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Can we get rid of stealth already?
ghoul31
Member Posts: 1,955
Walking around invisible then backstabbing people and insta killing them is just stupid.
It makes open pvp games a griefers paradise.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I agree. When I started playing MMO's I favored stealther classes, and it was fun and relaxing going around contested lands un-detected, pick my own fights, or just escape any losing battle with around 99% success rate. Then I started playing other classes and realized how shitty perma-invisibility classes are.
These days I pretty much skip open PvP games that has a stealth class. I would accept more realistic stealth, not invisibility what it really is in these games, but something that is only invisible unless you look directly at it, there should be at least a few degrees cone directly in front of your char where you could spot that "ghostly" figure stalking nearby if you looked right at it even from long distance.
Preferrably I'd just like to see stealth/invisibility gone for good, replace the rogue class invis with agility and speed, make them faster and be able to use some dodge moves, just not the stupid invis + "your next move will do 300% extra damage" + backstab stupidity.
It's not a solution to start playing an invisibility class your self if you simply feel the game mechanic it self is ruining the pvp balance from grander point of view.
A low level player should be able to kill mobs, chop wood or whatever.
Then if they see someone approaching they can run to the safety of a nearby town
But invisibility makes it impossible for low level characters to exist in a pvp world
Because they will be constantly be insta ganked by invisible players
If you are a high level play and you want to gank lowbies, it should at least be a challenge
have someone chase the lowbie, and have another player hiding behind a tree in the opposite direction
You seem to miss the point of "ganking", it's not supposed to be a challenge. Otherwise, you'd call it a duel.
And, yea, in open world PvP, you will find ganking going on almost exclusively, either due to odds of 1vX, where X >> 1, or one player significantly outgearing, outleveling the other. Stealth just allows you to get a sucker punch in, or run away if you misjudge the gear level of your target.
Invisibility is not the only problem in that scenario, the fact that you can attack someone and knows that the worst that can happen is that they run away seriously is a huge problem in itself. Fun PvP demands that an excellent players always should have some chance.
But lets talk about invisibility. It is indeed stupid that people can walk around without getting spotted in the middle of the day in an open field. Some games like GW2 solves this by severely limiting the time you can stealth (my thief can stealth 5 seconds with both my stealth skills used after eachother), it limits the damage but it is still stupid.
AoC had a great idea where you when you stealth you need to move in the dark but it never really worked there. Good initiative, bad implementation.
Another option would be a pen and paper like approach where people had an opposite skill like perception, with a high perception you can either automatically or by a hidden roll see stealthing chars. That would work but not solve the problem with high levels ganking noobs, high level assassins would always have a lot higher stealth.
Alternatively could you instead of actual stealth give your thieves a chameleon like ability which would make them invisibly when they are standing still but as they move the background would look somewhat weird. Personally do I think that would work best in a MMO because with that you would need to use real skill to avoid detection in daylight, move real slow, stay in the shadows and noyt in peoples direct view or you would be spotted.
But the real problem with that is that it isn't challenging and very few people actually enjoy constantly defeating easy targets all the time. Of course some people are sociopaths that enjoy making noobs cry but in the long run mechanics that allow people to gank without any danger to themselves will just hurt the game.
Come on, you know that awesome feeling when you actually beat someone really good, no ganking can ever be close to that. What is the adrenaline rush in killing players as easy as it is to step on an ant?
Ganking is the single reason that PvP is a rather small MMO gamestyle while FPS lives on it. In FPS games the one with superior tactics and skills wins.
MMOs main issues in PvP is the huge powergap gear and level gives you. That works fine in PvE games but it makes MMO PvP less fun.
No, if I play badly I can cry or take it as a man and improve myself.
The problem I have is when someone plays really badly and I play well and they still wins without any effort. That is crappy game design.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Its not that I don't like it.
Its that most people don't like to be constantly ganked by invisible players
So they all leave the game.
Then game game has to shut down because there are no players left.
This argument has been made so many times before, heh.
Everyone hates stealth because it lets people choose when they attack and (sometimes) lets them disappear when things go wrong meanin they don't have to deal with consequences.
Stealth as a flavour / roleplay / fitting concept works but by and large in games with a stealth component, the thief/rogue/brigand sort of classes are almost always OP in one way or another.
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Came here to say this. Sounds like the insta-kill is an issue more than stealth is.
No....they don't leave because of stealth classes. I'm sorry I disagree.
Your analogy is wrong! World of Warcraft has been running fine with rogues.
Some classes handle rogues better than others, just as some can handle mages better. Just play a rogue and find out how many times you kill someone and how many times you die. You will be pretty surprised!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
But GW2 was terrible with it. Thiefs can stealth and continue to stealth and power shot people with very few ways to counter until the crit nerf. Rift did it better. I stealth and unstealth by taking damage. Unless using a cooldown.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
i stopped caring about stealth based classes when devs started making stealth last a few seconds. Make it sustained (like WoW, Rift, swtor) where you turn invisible until cancelled or dont waste your time making a stealth class.
Stealth mechanics can be improved and anti stealth mechanics as well.
I have an idea, For PvE make the stealth like SKyrim and ESO. And for PvP make it so you can only turn invisible while in the shadows (and in night time in areas with no light sources). Outside of shadows you only get muffled(silent steps), but are still obviously visible so hide behind big obstacles or something if you want to surprise someone.
Also, DayZ PvP is a good example of non-invisible stealth. You can cammo, move silently, hide behind stuff, and the game is in third person and being stealthy still works.
One problem is having "a" stealth class. Classically in D&D, wizards could turn invisible; rangers and monks had access to stealth abilities; even clerics had something like stealth (original Sanctuary spell).
If you're going to let players get the drop on each other -- and why not, that's how real combat works -- make it even. Let everyone except the tanks turn invisible (you can't hide in a suit of armor, and being tanks they should not get one-shot).
I would oppose removing stealth from the game. It is a fun playstyle. One of my favorite stealth models was the WoW rogue, with the Distract ability to turn NPCs around and control field of view. If they'd made all mobs patrol, rather than sit around campfires, you could have used Distract to pick off whole armies one by one.
As others mentioned, stealth isn't the problem, but the typical mechanics associated with stealth.
Stealth != invisibility, and should not be treated like it. This is sort of a cheap and easy modern way of integrating stealth.
I see 2 real solutions to the stealth problems.
1.) The realistic approach:
Realistically, stealth would be best served in First-Person view games... I think there could be a lot of fun if the Oculus Rift or other VR sets ever go mainstream. Stealth should be more related to line of sight and "hearing" / "move silently" skills and such.
If you are staring directly at someone, then stealth should be cancelled out, period. This actually would work in third person, just as well. Except in third person the player sneaking up behind you would have to be "invisible" until detected.
Could even make stealthing more manually-controlled like in FPS type games where you crouch/move slower by holding down the specific key/toggling it on. If you want to close ground on a moving target, you need to move faster, thereby increasing the odds of giving off sound, etc.
2.) The first strike approach:
Current mechanics, but without all the escape abilities really. Stealth should simply give you the advantage of surprise, but once you are in combat, it should be more even ground without all the "get out of jail free" cards.
Obviously, it would require some balancing so that the the sneaks could hold their own in combat once stealth is gone.
A half-dead(from opening backstab-type attack) knight in plate armor vs. the full life stealther in face-to-face combat being an even match-up. But, the full life knight should overpower the stealther fairly easily if he screws up his advantage of surprise.
Just basic common sense and RSP balancing on that really. You simply take away all the easy-mode escape tricks.
stealth is fine.. if the opener is too powerfull in whatever game you're playing i'd suggest taking it up with the developers and offer some solutions on how that can be changed without hurting the class.
I had fun once, it was terrible.
I rather liked the way they did it in WAR. Well, the basic mechanics of their stealth, though unfortunately they also broke the shit out of their own stealth with so many other things like bugged pets.
WARs stealth classes could go invis for 30s. As soon as you went into stealth though, it began draining your Action Points. So the longer you stayed in stealth the fewer attacks you could get off after breaking it. As a result if you didn't time it just right and your target started running a different direction and it took you a while to catch them, you were nearly drained of AP by the time you finally got to open up on them.
If you ran out of AP while stealthed it would also remove it. Once you unstealthed you had a cooldown before you could use it again.
On top of that, there was also a counter stat which allowed you to detect stealthed players if your stats were high enough (very common for the archer classes and certain melee builds) and you could knock them out of stealth, leaving them with no openers and decreased Action Points. Getting caught in an AoE attack would also break stealth.
Due to these mechanics, a good stealther had to know how to be sneaky and use the terrain to keep them hidden while still visible to get within striking distance of their enemy (while also avoiding AoEs flying everywhere in the middle of a heated battle), then stealth up and unleash on their targets with nearly full AP to take out a target or 2, then get back out with their cooldown finished and enough AP to be stealthed just long enough to lose anyone trying to track them down.
These types of characters have 1 chance to kill you because they are too squishy to defend themselves.
What they are designed to do is take out maybe, 1 high profile threat and once exposed die at the hands of other players.
Extreme 1:1 balance.
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