Would the staff consider shortening the timer on a failed locate mark? 12 hours seems kind of long on a failure.

I recently failed 2 locate marks in a row and so had to wait 24 ticks on top of spending several gold for nothing. And it isn't like it's an easy skill to practice.

I'm asking about failures only. Aw heck, and while I'm at it, up its learning rate?

gr

But it's not a big enough drawback for anyone to agree with me about changing.

n/t

Mark of the prey is already extremely nice with locate mark.

nt

To me, you are saying that there is no reason to update the tape cassette player in that car because that car is a Mazerati.

The whole if it ain't broke don't fix it mantra doesn't really work in a competitive environment and that is kind of what this game is in. It's why the staff works so hard making changes(and congrats to them for it too) I had a coach once who used to say "you're either getting faster or slower. You're never staying the same". His point was relativity and it applies here.

Also, WP, can I ask honestly how much have you really used this skill? You've logged about 950 hours as an assassin that I know of and you've had a 3% skill gain in that time with the skill, and some of those could have come from level up skill gains.

I'm not lobbying for a lot. I'm only petitioning to make a failed skill timer less than an in game eternity. A lot can happen in 12 in game hours, hell, even half that. I don't see what the big deal about cutting that timer down is. I don't see how this makes the class even stronger. Really it will only shorten up the inevitable. I don't think we're tipping the OP meter with this one.

Just saying I think the class is good as it is without examining the facts is not satisfactory.

Locate mark is an immensely useful skill even with its limitations.
A persons best defence against an assassin is to be able to avoid them at times. Locate mark will sometimes allow you to find them and they won't even know it. The success rate isn't even that low - when it fails if can be down to your opponent being in a place where there's no contact of yours that can locate them. I know I spent a significant time recently stuck in an area where I doubt locate mark would find me.

When cabal powers like sight of the damned existed they had a high failure rate and a much longer timer than locate mark.

Locate mark will also work much better for you if the person doesn't know you marked them, as they won't be taking countermeasures. That, counterintuitively means that sometimes you don't want to be hidden or in combat when you mark them, since either of those things can result in a give away that you marked then.

To my knowledge the one exception to this locating skill timer and low success is a tattoo power (maybe 2 of them so it) and frankly whatever it is it is op as hell because it means the person has no choice but to fight or use a strategy that will ultimately get them killed.

Let us also not lose sight of the fact you could skill focus on this skill from quite a low level, so a lack of improvement through use in no way stops you getting it high.

I agree that the skill is useful. That is why I use it and am here making a suggestion for it. On the failure side.

That being said, I am just going to make a few brief comments in reply to your post and leave it at that since my suggestion was directed at the staff and they haven't posted, I just assume that means they are in agreement with you and so I'll let it alone.

I've been trying to think of a current skill in game that has a failure timer to match or exceed locate mark and so far haven't come up with one. Perhaps you can.

You make some interesting points about defending against a mark. I'm sure some will read your comments and put it to good use - to my dismay!

Yes, you could focus skill learn on locate mark and have it improve that way without ever really using it. But, that wasn't the case in what I pointed out. That was a situation where you had many hours logged and low skill percentage. That implies little use. Yes, it is possible that he was just at the really bad end of the RNG and actually did use the skill often with never getting it to improve, but I doubt it. Especially when one character was an arial before the intelligence nerf.

I was going to make some comments about avoiding assassins but am deciding against it. Instead, I will just say it is for good reason you cannot stalk your mark.

And mark is superior to that in terms of what it tells you.

Although I could be mistaken and the timer might only be on success.

But if the fail timer is short, once marked, your prey basically can't get a break. I think a timer gives it some balance between predator and prey.

I agree with you that the timer on fail (or indeed a success) is there for a reason, namely to give the prey a potential break.

Game balance requires someone not not just look at one party (the individual player/class) but also "everything else" relative to said party. (Possibly where the "Maserati" analogy falls short? Though it was a fun analogy. You would probably need to add the condition that said cassette player was being replaced with components from sound systems in adjacent cars within the shop for the analogy to be complete.)

I suspect, and note: this is my personal opinion having played a handful of assassins and having fought even more, that the design of locate mark is "as intended", and as a result won't be tinkered with mechanically.

Most potentially powerful skills/spells/communes tend to have drawbacks or shortfalls and in this case the timer is one such drawback/shortfall.

I hope that helps the original poster.

Also overlooked or failed to mention, tho it is less relevant these days, is that you can mark one member of a group and stalk and try to assassinate another. So mark and assassinate do synergise at times.

I made a suggestion and opened up discussion on the skill. Now we are discussing and you pointed it out. It's definitely an argument against my suggestion, even though it is a pretty rare use of the skill and it also requires the skill to succeed which is tangent to the real topic at hand: failure of the skill.

And just to be clear. My analogy was aimed at the specific blanket statement "I don't think assassins need any improvement" and for that i think it is fairly appropriate. It was not intended to be applied against how the staff looks at game balance. It's not very fair to take my statement and put it against something else and call it lacking.

Damnit, I wrote out a long response and then my browser shot back and ate it, so this will be a little less involved, but...

I rarely used locate mark with either of my assassins because as villagers I didn't spend a lot of time fighting rangers, which is where it really shines.

Also, one of them was an assassinate monkey, and you thankfully can't stalk your mark.

I did use it on trannies, but since they feel so safe in duo it's pretty easy to find them without locate mark.

And I usually didn't even want to waste a command marking most of my foes, because in my experience there are two types of characters, those who who are pretty easy to find and those who you will never ####ing see so you can't mark them anyway.

I think assassins are really, really, really good the way they are and improving any of their skills even minorly (especially on the heels of stuff like nerfing savage blow) is just the rich getting richer and not really needed.

This is especially true considering that all of the other location skills have drawbacks. SotD had a long timer, iirc. Gravesight needs a corpse. The conjie spells come with psychic vampires or whatever the hell those things are. Track doesn't work in civilized. I don't know anything about the imperial spy network, but I'm guessing it's got some drawback.

I'm really not 100% opposed to giving assassins perks, but I'd love to see binder thieves, for example, get some love before assassins, druids, or invokers, who are the three classes who I think are the least in need of help.

sight of the damned had other uses, you could use it on mobs and see if people were around them. IIRC, you could keep casting it on different mobs.

You're basically saying just because something is old we should make it more powerful. That doesn't make sense. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Because if it's not broke, it means it works. It does work, competitive environment or not. Locate failing doesn't mean you can't go look for them the old fashion way.

You're kind of focusing on the wrong part and missing the point, which might be partially my fault for using a tape deck and the word update.

The point is not to say it is old. The point is that just because the sum of the parts is good does not mean that an individual part does not need improvement. I could have just as well said the radio was broke or it wasn't satellite radio capable.

That's great if it ain't broke don't fix it works for you but your missing my point about competitive environment and the faster and slower quote. My point is that if you aren't trying to improve your competitors are and they will eventually overtake you. So you are never really staying in the same place. You are either moving forward or backwards. I'm sure Einstein would agree. This again applies to just saying I think a class overall is good enough we don't need to examine its parts.

How was I missing the point?

There are a lot more important and broken things with the game already that need focus. Locate mark works just fine, and is balanced. If it worked better than it does, it would start to boarder on being too much power.

I got your point just fine.

MUDs are such a niche world of gaming anymore and the ones that remain are fairly set in their ways. Making little changes like this aren't going to affect the type of competition you are talking about. You need to worry more about how much money they put into advertisements. Locate mark working better than the way it is now is not that big of a deal and is not going to be a dealbreaker. I am not saying improvements are bad. If you think I am saying that, then you are the one missing the point. If you had an idea of changing locate mark to work different instead of just cutting out the failure setback then you might be onto something. The approach you are taking is like watering down the soup so we can feed more people. Though it will be guaranteed to feed more, it will not taste as good.