To be able to sneak by block monsters..

[moraq]

It would be nice to use ie. move silently or shadowdancing skill to sneak by block monsters, like the specter at night in orc town...

[artic]

One word: Game balance!

Oh, thats two, oh well...

[moraq]

It would be only logical that you could sneak by monsters too big for you, but still get to the place you wanted to.

What kind of a balance issue does it produce?

[artic]

What kind of a balance issue does it produce?

Well mostly if there are blockers there is a reason for them- maybe some great treasure in the other room or something. Basically blockers are balancers- they keep players of too low level out of a room. (At least this is the idea of blockers, if a area coder places blockers to where they do not belong, that idea does not work.)

What would be nice though, and i also mentioned it in another topic- would be a nice message saying : "As you try to sneak past <blocker>, hes keen eye notices you and he qickly steps infront of you, blocking your way." or something like it.

[moraq]

Indeed that's my point also, the diseffectines of Move Silenty and such skills, as you don't get prompted in any way; it makes me feel that the skill didn't do anything. And for the balancing we could say:

- The higher your move silently / shadowdancing is the higher level you are, no? and with higher skill you could sneak past bigger monsters.

- For newbies to get treasures could be limited by increasing the skill / success % for monster to be able to sneak by.

[thoran]

What kind of a balance issue does it produce?

Blockers to eqmonsters/quest items are there for balance. Consider a situation, where you could sneak into the room, pick the key up and go back without killing the guard. This would be, in many cases, much easier than actually killing the guard.

I agree, this would be "realistic", but then the quest would have to be changed some other way to make it hard to perform, or the balance would suffer.

IMHO, if we would change this to be possible, we would VERY SERIOUSLY downtune the overall possibility of sneaking, probably add a mastery that rises very low and allows you to sneak to monsters. I know that most people would be against this.

[brich]

I sneaked a bit...ok maybe a bit more and I would say that blockers are good for balance but a message (or set of them ) would be very nice. For example whe I try to get in the room the blockers block ( ) I could get a message : "As you try to open the door the guards notice you from among shadows ! "
That is if there is a door ... In other cases there could be oher messages...Let's not forget that those are guards for a reason. They might not guard their back very good but their eyes should be on the doors and such. Ah, did I say they notice you?
This gets me to an evil thought of mine: a sneaker tries to "override" blockers? Let him have it! Ok...ok...maybe with a bit of skill in move silently and such he could only get a mesage like : " You try to sneak pass the guards but you see them suddenly grabbing their weapons and change your plans ! ".
Hmm....maybe that message could be given by another skill :combat sense ... or something
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy another Brich Inc (tm) crazy idea

[khade]

and if you don't have this skill combat sense, you get stabbed in the back, or something.

[moraq]

Well maybe it's not the best of ideas.

[cutter]

I sneaked a bit...ok maybe a bit more and I would say that blockers are good for balance but a message (or set of them ) would be very nice. For example whe I try to get in the room the blockers block ( :) ) I could get a message : "As you try to open the door the guards notice you from among shadows ! "

The problem is, all the blockers already have 'custom' messages. So someone'd have to write new custom messages for 'trying to sneak past' for every blocker already in game or you'd only see the difference in new areas. And I think we have better things to do...

[artic]

The problem is, all the blockers already have 'custom' messages. So someone'd have to write new custom messages for 'trying to sneak past' for every blocker already in game or you'd only see the difference in new areas. And I think we have better things to do...

I don't! show me how, and i'll fix those blockers!

[brich]

Someone said my 'idea' would be against rp. Well...I'ld say that if not for rp it would be at least for "atmosphere".
That aside I kinda knew the "many custom messages to change-problem" would arise and thought a bit upon it. I sure don't know coding but I hope the next few words of mine would
help a bit...here goes: there is that "typomessages" feature arround. I say: could some of its code be taken and used to act so that before the sneaking player gets the "guard blocks your way" or any of that it would be replaced with messages like those I said. There aren't many different messages arround (as far as I know) and they seen to have a pattern that the code could recognize. I also think that this new "feature" could be "attached" to the move silently skill. No one else would use it...Ah the mages ...same to them ( attached to the spell they use)...
I sure hope I succeeded in saying what I thought. maybe there's something there... aaaanother Brich Inc (tm) product

[cutter]

That aside I kinda knew the "many custom messages to change-problem" would arise and thought a bit upon it. I sure don't know coding but I hope the next few words of mine would
help a bit...here goes: there is that "typomessages" feature arround. I say: could some of its code be taken and used to act so that before the sneaking player gets the "guard blocks your way" or any of that it would be replaced with messages like those I said. There aren't many different messages arround (as far as I know) and they seen to have a pattern that the code could recognize. I also think that this new "feature" could be "attached" to the move silently skill. No one else would use it...Ah the mages ...same to them ( attached to the spell they use)...

I have absolutely no idea what "patterns" you are talking about. The typomessage thing doesn't have any patterns nor does it recognize anything at all, it simply chooses a random message from a large list of "funny" random messages, so it doesn't solve the problem at all.
Random messages are not acceptable. (Try, for example, the specter on my first area. The blocking message (besides being one of the worst ever written...) is completely incompatible with any random "Guards notice your sneaking ...".)

[cutter]

The problem is, all the blockers already have 'custom' messages. So someone'd have to write new custom messages for 'trying to sneak past' for every blocker already in game or you'd only see the difference in new areas. And I think we have better things to do...

I don't! show me how, and i'll fix those blockers!

First, become a full wizard (I don't know if we allow dev-wizards to access other wizards area code even in special cases - Idles? Belannaer?).
Second, find every blocker in the game (well, that's rather simple question of recursive grep).
Third, write the new messages.

Simple as that, doesn't require any real coding skill as what you essentially are doing is just a simple "replace this with that" operation.

[brich]

I said I don't know anything about coding ...it was just an attempt of mine to brainstorm something good...It is not possible at this time I understand. Please excuse me if I stick me nose were 's not my biz ...sorry
We have a saying in Romania :" A child with too many nannyes has a hard life!" or something like that. Too many "good intentions" sometimes hurt ...