Searching a Room

[Puciek]

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!

That's the thing, the problem is not with the chance you get from the search itself, that is quite balanced. It's the fact that it's used too often when there is no indication that the area was compromised that's the issue. Honestly, what high profile person do you know, IRL, that when they enter their office they start any conversation by remodelling the room to make sure no one is hiding somewhere? Even politicians with security detail do not do that all the time, which ironically is why they fall to bugs.
And this will only promote this behaviour further.

[Andruid]

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!

I don't hate this suggestion, though I don't know if it'll gain much traction. I do appreciate the tossing around of these kinds of ideas.

[Andruid]

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.

While I don't necessarily agree that removing the limitations on searching would result in everyone spamming the command all the time (especially if searching continues to be MV-expensive and time-consuming), I do think that hide/sneak has some major issues and that these issues deserve their own thread. The system was modified during a time when I played a major criminal type, and those changes didn't really improve the experience for coverts at all, IMO. Ultimately, the clunkiness of hide/sneak contributed to my losing interest in the role and taking a step back from playing that kind of villain. Even after mastering both skills, it wasn't worth the headache and risk.

[Voxumo]

I think reducing the wait timer from 7 days to 24 hours would be the smartest choice, as that seems far more reasonable. Though I also do like the idea of separate search commands, which in the past I believe there was something akin to that, with Search and Search Thorough. Was never sure as to what the difference was between the two commands, but they were presented as different commands.

As for the reason people would have to search... Well frankly there are characters who become the frequent targets of attacks, be it magical or mundane, and who have legitimate reasons to be paranoid, especially if it's an unfamiliar location. Imagine political figures in our modern day don't just go to a location without their security force securing the location first, which could be akin to a person searching an unfamiliar room.

For example, if I were asked to meet someone at the queen's, I wouldn't be suspicious and search the queen's upon entering, but if someone asked me to meet them in some random wilderness location, it may raise a few flags and suspicion meter would be high.

[Kinaed]

Andruid was correct about the reasoning around one search attempt per OOC week. Searching for people hiding is an unintended consequence.

I am also disappointed at the level of hositility players have directed at one another on the boards recently. At this time, I think we're in generally aware that it's a handful of players, and I'm going to have to take stronger steps than gentle reminders like Niamh has already posted if it continues. If someone insults you, DO NOT post back a rebuttal. Instead, drop me a Request Board and walk away until I've had a chance to review it. NOTE: a disagreement is not in itself insulting, but using personal identifiers or accusations when discussing a topic is. Thank you.

Niamh, please add searching rooms for ppl vs secrets to Staff Talking Points. Thanks!

[Niamh]

Done!