Post Patch 73: A Study in Tracking

Track success and range should be factored with supporting skills. For example, a tamer with tracking should be able to track animals and monsters with great success, but not players. tracking with forensics and detect hidden should be able to track players with great success. There should also be anti tracking bonuses for example a character with hide stealth snoop and steal should be very difficult to track, especially while hidden or in stealth. A player with dh, track, hide, stealth should be almost impossible to track. There should also be a way to ditch an active track.. maybe actively going into stealth would wipe out the track until successfully tracked again.

A player with only tracking skill shouldn't be able to run a track macro in the background at champ spawns which basically completely disables a dedicated rogue skillset!

I really don't care about reds tracking bards at AOLs or anywhere else. What bothers me about tracking is a macro running in a tamers background not effecting his gameplay at all completely disables a dedicated thief. That is completely unbalanced. Maybe disable track at active champs?? There's no other reason to track at a spawn. The reds know you're there and don't need tracking to find and kill players working champs.

edited

Earlier in the hunt, I was the first time to make sure that there was no other's ass nearby, and now using the skill 5 times and not seeing anyone, I'm unsure of that one!

I can not just around the corner of the bank track a person who just stands and can see him, tracking is now effective only to search for monsters and animals, which was not a priority for me!

100 points experience in a bonfire, but it is better to find a useful skill ...

Nothing is certain in this life, except death, and taxes

try to roll this: wrestling, fencing, swords, eval int, animal lore, snooping, meditation. Then come say all those skills are useless.

No offence, but why should one of your skills counter my entire template?

Because UO is purposely unbalanced?

<<<< Because my skill is from my template and it differs from yours.

2-3 months ago using tracking I either found someone nearby, or if I did not find it, I was sure that there was no one

I tried out Tracking this morning on a character with GM Tracking and GM Detect Hidden. I had a completely visible character standing on the tile in front of the Tracking character, and started a macro that tracked every 10 sec.

Adjacent tile: The character was able to be Tracked every time.

1 tile away: The character was able to be tracked every time but one.

2 tiles away: The character wasn't ever able to be tracked. You see no evidence of people in the area.

Again, the character was NOT hidden, but did have GM Hiding. I'm not sure how much one tile translates to in terms of IRL distance, but D&D has 5 feet per tile. This would mean that a character that is an expert at tracking animals in the wilderness can't see a person standing in front of them making no effort to conceal themselves 10 feet away.

Just going to throw this out here but perhaps these tracking studies are moot as the exact method is precisely known by whom changed it recently.


e.g.

'we' know it's the way it is
discuss ways it could be

OK so last month every one wanted the IDOC system changed so that they could compete in it,regardless of if they were willing to put in the time running zones/running books/setting up bots/making sure competent military was available. And then WHOA BAMMM tracking is nerfed giving all the same people a chance to compete in the idocing scene. I spent years on what we call here exshards running IDOC teams from the background. I guess my only question is AM I THE ONLY 1 IN THIS ROOM WHO CAN SEE THE WHITE ELEPHANT

Curious.. do idoc'rs get a lot of competition from non-idoc'rs? And if so, how does a tracking nerf effect you? I don't really know because I've never intentionally been a witness to an idoc and can't imagine why anybody would.. unless one just stumbled on it or saw it advertised.. seems like a whisper on a scream as I'm sure your limited competition is other 99/100 idoc'rs!

Since you can no longer track other players it is much easier to get a timer for a home that is about to go idoc. Giving you a 2-10minute window of when the home will fall.

Not really. The timer-getting happens easily enough with item-id bots. You will see them recall in. Tracking isn't really a big deal at all in terms of IDOC stuff. If they just have a character hidden checking the sign, then there is plenty of time to track multiple times to find them.

Yeah but, the only way anyone else is going to track you is if they are fixated on the one idoc. If you have a runebooks full of fairly worn and greatly worns you will not be going to each spot tracking multiple times before going to the next rune. Right now this will help entry level people without blessed runebooks be relevant in the idoc game

@Everlast so you have never been to a contested IDOC . as an idoc team you wait till 2-3 minutes before the soonest time it can drop. the first toon there is your tracker looking for other combatants and just any one within 3-4 screens. next the reds jump a gate kill ant combatants and also any player that is in the area. then you have control of the scene, you continue tracking because even tho you have a good timer you want to make sure the people that you waxed dont have time to rez and return to the scene that you now control. but if the team cant track properly then they are reduced to running patterns and hoping to run into some one hidden or casting reveal 100s of time either one of which is pretty easy to avoid if you are used to running a gm stealther.

Lets take this into thought a fortress falls as a new player you get to stealth around and grab a couple of cool things but because they cant find you, you manage to place a small house inside the footprint of that fortress that small is now worth 800k even if it was the crappiest fort on the shard WHAM

It wont effect me for the first time in years im farming/hanging out with old friends and i haven't clicked a house sign in months

To be honest I couldn't read past a few sentences, skipped to the ending, and then came to the conclusion we agree.

Serious bump.

Btw, I checked on another popular free shard that aims to closely resemble present day osi, and tracking works more or less exactly as it does here. Tracking anything with 100 hiding more than 2 tiles away becomes very difficult, and anyhow max tracking distance with 0 hiding is around 20 tiles, ie on screen.
On a side note, I dont think it would be so detrimental to pvp, pvmrs alredy leave a track of corpses, just recall around, scout the area, maybe with with a stealther, and you will find action. If I can do it, and i dont consider myself an uo expert, veteran reds for sure can do it aswell.