Druid Tracking Skill Level Too High

[Ele]

Currently Druids cap their tracking skill at 125. This is a post Velious enhancement.
Druids should be capped at 20 skill points on Tracking until January 2000 (Plane of Sky patch) when it gets bumped to 50, then bumped again post-Velious.

Skill Level 20
Classic -> Plane of Sky patch

NewGroup postings from December 22, 1999
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/8OQbT7NgBho/xSMzTbTtg8gJ
At least with druids their current cap of 20 makes the skill nearly useless...
but bards have far *better* tracking than rangers in basically every way.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/8OQbT7NgBho/xvwPat8-U18J
The druids lack armor and weapon choices. As a
character of nature, tracking seems fit and a skill of only 20 is terrible.
A skill of 75 is ok but no where near the ranger cap.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/8OQbT7NgBho/Iu0obg8vsukJ
Druids should keep the tracking skill, and it should be higher than 20
(my argument is that it should be capped higher than a bard's
but...the bard's is too high), but not 75. 50 sounds like a reasonable
cap. Further, the skill should be improved so that rangers (and
rangers only) can do more with it, as was requested. My one gripe is
having to wait till level 20 for it, though. A lower level would be
nicer, maybe 12 or so.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/8OQbT7NgBho/gLOKbFj2-OsJ
I'll take Tracking, capped at 20,
over that any day. Honestly, I find Tracking to be a useful tool
even capped at 20, I'm not sure I want the cap raised.


Skill Level 50
The following patch bumped it to a skill level of 50. Plane of Sky patch -> Post Velious patch

January 20, 2000 (Plane of Sky patch) https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/JnDyJE1SdRs/GDyzC4OScIoJ
*Druid Enhancement*
The skill cap on a Druid's tracking skill has been increased. This
change was implemented based upon general public opinion that the
former cap was far too low for the skill to be even marginally viable.


Confirmed via EQ Caster's Realm Dec. 2000 says Skill cap of 50.
http://web.archive.org/web/20001217110900/http://eq.castersrealm.com/creationguides/Druid.asp

Finally, should be bumped up to skill level of 125 in a post-Velious patch

Skill Level 125
March 6, 2001 Patch Message http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2001-1.html

-- The tracking skill cap for Druids has been raised to 125. It was the
intent for druids to be better at tracking than they were, however
before the scroll bar, smaller skill numbers were often considered
better. With the tracking improvements from the last patch, this
increase was appropriate.

[oddibemcd]

Couldn't believe this, so I checked out the old Prima strategy guide for RoK and lo and behold, it lists druid tracking as maxing out at 50 as well.

[Calabee]

bards are better tracker then druids till velious? lawl

[Ele]

bards are better tracker then druids till velious? lawl

The original devs said lower tracking skill was "better" as it didn't clutter the limited tracking window with stuff across the zone. But with the unlimited track window here...

[Splorf22]

ITT: TMO/FE/BDA prepare to PL ranger/bard trackers

More seriously: nice research. It's amazing you can find stuff like this after the server has been up 3+ years

[Handull]

nice work, but would seem only fair to fix this bug and also remove the scroll bar from the tracking window at the same time, since they were explicitly tied together on live, as evidenced by the patch notes.

[melkezidek]

Not that I dont agree this should have been in. But by the time this does go in it is going to be scheduled to go out? So.... whats the point?

[SamwiseRed]

I was just telling someone bard track was supposed to be higher than druids. i had no idea druid track was that low but i did think our emu one was a little off. good find.

[Froglok]

As painful as the change is...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PX7fseE4voc/THKgo90ZE9I/AAAAAAAAAEo/otHsqf3Qhc4/s1600/make+it+so_2.jpg

[Ele]

nice work, but would seem only fair to fix this bug and also remove the scroll bar from the tracking window at the same time, since they were explicitly tied together on live, as evidenced by the patch notes.

All for limiting the number of targets in the tracking window and removing the scroll functionality, if we can get a UI fix on this.

Cross-Reference to previous bug report regarding scroll bar for tracking window.
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20264

[Ele]

Not that I dont agree this should have been in. But by the time this does go in it is going to be scheduled to go out? So.... whats the point?

Have to get the patch timeline correct for the eventual (if ever) proper timeline server in a few years. Additionally, the 125 skill doesn't come until 3 months post-Velious release, so Druids will have to live with 50 for a while.

[Ele]

bump

[this user was banned]

bump

[kanras]

Druid tracking cap reduced to 50, pending update.

[quido]

lol YES!

[Korpskugga]

Why make a change that you know Verant didn't intend and you will haveto change back a few months later ? why not spend that time to fix broken quests and such ?

[Versus]

lol Elethia, destroyer of souls.

[nilbog]

Why make a change that you know Verant didn't intend and you will haveto change back a few months later ? why not spend that time to fix broken quests and such ?

Why are you hating on rangers ? And what quests are broken?

[Handull]

Druid tracking cap reduced to 50, pending update.

-- The tracking skill cap for Druids has been raised to 125. It was the
intent for druids to be better at tracking than they were, however
before the scroll bar, smaller skill numbers were often considered
better. With the tracking improvements from the last patch, this
increase was appropriate.

any work being done to make ranger tracking more classic?

[nilbog]

any work being done to make ranger tracking more classic?

Can you explain further?

[Handull]

Can you explain further?

From the patch notes link in Ele's original post:

------------------------------
February 21, 2001 3:00 am
------------------------------

*Patch Day*

*Tracking*

Tracking now works in full view for all classes that can use it, and
sports a nifty scroll bar that allows players to see everything on the
list. In addition, the /trackplayer setting is now saved to the
eqclient.ini file.

The following options have been put in for Rangers only:

--- /tracksort
--- /trackfilter

*/tracksort options beginning with R are reverse order


And then two weeks later:
March 6, 2001 Patch Message http://everquest.allakhazam.com/hist...es-2001-1.html


-- The tracking skill cap for Druids has been raised to 125. It was the
intent for druids to be better at tracking than they were, however
before the scroll bar, smaller skill numbers were often considered
better. With the tracking improvements from the last patch, this
increase was appropriate.

The point is that before you could scroll or sort the Track window, a lower skill in Tracking had some benefit, that being that you could see most/all mobs in the area around you. A higher tracking skill in a crowded dungeon allows the tracker to see new pops around them, but not all the mobs in the area.

My point is that while fixing druid track to 50 is a step towards classic, and the scroll bar change was a separate patch, the patch to give druids 125 skill clearly says that this change goes along with the addition of the scroll bar, so to change druid track to 50 without trying to remove the scroll bar seems unfair to me, and since a dev hadn't adressed the scroll bar yet I wanted to bring it up again.

[Ele]

As it relates to all tracking for the time being until the post-velious release upgrade (Feb. 2001):

The tracking window should be limited to 20 entries.

from the first link in OP:

What they really need to do is to FIX tracking. Make it filterable, make it
customizable, make it hold more than 20 frigging entries, add a scrollbar, and
make it usable for more than seeing what's newly spawned in the entire zone.

[Nneen]

Just to let you guys know how worthless a skill of 50 tracking is, I am currently in Oasis and just got track so its at around 50. Sitting on the 2nd pillar I can't even track crocs that i can see to the right before the first hill. You may want to ask the community what they think of this because I can see this seriously frustrating people who have already had a higher skill and it be taken away.

[Sundawg]

Remember back in the day it was only 1st person view and even a track of 50 skill would be useful in that environment.

[Ele]

Remember back in the day it was only 1st person view and even a track of 50 skill would be useful in that environment.

Please take me with you.

[kanras]

Capped tracking at 20 NPC results, pending update.

[Handull]

Capped tracking at 20 NPC results, pending update.

doin work kanras!

[Labanen]

...

[Pufferfish]

Curious, shouldn't Druid Tracking be moved up to 125 by now?

I ask because today I checked my skill level, and it's been reduced to 20. Seems like the opposite direction.

http://s10.postimg.org/ldj15a3x3/Druid_Tracking_2015_12_30.jpg

[Ele]

Curious, shouldn't Druid Tracking be moved up to 125 by now?

I ask because today I checked my skill level, and it's been reduced to 20. Seems like the opposite direction.

http://s10.postimg.org/ldj15a3x3/Druid_Tracking_2015_12_30.jpg

you on red or blue? There has been a constant issue on red regarding the client/UI thinking it is in an older era while the server implements the later era and shows the lower skill.

[Doctor Jeff]

This is a visual bug, your skill is not actually at 20. You can tell because it will give you skill up messages still. Go to your trainer and put a point in it to fix to bug.