What's up with hips

Spura · Post by **Spura** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 3:21 pm

How was HipS altered? I hear people are getting, you have been detected messages when they use it even though those same creatures can't detect them if they come hidden.

Post by **Netrom.dk** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 3:25 pm

I dont know if any updates has been made to hips lately, but i think i heard once that if you disapear infront of an enermy he will go into detect mode, that might be the reason why they now can see you

Brennan068 · Post by **Brennan068** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 8:30 pm

Just to add a little info from a shadow dancer. I am spotted the first time I use HIPS everytime. I can be in a wide open field with my enemy laying dead at my feet, no other creatures on the horizon and I'll still get "You've been spotted!" when I hide during or after combat. During combat, I can understand that creatures should be trying to spot me and go into detect mode, that's fine, fair and expected.

There was concern a while ago about HIPS being too powerful and "double clicking your hide hot key = auto success"; I may very well be wrong, but I suspect this has been implemented to remove this exploit, but it is annoying as ****. I can literally sneak around these creatures (walk in circles around them to get the best spot for running after a sneak), yet I always fail on first hide during or after combat. I need wide open spaces to be able to keep far enough ahead of a beastie to hide.

I understand people being afraid of shadow dancers and crying for them to be gimped, I really do. I was afraid of them, so I made one myself. But, the class is about hiding (and specifically hiding in plain site, even in PnP.) The pale master is about crit imunity that isn't fair for rogues, let's take that away! (j/k)

Thanos · Post by **Thanos** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 1:04 am

Maybe they need to tweek it some. Trying to compare HIps exploit to immune critical is like comparing apples to oranges. Shadowdancer should be more than a 1 trick pony. Maybe now the developers can fix the summons and otherstuff so people may actually take more than 1 level of shadowdancer instead of taking 1 level SD just for a HIPS that is broken and a exploit.

Brennan068 · Post by **Brennan068** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:53 am

Apples and oranges are comparable. They are both fruit, their seeds are on the inside, they grow on trees etc.... they are similar yet different. Shadow Dancers and Pale Masters are Prestige Classes... they are similar yet different.

Shadow dancer is way more than a 1 trick pony (esp in PnP) and I agree the summons needs to be buffed a bit to be of comparable power to the other summons in the game.

Hide in Plain Site is not an exploit. The exploit was auto success on double hitting your hide. It should be a hide check vs the creatures spot check. A simple contest of skills. If the creatures do not have high enough spot to see a shadow dancer when he is sneaking up on it the first time, it should not auto-fail when he uses his skill in battle. What I'm trying to say is auto-fail is not a balance for an auto-success problem.

I did say I was joking about gimping the pale master. I don't think any gimping should be happening. I think that the players should be able to use their abilities that they pay for by taking the classes that they do. When the abilities are proven to be so overpowering that everybody is taking that class to use them, then you have reason to gimp. But looking at the player base online anytime I log in, there is a pretty good mix of classes. I think the 1 PrC limit, combined with the certain factions having exclusive rights to certain PrCs rule, has done its job wonderfully.

People who don't invest skill points in spot and listen were the ones crying for shadow dancers to be gimped. The problem I have with this, is that the shadow dancer can be beaten by the contest of skills as above. If you really want to seriously bring the other PrC's into why you should not gimp the SD, PM's critical immunity cannot be beaten by anyone taking some particular skill or feat. Other PrCs have their strengths don't take the Shadow Dancers' away.

JesterOI · Post by **JesterOI** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 9:18 am

Stealth does stealth get a 1d20 vs Detect 1d20, or is it just Detect that gets the 1d20 roll to see who wins? If it's only the detect side, I would say that people using the Detection mode have a definite advantage.

HPD_234 · Post by **HPD_234** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 9:23 am

Ok, no PrC class should be gimped or have anything taken away, it's silly. HiPS is just that, Hide in Plain Sight. The ability to strike, hide, strike, hide, has been taken away where a character has to step away from it's foe out of combat mode in order to use HiPS again, fair enough. Then some critters were boosted spot skills where HiPS isn't as effective and True Sight, which I'm not sure is supposed to detect HIDDEN PC's, does. Now we are talking about tweaks that will totally disable HiPS and make it useless. One may as well go Rogue and pick up the same skills.

My personal view on the SD is this: Personally I don't think HiPS should be gimped at all, besides taking away the ability to Hide while in attack mode which prevents the Hide/Attack exploit. Also I believe that Hide is only supposed to work in dark or shadowed areas...not in open fields in broad daylight (also acceptable). I also think that taking one level of SD for HiPS is cheesy. HiPS, in my opinion, is what gives the SD its uniqueness; and is very powerfull when used right. I believe that the HiPS ability shouldn't come till later SD levels, maybe even 10th and move Improved Evasion and UCD3 up to 9 or earlier. This would prevent the one level of SD for a powerfull skill. Also, the summons are pretty much useless, even if you take 13 levels of SD for the Epic Shadow Lord. It is still a very weak summons for an Epic level character. The Epic Shadow Lord should have been given something like Improved Invis, or Conceal Self or something appropriate for a Shadow; maybe low strength, high dex and finesse for many strikes but low damage, etc.

I understand the one PrC limit, I may not like it, but I do understand it and accept this. But if the fuss is over PC's not being able to spot SD's then boost your Spot skill. Just like a PC that is having problems with being Disarmed by a fighter type...boost your Discipline skill or deal with getting your weapon being taken away.

Don't change the skills to adapt to the PC's, make some changes to PC's to adapt to different types of encounters. Some PC's will do very well against magic users and horribly against melee characters. It's the nature of the beast. Adapt and overcome!

Thanos · Post by **Thanos** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 1:28 pm

[quote="HPD_234"]

But if the fuss is over PC's not being able to spot SD's then boost your Spot skill.
[quote]

If thats how it would work I would agree with you. Hips out of the box always works on the 2nd try and you can hide multiple times during a round. You have no chance to detect no matter how high your spot or listen skill are. That is why the developers are working on a solution to make it a resonable skill. With no motification to Hips it's all cheese and a one trick pony show. yeeeehaaaaa

Brennan068 · Post by **Brennan068** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 2:37 pm

I have no problem with modifications so long as they keep in mind that auto fail is as bad as auto success; currently it seems to be set to auto fail. I know my hide move silent skill is sufficient to accomplish certain things. I can sneak into a room of mob x. Right now, it appears (and again, this is observation of ingame mechanics, I don't know if a dev has really modified anything or not) that someone has gimped my pony; making a feat (note: feat, not skill) not work. Auto fail on first hide and then most mobs very quickly zoom in on my character even if I do manage to get a hips off. These are the same mobs that I can sneak up on, wander in amongst, rub shoulders with, bump them out of the way, and get myself in to prime position to have room to attack and dash so that I have time to stab the hide key several times in order to finally get hips to work after I make my first attack.

This is the primary reason I will likely not be advancing any further than lvl 1 shadow dancer. I'm better off working my rogue levels to get better sneak attacks so that one attack that I do get will do it's job. Thanks for the cheeze. My original plan was for at least 5th SD, and likely 10 or more, but to be an effective character I'll need to max out my sneak attack damage since it seems I'm only going to get the one shot now. Now, I'm going to ride that one trick pony rather than explore the SD class further.

BTW, stabbing the hide key toggles hide/not hide, so you cannot just jab the key several times and expect it to always work. If you were successfull one time, you are suddenly stepping out of the shadows again on the next. Auto fail has forced me to adopt a twice quick approach and that is still not always successful (in fact it rarely is.)

Post by **Lokey** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 3:33 pm

You can beat HoU with 1 level SD regardless of whatever else your character does. It can be done with a 8 hit die character if you can stomach "playing" that way (hear it's endlessly tedious). Does this sound like a balanced ability?

Brennan068 · Post by **Brennan068** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 3:57 pm

No, but then again neither is crit immune (PaleMaster), +n damage soak (Barbarian / Dwarven Defender), or devestating crit (any fighter type, this one has already been ganked, but everybody knows that before they start building for it) or immunity to fire and +10 str,cha,con (or whatever the RDD gets for stat boost) or... there are lots of unbalanced abilities and I don't have a problem with modifications like I said. The problem as it stands now is that the shadow dancer's primary (feat) ability is unbalanced in the other direction, making it broken from my observations. My only real issue here is that classes are being gimped before the play justifies it. How many Shadow Dancers are on the server? They are far from being the most powerful of PrC's, if they were unbalanced super powerful, you'd see more of them.

This is my opinion, don't take it as a slag against the great work the dev's have done here because in general I'm very happy with (and horribly adicted to) NS4. You guys have done a great job. I'm just voicing my opinion in hopes that you don't go overboard with the limiting character abilities.

I play various characters in all of the factions to find where I belong when beta is over, and to see if I can spot any bugs. This is just an observation of what has happened to my shadow dancer, he isn't critical to me, I'd just like his primary ability (hide/ms) to work.

Thanos · Post by **Thanos** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:31 pm

You have some valid points. Immune critical is overpowered because it was meant to be a mage prc class. Not a fighter PRC class. Dev critical has been removed from the game. Maybe the easiest solution is to remove the SD prc from the game then no one can cry either way.

Brennan068 · Post by **Brennan068** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 11:14 pm

Sure. Let's yank the Shadow Dancer from the available PrC's. Next, Pale Master, then Red Dragon Desciple and Dwarven Defender. Oh, wait, I saw some weapons masters and champions of Torm on tonight, let's yank those PrC's too... [/sarc]

My point is not to yank the PrCs, just don't cripple their abilitiies until they are shown to unbalance the server. Experience in NS3 has led the devs to yank dev crit and I'm ok with that and I think most players in NS4 are too. I'd also be fine with modification to shadow dancer's hips ability if it proved to be unbalancing. Numbers so far (to the best of my knowledge) seem to indicate that given the choice of 1 PrC, most will not take the Shadow Dancer, I know that I rarely see other SD's on the servers that I play on (1 & 4.)

As far as a SD being over powered, I know that I struggle with ogres with my sd... if all my levels were in cleric or straight up fighter type, I'd be walking all over them. I cannot go toe-to-toe with them. I have to hit and run. That is ok, because it is the intention of the character and eventually I see him as being quite powerful. He isn't now.

For me, I use Hips to enable solo play when I cannot group. In combat with a group, I rarely use it unless I'm being sacked or my party mates need some healing and I need to wade into battle to help them out.