f13.net

Game Devs:  Why do you do it?  What possesses you to put a class in the game that has such a binary advantage over another class?  And now, given that you've put this class into your game, how do you balance it with the other classes? with the NPC?  Why is it worth the effort (I assume that you asked yourselves if it's worth the effort)?

Latest case in point, from the City of Villians beta board:


Reply from Stateman


My 2 cents


In DAOC, as a Thane, I feared the spy classes whenever I had to move to a rally point in the frontiers (which made the recommendations, "don't travel alone" pure nonsense).
In WoW, as a Druid, I despised the rogues due to the stun-lock-dead routine (that the game is solo-friendly also makes the "don't travel alone" advise not worth typing)

These issues generate noise from players and many nerf-call threads/complaints.  It seems harder to balance a stealth class then most other classes.  So I always think (but never posted till now), "Why? Why is this worth the effort?".  Does datamining show that players love stealth? 

Obviously many player play Rogues in WoW, but I always assumed that it was because the Rogue was "DPS + Stealth = Joy" rather then players just really loving to play stealth.

What am I not getting?

In my experience, yes, rogues are very popular.  They certainly were in DAoC.  A lot of players like being strong solo, but I think the concept and the playstyle of a rogue are also both things that players like.  A lot.  It's not like rogues were the only good solo'ers in DAoC though ... at least when I was playing it seemed that other classes like Necros were the most popular solo classes.

Generally you can't have an interesting MMO without giving certain advantages and disadvantages to each class choice.  The challenge is, of course, to make sure that the advantages and disadvantages work out.  Traditionally rogues pay the price for their solo/stealth play by being less useful in group fights and large-scale battles.

Rogue-types are quite difficult to balance.  But then, I think that most interesting mechanics in MMO's are pretty darn hard to balance.  Generally I think one-hit-kills are almost never fun and aren't necessary for making fun rogues.  But allowing rogues to setup one very strong attack IS a very fun mechanic that a lot of players really like.

The alternative is just making everyone the same.  Or at least making everyone the same in all of the interesting areas and only giving slight variations like: your DPS comes from DD's, your DPS comes from AoE's, and your DPS comes from DoT's, but in the end you all do exactly the same damage over time.

Gabe.

Because DND did it.

Really, that's just about it. DND was like this so let's make rogues like this in our game. Or better yet, EQ did it taking a cue from DND, so let's do it this way too. EQ made lots of money.

I have started playing rogue classes lately because they are much more interesting of a melee class than warriors and I like melee. Plus, as you siad, they get the ability to choose their fights. But I'd rather stealth actually relied on the player having skill at finding cover. Make his character turn into a predator type when they stealth instead of just disappearing in the middle of the bareass open. Then make them look for good ground cover/camoflauge areas in order to move stealthed.

The other option is just make it so that they suck at combat like Shadowbane did the thieves. Of course, the thieves could have some kickass damage if they specced out right, but generally if they wanted to steal from players, they had to be damn good at getting away. Once they stole something they appeared and were probably going to get gangraped.

SB Mage Assassin

Best Stealth Class Ever.

As for SB Thieves, they got nerfed pretty bad, and stayed nerfed. They remained only good at stealing really (and that also meant speccing for Con more than Dex). The Rogue Assassin was better at killing.

Anyways...Just to keep on topic a bit.

I think not being as effective in group pvp is a good tradeoff. Speaking in terms of WoW, having long cooldowns adds to the negatives of the Rogue class -- It's not like they have everything going for them. It's not like they can decimate opponents at all times. As far as I'm concerned, people can be my guest in wanting to play that way. I have no envy whatsoever, and see more downsides to it than not.

Actually, the problem isn't so much there's a stealth class, the problem is the ONLY thing you can do with said stealth is yet more combat.  Stealth classes shouldn't automatically mean "assassin" but on such combat focused games as these that's the only real way to play it.  Oddly, SB got this closest to right with stealth classes actually scouting out enemy positions and reporting in.  What exactly is there to scout in most games?  Nada.

Well, there's also the mechanics problem of stealth = invisible, unhearable, and therefore indefensible, which is just plain stupid.  Let's face it breaking in a heavily guarded building to steal loot/assasinate a key figure and stalking through a forest hunting elusive prey or hiding from keen sensed preadators are wildly different skillsets and concepts... except in a MMORPG...


But on the whole, I think Haemish is right; D&D based games have to have rogues b/c "that's just the way fantasy rpgs are done".  Yet all they are in said games are melee fighters with more interesting options.  Bah. 

Xilren

DnD only gets it right because there is DM to keep the craziness in check.  Stealth in the dnd computer games is just as broken as stealth in MMOG.

I thought a cool strealth abilty would be the ability scan weakiness in monsters (which be randomnized) while they are resting.  So the scout would strealth in close, get the info, run back and "tell" the team.  Now players that are "told" can take advantage of the weakinesses.

This is a nice solution because it puts some of the choice of combat back into the hands of the stalked, instead of the stalker - avoid shadows/cover if you want to avoid being ganked.  My biggest objection to a stealth class being effective (or very effective) in combat is that the stalked has little or no control over where combat occurs, your solution addresses that.

Balancing based on the fact that it takes 20 minutes to set up a kill means zero to the person getting killed - they have no capacity to appreciate the artistry, etc, because they just don't give a fuck.  Balancing based on that requires everyone to play a stealth class to understand the limitations... requiring folks to play a class to understand something seems like something that isn't worth putting in a game.

I'd be much more interested in seeing a stealth class in a game where the stealth class was playing a completely different game then the combat classes, and I think they'd be easier to balance (e.g. the combat classes mostly crawl dungeons, the business classes craft, the stealth classes steal, the only time a combat class needs a stealth class are when they a hide/sneak/steal situation).  (course no one has done this type of game cause folks just seem to like combat, or maybe cause it's harder to create a fun game with those types of gameplay)

EDIT: sounds like SB tried to have stleath be a bit of a different game, but I didn't play SB so I can't say how well it worked.

It also helps that DnD actually has reasonably balanced rules to handle stealth, as opposed to just magically making you invisible - in DnD you do generally have to find cover to avoid being detected, and your target can find you if he's perceptive enough (read: has invested in Spot and/or Listen skills) or has magical countermeasures.

I still haven't seen a stealth system that complex in a video game.  The two closest are Vampire (which did "hiding" pretty well with concealment being a function of light levels and character skill) and Manhunt (with its sound-based radar system).  And both of those are purely single-player.

*cough* DDO *cough* kind of *cough*

I'll say no more though  :nda:

 :nda: indeed.

I'll agree with Xil and say that the problem is 1) people want to play thieves, and B) the MOG only allows combat.  If you look back at D&D, you didn't have thieves backstabbing liches with a cooldown timer.  They picked pockets, disarmed traps, scouted around, pushed the halfling into a pit when no one else was looking, and so on.  The MOG rogue is an assassin, if anything.

Don't get me excited about DDO.  I am down to one subscription.  I'm on the eleventh step, baby!

Planetside for the stealth win. Stealthers run faster, die faster, are semi-visible when moving, and invisible when stopped. They also show up on some radar. Lastly there is an implant that anyone can get which allows you to see them. You can play them for combat, for support (AMS, mines, vehicle hacking), or for ninja hacking bases.

Fantasy games could show the footprints of a steather on the ground in soft surfaces but until MMOGs evolve goals other than leveling it just doesn't matter.

I also think that stealthers doesn't fit MMORPGs, it's a way to powerful tool when it comes to griefing. Here's some examples how I've seen it been used in WoW.

Let a group from the other faction take on a hard quest, when they engage in the encounter the rogue sap one and kills the other ones, and then finnish the quest. Since the other team has agro from the hard mobs it's very doable if timed right.

The chest in burning steppes which is guarded by a fairly high lvl elite mob. The mob is soloable for most classes, but most come out with very little hp / mana in the end. The rogue lets the guy from the other faction kill the mob and then finnish him of and steals the chest.

Geting corpse camped by a rogue and finaly get your friends over to return the favor? Not possible, he pops and stealths right away.

I belive one of the reasons for why most people love rogues is that they have the power to choose his battles and choose the moment of attack, that is simply way to powerful in a PvP game.

But in WoW when everyone and their uncle plays a Hunter, I don't see how it's that big of a problem.

<---wants to hear Shockeye's viewpoint on stealth as a Scout in Shadowbane....

Scouts were so great in SB, I mean that class worked so well I remember during pre-siege build ups only the scouts and top leadership would be voiced in teamspeak...   

I personally agree..in fact, as a nation leader with two accounts and two comps, I levelled up an r5 scout simply to handle being able to "scout" both attacks and defenses in a siege environment. My scout was built for survivability, not offense so I can't really relate to the conversation about stealth being overpowered (I still died LOTS, but a big part of that was a bug in SB), but IMO it was stealthing done really well for a particular purpose.

I had absolutely no problems with stealthed characters in SB, but since I played a scout I was able to find the stealthers and take them out. Being a melee-specced scout certainly helped in that regard. Stealth is king in PvP games, that's a certainty. However, in WoW a large number of players play a class that can mitigate that advantage. In SB, there were never a large number of scouts. Most people did not want to play that slow paced of a class. I enjoyed the tactics and strategy it entailed. Killing Stephen Zepp a number of times didn't hurt either. But then I was a piece of trash barely above errant. Hing 4 Lyfe, y0.

Was?

Mommy wow, you're a big boy now.

Every post to you is going to be retribution now for fat Yuna.

More on topic, I agree with what Shockeye said - there was a play fast play hard mentality to Shadowbane that bugged me. Being a tactical slower player put you at an automatic advantage in that title. I don't think it's happened again since Shadowbane. Or should I say, happened in a game that the public has seen.

Stealth is just usually fucked up because devs think "invisible and powerful attacks" entails what a stealth class is made for, even though in pen and paper D&D a rogue would usually die if he tried to pull off hardcore combat they are usually associated with now.

I can't wait for DDO.

Actually, I've often thought about a sort of stealth that I've never seen in games, the stealth of being a nobody.

It would seem to me that there is a place somewhere for 'reputation stealth', where a character is present, but of so little import that any established character would probably be unable to single them out in most circumstances, particularly in 'city' settings.

I realize there are probably a whole legion of possible tricks and/or exploits that could be tied to such a status, but I still think that it would be an interesting approach to take, rather like M59's lowbie protection option.

SB made a pretty good implementation of 'traditional' stealth, with a variety of counters of varying effectiveness (AOEs, track, scout reveals), although it sounds to me like it could be improved by crossing it with the Planetside partially visible while moving and with a terrain factor modification.  Thieves were a fairly viable class in SB.  I'd say the results of stealth in SB are one of the best arguments for stealth in PvP.

Better teach the spellchecker things like PvP and AOE, IMO.

Stealth is not a problem as long as the developers use a rock-paper-scissors approach to balancing, e.g. stealth detection potions in WoW. If there is no such balancing ideal in use (ie. add a counter to every advantage), then yes, stealth becomes one of the most problematic advantages.

UO had the incognito spell, which changed your name (did it do appearance too?) and the thief disguise kits for "reputation stealth".

As to hiding in cover, "Legends of Kesmai" did that, but the game ran on a timer, with turns.  You had so many movements per turn, and if you ended your movement while not being adjacent to an object, you became visible.

Personally, I play rogues whenever I get the chance, even though the execution is generally pretty weak.  I generally like the whole concept of "Stealth" because it implies a certain level of cunning and intelligence and planning that other tactics don't have.  If I'm a warrior, I can just bash away with my sword.  If I'm a mage, I can just lob fireballs.  But a rogue, theoretically, has to find some other way, some kind of window in the enemy patrols, a hidden back door, something like that, and that's the kind of thing I generally find interesting.

I'm going to have to subscribe to the party line that the problem with stealth is that it's being used in games where there's nothing to do but fight.  Stealth ideally would be an alternative to combat, not an alternate way of fighting.

You get this problem in some single player games, too; Neverwinter Nights springs to mind.  The objectives in that game are all "Kill Fred the Monster" kinds of things.  If you NEED to kill Fred, and you've balanced the game so that the challenge level would be appropriate to every other class, then your thief class needs to be at least that combat-worthy, or he'll never get past that point in the game.  So, you're forced to make these ninja characters who can whip shit on everything that a fighter can but who can also turn invisible.

Probably the best implementations of stealth I've seen have been in games where there are non-combat objectives to achieve, like in Deus Ex or Quest for Glory (or Thief, obviously).  You can sneak in, grab the treasure/hit the button/get the key/whatever, and get out, and the purpose of stealth is to avoid combat rather than to help you win it.

I don't know about the "Rogues are good solo but horrible in groups" idea being a great way to balance it.  If your game is based on social interaction (as MMOGs are), why would you design a class that works best without that interaction?  And how do you balance this, anyway?  Team play and solo play are not really comparable concepts in the way that, say, wielding a sword and shield versus a two handed sword are; making someone very good at one but very bad at the other doesn't somehow make them "Balanced" overall.

I think that SB has come the closest to a really good stealth game.  I think the concept still has a long way to go, but SB is a good example of what's been done right.  The rogue classes are entirely why I got interested in SB at all, to come down to it.

The problem with rogues is that it too easily becomes "add invis and call it stealth".  Meaning, I can be "stealthy" and in the middle of an army, or walking all around one guy.  Often, there's nothing they can do; invis is an immunity button.  UO did this first, although it implimented stealth fairly well by making it very handicapped and having collisions on.  With it, you could only take up to 10 steps before having to re-apply stealth (with a timer between).  It's not immunity, because AOE spells could hit you, walking through others would reveal you, and if they walked/bumped into you, the gig was up.  On the other hand, its applications were pretty much entirely restricted to stealing thieves.  You could use it as a getaway (run off screen and hide), but really, there were better ways to escape.

SB has a functional rogue class, and although scouts are the best at it due to having detect abilities (usable while stealthed) and speed, it integrates well into all the classes.  All rogue PK groups could be deadly, due to being able to get, literally, right ontop of a group and opening up with a first strike, before the enemy even knew they were in danger.  Being able to scout and report location of troop movements was invaluable, and actually helps to create a battlefield fog of war.  Plus, they've been improving it with new/changed disciplines, etc.

But, it's still nearly an auto immunity button.  Scouts, on the other hand, are an auto anti-rogue win; if there is a scout around, your rogue is useless.  If there isn't one around, your rogue can operate with near impunity.  It's this very binary situation that can cause problems for the class, and hamper an otherwise interesting class.

More interesting would be a system that relies on a mix of variables.  Movement + proximity to enemies is a good way to get revealed.  If you're revealed, it should only be to those able to see you (the guy next to me might see me, but that doesn't make me visible to someone 100 yards away).  Differentiate between kinds of stealth; scouts are able to maintain stealth at high speed, but not at close range, while thieves are opposite.  For stealthers borderline on being visible, drop clues to anyone nearby ("you hear footsteps").  It helps to have NPC stealthers wandering entire zones, to add effect.  Allow thief/assassin types to pick a disguise - useful in large groups, but which doesn't withstand much scrutiny (say, merely targeting them, opening their paperdoll, etc).  No going invis with anyone watching.  Not that you can't stealth with people watching, just that they're already aware of you; anyone new won't see you. 

Also, allow rogues to do more things from stealth.  What about combat activities allowable while sneaking around?  Scouts can lay traps, thieves can screw with someones gear, assassins get their ambush, etc.  Open attack will obviously break anything stealthy, but open attack isn't always what rogues do.  If out from under stealth, let rogues redirect attacks; if A and B attack me, let me parry A into B or such (come on, they can do it in movies!).  If the player is a mage-rogue, let them "parry" magical attacks.  Or anything else that might be unusual, but what I don't like is giving rogues a masterfully evil one hit stealth attack - and little else.

I love my little thief in SB dearly.

Watching a group farm for their city, then running up and stealing all their gold, then running away was nothing short of gaming gold.

Yes. Shadowbane's efficacy with making interesting stealth classes was partly because as Xil said, stealth-classes had other things to do besides combat. In a PVP+ game at that, whoda thunk it? I think part of that is because the player's goals were created by the player and/or his social organization, and not handed to the player on a linear train track of leveling. It didn't matter how kickass a fighter you were, if you attacked a city and there were 100 people in the city and you didn't know that before attacking, you were probably going to get steamrolled. But one scout/thief/assassin type that could recon that bitch? Gold. Way's story about stealing one of House Daenyr's siege weapons while they were on the march to our town is another example. He never even got involved in combat, but it's one of his most treasured MMOG memories.

*siiiiiigh*  Why can't anyone clone/improve SB, like, without the bugs and stuff, oh and more shiney.

I'm not sure I'd even give a shit about the shiney, so long as they removed the leveling/farming necessities (and I mean COMPLETELY REMOVED IT), got rid of mouse movement and went to WASD and for God's sake, make it stable, non-laggy and sb.exe free.

I loved my thief in SB. He wasn't SUPER effective at combat, but he could take down a sitting caster if they weren't wary. I really liked the way they implemented the scout/thief- assassin counterbalance, although I think scouts got the better end of the deal. Roaming scouting bands of stealthed players reporting back to the leadership was pure fun.

God, I wish they hadn't fucked the rest of it up.

Lmao, sitting already made a player open to taking double damage. I would hope you could take a weary caster down in that situation  :wink:. Even my all Con Birdman Theif was effective there...

Though his real strength was as an item and gold farmer. That's all I ever really bothered with....But then they went and nerfed that too (by preventing Theives from being able to steal from Rune dropping mobs....But...I can't really blame them for that. That was a very shitty thing in retrospect).

So stealth is class is hard to (or arguably hasn't been) implement correctly, sounds like we all agree on that.  That said, doesn't any developer pause, at least a little, and ask himself/herself, "is a stealth class really worth the hassle to put in at launch?"

To ask a broader question, why include a dozen or dozens, of classes at launch, and have all of them be not very deep?  Why not just leave the classes that are not part of the "core" out and focus on the core classes at launch?  If a stealth class is part of the core that's great, you'll have more time to focus on making that class fit within the power balance of the other classes.  Then slowly add additional classes as you go, with markedly different goals, flavor and playstyle, each followed by a balance review so you don't fuck up your core game.

Seems like with fewer classes to screw with at start, you could focus more on your game environment, NPC AI, quests, PvP gameplay, etc., which in my opinion are the areas of gameplay that have been lacking in the last couple games.  Maybe classes are easier to implement then engaging and entertaining PvP.  Maybe engaging and entertaining PvP would be easier to implement if you didn't have so many classes.

I have yet to hear a compelling case why stealth should not be part of the design framework.  What I heard was paper complaining that scissors hurt.  Hey friend paper, rock has some serious mean in it for YOU! :P  One of my favorite characters of all time was my UO dungeon rogue.  He was pure stealth and acquisition and while a deadly fighter I considered it a failure if I had to fall back on that.

It's an entirely different perspective on time and flow.  Where most classes charge in with banners flying, the appropriate rogue template is precision and patience.  In UO particularly it was no trivial challenge to stealth to the bottom of an advanced dungeon, taking *every* locked chest and *never* triggering combat.  That sort of self-challenge is one of my biggest thrills.

Occasionally I've been paper in a game with bad templates.  In DAOC I was pissed no few times mainly because it was the stealth rogue archer escaping nearly every time.  This is the template that should never have existed: one or two-shot long ranged ninja killer.

Two things I can think of off the top of my head (other people have more to say about this than I do, but what the heck, I like writing).

One, people like having customization, and having a lot of classes means having a lot of options.  If I can be a thief, hey, great, that's the class for me.  If that class turns out to be just a warrior who can dual-wield and turn invisible, well, that's a crappy implementation of a thief... but it's still a thief, if only in name.  Just being able to run around the game world with the title of "thief" or "wizard" or "Jedi" appended to their names is going to be enough for some people, regardless of how well the actual class is implemented (in the long term, probably not so much, o'course).  If I want to play as a rogue, and your game has no rogue class, I won't pick it up.  If I want to play as a rogue and your game does have a rogue class but it's crappily implemented, it's not unlikely that either A) I don't know it's crappily implemented, or B) I'm holding the hope that someday it will be "fixed," so maybe I will pick the game up.

Two, I don't know that the "resources" used for developing new classes are analogous to the resources used for developing, say, a concept for a global PvP mechanic.  Give me an hour, and I can toss off five or ten ideas for classes, and bang out their abilities in a day or two.  Sail that down to the art/programming teams, and we're good to go.  Doing something like developing complex AI or dynamic quests is a problem of an entirely different order, and I don't know that it's a shortage of development resources that's causing them so much as the tradeoffs they'd make in other gameplay areas, or an unfavorable cost/benefit analysis.  If it costs you ten thousand bucks to program a good NPC AI, then if that AI won't create ten thousand dollars worth of revenue, it's a bad trade, regardless of how many peons you have on the factory floor.


Two things about that:

One, if your game is based on combat, it's a HUGE problem to balance stealth with other elements.  It's easy to say my water mage deals double damage against a fire mage but half damage against an earth mage.  Fine. But it's real, real hard to say how exactly you could make a combat stealth character "balanced" with regards to the other classes.  It's a very, very narrow line; too many counters and stealth becomes useless, but with too few counters, it becomes too powerful.  It's the same as with other abilities, but more nebulous and difficult to gauge.  Most non-stealth classes have balance issues with healing, armor, damage, that kind of thing.  How much damage you're recieving, how much you're giving, how much you're healing.  All this can be re-balanced fairly easily by tweaking a few numbers.  But stealth doesn't fit in anywhere along that continuum.  As such, it's real hard to balance in terms of those abilities.  If you had a game with non-combat based objectives, you could concievably get around this, but devs seem reluctant to go that route for some reason.

Two, while I like playing stealth characters, I have to admit that I hate playing against them.  I'm thinking here specifically of World of Warcraft, where Rogues can drop out of stealth and take off half your health bar before you can respond.  I don't mind dishing it, but in my experience, that shit isn't fun to recieve.  You might say it's a case of "Rock, paper, scissors," but that doesn't make it any less annoying.  If a mage is weak against a fighter, all right, the mage can decide to fight anyway or run or call for help or whatever.  He has a certain amount of control over the fight, even if he can't win it.  If he's weak against someone who can turn invisible, though, he's not going to know he's even in trouble until the knife is six inches into his back.  That's frustrating.  Removing frustrating elements from the game would theoretically be a good idea.

So many of us here had a relationship with SB like Ben did with J.Lo.

Yes but you're outlining solo pvp play.  Yes being paper is teh suk.  In group play paper travels with at least one rock.  Or enough of the other two as to negate the impact.

While a conversation about whether a stealth class that has combat as it's main function can be balanced against combat classes without stealth is interesting, why I asked the question is because I wanted to find out what people thought the main driver was in putting a class into the game that MMO history has shown causes problems with the client base.

My personal leaning was toward, "all the games before have done it, so if we don't do it we won't sell as well... besides, WE know how to balance stealth", but I wanted to see if anyone else had a different perspective.

Also, I was hoping someone who had actually put a stealth class in one of their games had some insight.

I think SB did put stealth in in an effective manner, particularly with the scout class.  More, part of what made the implementation so effective was that there were multiple stealth classes, with damage output increasing as stealth ability decreased.  While the actual implementation of stealth itself  could have been better, it was  good enough, and the classes didn't break the game, although tweaking was always important.  I've also heard love here for Planetside's stealthers.

I think that the real problem is that there is no place in PvE for stealth.  It is in the PvE with PvP games that stealth seems to be the greatest problem, and I wonder if that isn't a result of trying to balance the stealther for PvE, rather than the problem of balancing the stealther in pure PvP.

I strongly disagree on the first statement.  And I agree with the second but I think it simply casts the entire problem of merging such different playstyles without contextually different rule sets.

Would you agree with a modified version?  Specifically, that there is no place for stealth in PvE as it is currently designed in most, if not all MMOs, but that there could be a place for stealth in a different design of PvE?

It's hard for me to agree with such a blanket statetement as I'm pretty happy with how stealth works in the two commercial PvE offerings in which I have the most experience with such templates, UO and WoW.  I dabbled in it in DAOC and have already outlined my issues with Mythic's template.  NWN it would depend on the module - most designers understandably have a very hard time crafting content attractive to every major template type.

I like the fact that in one-on-one PvE combat the templates do well but in a mobbed group it goes down fast.  I like that I can pick which fights I get into but not always the ones I have to get out of.  WoW's Vanish ability is overpowered (it should fail more often) but other than that I'm highly entertained by a playstyle that requires me to pace myself and manage my impulses.  I'd like to see more content catering to the template but I don't view that as a problem with the template itself.

It can take me three or more times longer to do certain things with my rogues than I would with more hard-charging classes - that to me is also a good tradeoff.  We're in the context of PvE so there are no customer satisifaction issues.

No the only thing I'd change in the templates I've seen is more content aimed at those skill sets - in fact an emphasis on exclusive content.  We see a lot of unimaginative NWN modules that try to do this but wind up being series of tedious trap disarms.

The important issue with stealth characters is that in most games, the rogue knows when steath works and he knows when he has been spotted. This shouldn't happen. In DnD, you announce you want to sneak and then roll. You have no idea if it works until it is too late. In EQ2 (yeah, it is PVE only) when you stealth, all aggro mobs lose the red border on their names so you know you are safe. This shouldn't happen in a pure stealth sense.

I didn't follow that completely.  How is having my stealth check fail in a MOG any different than failing a die roll in D&D?  Either way it's about to be a painful encounter.  If anything the MOG implementation is more "fair" since the stealth check is constantly tested while in D&D it's pretty much done just once before the attempt to stealth.

Unless your complaint is that monster AI is often dumb and there should be some mobs that detect the player but hide their awareness until some tipping point is decided.  Sure I'd agree with that.

Because in a MMOG, you are going to know you failed your check and take action with that in mind.  In D&D, you have no idea you failed until somthing charges at you.

I would like to point out that pretty much the only people who thinks stealth is fine in WoW is rogues themselves and hunters. I'm sure some of you noticed the discussion of rogues which steemed from the movie World of Roguecraft. It might be a little biased, but I do think it displays some of the fuck ups with the design of rogues ( loads of stuns on stealth class which also posses tons of dmg ).

I have a toon for every class available to Horde.  My warlock is my main, not my rogue.  Same situation in UO and DAOC.  My opinion hardly comes from some rabid part of me.

Especially when the context is PvE I have a hard time understanding the hate for rogues.  And when it's PvP I have an even harder time understanding it since usually rogues may get that one/two shot kill but they usually immediately die as well.  One for one is no great crisis in the MOG design community.

Well, WoW spent alot of time making the instances stealth proof (all the 'by passing content" changes).  Time that they may have spent elsewhere if they had decided to forgo the stealth classes at launch and wait till they had some sort of spy craft they wanted to add.

I'm not against stealth, they are fun classes to play (the Thief series is tremendous).  I'm against putting a combat class into a mmo game that starts with a large (in WoW, very large) advantage and is difficult to balance... because it's just noise that distracts from being innovative.  Devs have done a bunch of broken stealth classes, let's focus on something new that's tuff to do, eh?

Worth noting is that players have numerous methods to increase their Perception in CoH/V.  This is the trait that directly counters Stealth.  Some powers will add to a player's perception (including Tactics, a pool power, which will add to your /entire group's/ Perception) and Insight Inspirations will do so as well.  Counters to stealth are plentiful in CoH.  Of course, Stalkers can invest in Stealth (err, the pool power) in addition to Hide, and get a teammate to hit them with Grant Invisibility, to try and be as sneaky as possible.  And there are the Perception debuff abilities like Flash Arrows and Smoke Grenades.

But.

Being one-shot is not fun.  I know it's a blast for the player doing the one-shotting (BOOM HEADSHOT BOOM HEADSHOT) but tough shit.  Stalkers in PvE should absolutely be able to one-shot enemies, but in PvP there must be a minimum cap of TargetMaxHealth-1=AssassinStrikeCap.  That one remaining hit point can be surprisingly important.

But that's just specifics I wanted to mention because it was CoV that inspired this discussion.

I would like to say that I'm one of the players who very much wants stealth in his game.  And I want to be able to do actual stealthy things with that stealth, whether that be stealing, scouting, or assassinating.  And there had better be a reward for it- sure, scouting in DAoC was useful for the people getting the info, but the scout didn't get a single damn point for it.

And there's a counter to Assassin Strike as well - it's called 'any PBAoE power', since Assassin Strike is interruptible.

Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, Repel, any tank damage aura, caltrops, hurricanes, ice slicks, arctic air, hot feet, the pool power 'whirlwind'... there's probably more. If you don't have one then stand in someone else's.

...of course, this means that you're all clustered up for an AoE, but them's the breaks.

--GF

I believe the Stalker's Hide ability grants a very large bonus to defense vs AoE attacks, specifically to counter those PBAoE auras.  Also, the Devs have stated more than once they'll be putting in some PvP code to prevent one-shot kills.

I think the implementation of Stealth ni MMOs is part of the problem...

Someone mentioned the World of Roguecraft videos up a few posts.  There is no way you should be able to remain invisible while hopping around like you've got flubber on your boots.  Even more so when very near someone who is looking for you. 

Stealth is done well in the Thief series, because it depended on light levels, motion, direction and range.  In pretty much every MMO, and most other games, it depends on, at most, one thing: 'stealth' skill/level vs. 'perception' skill/level  with probably a large adjustment for the character levels involved(where applicable).  None of them, to my knowledge, take into account day/night cycle, and only camelot does anything with range and maybe motion(don't recall).  From what I recall from beta, WoW doesn't even slow you down much while stealthed, even at low levels...  *checked website*  WoW's site claims that range does have an effect, but that motion does not.  Also, as you gain levels of Stealth you move faster, and there's a talent that allows you to move faster while stealthed.  Yet, humanoids, like all predators, have eyes/vision systems that are trained to pick out motion.  Things standing still, even in plain site, can be hard to see, but motion sticks out.  Why, of all the games with stealth, do only Planetside and maybe DAoC actually model this?

Alkiera

Yup.  Non-suppressed hide gives something like 30% base defense to AE.  Enhanced, you can stroll right through those damage auras.

That said, auto-hit effects like Arctic Air won't pop a Stalker out of Hide, but will interrupt the Assassin Strike currently.  That is supposed to change shortly.

But also worth noting is that Arctic Air has a -stealth component, so that most any Stalker entering it should become visible at least, though their Hide won't actually be suppressed until they are damaged.

I really liked the way Planetside handled their stealthsuits. If the stealther was standing still, they were pretty much invisible unless you had the darklight implant. The faster the stealther moved, the more visible they became. Crouchwalking made you barely stand out. Running made you into an easily seen pale blur. It was amazing how many stealthers thought they could run around and think they were safe. One of my favorite kills was chasing down an stealther who thought he was invisible and stabbing him in the back with my knife.

I remember early UO, before last target and all name... Stealth was very possible with the right choice of robes and some skill with dye tub.

Part of the difficulty in balance comes from giving a class multiple extreme abilities when others have fewer or only moderate ones.  (By extreme I mean it works very well when conditions allow.)  To use generic archtypes, mages are generally thought of as having extreme damage but are weak in other areas.  Warriors can take a beating.  Rogues get stealth usually coupled with an initial high damage attack.  Even though they may not deal as much damage over time as either, the initial attack often determines the outcome.  If they can run away should things go poorly and hide, either to heal wounds or to launch another attack, then they manage to have offense and defense better than their counterparts.

The one implimentation of stealth I really enjoyed was in a MUD.  We converted the stock Diku illusionist to a shadowmage.  They gained a rouge's stealth, but their overall damage was less than a mage's and they gained no extra damage when attacking from hiding.  For the patient they could still be very powerful since they were able to choose their battles, however it took some skill to beat mobs that other classes could stand toe to toe with.

Yes, IMHO, the problem is in balancing for both PvE and PvP. That opinion will involve six notes, some musing, a corollary outlined, and a conclusion. Also, I ramble.

In my combat gaming I have noted:

- Long, hard-fought battles are more exciting and satisfying than quick ones, win or lose.
- Winning a short battle makes me feel mighty.
- Losing a short battle makes me feel weak.
- Escaping from a battle I might have lost is exciting.
- Winning a battle from which I could not escape is total bliss.
- Losing a battle from which I could not escape is total exasperation.

These have been true of RPG and FPS, twitch and auto-attack, PvP and PvE, warrior vs warrior and army vs. army. I don't mind overmuch being attacked when I feel I have some chance of defending myself or fleeing, even if I fail to do so. I blame that sort of failure on myself. It is only when my death turns inevitable within seconds of the appearance of a foe that I sigh and roll my eyes and quit for the night.

That's ganking, whether a player does it or a mob.

If I'm going to lose, I want to go down fighting a desperate fight. The glee I get killing the defenseless is small reward for the despair I feel turned defenseless myself. Unfortunately, this butts heads with the PvE game. RPG development has centered on using a long string of small victories over relatively easy enemies to put some space between the challenging fights and to prolong the gaming experience. PvP only seems more problematic because suddenly both victim and victor have the opportunity to complain. No wolf whines that mages can kill it before it gets close enough to use claws. No naga cries nerf when warrior taunts prevent it from skewering otherwise defenseless clerics.

Corollary to the first note up top:

- Long, hard-fought battles are exhausting.

Think 'boss fight', the combat equivalent of a puzzle. Discover the enemy's tactics and abilities, adapt situation to minimize their effectiveness and maximize your own. Without space between such challenges  they start to feel more like an ordeal than a challenge (eg. Shadow of the Colossus). If your game is going to require the slaughter of literally tens of thousands of monsters, either they have to be unfairly weak or the characters must be unfairly strong... otherwise your players will get weary and drop out. You keep them playing by keeping them winning.

In short, characters are designed to be good at ganking... because that will be 90% of the gameplay.

Why go after yellows when you get better experience killing large groups of greens?

The invisible assassin makes that design choice blatantly, boringly obvious in PvP. If warriors or pets could effectively taunt players it would feel just as unbalancing, or more so. A wizard or archer's relative fragility may excuse their talent at freezing or hindering enemies while killing them at range, but it is little consolation to the frozen and the hindered. Among other things, they don't feel heroic.

Stealth PvP is certainly an ulcerous lesion, but it is just an obvious symptom of a more difficult disease.

Beowulf wasn't asked to kill fifteen grendles, nor did he have to kill forty grendel-kin while gathering an arbitrary nine scaly claws for the folks back in Heorot. There was no "Mother of Grendel 0/1" in his quest log to give away that unpleasant surprise. Also, when the noobs he'd started out with had all died there was no telepathic network on which to find a new group, and no guild from which he could draw higher level friends who had killed Grendel's Mother four or five times and for whom, now, she was about as threatening as an angry toddler. Finally, Beowulf didn't die six times and have to run back to claim his corpse while avoiding the grendel-kin respawn.

That's because Beowulf was a badass, not a ganker... and because Beowulf is a saga, not a game.

I haven't seen anyone address more technological problems related to stealth as well.

I remember many times in DAOC on my Thane where I would be running along, I would see a black blur on the screen, a two second freeze, some flashing effects all smeared together, and then see a Nightshade or Infiltrator standing behind me wailing away.  Of course the game had already decided that I was backstabbed, stunned, and at 25% life before my client decided to inform me about it.  No time left to even push a key or try to do anything about it.

Of course this poses problems for the invis person too: trying to line up precise positional combat moves in an arena where lag spikes, packet loss, dropped connections, and someone else warping around the screen make life miserable (unless you have a high horsepower PC and great routing to the server).

As stated above, Planetside has this worked out very well.  Want to stealth?  You get to wear no armor, and are visible when moving (visible at a rate directly proportional to movement speed).  You can have devastating attacks if everything goes well.  And there should always be some kind of option to allow any character to purchase some ability that affords some level of stealth detection.  I used to love killing cloakers in Planetside with Darklight, however I had to give up one of my three implant slots in order to do it!  The cloaker paid a price to cloak, and I paid a price to see them.  That seems like balance to me.

As it stands, if you get the same killing potential as any other class, plus you get to be invisible to 98% of your opponents, then why play anything else?

And cloakers could counter the darklighters with an EMP grenade.

I know I sure paid the price for playing a rogue in EQ - I couldn't solo, at all. Sure, I could get into places I had no business being, but if a mob saw me my rogue just cried and peed his pants as I tried to run away somehow.

Actually, I was damn good at running away from stuff in EQ. I didn't just start trains - I was the Train Conductor, choo choo.

What's the point of this thread? of any thread here, really? To chat about game features. And chatting serves the speaker more often than the listener. So I post here to put my thoughts in order. Apologies in advance for necroing. Y'all should be able to see my name next to a post and think, "oh, necro" by now.

1) Gameplay based upon stealth seems mostly pointless in a combat level treadmill MMO. The basic problem is content. There's a giant content wall right now, and as many quests as WoW has, it's still suffering in the size and scale of its raid content. What if there had to be that much combat content plus enough stealth content to keep a stealther busy for 60+ levels? This is part of why tradeskills are so thin. Coming up with thousands of hours of gameplay is hard; putting in two (or five or ten) times that much in one product just so that tradeskills and stealthing is interesting is something that I don't see happening until the era of the uber-MMOs that get released in the years after direct brain implants become the preferred interface.

2) If stealth does exist in a PvP MMO, it seems that consensus is that Planetside did it right. With I think ends the thread, n'est pas?

3) A few points on balance, in summary: with quests or gameplay that is solo-friendly, balancing invisibility by using group dynamics is broken. In a solo-friendly game, one-shot kills are not fun. pxib addressed some related issues. The people making the game (and I don't mean the designers, I mean the people that expect their investment in designers, programmers, and artists to be paid back) want their audience to have fun, and the frustration of one-shot kills is something I think is inappropriate even in group combat (except as a rarity or a punishment for gross errors).

Don't get me started onthe stunlock nonsense is WoW. There's no counter to it.

lern2play

stealth help fall butt you fuck up you b die a Assassin in sec all games a class stealth
kay to stealth speeds and int and level
stealth+set up traps good the usa lost 1 war a foe i you on wow 30gold you tell me who

I totaly agree, USA lost a war because of stealth traps and you can never go wrong with 30 gold.

This chap has a very low ankh.

the usa lost vietiam no winer

Trust me, the USA still has plenty of weiner left.

The admins call it a conflict.  No war was actually declared.  Kinda like Iraq.

I think stealth would actually work best in games with relatively less class differentiation - make it less of a 'backstab the paper' power, and more of a power for use in infiltration, tactics, recon, etc. in world-based PvP.

Becuase it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a stunlock 100% health -> 0% health with the execption of a rogue vs rogue combat without the PvP trinket. The closest real stunlock currently is, CS SS Gouge KS BS BS Blind CS BS CB Evis, and that won't kill you unless you're a rogue. You also can pop a trinket to get out of the stun.

Fear is the same as a stunlock; fight a shadow priest or warlock and you get the same. Disabling makes you feel helpless and not in control, and that is why people hate it.

If a game were to use the class system described in this (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=4077.0) thread, togheter with land controlled end game ala shadowbane for example, then stealth could fit another role entirely. The stealth class could have no grind at all associated with it, only some unlock mechanism of some sort. The class would have no direct dmg at all, only some saboutage related skills. The gameplay would consist of recon missions and destruction of resources in enemy guild territory. Playing the class wouldn't be your every day activity but it would have it uses. The counter to the class could be structures with true sight, it's something you would try to counter on a building level when you plan your city.

Neco Posting, because I care.

Why do they put it in?

Anyone who has ever played Thief knows that stealth is awesome fun. So why do people put it in their games? Because they want to include a class/skill/whatever that has a history of, when done right, being fun and different. Why try and come up with some completely new untried concepts when you know that if you can just get it right having stealth will be fun?

Why does it have an advantage over all other classes?

Because they implement it incorrectly. As the discussion has already shown some games (SB and Tribes seem to be the more agreed upon) have managed to get it right, or get closer to getting it right than others. So obviously it's not inherently flawed.

How do you balance it with the other classes?

Depnds what type of game, but here are some quick (and not especially related) ideas.

Make it not directly combat related. Make it so you cannot attack while stealthed, and have a cooldown timer after using it in which you cannot attack unless attacked first.
Make it so you don't always know if you've been successful. Give it a chance of failure when you try to stealth that is unknowable to you. (So you can only tell if you get someone else to check for you. "Am I stealthed?" "Yeah" "Ok".)
Make it that you can only attack while stealthed if you are standing still.
Make it so you move slower than others while stealthed.

Generally speaking you just have to make it so those with stealth abilities are weaker in other areas (can't heal/have bad armor/bad health/are slow/etc.)
Eg: an Assassin character that has a powerful first attack and some stealth skills, but cannot move fast or remain stealthed once detected (say a mage can cast a spell on them that makes them visible, and attackable, for a certain time time) and have weaker health, so while they are good at sneaky kills but will lose a 1v1 battle if they don't get the drop. That way they are good as assassins - better than others, but not better at everything.

There are plenty of ways to do this, if you want to.

How do you balance it with the NPC?

This is trickier, because it's hard to balance something that is very useful against intelligent characters (PCs) but is just as useful against comparably stupid NPCs. I would think the best way is to balance the PCs first, and then create the NPCs in line with the balanced classes. I think it's much easier to change a NPC so that the player skills work well against it that it is to change the player skills so they work well against both NPCs and other players.

Why is it worth the effort?

For diversity. Different skills leads to different play styles, which means more options for the player to choose and more diversity in the world. This is good and fun.

For example.

We have an assassin class that has high surprise damage, low health, slow stealth movement and the ability to attack while stealthed and immobile. We also have a mage class that has moderate damage, minor healing skills, and useful miscellaneous spells.
If the stealth class wants to kill the mage it has to strike first. It has no range (or at least no high damage surprise attack range), equal or lesser health, and less damage over time. In an up front battle the mage would win because it has better abilities for that type of thing. If the stealth class wants to win it has to get itself in a position where it can strike first, using its stealth to sneak up on the mage. If the Mage notices the assassin before he can strike (maybe he fails a stealth attempt, maybe he gets caught out by a 'reveal hidden' spell, maybe he gets attacked by a NPC with innate detect stealth) then the mage can kill him or get away safely. If the Mage doesn't (perhaps he's distracted in a battle, perhaps he's gone to rest in a unsafe area) then he dies.

People will complain because they're not used to it, but if you get it right they will get over it. Assassins will learn that they are not awesome 'elite' fighters who have the right and the ability to kill whoever they want but instead have to exercise patience and tactical nous, and Mages will realise that they have to make sure they don't put themselves in situations where they are easily targetabe. The Mages who started by say "this is bs, I was just resting after a battle and this assassin just came and one shot killed me" will learn that they have to watch carefully to see if assassins are in the area to begin with, and have to throw out the odd 'detect hidden' if they think they're in trouble, or travel more often in a group. The assassins who complain "this is bs, once i'm stealthed it takes too long to creep up on people and then just when i'm about to kill them they move and then when i finally get to them again someone casts 'detect hidden' and i'm dead" will realise they have to pick their targets carefully and not just rely on stealth as some kind of God mode."

Now of course getting that balance would not just be drop-of-the-hat easy, and would be harder the more classes you have, but it would be possible as long as you recognise that in specific situations real diversity requires imbalance.

Yep. Diversity requires imbalance. Everyone cannot be everthing all the time, and they will complain because they want to be, but they'll just have to suck it up. People will complain about something no matter what.

And anyone who doesn't think that having diverse play styles on offer adds anything to a game.. well.. no one thinks that, otherwise we wouldn't have different classes to begin with.

From a game design standpoint, I've a very simple reason I'd want to put stealth in a MMOG:  Your monitor is right in front of you.  Bob in Switzerland's monitor is over there, some several hundred miles away. Stealth has a potential to work for this game given your hardware setup. (Now, don't be an idiot and broadcast things that Bob's client shouldn't know from your server, because Bob may be a cheating bastard that uses a packet sniffer.)

Hardware reasons aside, stealth offers a bit of excitement and surprise that zests up any game, and you've no good reason to pass that up in an online environment.

As for it pissing you off in PvP, there's a little lesson of game design that developers would be wise to follow in the ways of PvP:
"For every Player versus Player offense, there should be an equal and opposite defense."
In other words, stealth shouldn't give anybody a massive unbeatable advantage, especially against players who are playing well.  If you're a good player, and the stealther is a good player, I want to see an even match.

You've come here and start a threat saying "Why are developers so dumb to include stealth?!"   I think what you should be asking is "Why are these specific developers so dumb as to not include the proper countermeasures for stealth?!"

I don't see how you can implement stealth class with dmg in a way that doesn't open up a truckload of possibilities for griefing. The only way I can see is making it a class which can't affect another player in a negative way ( healer for example ).

You know, as far as discussions go, it helps to read others opinions every now and then and not just say stuff without regard to those who are prepared to actually discuss the topic in a reasonable manner. At the very least, if you're not going to read and consider what others have said, at least express yourself in a way that isn't just "This is what I think." Please add in the "and here's way:"

Huh? Where can I read about this rule that I can't comment if I don't have the solution to the problem?

That Assassin class you described is the type of character that will never get a group, and still have all the griefing problems that comes with stealth. If detect hidden is a buff which you can easily keep up, then you might as well scrap the Assassin class. If detect hidden is a pbaoe spell which reveals stealthed people nearby, then it's useless. You can't expect people to run around and spam a spell all day because there might be an Assassin nearby, you know, the Assassin won't exactly wave his hands when he's nearby. Another counter you propose is that the mage should travel in groups, well that's shitty design right there.

One thing I never got is why stealth classes have to impart invisibility - sneaking up on someone while invisible is neither stealthy or skilled.

How about using camo or the "predator" effect (as in EQ2, sort of)? Also, devs should make more use of audio/visual clues if they're going to allow stealth in a PvP setting - footprints in soft surfaces, noises from moving equipment, grass/bushes being moved aside, etc etc.

I've always liked the idea of stealth classes, but the implementation usually sucks.

Planetside infiltrators are an example of pretty good balance of stealth.  The infiltrator suit itself prevents you from using anything bigger than a pistol.  You're completely invisible when stopped or walking in a crawl.  You're slightly visible walking upright (which is faster than in a crawl).  You're very visible when running.  Your opponents can voluntarily choose to use one of their few implant slots to take Darklight which can detect stealthers in a small radius around them, however having the implant enabled drains the same energy pool they need to run and jump.  Like the stealther, an opponent with darklight can sit indefinately, the darklight's cost being slightly less than the sitting still crouched energy regeneration.

Are infiltrators nerfed to the point of uselessness?  No, although it takes a good player to use them effectively.  Are infiltrators overpowered?  No, but you will get ganked by them from time to time.  Do infiltrators have a use?  Yes, in addition to sneaking in and harassing key members of the opposite side, they can do things like hack terminals or heal enemy faction members.

Inflitrators can also carry EMP grenades (taking up some of their very precious inventory space) that will temporarily knock out implants such as Darklight. So even the stealth counters have counters in that game. You can also hear them when they are switching weapons and the like. In other words the stealth gameplay in PlanetSide was very well thought out.