Dammit!

*places suicide note in shredder*

That's not going to do me any good now.

I don't understand why people have to be so bloody when they want to commit suicide, they could just take a needle filled air (this also puts in question why certain assassins uses poison needles instead of air.)

Wilki UO Community Coordinator

I apologize for not getting back to you sooner, but I was on the other side of the country until Wednesday and managed to bring back a nasty bug that kept me home today.

Here is what I'm currently thinking:

1. We'll let the changes as they are now ride for a little while and see how things shake out. I realize that there are some calls to further nerf passive detection, but please keep in mind that the key word there is "further" as you do have a better chance to stay hidden after Pub43. Yes, that even includes the extended detection range, as the overall chance is still much lower.

2. I'm leaning towards lowering that chance even further, and perhaps taking the elven bonus down to 30. I'm really in between a rock and a hard place here, as while I personally think that the jack of all trades bonus and the elven bonus are too high, I can't just run amok here. Instead, I'd like to find some kind of balance between the two sides. What I may do is change the formula so that the rate of increase to the chance to passively detect as skill goes up is an even steeper curve than it is now.

3. I need to look at AoE damage and revealing hidden players. That remains untouched as of Pub43.

4. I need to look at the animal form running while stealthed chance.

I am reading this feedback, but I also get a feeling that quite a bit of it is from players who haven't really tried the changes yet, as some of it is just plain based on incorrect information. Once this is live tomorrow, the feedback will be much more useful and we can go from there.


Thanks for the reply, I admit I had lost hope. :-)

"1. We'll let the changes as they are now ride for a little while and see how things shake out. I realize that there are some calls to further nerf passive detection, but please keep in mind that the key word there is "further" as you do have a better chance to stay hidden after Pub43. Yes, that even includes the extended detection range, as the overall chance is still much lower."

Agreed that the overall chance is lowered, but the extended range means that what used to be 2 people, each one applying a higher chance is probably now 5 people each one applying a lower one. So whether the overall chance is higher or lower than before it really depends on the specific situation, and in champ spawn situations it is likely to be higher.

"2. I'm leaning towards lowering that chance even further, and perhaps taking the elven bonus down to 30. I'm really in between a rock and a hard place here, as while I personally think that the jack of all trades bonus and the elven bonus are too high, I can't just run amok here. Instead, I'd like to find some kind of balance between the two sides. What I may do is change the formula so that the rate of increase to the chance to passively detect as skill goes up is an even steeper curve than it is now."

I really think that this is a design problem, just tweaking it won't help much I am afraid. As long as the detect chance is not so low to be negligible you are not going to have people in this thread even resonably content. For instance consider thieves. They have to snoop at least a dozen people, often in the middle of a crowd, before finding something worth to steal. If they are hostage of a RNG, either the likelyhood is so close to 0 as not to matter, or they are not going to be back. Stealth used to be a skill requiring a lot of RL skill. Now it is equally difficult to use (at close range) but simply due to a RNG. No true stealther is going to stand for this, except stealth archers (who are not touched by the RNG).

Note that the fact that you feel between anvil and hammer in choosing the likelyhood, is most likely because the design of stealth as is now is not correct as it does not place much focus (if any) on personal skill, so that the only way to "balance" it is tweaking a RNG.

"3. I need to look at AoE damage and revealing hidden players. That remains untouched as of Pub43."

Thanks for stating it.

"4. I need to look at the animal form running while stealthed chance."

Wait, that's a double problem. Do you mean the ability of walking at mount speed, or running at mounted speed? They are two different issues.

"I am reading this feedback, but I also get a feeling that quite a bit of it is from players who haven't really tried the changes yet, as some of it is just plain based on incorrect information. Once this is live tomorrow, the feedback will be much more useful and we can go from there."

Unfortunately not from me, as I am not paying EA until I am sure that at least stealth is fixed. But if I am stating incorrect facts, let me know, as my decision to be back is based on the info I gather from this forums and I would hate to take such decision on incorrect infos.


EDIT: I forgot to mention two other issues seriously affecting the stealth abilities of ninjas:

1) Shadowjump is not "shadow" at all. As soon as you shadowjump you broadcast to the whole world that a stealther just shadowjumped.

2) Shadowjump is unusable in about 70% of contexts due to the "you cannot teleport there" code.

Agreed with the shadow jump not being a shadow jump and less than useful most times.

Also, in the current fixes to stalth I can see another flaw. What about the detecting abilities of area spells? Currently a single Earthquake does the same job of GM detect, thus making the skill useless.
This issue is a major one, one that is as bad as the passive reveal... earquake reveal ALL hidden players 50% of the time on the screen. WAY to powerful. Why would one need target detect if they can cast a spell that does the same.

Ando UO Live Assistant Producer


Hey everyone. Thanks for all the feedback on Stealth. It sounds like many players feel that passive reveal and reveal from area effect spells may still need some more attention. Unfortunately I don't think we have any time left to make any more large modificaitons to Stealth in Pub43, unless a bug is discovered with the current changes.

In the meantime please keep posting your feedback here for Wilki and the rest of the Dev Team to read. We're particularly interested in hearing what people think about the Detect Hidden bonus players get from racial abilities.

Thanks for keeping us updated Tabbitha, quick question, I know on occasions some devs pop over here and take a gander, but do you post some suggestions from here back over there?

As for the bonuses:

Elves should have a slightly higher bonus than Humans.
Humans should have a slight chance to reveal, but not much unless points are invested.
I'm pretty sure it's 100% impossible due to coding, but % chance should decrease depending on what is going on (i.e. if actively attacking something, even walking)