Stealth classes in PvP MMO games

[Pococurante]

Two things about that:

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.

[Typhon]

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.

[Evangolis]

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.

[Pococurante]

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.

[Evangolis]

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?

[Pococurante]

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.

[shiznitz]

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.

[Pococurante]

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.

[Arnold]

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.

[Sairon]

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 ).

[Pococurante]

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.

[Typhon]

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?

[Llava]

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.

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.

[Glazius]

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.

Worth noting is that players have numerous methods to increase their Perception in CoH/V.  This is the trait that directly counters Stealth.

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

[Nevermore]

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.

[Alkiera]

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

[Llava]

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.

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.

[ClydeJr]

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.

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.

[sinij]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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?

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.

[pxib]

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.

[Miguel]

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?

[Trippy]

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.

And cloakers could counter the darklighters with an EMP grenade.

[Strazos]

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.

[Heresiarch]

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?

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).

[Strazos]

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

[Ironwood]

lern2play

[loank]

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

[Sairon]

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.

[Ironwood]

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

This chap has a very low ankh.

[loank]

the usa lost vietiam no winer

[HaemishM]

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

[Yegolev]

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

[Telemediocrity]

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.

[bhodi]

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

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.