Forensic Evaluation Discussion

[MatronDeWinter]

Oddly enough, I just heard about this. I have no idea how you guys snuck this one in here on me , but currently Forensics suffers from 2 immediately noticable flaws.

The UOSA Patch
"Forensic Evaluation will reveal a perma gray thief"

Ok, I'm absolutely positive that this was never the case at any point in the history of UO. Lets take a look at every Official UO patchnote pertaining to Forensics..

Thieves Guild, new skills, and more Feb 24 1999 1:06PM

The introduction of Stealth, Detect, and a bunch of other great espionage themed changes. This patch included a slight modification to the Forensics skill to give it more use.

Forensics
Using this skill on a player will reveal their affiliation with the Thieves Guild, if they are members. The difficulty of this is based on the thief's Stealing skill.

If you have a certain level of ability in the skill, using it on recently picked containers will reveal who the lockpicker was.

The professional title for this skill is now "detective."


UO Live Access Patch Aug 26 1999 12:39PM CST

This one gave us the ability to use many great skills and remain hidden.

"The following skills will not unhide you when they are used: Detect Hidden, Item Identification, Anatomy, Arms Lore, Animal Lore, Evaluate Intellect, Forensics Evaluation, and Poisoning."


Server Publish Mar 9 2000 10:52AM CST

Several click-target skills had a reduction in delay. Including Forensics.

Skill delays for the following skills will be shortened to one second.
* Animal Lore
* Arms Lore
* Anatomy
* Item Identification
* Detect Hidden
* Enticement
* Evaluate Intelligence
* Forensic Evaluation
* Sprit Speak
* Taste Identification

Forensics originally only told you some information on corpses. From it's creation up until the above listed notes, there were no changes to the skill.

UO.stratics.com currently has this information available on the skill...
* Using Forensic Evaluation on a corpse will reveal the name of the killer and of those who looted the corpse.
* Using Forensic Evaluation on a player will reveal their affiliation with the Thieves Guild.
* Using Forensic Evaluation on a lockable chest will reveal who has recently picked the lock of that container.

and this from an old Stealing Guide...
To see if someone is in the Thieves Guild use the Forensic Evaluation skill on them. The higher your Forensic Evaluation skill, the more chance you have of finding out who's in the Thieves Guild.

Here is something that I think we all enjoyed reading back in 1998-1999. The Detective Profession Essay.

Here is a quote from the essay..
This skill is relatively easy to raise to 90, if tedious, with apparently marginal incremental benefits. Raise it by use on anything that has had a crime committed on it. Simple. So, go to the box room in the Warriors Guild in Britain, or anywhere where urchins open boxes, steal etc. Try it on corpses, animal or human. It is a pain to raise, boring etc., but will work. Also try beggars, NPC thieves and thief guildmasters.

Why raise it? Firstly you fail less. Secondly, you are a detective, it's a kind of have-to-have skill. Thirdly, at higher levels you can blow thief disguises. Don't kill yourself to GM it though.


I remember "higher levels" as being 80.0 base skill. I actually worked this lousy skill up to gm on the first character that I ever created. While granted "blowing off a disguise" was fun (albeit pointless), I will never forget how annoyed I was that it would not tell you who is/isnt perma.

Another intresting thing to note about the skill is the wide-spread rumor that.. (quoted from the essay)
"using Forensics Evaluation on you, you can be noticed a lot easier 2 minutes after it's used on you."

There is no "official" mentioning of this, and I never once could tell a difference in the "difficulty" of getting caught, and yes we did perform a double-blind of sorts. I think this one is along the same lines as "food makes you gain skills easier", which we know now to be false.

"To reiterate, even if the skill tells you "This individual is a thief" you cannot attack him in town, unless he is otherwise gray or perma. You WILL be guard-whacked. Outside town, of course, you can pick a fight, sure in the knowledge that there will be no count, but it is of course at your risk."




Okay, This essay was changed post-t2a, sadly stratics is horrible about placing dates on their essays/works. What is listed now goes against my personal opinion and everything listed above...

"If you are a member of the NPC Thieve's Guild, any player who successfully uses the Forensic Evaluation skill to reveal your membership in said guild may either attack or steal from you."

!!??! But what about this quote from above..
"To reiterate, even if the skill tells you "This individual is a thief" you cannot attack him in town, unless he is otherwise gray or perma. You WILL be guard-whacked. Outside town, of course, you can pick a fight, sure in the knowledge that there will be no count, but it is of course at your risk."

I firmly believe that this (false) statement is the cause of this whole argument. I'm going to use the internet archive to check the page
http://uo.stratics.com/content/reputation/flags.shtml
to determine when this blasphemy was added. After all, it is an essay sent in by readers of the website.

Edit: The internet-archive started caching this page in 2002 .


Lastly, I noticed that Forensics works on previously lockpicked containers, even with a skill level of 0. While I know it's not difficulty based, the skill level should be your % chance to successfully tell who picked it, if I'm not mistaken.

[MatronDeWinter]

The archived (from our desired time period) noteriety guide from uo.stratics is convienently missing the parts about Forensic Evaluation "revealing perma status".

Take a look at the correct archive page.
http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_con ... tent=30626

Realistically, there is no proof in favor of this change that I can find.

[Kaivan]

This is the earliest archive of the flags page, just after UOR came out. That particular line shows up in this page as well, and the reason that we interpreted the information to show that a thief who was perma-grey would have that flag revealed is because of the surrounding contextual information. Lets take a look at the specific paragraph under the perma-grey section that brought us to the conclusion we have:

Things you should know

Simply being in the Thieves Guild does not give you a Perma-grey flag. But since most thieves join the Thieves Guild with the intention of stealing from innocents, they become Perma-grey pretty soon.

This establishes that you do not receive the perma-grey status from simply being a thief, but many thieves eventually receive a perma-grey status

If someone attacks you, you will highlight grey to them (after you get hit, or move 1 square) letting them know you're a perma-grey. Anyone can steal from you. Even if they are not a member of the thieves guild. This can be useful for training purposes, but it can also be annoying at the bank.

Obviously this is in the context of actually being a perma-grey. It would be foolhardy to assume that a player who was simply a thief would display the perma-grey status upon being attacked. One other useful piece of information is the italicized text about stealing from a perma-grey theif. This mechanic was removed as part of the 1/24/2000 patch, which dates this article to before that time frame.

If you are a member of the NPC Thieve's Guild, any player who successfully uses the Forensic Evaluation skill to reveal your membership in said guild may either attack or steal from you. If a player attacks you and that player dies and reports you for murder, you will be suspended from the thieves guild for the amount of time it takes for the short murder count (8 hours) to decay. While suspended you still cannot give murder counts, but cannot use the disguise kit or steal from innocents.

Again, this is in the context of having the perma-grey status. Its extremely unlikely (and unfounded from any other evidence on the skill) that a section talking about perma-grey status, and the effects that you need to consider while a perma-grey would suddenly jump context and talk about a thief without a perma-grey status.

However, this is still something that is open to debate. The rest of the surrounding information in that paragraph is verify-ably wrong (and somewhat understandably so) when speaking on the perma-grey status and the way that a thief would receive murder counts and receive a suspension. It is known that a thief's actions were considered aggressive actions where they would not be able to defend themselves until they were no longer an aggressor (2 minutes without actively attacking or without taking/receiving damage from the victim), and is verified by the early February 99 HoC chats where Designer Dragon explains the changes in detail. Whether a person received an aggressor flag, or was able to give a murder count to the thief was not related to the perma-grey status. Secondly, the suspension from the thieves guild is verify-ably incorrect directly from the 2/24/99 patch notes that clearly explain that murder counts result in a summary expulsion from the guild with a minimum 1 week wait time to re-join (i.e. you can now give murder counts yourself). So, given the incorrectness of the surrounding information of the paragraph, and of the information detailing the functions of the perma-grey flag earlier in the document (the same mistake about aggressive behavior is made there), it is not unreasonable to consider that the information about forensic evaluation might also be incorrect.

In any event, that is how we have interpreted the information from that particular document for the moment. If anyone can find some information from newsgroup postings or other era sources, then perhaps we can close the book on any debate about how this functioned.

Update to respond to:

The archived (from our desired time period) noteriety guide from uo.stratics is convienently missing the parts about Forensic Evaluation "revealing perma status".

Take a look at the correct archive page.
http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_con ... tent=30626

Realistically, there is no proof in favor of this change that I can find.

That guide is notoriously missing the entire perma-grey flag section. Given the time frame of the section, this is understandable. In June 2002, OSI removed the aggressor flag for theft, but as a direct result it resulted in two bugs emerging:

• Thieves no longer received the perma-grey status
• Thieves who were killed within the first 2 minutes of stealing an item would retain the item on them as if the item were blessed (presumably a bug with returning the item to its proper owner).

Given the first bug, it is understandable that any guid that had been updated (the last update to the guide was in May 2009), would remove that flag because it was no longer an attainable flag.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Here is a second age wikki on using forensic evaluation to reveal perma.

Do control F then type in Forensic.

http://wiki.uosecondage.com/?title=Beginners_Guide

It's under "colours" for the flagging system.

Of course it is an updated version.

[archaicsubrosa77]

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 0d41686aaf

From Nov.2 1999

tells how Forensic Evaluation was being used to reveal perma.

[Kaivan]

Interesting post, however the above story that is quoted showed that the thief was not perma-grey when he challenged the other person to attack him (a common thief tactic was to remove perma-grey status after a theft and then claim that they were still perma-grey).

Its difficult to say that the person quoting the text understood the situation, and that throws some doubt on to their assertion about forensics, however this serves as a possible suggestion that forensics might have revealed a perma-grey status to the detective.

[archaicsubrosa77]

The question was if he was perma grey or not, the response was that he would only see if he was perma grey using forensic evaluation. He wasn't there to see the thief die and ress. He only gave a response as to how you could tell if he was flagged or not.

[Kaivan]

The problem is that perma-grey thieves who were noticed by anyone would continue to remain visibly perma-grey to their victim until death. For the victim, there is no need to use the forensics skill to determine anything about a theft, unless the thief got away with the theft unnoticed. That is the primary concern that I have about the post; the person responding to the quoted text did not have a clear understanding of the mechanics of perma-grey, which throws the information about forensics in to doubt as well.