Scrying - Full Name?

[Eyeliner]

As such, I would be saddened to see Loremaster deleted without another just-as-viable option for that specific RP niche to be granted to players.

I don't think "delete loremaster" (or even "delete scry") is the opinion of the majority of players or developers. More like a very vocal minority on the forum who bring that to every thread vaguely related to the class. I wouldn't worry about it just being taken away though of course an overhaul is always possible.

[Xerah]

It's honestly getting to the point where I'm going to start locking threads about:

• Delete Scry

• Delete Loremaster

• Wizard sucks

Please keep that in mind moving forward.

[Xerah]

It's honestly getting to the point where I'm going to start locking threads about:

• Delete Scry

• Delete Loremaster

• Wizard sucks

Please keep that in mind moving forward.

Why?

This has been a largely constructive thread on the whole with ideas being bounced about. I don't think what you're saying is necessary.

Delete scry is not constructive. Here are other ideas for scry is constructive. Those topics have been beaten to death and people are annoyed to hear them.

[Kaeldre]

Personally, I think the concept of scrying is awesome. It is one of the few mechanics that can define a character, or better yet be a foundation to build an identity around. The world would feel less magical to me if it were cut out of the server.

That said, it does seem silly to me that people use scrying to break disguises. It seems reasonable to add a spot check against the targets disguise when a scrying attempt is made. Much like with pariah and exile mechanics it would probably be best to put such a mechanic behind a hidden threshold of disguise, otherwise everyone everywhere would just be disguised all the time.

[Rydala]

I'm against removing scrying not only because it's a path to interaction but also I disagree with the resounding reason for why it should be removed; in this case the troublesome problem is not scrying itself but the barrier to entry is far too low (not a slight at loremasters).
Returning to the initial suggestion for making scrying more difficult - I don't think names are a good enough source for this particular divination power as this is what I consider to be the reason it is so easily abuseable (specifically how easy of a scrying method providing a name is. Doesn't even require the scryer and scried to have ever met).

I think there's a lot of creative solutions to increase the barrier to entry and also get non-diviners involved in the process. You'll forgive me if the suggestion I provide has already been touched upon - this is a lengthy threat.

##########

• Diviners require some substance to attune themselves to the person they are scrying upon.
  Each race would require different lore-flavoured materials for them to be scry-able. Reason being, the diviner should at the very
  least know the race of the person they are trying to spy upon. If they have the wrong materials, no name given is going to reveal
  anybody to them. Here's an example of what I have in mind.

Diviner's Medium (Halfing)
Herbalism DC: 20
Description: A seemingly crude assembly of materials are in fact invaluable to inquisitive diviners.
Materials:
1x Pot of Dirt (a niche product that brings in trades in order to produce scrying materials. Also dirt is in line with the "Earthkin" for lore-flavour).
1x Garnet (perhaps each race could have a different gem associated with them, again bringing in other trades and lore-flavour)
1x Animal Blood
1x Fish Guts (I may be wrong but I think diviners traditionally used entrails and such to perform their soothsaying)

Once this item is activated it would be like using a speedy messenger.

I also like the previously mentioned idea of having a very heavy scrying fixture to reduce meta-gaming of going around a corner to scry someone to break a disguise. It would also make much more of an event out of scrying. If you are the attackers roaming surface/UD you should naturally have less information to go off of than the defenders in the settlements with access to this scrying fixture.

[-XXX-]

Regarding easy disguise counters - this has always been and shall likely remain to be the old-fashioned killbash.

People who quickly sneak off to scry-check a character whose name is in brackets likely aren't above inventing lame excuses to killbash just to make sure either (the "remove your hood or die" policy has become very common in towns).
Point being: the scry mechanic is not the problem here.

[Kalthariam]

As I've said before.

This isn't because Scrying is bad.

It's because the server's been infected by a player base that "MUST WIN" and overly relied on PvP combat to deal with any form of conflict.

Both the Surface and the Underdark are massively notoriously awful about this, and you have entire factions of people that clearly are not here to Roleplay, they are here to PvP and use excessively weak excuses, Meta game, and break continuity all the time to enable their ability to PvP others.

This behavior has been left to run rampant for years, and it's only getting worse as time goes on. The more time goes on, the less Arelith feels like an RP server and more like a PVP with some light RP server.

If you want tools to stop being abused, you have to address this PvP mindset and "I MUST WIN" attitude that has unfortunately become engrained into the server.

No amount of removing things like scrying is going to fix this issue. You can remove scrying and people will still continue this behavior, they will simply find some other way to skirt around the rules and find excuses to jump straight to PvP.

TL;DR

It's player behavior, not tools, that are causing the issues people are frustrated by, but for some reason they just want to kick the can down the road, instead of picking the can up and tossing it in the trash. Removing RP cookies because some people abuse them is not going to fix the issue.

[WanderingPoet]

Scrying is a very interesting feature, I've had it on two characters and barely found it all that useful. I wonder if there are certain 'good uses' for it that could be amplified to make it a better and more fun overall tool, while reducing the potential for misuse.

For example:
-Finding where friends are
-Listening to conversations
-Seeing who someone is with

What are the good uses that people like to use it for and build better narrative? I think I could live without listening to conversations, personally. Usually you'll get nothing useful and sometimes you'll get some super big secret that more often than not nips a cool plot in the bud.

But it is fun to scry friends to hang out with them, or use it to find out where you need to defend from enemies. So rather than making scry require a full name, maybe scry should just be like the telescopes that let you see number of PC's/NPCs in an area. But instead let you scry a person's location and see roughly where they are and how many people are with them; but make it harder to block while on the move.

Then you could get rid of the whole teleporting to another zone to scry bit if you can't hear them.

Of course, this might amplify scryganking, so perhaps it has a long cooldown per person. The more people you're with, the more you can scry them and track them. But you can't scrygank a lone person.

[Xerah]

Reminder to stay on topic.

[D4wN]

Already had the discussion about scrying in general before so I won't repeat that. In terms of scrying full name, I think it's okay to scry on first name only but if you only have partial name I don't think that should be okay. I also greatly dislike the "True Name" scrying that entirely bypasses someone's disguise and is then used to oust disguised people. You can't find someone with a messenger or a yoink on their real name if they're in disguise and scry should work the same. If someone is disguised you need to know their alias imo.

[-XXX-]

I doubt that we need even greater incentive for characters to run around disguised 24/7.