Ok... so...

You have scouted Person X at some point in the past, and now you want to find them. You are in a room that they have been in, in the last 10-20 minutes.

Track person x

You look around and follow the traces of person x.

This would obviously take a lot of scouting.. but if you have tracked them before, there should be some chance of being able to pick up thier traces.

Perma-traking of people was one of the items promised at our last guild wide meeting. It was supposed to take a great deal of time face to face with the target and the number of people on your "list" was supposed to be small. It was also stated the release of the improvement was . . . well lets not discuss that. I'm guessing the project got frozen along with the rest of ranger dev till P5 gets finished (Paklin's head of this project, if I recall correctly). Its to bad, I was almost as excited about this ability as I was about last names :(


--
Ranger Hanryu _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, Sword of House Calibanor
>We are Rangers, all your releases are belong to us. ~ Sylvado

<< My "ideal" form of tracking would just be...

...? Seriously?

That'd be worse than useless, you'd never catch anyone that way.

I still have my hope for scouting. I like the idea of a perma-track on a target you can stick with long enough to learn well. Hopefully it'll work from hiding so you can stalk the target for the time required to get the track. I also like the idea of some way to monitor who has passed through a room. To keep the data saved relatively small, maybe simply track the direction of the last person to exit the room?

>scout depart
The clearest tracks here seem to be going west.

This would only require the saving of one additional data point per room (the direction of egress) as it is rewritten every time someone else leaves the room. This gives a limited general-purpose tracking ability with minimal memory usage and the "realism" of being fairly useless in crowded areas.

Arcelebor

---

"Back off, man. I'm a scientist."
PSA - Sakhara's definition of RP (among other things) is erroneous
"I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."

<< You would if you were able to reduce/eliminate the RT with skill.

Okay, agreed. But that doesn't address the technical behemoth such a system would be.

<< Tracking is a method of following somebody who's moving, not homing in on somebody who's standing still, and that's not what scouting is right now.

That's what tracking is in reality , but in DR playability and the purpose of the ability trump the restrictions of whatever real-world activity that the ability is based on. Ranger tracking is (I believe) intended as a highly effective character location method. It works in a single way right now. I believe it would be better if there were varying levels of effectiveness based on the circumstances.

High-efficiency track (permanent, limited only by geographical barriers):
>hide
You hide.
{Roundtime: 2 sec]
>stalk Vorclaf
You move into position to follow Vorclaf.
>track vorclaf [same step as mid-grade track]
You glance at Vorclaf, noting things that will assisting in tracking him.
>study 2 vorclaf [new, high-grade track]
You begin to study Vorclaf's movements and actions, building a complete pattern by which to track him anywhere.
>
You continue to study Vorclaf, noting his particular habits as he moves.
>
You stalk Vorclaf...
[Another Room]
It's like the other room, but different.
Also here: Vorclaf
Obvious paths: west, east.
>
You take careful notice of Vorclaf's footprints and other signs of movement.
>
You complete your recognition of Vorclaf's patterns and feel confident that you could find him anywhere.

Mid-efficiency track (limited by time and geographical barriers): Exactly what we have now.

Low-efficiency track (limited by population density and activity):
>track depart
The clearest set of footprints appear to be going west.
>w
[Another Room]
It's like the other room, but different.
Obvious exits: west, east.
>track depart
The clearest set of footprints appear to be going west.

I would add the following notes...
1) The high-level track would message the target as well, if done in the open. It would have a moderate hiding vs. perception check for each pulse of the tracking process if done in hiding. If failed, the target gets the normal "in the open" messaging, but does not automatically out the Ranger.
2) The low-level tracks left by people would include those who left while hidden. A higher-skilled Ranger can attempt to hide his own tracks as he leaves a room, however, in a scouting/stalking vs. scouting/perception skill check.
3) For the mid-high tracks, the geographical barrier failures will result in the Ranger being kicked out of the track near a logical point of travel across the barrier. (i.e., person is in Haven and Ranger is in Crossing, Ranger would be dropped off near where the road splits to the Faldesu docks and the marsh).

That's all my thoughts, for the moment.

Arcelebor

---

"Back off, man. I'm a scientist."
PSA - Sakhara's definition of RP (among other things) is erroneous
"I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."

Yep it would be great to scout the area and see signs of a "blood wolves presence". I don't think you should be able to actually see the room the "blood wolf" is in so when you do arrive maybe you find a suprise of lets say that wolf and his friends. As you gain more skill perhaps from the tracks you should be able to tell if its in a pack.

This would be a great way to train scouting since its primary purpuse getting to place faster has for the most part been rendered useless by scripts. It makes too much sense that a ranger in the woods should be able to track variosu creatures and players. perhaps when you scout a room (with a high skill) you'll be able to see any and all creatures and players who passed through there is the last few minutes or what not. Maybe you can't tell the exact person (by name) but you can recoginze "Signs of a humans passing".

>>Yep it would be great to scout the area and see signs of a "blood wolves presence". I don't think you should be able to actually see the room the "blood wolf" is in so when you do arrive maybe you find a suprise of lets say that wolf and his friends. As you gain more skill perhaps from the tracks you should be able to tell if its in a pack<<

I would like to work closer to earth sense and the empath power percieve. But the skill should scale and we could even tie more skills like AL to get full ues out of the system.

For example say someone has 200 scouting, 300 perception and 100 AL.

They would scout area and see

North you sense a natural creature and a hidden Skra, south you sense nothing; south(2) you see a natural creature.

Now someone with 400 scouting, 500 perception and 200 AL in the same room would see:

North you sense a a Woodland Goblin and a hidden Jrendel (this would give you the point effect on him) south you sense nothing; south(2) you see a woodland Goblin.

So maybe scouting can determine the number of rooms you can sense, Scouting + Perception (a perception boost) would determine if you can see unhidden and hidden creatures/PCs and AL would be used to determine if you can tell what type of critters are in the actual rooms.

>>Kind of like how perceive health works? Which would eliminate the need for the system to keep track of each thing coming through the room but rather when activated via scout area it would show you bodies in a general area. The system would have to be able to tell you who or what was there but that shouldn't be too hard. Then you track <critter or person> and you have a lock<<

Exactly.

Da Madd Webba

---

How you expect to run with the wolves come night when you spend all day sportin' with puppies?

You might as well pay attention since your behind can't afford free speech

I'm like a pee stained mattress, don't sleep on me!

I think it's an awesome idea. You could use that and find a celpeze two rooms north of you and you would automatically have a track-lock on all the creatures you found. So you could then just TRACK CELPEZE and it would track you over to him.

Would be a great new way to learn scouting and give it an actual use past 250 ranks. I'm sitting well over 500 and I have no idea what the heck the skill is good for.


-Teeklin

"Gown Removed Carelessly. Head, less so." - Joss Whedon

And race with PTMs.


~Van

>You can peer around in leucros with less of a roundtime.

That's pretty worthless, IMO. I still got as much as 8-9 seconds of roundtime peering with 250 scouting. I can't imagine anyone that regularly hunts there has much more than that considering when leucros cap.

I know the peer thing is worthless...it's why I said it.

Calissa's player

>>I like the idea. I'd rather see more rangerly messages such as "You spot some wildland goblin tracks heading south, notice some movement in the shadows to your east, while the west wind brings you the reeking smell of three drunken clerics coming down the trail making enough noise to really "Awaken forest" as creatures flee from the assault on their nasal passages."<<

I could really care less about the messaging as long as the ability acomplishes 3 things.

1. The ability to search with out coming out of hiding.
2. Gives point effect multiple rooms away
3. Gives the ability to find and scout to critters rooms away (and actually teaches as well as trails)




Da Madd Webba

---

How you expect to run with the wolves come night when you spend all day sportin' with puppies?

You might as well pay attention since your behind can't afford free speech

I'm like a pee stained mattress, don't sleep on me!

Is there any formula known for receiving the message for WS being
"Your sense of smell sharpens to a potent new level, so precise that you feel you could track others by scent alone."
as compared to the more usual
"Your sense of smell sharpens to a new level, aiding your perception as well as ability to distinguish herbs and flowers."

The amount of mana I put into WS does not seem influence which message I get. However when I get the message I can make a PTM. For example:
____
R>prep ws
Since you're not feeding enough power into the spell pattern to make it coherent, you quickly work your way to the minimum required.
You close your eyes and breathe deeply, gathering energy for the Wolf Scent spell.
>focus my cambrinth armband
You focus your magical senses on a twisted cambrinth armband.
Your link to the cambrinth armband is intact.
>wear my cambrinth armband
You attach a twisted cambrinth armband to your upper arm.
You feel fully prepared to cast your spell.
>cast
You gesture.
Your cambrinth armband emits a loud snap as it discharges its power to aid your spell.
Your sense of smell sharpens to a potent new level, so precise that you feel you could track others by scent alone.
>take rock
You get a rock from inside your backpack.
>beseech elanthia to imbue
You rub a rock with your thumb as you silently call on the forces of nature to come to your assistance.
A rock gleams with a warm light for a moment.
You sense a slight loss of your inner self!
>take c knife
You get a leather-wrapped steel carving knife from inside your backpack.
>mark rock

You study the landscape and carefully shape the images into the rock with your carving knife to help find your way back to this spot.
>.b knife
[Script b is running, Esc to cancel, Shift-Esc to pause]
>put knife in my backpack
You put your knife in your backpack.
>
[script done]
>study rock

You study your trail marker rock, attempting to commit the location to memory. Creating a trail marker to mark this location, you reach down and arrange some pebbles into three concentric diamonds on the ground to mark your trail.

>exp scout
Circle: 41

SKILL: Rank/Percent towards next rank/Amount learning
Scouting: 168 33.24% thoughtful

Time Development Points: 19 Favors: 9 Deaths: 33
Overall state of mind: clear
EXP HELP for more information
________

Obviously the message means I am getting direct bust to scouting since I can't make a PTM without the message. And if I try to substitute a CV runestone cast at the same mana, I get a one second reducting in running regular trails from the perception boost but can't make a PTM using the perception boost. My question is on what does the message about tracking depend? Does my scouting bonus have to already be large in order to get the spell to give additional scouting buffing, or is it just a random effect?

Forgive my ignorance on ranger abilities but does scout in its current incarnation give the same ability that the old track did? You know, the one where you would glance at someone and then if they started moving you could track them to their last known location that they were standing out in the open?


-Galren Moonskin

Tusfaov calmly says, "Excellent. The inner fire burns bright within your chest, Galren. You have achieved a new level of enlightenment."
!>You hear the distant echo of a savage Horde screaming in barbaric approval of your deeds.

>Yeah that's still the basic use of scout. But unlike old tracking it's not an insta-track; it functions more like running the trails and there seems to be a greater chance of failure.

It also takes a minimum amount of time that doesn't seem to go down with skill. I remember scouting from one room away taking 20+ seconds, but I haven't tried in ages.

Hijacking the 100+ abilities thread, I wanted to add that I use my wolf and PTM's all the time on Aesry. When no moons or up, or the moon mages are sleeping, I can get across the island in short order if I can find a target for the wolf.

On this: Can we please for the love of all that is wholly, make beseech Elanthia to Preserve the meat for 24 RL hours or maybe even 12. Just something reasonable. It a number... I am almost 99% sure all you have to do is change the duration number to a much higher number. Companions have been promised soon for 5 years now. How about a symbol bandaid that would atleast let us play with our wolves more often.

Secondly, There was talk at some point of a new trail on the islands. Was this true? Can we atleast know what island it was on?

I'm sorry for any young ranger who had to push through that. I rolled another ranger up in TF and training scouting at lower ranks is ridiculously impossible.

I spent 10 minutes just trying to get success messaging from tracking the lad, and gave up on trying to figure out how to write a script that follows a moving NPC around different rooms. I scripted his perception up to 65 before I even tried this and still no trails around crossing worked.

I know it was recently 'fixed' but man, definitely too annoying for me. I felt like I was wasting potential DRprime time while in TF, but even moreso when I couldn't even train.

Anyways, I'm sorry for anyone who had to go through that and dare a GM to try getting scouting from 0 to 30 without a class.

-Vaeyrin

Lets not even pretend that training scouting at very low ranks is remotely fun or efficient.

~Hanryu Ves'Shomis
http://drplat.com/CombatEquipmentCompendium.xls
"But I say if you're going going to eat a creature alive, you have to expect some screaming. That is the carnivore's burden."
24/14/0 - 15 days

>Lets not even pretend that training scouting at very low ranks is remotely fun or efficient.

Seriously, it's broken.

Not fun, not efficient. Friend stated up a baby char, scripted to 80 ranks of perc, joined ranger guild.

Wasn't able to find trails, even with me casting WS on him. So threw a script together for tracking kitten and he ran that until 100 perc and 40-50 scouting, before moving to haven trails I believe.

Scout is a seriously annoying skill, doesn't matter what ranks. Running circles sucks :/

If you're worried about boredom, go hunting. Critters you can kill are also valid tracking targets.

DISCLAIMER: THIS POSTER IS NOT A MEMBER OF STAFF AND HIS INFORMATION IS/MIGHT BE WRONG.