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real stealth
bishbosh
Member Posts: 388
the way most games deal with stealth is that you become invisible until you are either damaged or more commonly until you deal damage. certain abilities or items can make invisible players become visible and aoes can damage and/or reveal invisible players.
i would like to see a mmorpg that has spells that fade you different amounts kind of like morrowind/oblivion chameleon spell and you can equip camoflage like leaves and branches to make a sort of fantasy rpg ghillie suit. you can have to rely on line of sight, cover, distance, diversion, vision affecting debuffs, shadows and foliage to execute stealth by doing rather than telling. ofcourse you will not be able to have visible name tags like a FPS unless in your safe zones or towns.
there can still be tradional style invisibility spells as well but they should have a downside eg long cooldowns, short durations, movement speed and/or stat penalties etc etc.
Comments
You'd better assume that there will be nametags because the first thing any UI-hacker is going to do is replace "real stealth" with "no stealth"
^ This. I really wish most games would get rid of the obnoxious nameplates above everyone's heads, tbh.
I prefer a first-person viewpoint and just sneaking up behind someone.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
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Me too. Would also like to see actual camouflage implemented sooner o later as well.
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
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I couldn't agree more. I think it's all come down to the "kill-kill-kill" mentality in today's games. Warriors were originally meant to excel in *gasp* war! Other professions excelled in their situation. But if a stealth class can't kill a warrior in a toe to toe brawl, people scream OP and cry for nerfs.
A more realistic mechanic wouldn't be any harder to implement than the standard cloaking device stealth mechanic currently used. Stealthed people just don't render until detected in the current model. Change the criteria for the stealther from not rendering on other clients to if they're not within the forward 180 degree arc they don't render. It'd force stealthers to attack from the back 180, and it's sorted. Sure, it'd require a different approach to the code, but the change in player strategy would be refreshing.
Anything short of full invisibility is prone to be exploited in one way or another. I remember playing certain multiplayer FPSs which made heavy use of map darkness. In theory players could stalk each other in the dark places but in reality you can always change the enemy models to either bright pink or set your gamma setting so that you can effectively "see in the dark".
Some things sound nice in theory but don't work when implemented.
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I don't know man, I played Darkfall for a couple years and using actual stealth was a pretty big part of living, dieing, or killing.
I mean you can always disable shadows and restrict foliage to absolute minimum but even that won't prevent people from sneaking up on you in a FPS MMO. There's been talk about not allowing players the ability to disable shadows from the client in future installments of that game, but it hasn't been implemented yet.
Gamma can be adjusted in your video control panel, but if there are outside zones everything will look washed out, especially at range, so you're losing out either way.
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
if you are good you can implement it,
pretty much every new development/idea is hindered by problems. humans didnt get were we are today by simply saying "its too hard"
im pretty sure its just a matter of running enough serverside checks and limiting graphics settings adjustment ranges for shadows, foliage, gamma etc.
I feel this is the method of stealth used in swtor. But as I saw, stealthers still tried to “sneak up” head on rather than on a player’s 6. They could be perceived if they came head on. Planetside had a variable degree of shimmer. If the stealther ran then the shimmer was visible, if the player crouched and walked they were near invisible.
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Until such a time when graphics engines get major overhauls and most people have much better computers, real stealth is a null option, due to the issues mentioned above. I am looking forward to that day, anyway. Foliage itself can be fixed as of now by making it collision-only, ensuring that if someone were to get rid of it, they would be making their lives harder running into invisible foliage.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
Aoc uses the light meter for stealth. I actually don't mind it although some of the lighting was a big wonky.
I've always wanted something like this in mmos. FPS games have them, in Battlefield 3 my sniper is almost invisible because I hide in bushes, and I'm only visible when I aim through my scope (scope reflection).
dude the technology is there, its been there for ages... its just a case of addicted easily-fooled consumers. why should developers try something new, complicated and risky when they can simply pump out some ads and a CGI video and amass a legion of drooling fanbois looking for their next fix.
In a FPS game stealth can be much more natural because the player's eyes are the character's eyes. In a third person game the two are not the same and there's no really good way to reconcile without becoming distracting IMO. I know there are third-person single-player games that do have LOS checks ... an enemy behind a boulder would be invisible while it remains close to the boulder and out of direct LOS. Mind you, for it to be "real," if he jumps out from behind the boulder while you're looking in that direction and charges at you, you're going to be able to see him no matter how well his outfit blends in with the terrain or shadows.
An LOS check would be a good thing to have, but still, there are too many issues as of yet. LOS would have to be done server-side, so not giving the character access to that person's data behind the boulder until he gets in reach.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
a mmorpg with real stealth will have to have non targetting combat like skyrim/mount&blade. ideally 1st person view but close up 3rd person will also work. so you wouldnt really have to have LOS checks.
- you will be able to equip camouflage gear/accesories
- there will be some spells that will help you camouflage/hide by fading you
- maybe even some blind/smoke/distorted vision spells
- stealth will not be effective at close range, it will be more of a tool used to close the distance/avoid detection.
server only needs to keep track of the buffs/debuffs and items equipped on the character and everything else happens naturally like a FPS game. LOS check occurs naturally as a part of gameplay, you cannot see someone who is not on your screen a.k.a in your line of sight.
the whole idea is to allow the player to DO rather than TELL. stealth will be something you DO by playing the game in a certain way rather than something you TELL your character to do.
In any client-sever application, you cannot trust the client with any secret information.
Yes, you can sort of push it through with checksums and punishingly heavy-handed scans of everything the user is running and this will likely discourage the majority of users from using cheats, but the high-end community is going to be a toxic mix of the cleverest exploiters and shadows of suspicion over anyone suspected of being "too good".
I disagree.
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Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture