Stealth is broken (concept and execution)

CONCEPT:

- Stealth isn’t effective in the dark, because you can’t see unless you use night vision.

- There are two stealth skills to constantly juggle back and forth (with casting time and cool-downs) in order to remind your character that he/she should stay hidden.

- Spamming stealth skills will increase their levels regardless whenever or not people are around. You can’t imagine yourself sneaking around and suddenly get better at it.

- Distract is supposed to be used to make enemies look at a different direction so that you can sneak closer… but the skill has a really short range; meaning you need to sneak closer. Paradox much?

- Pickpocket has a 9 seconds cast time and 2min cool-down.

- To prevent enemies from patrolling outside of Pickpocket’s range of 3 (or just flat out turn around), you need to immobilize them. Every skill that snares/root/stun are combat skills.

- If you have Pickpocket in your combat bar (which indirectly forces you to fill up your combat bar with at least 5 LOCKED skills: Distract, Camouflage, Silent Movement, Pickpocket, Sap), entering combat activates the 2min cool-down. Defeating the purpose.

EXECUTION (R26):

- Some enemies, while tripped, will glide on the floor to continuously face you; preventing you from using Sneak Attack or Sap.

- Pickpocket can only be activated against hostiles (so the idea of spending your unplayably-dark nights in town goes out the window).

- Enemies detect you from miles away while in stealth (this used to work fine in R25)… even from behind. EDIT: I've noticed that it's scene dependent. So stealth will work only on a few scenes while, on the other hand, is completely useless in others. Distract is also victim of this oversight.

- Distract can’t be activated if you have “Toggle Camera Look” on… but it no longer works anyways (compared to R25) so why bother?

- Distract removes your target, making you reselect your victim after each use. In Free Attack mode, clicking on the target makes you attack and, thus, get out of stealth. Tab-selects seem to have a priority on Rabbits.

- If by miracle you managed to successfully cast Pickpocket, the skill yields you absolutely nothing (not even skill XP).

SUGGESTIONS:

- Make stealth a toggle for every character and replace both Silent Movement and Camouflage with a passive skill that levels up when you’re near someone while still remained hidden.

- Increase the range of Distract.

- Reduce Pickpocket’s cool-down and cast time.

- Allow us to Pickpocket civilian NPCs.

 

Yup. Eso had the only good stealth in an online game that ive seen. I wish it worked more like that.

 

I loved ESOs assassin class. PVP was so fun for stealthers in that game.

Anyway, I was a huge stealther in UO. I am in every game, go figure. I even had two separate endgame assasin accounts for DAoC (one for Norse one for Albion). I really liked how UO's worked: Hide / Stealth. Hide was instant cast, and being GM Hide basically meant you vanished immediately in all but the most crowded scenes. GM Stealth meant you could basically walk in front of people for a few seconds and they probably wouldnt find you unless they did an AOE effect or had reveal. These two skills got me to Dread Lord status .

I agree that Hide and Stealth should require some form of viewer to work with. Even a rabbit, or a cat.

Camo is slow and cumbersome. Stealth is clearly a prototype, and in R26 its pretty useless. I still level it as I cant comprehend playing MMOs without them at this point.

Please help us starving stealthers and give the Subterfuge line a LOT of love in the upcoming releases, thank you.

 

(all my comments below are from a purely PvE perspective)
A very long thread from the past (2013+ ) regarding stealth and other similar mechanics:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/stealing-theft-hiding-stealth.4181/

Not much there for implementation ideas & suggestions, but a lot of debate around the merits of stealth mechanics.

I'd say as implemented in R26, it's unclear what the intended use case is for Stealth. Especially given the current Combat UI issues (random, hybrid, locked), the non-combat, in-combat disconnect as well as the overall difficulty vs. value ratio that the entire mechanic presents.
I mean, if you went through all this, and then maybe you could remove a large percentage of your targets health from an initial stealth strike, that would be one thing, but now? It defies logic as to the value.

IMO, there's no point in doing stealth badly. If it's not going to be useful, powerful, innovative, or fun, rip it out and start over, fix what is there, or just leave it out entirely for EP1. There's enough other broken things with the game that leaving this in place is just insulting to new players who might waste time skilling it up.

As far as my personal suggestions, to add to Gix's suggestions:

Spoiler

Distract, alone, could be a powerful mechanic, if developed deeply. In particular, things like a Throwing skill, animal calls, Ventriloquism, Various Languages, including civilized and monster languages, Animal Trapping/Care/Release (snakes, gophers, rabbits, pigeons), Vermin Trapping/Release (varies with locale, done on-the-spot), Gardening/Farming (raise beetles, grubs, mosquitoes, flies, bees, spiders, ants, fireflies) for both food and distraction/annoyance. All of those could be involved.
In a very simplistic implementation, the devs have mentioned the desire to add the ability to split-pull or in some way reduce social aggro to permit single-pulls in high-mob-density scenes.
Ok, so one way to do that would be to distract the patroller by offering either a lure, annoyance, distraction, or other similar thing. Kobolds maybe really like honey. Ok, so you raise bees, gather honey, and use your throwing skill with a honeycomb, and the nearest kobold, if within line of sight of the thrown honeycomb, will run over to investigate, and take a moment to eat it.
Now, maybe they hate beetles, so you release a beetle, they'll run over and kill it, but maybe it can pull too many, cause they -really- hate beetles.
And then you add in poisoned/drugged honey. Crafting table, cooking, honey, sleeping potion, done. These are consumables that can be used in combat, which is a desirable gold/time sink.
Similar mechanics for beasts, if wolves & bears eat rabbits, release a rabbit they chase the rabbit, distracting them while you run past, or sneak past, and again, maybe you can poison them if they do eat it.
Perhaps very foolish creatures could be distracted by fireflies. Maybe very smart or greedy creatures would be interested in a shiny crystal thrown, or a gold coin tossed on the ground. As in, yes, I'm going to take one of my gold coins, and throw it over there as a distraction to a guard. He notices, walks over "Hey, a gold coin!", laughs a bit, and now he has a debuff that offers 50% damage bonus from arrow shots for 10 seconds, and his social alert radius is reduced to zero. (one shot kill is now possible, without alerting the others)

The crafting systems that could be involved are cooking, alchemy, mining, fishing. I mean, maybe brute beasts love tasty fish. Bears love fish. Even something as simple as Deer love carrots. Grow carrots, toss a carrot, doe comes over and takes 10 seconds to eat the carrot, instead of fleeing continuously.

In any case, beyond distracting, stealth systems could involve silence, hiding, and masking. These would correspond to three senses each creature has for detection, hearing, sight, and smell. Each of those would require consumables and/or skills to prevent detection. If you go into a primarily animal populated zone, wear a scent masking agent (again, crafted consumable) and it lowers your detection range by 50%. Then have skills that amplify those consumables (or the other way around) similar to attunement.

At any rate, it can be done well, but as it is now? Bleh.

 

Yea im stealthier in ES games, simply cuz its fun and rewarding too. Getting off the perfect x3 dmg headshot and sliding into the shadows is great.

But I enjoy a samurai/knight DD class. and that's what Im going for this game, im kinda thankful I didn't choose assassin this go, cuz id be in your boat.


At the bottom line, this is an AI issue more than a design issue I feel.
They are still yet to add a lot of more complex npc/mob AI.
But from what I hear from Lum that's being worked on currently.

 

While I have issues with how stealth works and how it's completely ineffective and actually harmful for the user in PVP due to the fact that it basically broadcasts you're about to try something and is easy to spot(some cards render it easier spotto find than non-stealth'd chars even), I think the issues you list here are artificial and come from you trying to play combat as noncombat.

Specifically, the fact that if you are attempting to be hostile to a character(such as sneaking up, stunning, and pickpocketing), even if you're not swinging a sword to hurt them, that is still a form of combat between you two.

Pickpocket has a 9 second cast time (reducable to 6.5 with appropriate skill use), and a 2 min cooldown (cooldown is irrelevant in an unlocked deck).
Your issue is you are hung up on utilizing locked skills and do not use the broad mechanics allowed via unlocked and stacked skills.

No cooldowns, increased durations, ability to use the same skill in a row (repeated silent movement, no need to use camoflauge at all).

In pretty much anything you do, you will be sub-par utilizing a locked deck vs utilizing a properly built unlocked deck, which requires more skill to properly manage/combine so that you always draw the glyph you want. If you think unlocked decks require luck in any situation past the first 20 seconds you go into combat, you are not utilizing their mechanics correctly to properly control what you draw.

The problem comes from trying to balance the locked powers with the unlocked ones. Since the unlocked abilities will by definition be more powerful, the price you pay for the convenience of locking is substantial, or else the unlocked variant gets too strong.

Case in point:

If I caught someone afk in a pvp zone or pvp flagged at a bank/etc in the previous release, they would lose roughly 9-10 items out of their inventory/equipment per minute. That's just in pvp alone.

For npcs, the ability to chain sap's makes it pretty much a given the npc will never do anything until you're done with it. Potentially keeping 2-3 at once disabled if you're quick enough.

Most of your other complaints i agree with thematically though.

 

@Umuri Stealth play doesn't work in locked, unlocked, combat or non-combat. The reason being is that it's unwieldy.

 

@Gix - Except that i've demonstrated that it does work, and that I've been using it with success the past 7 releases. It works perfectly well in unlocked stacked combat and is actually much less unwieldy than certain other schools/skills. Maybe you just need to look up some videos on how unlocked guaranteed draw decks work? I'd be happy to help you out there, I have another round i need to put out pretty soon, i'd be happy to make one demonstrating stealth play.

If you have an actual point to refute and show how it doesn't work, then by all means let's discuss it, but what you've said there is "no it isn't".

At best, your argument is, "But it's too much work for my play style", which i've covered by pointing out they have to balance it towards the high-end play, and if they made it easy enough to be just as effective at low play, it would be overpowered at high level play and you'd see complaints that way.

 

2cent solution points to the fact there is little as far as player control in game - ie no mechanic 'type' actions other than jump, roll, run that aren't cards.
I don't get combat it in general seems broken but there are for sure some cool ideas in there. - i have been liking the 'Tap Soul' ability combined with healing makes a interesting life/energy mechanic.. Probably I just don't know how to play well though, but still it seems like lack of flexibility with what the characters can do - for any paths.
Many other games I've played have used 'special abilities' which are built into the characters natural animations/sounds etc. Some like crouch/shield can have instant benefits for self and/or others..
Or it could be that the cards stacking/combos need to be changed to fix?

 

Funny you say that, considering you just went "Nuh huh! It does work! Learn to play!" when I actually gave grounded reasoning as to why I think it's unwieldy. By all means, though, if you have videos demonstrating stealth play in R26, I'll be glad to look at it.

I specify R26 because, as unwieldy has it has been in previous releases (the mechanics of pushing a multitude of buttons to do something as basic as "sneaking closer"), I've never seen stealth as broken as it is now... and it's harder to run tests now as you have to worry about zones that don't even register stealth at all.

You're concerned of skills being overpowered at high level play, I'm concerned of skills being unplayable at the early game; where it matters most. If it's not fun in the first place, then it's not fun ever... and if you're currently having fun at the high levels then I'd argue that you're just having a power-trip from the larger numbers and not actually enjoying what stealth-play should bring to the table; playing cat-and-mouse against opponents of your level.

They have to balance it for EVERY level of play because the game needs to be fun at every level. Otherwise, you risk turning off all the players who love playing a specific character archetype that can't figure out how to play or simply don't enjoy grinding mindlessly for the "fun" to begin.

As much as I'd be happy to learn something, I'd also have to argue that stealth play should work in any mode.

If I can't make stealth play work in any of the modes available, then I naturally have to question its implementation. No player should have to be tutored into playing their character.

Some of this stuff (like Distract removing your target selection) has nothing to do with the "power" of the skill or how the player plays a lock or unlock deck. That's what I mean by unwieldy.; and the stealth archetype right now has too many pitfalls like this to be remotely practical.

 

I have everlasting stealth in a locked deck, as it is now in the skill range of mid 50's. From what I can tell (since R25) is that it just doesn't work as intended. with lv 50+ stealth I should be able to sneak up to and past a green tier 1 zone wolf.. you just cant do it.. In release 25 with 35 stealth (Locked there ) I could walk thorough eastreach gap and only come out to open the door...

 

Stealth is broke as folk. There is really just no two ways about it. Magical stealth should be an absolute invisibility spell IMHO and natural stealth should be some kind of toggle. Once toggled on you use focus when you move while stealthed, with chance for it to break increasing depending on how low your skill is. As it stands, stealth is not viable or usable for much of anything outside of *maybe* pvp and that is sometimes stretching it. PVE? Forget about it.

 

I need to play a bit more with Silent Movement and Shadowform. Not really sure of the difference between the two. Do CC effects against your opponent such as Confusion, Root, etc allow you to stealth up in PvP after you've attacked you've attacked someone?

Shadowbane had a pretty nice system for stealth and backstabs. For GM stealth users the casting time was instant. If you took any type of damage, it popped you out of stealth though. If your stealth timer was back up it wasn't a big deal to re-stealth unless you were lit up with DoTs. Most of the time stealthers had high defense to avoid AoE attacks, and they could also dodge certain attacks without being popped out of stealth.

The enemy of stealth in Shadowbane was auto-hit bleed attacks. Bow users could hit you from long range with an auto-bleed attack and prevented you from stealthing until you cured it. This was one of the primary functions of the Scout class in Shadowbane. Revealing and putting a bleed on high damage stealthers before they could do their thing.

Poison was also integrated into backstabs in shadowbane, so you had a physical backstab and poison backstabs. As long as you were stealthed and very close to your opponent, poison based backstabs allowed you to put a variety of effects on your opponent - here are a few examples:

Pellegorn: 3% Health damage over time every 5 seconds for 60 seconds. Also a HP Regen debuff of 100% for 60 seconds. This means characters couldn't regenerate hit points unless they healed themselves with spells. This was a very effective backstab for assassins - the class had a lot of tools at their disposal to prevent other players from healing and regenerating. Healing can be a real problem in GvG (group based pvp) where your enemies just sit there and spam heal their allies. CC helps fight against this too.

Magusbane: Basically the same thing as Pellgorn, except it affects a player's mana pool and mana regeneration. In Shadowbane, some characters were so durable the only way to kill them was to take away their mana to prevent them from healing.

Buchinine: Same thing, except it attacked a user's stamina. Very effective against a player who went through a lot of stamina, such as characters that could fly, or fighters with high stamina draining types of weapons. Poison backstabs let you pick and choose based on the type of character you were fighting.

Galpa: Debuffed a players INT and SPI (mana and spell power) and reduced the player's spell power by 25% for 60 seconds. There was a similar power called Gorgon's Venom that was designed to debuff fighter type classes.

Players could cure these effects using the Cure Poison spell, but that added one more thing for a player to deal with during the fight.