Problems:

1. Enemies (well beetles at least) seems to aggro traps set by the party in their visual range.

2. When a trap is triggered by an enemy, it start combat with the party despite the party being. This could be intended to avoid cheesing fights with traps, but what cause the transition is not clear.

 

Steps to reproduce:

- Put traps in BB rogue quick slot

- Go to the Crossing (I only tested this on the beetles, might affect all enemies)

- Put party in stealth mode right away

- Take BB Rogue and move north until you see a few beetles's red circles.

- Set a trap and move BB Rogue back away from it

 

Results:

- The beetles will start to move toward the trap that was just set.

- One will walk right over the trap too, triggering it.

- When a beetle set a trap off a "start of combat" event is triggered. This cause the party to exit stealth without the player telling them to or having been discovered and the beetles will all switch their attention to the party.

You're automatically forced out of Stealth when combat starts? That's sounds terrible for any party with multiple good stealthers that wants to set up coordinated attacks.

Regrettably true. There's no per-character stealth either. You can do stealth attacks -- I did the Skaen temple with a somewhat stealthy party and did get the jump on them a lot of the time, and it did make things a lot easier -- but the way to do it is to sneak into position, pause, issue commands for the opening volley, and take it from there.

 

Rogues can take the new "Invisibility" talent though. I would like to see this expanded on, with invisibility spells, potions, and perhaps making it a per-encounter talent at higher levels.

Regrettably true. There's no per-character stealth either. You can do stealth attacks -- I did the Skaen temple with a somewhat stealthy party and did get the jump on them a lot of the time, and it did make things a lot easier -- but the way to do it is to sneak into position, pause, issue commands for the opening volley, and take it from there.

 

Rogues can take the new "Invisibility" talent though. I would like to see this expanded on, with invisibility spells, potions, and perhaps making it a per-encounter talent at higher levels.

My apologies to the OP for the off-topic banter, but that's just crazy. I can think of a lot of situations where I want to keep some companions out of the combat or hold off their introduction, or simply delay when I want to start smacking the hell out of whomever I'm planning to backstab.

 

In both the IE and in DA:O, I remember situations where I would sneak my rogue into position behind an enemy mage, and then - with all other characters - engaging and pulling the rest of the opponents in the enemy group. My rogue waited until all the beefy enemies had started attacking my group, at which point my rogue leapt out of the shadows and started picking off the mage or archers or whatnot.

 

With combat forcing the entire group out of Stealth, the game becomes robbed of tactics like this, making it virtually impossible to "tactically deploy" with Stealth.

You're overstating it slightly. It's not virtually impossible; it just significantly restricts your options. To pull off the move you're describing you need to give your rogue the Invisibility special. Without it, you can still use stealth to position the party prior to engagement. I used it successfully to sneak my rogue forward to a squishy high-value target, gank him, then Escape back before getting murdered, as the rest of the party engaged them from the front. (In Skaen temple.)

 

I.e., it is a material and significant step backward and one I hope they'll address at least in sequels, but it's not quite as bad as all that.

 

Regrettably true. There's no per-character stealth either. You can do stealth attacks -- I did the Skaen temple with a somewhat stealthy party and did get the jump on them a lot of the time, and it did make things a lot easier -- but the way to do it is to sneak into position, pause, issue commands for the opening volley, and take it from there.

 

Rogues can take the new "Invisibility" talent though. I would like to see this expanded on, with invisibility spells, potions, and perhaps making it a per-encounter talent at higher levels.

My apologies to the OP for the off-topic banter, but that's just crazy. I can think of a lot of situations where I want to keep some companions out of the combat or hold off their introduction, or simply delay when I want to start smacking the hell out of whomever I'm planning to backstab.

 

In both the IE and in DA:O, I remember situations where I would sneak my rogue into position behind an enemy mage, and then - with all other characters - engaging and pulling the rest of the opponents in the enemy group. My rogue waited until all the beefy enemies had started attacking my group, at which point my rogue leapt out of the shadows and started picking off the mage or archers or whatnot.

 

With combat forcing the entire group out of Stealth, the game becomes robbed of tactics like this, making it virtually impossible to "tactically deploy" with Stealth.

 

It makes sense to me. Stealth isn't invisibility. It sounds like you can't stealth in plain sight once enemies have already been alerted to your presence. That's what invisibility would be for.

 

Edited January 1, 201511 yr by Quetzalcoatl

You can enable per character stealth by only having that selected character highlighted, no?

And you find the stealth mechanics working to some degree ?

I find them horrible. Without any real way to determine how good of a stealth character you are.

No you can't. That's how we would like it it work, and I have no idea why they didn't code it like that in the first place ....

 

Instead, Stealth is a Game State. Combat is also a Game State. and Stealth and Combat game states cannot both be active at the same time. Very strange implementation.

Edited January 2, 201511 yr by Sensuki

You can enable per character stealth by only having that selected character highlighted, no?

 

And you find the stealth mechanics working to some degree ?

 

I find them horrible. Without any real way to determine how good of a stealth character you are.

 

Nope.

 

Yes, stealth does work "to some degree." It's useful to scout forward to see what's waiting you around the next corner, and in some cases for positioning your party for the start of the encounter, especially in close quarters where "pulling" isn't feasible. You can also sneak a high-stealth character to the back and gank a squishy near the start, although getting him out of there afterwards might be a problem. You can even approximate the "classic" stealth tactics if you have a rogue who's taken the Invisibility talent: sneak in the back, gank, go invisible, move to relative safety, backstab, then join the fight normally.

 

I agree with Sensuki that it's a strange way of implementing stealth. But it's far from completely broken, useless, or horrible. Spiritshift is useless, the ranger's shared health mechanic is horrible, and certain spells/invocations/powers are completely broken. Stealth isn't anywhere near that bad.