A Necessary Change

[Screws]

Tracking is currently a purposeless skill and I'd like to see it changed to allow for a much more interesting environment with more player interactions. Those of you with characters on less popular shards would probably benefit the most from the proposed change, but even people exclusively on Atlantic will be able to actively use and benefit from the revised tracking skill in this thread:

http://vboards.stratics.com/uo-scout/246159-skill-doesnt-have-garbage.html#post1983488

I'd appreciate any support possible, just posting on the thread is great and I welcome any argument against the proposal.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

An improved tracking skill would surely be neat.

Regrettably I have no ideas beyond that which you've presented in the Scout forum and.....Well, this one more idea, which probably misses the point but I'll shoot it out anyway: Giving it combat-oriented "ranger spells" a la Chivalry or Bushido, and finding a way for it to not possibly interact with Chiv or Bush to avoid creating yet another uber-template.

Again, not what you meant.

Maybe dump Detect Hidden and fold its abilities into Tracking, that way you can have a single, useful anti-stealther skill?

I suck at this. *chuckles*

-Galen's player

 

[Screws]

No that's not a bad idea, someone on another thread I think actually presented a very similar idea. The only problem I had with it was that it doesn't really bring up player interactions which is my main goal- tracking is more of a convenient median

 

[unified]

Tracking is currently a purposeless skill and I'd like to see it changed to allow for a much more interesting environment with more player interactions. Those of you with characters on less popular shards would probably benefit the most from the proposed change, but even people exclusively on Atlantic will be able to actively use and benefit from the revised tracking skill in this thread:

http://vboards.stratics.com/uo-scout/246159-skill-doesnt-have-garbage.html#post1983488

I'd appreciate any support possible, just posting on the thread is great and I welcome any argument against the proposal.

I like your suggestion as well as another's suggestion that the Detect Hidden skill be merged into it.

I'd suggested in another thread that Tracking be used to locate treasure chests in Treasure Hunting, allowing hunters to get onscreen messages about how close they are to the chests like the Turkey maps. I think this would be a better compliment than Mining.

 

[icm420]

Tracking need the entire formula reworked. People complain about JoT tracking but in reality tracking is just broken. It serves no practical use for survival, combat, resource gathering, it's a low percentage at gm to find stealthers. There is a nice long timer on it, and you have 4 options to track for. A stealther hits hide and walks I know there is a timer on hiding but it's not such a big deal, also most stealthers are ninjas for smoke bombs, which helps them hide in rough situations.

Anyways we know all this, my thought is a passive tracking skill. If you walk by someone stealthing why not have an arrow pop up suddenly? You see his footprints in the dirt and suddenly you know there is someone there. Makes sense to me. A stealther can switch between animal form and human form constantly, much much faster then a tracker can hit track for player then track for animal, so this would be a cool adjustment. I'm not saying it should be every time but have it scaled vs the players tracking skill.

Another option I think would be cool is to give a tracker more ranger like skills. A ranger to me should be able to tame certain animals. If a tracker could control a nightmare for example think of the possibilities. I am just using that as an example, but they should have some sort of usefulness associated with the skill in terms of survival or damage. I know tracking increases deathstrike damage (or used to) but deathstrike already requires hiding/stealth/ninja to use. It just isn't a practical association. A minor taming chance would be awesome...think of bake kitsune from a necromancers wolf summon.

Tracking means finding people/animals/monsters. So trackers should gain some sort of a damage increase vs something tracked. If you find a person stealthing you should have a slight increase to damage done scaled on how much tracking the person has. Monsters and animal tracking would become a viable skill. But knowledge is power and if you know where something or someone is you should be able to have an advantage. This however could be an issue in pvp, but in terms of monster tracking it makes total sense, it makes tracking viable in pvm.

Have tracking make smokebombs fail. If you have 100 tracking skill then someone being tracked should have their success chance to smoke bomb scaled against the trackers tracking skill. A guy who is tracked by JoT can still smokebomb, but a guy who is tracked by a gm tracker fails 50% of the time using a smokebomb. (Just throwing numbers out here).

Thats all I can think of now, I will most likely get ripped apart by stealthers now, but something really needs to be adjusted with tracking to make it viable. Tracking + Detect Hidden to find hidden players isn't worth it. There is no reason to track animals or monsters either. Hide and Stealth are awesome don't get me wrong, but the counters are weak in comparison, someone can hide and walk around hidden but to find them you must constantly spam an active skill, have a less then 50% chance to find them and in a lot of areas tracking targets just don't work. (despise champion spawn). Also tracking/detect helps in no way what so ever for survival or damage.

 

[Screws]

Definitely, tracking needs to be updated, and the possibility of tracking maybe buffing up damage against what you have tracked (a lesser enemy of one effect) sound very interesting, but I feel like you're running into balance issues.

The best part about the idea of increasing the range as opposed to adding effects to the skill is that it really doesn't change balance... You can have a 0% chance to find people who are hidden off your screen still, and the only added effect would be that you'll know when people are near you (Assuming they didn't invest the points needed to avoid detection) essentially eliminating the ability to easily sneak up on people doing a champ spawn and also allowing others to search Sosaria's sparse population without spending hours glazing over it.

 

[puni666]

I like your suggestion as well as another's suggestion that the Detect Hidden skill be merged into it.

This.

Just like Taste ID should be part of alchemy. And Forensic Eval should be part of Spirit Speak.

 

[Screws]

This.

Just like Taste ID should be part of alchemy. And Forensic Eval should be part of Spirit Speak.

The only problem is any balance issues, merging skills could potentially bring up over powered templates, though with your suggestion it seems unlikely, detect hidden/tracking being merged could completely ruin the idea of stealth (since you could get a 50% chance to detect/100% chance to reveal with the use of 100 points, essentially turning the situation around in terms of who has the obvious advantage, letting you keep the advantage of skill points when fighting the stealthed player AND making escape impossible) which I want to avoid when trying to make tracking useful.

On top of that, it doesn't really help the fact that population on most servers is so sparse it's hard to have any player to player interactions at all.

 

[puni666]

The only problem is any balance issues, merging skills could potentially bring up over powered templates, though with your suggestion it seems unlikely, detect hidden/tracking being merged could completely ruin the idea of stealth (since you could get a 50% chance to detect/100% chance to reveal with the use of 100 points, essentially turning the situation around in terms of who has the obvious advantage, letting you keep the advantage of skill points when fighting the stealthed player AND making escape impossible) which I want to avoid when trying to make tracking useful.

On top of that, it doesn't really help the fact that population on most servers is so sparse it's hard to have any player to player interactions at all.

Should change it up all together if it were to be combined. You should get a few options of how you'd like to attempt revealing. First way you'd have to track them for a specific amount of time then after that time duration's up you reveal them 100% if you're on the same screen. Or you could try for an immediate reveal at a less % and a small 4x4ish tile range. You'd have to wait the normal 8 seconds or w/e to reattempt detection. Having the skill would still boost your passive reveal.

 

[Screws]

I understand what you're proposing- But it would interfere with another skill (stealth/hiding) to an extreme, and if it effects balance in such a way it's far less likely to be implemented. Besides that, I personally don't think stealth needs to be easier to reveal.

 

[puni666]

There's a ton of ways to instantly re-hide if you're a hiding character. To detect again you either need to wait the timer to attempt or cast a long AoE spell which then it's only a chance to reveal.

 

[Screws]

If you don't want to run into a scenario where another skill gets nerfed you can't allow tracking to find characters using stealth/hiding from a greater distance, and you can't allow it to be more effective at finding them than it already is (at any range).

Under the condition that it shouldn't interfere with other skills, the only solution is that the range is increased and the check ignores stealthed/hidden players after it exceeds the current set range.

Besides that, interacting with others is an extremely important part of UO, this change will allow this to happen more frequently (more than once a day!) on all shards.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

General reply since a few mentioned the Tracking/Detect Hidden merge idea.

What I had in mind was one of the following.

• If nothing else changes: Have an additional option come up when you use Tracking: Reveal.
• Better yet, though: Have only two options come up when you use Tracking: Track (screw the categories, have you able to track everything trackable, the higher your skill the more beings you can 'see' to track) and Detect.

Either way, when you mean to reveal you'll of course have to lose the Track, thus running the risk that the hidden will get away while you're Detecting.

Hell, why not fold Froensic Evaluation into Tracking along with Detect Hidden, and now you have a single "Detective/Ranger" skill.

-Galen's player

 

[Screws]

I'd much rather bring the servers closer together- But as long as tracking changes I'll be content.

 

[Screws]

Finally got to it and I think the best way to go about this is keeping the current range for 0 and not increasing it till after 20. One screen is roughly 30x30 tiles, depending on how far you zoom out. Moving up past 20 should increase the range by 1 screen every 10 points (or ~30 tiles). At GM, while a lot of skills gain a 5% increase in effectiveness I think that allowing an entire dungeon to be checked is a better choice, since 15 tiles is never going to matter. So at GM you'd have a 12 screen (or ~300 tiles) radius, and the ability to quickly scan a dungeon for what you're looking for without having to go through the entire level (you would still have to move from one level to another, but you could scan the entire floor that you're currently on without wandering around).

The numbers SOUND a little high, but compared to how massive sosaria is and how quickly people can move, I'm wondering if this is actually enough to reliably find anyone on any shard but Atlantic.

 

[Raptor85]

a little high? that's the entire city of brit, both sides of the river...and some of the forests outside it. That would make it retardedly easy to track and hunt down every single stealther in the world (essentially making the skill useless)

Now I'm all for tracking range extending as the skill goes up, and splitting it from as it is now, but not if it makes it even stronger than it already is, it's already incredibly easy to reveal gm stealthers without even needing points invested in tracking.

I'd like to see tracking skill effect the range at which you can track, and the categories go away, maybe at a max of a 2 screen radius at gm (a 4x4 screen radius is pretty huge), of course unless they can actually make it like talked about in the other thread where you follow a trail where someone has been, instead of seeing where they are.

http://vboards.stratics.com/uo-siege-perilous/246249-needed-change.html

Then make it so that you have no chance of tracking someone who's hidden unless you have matching detect hidden skill (tracking becomes a simple check of range, and the detect skill is 100% what is used to determine if they're trackable), but 100% chance of tracking at equal skill (so basically 100 detect 100 tracking you'd always see everyone within a pretty good distance of you, JOAT trackign 100 detect you'd be able to track everyone on the screen with you, which really is about how those skills are now)

Detect itself works fine as is, when you reveal someone at GM detect they can't re-hide for nearly 10 seconds.

 

[Screws]

A little misunderstanding, I should have mentioned it in this post; I wouldn't want tracking to reveal anyone (just like it doesn't right now) but I would also not apply the range to tracking stealthers, the range for tracking someone who is stealthed would remain the same as it currently is (a little less than 1 screen) or even not allowing the tracking of someone who hides at all would be fine, leave that completely to detect hidden.

My argument for a 300 tile radius is that I don't think it's enough incentive to gain tracking for anyone (Support) to raise it if it's too low because it wouldn't be able to see far enough to prepare for ganks on champ spawns in time and it wouldn't see quite far enough for people to really want it when looking for people in the open world. Though, to argue against myself a little; if the ability to search a level of a dungeon at GM stays then that will probably be enough incentive for a support for a PKer, but then it really wouldn't help the champ spawn defenders/Treasure hunter support much and that might throw off the balance slightly.