Automatic anti-tracking skill: pass without trace

[BlackWidow]

Simple idea here...

Rangers and possibly druids could have an automatic passive skill which prevents tracking within forested (and possibly other) areas. It's sort of an extension of quiet movement, but I feel druids should get it too.

Like the spell from AD&D 2nd edition, this skill would leave no sign of passage through an outdoors area (forest primarily, possibly hills and mountains as well).

In practical terms, when the ranger (or possibly druid) enters an appropriate area, their tracks stop at that point and resume when they enter an area less suited to this.

I'm not sure where this would go from a balance standpoint if we consider the game's world. Having just forest get covered would make Unsiliel Wood a far more difficult place to track a ranger if you didn't stay on them though... From there somebody could either head towards the Sanctuary (which has a place where tracks could be found) or through Dankbark Forest (leaving tracks once in the Outerlimits), or enter Gasteride (less likely).

[Davairus]

I kind of like this for rangers only. Definitely not druids, but yes to rangers. I think balance is easy, it should just require you to put at least two practices into the pathfinding skill. We could improve a lot of our skills in the same way, just have the base skill that gets 1 pracced and then add a sweetener to entice spending another prac, or don't if you would rather have the train. It'd be cool to have a dilemma of spending pracs or saving for hp for small but minorly impactful stuff like this.

[Vevier]

The skill change sounds cool, but forcing people to two prac to get better skill bonuses does not. Id rather see that kind of bonus tied to a quest or something more meaningful than taking away the option to give up time training for more hps.

[Dogran]

I think the idea of adding possible second benefits to skills that you can take or leave in trade of two practicing is really cool. Could make for some more careful strategizing as you are building new characters, especially for more pk oriented toons.

[Davairus]

Well actually it is no different than spending a second prac for a new skill.

[lionSpyre]

This is very cool, although I’d have the no track aspect toggle like sneak and have it cost some extra movement. The idea being that either you’re actively covering your tracks or taking a more careful/less direct path through the area.

[Rothak]

With the 1 and 2 skill practice to possibly ‘learn’ a newish skill, how would that work for higher intelligence chars? Automatically obtained the possible Bo us if this becomes a thing?

[Kedaleam]

It's actually a neat thought. My thinking here would be you put the extra practice in when the skill hits 100%. So if you 1/2/3 practice it to 75% shouldn't matter. You can put the extra practice in when you mastered the ability. It would put those random practices a person has left over to some use.

[BlackWidow]

Regarding using an extra session after obtaining pathfinding to get this:

The thought seems perfectly reasonable to me. It might require a higher level than the initial skill, and only become available once you have invested enough effort into the previous skill..

Right now, our so-called "skill tree" in AR is really not a tree, but a list of skills/spells (and in the bard's case, songs) that are available once you obtain a given rank. There are no stat requirements, though obviously for physical stuff strength and dexterity matter a lot. We're starting to see potential development of what I'd consider skill trees with the new devotion options at the priest.

There was an MMORPG I played a number of years ago which had skill trees and from what I saw, there were five tiers of skill trees (all doing different things) and you could typically focus on any of three branches while having to decide what you really wanted out of your character. Sometimes it wasn't worth investing skill points (you gained those each time you leveled up) in certain areas. Sometimes you had to invest more than one skill point into an ability before you could advance further along that branch of the tree.

It *would* change things dramatically if this kind of thing happened at a larger scale, but my point is, Dav's idea sounds reasonable enough from the standpoint of metagaming and looking elsewhere for comparisons.

[Ashlyn]

I like it.

[Mogu]

I like this idea a lot. The concept is cool and it really fits thematically. Also like Lionspyre's and Kedaleam's suggestions. Another thought is just to have it available for toggling on/off once it hits 100%. It's like detect magic becoming a part of detect invis once it's mastered.

[Andrael]

If its just going to be for rangers, could just bake it into pathfinding.

[Kalist19]

Idk if ranger actually needs this though. Just played one (hardulf) and they felt really strong.

[twerpalina]

I'd rather not see something like this unless it's an active skill that slows your movespeed or consumes extra moves as you are actively trying to cover your tracks you should not be blazing full speed and passively removing tracks.

If anything, give rangers an improved track instead.

Can you track flying characters btw? If you can, then that should be removed imo and maybe the improved ranger track is the track that can track flying characters in forest based on broken twigs etc.

[Dogran]

You cannot track flying.

[Mogu]

You can track flying and I don't really understand why. It makes sense for balance but that's all.

[Dogran]

If you can actually track flying, it's a bug. I submitted a bug at the beginning of tracking and it was fixed. I can tell when I'm tracking someone and they switch to flight, because they don't give me anything when I type track.

[Mogu]

Okay it might be fixed. I just remember being able to be tracked when I was flying. This was probably a few months ago.

[Dogran]

One thing to remember, is there are still several people really good at anticipating where you might have gone, so it only seems that way.

[Xenyar]

Pretty sure you can still track people who are flying...and you can not track somebody if you are flying