Thanks, yeah, it looks like this skill is quite neglected.....
But I hope there is hope, after all Forensic Evaluation was brought up to a new life when the Devs activated the Honesty Virtue so who knows, perhaps UO players could bring up ideas, if we had a proper forum to discuss them, about possible ways to enhance Tracking for both PvP and PvM ?
My gripe, as of now, about this skill, is that it is a bit of a pain to raise because of the skill downtimer (about 10 to 12 seconds in between uses...) and in the end the range is very limited....
I am currently 85 tracking and I can only track down a target to at most 19 paces away. Clearly way too short a range, IMHO. I am not sure whether getting to GM will increase the range considerably....
Personally, I think that a GM tracker should be able, at least for a mid size town like Skara Brae, to stand up in the middle of the Town and track anything wanted all over through it.... Of course players with Hiding and Stealth have some sort of protection over this which is currently as it is....
But as for tracking NPCs, be them monsters or anything else, a GM tracker should be able to track them screens upon several screens away........
Also, another gripe that I have is the CAP there currently is on targets' results. This makes the skill useless when used in a large spawn area or in a Town. Say that I am tracking 1 single target in an area filled of possible targets, with the current CAP, the one single target I am looking for might be left out from the list and I might therefore overlook it thus making my 100.0 invested points useless...........
The CAP needs to go and perhaps the searches be administered through multiple sub-menues but all of the available targets should always be reported by the tracking search, never ever leaving out any because of a CAP limit to results....
Say, for example, that I am tracking for a specific NPC (be it for a quest or whatever...) and I know that the NPC will be a "yellowly named" one, not a NPC with a blue name, well, then I should be able to limit my search to NPCs carrying a yellow name OR NPCs carrying a blue name, but never ever leaving out any possible target result because there are too many results to be displayed....
Also, for monsters, say that I am looking for a particular type of Monster over others (like in large spawn areas), I should be able to selectively tell to my tracking search WHICH monster (or animal, for taming purposes) I want to track down.
Also, the direction arrow that points to my tracking target showing me where to go, should activate also from a very far distance, many many screens away. As of now, one needs to be way too close for it to activate, often I can read the name on my screen way before the arrow actually activates which makes using this skill pretty much useless...... one can just run around and looking at all names until the wanted name shows up on screen, even telling from which direction one needs to go to find it..............
If we consider that in real life expert trackers can find from footprints hints to a target that is miles away, I think that a UO GM tracker should be able to find out about a wanted target way, but WAY at a bigger range than the skill offers now.............
Perhaps it would be good to have a Forum on Stratics where players who would like enhancements and changes to this skill might be able to discuss about it ? And who knows, perhaps Mesanna or any other developer might even step into the discussion to tell their side of the story about this skill and its possible revamping ?
