- Status Closed
- Percent Complete
- Task Type Feature Request
- Category Engine → Magic System
- Assigned To No-one
- Operating System
- Severity Low
- Priority
- Reported Version
- Due in Version Undecided
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Due Date
Undecided
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Votes
1
- Daevaorn (18.01.2009)
- Private
Opened by Elvors Amenoras - 07.01.2009
Last edited by Lanarel - 19.07.2009
FS#2660 - Nature Intuition lacks atmosphere
Nature intuition is far too precise; getting just a dump of player data isn’t very IC.
Also, in practice, many people object to being scanned, mostly because they’re unsure what information exactly the mage got and what he can do with it.
I can imagine several approaches to address one or both of these points:
1. Don’t give all stats and skills, just a random selection. Higher spell levels might return a larger selection; e.g. 1 stat/skill at AW 10-19, 2 at 20-29, etc.
1a. To make the spell work better RP-wise and technically in consensual situations, the target can actively select which of its stats/skills the mage should get.
2. Inform the target that it is getting scanned, with a message like “Yannae is looking into your soul and takes a glimpse at your Strength and Agility”.
3. Make the information imprecise. E.g. if the true value is 100, tell the mage it is “between 80 and 110” (rarely, tell him it’s “between 60 and 90”). Make sure this scales properly - if the result from a skill value of 100 is “80..110”, then the equivalent result for a skill value of 10 should be “8..11”, not “-10..20”. (The math to get all borderline cases right is a bit tricky, I’ll spill all the gory details on request.)
This is related to FS#646 but not the same.
Feel free to reduce the severity if you think it’s overrated. I’m setting it High because it adversely affects Roleplay.
FS#646 had comments that Nature Intuition should give just the stats, not the skills.
I disagree - a skill is part of a person’s mental landscape just as his willpower, for example.
| ID | Project | Summary | Priority | Severity | Assigned To | Progress | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 646 | PlaneShift | Low | weltall, Davide Vescovini |
I think 1., 1a. and 3. will result in massive multiple scanning, because you sill can get approximately the same results as now.
I agree people will try multiple scanning next, yes.
However, things will develop differently than before after the first scan attempt. With Nature Intuition as it is, the (perceived) damage is done, the target can’t do much about it.
The target can prevent further attempts by running away or logging off. S/he/kra can scold the mage in public so that another attempt at scanning appears rude.
Here are some more possibilities for the list:
3a. Make the information more precise in a consensual situation. (Either full precision, or just improved precision.)
4. Make the spell fail with a high probability (i.e. a significant failure rate even at maxed AW).
4a. Drastically reduce failure probability in consensual situations.
I think these are great proposals to
- make the spell less intrusive
- keep the spells overall worth for RP, which is not to be underestimated.
Both points being touched on in almost every comment related to that spell, this would solve it all.
It would furthermore allow to replace the approximate values in numbers by a textual description in a second step.
What is a consensual situation?
I think any random effect or fail probability will cause massive multiple scanning.
What would be easy to implement is:
- Drastically increase the spell time (about one minute, maybe depending on the skill).
- Give the target a warning message like ‘Someone tries to probe your mind.’ - Maybe a message if the attempt failed or succeeded.
Last element to establish a consensual situation: if the target moves while being scanned, let the scan fail.
Actually that would work even if the spell were considerably faster than a minute, 10-15 seconds should be enough to notice what’s going on and move.
I think we have a consensus that the target should get a message.
On a tangent, I’m wondering what mobs and NPCs should do if they get scanned.
Move away?
Have the attempt always fail? (Would need a bit of extra programming.)
Attack?
Maybe a different reaction, depending on: General race aggressivity, faction points of the caster with the race?
I know it’s not implemented yet, but I think learning how to defend yourself against NI could be classed as Anti-magic (AM) . You could:
Antimagic is certainly a factor once it’s implemented, yes.
Still, a low-level AW mage shouldn’t be able to serially scan newbies and get the ultra-precise results s/he’s getting today.
Besides, while Antimagic may make it harder, the question how to reduce the scan results to something more “fuzzy” still stands.
For some reason this bug had status postponed. It does not show someone did this, so I assume this was an error.
Please explain again how this is not a duplicate of
bug 646? Both discuss that the spell shows too much. Solution to both is to translate actual skill/stat display (as given by the gm command) to something less explicit and more RP friendly. I do not see how these should be two different discussions and (since more is discussed in 646) I am about to close this as a duplicate.#646 evolved into a discussion that the GM command should be separated from the spell.
What didn’t get discussed very thoroughly is what the spell should show when it’s finally separated. I thought a separate bugtracker entry would allow discussing each aspect without interference from the other (and, also, the fix could be in two steps: one to separate command and spell, closing #646, and one to rebalance the spell, closing this one, so having two separate entries helps with the progress aspect of things).
Feel free to close this one as a duplicate if you wish, but please make sure that what was discussed here is referenced from #646 then so the fixing dev doesn’t ignore it. (Unless devs routinely look into duplicates, of course.)