Clarification on Seek and "Tracking"

By Dr Lucky, in Proofreading Changes

I sent this in to the Beta email but I figured I would post here too for the community to weigh in:

We were trying to get a sense for the Seek Force Power today and we had a bit of confusion, particularly with the meaning of the word "track" as it is used in the upgrades.
The word "track" is not used in the basic power and is only used in the description of two of the upgrades: the Control upgrade in the left column and the Duration upgrade. That Control upgrade is required to reach the Duration upgrade on the tree.
The Control upgrade says "Spend [Force point] to track up to one additional target when using this power. The user can activate this multiple times." However, the basic power isn't a tracking effect - it gives one-time insight into location or sees through concealment effects.
The only tracking-type effect in the tree comes from the Duration upgrade, which reads "The power grains the ongoing affect: Commit [Force die] after successfully activating the basic power to find the direction of a person or object. Whenever the person or object moves, the Force user becomes aware of this movement and of the person or object's new general location or the direction he must follow to reach it." To me, this sounds like actually tracking. However, the brief description of the Duration upgrade (in the tree itself) says "Commit [Force die] to continue tracking target even when it moves." (which seems even stranger because "continue tracking" makes it sound like you were already tracking that target, which makes no sense for a one-time effect).
From what I can tell, one of two things is meant to be happening here:
- The Control upgrade is intended to allow a character to activate the base power (gain insight into the general location of a person or object) against more than one target, which is not an intuitive use of "track." Perhaps the use of the word "track" should be changed to "locate" or something similar in this upgrade (in its large description and its description on the chart); or
- The Control upgrade should be switched with the Duration upgrade immediately below it on the chart. Essentially, that means the Duration upgrade allows the power to be used to "track" and the Control upgrade then allows a character to track more than one person/thing.
As it stands, either the word track is used in an unclear way (and should be defined at the very least) or you are required to buy an Upgrade that you can't use until you buy the upgrade below it (and there is no other way to reach it on the chart).
Thoughts?

The upgrades are fine as they are, there really isn't any need to clarify anything as I see it.

As for how the power works, here's an example: You and your group are in combat, chasing after two guys, and they split off in separate directions - you've lost them. You kick off Seek and using the base power, get some solid rough ideas of where one of them presently is. So then you use the upgrade, and now you've got a a rough idea of where the other one currently is as well. Then you decide to commit a force die so you can keep better tabs on both of them, getting new flashes every time they move somewhere new or make a drastic change in course. That's essentially how it works.

The use of the word "track" isn't a way of breaking upgrades apart from the base power. "Track" is just a short term so they don't need to repeat "... gain insight into the general location or direction of a person or object previously encountered, regardless of current distance." in each upgrade that applies to it.

Besides, if "tracking" only applied to the continued insights of the person/object, then there's issues where Duration couldn't even function since it specifically says "... to continue tracking..." So if the base power itself was not tracking anything in the first place, then Duration would have nothing to continue tracking.

Also if you follow the descriptions of the power it doesn't say you can really "track" with it anyway, except for that one upgrade. Sounds more like "you sense they are that way...somewhere" or "you get a flash of him roaming the aisles of a department store."

The upgrade just allows you to "track" by getting regular updates when they move. So "Now you see him running through a stock room.......now a loading dock..... now he's in a dark place with lots of shipping containers" would give the players a clue that he's ducked out the back of the store and slipped aboard a truck.

You'd need the magnitude upgrade to get more "A store manager nearby him is wearing a green shirt and a nametage shaped like a cartoon Grootox with a huge smile."

Sometimes I think this power should be called "Pinpoint", rather than "Seek". I like the specificity of the word "pinpoint", which suggests homing in, requiring precision (such as with the shatterpoint mastery upgrade), rather than the general wishy-washiness that "seek" implies.

Also, changing the name of this power would help bring some variety and get some distance from the "Seer" specialization and the "Seeker" career. Too much "see-" words for my tastes.