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Stealth and Invisibility
Cuathon
Member Posts: 2,211
As I was commenting on a different thread I realized I wanted to have a whole discussion about this.
How do you feel about creatures with invisibility?
How do you feel about creatures with stealth skills?
Would it upset you if there were creatures you couldn't target because you couldn't see them? What about tracking by sound?
Would it be better if you could use collision based combat to attack such creatures. Like if you got hit and didn't know why, do a circle swing or proce a fire ring spelll?
If sound and sight are part of knowing if there are creatures nearby as opposed to radar and giant healthbars is that cool?
How do you feel about different monsters having different sight and hearing stats instead of generic aggro ranges?
How would you like to be able to use stealth for travel?
What if you could have sound blocking or invisibility or both and try to sneak through dangerous areas or scout? Suppose that creatures with no sight would need to hear you and creatures with no hearing had to see you? If you were invisible and no nearby creatures had powerful hearing or magical detection skills you could sneak past creatures without raising the alarm. You might be able to sneak in, kill something and then escape undetected.
Comments
In Final Fantasy XI there are creatures that can detect you by sight, by sound, by smell, by using magic or by being low on HP. There are spells and items to become invisible, silent or odorless. I have mixed feelings about all these.
Tracking by sound was always interesting in titles like Age of Conan. You could track an invisible player by its footsteps.
Its enormously enjoyable when your senses kick in and you actually manage to track down a particular player just by using them.
And invisible monsters? Why not. Encountered many of them in some MMOs. Never had any issues with not liking or such.
But like I posted in a previous post: Stealth in general is massively bugged in so many games. Implementing functionally AI in combo with stealth seems to be tricky, even in 2012.
My opinion: Invisibility and Stealth should be competely removed - especially in PvP.
Instead, enemy player name-tags and levels should be removed. Thus, giving you a chance to actually use the environment, e.g., sneaking in the bushes, creeping within the shadows, proning behind the fallen log, or crouching behind the rock.
And yes... sound from a running character should be loud for all who are near to hear. This will actually give walking or crouched creeping some meaning.
Then a client mod will add them back in, penalizing anyone who doesn't use it?
I kind of liked how they did it in AoC. You had to pay attention to your surroundings and the light to remain stealthed. It didn't work perfectly as there were places where you thought would be dark that were actually light but still, more realistic than the invisibility that most games have their stealth as.
I will be abstract to the answer and describe it pretty much exactly as AV did when talking about Darkfall which I might add for the most part was true.
Characters or monsters can not be invisibile however given the enviroment depending on what they wear and how good they are at sneaking around it will become harder to see them not because of the game mechanics but because of how the world looks visually and how the armour etc physically looks.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Everquest 1 had invisible monsters, it was pretty cool, made dungeons a bit more scarier/threatening. Made certain buffs/potions worth having around just in case.
I'm perfectly fine with mobs being able to invis/stealth in PvE as it creates situations/areas where you can be taken by surprise for a change.
Other games like FFXI have also used a more varied detection system like sight/sound/smell/casting spells. It's a fantastic feature that is apparently being ignored by modern developers.
My feelings towards stealth as far as how players use it in MMO's is pretty piss poor. There is no actual "sneaking" involved, it's just a temporary invisible toggle. It's one of several reasons I can't really don't enjoy playing stealth classes in MMO's. I'd like to see it improved/caught up to speed with single player games, but I don't see that happening given the current trend MMO's are following.
I Plead the FFXI and will say no more that could be used against me.
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
I think DDO's implementation of stealth is one of the best, three is a visual and audible skill for stealthing and a visual and audible skill for detecting stealth. The lighting of an area also affects stealthing and then there are spell that can allso affect detection.
As for actually trying to hide like one would in real life. That is a pipe dream. Watch what real snipers do in the field. The games are just not setup for things to work out that way. movement is not freeform enough and things like cover are just way to whacky.
What about in a game where monsters are not static or area spawns and where you might get a town attacked by a big sieging army. If you know you are going into a zone with stealth or invis its a little different than if you can get hit in an area without easy expectations.
Then what's keeping some idiot from pulling an entire army into some poor shmucks town and destroying it?
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
Firstly players are interdependent. So fuck someone else fuck yourself.
Secondly, it would be incredibly hard to kite an entire army with many variances in creature speed when unlike most MMOs there are creatures you can literally not run faster then no matter what. Thirdly the army would have to be heading for the city anyways or else it would takes like 5+ hours to a few d ays straight to kite the army to the city. It all depends on other circumstances in a particular game really. The above example is my game. Also since the game isn't PvP I would just ressurect the city from backups and permaban the player who did it because fuck griefers.
Yes, much better to have invisible monsters / ambushes zone-specific or situation-specific rather than anywhere, anytime. It's controlled paranoia - as a player I don't want to be on edge all the time, but it can be fun sometimes. Just give me some clue - zone, phase of the moon, skittish wildlife - that signals that I need to beware or begone.
Trap door spiders can get my adrenaline pumping very easily, sometimes too easily for my tastes.
GM that ban griefers?! /swoons
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
I think with Mobs, some way to combat the stealth/invis would be needed. Sound like you suggested is good, or the PBAoE if blindly hit.
If I could stealth/invis to bypass or scout, I would! To heck with dulling my blade edge
Stealth for travel... Hmmmm... I don't see it as a long term travel mode, but that's just my personal opinion. Stealth is usually hampered with a slower run speed, which makes sense since one is being extra careful to be stealthy.
Invisibility on the other hand, is usually more like a power or effect, not a skill, so it wouldn't have the restrictions stealth does.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Well the game I am making has lots of safe space. You would only do stealth to travel past small danger zones as opposed to always being in stealth. And yes invisibility would allow for even easier travel. But of course its rarer in game.
Seeing as you wanna make a sandbox, I would suggest using stealth to put your game into peoples shopping cart so they actually buy it.
Seriously, I havent gotten the feeling you cared anything about PVE focused gamers, but stealth mobs can be a good thing....I would suggest not overdoing it though. On average, for a 4 hr game session, I would put the occourance rate at like once to twice per session.
I would think you wanna shock the person, and not make them focus constantly on when they are getting hit next.
Also things like "smarter" AI could be of benefit if you want good PVE in your game. If your players are beating down a group of mobs designated healer, their tanks should be doing their damndest to attack that person. If someone hits a crucial mob with a CC ability, they should be doing everything they can to break it etc.
Even if you only used that type of stuff for special encounters, it would really get some good feedback I think.
Good Luck with it. Having made a Pac Man game in Assembler for my 365 Micro Architecture class back in 94, gaming is some of the most hair pulling programming I ever experienced. Hopefully the tools these days make life a lot easier.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Dude game programming is so irritating. So much interaction crap and database calls. God. Everything else is easier.
I think both stealth and invisiblity have their place in games, but I'll be firm on this about invisibility - it needs to end or give a big tell when someone's taking an offensive action. Even having one attack completely concealed can put a battle on a one sided tilt, forget about dealing with multiple attacks or attackers. A counter in that case (see invisibility) would become mandatory if it were that strong.
Visual stealth honestly just doesn't work that well in games. Having played a lot of FPSes with fairly advanced camo rendering compared to most MMOs, it does nothing to the experienced, and honestly color tweaks or video card rendering gimmicks will simply render them useless, having access to color remapping software is fairly trivial these days.
if i could summarize it, simply being the attacker and being able to set the pace of the battle with an opening strike in many games is often enough to completely win it, forget staying invisible after it. As many years as a Rogue in World of Warcraft, world PvP, no matter the opposition due to having such a good rotation, no foe could best me one on one on most occassions, not even warriors who had levels over me back in vanilla had a chance. While many other games don't have these identical mechanics, they do often play out similarly.
I always wanted such a mechanic but I also realize there are some issues with this.
First is targetting. Classical tab-based targetting can't be used otherwise it would be no use hiding in a bush as everyone would just run around constantly pressing tab to find hidden people.
You may suggest no target locking at all and using some sort of hit/miss mechanic based on crosshair. Something similar to what's in games like Fallen Earth. But then you need the nameplates, otherwise you will end up with a game full of people hidden in bushes shooting stuff at distance.
Second problem is how to distinguish friends from foes easily without green/red nameplates. Some sort of faction specific colors or uniforms would be neede which I can imagine many would object to.
That being said, I would LOVE to see some game solve these issues well and come up with PvP where terrain and environment played bigger role than what's common these days.
Btw I also think minimap needs to go. It would make exploring and learning the areas so much more meaningful.