Here's an idea for an expanded where command. Because I think that the world is too large for the player base and yadda yadda:

Add an option for an extensive where.. It costs a bit of mana, lags you for a round or two, doesn't with adrenaline timer. In exchange it shows you people in adjacent areas as well as in the current area.

Feels overpowered to me, for APs and shamen especially.

Your opponents teleport blind and plagued. This makes it much easier to finish them off.

(Necro ones are quite likely to die anyway.)

Pretty much sums it up.

Or maybe it could be a tick of lag instead of a round, similarly to harvest.

Two that I see are:

1. Stealth classes suddenly become very good. You can hide, poke about with 'extended where' and then plan your attack from a much greater distance than is normally allowed. Finding said stealth class while they do this would become impossible. Assassins stalking would be able to check on their mark before entering an area. Things like standing on area borders to catch people off-guard when they step out would become much harder. A thief could stand on eastern and simultaneously check a very large civilised area. The same with standing on Galadon's borders, or even hamsahs if he felt like it.

2. The flip side. Those that can see stealth classes, suddenly become far, far better. Instead of more fights, you'd have plenty of people who flee like hell before you're even in the same area! If you then stop them seeing stealth classes 'from a distance' you've injured people who sacrifice a lot to gain something like detect hidden (duergar) while giving the assassin an edge over them instead.


Finding an opponent you really want to fight can be done with a number of abilities (airforms, gate, clairvoyance, sight of the damned, imperial spies, familiars, track, track the wicked, bloodtrail). There are any number of tactics that might force a caballed person to face you. Other people can be paid off, befriended, hired or executed (for not) helping you with the above abilities. I currently have little trouble finding who I need. Most people are predictable in their habits. There's a mud full of potential eyes. Locate object, elemental attunement and animism (rangers and druids) can be used to look for corpses, limbs, entrails and keys the person might be holding/have repopped. With diminishing numbers these signs are actually EASIER to use as clues to a foes location. If its just you, a healer and this AP you want to kill - seeing several abishai limbs or elite storm giant guts appearing for a moment might just be as good as using 'where'.

If these tactics don't work, you're opponent is either avoiding you (in which case, you'd likely not be able to fight anyway) or is moving around too much - likely looking for your ass too.

Yhorian.

>Two that I see are:
>
>1. Stealth classes suddenly become very good. You can hide,
>poke about with 'extended where' and then plan your attack
>from a much greater distance than is normally allowed. Finding
>said stealth class while they do this would become impossible.
>Assassins stalking would be able to check on their mark before
>entering an area. Things like standing on area borders to
>catch people off-guard when they step out would become much
>harder. A thief could stand on eastern and simultaneously
>check a very large civilised area. The same with standing on
>Galadon's borders, or even hamsahs if he felt like it.

Not it you stepped out of the shadows for 2 rounds to use it.

>2. The flip side. Those that can see stealth classes, suddenly
>become far, far better. Instead of more fights, you'd have
>plenty of people who flee like hell before you're even in the
>same area! If you then stop them seeing stealth classes 'from
>a distance' you've injured people who sacrifice a lot to gain
>something like detect hidden (duergar) while giving the
>assassin an edge over them instead.

Again, making it unstealthify you would negate much of these issues. The justification being that in order to do this deep scan where, you can't maintain the stealthyness needed.

>Finding an opponent you really want to fight can be done with
>a number of abilities (airforms, gate, clairvoyance, sight of
>the damned, imperial spies, familiars, track, track the
>wicked, bloodtrail). There are any number of tactics that
>might force a caballed person to face you. Other people can be
>paid off, befriended, hired or executed (for not) helping you
>with the above abilities. I currently have little trouble
>finding who I need. Most people are predictable in their
>habits. There's a mud full of potential eyes. Locate object,
>elemental attunement and animism (rangers and druids) can be
>used to look for corpses, limbs, entrails and keys the person
>might be holding/have repopped. With diminishing numbers these
>signs are actually EASIER to use as clues to a foes location.
>If its just you, a healer and this AP you want to kill -
>seeing several abishai limbs or elite storm giant guts
>appearing for a moment might just be as good as using
>'where'.

Most, if not all of these things really only apply at or near hero. I currently have a character over 30 hours old that hasn't been involved in a single pk. I've SEEN 4 in range people in 30 hours. I find it hard to believe someone hasn't been trying to hunt me in all this time, but likely they just haven't been willing to scour every area to find the remotish ones I've been in. I've said before that I find ranking to be danger free (up till you enter hero range) where in the past ranking was something that was perhaps when you in the most danger at lower levels.


>If these tactics don't work, you're opponent is either
>avoiding you (in which case, you'd likely not be able to fight
>anyway) or is moving around too much - likely looking for your
>ass too.

I've had the problem where I've been looking for someone for 20 minutes, and they've been looking for me, only for one of us to get frustrated and basically ask where the other one is in order to get a fight. Just traveling the battlerager loop takes enough time and through enough areas that locating someone who is also on the loop might be impossible unless one of you stops moving for a significant period of time.

>Yhorian.

locate object is most usable on RANKING groups. And its attained at level 15 by the classes that get it.

Track? Level 30. Works in all wilderness areas.

Air shifter? Can fly at about 28-31 if you pick major. Bingo, you can see everyone from the sky.

Ontop of that, the places that a lower level person would want to go are far fewer than a person of a higher level. If you can't find someone in their teens, you really aren't trying. Its possibly the easiest time to find them, assuming you can afford the refreshes you need. A class that gets it as a skill has yet another advantage.

I'm telling you again, finding people is part of a classes abilities and its up to you if you wish to choose a class that fairs better or worse at that. Even if you find them, the problem of 'wanting to fight' isn't solved. They can run at the sight of you, wasting your whole effort. If there are two of you who really should be fighting, challenge a duel. There are plenty of ways to engineer a fight that don't involve asking the imms to code a super-locator for your bash warrior.

Yhorian.

Seriously.

I'm a little fuzzy on locate object. I always assumed npc parts would be the level of the npc (like corpses) so locate object wouldn't be all that useful. I could be entirely mistaken. That said, are you hunting groups with your transmuter or your first tier shifter form?

Either you haven't played a ranger with track, or track is somehow VASTLY more useful then when I last played a ranger, or I'm too stupid to figure out how to use it. Sure it will let you know if someone passed by, but it isn't 100% reliable even at 100%, and mob-track it ain't.

Air shifter? When are these dangerous to a ranking group? At or near hero. At 28-31 your air form isn't going to take down a hurt out of form shifter.

I can think of dozens of places to rank at lower level that are very seldom used. That is usually because they aren't the easiest and fastest ranking spot. I'm pretty sure the available ranking areas goes down as you near hero. I.e. evils rank on spirits or storm giants. At level 15 I could probably come up with a dozen places to rank.

I won't even mention that doing something like going to FoN requires refresh or resting. Check Azuremein? Be prepared to heal refresh. Going to Akan/Castle? Refresh refresh. Sure you can check 20 areas quickly if you spend hours gathering gold to buy refresh preps, but that doesn't displace the amount of time it takes to find someone, just front loads it.

Gone are the days of 2-3 characters getting together to just go out and slaughter their range. Do I miss the multi-killing, griefing nature those groups usually brought with them? No. But ranking was at least engaging for survival purposes.

I'll give you an example for my most recent character: No inherent detects (invis/hidden/etc) and *rarely* used potions pills even for detect invis I leveled from 1 - 51 without being surprise attacked once. Not once. Was I lucky? I don't think so. I rarely bother to keep up non-class given abilities when ranking because the danger is low enough that it isn't worth the cost (time/gold/etc)

I think that is wrong. In the days when Thera was smaller, I wouldn't go without detect invis unless I was a rager app. Now, I don't bother with my most magic happy characters. There was a time I feared necromancers at low levels... Now I only fear them after I've already been slept. Most of the rest of the time they won't find me unless I "roll the dice" and walk down eastern without detects up.

Extended where would affect every class equally, so those classes that are already better at locating people would become that much better and those that aren't so hot would gain enough to be at least a little scary.

I thought this was Carrion Fields, not Dueling Fields. You know the place where you can't avoid fighting, instead of the place where you only have to worry about a fight if you wander into the wrong neighborhood because all the other hoods are deserted.

Meh, I think it's a good idea, and that you overestimate the ability to find and be found at lower levels. Of course neither of us gets to decide.

Like, you can sence a potential threat in the north, if there is someone in an area directly north of you.

Sorry Marcus, it won't happen.