Stealth in Action

2. Players need a way to dispel magic. For example, LIGHT. OMG if someone casts light on me one more time while I'm stealthed I'll lose it. There's no counter to this currently. It's really annoying to have light cast on you for 3 minutes while you're trying to hide. Awesome griefer move.

That's actually a pretty cool example of using tactics against a stealth player. It would be nice though if there was some kind of spell that could dispel all light sources in the area, including magical light sources. Or even a darkness spell, which would create a field of darkness.

6. Casting magic while stealthed SHOULD remove stealth. However, stealth spells should not have this effect, imo. In the video there's a point around the 3:00 mark where someone to my left casts Vanish on themselves and then casts another spell on themselves from the Moon Magic school (probably Night Vision) and they destealth!

Kind of what Bowen is saying; it depends on how magic works. Even if you do remain stealthed, definitely, the visual effect should still show, at least temporarily letting the opponent know where you are.

12. Sneak Attack should not work when you're not stealthed, it currently does work, just for less damage.

Similar to how Coup De Grace works even when the target is over 20% health, and there's no chance of a death blow. I don't think the skill name should be taken too seriously.


Oh... and I'd still find a Blink + Sneak Attack combo fun

 

I like sneak attack working stealthed or not. Having the ability to inflict more damage to an opponent while flanking them might be the best tactic a pure rogue has. I'm thinking of a person with a high dex not str... They need their skills to work even at reduced damage. Besides who wants a glyph in their deck when it does nothing?

Light should reveal a stealthed player. Although a dispel magic would be nice but maybe the resist magic could be a proactive way to eliminate the light problem. Let it just resist the light spell entirely and that problem is dealt with for those willing to take the spell.

Keep in mind stealthers will have access to all kinds of speed and blink stuff to help run away if they get revealed.

 

The short swords, daggers, and high dex should result in less damage than those who would wield more damaging weapons, but have the chance to do more damage when critically hitting an opponent. the increased chance for critical hits from the high dex and the weapon's critical chance should make them very effective damage dealers if they are lucky.

It seems kind of fitting that the rogue would be more of a chance/luck based character. Relying on critical hits and sneak attacks to win fights rather than predictable damage dealing. Then a solo rogue/assassin might beat somebody down fast one fight but always be on the lookout for escape routes if they fail to land critical strikes early on (including the sneak attack).

So maybe the rogue should indeed be able to finish somebody off quickly but they need luck on their side. In any case this type of character might be considered annoying (yet a definite threat) to the other character types.

 

I'm about to test it myself, but has anybody seen how stealth works against monsters?

I can understand not doing one hit kills in PvP but a damage cap should be much higher against monsters.

 

I don't think there's any luck needed when you're stealthed behind someone and stabbing them in the back. It should pretty much be game over.

 

Oddly, I don't like the idea of non-magical stealth being innate. While I can agree that coming up on someone from behind would result in a stealth-like advantage.. actually employing the skill should be an untimed mode with its own set of rules.

I should be able to walk up behind someone unstealthed if I want to do that.

 

Yeah the sneak attack should kick butt. Maybe sneak attack damage could be modified by another skill as well or something like that? I don't know, either way it seems like it needs to do more damage.

Also after testing it and seeing another person in stealth my first impression is that I like it... for magical stealth. I hope the natural skill based stealth requires more thought on the part of the player of how to hide. Right now running in the middle of the street isn't very "natural" when stealth is concerned. The natural stealth needs to be a little bit more visible out in the open and blend in when in shadows for sure.

Although if stealth is an innate skill there needs to be a way for the rogue to not just go stealth while he is talking with the butcher or something. maybe the devs want stealth to only be active while the rogue is in combat mode. That's cool with me because if it is always on because it is innate that could be an issue while walking around in town. lol

maybe they could use an emote as an un-stealth tool. If a player wants to remain unstealthed while in combat mode activate that un-stealth emote and let that emote remain active until they use the emote again. let it be like dance where the emote is active, but in the case of unstealth it does nothing but make you visible while the emote is active.

Drawback could be that doing another emote might cancel it. Not that big of a drawback though, because in combat mode you don't need to look like you are chatting when you type. You can stay combat ready. the talk emote only needs to be activated by text when the person is out of combat mode. Actually that might not be a bad way to go since any emote could cancel the un-stealth, a rogue could wave or do any emote to begin steatlth again. Wave, or chicken dance at somebody and then run over to find cover and then when they lose track of you... circle behind them and attack them from behind.

Other than that I would say exit combat mode if you want to hangout and chat. Seems kind of odd to me to have a conversion with a friend with your sword ready to strike... just me maybe.

 

We do need a careful walking mode that moves us at a slower pace, whether its stealth or not! ~Gets out his lobbying stick~ But it would also naturally work together of course with innate stealth skills.

 

what about crawling or crouching too?


oh wait... just had a thought. What if the stationary hide skill places the avatar in the crouched position? Since the player is not moving it might provide an additional amount of cover.

So every time the stealthed player stops moving they enter a crouched state.

 

Yes crouch walking would be a nice addition a button to crouch or pick up legs while jumping and if you move while crouched its slower like walking

 

While waiting for anyone to show up in the Vertantis Shardfall, I kept thinking how pointless all this stacking was. I even alt-tabbed a few times to read the news on another website (Time to enable SLI). I kept thinking that I should probably suggest that stacked glyphs don't reshuffle unless a person moves. That way, we're always focused and ready to go in during an ambush, afterall there seems to be a lot of waiting around in these situations and stacking for long periods of time is tiresome.

But then I came back to the scene in time to see Vrook running past me, unaware that I was 10 feet away from him, stealthed. I knew he'd be back soon because there's nothing to do in the Shardfall, so I waited. I almost took him out, and that's when I realized that there's absolutely no reason to do anything with the stacking system, it's working as intended.

The one thing I will say however is that being able to tab-target stealthed players needs to be removed immediately. I would guess that Vrook will never enter a Shardfall without Tab-Targeting again, and that's just not very sporting.

I'm level 35, btw.


Oh, and one more thing. Can we please get rid of the stupid PVP stats window that alerts everyone who's in the "pvp arena"? There's nothing meaningful about "keeping score" like this.

What I'd ultimately like to see is instead of "leader boards" we have a lore based "score card" where there's a shrine or something that tracks who has the most kills or whatever. But it's IN-GAME and not accessible out of game. You have to physically visit the site in the game to see "who's the best".

 

not only is stacking tiresome it is a hassel even with the mind lock skill. I've used mindlock while stacking quite a bit and if you look away from the screen for just a moment you might find some of your skills have faded away. There is no rest while playing this game and stacking, it is completely draining.

A stealthed player will likely have to be patient, and have all the skills primed and ready to go (stacked or organized). Stealth will be quite annoying if you have to wait 10 minutes to get your ideal shot on somebody, and during that time you have had to constantly press mindlock for fear of losing our skills.

**************************

Also I found that when I did use mindlock i could no longer use stealth again. I don't know if this is a bug or if this is a design issue? Is there something that says we must exit combat mode after we unstealth? Either way I could not stack my glyphs, and I didn't post a bug report because I am a bit confused if it is a bug or not. Should be a bug. Heck I'll post it. It was bothersome enough I gave up playing with stealth because I couldn't stack my glyphs, and I didn't want to have to stack in the first place (but it only makes sense to be ready as a stealth player). Otherwise I would still be testing this.

 

I'm not sure if mindlock is supposed to work with stealth or not. I recommended that it would destealth in my design proposal.

 

why not? if anybody should have a disciplined mind it ought to be the crafty little thief who carefully and skillfully moves from shadow to shadow. Also an assassin that would benifit from these skills should also have a disciplined mind.

 

That's a really great compliment coming from Ra's al Ghul.

 

I have an idea for a new Focus skill that I think would be very popular but not unbalanced...

Mind Freeze: I think we should be able to individually LOCK one stack using an instance of "mind freeze" which would be its own glyph. You could have a total of 5 Mind Freeze Glyphs in your deck. Which would take up valuable real estate in your deck. To use Mind Freeze, you would have to drag it over the stack you wish to freeze, the stack remains frozen until used OR if you move.

This would allow people to set up an ambush, but they would not be able to move.

 

I'm not familiar with all the different weapons. Do Daggers and Shortswords not have any innate bonuses to them then?

I wouldn't, for instance, mind seeing Dexterity as the final crit damage modifier, the same way Strength is the final damage modifier. Then have weapons like Daggers and Shortswords have a higher crit bonus from dex the same way the str damage bonus varies.

So a Dagger would have a high crit damage modifier based on dex and a low base damage modifier based on strength.

Also, the damage/crit modifiers could use different stats. Not sure if this is already in, but obviously a wand's damage modifier should be int, right?

To fine tune this, you could even give abilities different modifiers. Like what stat(s) does Backstab scale with? How well?

You could make backstab's base damage scale terribly with dex and str, but make the base damage itself high, so it would mainly benefit from crits, which the Dagger would modify very well with the modifier, but a mace might modify pretty badly by comparison.

Just throwing out ideas. I don't like the idea of any weapon being less useful than another.

 

Generally speaking the lower size the weapon the more crit bonus it gets. However the fatal flaw here is that the size of the weapon also determines maximum damage. So who cares if you're getting a CRIT when it only does 10 to 20 damage?

 

Does maximum damage cap or influence your actual skills then? Such as backstab?

Honestly we could do with documentation on this, unless it already exists?