The stealth meta

[triste]

Does not remove the fact that many wouldn't know the difference between the types. "That guy can just do wind stuff better than other guys"

No one is talking about the different subclasses.

I really don't know how you can miss the phrases travelers vanishing, widely regarded, and power over the wind other than intentional ignorance or possibly trolling. So instead, if this is the win you need to get a leg up in your personal life go ahead, champ. I am not interested in trying to fix your bad opinions.

I posted dumb, meaningless gifs because this argument is pretty heated for what it is. I think the docs you found here are neat [thanks for citing them], and that there is also flexibility in what you roleplay, AKA a yaroch villager may not have as sophisticated knowledge as a magick accepting tribal. Agreed, those docs are a good guideline and indication that everyone would know at least a bit about magick. I'd argue even someone raised by gortoks would have the vaguest sense of what magick is given that magickers occasionally pass through the woods.

[Brokkr]

Does not remove the fact that many wouldn't know the difference between the types. "That guy can just do wind stuff better than other guys"

No one is talking about the different subclasses.

I really don't know how you can miss the phrases travelers vanishing, widely regarded, and power over the wind other than intentional ignorance or possibly trolling. So instead, if this is the win you need to get a leg up in your personal life go ahead, champ. I am not interested in trying to fix your bad opinions.

I am just going to note that the docs intentionally don't say stuff like invisibility. They say travelers vanishing and that can be interpreted a variety of ways, as intended. It also better represents general knowledge, which isn't sure exactly what they can do, but there are rumors of spooky stuff like travelers vanishing that the average commoner can gossip about without really having any clue what it means.

[Doublepalli]

Bringing up another universe, Pirates of the Caribbean....

Have you not heard the extent of gossip (true or not) from sailors, pirates and common folk of the uneducated and uninformed?

If there's already speculation to the powers of wind, I don't think a common zalanthan thinking a wind gick is invisible is far fetched.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Anecdotally, that blurb in the docs makes me think first of invisibility simply because of the context.

This is a silly argument, I think. Why is it perfectly fine to play a character that is so mentally disabled it can hardly speak, or a character that believes themselves to be the living avatar of the Red moon, or a dwarf with stupid orc mutations for the millionth time, but playing a character that has an understanding of things clearly implied (to me, at least) by the docs is not a given?

Maybe a direction should be adopted to make a clearer What You Should Know document for different locations in game because this is another tedious bit of fallout by the mishandled OOC shift to magickal subclasses that had zero IG reference. Or alternatively start updating documents to take hard stances on the knowledge of commoners in different locations so we don't have misinformation accidentally spread around and no one needs a bachelors in 4d chess and a minor in doublethink to figure out "would my character know Vivaduans can make water?".

To keep this from derailing, I miss having scan on more characters more for hunting than PVP and think even at low levels it's great. That said, I've never experimented with watch enough to get any kind of benefit out of it. I'm torn on the subject of high stealth being impossible to spot as the alternative turns it to crap immediately because of the bipolarity of crime code in certain locations and the dangers of putting your PCs life in even well bribed hands.

[worldofsand]

I miss having scan on more characters more for hunting than PVP and think even at low levels it's great.

Statements like these make me wonder how much actual experience goes into people's posts on these forums. I've experimented extensively with scan, and my conclusion is that until at least mid-advanced, the skill is literally worthless. As in there are no things you can detect with scan until that level. RATS become detectable at advanced. Jozhals at high advanced. These are things I've carefully tested, knowing the locations of just about any hidden creature in the game. To hear someone say "even at low levels it's great" when, in my deliberately tested experience, there is nothing you can detect until the skill is pretty high... it just really makes me think that a lot of what gets posted here is just complete fiction. Sorry, but... come on. What are you detecting with "low scan"? What NPCs and creatures have a low enough hide skill to where, say, journeyman scan can detect them? In my experience, the answer is: literally none. Like NONE.

I'm torn on the subject of high stealth being impossible to spot as the alternative turns it to crap immediately

This I agree with, though. If everyone playing the guilds with top tier scan could just spot everyone with top tier stealth as a matter of course, stealth would definitely become trash. I think the main problem here is the fact that scan is too passive to serve as the sole mundane method of stealth detection. If instead it required a search, which takes time and can be escaped by the hiding party, it would be a lot more reasonable to say that anyone can be found no matter how proficient they are at hiding. The search skill serves far too few purposes as it currently stands and could be turned into an activated counter to stealth, one that you have to go out of your way to use but may be more effective than just squinting (i.e. scan).

[gotdamnmiracle]

Sorry. Been a while since I've had scan on any characters. I miss being able to identify salt worms and shit.

[Alesan]

I mean, to be fair, not everyone takes scan so they can identify miscreants and stalkers.

But I still don't trust scan to expose most wilderness fauna until about advanced, either.

[Hauwke]

Even there it can be a crapshoot to actually see things.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

I think I'll also weigh in that sure, while it's possible for common, ignorant folk to come up with completely "outlandish" stories, which may sometimes be true, it's like the saying, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day." The amount of rumors and speculation must be rampant, with all sorts of crazy superstitions.

If an ignorant common folk is to believe that a Whiran can vanish before one's eyes, chances are they also believe a large multitude of completely false rumors as well. How do they differentiate from truth and fiction? Unless they have direct experience and knowledge to prove otherwise, they can't sort out the good information from the bad.

So I guess what I'm saying is, just firmly believing a Whiran can turn invisible might not help so much, because you'd also probably believe they can summon huge sandstorms at will, or maybe suck the air out of your lungs, or curse your family and its bloodline for seven years, or shoot jets of air from their fingertips.

If a Whiran can do all that, but.. such things didn't happen, would you be suggesting that some person with only the ability to turn invisible robbed you? Absurd!

[triste]

[ Redacted details about DIKU code implementation of hide/scan ]

[triste]

Secondly I want to say staff are free to remove my post with the old code above, but I think even outdated facts and data are relevant to debates, particularly when the only evidence thus far has been anecdotal. TLDR on the code post if it is removed: most games have modifiers in the 0-200% range but DIKU code tends to have more dramatic 50-500% modifiers, leading to jarring success breakpoints as people noticed.

Lastly I love the magick derail -- yes people should roleplay wacky superstitions about magick, and sometimes toss truth in there.

[triste]

Lastly forreal, note that the stat bonus for scan in the code comes from wisdom. Y'all joke about dumping wis as a stat and complain about scan being broken at the same time? SMH

[Dar]

I'm probably the twinkiest person out there, but even I draw the line at digging through code. Fml.

[triste]

I'm probably the twinkiest person out there, but even I draw the line at digging through code. Fml.

Thanks for the feedback, I've removed it.

[Dar]

I'm probably the twinkiest person out there, but even I draw the line at digging through code. Fml.

Thanks for the feedback, I've removed it.

Didn't mean to press you, or anything. 

You know these iron realms muds? You need to learn scripting languages just to be competitive in combat.  Yeah, it Arm gets close to that level of code exposure, I'm outtah here.

[triste]

I'm probably the twinkiest person out there, but even I draw the line at digging through code. Fml.

Thanks for the feedback, I've removed it.

Didn't mean to press you, or anything. 

You know these iron realms muds? You need to learn scripting languages just to be competitive in combat.  Yeah, it Arm gets close to that level of code exposure, I'm outtah here.

Full agree, I knew it was risky to post code, but I am also mildly autistic and work a full time job coding + two part time jobs coding and so it's on my mind a lot. I kept seeing the debate and knowing that more programmatic details could be found and provided and genuinely did not know the right thing to do, so your feedback is valuable! I'll try not to look at the code again.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

lol, looking at code isn't an invalid way to go about this when determining if something is broken or not.

The problem is, it's rather foolish to assume ARM still uses some kind of DIKU mud code you dug up from decades ago, completely unmodified.

[triste]

lol, looking at code isn't an invalid way to go about this when determining if something is broken or not.

The problem is, it's rather foolish to assume ARM still uses some kind of DIKU mud code you dug up from decades ago, completely unmodified.

Yup, there was a disclaimer about this in my original post. But literally any quantitative information is higher quality data than anecdotes by definition. I now understand it is also data that can't be shared sorry.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

I disagree.  Data like THAT is worse than anecdote.

[triste]

I disagree.  Data like THAT is worse than anecdote.

K. Well the data also explains the anecdotes. No need to get so worked up we are all in agreement.

[Harmless]

Yep stealth is broken, as is demonstrated by the fact that nobody takes risks they know will get them killed or stolen frkm. Empty bars, no interactions to be found for hours in the city,  underfilled law enforcement clans, etc etc.
As was discussed in my "all PK is surprise attacks, what do we do" thread, the brokenness of stealth is what leads to the breaking down of the game interaction.

Greater Anonymity, which is in essence a NERF to look when a hidden person is spotted, is a great suggestion in that thread which could directly address the main concern totally filling the first page of this thread. Better ways to disguise or partly evade detection besides this all or nothing system would work, to protect the stealthy but also protect the non stealthy against being robbed blind at a pindrop or backstabbed dead with no defense but to never go out at all. Old discussion, no recent changes to the system to correct it. The old days of Rangers with their Master scan are gone, and good for that as it made stealthing a deathdance, but since rangers were removed we have been seeing a Hunger Games of stealth kills for years.

[Dresan]

You know there are a number of counters against backstab and sap. In fact nerf stealth won't really help in this regard as the best sappers/stabbers are already not that great at stealth to begin with. If you don't want to be robbed blind just pick something with high watch/listen. 

At this point if you just outright nerf miscreants or stalkers stealth, as well as reducing the number of criminals and crime, you'll probably cause another decline in the player base without something like copper wars event to fill that void.

If people aren't going to taverns its mostly because when you go to a tavern there is practically nothing to do or talk about, the ONLY thing that can happen is someone comes around and steals from you. By removing stealth you are removing something else that can happen in the game.

Instead of just removing yet another part of the game, make taverns exciting, put fighting pits in taverns so people come duel each other, gamble on, make being a good fighter meaningful again. Then people will probably go to taverns fight or watch the fights, and leave all their nice belonging in their nice safe clans that no one would dare break into unless you want staff to smite you and/or your karma.

[Alesan]

Nobody sits in taverns anymore because if you're seen sitting in a tavern for any longer than absolutely necessary, you become a "tavern-sitter" which is an inferior type of player than others who are actually doing "meaningful" things in the game.

[Warsong]

By removing stealth you are removing something else that can happen in the game.

Instead of just removing yet another part of the game

I don't believe anyone has ever so much as hinted at "removing stealth."

[Harmless]

I am in fact asking for a reduction in how much one sees if they succeed in looking at a hidden person. Instead of getting the full mdesc, maybe just a shape, the cloak, the mask, the build. One piece of information only. It would be a nerf to the LOOK command.

It would be best counterbalanced by a boost to scan, but then the thief would be less likely to lose their life because all the detecting/scanning party got is a vague sense of a creeper about at that time wearing this or that. The thief could, with adequate perception themselves, realize they are spotted, escape, change costume, then return for more. There would be more interaction because near misses would be a more frequent occurence instead of all or nothing detection as it is now. Thieves would be free to take more risks, and so would the non thieves.

I am sorry I didn't spell it all out clearly, because it is a years old idea. It was more thoroughly discussed on a mechanical level in prior threads, such as one I started recently. Link to that thread is here: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,55215.0.html