Locate Soul range on Epic

[BrQQQ 2,854]

Currently there is a maximum of 200 tiles range for Locate Soul spell on Epic.

 

On a 4096x4096, I think this is WAY too small. To give a perspective, that's half the width or height of the hota zone. This means if you can locate people, they're already close enough to hit your local in a minute or maybe two.

 

I suggest a distance of roughly 500-1000 tiles, which is approximately 1/8th to a 1/4th across the width or height of the map. This still means you can't "scan" for pvp by locating everybody you know, but it means the spell is actually useful.

[Wargasm 1,926]

-1

 

I think even on an a small map, you'd have the same issue.

[necroe 696]

-1

 

This is by far one of the better changes to pvp on that cluster.

I would love to see it end up on chaos as well.

Edited February 18, 2018 by necroe

[Meep 284]

Rather see it removed completely, just boring when ppl sit and spam locate before they dare to leave deed

[BrQQQ 2,854]

Personally, I think the "locate them from deed using the priest" is a dumb thing and this locate change removed that.

 

However, the main problem is if you're chasing anybody. Say you run across someone in local and then they disappear. If they run away in a random direction, you have roughly a minute to locate them. After that they're just completely gone. Any element of tracking is gone and it's pointless to bother looking on such a huge map unless you know where they are going.

 

Having a slightly larger locate area means you can actually chase down people without letting people sit on deed scanning for people. A 500 tile range is from one side of hota, to the other side's end of build zone. That's enough to track people and not enough to scan from deed, which is seemingly what this change tried to achieve.

[necroe 696]

If you come across someone randomly and they get out of locate range... well you likely lost them anyways.

[BrQQQ 2,854]

Well that’s just plain wrong... 

[SmeJack 5,796]

Its another one of those changes made in the name of fixing pvp that ultimately just makes it happen less

 

+1 for returning better use

[Beastwolf 650]

No its reasonable to have to be within range -1 -1 -1 -1, this change was a very good one.

[AlphaWolfen 160]

-1 as its good for catching the direction beyond a pendulum and not letting spam be possible.

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by AlphaWolfen

[MrGARY 12,421]

a reasonable limit on max distance helps block sitting on deed with a caster alt spamming locates

a reasonable limit on min distance helps block encouraging running away to avoid pvp

 

500 tiles to see how it goes seems reasonable to me

 

can't even compare to a pendulum because body nolo blocks pendulum 100% where locate soul can break it

[Rocky 299]

-1 Having a "Radar-System" in a Medival-Game is stupid anyway.

[Inventor 549]

This is what you are suggesting. I'm not convinced your suggestion prevents safe on-deed priests locating people.

[platinumteef 2,198]

-1 the range is good, sitting around shitting out locates from a safe deed on a priest alt is retarded

[platinumteef 2,198]

if we had a good map you wouldnt need to ###### out locates because it wouldnt be a 45 minute ride trying to find people

[BrQQQ 2,854]

3 hours ago, Inventor said:

This is what you are suggesting. I'm not convinced your suggestion prevents safe on-deed priests locating people.

 

To me this just shows that the suggested minimum is pretty good. The only "safe" locating that could happen is a locate between Kronos and Carlsborg, which I don't think is a big issue considering they're both deeds that are bordering the no-build zone of hota on the northern part.

 

 

I think that if we had a 2048x2048 map, a 200 tile locate would work fine. On a smaller map, I think no locating at all would be perfectly fine. On a 4096x4096 map, having no locate soul just sounds like anti-pvp to me.

 

[platinumteef 2,198]

15 hours ago, BrQQQ said:

 

To me this just shows that the suggested minimum is pretty good. The only "safe" locating that could happen is a locate between Kronos and Carlsborg, which I don't think is a big issue considering they're both deeds that are bordering the no-build zone of hota on the northern part.

 

 

I think that if we had a 2048x2048 map, a 200 tile locate would work fine. On a smaller map, I think no locating at all would be perfectly fine. On a 4096x4096 map, having no locate soul just sounds like anti-pvp to me.

 

 

i wrote up a huge reply on how a non blockable locating mechanic is antipvp/anti gameplay in and of itself but decided against posting, because the devs are ignoring everything epic related anyway

 

tough it out for 2 more months and when we hit the 6 month mark if we don't get a new map just move on like everyone else imo

 I want to see a good working map over a broken locating mechanic that destroys small scale traps and forces people to logout for hota and other events

 

[Angelklaine 4,266]

-1

 

I agree wholeheartedly that locate soul should remain in its current form. If the map wasnt utter garbage, you wouldnt need it anyways. Take for example Chaos. Guy comes and triggers Dadd's alarm then runs. You know there are very few places he can go. If you are south (capital) and he doesnt come into your local, then you know he is either going north or north west. So you head in that direction. Locate soul serves as a way to tract down that person which is running in a general direction you already know. (I know it doesnt work the same on Chaos. But humor me.)

 

On Elevation, Locate Soul is worthless. Why? Because the guy can run in any direction and you need to guess what way he went.

 

The problem is not the spell. The spell is fine. The problem is the ###### map people are forced to play on. Change the map, problem solved. Altering the spell to accommodate the map would be a travesty.

Edited February 20, 2018 by Angelklaine

[MrGARY 12,421]

I think the best idea would be to increase the range at least somewhat to scale to the map size like some of the lurkers do now, but take the older ignored idea of an invisible resistance on the targeted account and make that grow in power every attempted locate

 

This makes it a chance to locate someone, but if you fail its going to get increasingly harder to locate them at all and you'll have no idea if they're online or where.  90ql ring with 90 power cast and 90 power body cast or higher which is all very easy to do will make the initial locate already very difficult to pull of (from my testing the 90-95 mark across the board is where it has a good impact).  But as always said before locate vs nolo whether its balancing either of them or removing either of them there will never be a truly proper achievable balance

 

Another option is make it hit 500 tiles max at first, but gives the priest itself a resistance that reduces the max distance towards 200 based on the power of resistance.  Something like 0=500 tiles, <20=440, <40=380, <60=320, <80=260, <=100=200.  This would mostly benefit people that are attempting to chase and/or create pvp as the bicycle priest on deed will entirely be useless fast.  Power gained per cast can be decided by the devs playing with a dart board and picking the number they hit

[platinumteef 2,198]

5 minutes ago, MrGARY said:

I think the best idea would be to increase the range at least somewhat to scale to the map size like some of the lurkers do now, but take the older ignored idea of an invisible resistance on the targeted account and make that grow in power every attempted locate

 

This makes it a chance to locate someone, but if you fail its going to get increasingly harder to locate them at all and you'll have no idea if they're online or where.  90ql ring with 90 power cast and 90 power body cast or higher which is all very easy to do will make the initial locate already very difficult to pull of (from my testing the 90-95 mark across the board is where it has a good impact).  But as always said before locate vs nolo whether its balancing either of them or removing either of them there will never be a truly proper achievable balance

 

Another option is make it hit 500 tiles max at first, but gives the priest itself a resistance that reduces the max distance towards 200 based on the power of resistance.  Something like 0=500 tiles, <20=440, <40=380, <60=320, <80=260, <=100=200.  This would mostly benefit people that are attempting to chase and/or create pvp as the bicycle priest on deed will entirely be useless fast.  Power gained per cast can be decided by the devs playing with a dart board and picking the number they hit

 

in other words,

 

lets add twenty more bandaid mechanics in an attempt to bandaid said mechanic that has no real place in the game, other than the fact it tries to bandaid the real problem ,which is a 23 trillion tile map with sub30 people playing on it

okay

 

the real achievable balance is a proper map, and then people understanding the concept  that if they want to find people they need to leave deed?

1. get rid of locate soul altogether and keep pendulums and nolo on body as a priest vs non priest power check

2. give us a good map (see the 7,000 suggestions on how to fix this)

3. fix the skilling on freedom vs skilling on epic problem to encourage people to actually spend time on epic (see the 7,000 suggestions on how to fix this)

4. fix the missions so people find them fun to do again (see the 7,000 suggestions on how to fix this)

5. add more interesting things to do on elevation aside from a hota that happens on a scheduled timer at a static location, and a depot that happens on a scheduled timer at a static location (see the 7,000 suggestions for things to do)

6. more fun stuff = more people playing. smaller map = more density with more players = people will run into each other naturally and theres no need to locate someone from 800000 tiles away to find out if they're off deed

 

the problem is if I think gary is off deed (or even if I dont, if i just wanna go look) I have to follow a set route (literally one route to every location) and its a 45 minute ride to where I think you might be, but in that 45 minute time it took for me to get to your possible location, you had 45 minutes to go afk take a giant ######, maybe run to the convenience store and grab some sunkist and lotto cards, come back scratch them off down the sunkist and then complete a mission or whatever and run home

 

don't get me wrong, we do have a problem; but i'm tired of settling for bandies and everyone else should be as well

 

[MrGARY 12,421]

I don't really view it as a bandaid, more of a balance check that also applies to a new smaller map that everyone agrees elevation needs

 

5 minutes ago, platinumteef said:

get rid of locate soul altogether and keep pendulums and nolo on body as a priest vs non priest power check

 

This part I find curious.  Every priest has locate soul because it was imbalanced that only Vyn had it, but now people go backwards and want it removed instead.  If locating was purely pendulums, the new meta would be to just have everyone nolocated with any power cast doesn't matter and then entire groups are invisible and scouts/runners are invisible and mines to hide/wait in will appear all over the map, because even if you're a non priest with no nolo or your cast ran out and don't have time to recast, just dip in a mine while you're too far for a pendulum to hit you and the extremely short local distance will give you plenty of time to stealth before someone might come close enough and they might think you got away because lurker only works on your current layer.  For this to work imo pendulum cast needs to be at least power=tile radius, check both surface/mine layer at the same time, and probably not be 100% blocked by body nolo.  but then it'll be the same argument of it being too weak vs becoming too strong

 

14 minutes ago, platinumteef said:

the real achievable balance is a proper map, and then people understanding the concept  that if they want to find people they need to leave deed?

 

even with old elevation and its higher population, we would still be locating people to see if they were out to do a mission in x spot or something like that to see if it was worth going there without wasting time finding no one.  running to peoples deeds to find them there generally didn't create much of anything because everything was a trap to everyone by the time the first couple years of epic passed

 

The problem probably is that in wurm mechanics can both promote pvp and are anti pvp at the same time, but even with a proper map I think that's more an issue that lies with the players themselves and how they use it, whether mechanics are "bandaided" or removed or left as is.  who knows, its better to sit back chill and fix these x3s on freedom atm because nothing will fix epic unless the map is changed and people can be kept for more than the one time premium purchase

[Moonpoppy 428]

I don't think the issue is the locate range... its more the map.

 

If you actually review the current Elevation map, the majority of the outer circle (outside of the hota "island") is completely deserted! Making locate soul pretty useless anyway, especially locating long distances.

 

I'd take the old elevation map over this one any day. I really don't understand how players allowed this map to be approved.... maybe it was because the first option was that bad? Fix the map and then potentially re-evaluate things like locate soul etc.

 

I would love to see a smaller map with more spread out deeds promoting roaming etc.

Edited February 20, 2018 by Moonpoppy