Problems with the Rogue class

[MatronDeWinter]

Titles:
Currently, you can spot a theif very easily. Look at someones paperdoll, if they have absolutely no title, just check myuosa, if they have any skill GM, you know they cannot give a murder count.

The OSI patch says that they removed the "professional" title for members of the thieves guild. The professional title is "Grandmaster Pickpocket, Master Rogue, Expert Armswoman", not "The scoundrel, The Evil Lord, The Admirable".

This should have no effect on theives because, how often do you see a high (level 4) famed thief? I believe this patch was intended to allow players to NOT show up as "Grandmaster Pickpocket" at high fame, not as a means in which one can instantly spot a thief.

I remember thieves almost ALWAYS showing up as "The scoundrel".

I will reiterate my first point as well as propose another concerning the
problems with disguise kits.
1) You get an NPC name. If the disguise kit can change your name, why
wont it let you enter a name of your choosing? I mean the Scoundrel
Ernest is a dead giveaway right?

Detection:
Somewhere along the line, someone who had no business writting a guide for uo.stratics, did just that, wrote a guide for uo.stratics. It was on Forensics, well the Detective to be more specific. In it, he claims that you can reveal the perma-status of a thief via the skill. This is just not true, nor has it EVER been. If this was ever possible, the people who played thieves would remember it. Forensics should not do anything other than tell them if you are in the thieves guild.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 4e0b8e3b58

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 28faef733c

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 1ce90e9575

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... b61d20d3db

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 7ec831f1c7

I should also add, that the chats also mention that using the steal skill, without being guilded, and targeting a thief, was a bug that was fixed. It does not look like that should be here either. There are several references to that method of thief detection "doesnt work anymore" ect.

Snooping/Stealth:
As much as I would just rather not bring this up, I know that hemperor will come in here with his thief-hate mongering philosophy and post it.

There was a time when stealth was the cats meow. You could walk over people, move more than 10 tiles, almost never get revealed. Peoples homes were getting looted, they were angry about it, and thus, OSI gave stealth a good old nerf.

In this nerf, stealth-steps were limited more, you would now reveal when you pushed through another mobile, if you moved within 8 tiles of anyone with any decent INT, you would reveal, snooping revealed you.

In a chat between Ralph Koster and some other guy (found it on that same website), Ralph suggests people use Detect Hidden in their homes to prevent theft. The next poster goes on to suggest making Detect Hidden always work for friends/owners of the house, which we all know came to be!
(not totally related, but I think it shows that R.Koster was a reasonable guy who paid attention to the players)



On march 20, 1999 GM Runesabre posted this about the changes to stealth.

I have read thru many of your ideas and concerns about stealth. I do
realize stealth is not simply a thief/rogue skill btw.

Tentatively, here are some changes that I might consider making to
stealth. Comments welcome.

- Keep pushing thru a player revealing you... I think that is ok.
Limit this only to players though. Allow that you can push thru
non-players like rats, monsters, etc without revealing you
automatically.

- Reduce the passive, automatic revealing to a distance of one tile
instead of what it is now. Basically have the automatic reveal check
only work when the stealther is standing right next to another player.

- Make it so you are not auto-revealed by a guildmate. This allows
people to stealth in groups instead of being loners.

- If you manage to snoop without being noticed, then you are not
revealed.

They clearly understood that the snoop-reveals-you completely defeated the purpose of stealthing. If you check OSI to this day, you will not reveal when you snoop. I really doubt that snoop-revealing was in the game longer than a few weeks.

[Jill Stihl]

Titles:
Currently, you can spot a theif very easily. Look at someones paperdoll, if they have absolutely no title, just check myuosa, if they have any skill GM, you know they cannot give a murder count.

I don't follow this bit? I just looked at two of my characters with other characters, neither of them show any info except their name on their paperdoll, and they do both have some GM level skills. They are not thieves and can give murder counts.

[Karik Verlee]

Titles:
Currently, you can spot a theif very easily. Look at someones paperdoll, if they have absolutely no title, just check myuosa, if they have any skill GM, you know they cannot give a murder count.

I don't follow this bit? I just looked at two of my characters with other characters, neither of them show any info except their name on their paperdoll, and they do both have some GM level skills. They are not thieves and can give murder counts.

Matron is wanting it so your other toons paperdolls will say the sinister, the kind, the whatever if they are a thief. Apparently right now all it is is their name if they are in the thieves guild. I think I'm understanding that right.

[MatronDeWinter]

My thief has a title of "The malicious Matron de Winter Grandmaster Pickpocket".

If someone looks at her paperdoll, they will see "Matron de Winter".

If she was not in the thieves guild it would show to someone else as
"The malicious Matron de Winter"

If she was level 4 fame, and IN the thieves guild, it would show as
"The Illustrious Matron de Winter" to someone else.

If she was NOT in the thieves guild and level 4 fame, it should show as
"The Illustrious Matron de Winter Grandmaster Pickpocket" to others.

Edit: Karik is basically right

[DarkWing]

If you don't like the Professional Title you have .. lock every Skill except the One you want! like Anatomy (will make you a Healer)

you don't need the GM's to Fix every little detail to make you happy!

[Karik Verlee]

If you don't like the Professional Title you have .. lock every Skill except the One you want! like Anatomy (will make you a Healer)

you don't need the GM's to Fix every little detail to make you happy!

Did you read the post?

He doesn't care what skill is displayed for her. He cares about his TITLE(Such as karma/fame) not his SKILL TITLE.

Matron is saying thieves karma titles don't show up to other players after they join the thieves guild.

[MatronDeWinter]

If you don't like the Professional Title you have .. lock every Skill except the One you want! like Anatomy (will make you a Healer)

you don't need the GM's to Fix every little detail to make you happy!

I dont think you understand the issue. Thieves should not show a professional title at all, and they dont. They should show the karma/fame title though, which for some reason they dont.

EDIT. Karik beat me to the punch again! Posting the same time I did.

[Mikel123]

if you moved within 8 tiles of anyone with any decent INT, you would reveal

This sounds hilarious. Anyone ever see Mystery Men? In that movie, there's a character who names himself Invisible Boy. His superhero power is that he can become invisible, but ONLY if no one is looking. Sounds like stealth turned into that at some point.

Second observation, regarding house looting and such... it always amazes that I played in the same era as all you guys, and I was so woefully ignorant of so many things. I wish I remembered more about UO back then, but as far as I can recall, I don't remember a damn thing. I don't remember house looting, zero-delay, teleporting into/out of tower eaves, onto house roofs, etc. I was minding my own business, playing the game, and meanwhile there was this entire other game going on.

No joke, if I had a time machine, I think the first thing I would use it to do would be to travel back to 1998 and play UO for a couple years with my current knowledge.

[Kordavox]

Second observation, regarding house looting and such... it always amazes that I played in the same era as all you guys, and I was so woefully ignorant of so many things. I wish I remembered more about UO back then, but as far as I can recall, I don't remember a damn thing. I don't remember house looting, zero-delay, teleporting into/out of tower eaves, onto house roofs, etc. I was minding my own business, playing the game, and meanwhile there was this entire other game going on.

Well put; I was in the same boat. I worked on my tamer and my mage, farmed earth elementals with my fencer... ran frantically from PK's. I never got looted (I just had a small house in a terrible location. I think it was perpetually surrounded by a gang of gargoyles.)

I just don't recall all these specifics.

[Karik Verlee]

Ive never seen house looting as much as on this shard. Peeps are nuts here.

[Kaivan]

Snooping continued to reveal you until this patch in early UOR.

[Silverfoot]

Snooping continued to reveal you until this patch in early UOR.

Now, I know the first sentence of that patch note reads, "Thieves will have a chance to snoop and remain hidden." But, the full patch note implies that if you are successful at snooping you will always remain hidden, only when you fail do you have a chance to become visible. Perhaps prior to this you remained visible on successful snooping and were revealed on failed snooping no matter what. It kind of feels like an assumption is made that snooping always revealed you prior to this patch, which to me this patch note is not enough information to confirm.

Edit: Let me clarify what I mean slightly. There is nothing in here that says to the effect that a player will remain hidden after successfully snooping, which could mean that prior to this, successful snooping did not reveal you.

[Kaivan]

In theory that implication would be true (keep in mind this only applies to snooping while stealthing), except that there is significant evidence against it.

Here are 2 excerpts from the 3/12/99 HoC chat involving the snooping changes:

Glamdring - *El_Barto* 2 Questions: With the new changes to stealth, you're basicly making it useless to the thief (reveal on snoop). How are thieves supposed to survive?
DD - First off, we don't want stealth to be to antisocial a skill. And we are going to work hard to make sure that it is a viable skill but isn't useful only for stealing and killing. We've made several revisions on Test Center even since the update stuff was posted on the website... those changes are no longer exactly current.
DD - For example, stealth no longer checks the people around you when you start stealthing--instead, we made it harder to stealth up towards groups. This allows players who are in groups to help "protect" each other against thieves, while leaving the lone guy in the woods still more vulnerable. That way players can protect themselves against those using the skill for that purpose.

Glamdring - *DrubDeviL* For the thieves....Why nerf stealth when you're adding friends of the house the ability to detect without fail or skill gain. That alone will make homes secure again...
DD - Because we're not worried only about house breakins. We are also worried about the fact that it was just about impossible to take any preventive measures against a thief who stealthed up to you, snooped, stole, and ran away.

Here is the 3/28/99 line item regarding the changes to snooping while stealthing:

Snooping will reveal you.

Finally, here are a couple of newsgroup posting by players commenting on snooping while stealthing and how it revealed you:

Snoopinng & Stealth:
At 100 in each of these, I dont think I should be revealed when I snoop
into someone's pack. I have heard it proposed that snooping only reveals
you when you fail. I think this a great idea. It gives a rogue more
incentive to concentrate on rogue related skills and not some other
combat skill or something. Maybe if snooping and stealth are over a
certain level, you can snoop without being revealed.

2. Snooping is nerfed. It is totally worthless to the Rogue. I can hide
and I can walk 16 spaces in stealth walking. But when I snoop a pack,
I'm revealed. It does me no good then to even stealth up to you. The
only way to counteract this is by waiting next to the person you want to
snoop, snooping, waiting for his pack to open and then hiding again.
Hopefully you hide successful and the player does not notice.

Given this progression of information we can see that the March 99 change explicitly states that snooping would automatically reveal you at all times until the change in early UOR. The only other possibility is that failing to snoop while hidden (not stealthing) would always reveal you when you failed and was subsequently changed after this patch to give you a chance not to fail. If the alternative is true, that would imply that no change happened to stealth snooping, thus making it operate the same way during UOR as it did during T2A. In either of the two circumstances, no information exists so support the position that snooping while stealthing did not reveal you.

[MatronDeWinter]

So you are saying, that no-snooping while stealthed is how is "should" be here?

When was the max stealth step reduced?

[Kaivan]

Stealth steps were halved with the 3/28/99 patch (I know the second quote says 16 steps, that doesn't mean it was done all in one skill use though).