Searching a Room

[AlwaysShunny]

Can we tone it back a little? It seems like a lot of these threads lately always end up in some sort of heated exchange for some reason, and it's super discouraging for people looking to participate.

I agree that 7 days is too long. I think it should be maybe 3 days at least, or at least with a CNOTE for repeated searches.

[Lei]

Yeah... it would be really nice if we could discuss things without hostility here. We the players are not going to see eye to eye on everything with each other, or with the staff. My question wasn't an attack on the stealthy types.

[Rothgar]

I agree that 7 days is too long. I think it should be maybe 3 days at least, or at least with a CNOTE for repeated searches.

I didn't think about cnoting, but yeah, I agree, that might be something worthwhile. Maybe a prompt that comes up whilst searching, like with the Southside border and other things? That'd remove the 'you can't search here again,' by placing the onus of reason for searching upon the player.

[Andruid]

If I'm remembering correctly, the current 7-day limit came into play around the time secrets were introduced and, as has been suggested, is intended to curb abuse and limit metagaming.

I think the limit was probably mostly focused on secrets and that the inability to double-check the room for stowaways or stalkers (things that can change from day to day, unlike secrets, which are semi-permanent) may be an unintended consequence. Definitely worth bringing up, IMO.

Though I understand the purpose of the hard limit, I'm not particularly fond of it either (it's quite arbitrary) and wouldn't mind seeing alternatives that are more flexible and can be dictated by RP rather than an arbitrary time period.

[Niamh]

For the pair getting hostile with each other, please stop so other people can discuss the topic at hand. Thanks!

[chronodbu]

I believe the search timer was set to avoid people spamming search to find hidden exit.

I do feel it could be rather relevant to check a room for snooping folks though if you feel your scene should be private and your character is reasonably paranoid, aka lawful types or high security characters.

Might it be possible to divorce noticing sneaky/hiding folks from search and attaching that to a new command?

[Percival]

Pretty sure sneak/hide scales skill vs wisdom of the searcher as to whether they're revealed, so this should cause no extra harm to the hidee. Would need a code check on that.

[Puciek]

Pretty sure sneak/hide scales skill vs wisdom of the searcher as to whether they're revealed, so this should cause no extra harm to the hidee. Would need a code check on that.

You mean that people being able to willy-nilly run searches in rooms as they please for player, without having to need just cause, will not hurt sneak/hide players? How exactly so?

From someone who uses those skills a lot, hide/sneak is already not only weak but bloody expensive to train and use. You need two master slots, you need quite a bit of OOC knowledge how to use it to use it well, people can have triggers for "noisy" sneaks to spot you before you can re-hide (and a lot of people do), it leaves extremely obvious tracks, people can set watch on direction to be almost guaranteed to see you sneak in, they can lock you in between rooms as you sneak by, or they can simply sit in a room with closed doors, without even locking them, which will kill the idea of sneaking (especially works well with watch), or you can simply get lucky, no matter how good the sneak/hide is, you can always be simply randomly detected on entering/leaving room. And then there are some other ways I won't say but I don't want to shine the light on them on a public forum.

So to effectively sneak in you have to get to the area before the victim, not leave tracks, not be seen along the way, and hope to not get locked in along the way (omitting anything of the above will have high chance of compromising the sneak in) and then, still, all it takes for someone to press search just because "they are a high profile player" to likely nullify the effect because when one person does types in search - the whole room usually follows, so even if you will get one luck roll you won't be getting two of them. Oh hell, often when that one person will find nothing the next emote is "Well, I found nothing, but you are better at this search than I am." and here rolls the dice one more.

And people say that we should give everyone additional tool in their arsenal to combat it - a search with no/little cooldown to nerf it even further, that costs no master slot or xp? I swear I want my master slots back. And then neither of the above protects against the real eavesdroppers in this game which has very little to no counter.

[Percival]

Hoo boy. Never take up magery.

[-+[-__-]+-]

What about extending search utility? Instead of one option to cover everything, have different options. "search room" lets you look for hidden people or objects and has a cooldown of 8 RL hours. "search secrets" lets you look for hidden exits and has the seven day cooldown. This still prevents spamming in homes of a better roll but allows for more realism in use, which feels to me like solid middle ground.

If it's too easy to find a hidden person with regards to skill versus stats, I think that's worth its own separate thread to discuss!