Stealth classes in PvP MMO games

[Typhon]

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:

Man, I must say I love playing my Stalker. In fact, I just love rogue-like classes (Rogue was my first character in DnD years ago, still play em in all games available).I have yet to PvP in CoV, so all this one-shot goodness is sure to tick people off (like my Rogue did in WoW, RO, hell even NWN). I've read things about Stalker=easy mode. Not so. Let me tell you, PvE is quite diffucult as a Stalker. You get your one AS in (hopefully your smart and have plenty of yellows in that attack so no miss) and then hope you dont get a humongeous deadly alpha strike on you from the other enemies. Cause as far as I can tell, the defense with an exception of Energy Aura, is lacking. Sadly, I know AS is going to be nerfed due to PvP in a supposedly PvE game. Yet again, PvP ruins my fun. Im not a PvP buff, but I did a little PvP once in awile in the arena on CoH. I thought it was fun, but it shouldnt determine the game mechanics (as Stalkers are meant to one-hit kill and hide, its the whole point of the class). It simply seems that Stalkers are the PvP-type class, much like the rogues of other games with PvP. I'm hoping for a "fix"(something with compsention involved) and not a nerf.

Just my little rant :P

Reply from Stateman

To be honest, I’m extremely torn by this.

On the one hand, one shotting is what the Stalker is all about. It’s his strength. First, other PvP MMP’s have character classes that can similarly one shot – and PvP still thrives. Secondly, our PvP is meant to be balanced around the team; sure, the Stalker can take out one player, but then he’s vulnerable to his victim’s teammates. Thirdly, the Stalker is hardly the only Archetype that can one shot. A Blaster, with certain powers and Inspirations, can do almost the same damage as a Stalker, but from a distance. Lastly, players have access to a number of powers that counter the Stalker’s abilities (Tactics for instance).

On the other hand, it’s not necessarily fun to be instantly defeated in a fight. A player has no way to react to the Stalker; the Assassin’s strike either hits or it doesn’t. The defender doesn’t play any part at all in the battle.

Needless to say, we’re scouring the forums for your suggestions and ideas…

My 2 cents

I just don't understand how dev's can continue to put stealth classes in games with massive alpha-strikes. Giving a class stealth gives them the ability to choose their battles. Giving a such a class a large alpha-strike is just begging for abuse.

My suggestion is that you tone down the upfront damage, and give the assasin strike a DOT component (the assassin applies poison). The DOT should be long lasting, and signficantly damaging such that if the victim doesn't have healing, healing friends, or enough health insp to outlast the poison, he's going down. The assasin then concentrates on harrasing/avoiding his victim until the poison has a chance to work.

No alpha strike from stealth please.

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?

[StGabe]

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.

[HaemishM]

Game Devs:  Why do you do it? 

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.

[stray]

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.

[Xilren's Twin]

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

[tazelbain]

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.

[Typhon]

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.

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.

[Samwise]

DnD only gets it right because there is DM to keep the craziness in check.

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.

[stray]

I still haven't seen a stealth system that complex in a video game.

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

I'll say no more though 

[Samwise]

  indeed.

[Yegolev]

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!

[Krakrok]

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.

[Sairon]

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.

[Shockeye]

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

[Stephen Zepp]

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....

[Hoax]

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...   

[Stephen Zepp]

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.

[Shockeye]

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....

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.

[schild]

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.

[ahoythematey]

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.

[Evangolis]

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.

[AOFanboi]

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.

[Arnold]

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.

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.

[Kail]

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.

[Roac]

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.

[MrHat]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

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.

[Hoax]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[WayAbvPar]

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.

[stray]

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.

Lmao, sitting already made a player open to taking double damage. I would hope you could take a weary caster down in that situation  . 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).

[Typhon]

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.

[Pococurante]

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?"

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.

[Kail]

To ask a broader question, why include a dozen or dozens, of classes at launch, and have all of them be not very deep? 

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.

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

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.

[Shockeye]

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