Deadfire stealth.

[Phenomenum]

Hello to everyone!
Is there any information about stealth in Deadfire? I've read all Q&A and interviews, but seems no one mentioned that...
It will be nice, if stealth became more realistic - with various, individual and group, buffs and debuffs depending on time of day, new dinamic lightning system, armor and weapon type etc.
PoE very often looks strange, when your party (or rogue) sneaking and shining like a cristmas tree, with all those fancy weapon enchants (yeah, i hate them).
Will be some emprovements in new game?

Edited February 26, 2017 by Phenomenum

[Fenixp]

I'd just like to see vision cones added to enemies and potentially implementation of some sort of noise meter to make stealth more fun. And remove the requirement of remaining in stealth all the time to increase chances of detecting hidden stuff.

 

Having things like time of day, equipment noise, visibility etc. would just make stealth a lot more annoying, not fun.

[desel]

And remove the requirement of remaining in stealth all the time to increase chances of detecting hidden stuff.

 

This has been already confirmed to be not the case anymore. Being in scouting mode does not confer a bonus to detecting hidden stuff.

 

Having things like time of day, equipment noise, visibility etc. would just make stealth a lot more annoying, not fun.

 

Strongly disagree, it would make things a lot MORE fun, especially for rogues.

 

Time of day, for instance does play a role in Deadfire. Every NPC has a schedule they'll follow and you can use that to your advantage.

 

If I remember correctly they even confirmed pickpocketing.

Edited February 26, 2017 by desel

[Phenomenum]

Aaand it will be nice, if enemies also use stealth. Imagine: your party walking in dark alley or dungeon, then some bandits attackin you from stealth, without any warning, just becose your perseption not enoug high. Some things like that adds diversity and more "atmosphere" in gameplay. Also, enemies (especially roguish types) will be real threat and not looks like an invalids, becose...they don't know how to hide

[Fenixp]

This has been already confirmed to be not the case anymore. Being in scouting mode does not confer a bonus to detecting hidden stuff.

So Obsidian came to their senses. Excellent.

 

Strongly disagree, it would make things a lot MORE fun, especially for rogues.

 

Time of day, for instance does play a role in Deadfire. Every NPC has a schedule they'll follow and you can use that to your advantage.

And that's good, watching patrol routes and daily routines is a fun activity for a player who wants to sneak past undetected. That's good.

 

Lunging several equipment sets in your inventory so that you can change it based on weather to maximize stealth is not fun in any way. Just as it's not particularly fun to have to rest-spam in the wilderness in order to get the night-time stealth bonus. Both of these things would be busy work, not engaging gameplay.

[Phenomenum]

 

And remove the requirement of remaining in stealth all the time to increase chances of detecting hidden stuff.

 

This has been already confirmed to be not the case anymore. Being in scouting mode does not confer a bonus to detecting hidden stuff.

 

Having things like time of day, equipment noise, visibility etc. would just make stealth a lot more annoying, not fun.

 

Strongly disagree, it would make things a lot MORE fun, especially for rogues.

 

Time of day, for instance does play a role in Deadfire. Every NPC has a schedule they'll follow and you can use that to your advantage.

 

If I remember correctly they even confirmed pickpocketing.

 

Indeed. If we get just simple stealth bonus during the night, it makes more sense to use this new ToD advantage to make some dirty business.

[Phenomenum]

Lunging several equipment sets in your inventory so that you can change it based on weather to maximize stealth is not fun in any way. Just as it's not particularly fun to have to rest-spam in the wilderness in order to get the night-time stealth bonus. Both of these things would be busy work, not engaging gameplay.

 

Obsidian already confirmed waiting option, becose ToD system. You can simply wait anytime, like in TES series.

About equipment - in PoE we already have some of this with bonus to stealth and more of that - we have some items with stealth debuff (armor -1 stealth and some other stuff). So i can see no harm if this things will be developed further.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Phenomenum

[Hertzila]

I agree that Time of Day buffs and/or possibly light-level based (de)buffs on stealth would complement the new schedule and weather system very well. It certainly makes sense that a sneakier type hiding in the darkness, the heavy rain or the shadows would have an easier time sneaking around than one waltzing in broad daylight or right under torches. Right now, doing anything sneakier with stealth is a bit too dull, since the only trick to staying hidden is being far away enough from the guards. Having the cover of darkness help stealth and making light sources places to avoid would be enough to make it more interesting. Having a proper visual representation of a guard's detection range would be nice too (potentially dependent on me having enough of some stat).

Nothing's stopping the enemy from pulling this stuff on me, of course, besides the limits of good game design and my Perception score or another appropriate stat. Or a torch.

 

However, going full speed on it and including stuff like weight-based debuffs and a full sound system is going too far for a more generalized CRPG approach. Moving around gear to eliminate negatives from stuff like weight or boots is too tedious. Just having (de)buffs on stealth from appropriate equipment is plenty enough as it is. Things like sound-based detection work very well on full-on stealth games, but I think it would be a too specialized stealth mechanic for a CRPG and since there's no way to do silent takedowns in our system (I'm assuming but it seems like too little gain to me) it would very quickly become infuriating rather than nicely challenging. Vision cones are in the same boat and it would be odd how guards can only see like 100 degree cones but the party still has 360 coverage.

 

As much as I love stealth games like Commandos and Shadow Tactics, I'd prefer Pillars to keep its RPG mechanics on the forefront.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Hertzila

[desel]

Having a proper visual representation of a guard's detection range would be nice too (potentially dependent on me having enough of some stat).

Nothing's stopping the enemy from pulling this stuff on me, of course, besides the limits of good game design and my Perception score or another appropriate stat. Or a torch.

 

Speaking of - I also recall Sawyer mentioning that it's now Perception (for real this time) and not the Mechanics skill which gets checked vs. detecting hidden things in the environment. A high level in Mechanics, if there still is a Mechanics skill in Deadfire, should now only help with picking locks, disarming traps and knowing or figuring out how to operate contraptions and apparatuses like you expect it would.

 

Having a proper visual representation of a guard's detection range would be nice too (potentially dependent on me having enough of some stat).

 

Like with any other visual helper features - as long as it's optional and can be toggled off, sure, why not.

 

Shadow Tactics

 

What a game.

With a surprising (for the genre) attention to story and characters. I really dig the concept of the somewhat deranged teenage street urchin, talking to her weapon and tools as if they were people ("Wake up little knife", "Wake up little tune", etc).

[Heijoushin]

Well... at the end of PoE1's development, I think Stealth was in an okay place. The suggestions in this thread are good, but this ain't Metal Gear Watcher, so I don't think they're going to spend too much time making the stealth system super realistic.

[injurai]

Why is thread empty? Hello?

[gibonez]

Hopefully stealth becomes vital and far more in depth.

 

Stealth gameplay in Crpgs is extremely fun when it is powerful enough and worthwhile to invest in.

 

One good example would be Baldurs gate with the Assasin or any rogue class, sneaking in for massive backstab crits, or Divinity Original sin pre EE when you could stealth in combat.

 

The Assassin Subclass in POE 2 is making me optimistic.

[draego]

Hopefully stealth becomes vital and far more in depth.

 

Stealth gameplay in Crpgs is extremely fun when it is powerful enough and worthwhile to invest in.

 

One good example would be Baldurs gate with the Assasin or any rogue class, sneaking in for massive backstab crits, or Divinity Original sin pre EE when you could stealth in combat.

 

The Assassin Subclass in POE 2 is making me optimistic.

 

I would think also to make it more viable there should be more roleplay use for stealth. Like going into upper floor of home alone or around a area to find someone or something without fighting. To me i would also want to use it to subvert fighting for more options. There were a couple of missions like that in POE1 but not enough. I dont want the whole game to be stealth game but more than POE1

Edited February 27, 2017 by jnb0364

[Katarack21]

 

And remove the requirement of remaining in stealth all the time to increase chances of detecting hidden stuff.

This has been already confirmed to be not the case anymore. Being in scouting mode does not confer a bonus to detecting hidden stuff.

Having things like time of day, equipment noise, visibility etc. would just make stealth a lot more annoying, not fun.

Strongly disagree, it would make things a lot MORE fun, especially for rogues.

 

Time of day, for instance does play a role in Deadfire. Every NPC has a schedule they'll follow and you can use that to your advantage.

 

If I remember correctly they even confirmed pickpocketing.

And *reverse* pickpocketing!

[Koth]

I don't mind the whole enhanced stealth during the night thing, would be easy enough to implement. +1 for 9pm-12am +2 for 12am - 3am, +1 for 3am - 6am etc.

 

My fear though would be that people (myself included) would always try to game the system by never running around anywhere during the day (unless required by npc day/night cycles).

 

A standard tactic in PoE was to stealth up to a group until just outside of detection range and launch in a confusion spell to kick off combat.

 

So why would I ever want to play during the day if the incentive was to only ever play at night?

Edited February 27, 2017 by Koth

[Boeroer]

And *reverse* pickpocketing!

Yes, so cool. Josh also said that you would be able to place explosives into other peoples pockets (maybe even poison like in Skyrim? He didn't say that, but I think this will work, too). Explosives can be enhanced with the new alchemy skill. So I assume poisons will have a similar skill. Because they said they have a LOT more skills in PoE2. Did they talk about 20 skills or so? Can't remember, but it was a quite high number (see the Twitch stream with Josh and Bobby Null for details). 

 

Edit: Ok, looked it up: 

[...]

Bobby Null: [...] I think we're at eleven or twelve [skills] or something like that now?

Josh Sawyer: Oh, dude, it's way more.

BN: Is it more than that? Okay, it's a fair amount.

JS: It's a lot.

[...]

BN: Did we talk about reverse pickpocket yet?

JS: Get ready.

BN: We are going to do some reverse pickpocketing, so if you want to plant explosives on people and blow them up...You'll be able to do that.

JS: There will be explosives, also. Which you can make with Alchemy.

BN: Yes, Alchemy is one of our new skills.

JS: Actually, it's not that you can make them with Alchemy, but it allows you to use them better, I believe.

[...]

Edited February 27, 2017 by Boeroer

[Osvir]

Ship stealth!

- Would a Wizard or Druid be able to boil water around a ship, to envelop it in mist or fog? Mayhaps creating a boarding party in a blind zone?

- A Cipher Jedi, manipulating the crew of another ship "You have never seen us". Or a dockmaster.

 

Alchemy and Throwables:

- Smoke bombs?

Edited February 27, 2017 by Osvir

[Lord_Mord]

 

My fear though would be that people (myself included) would always try to game the system by never running around anywhere during the day

 

So what? That's what thieves do. If you have day and night cycles, you'll have a totally different gaming experience during the day than you would have during the night. Sounds great to me.

[Phenomenum]

 

Yes, so cool. Josh also said that you would be able to place explosives into other peoples pockets (maybe even poison like in Skyrim? He didn't say that, but I think this will work, too). Explosives can be enhanced with the new alchemy skill. So I assume poisons will have a similar skill. Because they said they have a LOT more skills in PoE2. Did they talk about 20 skills or so? Can't remember, but it was a quite high number (see the Twitch stream with Josh and Bobby Null for details).

Oh my... If Obsidian implement good stealth system, this game will be a saboteur's dream

I like it.

I'll be missing Durance in this case becose, you know...this man knows everything about bombs

Edited February 27, 2017 by Phenomenum

[Boeroer]

A priest of Magran/rogue as MC could quench your longings.

[Phenomenum]

A priest of Magran/rogue as MC could quench your longings.

Sounds good. + RP  - a many good reasons for Magran's priest to catch Eothas.

[Osvir]

Some more thoughts, and inspiration for Obsidian (for active stealth combat abilities):

 

Heroes of the Storm, take a look at Valeera, Samuro, Tyrande, and Greymane. They have some of the most fun stealth mechanics I've seen.

[draego]

New stealth info. Npcs will have vision cone, hearing radius and patrol patterns. This will allow more stealthy mission content with more use for stealth. Josh said where npc is looking will be important for detection and also sound.

Edited March 9, 2017 by draego

[TheisEjsing]

Also the natural reaction for interacting with npcs while in stealth will be pick pocketing. Wohoo! 

Edited March 9, 2017 by TheisEjsing

[JerekKruger]

Yeah, this news was pretty cool.