Swimming out of Control

[RollerDog]

<p>I think maybe the inproved swimming skillup changes are a little zonked. I went from 5 to 65 (my max) in less than a minute of swimming. Basically the skillups ocurred non-stop at faster than 1/second.</p><p>Maybe at higher levels it slows down but at low levels its crazy. Of course, as a fae, I still had to go underwater to get any skillups.</p>

[timetravelling]

<p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p>

[Korrupt]

<p>Do you get skill ups now if you are swimming on top of the water rather than just underneath? I'm not sure if that was a universal issue but I know my arasai would not gain skillups unless I was underneath the water.</p>

[TheOrder20]

<p>Once again, EQ2 is stricten down with another case of easy mode. How sad, why even have a swimming skill anymore, why don't you just make us swim at a normal speed from the get go.. Sick of being babied with not having to do anything to better my characters in this game because its so easy to do ANYTHING now.</p>

[AScarlato]

<p>Clearly putting on a fishbone earring, putting your character on autorun, and leaving your computer to watch tv takes talent.</p><p>At least thats how I bothered to level swimming...</p><p>I like this change.  I don't think we need incentives to leave our computers to accomplish something.</p>

[Isard]

<p>How about a skill up ever 2 seconds not every .01 second.  It's silly now.  Might as well just remove the skill.</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p></blockquote><p>Well if this is intention, then please remove it as whole and give people max swimming from the get go.</p><p>This is silly. It just clutters up your whole chatwindow with horrendous spam of swim skill up.</p><p>At the rate it is now, it's just completely silly and pointless to even have a swimming skill.</p><p>I really don't understand why stuff like this needs to be dumbed down? Was nothing wrong with it. It went more then fast enough.</p><p>You guys are dumbing down so much stuff, that it even for a casual player, it comes to a point that we say why bother playing this game? What's the point. What's the challenge anymore?</p><p>You can't turn a casual player in a RAID'er. So if you think that dumbing the whole game down makes casual players start RAIDing.</p><p>Well sorry to crush your SOE devs dream. Ain't gonna happen!</p><p>Jer</p>

[Nathdorl]

<p>despite the wahwahwah in here: nice change, please keep it like this.</p>

[carpe_caminus]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p></blockquote><p>Bad move in my book.  It's never a good idea to water the game down (no pun intended).  It's not like swimming was hard to skill up anyway since every city has water without any creatures in it.  BUT, the number one reason this is a bad idea... IMMERSION.  Yeah, I know that doesn't really matter much in EQ2 anymore, but try to hold on to what little hasn't already been chopped out... please?</p><p>This is kinda like how Sense Heading got made useless in EQ1.</p>

[Xada]

<p>It's official. People will complain about anything.</p>

[Cusashorn]

<p><cite>carpe_caminus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p></blockquote><p>Bad move in my book.  It's never a good idea to water the game down (no pun intended).  It's not like swimming was hard to skill up anyway since every city has water without any creatures in it.  BUT, the number one reason this is a bad idea... IMMERSION.  Yeah, I know that doesn't really matter much in EQ2 anymore, but try to hold on to what little hasn't already been chopped out... please?</p><p>This is kinda like how Sense Heading got made useless in EQ1.</p></blockquote><p>The immersion of this game is one of the reasons why people think I'm crazy around here. I believe in it, but the status quo states that it's no longer needed in the game.</p><p>Sense heading was made useless by the fact that the environments all had a set pattern anyway.</p><p>The sun always set from East to West.</p><p>Drinal always rose from North to South</p><p>The Clouds always moved west.</p><p>If you dropped a sword on the ground, it's blade would point north.</p>

[Ahlana]

<p><cite>Xada@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's official. People will complain about anything.</p></blockquote><p>QFT, people say it wasn't hard to level... so who cares if you don't have to anymore? I mean really this did not make the game easier.. it did not dumb down anything. As even the people against it have pointed out.. ITS SWIMMING AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN JACK EASY.</p><p>No one cares, I would say more than 90% of the people will be happy with this change. If there was a purpose for swimming to take long to level up this would be a bad change, but there simply is no reason /shrug</p>

[Bigmik22]

<p>Lol, yeah people will complain about everything.</p><p>You are a pro hard working player, swimming there for 4 hours to get your swimming up... man, I envy all those pro players... Now instead of sitting there braindead for 4 hours, you can do it braindead for 20 minutes, and use your brain the other 3 hours 40 minutes in a creative way... but being creative is not for the pro hard working people. They prefer to do repetetive braindead stuff to prove their hard-coreness. Get a life tbh, or at least stop complaining.</p><p>Another thing I find amusing is that the people that cry about things being too easy are usually the same people that cry about things being too hard before-hand.</p><p>Man, working as a dev must be really hard. Nothing worse than doing your job right to help people and getting undeserved negative feedback.</p>

[Quesera]

<p>I don't mind an acceleration in the skill up. True, it's not hard,  but some of my toons took a lot longer with swimming than they did for say, mining.</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Ahlana wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xada@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's official. People will complain about anything.</p></blockquote><p>QFT, people say it wasn't hard to level... so who cares if you don't have to anymore? I mean really this did not make the game easier.. it did not dumb down anything. As even the people against it have pointed out.. ITS SWIMMING AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN JACK EASY.</p><p>No one cares, I would say more than 90% of the people will be happy with this change. If there was a purpose for swimming to take long to level up this would be a bad change, but there simply is no reason /shrug</p></blockquote><p>The point is, that now it's so fast, that it spams the whole chat window!</p><p>If they want to make it so easy and so fast to skill up swimming, then why bother keeping it as a skill up in the first place?</p><p>Just remove it and give everyone max swimming as default.</p><p>I wouldn't mind. At least it doesn't spam the whole chatwindow anymore.</p><p>Jer</p>

[aliksteel]

<p>If the skill up is as fast as you are saying from skill level 1 to 400 then why have it as a skill?</p><p>Maybe when a MMO gets to be this age, You have to start doing things like this to bring in new players. True you may bring in more new players than you loose, but this is just one of many things that have been, not just hit it with the nerf bat, but crushed to the point that you must ask, Why do we have it any more?</p><p>In all most every thing they do I can see both sides of why they are doing the things they do, But it feels like we are getting to the point that a two year old can bang on the keyboard and solo an epic named mob. Ok we may not be to that point yet, But we are starting to see a lot of little things taken away from us. And it does start adding up.</p>

[Katanalla]

<p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><strong>Why swim when you can surf?</strong></span></p><p><img src="http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg285/Katanallama/kat_surfsup.jpg" /></p>

[Macross_JR]

<p><cite>aliksteel wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If the skill up is as fast as you are saying from skill level 1 to 400 then why have it as a skill?</p><p>Maybe when a MMO gets to be this age, You have to start doing things like this to bring in new players. True you may bring in more new players than you loose, but this is just one of many things that have been, not just hit it with the nerf bat, but crushed to the point that you must ask, Why do we have it any more?</p><p>In all most every thing they do I can see both sides of why they are doing the things they do, But it feels like we are getting to the point that a two year old can bang on the keyboard and solo an epic named mob. Ok we may not be to that point yet, But we are starting to see a lot of little things taken away from us. And it does start adding up.</p></blockquote><p>if you for once think this change to swimming will bring people in you are full of it.  Honestly an MMO this age doesn't really try and go after new people, it is trying to retain people.  Each expansion they hope to get new people but the expansions are there to keep the paying customers paying.  When a new MMO comes out it's best chance at getting people is at the launch of the game, that is the sink or swim of it.  Anything after they try to make improvements where they can to keep the people who stayed playing.</p>

[GlitterPaws]

<p>Kowabunga! That's a great shot Katanallama! The flowered jammies add a nice touch too. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Aurel]

<p>*blink*  I don't know about you guys, but... in regards to the statement whoever it was made about swimming braindead for 4 hours...  I mean, I never went around trying to intentionally skill up my swimming.  It just went up on its own during my adventures.  Heck, I didn't even know it took that long to skill up, but I guess if I had been specifically trying to level it up, maybe it would have seemed harder.  But on my adventures, it always seemed to level up just fine...</p><p>And if the skill-up messages bother you, can't you just filter that out?  Or am I mistaken...</p>

[Dimhammer]

<p>I like this change.  Some races seemed impossible to raise swimming.  My Fae is level 70 and still ony 20 in swimming skill, cause no matter how much I swam it would never go up.</p>

[xeyda]

<p>Like others have said, if this is going to raise so fast, why not either remove it, or give everyone the max automatically, like the Sense Heading changes in EQ1?</p>

[Dulissa]

<p><cite>Aurelis wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>And if the skill-up messages bother you, can't you just filter that out?  Or am I mistaken...</p></blockquote><p>yes. yes you can. </p><p>or you could just make a whole tab just devoted to skills and then just ignore it (which is what I did)</p><p>point is, there are work arounds.</p>

[revren]

<p>Imersion  : Swiming with plate mail is in general considered a bad idea , even if you are a very good swimer , evedently the added weigh can casue you to sink realtivly quickly and be unable to breath for the remander of your life, however long or short it may be.</p><p>Welcome Home</p><p>Rev</p>

[Kasar]

<p>Swimming skill used to be at least some sort of diversion while swimming back and forth to see the fence multiple times a day.  Now that nobody does that, the only swimming my toons do is to Veksar or Chelsith, and that's only when someone else doesn't do it and zone everyone in.  There're a couple more spots in instances, but really, who spends much time swimming anyway?</p><p>Do safe fall next.</p>

[aliksteel]

<p>Once again, this time with feeling. Why have it as a skill? If it levels up so fast, Just turn it up to max from the start.</p>

[Arbreth]

<p>Sixty-five levels in a couple minutes is a tad too much - then to give an Achievement for that only makes it more laughable.</p>

[firza]

<p>I understand that some people would think the old swimming skill took to much time. I just leveled 2 toons to 80, one is sitting at 211 skill and the other at 175. A bit support there for natural progression could help.</p><p>but whoever thinks that people have fun getting skill ups at any rate > 1 per minute (arbitrary, just not 1/sec) should start playing games themselves.</p><p>You play to put effort (also arbitrary, but the feeling needs to be there). in and progress. You do not play to auto ding and forget.</p>

[madha]

<p>turn of skill up spam in your chat settings. problem solved.</p>

[Finora]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p></blockquote><p>While I'm all for faster swimming skill ups, the speed one levels swimming now (65-200ish for me in about a minute maybe two because I was actually in the water for a quest) you really might as well make it an auto leveling skill. DING and you get your next 5 skill points. Thinking about it I suppose it was easier just to make it level faster than changing how it leveled to begin with  but even so...</p>

[Ahlana]

<p><cite>Finora@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p></blockquote><p>While I'm all for faster swimming skill ups, the speed one levels swimming now (65-200ish for me in about a minute maybe two because I was actually in the water for a quest) you really might as well make it an auto leveling skill. DING and you get your next 5 skill points. Thinking about it I suppose it was easier just to make it level faster than changing how it leveled to begin with  but even so...</p></blockquote><p>Yeah I am guessing it was just a quick and dirty "fix". Quicker to change the timing integer than to recode it to auto-up or just be max I am supposing. But I wouldn't be surprised that it goes to just max Skill eventually.</p>

[Enna]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is intentional. We no longer want skilling up swimming to be a chore. Enjoy the faster swimspeed! =)</p></blockquote><p>Thank you. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Once I get everyone caught up, 5 per level will not overwhelm my screen.</p><p>The new method sure beats nearly drowning just to get a single ping on winged races! <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Much appreciated! /salute</p>

[Zerebro]

<p><cite>Dimhammer wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I like this change.  Some races seemed impossible to raise swimming.  My Fae is level 70 and still ony 20 in swimming skill, cause no matter how much I swam it would never go up.</p></blockquote><p>IMHO fae/arasai should fly above the water.. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[TheOrder20]

<p>Yay, my character can become an olympic class swimmer in the matter of two minutes. How nice... Please change it back there was nothing wrong with it other then the lazy people complained about it.</p>

[BrainCandy]

<p>I am not too thrilled with this change.  I play on Nagafen where any little advantage over another player can mean life or death.  I have always worked to keep my swimming skills at max, whereas I have found most people don't.  Gave me that little advantage when chasing someone who tries to flee in the water, or if I am the one trying to flee.  Seems a shame to just give it to everyone now without any effort put into it..  Ah well.</p><p>-BC</p>