Additional AA pts...

[wesker105]

To be straightforward & blunt: You're the game director, not a marketing marionette. Anyone can copy & paste. This thread would not have been so long with so many questions if the original statement was clear to begin with.

No offense Joel, I like everything you're doing & projecting for the game. I'm a Spring '09 veteran who is temporarily a non-player with free account status. I was initially waiting for completion of Dragon's Spine & the crafting update to resume play. I would like to take advantage of the AA points, so I may resubscribe for 3 months.



That sounds really vague. So I can take this to mean as long as I reactivate my premium account by May 30th I'll get the initial 40 AA points? Exactly 50 days later I'll get the additional 40 as long as I'm still premium?



Again vague. I have a couple characters under 80, so when will I get an AA point per level? It would be a waste to login and level up before it was in effect.

Thanks for your attention to the game and user forums.

No offense, but I don't get how any of that could be hard to understand...at all.

[Kurt2013]

Then why not simply answer him, if all is so obvious?

I am not 100% sure, but if you resub before the 30th for 3 months, it SHOULD cover the 40 AA points now and 50 days later (we will have to see how they execute it tomorrow).

As f2p you do not get 1 AA per level up as it is now (tested). As f2p who resubs, yo DO get 1 AA per level up (tested, this change is meant to be a permanent addition, not a temporary offer like the 40+40 AA points afaik).

Example: Your old f2p lvl40 char levels as f2p to 50 (+0 AA). Then you resub before the 30th and level him to 60 (+10 AA). Since he is only lvl60 he will not get any bonus AA (+0 AA). You level him to 80 in the 50 days of premium membership (+20 AA) and since you are lvl80 AND premium at that day, you'll get the second points (+40 AA). Leaving you with 70 expertise AA points to spent as fresh 80.

This should be the status according to the latest info.

[Lady-Zarathustra]

reading all those post makes me angry and sad...

everything they do, is BAD or NOT FAIR to some forum whiners

you cry about the 40 or 80 AA points, as it was something big for vets... AA progress is set to easy mode today, you get so many AA per HM, quests etc. it took me a month of daily activity to get most of the AA needed to do all the 6-mans in khitai (without any boost potions)

most vets got their AA trees and full, or have the perks they wanted too, even though Funcom decided to give you the AA you could missed to comparision to new toons... but still a new problem arise, with alt who have 79 lv and so on... come on people, stop be such cry babies!

I get the feeling that some people will always be unsatisfied with Funcom decisions

[Engzoria]

I think this is really nice. Just what I needed for my toons to get the final AA perks I miss. Thanks Funcom!

[Kurt2013]

...
you cry about the 40 or 80 AA points, as it was something big for vets... AA progress is set to easy mode today, you get so many AA per HM, quests etc. it took me a month of daily activity to get most of the AA needed to do all the 6-mans in khitai (without any boost potions)

most vets got their AA trees and full, or have the perks they wanted too, even though Funcom decided to give you the AA you could missed to comparision to new toons... but still a new problem arise, with alt who have 79 lv and so on... come on people, stop be such cry babies!
...

THere is still a big difference in the speed of AA progression depending on gamestyle and preferences (pvp, solo questing, solo instances, group instances, raids ...all have a different curve there). It is perfectly possible that veterans have not progressed in 2 years as much as you might have or some new players. One month of daily activity might not be much for you, but for others it can be...and if the aim is to get people into those HMs, how can these additional AAs hurt this aim?

About the second part...there was even a thread about the measure, showing the problems and concerns before the level up script was introduced. But once this was decided, the aim was to MINIMIZE the problems that come with it, while MAXIMIZING funcoms profit. If you look up the dictionary, i don't think this is considered "whining", "qq" or "being always unsatisfied" and most made it clear they are not satisfied with particular decicisions without generalizing like you do.

Maybe, if you try to see the others points of views and how they feel, you might feel less angry and sad and add something constructive, like how you would have handled it?

If you ever worked in design, you should know that even with best intentions there might be points you overlook (especially with a small team). Would you call people pointing at these things whiners and crybabies in RL, too? Good luck with sales, then.

I am all with you in general with the advice to take things easy and chill out...it helps settling down or reflecting your opinion. But it does not apply for every situation.

According funcom: The fact, that they did something and re-thought (it does not matter to which thread or customer/employee they listened here in terms of outcome. Had they just introduced the script without doing anything it would have been far worse than now!) is a good indication things might change to the better

[Bibik]

MMh i'm wondering if thoses changes in AA significate that upcoming unchained PvP minigames will have AA enabled (that would be sad, really)

[Kurt2013]

Sadly, pvp in general seems to have not been considered much (especially low level pvp).
Still at lvl80 the advancement is there (even if you are left out 80 expertise) and if you get 40-80 now (or more for a fresh char), you should get the important ones high enough to not feel the difference (in AA only) much.
For me, when i compare my new 80s of a class with older 80s of the same class, i notice mainly a difference in pressing, decisive and the passive prot ones and having certain gold/silver perks or not. A few more +% in combos or cc resistances can be easily compensated by luck, gear, gameplay, build etc., imo).
Would be interesting, if they added a progress bar for that (like percentage of AA tree filled, maybe even divided up in general, archetype and class perks).

[Daynan]

If this AA's offer is the brain child of the marketing department then I am not sure what they are trying to achieve. They should be encouraging players to create new characters and play through the lower levels in order to build community and influence new players to stick with the game.

Instead this strategy will encourage veterans to get out of tortage asap and PL to 30 so they can burn their offlines and gain 40 AA's on the 30th.

If you start a new character and play through the game properly it can take a handful of weeks at a couple of hours a day. All that replay value is lost in a couple of days.

I am not complaining personally as I have gained much from this (cheer!), but from a business standpoint it boggles my mind at how you came up with this (cringe).

Best strategy. Take a snapshot of every characters level at the beginning of the events. Then give each character that 1 expertise for every level they had at that point.

I'm pretty sure that you have that snapshot because you brought down the server to start the event and the smart thing to do at that point would be to back everything up.

[Kurt2013]

...

Best strategy. Take a snapshot of every characters level at the beginning of the events. Then give each character that 1 expertise for every level they had at that point.

I'm pretty sure that you have that snapshot because you brought down the server to start the event and the smart thing to do at that point would be to back everything up.

Agree with you and people suggested that as soon as the new rule was made public, but either they could not do that, did not want to do that or thought the actual offer is better (and in terms of bringing people to resub right now for 3 months, it definitely is...otherwise people could just resub at their own leisure (not sure, if marketing people are fond of that)).

On the other hand this is just a transition effect. Surely the people you describe are benefitting most of it now, but sooner or later at 80 the field will be levelled.
And new premiumm chars can level and get the 1 AA/lvl to still get a good headstart at 80. They wanted to make subs more attractive (and definitely did). And veterans now at least have a choice and can't complain that their old 80s were left out.

If it was a good move to do that by increasing the power gap between f2p and premium, time will show. Even if not, they can still remodel the shop to give f2p some alternative to the new feature (for example in this particular case AA expertise points for sale, since they decided not to keep AA a rare feature till lvl80 anyway. or something else...).

[KephaPT]

On Day 31 my sub expires. Will my LOCKED 80 character still receive the additional AA?