Caswydian

There was indeed some confusion on how to handle AAs in RoK, but that by itself does not mean the final decision to increase the number of AA points was incorrect.

Overall, I think the AA system in EQ2 has been rather poorly implemented, with the intention of the devs to provide some sort of added customization without making any one AA spec mandatory has not worked. People wanted both AAs that would enhance core class features, but didn't want any AA line to be seen as required, and the AA system fails. Either you end up with AAs that are seen as largely worthless or there's little real choice about which AA line to take. This isn't the case for every AA line for every class, of course, but it seems to be the case for most.

This seems to be far more of a criticism of the overall AA system.

SOE needs to take another look at AAs for sure, but the addition of 40 more points is not, by itself, much of an issue to me.

Jalathan

my issue is that there is no consistant feel with the game... It is group, no its solo, no it's raid, no its solo... There isn't a consistant feel to it. Yes, I'd agree this is an industry wide issue, but SoE seems to blow in the wind more than most others and have no real clear idea what kind of game they really want...

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Paladin of Antonia Bayle (or will be soon anyways)

Flight

Fixed the first bit for you.


As for the second bit, you are still talking nonsense. It is not a criticism of the entire AA system, which was well balanced for 50 AAs. Each class had options, including those that had to choose a weapon type based on their AA tree of choice.

Increasing the number was a poor decision, taken at the last minute, probably because they needed to throw the player base a bone. That was because they didn't get the Epics done in time.

It is, of course, laughable that they went on to blame their failure on the fires. Two weeks of fires put their work back three or four months.


Their project management is piss poor, their ability to deliver is piss poor, their customer communication is FUBAR'ed and they don't learn from past mistakes.

kyros

Sorry, I went out for a bit. Looks like aduros answered your questions for me, though. There are other combat issues right now. Tanks being one-shotted, abysmal melee hit rates against high-orange cons, etc.

I do think it's kind of funny that you're downplaying the arrow problem. It degrades performance A LOT. It does break the class - they have no way to progress in the new content. They are stuck at a t7 level while every other class has the ability to move up. This bullshit should have never made it out of alpha testing.

kyros

Good lord... OK then, Cas. please tell me: What is RoK?
For every thing that someone has come up with as an argument against the expansion, you have written it off as something else.

arrows: no that's a mechanics problem
direction of the game: no that's an MMO problem
shoddy AA addition: no that's an AA problem

please.


Also, while i'm at it:
The primary issue with overbuffed mobs is that the "challenge" of combat becomes a matter of gear and luck, instead of skill and tactics. This is especially an issue in raids. Encounters should not be a lucky roll for success, nor simply a matter of having the biggest and best gear. It should require a degree of strategy that has been mostly stripped from the mechanics in general. While that is not a problem unique to RoK, these mobs are even more excessively overbuffed than those in the past.... so much so that solo mobs have become overwhelmingly powerful (these particular mobs are unique to the expansion).

Caswydian

I recall a number of complaints that many AA lines were useless and that weapon choices were overly restrictive, and that seemed to be the far more frequent complaint.

Do you agree with SOE's decision to remove the weapon requirements and change the cost of the final class AA ability?

Why was this a poor decision? What is the negative impact of it? You've not given any specifics on why AAs are suddenly broken now that people have 70 per tree instead of 50.

The fires certainly caused a delay, and they are not 3-4 months behind. RoK has only been out for a bit over a month now, and epics are due in the next LU, which means they've likely already been checked in for testing. So, they are about a month or two behind on development.

Now you're just getting into exagerations. Their project management seems on par with the software industry as a whole. Where, specifically is SOE failing, and where are other companies doing better?

Caswydian

You seem to be overplaying the arrow issue. There are plenty of rangers who are doing just fine with T8 content in actual gameplay, not looking at parses. It does need to be fixed, but it does not seem to be greatly holding back the ranger class.

Caswydian

Those issues are not issues with RoK specifically. Just because they coincided with RoK does not mean they are caused by RoK. I do not really see why the cause is an issue, and I would think if you wanted to see the issues actually corrected, you'd be more concerned with identifying their actual cause.

I've seen others in this thread claim that people are beating the T8 raids while still using their T7 gear, and complain T8 raids are too easy. Is this a false claim, or is this overbuffed mobs issue not really an issue? For all the claims you make about overbuffed mobs, where is it showing up in actual gameplay? What content is unbeatable doe to mob power? Which dungeons or encounters are too hard? Which classes cannot solo due to mob difficulty?

Cochy

And you are basing this off of what? You looking at Rangers in a situation where I could be doing 1 DPS and the group wouldn't care? The fact that the RSB is more DPS than a t8 dropped bow is a huge mechanics flaw.

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MadLordOfMilk

When you ignore the actual results and just think what you want, the results are GREAT!

FFS.

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