A suggestion to make Camouflage and Silent Movement more unique

Currently, the Light Armor stealth skills are identical to the Moon stealth skills, except for only being cast on self.

When I first read the patch notes, I imagined something else, and I think my first impression was more unique.

Instead of Camouflage and Silent Movement being active skills, make them passives. Camouflage activates automatically when a player stands still for a certain amount of time (this time can decrease with skill level). Silent Movement allows the player to move for a short amount of time after Camouflage activates before stealth breaks (this time can increase with skill level).

This gives the Light Armor stealth skills their own use unique from Moon magic, and allows the two to complement one another.

 

This is exactly how they originally designed the concept. Until R22, that's how the skill read in game when you hovered over it.

However, I think they made the right call not creating a passive stealth skill in a use based system. Just walking around in R21 I was able to get those skills up into the high 30's.

I'm also not sure that having a skill that "just works" is a great thing either. We already have too many of those in my opinion.

Not trying to poo poo your idea here, I'm a big fan of stealth and I think it's working well in the game right now. I just want balance for pvp as the goal of whatever we do.

 

I would love to see stealth given some major love. Right now rogue-ish builds just aren't appealing. (At least to me.) I love stealth, invisibility, etc but they're just not interesting to me at this point.

Portalarium really needs to make a descision about what the focus of SotA is. Balancing for PvP and PvE makes neither fun and if they intend to focus on PvP balance over PvE balance then they need to clearly state that.

 

this is my biggest fear. I hate the leaderboard system for this very reason. I did however get them to put ? mark instead of the name, but it does no good with them even knowing there is some one else in the scene. I hate leaderboards....

 

Yes indeed they do .... cause I am not a PVP'r, and if they are going to focus on PvP balance over PvE balance, then I would be very disappointed, and feared I wasted my money on a game that's NOT FOR ME .... I don't want my game play to suffer because they are swinging the NERF BAT to balance the PVP at my expense.... That's why I tend to avoid games that cater to both, cause sooner or later the nerf bat swings in favor of the PVP part of the game and the PVE are the ones who suffer the effects of it.. Though it can be done, LOTR and DAOC did a good job on it .... So I will leave it to the devs. I hope they are able to balance both .... Most times there doesn't need to be a balance, it's that some peeps just suck in PVP, and whine for the devs to weaken all those mean players who keep beating them.

 

Yeah if they decide that they're balancing for PvP with PvE as an afterthought (which is the feeling I'm getting) then they just need to say it. I only say they are balancing with PvP in mind because we don't have any long term effects, almost no skills that allow decent crowd control, etc. A PvP balanced game normally equates to lackluster PvE since everything focuses on running in circles wildly flailing at your opponent rather than being able to control the flow of combat. It also trashes abilities like stealth because then everyone is just an invisible ganker that stealths around ambushing people.

 

I would replace the active feature of these skills with a new Tactics stance of Sneaking (or Stealth) which is deactivated upon discovery [note: currently stances are not true stances with a permanent duration]. The Camouflage passive skill should change the amount of character transparency depending on skill level while the Vanish spell casts true 100% invisibility. The Move Silently skill should affect the noise that a character makes while moving , their chance of being detected by environmental tells (IE footprints or bent foliage), and decrease their movement speed while sneaking since they are being careful not to make noise or make tracks. The Shadow Form spell should make you as light as a feather and basically the same as a character's ghost. The stealth stance should not be able to activate while being observed and the Vanish spell should not simply deactivate while making any move. A stealthy character should be able to cast vanish in front of enemies, activate Stealth (and maybe Escape as well), and then rely on their Move Silently skill while slowly moving under Vanish until it expires and they then have to rely on their Camouflage skill. The Shadow Form spell would be used to make quick escapes (if in Stealth stance it would cancel out Move Silently) and even attacks with enemies only detecting you briefly after the attack (for example Frodo attacking with Sting while invisible can be counter attacked with difficulty because his sword is visible until it is sheathed).

 

The confusing part is why there's a casting time to those skills?

What's the point of Camouflage? Why would I NOT use Silent Movement?

 

Stealth will receive love in a near future release, AFAIK.