stealth vs. hardware requirements?

[ganzo72]

Originally Posted by Epoch

Then it's just a game of changing settings to know where you are at a glance, unless you're behind something which isn't always possible.

yeah but again. if you want to play a good game with awsome graphics with shitty settings on your kinda dumb. and i think i already stated that there shoud be ike a dark mist arround you if your in the shadow. not compete invisibiity. but exacty its not possible. you shoud have to aadapt to you surroundings in the game. hide beind a rock, in a shadow, or a bush. or not sneak at all. you ever sneak up on someone in a open field? if you did youd proly have to be realy quiet. there could be aother skill for being extremely quiet. an assassin isnt an assassin if he can just go invisible and stab someone. hes just a wizard with a dagger.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by ganzo72

yeah but that takes all the skill out of it. i dont want sneaking to be a game of chance. i want to have to think about whaere to go and how to position myself. if you just invisible that takes the trill out of it. thats why i hate most mainstream mmo's. theres no thrill in the hunt. you pull and yuo smack. that gets old rea quick

Instead of writing a long example how sneak mechanics and player skill would work in practice (got longer than I though, so gave up while it was still sensible to do so), I'll just say that chance is very important factor in everything we do daily in real life, and so it should be in rpg's as well. MO will have an extensive skill system, so skill will play some role in it. In fact, I think even Thief games had some random variables used in the stealth system, and it's as close to the stealth system you seem to want. So not having chance at play is probably nigh impossible, but we can however hope, that the system will be made to be as much dependant on player skill as possible. Having environment and facing have very significant impact on detection chance, and using my idea of dynamically scaling transparency effect when sneaking, I think we could have a pretty good result But, that's just me talking

[Thalras Naeblis]

I definitely want stealth to be as realistic as possible, no matter the hardware requirements

[Thalras Naeblis]

Originally Posted by ganzo72

yeah but again. if you want to play a good game with awsome graphics with shitty settings on your kinda dumb. and i think i already stated that there shoud be ike a dark mist arround you if your in the shadow. not compete invisibiity. but exacty its not possible. you shoud have to aadapt to you surroundings in the game. hide beind a rock, in a shadow, or a bush. or not sneak at all. you ever sneak up on someone in a open field? if you did youd proly have to be realy quiet. there could be aother skill for being extremely quiet. an assassin isnt an assassin if he can just go invisible and stab someone. hes just a wizard with a dagger.

That is definitely the way I want it, no more wizards with a dagger please!
I want to be able to hide behind things and be able to climb almost anything as an assassin to get a better vantage point, but I never want to turn invisible please. Unless a mage came up to me and can turn me invisible then thats a different story.

"you ever sneak up on someone in a open field? if you did youd proly have to be realy quiet." I hope I never see that in this game because most likely the person that is sneaking will be dead. Hopefully assassins are a lot more smarter than that. A guy out in an open field... A crossbow could come in big handy.

[catmorbid]

I'm actually thinking, if the game had some kind of "radar" (don't read it literally) for sensing other players, simply it not showing sneaking characters would make sneaking a viable skill. Though this would all need a detection system which shows other characters. I usually wouldn't like one in a game which thrives for a more realistic touch, but when you think about it more, it does make sense: you cannot possibly perceive the world around the player character by looking at your screen, the way you perceive your own world around you. Unless you have really great sound system you can't hear things as you would hear, or even feel other things. In that sense, I think it should come to a... new thread.

[Tickle]

This is an MMO based on one of the most demanding engines on the market, so yes, I'd support full stealth based on shadows and light levels. Dynamic shadows would hardly be an issue, as someone else pointed out, if something is moving it's pretty tough to hide in it's shadow anyway. And ordinary shadows could be enforced, part of the most basic system requirements.

My only qualm with stealth being tied to light levels would be a real-time day/night cycle. I don't want to have to stay up all night just to have a full stealth advantage.

[Thalras Naeblis]

Originally Posted by Tickle

My only qualm with stealth being tied to light levels would be a real-time day/night cycle. I don't want to have to stay up all night just to have a full stealth advantage.

Yeah I would like the day/night cycle to maybe be a 12 hour day where in the summer there is more daylight, and in the winter there is more darkness and then in the fall and the spring where there is equinoxs that have 6 hours of daylight and 6 hours of night. That would make it better for assassins so they dont have to stay up late, especially assassins that have to work 7 days a week, early in the morning.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by Thalras Naeblis

Yeah I would like the day/night cycle to maybe be a 12 hour day where in the summer there is more daylight, and in the winter there is more darkness and then in the fall and the spring where there is equinoxs that have 6 hours of daylight and 6 hours of night. That would make it better for assassins so they dont have to stay up late, especially assassins that have to work 7 days a week, early in the morning.

I personally find AoC's day-night cycle of approximately 4 hours long enough. Though increasing it to perhaps 6 hours would be good as well, but even 8 would be too long imo. Four cycles per day would be enough for me, it would give everyone a fair chance to play at night/day if they wish so, regardless of things such as work schedule.

If the game was a mmo about vampires, i'd definitely vote 12 hours day cycle, just for the extra long nights it would offer, but otherwise I don't see any valid and objective reason.

[Thalras Naeblis]

[quote=catmorbid;36704]I personally find AoC's day-night cycle of approximately 4 hours long enough. Though increasing it to perhaps 6 hours would be good as well, but even 8 would be too long imo. Four cycles per day would be enough for me.quote]

Yeah, actually that would be better to have four cycles per day.

[Necromantic]

The day cycle discussion is in another thread. ;P

But I don't know it's up to the devs, I wouldn't bother high requirements.

[Thalras Naeblis]

lol yeah i love how this thread is about stealth and we somehow start talking about the day and night cycle

[catmorbid]

well... Day-night cycle is relevant to stealth in that if darkness has meaningfull impact on stealth, as is should of course, the length of nighttime would determine the scale of operations you can perform with the cover of darkness. Darkness and stealth pretty much walk hand-to-hand, so it's actually not that bad of a sidetrack.

Anyway. I have already stated my opinion on issue, except maybe for the hardware issue? Oh well, it should be made hardware-independent, so that regardless of which detail you run, you won't have any advantage.

[Thalras Naeblis]

Yeah oops when I think about writing that post that was stupid of me it is totally relevant towards stealth.

[Stormblazer]

I want minimum "magical" stealth. In other words, no automatic invisibility should be in the game, ever, and it should be mostly up to the player to use the environment to their advantage.

[Neek]

Stealth is critical aspect to get right by launch. It is an apex feature usually chosen by a select few who roll stealthers as their mains before any other choice. (Me)

What I have concluded from this thread and from my experiences:

Challenging - Stealth does not need to equal EZ mode.

Advantageous - The reason the skill exists is to get the jump, avoid fights, cause confusion

Overpowered - Stealth can easily tip the scales of balance if not discerned properly

Bonuses - What are the limitations while in stealth?

The Victims - Give them a chance!?

Reality Check - There should be initial checks in place so that you cannot stealth while in the open and targeted

Everyone - Should everyone have the option to stealth?

I have to gather my thoughts on this because stealthing is the single greatest skill in any community-based game that has a huge impact on rogues and everyone in general.

IMO, this is the most important skill-based feature to get right even though getting it right is very demanding due to so many differing opinions.

[Rhygar]

Originally Posted by ganzo72

yeah but being just comepletely invisible woud be lame. who does that? and im not onna ruin my visual experience just to see some shmuck trying to sneak up on me and kill my toon. and i think alot of people would agree.

I hate losing as much as the next guy, but I have to agree with that. If some idiot wants to lose out on a part of his gaming experience so that he can sneak up on someone (and how often does that happen anyways as a percentage of your total fights?) then well the joke's on him. I'll be enjoying the graphics thank you very much.

Besides is it not possible for the software to determine what your settings are and counter act it on screen?

[Rhygar]

Originally Posted by catmorbid

I personally find AoC's day-night cycle of approximately 4 hours long enough. Though increasing it to perhaps 6 hours would be good as well, but even 8 would be too long imo. Four cycles per day would be enough for me, it would give everyone a fair chance to play at night/day if they wish so, regardless of things such as work schedule.

Thank you. I get so frustrated with people that think the day/night cycle should be linked to real time just because WoW did it?!

4-5 hours is ideal relative to the average player's session length.

[Death Saved]

Realistic shadow that you can hide in would be fun but then people can just raise the gamma level unless it's capped at a decent level.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by Rhygar

Thank you. I get so frustrated with people that think the day/night cycle should be linked to real time just because WoW did it?!

4-5 hours is ideal relative to the average player's session length.

Yeah, exactly. A computer game is always an abstraction of a reality, not a reality in itself. And because everything is abstracted in computer games, why the hell should day-night cycle not be? A 24h cycle has more cons than pros. Especially when stealth is tied to darkness and night time.

[WonkoZSane]

A possibility would be to have people in stealth mode become transparent. The amount of transparency would depend on randomness but biased by the hiding player's 'stealth' skill and the observing player's 'perception' skill. This automatically factors in skill since the more transparent you are the far more likely you will go unnoticed. Further since the transparency will vary from PC to PC, observant PCs will, on average, be far more likely to see someone in 'stealth mode' than the unaware. You could have active search on that slows you down but increases the transparency of other PCs so it's more likely you might see someone hiding. Note this way you wouldn't have to factor in distance, light/darkness, terrain, movement, etc. This is done automatically... being immobile, far away, hidden by shadows and blocked by terrain will almost guarantee you'll go unnoticed if your stealth score is decent enough. However, no matter how good you are (or how unobservant your opponent is) you will be unable to simply disappear in front of someone, especially in the middle of an open field in broad daylight. If you want to sneak attack someone under those conditions you have to get him from behind. And hope that he doesn't hear you coming.

WZS

[Esto]

Checking out what the U3 engine can do was a good idea.
Also, if you did turn down the graphics wouldnt the low quality stealth be all mixed up and hard to see with the low quality graphics of the anything around the stealther?

[Malinos]

Something similar to how it was done in Planetside would be good. It was a magical stealth but you became more visible the faster you moved. Skill could allow you to move faster, or become less visible as you moved.