Alternate Advancement: Good or Bad?

[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.

[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!!

[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.

[Omnimorph]

Skill trees in diablo 2 i thought were fantastic. I understand that given there were only like 7 classes you had different branches of them, but this meant it was possible to have 2 different sorcerers or w/e useful for completely different things.

AA's became quite ridiculous with time, a new expansion meant a stupid amount of aa's necessary to grind. And it was a grind too. Some were fun, self stasis, BDB etc (chanter aa's) but grinding 5aa's to get +1 mana regen when i'm already regenning 150 mana a tick already? that's just pointless.

[holkan]

While I can understand people not liking aa's because of their abilities or even because they were released in an expansion they dont like. Saying you dont like them because they're too grindy is LOL this entire game is one huge grind first a level grind then a gear grind.

[Aeolwind]

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

While I can understand people not liking aa's because of their abilities or even because they were released in an expansion they dont like. Saying you dont like them because they're too grindy is LOL this entire game is one huge grind first a level grind then a gear grind.

I used to have no issues with leveling or XPing or whatever, but after AA made it a necessity I lost all interest in it. You used to have to grind out 10 levels and then relax as you raided & just killed shit. But, when it became expected to be on 16 hours a day, 8 doing AA and 8 raiding, it got old...fast.

[holkan]

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

I used to have no issues with leveling or XPing or whatever, but after AA made it a necessity I lost all interest in it. You used to have to grind out 10 levels and then relax as you raided & just killed shit. But, when it became expected to be on 16 hours a day, 8 doing AA and 8 raiding, it got old...fast.

Thats less to do with aa's and more to do with how fast sony released expansions. Aa's were just something to do when raid targets were dead or you couldnt/wouldnt raid and had the best gear you could get. While requirements for aa's came forth from min maxing just because you had 500 aa's and your friend had 800 aa's didnt mean you couldnt raid or group together unlike being lvl 30 and 50 or what have you.

[Alleusion]

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

Thats less to do with aa's and more to do with how fast sony released expansions. Aa's were just something to do when raid targets were dead or you couldnt/wouldnt raid and had the best gear you could get. While requirements for aa's came forth from min maxing just because you had 500 aa's and your friend had 800 aa's didnt mean you couldnt raid or group together unlike being lvl 30 and 50 or what have you.

Oh but sometimes, it did mean exactly that. Certain groups / guilds didn't want someone unless they had X AA skill. If you didn't have it, they could always find someone who did.

[Randiesel]

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

I used to have no issues with leveling or XPing or whatever, but after AA made it a necessity I lost all interest in it. You used to have to grind out 10 levels and then relax as you raided & just killed shit. But, when it became expected to be on 16 hours a day, 8 doing AA and 8 raiding, it got old...fast.

The bright side of it all that this is *just* an emu server.

Not that it isn't grand; I'm actually having way more fun here than i did in live, but I don't think we're going to have super strict guilds. Maybe we already do and I don't realize it because I'm only lvl 14, but people here have less vested. We aren't paying for it, you can't ebay your character (and if you did I think theres a much higher risk of it getting banned), etc.

I'm in favor of an AA system, I'm also in favor of finding a way to add more content, whether its going beyond SoV, or its some hybrid of old/new content like another thread suggested (adding the PoP zones off of existing zones and eliminating PoK? sounds good here), we're going to need something eventually, otherwise the high end will die out.