.
The problem is, as Feldon points out in his article: “More than a few high level crafters have yet to spend significant time adventuring and, so far, they haven’t been penalized for that choice. Crafters of at least 10 adventure levels has been able to pick up Health, Power, and Runspeed from the Shadows tree since 2008. With this change, crafters will have to reach adventure level 50 to even touch those Shadows AAs.”
So, while things like swift creation and bountiful harvest will be on their own crafter tab, ancillary aas that have made their harvesting/questing easier will not be accessible anymore.
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Luminata
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I have just logged in my lvl 10 crafter on test and she can only spend 50 points in the KoS Tree not 100 as you have in your chart. In fact from my testing it looks like this:
level 10 = 50 points KoS
level 30 = 50 points KoS, 50 points EoF
level 50 = 50 points KoS, 50 points EoF, 60 points TSO
level 70 = 70 points KoS, 70 points EoF, 60 points TSO
level 80 = 100 points KoS, 100 points EoF, 100 points TSO, 50 DoV
Not sure where you got your information, perhaps it is something announced but yet to go live on test. Otherwise the only people to gain are the level 80-84 toons.
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Steve
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They may be gamers, but do they play any SOE games?
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Al_Ghouti
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As someone who has two characters locked at lvl 32 and 52 atm, i’m not to sure how i feel about it. For my lvl 52 it only gets better as said.
But i’m unsure how i feel about the effects for my lvl 32, ok it’s nice i can spend 200 AA rather then 160, but i do lose the shadows tree where i went up to the third line. Personally i think i’ll come out better (inquisitor btw) as i can get more endlines in class and subclass tree.
I presumme though that we will have a forced AA reset … i’ll be maxing out my shadows tree on my lvl 32 to be sure and hope they aren’t forcing it lol 😀
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XK
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@Al_Ghouti I guess it depends whether Feldon’s chart is accurate, or whether what Luminata reports as being on test (i.e. that there is no increase in the # of aas you can spend at lower levels) stays the case.
If it’s the latter, there is really no benefit at all for your sub-50 character (other than the fact that aas in the sub-class tree are unlinked)
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Luminata
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Just noticed I said 100 points in TSO at 80, I obv meant 70 lol
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Al_Ghouti
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Ouch if the newly formed table is correct then yes … this is a real big nerf :/
Although i also have to add that most people that level lock their characters do so do try and do as many quests as possible, grinding AA isnt the main reason. AA just made it easier to solo heroic zones, which will be harder now and make people do them while higher lvl… but eh still sucks lol
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Ebofu
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you realise all your gear is getting like 10x better?
AA has trivialised all content < 90
get over yourselves, if you want to level lock, do so but do it as the content was intended, not with an ability that can one shot mobs at 30… and it solves the 39 situation as well
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Feldon
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A friend pointed out a pattern to me which I’m starting to see…
What if this is all part of a plan to make level 50+ cost extra in EQ2X?
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Al_Ghouti
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I wouldnt be surprised to be honest, Smokejumper already commented that the live servers is mostly populated by lvl 90 characters. While EQ2X community is more active in the lower regions …
Still dunno how the gear will change, but i enjoyed the way AA at low lvl could really change the way your character plays. While at higher lvls its usually pretty straight forward in most cases.
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Volstagg
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Battlegrounds is as useless as the Arena in my book – 100% waste of time. I’d rather be (gasp!) tradeskilling. Don’t matter one bit if you have to be 80 before you get to spend any AA’s. Chrono if you really want to revisit zones. That’s what I do, and it works excellently.
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Claviarm
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@Feldon: They don’t think about Extended. Honestly. SmokeJumper is the only person on staff who is even aware we exist. A lot of things may seem like ploys to make more money off us, but actually they are just oversights because they didn’t consider the impact on Freeport when designing. (Funny how both thinking of Extended and not thinking of Extended have the same end result. :P)
The ridiculous power of a mentored character is one of the things that make leveling a joke–but only for people who have a high level friend. If the gear progression is smoothed out a bit so that 90s aren’t the only ones with crit bonus and potency, so much the better, in my opinion.
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dillio
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k one question..so its saying that at those lvls(10,30 etc) thats how many points u can spend…can u still build more than that and just not spend them till u hit set lvls?…if so to me idk cause i dont do battlegrounds…i just like to build them at low lvl cause its eiser
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Aethn
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The current system super inflates characters FAR beyond the power they are intended to have 50+, this is, and has hurt the game, i dont blame SOe for trying ot fix these issues and welcome these changes with open arms
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Dethdlr
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Could there be another/additional reason for this AA redesign?
Feldon says
Let me try some spinning. 🙂 They recently revamped the spells/CAs that you get at the lower levels to try and make the new player experience a bit less confusing. Could this be another thing designed to make it less confusing for new players? If you can only use one tree from level 10 to 30, then you don’t need to figure out the other trees until you ding level 31. Don’t need to bother with the next one until level 51, and the next two until 81. This eases you into the AAs a little at a time instead of at level 10 giving you access to three of the trees and asking you where in this sea of options you want to spend your AAs. It’s not uncommon for players to stack up bunches of unspent AAs at the lower levels simply because they haven’t had time to look through the available trees to figure out where they want to spend them. They come so fast at the lower levels due to the lower point requirements to obtain the early ones that you easily get them stacked up without a chance to spend them. If you’re only looking at one tree, the choice would be more simple.
Feldon said
What if it’s something completely different? What if SOE was actually gearing up to do something right? We’ve heard that the free trial for the Live servers is supposed to be coming back. What if when it comes back, instead of being a 14 day free trial, it’s a first 50 levels free trial? Do I think this is their plan? Probably not. But I can hope. 🙂
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Anaogi
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The cutoff at 50 is telling–that was the old cap at launch, no expansions. Having a rather basic selection of AAs rather mimics the state of things when the early expansions with AAs hit.
So…and I’m not exactly a fan of our devs, but…suppose, as Dethdlr suggests, they’ve actually decided to do something right? A more organic progression, more closely resembling what the long-term players went through? Perhaps, I don’t know, some learning curve that results in cap level players that actually have a clue how to handle their characters?
As to the gear, ever looked at the power curve in this game? Linear up to Kunark, then that sucker bucks up and doesn’t look back. (Yes, TSO and Velious, I’m looking right at you. No Velious, boring gear does not mitigate the offense!) Moving some of that kick back to 50 creates a smoother progression, even if the line does shift over time.
Besides, maybe that means that KoS gear won’t suck nearly as bad…nah, never happen… 😉
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Xalmat
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Minor correction. The KoS and EoF trees were separated by 9 months, not 2 years.
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Feldon
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There’s another thread worth reading. If my post gets deleted, I can repost it here. 🙂
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=504230
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urgh
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“At level 30-49, you can now only spend 100 points.”
I think this is 125 points if you count the new Tradeskill AA line.
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Xalmat
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For all intents and purposes you can ignore the Tradeskill AA line. While it’s available at level 10, it does not affect adventuring in anyway.
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Bohohoboprobono
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WoW did it, EQ2 has to do it.
Here’s a few problems with the outrage:
-People who lock rage about how easy everything is. Congrats, it’s going to be harder now. This is what you wanted.
-People who don’t PL and/or don’t set the AA bar over 50% will be 50 in under 8 hours and none of this will matter.
-Mentored/Chrono’d 90s have always been disruptive to lower level content. This will never change until mentor/chrono is dramatically nerfed or completely removed.
-SOE cares more about not overwhelming new players than it does about the EXTREME minority of smell-the-roses progression types that, strangely, want massive amounts of power inappropriate to their level range (if we’re going by traditional progression).
-SOE wants you to get out of the terrible old content ASAP because it’s awful and they lose more members than they keep if people stray too far from the Golden Path. The community telling players to “stop and smell the roses” ends up with new ex-WoW players going to trash zones like Nek Forest and cancelling because the zone quality is so poor and hostile to players.
Face it, most of this rage stems from two massive groups and one teeny tiny one:
-T4 PvPers. You can’t get Battle Hardening anymore and be invulnerable to the vast majority of physical damage. Sowwy!
-High-level players that this change won’t affect in the least. However, people like to cry about any change, good or bad, whether it affects them or not. Since they “might want to lock in the future,” this is an outrage. Will any of them? This leads us to the group that has no influence in this argument…
-The people who actually level lock. These people are such a small population to be almost statistically insignificant.
It’s stupid politics. Rage about something that doesn’t affect me in the least because it’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing.
Please. Grow up.
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Bohohoboprobono
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The real travesty in all this is that Tradeskill AA isn’t a separate pool. You’re telling me that if I want to craft AND adventure I have to waste 25 adventuring points? Pathetic.
And no, “Get an AA Mirror” doesn’t count. What if I have a Raid spec and a Solo spec? Where’s the room for a Crafting spec? Or for that matter, where’s the room for a Gathering Spec?
I know I can juggle multiple AA specs using multiple houses, but that’s just a godawful mess due to the stupid way mirrors work.
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Xalmat
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Bohoho, you can have up to 11 AA specs, now that you can have 10 houses each with their own mirror. Considering up to six of those houses have a weekly upkeep of 5sp a week, is it really that big of a hindrance?
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Claviarm
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It’s a hassle to swap AA specs–a hassle that didn’t exist before, since the crafting and harvesting AAs were in the first shadow line, where they weren’t taking away from anything significant. You have to drop 10 points in that line; the opportunity cost was very low. But now that they’re in their own tab, anything you spend comes right off the top of any adventuring AAs you want.
There are players who will now have to deal with the annoyance of juggling multiple mirrors who didn’t have to before, just to achieve the same functionality they had before the revamp. Surely we can all agree that added hassle is a negative thing, right?
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Steve
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Bohoho…you do realize that SmokeBlower wants to get away from the Golden Path, right? So, now that you have been enlightened maybe you can go back and rethink a point or two in your grown up rant about a video game.
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XK
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Way to completely ignore the posts of people stating why this is a problem, (not to mention the article itself), Bohoho.
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Isest
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I really don’t understand the need for such sweeping changes. Did soe not learn from SWG that these kind of massive changes can have a very negative effect on the game base.
Honestly there’s no need to do this. Unless they want to chase folks off and into eq next.
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Einina
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Calling this a sweeping change is overreacting IMO.
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Labruja
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Two questions:
1. Was the present system broken?
2. If not, why fix it?
Soe, you really need to take your customers’ reactions into consideration. This is the type of action that has ruined so many good games in the past. People no longer want to be led by the nose. They want to make their own decisions and want as many options for shaping their characters as they can get. You have a wonderful game with a fairly mature player-base. Allow them the options they are used to instead of making them feel like they are being pigeon-holed. If the major problem is with an ability in PvP, change that, don’t remove one of the things that many players treasure – the option to be different.
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melpheos
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@Einina : so removing a whole array of possiblities (no solo heroic quests)and taking away 110AA points and two AA branches for player under 30 is not a sweeping change ?
What does it require for you to be considered a sweeping change ?
(damn cant find any good joke 🙁 )
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darkcircle
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i think i this change may have to do with the over haul of most 1-70 gear?
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Feldon
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Being able to spend AA at low levels gives players choices.
If you’ve seen Destiny of Velious gear, you don’t really have a “choice”. There is one obvious set of stats that you will expect on each item you equip for your archetype. With the 20-80 revamp, you will no longer need to look at items and think about whether they’re appropriate for your class.
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