Ok, we're allowed ONE thread about 200 Sense Heading.

[Sanna]

If anyone has a char that has gone from 1 to 39 in no more than 264 RL hours, I will officially declare them as Having No Life and Needing To Cancel All Their Accounts And Give The Saved RL Money To Me.

Even having said that, it would be interesting to see, yes, if the SH skill 'still goes up', that is, you get less fail messages as you continue to press the button.

I'll see what toons I can test this one... I have a variety of low-levels spread over various servers (See the sig pic and keep in mind that most of what's piced is hypothetical ^_^).

You bring up an interesting point... Did they honestly remove the need for an SH button, or just whitewash things?

-- Sanna

[KyrosKrane]

Slight derail ... Sanna, when LoY came out, one of the uber necros in a top guild (wish I could remember the player, guild, and server names, but my memory sucks -- one of the uber-guilds like FoH or Afterlife, but not those two) did an experiment for fun.

Within 24 hours /played and 48 hours RL after the LoY patch had completed, this necro had made a Froglok cleric, PL'ed it to 65, and had his epic. I believe, though I'm not sure, that the froglok was also flagged through to HoH or BoT -- and this was before they opened up the zones by level; he had to get the actual flags.

Granted, the cleric had all skills darned close to zero. Granted, much of the epic work had been done beforehand and was MQ'ed for him. Granted, he had the whole uber guild working with him to PL or port or MQ or flag when needed ... but still. That was one heck of an impressive accomplishment.

[Draggar]

Looks like the compass market is dead. Just had to lower the price on the one I was selling from 250 to 100 (just for the stats)...

Ouch. I don't like ot give up 150PP any day, unless its well worth it.

[Draggar]

Originally posted by Lilosh
How else would a person get better at finding his way around? Cast True North until Sense Heading was Maxed?

An old tale I was once told as a newbie (years ago)...

"Dropped sword always points north"

[Antoin]

Some get it, some don't; I don't care.

"Dropped sword always points north"

And clouds in old world zones always blow to the west, I think.

--

I frankly had no opinion of the change, and don't really grasp why everyone is so upset about it. "On principle" isn't working for me.

I mashed the button to 200 (was part of my combat hotkeys--taunt, sense heading, disarm, etc...)

I can navigate by /loc; taunted people who never practiced sense heading and so couldn't use the compass; have made my own maps; know a lot of zones like the back of my hand...

and you don't see me upset, or missing all that work.

I personally like to give compass directions, so it's nice. Real nice.

--

A lot of 'nonsensical' things in EQ can be explained by the underlying code of the game--such as why Frogs can wear all this vanilla cultural (frogs had to be added to all medium and small platemail pieces, including cultural, so that they could wear it)

...or why non-iksar races that are allowed to be beastlords can use the Stone of Morid now. (When they introduced beastlords, anything beastlord usable became "BAR TRL OGR IKS VAH"--and well, the stone of morid became beastlord usable.)

They're using sweeping commands to alter a database, somewhat like "Find/Replace All" in most word processors. Little things like that are going to get swept over and changed. I certainly wouldn't want to alter EQ's item database manually.

Traders' was done manually and I have a partial grasp on exactly how much work that was.

--

As for the "time to make this change..."

It's 10 minutes to make that change, and then you're back to work doing whatever it is you were working on. Maybe 5 minutes tops in a meeting to discuss changes to the game.

Piffle. It's a game, kids.

[TheCraftyBard]

I think that when EQ first got going, it was ntended to bring up memories of D&D games where you'd go out, have adventures, etc., live off the land, that sort of thing. This is a lot of fun... for a small group of people dedicated to it. But any video game is bound to attract the legions of people who have certain expectations of what a game should be like.

As our society progresses into the age of instant replays and "When _____ Attack!" specials, our attention span shrinks at the same time. Today's average EQ gamer probably wants to jump right in and stick his Sword of Pretty Much Instant Death into A Slightly Upset Zombie and earn his Cloak of the L33t. I doubt he wants to make short ales and worry about his character's personality and/or life story.

A skill like Sense Heading is a relic of those older days. I know that you veterans still love that feeling of heading out for adventure, but SOE is a business, and as such, they have to please their customers.

I still remember my first character's journey from Felwithe to Freeport, and subsequent ship ride to Kunark as well as the late-night ride back to Fel I made with a friend. That was around the time SoL came out, and as far as I'm concerned, the ability to use the Luclin spires to turn an hour-plus journey into a 20-minute one was the first sign that things were changing. Since then, every new character I've made has ping-ponged around the world a dozen times before hitting level 20. It sure is convenient, and I'm not about to stop. But I still wish I could re-live that experience that I had when I traveled to Kunark, and really felt "far from home".

[kiztent]

Originally posted by KyrosKrane
Slight derail ... Sanna, when LoY came out, one of the uber necros in a top guild (wish I could remember the player, guild, and server names, but my memory sucks -- one of the uber-guilds like FoH or Afterlife, but not those two) did an experiment for fun.

Within 24 hours /played and 48 hours RL after the LoY patch had completed, this necro had made a Froglok cleric, PL'ed it to 65, and had his epic. I believe, though I'm not sure, that the froglok was also flagged through to HoH or BoT -- and this was before they opened up the zones by level; he had to get the actual flags.

The truth is out there:

http://www.harmonium.net/newsdisp.asp?id=197

Harmonium on Xev is the guild, it was 49 hours to get the frog to 65 and epiced with a 65 necro and a quested CoD key.

[borblefoot furtoe]

It not the change to the skill itself so much that has most people like myself upset, But their reasoning as to why it was changed and the disturbing pattern it represents.



They took a skill that was unappreciated by most peope even though most people use it every time they log on (they just don't think about it) And gave it away for free.

Now if they had just said we don't think Sense heading is an important skill in the context of todays game and are therefore giving all players 200 skill in sense heading I think while there would have been some grumbling here and there most people like myself would have shrugged and gone on with playing.

But the argument for the change is it was boring and tedious to raise and that this justifies them making the change is ludicrous and is the main reason why many people are hopping mad about the change. And even if you could convince me that that is a valid arguement for making the change it is still not what I would consider to be the best fix for the problem.

They should have just increased the rate at which you learned the skill and removed the level cap from the skill.

While I am sure that this change did not significantly drain resources from other problems I. E. (LOS issues, mob pathing, melee balance etc etc) I do know that when you have a significant portion of the player base screaming for fixies to what most consider to be more important problems these types of changes come off as being Marie Antoinettesque in nature.


I think that pretty much sums up why many people are unhappy with the change.

Personally I liked getting my sense heading skill ups every level. It always gave me a sense of progress while leveling especially when other skill skillups could be slow sometimes.

[Stugein]

Originally posted by TheCraftyBard
But I still wish I could re-live that experience that I had when I traveled to Kunark, and really felt "far from home".

Not the same thing, but on occasion I will make the walk from Freeport to Qeynos just...because. I remember when that was quite an accomplishment at the lower levels.

I remember being in my teens, running through EC and standing behind a tree when I saw a griffon because I thought that would actually hide me from it (much to my chargrin...). The mad dash through WC avoiding hill giants and bandits and orcs. Taking a nice calm stroll through Kithicor (yes, even at night) because there was nothing too terribly scary there at the time. Getting completely lost in the trenches of Highpass. Feeling really paranoid about how open the Karanas are (I need a tree to hide behind before that lion sees me, dangit). Finally making it to Qeynos. It felt like I had done something even though all I had managed to do was not die. I would spend the next couple months of my RL play time on that side of the continent simply because to get back to Freeport was too dangerous a task.

Now of course at L52 it isn't nearly as harrowing an experience, even with Kith not being as friendly at night. But sometimes I'll be in PoK making patty melts or something and need cheese from Jaggedpine. Instead of zipping down to Qeynos, I will port down to Freeport and walk. See the sights. Help out some lowbies along the way. Chuckle at the mobs that used to send me sprinting for the nearest zoneline. It may be a waste of time, but to me it's actually somewhat relaxing. Fun.

[eniamn]

i'm a wizard. i love my ports. the books feel a little too far though. to get to qeynos without books its the tox port run through erudin and take the boat (ie. gnomes becasue boat pathing is ....weird.), or port to wk lv 39 spell and lesser evac to zonein and run through qeynos hills to north qeynos. nothing is as close as the books. i have heard ppl ask where the book for nk and highpass are. i make a lot of money porting so may be biased but the books are a little too much. and i ran from qeynos to freeport at lv 20 as a wizard at night through kithicor to smith because freeport was "THE" place to smith. that was pre velious. good times.

think the reason for the sh change was wrong. think it was so ppl could see where there ldon was and they didn't want to admit it. at 20 that compass isn't very straight even maxed.

[Maevenniia]

OK, I think that's it for this thread.

time to move on.