Nerf City Listen

[Tamarin]

If you annihilate ranger city listen, then you have to also make ranger hunt/sneak/hide more appropriate outside.  This means letting you sneak up on auto-flee creatures.  This means making hunt more active, rather than just tracking.  Rangers should be able to navigate the outside so easily that they can sneak up on critters no problem, and also avoid the baddies that come at you from a room away.

So there.   How do you like them apples?

[Forest Junkie]

As far as I know, rangers already take appropriate negatives to their listen skill when inside the city.

If you do not want your conversation to be overheard, then I suggest you retire to a more suitable place, ie a private room or your apartment, perhaps.

Again, I reiterate: If you do not want to be overheard, go somewhere else. It's common sense.

[Desertman]

I would like to see listen nerfed. It makes very little sense to me that a person listening can hear every conversation at every table in a busy tavern.

This is not the case I am afraid. The listen skill does not allow you to hear every conversation in the room at every table. It only allows you to hear some of the conversations in the room.....How you ask?....Have you ever heard any of those 50 other vnpcs having conversations in that crowded tavern?.......No?.....Thats because your listen skill isnt picking up every conversation at every table in the room. There are tens upon tens of people moving about the room and sitting in the tavern having conversations other than the relevant pcs, and I am apt to think your character has never overhead many of thier conversations if any no matter how good your listen skill has gotten.

[X-D]

As to the arguement that you would not be able to hear all that at the same time...well, your right, -you- wouldn't.

But then, its not -you- is it? Not even earth, as has so often been said before, it is Zalanthas and these are Zalanthan races. Races that somehow contact each other with thier minds. Having a mind capable of doing that over the breath of the world, is it so hard to beleive that it could not decode a few conversations going on at the same time around it?

I have no problem with the listen skill as it stands. I often ignore things my char hears when listen is on and concentrate on a particular table already..BUT..if something catches his ear then he will change that concentration. This is not something that could be easily handled by code.

No, you want to make it target, because to you it is more realistic, fine, do it, but also, code in the ability to enter in between 50 and 100 keywords that your char will hear even if it is not the table he/she is targetting, that would make it close to realistic and able to change target.

But I think it is fine the way it is, the code accounts for many of the things people are saying to do already. And as Forest Junkie said.

If you do not want to be overheard, go somewhere else. It's common sense.

IE, You want it harder for people to hear your super sekrit plans to off Tektolnes and diddle all the templars, THEN MAKE IT HARDER YOURSELF!

Thats the main reason that the skill is even in place. to Force people to act in a realistic manner or get caught, simple as that.

I don't care what the movies show, nobody is going to make plans to build a nuke while sitting in a crowded bar, they are going to do it in a basement with all the doors locked and probly people out in the yard to make sure nobody approaches.

Bah.

[Cale_Knight]

As far as I know, rangers already take appropriate negatives to their listen skill when inside the city.

The one and only ranger I played lived less than five days, but by the time he died his listen was good enough that it almost always turned on within two or three tries inside a city.

[Delirium]

As far as I know, rangers already take appropriate negatives to their listen skill when inside the city.

The one and only ranger I played lived less than five days, but by the time he died his listen was good enough that it almost always turned on within two or three tries inside a city.

There ARE other things that 'listen' is good for besides snooping on table conversations.

Other far more useful things, really.  Table conversations are, on the whole, useless tripe to a spy.

[Angela Christine]

Honestly I'm not worried about listeners listening to all the conversations in a bar at the same time.  Because if there are more than one or two active conversations listen becomes really unpleasant to use, and I usually turn it off at that point to save my sanity.  Have you ever tried to use listen in a bar with active conversations at four tables?  It is hard to make sense of anything, as it should be.  While you are trying to sort through all the scroll to find the interesting bits, it is quite possible that the interesting bit has already scrolled right off your screen.  I suppose a listener could log the scene and comb through it later to reconstruct the individual conversations, but that doesn't sound like fun to me.

Being able to target listen to a specific table would be helpful in some situations.  I wouldn't consider that to be nerfing the skill at all.


Angela Christine

[Anonymous]

Anon, there is such a thing...it's called whisper.

Whisper only targets one person. I meant something like leaning forward and speaking in a low voice to all people at your table.

As to the rest?  The responsibility is on the player listening.  If the person hears everything because the code allows him/her, they're doing bad.

Gaaaahhhhhhh! And just how do you decide what your character did and didn't hear? Roll a dice?

[Malifaxis]

Choose not to hear some of it, as a player, and also take into account what exactly your player was doing at the time.

If you lean forward and order a beer just as lord fartynose says some sekrit thing, chances are you were ordering the beer and just happened to miss it when the bartender responded.

[mansa]

Sometimes, characters talk to mine, but I choose that my character ignores it, or that my character was facing a different direction looking a different direction ignoring it all.

I am overloaded with information; what people wear, what items in their hands, what accent they have, the weather outside, the time of day.

You have to be responsible.  Just because you can do it doesn't mean you do it.  I mean, Do you log all the descriptions of people that you see, put it into a excel file and save it, along with all the information that you've ever heard from that person, for your special 'rinthi elf with ADHD and one EYE?

[Lazloth]

Sometimes, characters talk to mine, but I choose that my character ignores it, or that my character was facing a different direction looking a different direction ignoring it all

That's well and good, and I'm sure people applaud your discretion.  Listen differs from your other examples in that it is a skill and not a generic command for information.  The incarnation of listen (in one context, yes delirium .. hopefully people picked up on your point) does not reflect that.  AFAIK, your "skill" in eavesdropping tabletalk is not pulled into question beyond the obvious.

Some people prefered the old way and some people have suggested various other approaches.  There's a wealth of history on the topic if you search the gdb.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

If you do not want to be overheard, go somewhere else. It's common sense.

Thank you for this, sir. I'll be honest with you, and you can like it or not ... listen can really make a real boring time much more interesting. I don't care if you call it twinky or not ... it is much more fun. Personally, my character doesn't hear everything, and what he does hear is based on what I've decided to do with my character today. But when you play a loner, listen breaks up the utter OOC boredom of waiting out something, etc.

If you want to change how much specifically you can hear, as far as complete sentences, then fine, I'll go with that. But fuck a nerf.

[Fragmented]

While I didn't even bother to read all the ranting posts about rangers being too buff and whatnot, I did want to reply to Venomz. I think having listen adjusted so you can only focus on one table and (with higher listen skill) catch scraps of other conversations would make things -more- interesting, then eavesdropping on every conversation, at every table.
You just heard that guy saying he wished someone would fall off the shield wall, but -who-?

And this has nothing to do with wanting private conversations to stay private. It has everything to do with realism. Listen is too powerful. It's ridiculous, and I'll trumpet that to the very end.

Rooms flagged "noisy". Less clarity through listen for city dwellers. Sneakers -not- being caught due to listen in a bustling tavern. Hoorah.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I could live with your solution. Generally, when I hear the word 'nerfed', it indicates that someone wants the skill to be harder to learn, or, some class to lose it.

Nerfing as in modifying output to a more realistic level bothers me not at all, but fucking with the ability to learn it or bitching about fucking rangers having it just ... bugs me a lot.

[amoeba]

If you do not want to be overheard, go somewhere else. It's common sense.

Thank you for this, sir. I'll be honest with you, and you can like it or not ... listen can really make a real boring time much more interesting. I don't care if you call it twinky or not ... it is much more fun. Personally, my character doesn't hear everything, and what he does hear is based on what I've decided to do with my character today. But when you play a loner, listen breaks up the utter OOC boredom of waiting out something, etc.

If you want to change how much specifically you can hear, as far as complete sentences, then fine, I'll go with that. But fuck a nerf.

I'll go with that as well. All this brouhaha over what? Being overheard? There are so many ways to not be heard it's absurd to call listen a problem.  99% of the time it is simply entertainment.  I'd rather see -more- conversations being overheard, not less.

[Maybe42or54]

Fun? For who? I've never had good experiences with listen, when I had it or didn't have it. Even when I had it, people treat taverns like they only go there to get overheard, or drink.

People go other places to have secret conversations, how is that fun?

How would it not be more fun if a bunch of borsail were talking at a table and you heard them say ,"We really need to .... that guy. .. is really getting on my ........ Shit man, I'm going to .... Lord Hardtits."

That leaves a lot more open to imagination, than "We really need to help that guy. He is really getting on my nerves. Shit man, I'm going to tell Lord Hardtits."

Making listen a less perfect skill will do a lot more to add to RP than as it is now where everyone stays away from the taverns so some guy with listen doesn't overhear their plans and tell 10 Pcs, (which happens to be all of allanaks Pcs at the time).

[amoeba]

Making listen a less perfect skill will do a lot more to add to RP than as it is now where everyone stays away from the taverns so some guy with listen doesn't overhear their plans and tell 10 Pcs, (which happens to be all of allanaks Pcs at the time).

So if listen were made 50% less effective, then 50% more people would show up in the taverns having 50% more conversations?  Quite frankly I don't buy the argument, there is a lot of unsubstantiated and subjective reasoning in there.

And do we really want all the activity to happen in the taverns? I've seen SOI's version of listen, with the ... inbetween.  It was not all that spectacular in practice.  The problem with a lot of examples given is that they are massaged to pull out key phrases, in truth the code can't tell a key phrase from a hole in the ground.

Now, should listen be changed?  If it is made more enjoyable for more people, and serves it's true purpose in leaking secrets out, sure.    But I won't go as far as saying it is broken.

[Maybe42or54]

It's not broken. It is too perfect. It needs to have faults and holes.

[Anonymous]

Make listen targettable to a table or a person to get 100% of what is said at that table or to that person.  Make listen without a target give a less than 100% chance of echoing what was said to the listener.  I can buy that you are able to focus on a particular conversation.  I can buy that you can overhear fragments with a passive eavesdropping approach.  I just don't buy hearing 100% of everything that is being said at every table in a tavern that is loaded with PCs, NPCs and VNPCs all chattering up a storm.

Listen also needs the chance for failure messages to be directed at the target.

You notice that the nosey, lanky man stares at your table for a long time.

I still believe that if listen is less all-encompassing that people will talk about sensitive matters just a little bit more in public making the skill all the more valuable.

[Rindan]

Fixing listen to be a little bit more realistic would not make plan their plot to kill Tek in the Bard's Barrel.  What it would do is make people more willing to do something that might get them into a little bit of trouble.  I can't even begin to count the number of times when two players have had a problem, one of them gets up and leaves, and the other character mutters something at the table they are at, and the character that is standing RPs hearing it even though they have walked off and their back is turned.

Other simple shit that could happen if listen wasn't so all powerful is that two people might be more willing to talk about minor conspiracies.  I don't mind opening myself up to a chance that someone is going to listen in on what I am saying. I do mind knowing that there is a 100% chance that someone is going to listen in on what I am saying.

If I could change listen, it would be like this.  Anyone that is standing can target another table to listen to.  They stand a reasonable chance of catching most of the conversation with a moderate listen skill.  They can also target nothing and stand a reasonable chance of hearing all conversations in the room with a very high listen skill.  People that sitting or resting at another table trying to listen to another table stand a reasonable chance of listening only if they are highly skilled, otherwise the best they can hope for is fragments.  Even with a maxed out skill, people sitting at a table can only catch fragments of conversations if they do not target a table.

The idea is this.  Want to listen in on someone else conversation?  You need to be standing and mobile.  Want to sit across the room and listen to another table?  You better be damn good at lip reading to try, so you better be skilled.  If you want to listen to 'everyone', you need to be mobile to stand even half of a chance and be exceptionally skilled.  If you are sitting, forget it.  There is no way you can possibly listen to everyone.  The best you can hope for is fragments of conversation if you can going to try and listen to 'everyone'.

I might even throw in the ability to 'talk whisper' which double the difficulty of anyone overhearing you.  I want people to discuss stuff in taverns.  I want spies to be able to overhear this stuff if they really are trying.  It would be nice if there was a grey area between shouting to the entire tavern and hiding behind a locked door.

[daedroug]

I agree that somthing should be changed to make it a little more specific and as a suggestion i'd offer the way that SOI does it, along with a few additions. Basicly it'd be just like the language skills are now.. always on and depending on how good you are you'd catch snippets of conversations (though i'd suggest using ... instead of scrambled letters and that instead of missing individual letters group the words together) and at times you would have to fill in the blanks between the words (which could be fun at times). one suggestion that i would add to that would be to keep the listen but instead it gives a bonus to it, this might be made to be directional or table or person oriented or all three. and as one final addition it could be made so that as soon as you change position or move to a new room then it resets to off that way you can't just turn it on when you get online and forget about it and it would also demonstrate the fact that you wouldn't always be trying to listen you'd be concentrating on other things at times.

[X-D]

Ugh, thats horrid, specialy for rangers, who -need- it on at all times in the wilderness.

Yes yes, then you say simply make it only turn off in city rooms, problem is, not all wilderness rooms are flagged wilderness, and its not always easy to tell when. On a playability level that would be simply -horrid-.

On another point. SOI listen and movement are two of the main reasons I don't play it.

I'd also like to point out again that Zalanthas is -not- earth.

Also, what about races? Would listen work differently for different races?

I think it should if it got nerfed. Course, you would have to figure out who gets what and how. Desert elves would be different then humans and city elves, dwarves have an extreme ability to concentrate when they need to, etc etc.


[rant]

I'm still against changing listen from where it is at, I like the fact that if I wish to keep something secret my char has to -work- at it. I like that it makes the cities feel even more like the police states they are with snitches at every turn. I like that it accounts for the -hundreds- of vnpcs around you who -could- be listening also, simply by feeding the PC's a bit more information then some people think they should.

You -should- be VERY VERY worried about speaking wrong in public, even if it is something as small as saying Ladyprissypants shoes are an ugly color. Hey folks, KNOCK KNOCK, this is a world controlled by jealous sorcerer godkings and nobles and templars. Police states only work if you are able to keep control of the population, if they think that everything said, done, thought, can be overheard and dealt with in a drastic manner.
And to remember that there are desperate people out there willing to sell thier mothers to the templarate to get ahead or to simply keep thier eyes off them.

I like that so many people are complaining about listen, it means it is doing its job and forcing people to play realisticly in these police states where all information is strictly controlled, hey bub, there is a reason that READING and WRITING by commoners is ILLEGAL.
[/rant]

[Anonymous]

Ugh, thats horrid, specialy for rangers, who -need- it on at all times in the wilderness.

Ugh thats not what i meant at all #1 I said that the skill would be on all the time #2 i said that you could start trying to listen to conversations and that is what would turn off on it's own

[Agent_137]

I really don't care what happens to listen.

But I will say listen is fucking annoying as it is. I hate being spammed in a tavern when I just want to listen to one table.

One should be able to target one table, even if you don't -have- to target one table.

[X-D]

daedroug wrote:

and as one final addition it could be made so that as soon as you change position or move to a new room then it resets to off

Hhhmmm, certainly looks like thats what it says here.