Very bad stealth mechanics..

[Valaden]

I can't wrap my head around this dubious design decision:

"The scouting state ends when the party enters combat, i.e. when a party member is being targeted by a hostile character."

 

Seriously?? Its completely illogical. Did my rogue get spotted? No? Then why did HE get taken out of stealth? Illogical.

 

Make stealth toggleable on a per-character basis, like it has been in every other crpg to date(for good reason). If I want my rogue to scout around in stealth I sure don't need the rest of my party to crawl around.

 

[Mdalton31]

Yep

[Enoch]

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls.  Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that.

 

(I liked D:OS's stealth implementation specifically because it played up how ridiculous this trope is.  "Oh, pay no attention to that great, goofy barrel over there!")

Edited March 29, 2015 by Enoch

[View619]

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls.  Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that.

 

(I liked D:OS's stealth implementation specifically because it played up how ridiculous this trope is.  "Oh, pay no attention to that great, goofy barrel over there!")

 

Pretty much this.

 

Stealth != Invisibility.

[Michael_Galt]

That is a very valid point.  I really don't understand why it became mandatory for EVERYONE to be scouting.  Why?  I wish there was an individual "stealth mode" and a "scouting mode".  It really doesn't make sense why I can't set up a trap with everyone else hiding while say, someone else lures the group of baddies back into the ambush site...  It gets annoying that I HAVE to use my "rogue" in the scouting lead, so I can do my sneak attack, otherwise I can't (without using her ability/talent, whatever it is, to go invisible 2 times a day). 

[Mansen]

I don't understand why it's mandatory to have your rogue arbitrarily "hidden in plain sight" D&D style at the beginning of combat.

[Infiltrator_SF]

Yeah, said it in my own thread.. really poor gameplay implementation of stealth, both from a tactical and roleplaying perspective. There isn't much fun to be had for those of us that enjoyed stabbing people in previous IE games. 

Edited March 29, 2015 by Infiltrator_SF

[Mansen]

Yeah, said it in my own thread.. really poor gameplay implementation of stealth, both from a tactical and roleplaying perspective. There isn't much fun to be had for those of us that enjoyed stabbing people in previous IE games. 

 

Nothing preventing you from that - In fact it's made even more "realistic" (or at least closer to the pen and paper counterparts) since you flank them now instead of doing "magical undetectable damage from the shadows"

[Infiltrator_SF]

 

Yeah, said it in my own thread.. really poor gameplay implementation of stealth, both from a tactical and roleplaying perspective. There isn't much fun to be had for those of us that enjoyed stabbing people in previous IE games. 

 

Nothing preventing you from that - In fact it's made even more "realistic" (or at least closer to the pen and paper counterparts) since you flank them now instead of doing "magical undetectable damage from the shadows"

 

 

Oh, look. Someone's talking about realism.. Should I talk about how realistic it is for my entire party not to see past 20 meters in broad daylight? Or how houses are little on the outside but huge on the inside? Or maybe how one guy is taken out of stealth when another one 50 meters away makes his presence known to someone. Surely, there's no room from magical undetectable damage from the shadow in this game. No sir.

Edited March 29, 2015 by Infiltrator_SF

[Mansen]

Strawmen doesn't invalidate a sound argument.

[Captain Shiny]

I can't wrap my head around this dubious design decision:

"The scouting state ends when the party enters combat, i.e. when a party member is being targeted by a hostile character."

 

Seriously?? Its completely illogical. Did my rogue get spotted? No? Then why did HE get taken out of stealth? Illogical.

 

Make stealth toggleable on a per-character basis, like it has been in every other crpg to date(for good reason). If I want my rogue to scout around in stealth I sure don't need the rest of my party to crawl around.

 

The very nature of 'backstabbing' requires your attacking character be stealthed/hidden/undetected.

 

The system in place contradicts that requirement.

 

That you can not stealth/unsteath individuals characters is an impressivlely bad design decision that is counter to the very mechanic it is trying to achieve.

 

"All the world is blind to my passing..." -Yoshimo Baldur's gate II.

[Infiltrator_SF]

Strawmen doesn't invalidate a sound argument.

 

Agreed. Stupid arguments on the other hand are invalidated by pretty much anything.

[aiqidar]

 

Yeah, said it in my own thread.. really poor gameplay implementation of stealth, both from a tactical and roleplaying perspective. There isn't much fun to be had for those of us that enjoyed stabbing people in previous IE games. 

 

Nothing preventing you from that - In fact it's made even more "realistic" (or at least closer to the pen and paper counterparts) since you flank them now instead of doing "magical undetectable damage from the shadows"

 

 

"Magical undetectable damage from the shadows" happens in real life. Snipers for instance. The equivalent here would be a crossbow, I suppose. It'd be harder to do that with a melee weapon, but it can still very much done especially if one party member is conspicuously grabbing everyone's attention while the other is waiting around a corner or something.

 

The main point is that this wasn't done for realism purposes. I briefly thought it might be one of those "This perfectly logical aspect of the game is too easy, so let's make things more difficult in an arbitrary and completely senseless way" things, but in the end it seems that it was just a simple mistake on the part of the developers. I believe one of them was quoted in another similar thread where they said they hope to fix this in one of the patches.

[Gromnir]

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls.  Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that.

 

 

on the other hand, the current mechanic makes stealth usefulness rather suspect.  we were hoping, beyond hope, that obsidian would implement the stealth fix (or fixes) they had referenced  before the game were released.  will stealth get a fix with a patch?  do we need wait for an expansion?  at this point, the expansion would appear more likely. 

 

we get very little value from stealth.  any character can scout. stealth adds a slight increase in how close one may approach foes w/o detection, which is only useful for setting traps and would be valuable if we could position the stealth character appropriately before battles.  have party stealth drop makes our scout a proverbial sitting duck for the cf mobs that is ubiquitous in hard mode. 

 

at the moment, in Gromnir's experience, stealth is the least useful poe skill.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Yosharian]

 

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls.  Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that.

 

 

on the other hand, the current mechanic makes stealth usefulness rather suspect.  we were hoping, beyond hope, that obsidian would implement the stealth fix (or fixes) they had referenced  before the game were released.  will stealth get a fix with a patch?  do we need wait for an expansion?  at this point, the expansion would appear more likely. 

 

we get very little value from stealth.  any character can scout. stealth adds a slight increase in how close one may approach foes w/o detection, which is only useful for setting traps and would be valuable if we could position the stealth character appropriately before battles.  have party stealth drop makes our scout a proverbial sitting duck for the cf mobs that is ubiquitous in hard mode. 

 

at the moment, in Gromnir's experience, stealth is the least useful poe skill.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Really?  Because all my characters have Stealth.. and my high-Stealth rogue plays a very important part of my strategy - he's the one who can get close and scout how many enemies there are, enemy types, etc.

 

This isn't as useful if you are doing your third playthrough, but for first playthroughs it's extremely useful.

 

If you want to talk about useless skills, there are a few others that need to be looked at first *coughSURVIVALcough*.

[Gromnir]

 

 

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls.  Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that.

 

 

on the other hand, the current mechanic makes stealth usefulness rather suspect.  we were hoping, beyond hope, that obsidian would implement the stealth fix (or fixes) they had referenced  before the game were released.  will stealth get a fix with a patch?  do we need wait for an expansion?  at this point, the expansion would appear more likely. 

 

we get very little value from stealth.  any character can scout. stealth adds a slight increase in how close one may approach foes w/o detection, which is only useful for setting traps and would be valuable if we could position the stealth character appropriately before battles.  have party stealth drop makes our scout a proverbial sitting duck for the cf mobs that is ubiquitous in hard mode. 

 

at the moment, in Gromnir's experience, stealth is the least useful poe skill.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Really?  Because all my characters have Stealth.. and my high-Stealth rogue plays a very important part of my strategy - he's the one who can get close and scout how many enemies there are, enemy types, etc.

 

This isn't as useful if you are doing your third playthrough, but for first playthroughs it's extremely useful.

 

If you want to talk about useless skills, there are a few others that need to be looked at first *coughSURVIVALcough*.

 

use o' consumables can be invaluable.  extend duration o' such is likewise useful.

 

we typical can scout very well with even a low stealth character.  the density o' mobs in hard mode make poe scouting a bit limited, so that even with extreme high stealth, we will be discovered as the screen is frequently filled with enemies.  low stealth character can get close enough to see front line o' foes and get away undetected... which is usually what we can manage with our high stealth character.  perhaps because you got stealth on everybody, you don't realize how it is almost complete unnecessary.

 

currently, stealth is good for setting traps (wish we had more) and for aiding in stealing as high stealth allow us more time to get away before inevitable detection. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Lephys]

I really do hope it gets fixed. I kinda hope that, since it's doing really really well (or seems to be... Metacritic score of 92/93?! I know that's not the best thing to go on when judging a game, but it usually means really good things for sales, statistically), they get to do sort of what Shadowrun did with Dragonfall: Director's Cut, and give the engine an overhaul.

 

I realize that they couldn't spend more time on the whole design of combat/stealth states, but I cannot believe that this was their ideal concept for Stealth and combat. They should, if they get the chance, make the whole "combat state" thing much less of a significant game state, and separate stealth from a game-state, as well (and just make it a character state). You should be able to initiate combat whenever you like, and pre-buffing is fine, even in their current design, because buffs don't really last that long anyway. If you wanted to, you could have enemies with scouts around the room/area, so that the first "outer ring" of foes you encounter are those scouts. Then, if you alert the scouts, they can basically give a simple "ENEMIES!/TO BATTLE!" signal, and any casters in the rest of the group can pop off their own "pre-buffs." Boom. Odds evened. Even then, you could still very craftily probably handle the scouts without alerting the rest, if you were careful (and the stealth system allowed it a bit better).

 

But, yeah, the game is pretty friggin' fantastic, all things considered, but I do hope that they get to overhaul some of the systems, whether it be in the expansion, or just in spare time, etc.

 

 

You're right about Survival, . Although, I will say food items are pretty useful in this, in general. Feels like they could be a bit better fine-tuned, though. And I'd like to see Survival be a more significant choice than just "you'll get some dialogue/scripted interaction options" and "food buffs last longer." Maybe it could affect your travel times between places (just as something off the top of my head). Or maybe it could affect how many camping supplies you need to camp? Something like that. I dunno. It'd hafta be something that you don't really NEED (like Stealth... you CAN just be loud and obnoxious and go all Rambo on everyone if you want to), but that's still actually got a really good reason to put points into it.

[Elerond]

 

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls.  Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that.

 

 

on the other hand, the current mechanic makes stealth usefulness rather suspect.  we were hoping, beyond hope, that obsidian would implement the stealth fix (or fixes) they had referenced  before the game were released.  will stealth get a fix with a patch?  do we need wait for an expansion?  at this point, the expansion would appear more likely. 

 

we get very little value from stealth.  any character can scout. stealth adds a slight increase in how close one may approach foes w/o detection, which is only useful for setting traps and would be valuable if we could position the stealth character appropriately before battles.  have party stealth drop makes our scout a proverbial sitting duck for the cf mobs that is ubiquitous in hard mode. 

 

at the moment, in Gromnir's experience, stealth is the least useful poe skill.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I think that they mentioned that they plan to rework stealth system for expansion, but it is unlikely that new version will be delivered with patch.

 

Currently most usefulness from stealth ability comes from that it lets me steal valuable loot even places where there are close by npcs. But as you can do most before combat positioning even with stealth 0, I don't necessary find it that useful combat skill, with exception of backstabbing rogue.

[Aqvamare]

it is even worse, if a character specce into stealth...the stat only makes the time how the detection works, slower.

 

so you have more time to bring your character into position, but he will be discovered after some time.