Changes to hide and listen skills.

[fearwig]

Let's take a look at these commands, and see if you don't like my ideas for updating them. I think these are pretty necessary, myself, and the changes are essentially similar:

Make hide and listen toggles, not "attempts".

For hide: If you are attempting to hide, "hide" will toggle on, and upon the first room contact with a person (i.e. either the moment of hiding or the moment at which the person enters the room) there will be ONE check to determine whether or not you are hidden to that person. That check will be determined by your hide skill, their possible scan skill (without using the scan command or delivering a check to improve it--yes, that's codedly possible), and possibly some basic secondary check of seer wisdom vs. hider hide skill.

Movement will break hide. Emotes, any skill or command that involves looking, and similar activity will not. Using "look person" while hidden will show no echo (though perhaps this could be amended so that it involves another hide check, simulating someone trying to peek out from their hiding spot).

For listen: listen is already a toggle, but you don't actually toggle it on or off unless your skill succeeds, at which point you have to type "listen status" to determine whether or not you are actually listening (juh?). Best way to do this would be a simple toggle that reverts to "off" when you change positions or leave the room, but which, when on, would deliver a skill check every time someone says something at a table not your own.

Constructive comments, please. No "impossible to code" comments unless you actually know that it's uncodable and why, and are willing to share that information. What I understand of diku indicates to me that these are both quite feasible, and no more complicated than many skills in place. "Would put too much strain on the mud" would probably be a poor comment, as well, being that the biggest bottleneck with a mud is not the level of processing, which any modern PC could really handle, but bandwidth--these processes don't generally involve more echos being transmitted, and so would have little to no effect on bandwidth.

Overall, I think these would have a big impact upon the way both skills are used, and I think they'd contribute a lot to the realism imparted by these wonderful RP skills. A player should not think of hiding behind a bunch of rocks as either "failing" or "succeeding", and shouldn't really have to ask themselves "Gee, am I trying to listen hard enough?". Those are OOC elements unnecessarily imposed on the game, I'd say, and it'd be nice if we could code them out. Thanks for reading.

[lazycritic]

I like being able to listen to everything with one check, and being able to hide from everyone, regardless of their individual level of constant alertness.  

To be honest, this would make things inordinately difficult for shady PCs, who are already difficult enough to survive with.

[fearwig]

It might make things more difficult in the long run, but it does the following:

A) It imparts an unrealistic benefit to those players.

B) It necessitates lots of spamming to achieve any effect, while giving an unrealistic benefit after all the tedium. This is something a lot of muds suffer from, usually in a far worse way than Arm overall.

Really, these are not major hindering factors to gameplay. Maxing hide should not guarantee a hide every time, and hiding successfully from one person should not hide you automatically from another. I'm not trying to offend, but that criticism would be expected from the stereotypical "gamer" crowd. Realism can be a good thing, even when it hurts your character.

Really, the way it is, the skills are cheapened. They're made less rare, less chancy, and less interesting as a result. There should be a chance you'll miss a line of a conversation when you're eavsedropping in on something important. It's part of life. Same with hiding--there should be a chance some eagle-eyed bastard will spot you while an inexperienced half-giant won't.

[lazycritic]

Well, if one person spots you, they usually run about yelling about a "shadow", so you're hiding is basically screwed.

Even if it does give an unrealistic benefit to those characters, it's not like they don't have things unrealistically stacked against them, e.g., the unrealistic crime code.

One of the things that sets Armageddon apart as an RPI these days is that it's unrealistic yet it still works. It has classes. It has super-skilled warriors and super-skilled assassins.

Shady PCs actually generate, on average, more interesting RP than the other classes. They need to be kept powerful to stand up against what they have against them.

[Cuusardo]

I don't think hide should be changed, because the way it works makes total sense.  You look for a place to hide, and you hide as best as you can.  You think that you are hidden, but you can't be certain because you can't exactly hop out of yourself to check.

[lazycritic]

I don't think hide should be changed, because the way it works makes total sense.

Eh...it doesn't make total sense. It doesn't make much sense at all, actually. Like fearwig said, just because the one-eyed half-giant misses ya doesn't mean the canny elven burglar does.

Realistically, hiding shouldn't mean you're hidden from everyone. If you read the thread closer, you might see what I mean.

Of course, there's a lot of things that don't make sense - how does a reeking 'rinther with a dark hood up "blend in" with the crowd in the Bard's Barrel? I dunno.

[Bestatte]

Hide doesn't hide you from everyone, already.

If you type hide, and are successful, you are hidden ONLY from people who aren't paying close attention to their surroundings. Anyone who IS paying close attention to their surroundings can see you, to some extent.

It's already doing exactly what you're saying you want it to do.

[Cuusardo]

Hide doesn't hide you from everyone, already.

If you type hide, and are successful, you are hidden ONLY from people who aren't paying close attention to their surroundings. Anyone who IS paying close attention to their surroundings can see you, to some extent.

It's already doing exactly what you're saying you want it to do.

Which is why I say it makes total sense.  You think you are hidden, but you can't be 100% certain that you won't be spotted, period.  Some people will notice you, some people won't.

[Angela Christine]

A toggled hide would be useful for those times when something is following you and you may not have time to wait through movement and hide delays.  You know something is on your trail or patroling the area, so you dive under a bush or behind the curtains, and then you hold your breath and hope your skill delays pass before the threat gets close enough to see you.  You would re-hide after each movement, just like you durring a successfull shadow.


Then again, maybe that would make hide too powerful.  I don't know.


Angela Christine

[mansa]

Hide is already -too- powerful, in my opinion.

[Rhyden]

IMO-

Hide's good if not too good. I like the hide skill the way it is. Sorry.

Listen is -way- too good. Either the code is unrealistic or some Zalanthians have amazing hearing. I don't like the way listen is. I think less would be better in terms of the listen code. If anything with listen is to be done, it should be so that characters can hear less.

[wizturbo]

The best solution for the hide skill, is unfortunately pretty difficult to implement.

It'd mean going through room by room, and setting bonuses/detriments to hide based on the room.

It'd be a lot harder to hide in a stark apartment then it would be in a crowded city street, but the way the code is now from what I can see, is either you can hide in a room or you can't, and there's no in between.  Which makes things pretty lame, and you get instances were someone can shadow you into your apartment with ease, where something like that would be extremely difficult.

[fearwig]

Rooms are categorized by area type already. Distinction between city and outside is sufficient. I didn't really indicate specific changes to room attributes. I think indoor areas are coded differently, and the increased difficulty of hiding in a small (implied by "indoor") area may already be reflected, for all we know. I'm not going to speculate there, not knowing.

As for those indicating that these things should be made less sure and reliable, isn't this what I'm suggesting? Are you guys responding to the idea, or to other people's responses? Because I can't see how I suggested the toning up of any of these skills. If you toggle listen on or off, and you are simply -trying- to listen, often failing, that's less powerful than knowing for sure that you're listening and that you'll get every single bit of every conversation in the room (which is silly). If you are poor at concealing yourself, you'll escape only the least attentive or stupidest people, and only then a small portion of the time. I made no actual suggestions to change the balance, just the implementation.

Hiding is powerful now because you know when you're damned good at hiding, and you know that when one person fails to see you, all (or almost all) will fail to see you, barring the use of the scan skill which is a rather different matter in my opinion. The thought "Okay, I must be hidden, X person didn't seem to see me so no one else will," shouldn't ever really go through someone's head. That's a code-based idea, I think. Sure, being hidden from one person means you're likely to be hidden from someone else, but it's not a sure thing.

I like getting responses to ideas, but I like it more when someone reads my idea. Do I say that too much?


EDIT: Okay, here's a reinvention of what I meant by my changes to the hide skill, which I think should be something like as follows:

Your skill at hiding allows you to produce a random number between say, 1 and 100, or 1 and X with X being based on your skill level, right? As your skill gets better, X increases significantly. There will always be a chance of failure that way, though it will become smaller and smaller. That's your "hidden-ness' variable. When people walk in, there's a roll or a check to determine whether they can see you based upon that variable. Their checking variable can depend upon a lot of stuff, up to the discretion of the coder: class, subclass, hide or scan skills (with scanning as a command having a higher likelihood of spotting you than the passive form). It could also take wisdom into account. That way everything is reduced to relatively simple (code-wise) checks against something that's determined at the time of your hiding, making it reflect rather well the reality: If you are well hidden, not many people will spot you. If you are poorly hidden (which anyone can be, depending upon all kinds of variables), some people -might- spot you, others might not at all.

I think that's a good and precise way of putting it, if a little long-winded.

[Sephiroto]

I like hide as it is.

As for listen:
I'd like to see it change a little.  I'd rather "Listen 2.table" or "Listen south".  It doesn't make since to be be able to hear all things at all tables and all directions all at once.  My only argument to that regards being in outdoor settings.  When you're pretty much alone in the open listen should stay the same and work for all directions.

[fearwig]

Is there something in particular you like about hide as it is, or just that it's how it already is? Do you like that it's a near-absolute evasion of people who aren't actively searching for you, unless you fail outright, making you visible to anyone and everyone in a generally artificial way? Is it actually better that listen is something you either "do" or "fail at doing and type listen on again", or are we just too lazy to think about the alternatives I've suggested?

No, I'm not bitter. Really! Okay, a little.

I don't dislike your idea about listen, though. Not a bad idea at all.

[Tamarin]

Cheese is yummy.

[joyofdiscord]

Is it actually better that listen is something you either "do" or "fail at doing and type listen on again", or are we just too lazy to think about the alternatives I've suggested?

I will say that I think listen is better as it is, than it would be as a skill-check-with-every-talk listen.  Making a skill check for every statement is too much code arbitration, in my opinion, and opens the door for unrealistic play.  

As it is now, if someone talk-emotes leaning over their table and talking in low tones to their friend, I can play it off as my character not being able to hear it.  If someone talk-emotes speaking loud and clear to the sirihish-challenged desert-elf, I can play it as my character hearing it easily.

If a single, context-free code check takes over, I may be in the situation of having to accept that, since the code said I heard the quietly talking rinthers across the room, I did indeed hear them.  And since the code decided that I didn't hear the loud-talking fellow buying things from the longneck, I have to assume I couldn't hear them

Whenever a skill check enters roleplay, that ends up trumping a lot of the context of the situation.  That's why we have declarations on the GDB like: if a ranger passes their hide check, that means you were unable to see them.  Or, if a thief passes their steal check, that means you didn't notice them.  Those sort of arbitrations are good, because there's WAY too much room for subjectivity.

But applying this to listen, when many factors such as room crowdedness, talk-emotes, and room-layout affect the situation, which the code can't take into account, but which players can.  This change to listen would be a good one if we were a hack and slash mud where players use every bit of knowledge that scrolls along the screen to their advantage.  I don't see any need to take away a way that players can roleplay and logically interpret their surroundings in favor of a blind skill check.

The suggestion to have a limited-scope listen, like listening to a specific table or direction, is better, but still doesn't jive with my real-life experience as a chronic eavesdropper.

[fearwig]

Nice responses. I like hearing a good reasoning, even if it's not one I'll entirely agree with.

I like some limitation in code, even if it trumps your ability to judge what you may or may not have heard. There's a good argument for adding some random factors to skills like listen, and I think the best way to do that would be to remove the redundant and ineffective "listen on...listen on... listen on... got it!" method that's required by the current system, especially in light of the fact that, by the dictum of code, at least, your character hears -everything- in the room. Now, while you are a responsible roleplayer and choose to limit that skill yourself, in your own way, I would rather see it limited across the board, reducing the chance that someone will hear every single bit of every conversation in the room and roleplay accordingly, as surely they will. I don't like surety in skills any more than I like absolute surety in roleplay. It makes for an uninteresting environment, I think.

The fact that separates muds from mushes, moos, whatever is that muds choose to arbitrate who wins a fight, who can do this, who can do that. They form a roleplaying -game-, not just a game of roleplaying. It's a nice balance, and it works well.

I think these skills should be better arbitrated by the code. I don't think it's as interesting if everyone gets to decide exactly which conversation they heard which parts of, because frankly that's not realistic either. It sounds really nice, but it's innately biased and it's really very dependable. Not fun at all, I say.

Hide isn't as dire a situation as listen, and I agree that my suggested changes are maybe too complicated. I think they'd help to flesh the skill out, though. I'm dead-set that listen should be fixed as I suggest, though. Maybe I'm alone on this. Typing listen on should make your character try to listen, and if he fails, he hears nothing, if he succeeds, he hears the line in question. It removes the need to "struggle" to listen, rather than simply to try, and it removes the OOC question of "Am I listening yet?" which has no IC context. I don't like all-or-nothing skills, especially when the real situation is anything but similar.

[joyofdiscord]

I will admit, it's a little odd when I'm playing a listening character, I type "listen on", get "At X table, the brown-eyed man speaks."  So, dang, "think It's noisy in here" and I type listen on again.  Then I hear that I'm not listening, dang "think Hard to hear from my seat."  Then I listen on again, and *poof* everything gets through from then on.  It is wierd, for sure, but this is a game after all.

[Maybe42or54]

And then you would get times like this.

>At the round, square, reddish yellow table, you overhear the man in pink say, in sirihish, leaning over and speaking quietly to the woman in black:
"Hey, let's go have sex."

> At the other oval table, the man says something, practically screaming at the man in a halfling costume.



I'd hate that moment if it was changed to skill check every talk.

[joyofdiscord]

Heh, much like I mentioned in the post above.

In all fairness, things like "talk (practically screaming at ~halfling)" should probably be handled with "tell halfling (practically screaming at !halfling)", since if you're screaming, the rest of the room should probably be able to hear.  And I have been in/near a few scenes where someone did play it like that, which I appreciate.

[Cindrak]

I'm not sure about the hide part. The problem with a toggle that just stays on (if I understand your proposal correctly) is one second someone might see you when they look at the room, the next all of a sudden you're gone, then you're back again, and so on. Are you constantly jumping from one hiding place to another in an effort to stay hidden? Maybe I just totally misunderstood you about how it would work, if so please correct me.

I agree about listen, though, the way it works now is absurd. And I like the idea of listening towards a particular table. Perhaps listening with no argument would allow you to listen in all directions, but having a divided attention would mean you had a lower chance of listening to any one particular conversation.

But applying this to listen, when many factors such as room crowdedness, talk-emotes, and room-layout affect the situation, which the code can't take into account, but which players can.

This is true of the latter two, but certainly the code can take into account crowdedness. And as you pointed out, things that are shouted should be told or said, not talked.

I think the code can and should take care of arbitrating what you do and don't overhear, especially since it's a skill, with a proficiency. The way that proficiency is taken into account now is just silly. Listen on... nope, nothin'. Listen on... nope, still can't hear a thing. Listen on... ahh, clear as a bell, I can hear the cockroaches whispering in that crack in the far wall.

Here's my contribution to this idea: what if a low proficiency didn't cause you to miss what was said altogether, but garbled it to some degree? This strikes me as very realistic:

Code Select Expand

At a squat marble coffee table, the skinny, balding man says, in sirihish:
    "Yes, deliver the ... ... night. If you ... any trouble ... Templar or ... I will of course ... and deny any ... ... wash my hands of you."

Wouldn't that be neat? The chance of garbling might be based on a combination of proficiency, how crowded the room is, and whether you are listening in all directions or focusing on the table where the conversation is taking place.

-Cindrak

[The 4th Kankman]

fearwig posted:

"Now, while you are a responsible roleplayer and choose to limit that skill yourself, in your own way, I would rather see it limited across the board, reducing the chance that someone will hear every single bit of every conversation in the room and roleplay accordingly, as surely they will."

Fear and ideas such as this have come up over the years I've experienced this Multi-User Dimension.  What makes Armageddon different from other MUDs is the absolute requirement for integrity that, on a general level, is well-played out.  Consider, instead, using the skill limitations as an opportunity to step up to the plate, set some standards of roleplaying integrity, and then encourage other players through your actions.  The code changes can wait.

That said, of the two aforementioned skills, listen -is- the skill with the best chance of getting tweaked anytime soon.  My earlier posts have suggested modifications that coincide with Cindrak's ideas (listening towards a particular table, and making a general 'listen' command give you only bits and pieces of conversations from the room).  Later on, differences in city-wide and outdoor settings can be implemented.

fearwig posted:

"Is there something in particular you like about hide as it is, or just that it's how it already is? Do you like that it's a near-absolute evasion of people who aren't actively searching for you, unless you fail outright, making you visible to anyone and everyone in a generally artificial way?"

As it stands, the skill is useful and coded well enough to make the game workable.  And yes, it is extremely realistic in many ways.  In a real-world context, if you do not understand the principles of what catches and diverts attention, you will be making mistakes that draw the attention of near any passerby.  As you gain more skill at your trade, and become more consciously aware of what you're doing each time you attempt to stay 'out of sight, out of mind', the mistakes are fewer, but the potential for error -always- exists.  The 'scan' skill, as mentioned elsewhere, is a good check for this.

In any case, none of the alternatives that have been mentioned are feasible from a coding basis.  It would take too much time and effort to tweak hide in a manner that will take into account so many other variables that -do- make a difference in real-life.  The human imagination is a powerful tool, and it is up to us to 'fill in the blanks' where the code is limited.  Until a better code for the skill is decided upon, let us work to the best of our ability with what we have.

~ The 4th Kankman of the Armageddon

[Dracul]

Code:
At a squat marble coffee table, the skinny, balding man says, in sirihish:
    "Yes, deliver the ... ... night. If you ... any trouble ... Templar or ... I will of course ... and deny any ... ... wash my hands of you."


Wouldn't that be neat? The chance of garbling might be based on a combination of proficiency, how crowded the room is, and whether you are listening in all directions or focusing on the table where the conversation is taking place.

That has been suggested before, and in fact, would be very cool.

One idea that popped to my head...then listen may also (maybe not recoded, but only added to) like a language skill codewise, but rather than garbling spelling, leave it blank...as replaced by '...'s)

I would very much like that.