One thing that hurts the world is over-powered tracking.
Tracking, as a skill, is the ability to detect that something passed by . It should not be the ability to zone in and see every mob that is up in a zone, check named mobs and know if something miles away spawned..
I two-boxed a druid & mage combo. I would port to a zone, check track, see a named mob, run to the mob, kill it with my pet tanking, mage dps-ing, druid healing, loot named drops, port to next zone.
It was INCREDIBLY powerful. For the last 1-2 years of my playtime thats what I did. I went zone-to-zone farming every named mob and getting tons and tons of loot. I was way overpowered and it was the tracking that did it.
If a rare mob spawns in one place and someone finds it, it should be a secret unless someone sees it or tells where it is. Tracking across a zone should not show that a mob is up and where it is.
Tracking is worse than in-game maps with breaking immersion and fairness.
Now, rangers SHOULD have tracking for mobs they are chasing, fighting, looking for but not as an insta-list of every mob in the zone that hasn't crossed their path. Now if a mob roams around, a tracker should be able to detect that they passed by somewhere earlier.
(this is *NOT* and anti-ranger post - I am trying to propose more realism in the persistent world).
I also had a druid. I never 2-boxed. But when they nerfed the tracking because they said it wasnot sopposed to match the ranger Iwas stunned. I could stand in a zone and look outand see mobs. but when I turned on tracking they would not appear on the list. What good was tracking if it couldn't even see the mobs in sight. They eventually fixed it but it was a long time to have tracking not working properly.
You wait twenty levels to get it and al of a sudden they say it needed to be changed. They made it pretty useless for a long time.
I do believe it should not cover the whole zone but a fair distance should be allowed. Something past your normal eyesight.
I don't think it hurts the world much, honestly. You're exaggerating a little bit on the range, although in some dungeons in EQ that were small, you could see pretty much anything.
They could easily limit tracking by only allowing you to see up to a certain range based on your skill, but hard cap it at a certain % based on the size of the zone to prevent you from seeing too far.
I think it would be an interesting idea to try and reinvent the concept of tracking - get away from the EQ/FFXI mechanism of "here's a giant list of mobs, click the one you want" and make it something that's still useful, but less problematic for zone and encounter design.
I'm not quite sure how I would change it, but coming up with a newer, better way to handle it would prevent us from repeating the history that you all are talking about.
Edit: Actually, what if tracking tied into the perception system to allow you to *spawn* things dynamically? And, as your skill went up, you could even trigger spawns of tougher creatures or even lairs?
So let's say you, as a ranger, decide you want to track predators.
At low skill, you might then find your way to any random predator from the zone's spawn table.
At basic levels of skill, you can distinguish between say, cats and wolves.
At intermediate levels of skill, you can distinguish between normal wolves and dire wolves.
At master levels of skill, you could find the lair of Howler, an old and monstrous Dire Wolf who has terrorized the area for years?
I'd hope they return more toward the D&D base of tracking if they include it at all. Zones/areas with soft or very soft ground (snow, mud, thick dust, soft dirt) would allow tracking over a large distance, firm ground (lawns, fields, woods, dusty/dirty floors, thick rugs) would allow tracking over a moderate distance, and hard ground & waters (stone, metals, indoor flooring, streams/rivers/lakes) would only allow tracking over a small distance. Preferably deserts and snowy areas would fluctuate the tracking by having sand/snow storms make it very hard to track anything.
They pick a target from a list and have to follow visual queues to locate the target (no direct path/direction show or given). Rangers would have to build a bestiary of sorts, all mobs would show up as "???" at the start and the only way to reveal a name in the future would be to track a mob of that type/class/name then kill it. Just killing it without using the track skill to find it first would not update the beastiary. This would mean that many dungeon zones would be very limited in terms of being able to track/see what is up & would require the Ranger having spent a fair amount of time there filling out their bestiary. Some mobs would be untrackable as well as if they had a "pass without a trace" enchant on them.
Something like that anyway.
The tracking skill, if it will exist, should do exactly what it says, that is to identify and follow the tracks of something that moves. It should not be some god-like radar that lets you see around corners to 'see' a creature that does not path past the point where the tracker is standing. This would mean that a creature like Lord Nagafen or Trakanon, creatuers who never leave their lair at the far end of the dungeon, could not be seen using the track skill. The skill would only let you see the path that an entity took near the position you are currently standing. Nothing more.
As your skill increases, you can follow the tracks further and further.
A tracker should need to find tracks and learn from actually finding what made them! Never cared for how eq did tracking....
This way a tracker would need to not only find tracks but remember what each creatures tracks look like. The best trackers will have good memories.
Be nice to have tracks fade over a certain amount of time so a tracker will know if there new or older tracks.
I believe tracking should be an opposed type of check. The character's tracking skill should show creatures based on how tough a creature is to track (tracking flying creatures is probably not as easy as tracking ground pounders), possibly the terrain modifying it, and the number of creatures in the area (the more creatures that roam the area, the harder any particular one would be to find).
Developers could adjust how hard it is to track a creature based on many factors. Does it fly? How big is it? How far does it typically roam? Stationary mobs would have higher difficulty than mobs with large roaming areas.
If the character is in or near an area of high traffic (doesn't have to currently have a lot of mobs, but many could spawn in the area), then it would be more difficult.
Certain zones could just be harder. Dungeons could be harder to track in. Worked stone could be more difficult. Etc, etc.
This gives a bit of freedom to make it a powerful ability, but not just a see all, catch all radar.
My idea: a ranger hits the track button and if a mob or mobs have passed within a small area around them, the game will highlight foot/pawprints on the ground (via glowing or some visual indicator). The ranger can then select one set of tracks to follow. The higher your tracking skill, the older the trail you can follow can be! And the trail might tell you what you're following, too! That way, a ranger would be able to track far more than anyone else, but it wouldn't tell you if something on the other side of the zone has popped.
I do think it makes sense for other classes to have minimal tracking skills (like any kind of 'scout' class, and druids since they're always out in the wilderness), but rangers should be the masters.
Making mobs only be visible if they had been aggroed at some point since they spawned is interesting. I agree that showing a list of mobs to track seems pretty remedial considering what is possible with games these days. There should be a better way.
I don't know how well it would work in an MMO, but I liked the way tracking was handled in Witcher 3.
Granted, most of those were scripted events. The system may not be viable in an MMO setting. But turning on tracking and seeing "tracks" (however they want to represent them) would be better than the spawn list.
But, that said, if something like the above isn't workable, I'm won't be bent out of shape by the old system as long as it is balanced out to not be an in game radar app. It could also be limited by a mob's difficulty/level, etc. in other words, named take more skill to track than trash.
Liav said:I don't think it hurts the world much, honestly. You're exaggerating a little bit on the range, although in some dungeons in EQ that were small, you could see pretty much anything.
They could easily limit tracking by only allowing you to see up to a certain range based on your skill, but hard cap it at a certain % based on the size of the zone to prevent you from seeing too far.
Druid track was actually pretty limited...
Ranger track - I tested it out back in the day, I could see (if I recall correctly) more than half way across South Karana - so a pretty sizeable range. Certainly enough to cover smaller zones. I don't see it in any way game beaking though. Similar to druids and wizards with ports, Rangers often got asked to track mobs for cash. At least I did. And just because you could track it, didn't mean you would get to it first.
Having said that - I think track should work in some similar way to EQ rather than having the magic glowy line suddenly appear between yourself and whatever you are tracking. In EQ, you got a series of messages in your log...
Your mob is ahead and to the left
Your mob is ahead and to the left
Your mob is ahead and to the right
etc...
It was hints, not an exact line to follow. You could easily pass by the mob, or over correct (like in my example where it was on the left and now on the right). It's actually (I believe) part of the reason rangers got the rep of dying all the time... our faces were locked onto our chat boxes while we were running across zones and, sometimes, into stuff we'd probably best avoid running into.
Turning track into a bit of a mini game sounds fun, but would it really work out and be useful? I mean if the zones werent absolute monstrous mazes, then wouldnt anyone looking for a rare spawn find it much faster by just running around and scanning the zone visually. Meanwhile the person playing a tracking mini game has lost out on the prey. I mean I love the idea, but I dont see how it doesnt instantly become useless unless it is used in an instance or like suggested above to actually triger a spawn.
Amsai said:Turning track into a bit of a mini game sounds fun, but would it really work out and be useful? I mean if the zones werent absolute monstrous mazes, then wouldnt anyone looking for a rare spawn find it much faster by just running around and scanning the zone visually. Meanwhile the person playing a tracking mini game has lost out on the prey. I mean I love the idea, but I dont see how it doesnt instantly become useless unless it is used in an instance or like suggested above to actually triger a spawn.
Yeah, that's the exact reason I was thinking that it should maybe be a "spawning" system - you're not tracking what's already spawned, you're tracking the thing that *will* spawn when you get there. Since we know/think that the perception system will be able to trigger scripted events, I think it could work in a similar way :)
A couple threads on this you might be interested in:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6976/track-nodes
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3482/perception-and-real-tracking-for-rangers
I was brain storming on tracking earlier. While there are a few threads, this is the most applicable in my mind (and most recent).
I would like to see tracking not limited to any particular class. In my mind, tracking would be tied to perception. I can see you getting started on a trail, in one of two ways:
1. You come across the obvious signs of a crime scene or some type of incident. In this case, there will be a particular place to look (likely the edge of the incident where you see a footprint or piece of cloth), and you pickup the trail of whatever you are intended to track. This would be similar to the what I have viewed in an alpha video, similar to how perception is/was already in place in game. As you will be following foot prints, broken twigs, you will see foot prints appears, which you will follow. If you go too fast, they will fade away and you need to back track to follow the clues again. Maybe you have to slow down on occassion, to see the broken twig or scrap of cloth. This system could work great with the fancy software showing grass laying down after someone ran across tall grasses.
2. There could be a quested hound, blue heeler, etc, or maybe you do a quest to train your existing pet how to track. You pull out a scrap of a pelt, or a piece of loot which previously dropped off a named mob you might be tracking. When you think you are in the area where tracking will be fruitful, you give this to your tracking animal, and they might be able to start tracking the mob. You won't see foot prints, so you will need to follow your animal who is following the scent. If it is a dog, it can possibly run faster than you, so you might need to sprint or mount up. It would stop from time to time, to search for the scent, before getting back underway.
I believe this would satisfy alot of us, who don't want to simply see a list of names, and would make the game more immersive.
If you've ever played the witcher games, you know how they can present both footsteps and scents pretty clearly, per player, uniquely. In an MMO, it's trivial to do it without a huge rendering burden with projected textures. The Witcher Scent effect has already been used in EQ1 & EQ2 for the "find in a zone" glowing path, just with a different texture.
So it's not that it can't be done, it can. It can be done per player, without causing any issues with performance or affecting other players at all. Creatures could be tracked by mana(magic users), footprints(non rogue, non-magic users), odor for animals and certain humanoids, spirit(undead), elements(fire/ice/water/earth/whatever), and sound, in enclosed spaces without light.
Pets, companions, or familiars could act as visibility toggles or trackers, or it could be done directly by the player, or both.
Hopefully the VR team implements some of them, eventually, as part of the perception system or simply as questable, trainable, racial, or class skills.
I don't think it hurts the world much, honestly. You're exaggerating a little bit on the range, although in some dungeons in EQ that were small, you could see pretty much anything.
They could easily limit tracking by only allowing you to see up to a certain range based on your skill, but hard cap it at a certain % based on the size of the zone to prevent you from seeing too far.
I like this idea. It could even use vectors indoors to calculate the distance of targets, like sony used for their shitty pathing system in LDON I guess.
I'm fine with anything for tracking, I just think tracking "steps" or passing by creatures will probably be of little use, as in MMO's we run and move a lot since we feel no tiredness, and it's not really comparable to RL tracking where you search an animal on tracks old of days.
I have a feeling that it would be technologically brutal but what if you actually had to walk across the tracks of a mob before you could begin tracking it. This would require each mob to have its own digital trail that is tracked server side. If the player with the tracking skill selects they want to track orcs then they need to find an orc trail first before they can follow it.
I don’t like the concept of being able to track Bob the Orc vs Tom the Orc, in tracks they are all the same.
Now a special long cast divination spell that can give you the name, distance and direction of all (humanoid, animal, plant, undead, construct, or monstrous beast based on which version is used) in range of the spell could be pretty cool. It would help you find things but you would need to sit down and focus to get an update on them after trying to follow the directions given by the last divination.
Combining a divination tool and active tracking of pathing may be the best of both worlds.
As a dedicated proponant of at least basic maps (without radar of any type) who keeps hearing on these forums about how even a primitive map makes things too easy and destroys the joy of exploration, I feel compelled to point out the total inconsistancy of limiting maps or having no maps at all but allowing any player of any class under any circumstances to have a tracking ability above and beyond being able to recognize what he or she is actually looking at.
Tracking at the absolute most should be limited to "you see signs that a humanoid passed this area approximately X minutes ago heading southwest".
