A SERIOUS Discussion about Passive Detect:
My understanding of how prodo shard passive detect works is that ALL player characters have a random chance at revealing a stealther near them, passively. I'm not sure what the percentage chance is, but I'd venture to guess around 30-40%. Please someone post the correct information.
My belief of a fair compromise to passive detect on Siege is as follows.
Hide + Stealth is not an ACTIVE skill, it is a passive skill. You don't have to click 'stealth' everytime you want to stealth, it just happens. Detect + Tracking IS an Active skill, everytime you want to detect something or track something you have to press a button. If you never press a button, then you are not using detect/tracking.
As hide/stealth and detect/tracking are essentially counter skills, they exist to combat each other. When hide/stealth can be used passively and detect/tracking can only be used actively, that gives a heavy edge to hide/stealth.
I do not think a person with 0 detect/tracking should be able to passively, or even actively detect a person with 100 hide/stealth (possibly with JOAT but that should be like, 2%). However, if character A with 100 hide/stealth is standing next to Character B with 100 tracking/detect, and Character A attempts to hide or stealth, shouldn't they only have a 50% chance to succeed? I mean if I have 100 swords and you have 100 fencing, don't I have a 50% chance 'to hit' you? Both skills should play off of each other. Right now they don't.
Therefore I'll put forth one previous suggestion I've seen from Chad and a suggestion I've made before:
My proposal:
If a 100 hide/100 stealth person walks within 1 tile of another person, they should have a 10% chance of being revealed. This allows thieves with hide/stealth a 90% chance of moving next to their prey undetected.
If a 100 hide/100 stealth person walks up to a 100 detect/100 tracking person then, within the following number of tiles should have a chance to reveal:
4 tiles away, 5%
3 tiles away, 10%
2 tiles away, 15%
1 tile away, 20%
This would mean that a person with 200 skills invested in hide/stealth versus a person with 200 skills invested in tracking/detect has a ~50% chance to succeed. This is how it should be (in terms of a 50/50 shot against corresponding skill levels).
This forces stealthers to THINK about where they walk and make a concerted effort to get directly to their prey, not wander around aimlessly.
Chad's proposal:
1) Weaken active detecting. They should have to pin point you. Maybe 3x3 square at GM. Not full screen.
2) Add passive detect, but include directions people are facing into the detect chance.
Stealth behind someone = 0% Passive Detect
Stealth on the side of someone = 25% Passive Detect
Stealth in front of someone = 100% Passive Detect
I kinda like chad's proposal better, but don't think there is the coding for a line-of sight within the game so would be much more difficult to implement.
Nonetheless, all of these proposals pretty much state that passive detect only really works 100 track/detect versus 100 hide/stealth (with correspondingly lower success rates at lower skill). A person with 0 track/detect should have minimal, if any ability at all to reveal a 100 hide/stealther.
I believe most of us would agree that a 100 track/detect person should be able to passively reveal a 100 hide/stealth person to an extent. We probably just don't agree on mechanically how that would happen.