Alternate Advancement: Good or Bad?

[Ropethunder]

Bad. AAs throw balance out the window and substitute skill with playing time.

[Senadin]

People keep saying skills but is skill really a misnomer? Are folks trying to say knowledge?


It takes skills to juggle, it takes knowledge to know when to cast, heal etc. MMO's arent rocket science! Hit a button or several buttons. Maybe bards require skills? I've never really played one further than 36 or so.

You posted twice and have yet to bring an argument against AA. Simply saying or rather implying that someone who has tons of times will be necesarily better than you because he has more AA's than you.

You mention balance! There's no real balance! If a caster can solo better than me, is it balance? I can only heal myself with bandages and mend. I am not balanced with a cleric and nor should i be.

Each class has it's purpose and that's fine... i dont see how the balance could be broken with AA's when it already is broken and that's the way it should be. Without that imbalance we might as well each play a single player game. When i quit i think i had 700 something AA, that didnt made me a caster or a healer. I could solo a bit more but still not as good as a caster. Which is the same situation now without AA's.

[Sparkin]

Originally Posted by Ropethunder [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bad. AAs throw balance out the window and substitute skill with playing time.

? Character power in all MMO's is based off playing time. Yes, there is hopefully a good measure of skill involved, but in the end most of a character's power is based off relative playing time. Even before AA's were introduced, power is based off playing time, only in the form of gear.

I'll take the AA's they gave us over none, but I agree with the folks saying they could have been better implemented. The OP suggests you had choices to make which direction you wanted to go with a char, but they were pretty short-term choices. In the end you were just going to get them all, which was pretty boring.

The biggest mistake they made with AA's though was always the ability for old / new players to catch up. There needed to be a system to help them do it a much faster manner. I guess maybe they did some things to help with that eventually? but only after it was too late. Or as suggested if there was some sort of AA cap where you had to make choices, it wouldn't have been an issue.

[Aeolwind]

Turned EQ into Pokemon: Gotta catch'em all. I hated AA's. I liked some of the abilities, but having to grind that much XP for marginal returns was hell. I -hate- xp'ing now because of AA.

[Ethanblack]

Originally Posted by Aeolwind [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Turned EQ into Pokemon: Gotta catch'em all. I hated AA's. I liked some of the abilities, but having to grind that much XP for marginal returns was hell. I -hate- xp'ing now because of AA.

Well, to clarify, the point of this thread really is just to sort of seed the idea of new custom AAs with developers such as yourself.

The goal isn't to have Live AAs added, but instead to sort of encourage Devs to think long term abotu actually inventing their own sets of AAs that do what the old AA system didn't (that being encouraging specialisatio), whle avoiding the whole More AAs = Uber in every way' situation.

[Uaellaen]

i loved some of the AAs ... especialy MGB!

[rockhopper]

No one tailored their characters to specific roles using AA's. All classes had specific roles that weren't modified whatsoever by AA's. AA's merely enhanced those roles.

- Tanks prioritized tanking AA's
- Rogues prioritized DPS

Etc.

Just look at any class forum/site. Most had priority lists for AA, and whenever new people asked for AA advice, the same answers were always given.

[Tallenn]

First of all, the claim of upsetting balance assumes that there ever was or indeed, ever could be, real balance between the classes. There never has been and I submit, there never can be, unless all classes are removed, and everyone given all identical abilities. One set of abilities can NEVER be made to perfectly balance against another set, not to mention 14 different sets to all balance against one another. It's just not possible. There is not balance- there never was any balance, there never can be any balance. So that is not a valid argument.

That said, I like AAs. That was the whole problem with WoW. Once you have reached max level (admittedly far easier than in classic EQ), the only way to improve your character is with gear. Now, getting all the very best gear can take quite a bit of time, but what if you don't want to raid, what if you don't want to do arena or battlegrounds, or whatever the PvP du jour is now? What if you don't really even want to group? I got my character to 80, did all the quests I could solo, and grinded out tons of cash to buy the very best equipment available on the AH. Ok, then what? Keep grinding cash? for what? There's nothing left to buy that would make my character better. Grind factions to get a different mount that's not going to be any faster than what I already have? Unless I wanted to start raiding or doing those mind-numbing daily heroics, I was done. I beat the game- as much as I was interested in doing, anyway. I went and leveled another character to 80, but got tired of that one even quicker. That's why I'm not playing WoW now, and why I probably won't until the next xpac comes out.

EQ without AAs is the same way. The only way you can continue to improve your character once you are at max level is by raiding, which I'm no longer interested in doing.

Let me be clear though. I'm not promoting the idea that AAs be included on this server. AAs were introduced with Luclin, and this server will not include that xpac. Therefore, there should not be AAs on this server. Period. I love AAs, but they do not belong on a classic server.

[JaVeDK]

One of the few aspects of WoW that I actually liked were the skill trees (I'm aware WoW didn't invent the concept). If the devs are up to it, I would love to see some sort of AA skill trees implemented once the project is well into Velious.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Originally Posted by rockhopper [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No one tailored their characters to specific roles using AA's. All classes had specific roles that weren't modified whatsoever by AA's. AA's merely enhanced those roles.

Pretty sure all rangers tailored their characters to the "long-distance damage dealer" role with EQ/AM3, a role they really didn't have before AAs (unless you count 2 mins of Trueshot disc every 72 mins.) Do tons more damage than I could with melee without aggro or having to be in AoE range? Yes please!!