a simple question

[khamaileon]

very nice shard,good old classic risk/reward uo is what today mmorpgs really lacks.i've been plaiyng around for a while,and i was happy to found evry thing as i left them,in t2a.my new roomate also play here,and reentroduced me to the world of uo after many years.ok,i dont want to bother you with the story of my life,it's just to point out how much i like this shard.this because i have to make a critic,but of the constructive type.i found somthing that really disappointed me,among all this awesomness.this is the snooping thing.i understand that ones memories does not matter(so i wont bother you with mine),and that this is been discussed before.lurking the forum i've found and read the whole 3d about that.but the one thing i was thinking since the beginning,still holds no explanation:the fact that snooping only reveals you if failed.one guys pointed that out but noone said nothing on this.sound pretty clear to me.not everybody back in the era was GM,so this can explain a lot.as i understand it,the "snooping will unreveal you" under stealth in patch notes,is linked to "actions that normally unhides you still will",referring to the fact that if fail snooping u get revealed in any case.
i really like an answer on that.
moreover,said betwen us,in todays uo you dont get revealed on successful snoop,this sounds very weird that it used to in the golden era of thievs.and if im wrong in my thoughts and this really was the case im ready to bet this change lasted for like 1 month or so,and we have to deal with it forever
im sorry to have stolen(:P) your time.

[Panthor the Hated]

hide->stealth to victom->hide->snoop without revealing

[fox_phyre]

hide->stealth to victom->hide->snoop without revealing

^- takes too long, only way to do it quickly now is with invis jewelry, which is very expensive for some people. I remember when this came up months ago when they changed it and I wasn't convinced with their findings that eventually got it changed to reveal while stealthed.

[khamaileon]

hide->stealth to victom->hide->snoop without revealing

i know that,but as i said i dont want to bother you about how this process i really cant remember.plus it make it impossible to steal on the field.
as i see it the conclusion taken over those finding was a bit arbitrary.stratics,and every users post from 1998,and official patch notes too, is moar like something that needs interpretation,its not the revealed truth.in today official runuo shards they have problems finding how things works,imagine 1999.
yet the obvious thing about revealing on failure its not being explained.
if "You notice khamaileon trying to peek into your belongings",it is sensible that you also notice khamaileon.

[Corbin]

Now that you brought it up, I do remember that. Snooping only revealed when you failed.

[khamaileon]

imo,things are as follow:snooping,much like stealing,has different outcomes,below gm level:succesfull unnoticed,succesfull noticed,unsuccesful noticed,im not sure about unsuccessful unnoticed,but this does not matter.if you are caught snooping,whether you open other backpack or not,you are also revealed if hidden.hence the crying about open backpack but being revealed anyways.
and patch regarding stealth just note that if you go noticed snoop,you are revealed just like when you are hiding.remember stealth was a pretty new skill at the time.
also according to the "revealed if pass trough someone" and "action that normaly unhide you still will" notes,i assume when skill first came out if you succesfully use the skill u where able to take x stealth step,no matter what,probably because was a different code from hiding.patch just unify the behaving of hiding and sthealth.

[Kaivan]

This topic has seen extensive discussion in another thread regarding the issue, however it is still open to debate. As of now, snooping reveals on UOSA only when a player attempts to snoop while stealthing. The reason for this design is because of the placement of the patch which talks about revealing on snoop. The patch note in question is as follows:

• Hiding
  • You can no longer hide while casting a spell.
  • Using hiding sets the number of stealthy steps you can take to zero.
• Stealth
  • Shoving past someone while stealthy will reveal you.
  • Snooping will reveal you.

In the above excerpt, the fact that the line discussing snooping revealing you falls under the Stealth heading serves as our reason for actually causing snooping to only reveal when stealthing. However, this is only an interpretation of the patch notes, and the change may have been more pervasive and revealed you strictly while hiding (i.e. the line item may have been mis-categorized). This is the point of debate on the subject.

Although a good amount of research was done in the other thread regarding the issue, I've gone back to the newsgroup postings and pulled a few more excerpts from there on the issue. When reading these excepts, it is important to read them without any preconceived notions about the context (i.e. the person is always in stealth mode when attempting to snoop).

Just a few things I'd like in a perfect rougue-friendly world

1. Some kind of a message when people actually see you snoop.

2. Snooping while hidden not revaling you.

I thought that one of the things that was supposed to have been changed was
that now, after the lastest patch, you can snoop without revealing yourself.
But this is still not possible. Did I read the latest change list wrong?

The above quote is in reference to the 8/26/99 UO Live Access patch where the initial "Testing for next Update" note actually had snooping on the list of skills that would not reveal you when used.

Finally, here is a patch note from mid-2000 that talks about changes to snooping:

This information is open to anyone's interpretation because of the lack of clarity, thus fueling the debate. In that stead, I believe that the information lacks the clarity not because it was something that people missed, but it was a level of clarity that wasn't needed (basically snooping always revealed you while hidden, stealthed or not).

[Stuck]

I never saw any of this. All of this info is very ambiguous.

Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden. This will be based on a check against their hiding skill. At zero hiding skill, a player will be revealed when failing snooping 100% of the time. At 100 hiding, a player will be revealed 50% of the time when failing snooping.

They seem to be negating the original mechanics and affects of the snooping nerf with the last 2 sentences above. But if snooping unconditionally revealed prior to this change, wouldn't it read more like this (?):

Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden. Snooping will now only reveal after a failed attempt. This will be based on a check against their hiding skill. At zero hiding skill, a player will be revealed when failing snooping 100% of the time. At 100 hiding, a player will be revealed 50% of the time when failing snooping.

They seem to assume the players reading that patch note already understand that snooping only reveals after a failed attempt, which is why they don't preface the last two sentences with anything.

Just a few things I'd like in a perfect rougue-friendly world

1. Some kind of a message when people actually see you snoop.

2. Snooping while hidden not revaling you.

That post above provides a subtle implication that maybe the reason he mentioned those two things was due to the relationship between a failed snoop attempt and getting revealed. (Strangely enough, he didn't say stealthed, he said hidden. Maybe he misspoke?)

I admit I'm very biased on the issue, but after the snooping change was implemented I did accept it as era accurate and didn't attempt to challenge its accuracy. I never saw any of these posts though. This is leading me to question its accuracy more.

[Mikel123]

I suppose it could be the case that failed snooping while hidden or stealthed would reveal you, since as Stuck said that final quote seems to be implicitly talking about failed (noticed) snoops.

In any case, though... people who played thieves, and people posting patch notes about thievery, did not seem to be the most thorough, detail-oriented people in 1999

[khamaileon]

Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden. This will be based on a check against their hiding skill. At zero hiding skill, a player will be revealed when failing snooping 100% of the time. At 100 hiding, a player will be revealed 50% of the time when failing snooping.

it seems me obvious that this implies that only failed snooping would have revealed you.if it wasn't the case,why the patch does not take in consideration the case in wich you actually succeed in snoop,but only that in wich you fail?does it means that "Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden" only if they fail?i dont think so.it is implicit that a succesful snoop does not reveal you.applying this to all other post and patch,its clear aswell that "snoop will reveal you" implicity means "failed snoop will reveal you".

[Pirul]

Interperting quotes written 11 years ago is a tricky matter. Everyone will see it with the glasses that favors them the most.

For me the patch notes are pretty clear in the sense that snooping reveals.

• Hiding
  • You can no longer hide while casting a spell.
  • Using hiding sets the number of stealthy steps you can take to zero.
• Stealth
  • Shoving past someone while stealthy will reveal you.
  • Snooping will reveal you.

Not much interpretation needed on something so cut and dry as "Snooping will reveal you", no if's, and's or but's.

Then again, I am not a thief, and this works in my favor, thus I don't need to find obscure quotes, and find ways to pick and choose phrases to "assume" that relate to those quotes. But for argument's sake:

Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden. This will be based on a check against their hiding skill. At zero hiding skill, a player will be revealed when failing snooping 100% of the time. At 100 hiding, a player will be revealed 50% of the time when failing snooping.

That quote is from mid-2000, past our cut-off date, and implies that before that patch thieves did NOT have a chance of snooping and remaining hidden, making the current mechanic era accurate.

[Stuck]

That quote is from mid-2000, past our cut-off date, and implies that before that patch thieves did NOT have a chance of snooping and remaining hidden, making the current mechanic era accurate.

I realize that. Read my above post. Look at the way it is worded.

Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden. This will be based on a check against their hiding skill. At zero hiding skill, a player will be revealed when failing snooping 100% of the time. At 100 hiding, a player will be revealed 50% of the time when failing snooping.

I gather from this that, prior to this, players were always revealed when failing snooping, so they negate/alter this mechanic with the last 2 sentences entirely, but they curiously don't mention that snooping no longer reveals you when you succeed?

I mean, there is of course the first sentence. But it still makes sense for this first sentence to be there even if snooping only revealed on failure prior to this, because if that were the case, thieves would not have had a chance to stay "hidden" after a snoop. A failure to snoop would reveal them 100% of the time. They would of course stay hidden on a successful snoop, but that isn't relevant to the "chance" calculation they talk about. Not to mention, most people back then didn't have GM anything. Presumably, most people weren't even GM snooping. So if snooping revealed only on a failed attempt, it's safe to say in practical terms that every thief had a chance to be revealed on a snoop (they all had a chance to fail snooping), which would further explain this first sentence - it would make sense to make a general statement like that. The OSI rep seems to assume that the players understand that snooping concurrently revealed only on failure.

Not much interpretation needed on something so cut and dry as "Snooping will reveal you", no if's, and's or but's.

Furthermore, I think there's even more uncertainty surrounding this issue when OSI officials can't even get their story straight. They list the original "Snooping will reveal you." note under "Stealth", but when they talk about it, the say snooping will reveal you when hidden. Someone has to be wrong. And don't even get me started on the players. Half of them say it reveals on stealth, half say its on hidden. One guy says it shouldn't reveal anymore, and that its only a bug. The evidence pointing any direction on this issue is a mess.

I'm in a position where I don't think any source here is completely trustworthy or should be taken to their every word. They didn't expect their words to be furiously examined and analyzed by people 11 years in the future.

I used to think that patch note was pretty cut and dry which is why I accepted it as accurate even though I was extremely unhappy with it, but now I see there is a large amount of uncertainty surrounding this.

[khamaileon]

Not much interpretation needed on something so cut and dry as "Snooping will reveal you", no if's, and's or but's.

applying this to all other post and patch,its clear aswell that "snoop will reveal you" implicity means "failed snoop will reveal you".

or at least it can brings up the doubt it does need interpretation.

For every person who spent weeks mining
so they could buy a halberd of force only to have you steal it in one
second, I want you to spend weeks wailing and gnashing your teeth.

and this is found in the same google group of others enlightening founding.i want to be able to steal halberds.

o,and i also want fewer all around gold so that you actualy need weeks of mining to buy an halberd of force.

[Kaivan]

and this is found in the same google group of others enlightening founding.i want to be able to steal halberds.

It is patently known that no direct theft of a halberd could be done prior, during, or after T2A due to the weight being greater than 10 stones. The newsgroup posting is not referring to "stealing" the halberd in the direct fashion, since it was never possible.

o,and i also want fewer all around gold so that you actualy need weeks of mining to buy an halberd of force.

Ease of access to money is not solely determined by the amount of ore there is to mine. It is effected by the number of miners, player skill, sales rate of ingots, and the price of such a weapon in the first place. It is impossible to replicate the exchange rate for items and the difficulty in acquiring such items and any attempt to do so would be a deviation from an attempt at mechanical accuracy.

----

On the subject of snooping, perhaps looking for some late-2000 posts and ones beyond then might give us an idea of the insight that players had on the issue of snooping and reveals. Since the patch notes are clear that snooping on a success wouldn't reveal you after the 2000 patch, it stands to reason that someone would point that feature out at some point. If no one does, it is reasonable to assume that the community, as a whole, was not well informed on how the mechanic worked. Given that, if the mechanic was not understood after the change, it stands to reason that the mechanic was equally misunderstood prior to the change. Ultimately this will serve to strengthen our weaken our faith in the literal interpretation of what was said during 1999 about snooping revealing. If the newsgroup community proves to be ignorant on the issue, we can consider the statement "snooping reveals you" to be a very vague description that does not include the clarity needed, while an informed community would serve to suggest that when they say "snooping reveals you" they mean that it reveals you in all circumstances.

[khamaileon]

now im complaining about the title of this 3d.lol few days ago i realy thought it was simple,now i understand this is not simple at all :p