Making Spirit Speak more usefull

:shock:

:ugeek:

Then you're not paying attention. Someone was literally just complaining about PKs with blessed runics a few days back.

Rogue feel or blatant ability to exploit a simple mechanic for nefarious purposes never intended by development?

I just farmed for the first time in weeks, last night, just to play with my tamer a bit. I'm not stoned at work and quite frankly not day dreaming at all. I think long and hard about the possible implications of mechanics and why they could be one way or the other. Abusing mult-account for nefarious monitoring is Trammel for criminals. We are asking for a good counter to something that has never had one. Thieves already live in Trammel because they risk absolutely nothing in their practices, short of two minutes of downtime when they need to res. How much Trammel do YOU really want here Jack?

Fuck it, I guess I'll just leave my kid's accounts dead and placed in various locations and homes all over the shard. Hell, your friends had 20+ accounts and abused the shit out of ghosting, so why not everyone here, 15 years later.

Screw it, can we just remove account limits entirely. I'd prefer a live ghost monitor in every dungeon and enemy guild hall on the server. Please let me know when that awesome dose of Feluccia gets put in.

I think you secretly want a trammel shard and don't know it.

Saying I want Trammel because I feel there should be a valid countermeasure to people being douchers, is invalid. Wanting mechanics that suit fair play on both sides of the fence, is Feluccian to the core. You want to call it Trammel because it negates the ability to be a complete douche without fear of failure (ie: ghosting, and basically stealing as well).

If you want the freedom to abuse shitty mechanics that never were intended functions, perhaps you should play somewhere more accurate to failure and ignorance. The goal here is balance and perfection. Permitting the |expletive deleted| of ghosting is far from perfect and requires SOME balancing factors in order to not be so.

I most certainly want the ability for you to get into my house and steal all my things. That is appropriate for UO in my opinion. In order to do so however, I expect you to deploy skill and prowess. Not |expletive deleted| .

trammellll, you go on and on about what was intended, but 5+ years into UO and that never was changed. trammmmeeeeellllllllllllll!



*shhhhh children, we hear the call of the not so rare blessed masked boobie*



*trammmmeeeelllll trammmmmelllll*

I would have never imaged that a half-baked idea like revealing ghosts would get so much attention. There's no need to bolt-on abilities to worthless skills or ban campers or otherwise reinvent the wheel. A perfect method for revealing ghosts is already in place. It doesn't cost anything, it's easily activated, it's available to all players and requires no development: Be a ghost.

But even if this perfect countermeasure wasn't already in place, I see no compelling argument for making any change. Sure, your conversations can be overheard, so what? The person you're talking to could be an impostor or a backstabber or someone could have stealthed in or be hiding on a nearby rooftop or there could be a hidden comm crystal or... Whatever the case, take it to IRC.

Also, this notion that ghosts (or thieves) can only be used for "nefarious" purposes reminds me of the Salem witch hunt where people were jailed and killed for not fitting in with some puritanical lifestyle. Is it the name "thief" that makes it "nefarious"? If so, perhaps you should be campaigning to have the class changed. As thieves tend to take from the wealthy and redistribute income I propose "Democrat".

It's really not about thieves, and stealthers, so I suppose I shouldn't have drawn paralells there. I shouldn't have to ghost a character every time I go into my house or a dungeon just to be sure some dick isn't there monitoring my activities. If the person were an imposter, stealthed, hiding on a rooftop nearby or using a comm crystal that is actually legitimate skill or prowess applied and I can use Tracking or other skills (DH/Reveal/EQ/etc) to clear things up. Not many people would pack the skill just to check for ghosts but what is the real damage if they can?

The problem is people parking ghosts for monitoring and free platinum to spy on others or dungeons. No one is reinventing any wheels. The wheel had a huge crack in it called "no logical countermeasure to people abusing ghosts". Hint: a countermeasure doesn't need to be "if you can't beat them, join them". Things in this game should be countered by skills in the game, not keeping a dead character available at all times. It's just silly to suggest such a thing.

Please explain to me what the real drawback of allowing GM SS to see ghosts would really be? All I've heard so far is that you wouldn't be able to be complete scumbags with ghosts, without some RISK (ie: Feluccia) of getting banned or found out.

It still boggles my mind that two of, arguably, the best thieves on the shard are so hell bent on supporting ghosting. Are you guys losing your knack for thievery that bad that you need to rely on shit like ghosting? Is that how you monitor your rare timers too Up?

In convo with a friend, the concept came up of a possible combination of skills. Perhaps Forensic Eval + Spirit Speak to detect ghosts? Or how about SS + Tracking allows tracking of ghosts, but not forced visibility?

Personally, I have only two issues that I feel kind of strongly about when it comes to issues in this thread. First, I don't like for a Ghost to be able to roam freely inside my own house. Second, I don't like having a whole account banned when I ban either a Ghost or a living Character. There have been many suggestions in this thread, some of which are pretty good. I would like to discuss four of them further.

A. I have always enjoyed being able to take a Ghost down into a dungeon. That is because I am not quite at the point where I can survive the worst of the worst, but I still like to see what is down there. But I also understand that this practice is frowned upon by some because it is often used as a way to spy and/or scope out an enemy's whereabouts. I love the idea of requiring the combination of two or three skills which together would allow someone to locate and reveal a Ghost in a limited area. Something like requiring GM Detect Hidden, GM Spirit Speak, and GM Tracking. Since many guilds already employ decoys, or support characters, whose job it is to hang back and provide medical service, looting of fallen commrads, gates for a quick escape, etc., it would not require much additional work for these characters to become the ghost locators for the group.

B. Let's do away with whole account banning. When you use the "I Ban Thee" command, whether on a living player character or player ghost, just have that character be banned, not all the characters on that account. The only times this is going to be a real problem is when Griefing in involved. Since this practice can result in one being banned from the game (depending on the situation), this is really not an issue for this thread.

C. Let's continue with the beliefe that "A man's home is his castle" and give house owners the ability to reveal Ghosts that are in one's house by the same method used to reveal someone that is hidden, the Detect Hidden skill. Although a Ghost can cause no damage or do anything inside one's house, they can be irritating. And since one would be hard pressed to prove that the mere presence of a Ghost is causing one grief, it is nonetheless irritating. I think that since we do not need any skill in Detecting Hidden in order to reveal someone that has Stealthed into our house, it might be nice to be able to use the same procedure to reveal that pesky Ghost.

D. I think it would be a mistake to physically force the removal of an idle ghost to another location such as a town healer. A Ghost, whether visible or not is incapable of doing anything except running around all over the area. He cannot open/close doors or containers. He cannot affect the actions of monsters or animals. Let's not have the Game itself take any actions against them.

Okay, that is all I can think of.
Keep the ideas coming people, but please, let's keep the discussions civil.

Wholly agree with this sentiment

Agree, or make use of those skills in your home actually based on the skills themselves. Thus giving a better chance to actual SKILL users who are trying to housebreak, but still providing some recourse (easy enough to have a character with DH/SS/Tracking skills on an alt/crafter, etc.

I feel that such action should only be taken if a ghost is idling on the same spot for more than X amount of minutes, but it is a bit too much of a forced mechanic. Would much rather just have the ability to detect or track them without actually keeping a ghost in the party.

Word

One thing to consider here is that very few people care enough about Ghosts to waste the skillpoints in order to do this.

If we don't add Ghosts to those detected when a homeowner uses Detect Hidden, then how about making the ability for a Ghost to hide, and move while hidden, be based on that character's actual skill in Hiding and Stealth. Then, make the Ghost become visible as soon as he/she starts to walk, forcing them to successfully use the Hide and Stealth skills again.

what if spirit speak made meditaition faster/more efficient

I don't really see what anyone could have against Spirit Speak detecting ghosts, and it's a shame this topic disappeared from the front-page. There's been excellent suggestions, but I'd actually take it a notch further..

Being a ghost ranks at 0 risk on the risk/reward scale, and if people are trying to obtain something (especially something as crucial as intelligence) without taking any risk at all, other players need a way to interfere.

So, here's what I suggest for active use of spirit speak, with roughly one third of the range of tracking at respective skill levels..

Low skill levels - vague messages akin to anatomy/eval, along the lines of:
"You attempt to calm your mind, but your second sight fails you." (Fail)
"You calm your mind, but sense no disruptions of the spirit realm." (Success, no ghost)
"The presence of a fallen soul sends a shiver down your spine." (Success, ghost detected)
"The spirit realm is in turmoil!" (Congratulations, you are in a ghost town. Several ghosts detected.)

>80.1% Spirit Speak (true skill): Additional chance to reveal ghosts on screen.

100.0 Spirit Speak: Guaranteed to reveal ghosts on screen, and the ability to "exorcise" them in a small area. (Something similar was implemented as a necromancy skill for use at champ spawns on production shards some time during AoS, or at least in discussion. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
How exactly this should be implemented to avoid abuse is up for debate, but the effect is simple: Blue ghosts get sent to Yew Abbey (or a similar location, if it's an issue for FW characters), red ones to Buc's Den.

That's not a massive inconvenience in any case, but it gives players the opportunity to fix "ghost cams", if they're willing to invest the skillpoints.
To me, that makes the skill desirable already, but I see no issue with it also increasing mana regeneration slightly.

Having Spirit Speak affect Mana Regen would impact game mechanics directly - i do not like it.

Seeing ghosts through spirit speak sounds like a very good idea. Being able to see ghosts all the time at GM level as Godric has proposed is also a great idea to give the skill an additional edge like it was done with Item ID.

We could consider giving Spirit Speak a 100% success chance to reveal ghosts in a house like it works with detect hidden.

Ghost Cams have been under discussion in other threads and i see this as a very practical solution to the ghost cam flaw.