The purpose of me starting this thread/poll was to inquire as to the pulse of Siege regarding passive detect and possibly including this in the 'letter' to Cal regarding low hanging fruit. As it stands now, about only 38% of the voters are in favor of making any immediate changes to passive detect and therefore will not be included.
Also, there is only a slight majority of people, about 58% who do want any form of passive detect change on Siege. It is obviously a hotly debated subject.
This is something that we will have to intelligently discuss in the coming months as to if we want any change on passive detect and if so, how. Only this way can we present something meaningful to the devs that they hopefully will listen and respond to, if we want any changes.
My personal opinion:
Siege Perilous, the key word there being Perilous, to me is about risk. What Siege offers that other shards do not offer is increased risk. Now risk in itself is not good, but I have always felt that the victories are much sweeter when the risk is greater. This risk manifests itself in many ways on Siege:
- When hunting, you could become the hunted by a pk
- When travelling to a destination, the inability to recall means you must journey there, and that journey brings with it inherint risk.
- The rewards of your hunting are always at risk to being poached by thieves.
- Attempting to slay a monster means you must risk death, and with death you may lose your gear (no insurance here to prevent this risk).
So it's that risk that sets us apart. What's more fun, succeeding at something you have a 100% chance of success at, or succeeding at something you have a 1% chance of success at? The 1% of course. I've done countless rat champs in my time. They're no fun because, I know that we will succeed 100% of the time. Sometimes though, you just do them because it's either something to do or you need/want the scrolls.
However think back to the first time we went up against the big dragon in the abyss. I'd rather do that, and have 20 deathrobes in my pack and NOT be successful than do a rat champ, it's that risk. That is what sets Siege apart and I think that is what we have to hold on to.
So how does Risk go hand in hand with passive detect? Well to me, stealth takes away this risk. Imagine if 20 dragons are guarding a cave. You could get 50 people to take down those dragons to enter the cave. You could stealth into the cave. BUT, you should not be able to stealth past the 20 dragons with ZERO RISK. It should be difficult. There should be a chance you get revealed and eaten alive. Just like if there were 20 murderers guarding the Skara Brae docks. If you decide to stealth past them, there should be a chance to succeed, but there should be some risk that you get caught. What if there was a thief, with 20 people hanging around Luna bank - if a thief had a mark and wanted to hit that mark, they should not be able to stealth past these 20 people in the bank with impunity, there should be some risk! It's like stealthing in the labyrinth for minotaur artifacts, those minotaurs have a chance to passively reveal you so when you stealth past them you have think and plan each of your steps. That is what stealth should be like.
For Siege to thrive, there needs to be a vision of what Siege needs to be. And to me that vision is a shard with additional risk, and thus the rewards taste sweeter. And if this is the vision of Siege we all agree on, then we should all be in favor getting rid of things that remove this risk, such as stealthing with impunity.
Other perfect examples of un-Siege like things that remove this risk - smoke bombs, faction runes, instanced corpses. Yes they all make things easier, but they remove the risk.