I specifically didn't post the formula for range as a factor as we put a significant amount of work in developing it and would prefer the research/testing not be stolen. As I said tracking, in my research of UO history, never factored in the range between the two targets. So someone who only invested 20 points in tracking, had a 100% chance of finding someone at 20 tiles. Before our patch as well, tracking was based on modified skill, not real. So someone with 0 tracking, and a modified tracking of 22.8 could track someone 22 tiles with zero chance of failure, or even investing additional skill points. Late in the Renaissance era (i think) changes were made to tracking that cut the maximum range to 10-15 tiles, I suspect in an effort to resolve this. Regardless nothing we found applied any level of skill to tracking, or referencing the tracked player in any way. What we did was develop a formula that, regardless of your skill in tracking, you have a good chance to detect someone the closer they are. So someone with 30 tracking, tracking someone with 100 hiding, would have a 100% chance to find them at 2 tiles, 90% chance at 4, 80% chance at 6 tiles, etc. (approximations) If the target was hidden, this would drop quicker. But generally at 50% of your range, you will have a above average chance to find the player. The farther away someone is, the more skills factor into their chance to avoid detection. So going into a dungeon with 100 tracking, and tracking players, your going to find anyone in the dungeon within 100 tiles with zero hiding, and who is not hiding. However your chances to find a hidden stealther outside of 20-25 tiles would be very low. If you have added detect hidden to your template you would have an increased chance to detect the stealthers, but this would have minimal effect on your chances to find someone without hiding, as your skill check would greatly exceed theirs. This leads to what Basoosh describes as "feeling normal" when using the tracking skill. The mechanics when dealing with a thief within 20 tiles for someone with 100 tracking, should be barely affected by these changes. Even someone with 30 tracking looking for someone within 10 tiles should not be difficult, although you might have to track a few times to find them. But once they are caught, you maintain your track until they get out ot range.
I pretty much agree with that. This is kind of a long thread and I haven't read it all, but I do see some folks saying they don't think tracking is effective here and I want to speak up to say that I'm a big fan of it. I will say that it does not feel reliable when you only devote 30 skill points to it. I have gm tracking on 4 characters. Three are murderers and one is a faction thief that I also use for scouting. I believe also the reds in the LoL guild have a few GM trackers now too. My experience has been that it is very effective at tracking players quite some distance away on the first try if they don't have hiding. To put some perspective on 'quite some distance away' I would say for most dungeons I can come in and track an entire floor pretty efficiently from the entrance or where I may have recalled into. Because of the way the dungeon server/map works I'm also able to track people that are in different dungeons/floors than me. For instance I can go to the orc dungeon and track players in khaldun. Most areas I go to I can track all of that area from one location and that's what I consider the real strength of the skill. I save a lot of time not having to run around. This also gives me a significant advantage as far as knowing who I'm approaching, exactly where they are and a chasing advantage so they won't be able to shake me unless they recall/gate away. Most hidden people consider themselves safe and tracking is really good at leading me to hidden or hidden+afk people as well. As far as my experience with tracking+hiders it feels like I track them about half the time. If I go somewhere and I think there's a good chance there are people in the area but I don't pick any up or as many as I'm expecting I will just wait ten seconds and track again. If I've tracked 2-3 times I am never surprised by players I wasn't expecting - I've typically seen them by this point. Anyways my point is that unlike some people I have had a really positive experience with using this skill and I think it's quite effective as is.
agreed, I have 2 gm trackers and it is very very effective; can find players screens away! i've always been quite impressed. never did any test against specific players, i'm mostly scouting with my thief so any target is fine as I've said before, what i think needs a tweak is that with GM tracking + GM detect hidden, standing next to the character (which is being tracked): - if the guy has quite high hiding, detect hidden fails quite a lot - the guy can hide again right away, so we go in an infinite detect hidden/hiding loop...
I totally posted this in wrong thread..... argh. Must..sleep... I found this here. In thread http://uorforum.com/threads/tracking.2458/ Chris says... It may just be me not seeing this. If it does work as he states that's what I was talking about. It sure seems otherwise though.
