[STEALTH COMBAT] What i loved about Elder Scrolls Online and what i wan't to see in AoC.

Hello. I am a Veteran gamer and would like to discuses stealth in AoC.

I wan't to talk about a game that did stealth right in my opinion and how it should be added into AoC.

Elder Scrolls Online has fabulous stealth mechanics and i played a stamina nightblade (rogue) for years.

Simply put stealth needs to work like this:

-Crouch enables stealth after a 3 second period (3 seconds is effected by time of day, possibly rogue passives, etc [in eso vampirism reduced this at nighttime].
-Stealth turns you completely invisible and you now have a detection radius. (armor type, race, passives and/or sets effect this size) Movement effects detection radius aswell.
-Two stealthed players can see each other in stealth if within each others detection radius but will not reveal each other until 1 attacks.
-If a none stealthed player walks too close to you.. you are revealed.
-You can only return to stealth after 5 seconds of not taking or applying any damage to an enemy. You still need to wait the 3 seconds to stealth after this 5 seconds.
-Stealth grants a crit on you're first initial hit
-Stealth grants a 15% damage bonus for 3 seconds upon striking you're enemy.

The reason to have both of these stealth benefits is to create diversity in ganking builds. Either you can build 1 shot builds or a quick rotation to kill.

Now here are some ideas i would like to be added to stealth to add more flavor to stealth by adding layers to playstyles.

In ESO back in update 1.6 there was an ability called mage light. It revealed stealthed players to you. However if you were in stealth aswell it would show you the stealthed player without them seeing you. Then there was a set called "the sentry set" that increased you're detection radius by 50%. This also increased the detection capability of mage light.

This combination created a new dynamic in open world pvp. There were regular warriors. Then rogues to gank the warriors. Then there were rogues with this sentry mage light setup who were the "rogue killers".

So now you had two types of cat and mouse. Gankers trying to gank and Gankers trying to find other gankers to gank.

This build was quiet overpowered. I could slowly creep around player dense keep fights and find crouched players looking for a kill and id just walk over.. cast my class invisibility spell and 1 shot the ganker (gankers are squish).

The thing is. Even though i walked around 1 shotting players in pvp all the time. I was still dying quiet a bit also. There were a billion ways to reveal stealthed players in ESO. Detection Potions. Mage Light skills. Flare skill. Mark Target. Any AoE or DoT tick revealed you. Its not like staying hidden after getting a kill is easy either.

So in AoC i'd like to see every player in the game be able to go into stealth and utilize it to hide. That way we can add more dynamics to PvP. Ambushes and other things like that. You can add tons of items that influence detection radiuses and or reveal areas.

Steven the CEO says things like, "people may come and contest you while youre farming".

While with this system system, you may have multiple parties watching you farm.... or you may accidentally reveal someone in YOURE farming spot.

This system would work so well this AoC.

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Comments

Caeryl

I don’t want ESO type stealth at all. You could have a full raid group in the PvP zone crouched in the middle of nowhere, not hidden, not behind terrain ready to flank, not skillfully avoiding the enemy’s LoS, just in an empty field as they wait for one tanky dude to bait people into a 20-30man invisible goon squad.

Stealth should be based on Line of Sight, light levels, distance, and specific class skills. If you’re not a Rogue main or subclass or using some magical item, you should never be able to have true invisibility.

Iversithy

I prefer having stealth on characters that choose to build for it. Either Rogue as primary or as secondary.
Haven't played ESO at all so I can't make a comment on the system but the idea of a big bulky warrior/tank who simply can sit down to become invisible with the same/similar advantages as someone who pick the profession directly seems weird.

Cold 0ne FTB

I don't know how much I like the ESO crouch stealth mechanics but I like the counter play that exists. It makes playing a Nightblade really interesting. What I would be interested to see if a mechanic like bombing exist? Boomblades are so much fun.

THEmightyCARL

I think stealth is really cool in alot of video games, but stealth in a pvp setting in a MMO is a double edged sword imo. I think open world pvp shouldn't have any stealth for the sake of balance alone. In a siege situation you shouldn't just be able to hide an entire army by activating stealth lol. I do think that stealth missions could be really fun however. The thieves guild for example could have quests that are specifically "stealth" or even your own guild could have these quests that target another guild that yours is at war with. And perhaps specializing your character as a rouge could make you more efficient at these "missions". Just another niche to be filled in the game like the professions you know? Professional thief, saboteur, or assassin sounds cool but now im just fantasizing lol.

Juk KO

Caeryl wrote: »

I don’t want ESO type stealth at all. You could have a full raid group in the PvP zone crouched in the middle of nowhere, not hidden, not behind terrain ready to flank, not skillfully avoiding the enemy’s LoS, just in an empty field as they wait for one tanky dude to bait people into a 20-30man invisible goon squad.

Stealth should be based on Line of Sight, light levels, distance, and specific class skills. If you’re not a Rogue main or subclass or using some magical item, you should never be able to have true invisibility.

There are a lot of abilities and mechanics in Elder Scrolls Online that prevent those situations.

For example, a full raid group in stealth is fine because they are doing nothing. Waiting there moment yes but that diminishes the second they try to achieve any real outcome in ESO pvp. Resources or Castles get flagged on the map to indicate to all people in Cryodill (the pvp zone) its under attack. So if a full group wants to grief along travel routes thats there decision. However the groups siegeing keeps and claiming emperor-ship are the ones making real progress. If youre a grieifing guild and you wanna sit in stealth you can but generally its not that helpful execpt for adding a little surprise element to outcomes of battles.

2nd. Yes the poor souls who walk into them may die but that may expose your whole groups plan and or intentions to siege a keep. eso cryodill is very nice open world pvp. eso also has global chat for youre faction where you can communicate to youre faction theres a guild ganking in stealth.

3rd. that sounds pretty freaking awesome your guild can go into stealth and wait for an opposing group to get close or turn there back to you.

4th. there are very large aoe abilities that can be mindlessly thrown in certain areas to reveal people. abiltiies that have easily 30 foot radius's themselves with 50 feet global cast ranges. 1 being volley from bow users. 1 being caltrops a skill any class or spec can use. revealing flare, a persistent aoe reveal.

5th. once these groups kill players, combat indicators appear on the map that battle has occurred so players will be notified something is up.

In this game i can see how stealth makes 0 sense for all classes so i may retract my statement and just apply my topic on the stealth class / subclass spec.

Lfmr

Getting baited into a 1v5 can be sort of annoying, but it's just that in ESO, an annoyance, it pretty much serves no purpose but to gank, and does not serve to help in a castle siege at all (Save stealth nuke builds) However in a game where death causes you to lose XP, that is going to be more then an annoyance, I like the idea of no classes having true stealth, and instead becoming like 90% transparent, or being invisible with a shimmering effect that you can only be seen if someone is looking for you. (See Predator)

Would also love if standing still while in stealth activates 100% invisibility. The amount of times I have ran around a corner, crouched and stood still to avoid chasing players as a Infiltrator in Planetside 2 is amazing, it makes you feel like you have a megamind sized brain.

Ziu

I don’t think having any kind of combat stealth is a good mechanic. It’s too overdone, overhyped and blatantly not realistic. You should always be able to see your opponent unless they are literary blending in to something from a distance

Juk KO

Lfmr wrote: »

Getting baited into a 1v5 can be sort of annoying, but it's just that in ESO, an annoyance, it pretty much serves no purpose but to gank, and does not serve to help in a castle siege at all (Save stealth nuke builds) However in a game where death causes you to lose XP, that is going to be more then an annoyance, I like the idea of no classes having true stealth, and instead becoming like 90% transparent, or being invisible with a shimmering effect that you can only be seen if someone is looking for you. (See Predator)

Would also love if standing still while in stealth activates 100% invisibility. The amount of times I have ran around a corner, crouched and stood still to avoid chasing players as a Infiltrator in Planetside 2 is amazing, it makes you feel like you have a megamind sized brain.

This game isnt just castle sieges. Theres towns, dungeons, delves, raids, housing and more. Castle sieges could still benefit from stealth. Imagine you and your guild all in stealth in like the west tower and an apposing guild walks by you not checking the area with aoes to reveal. Boom now you have the advantage after you roll over them. Or vise versa.

In Eso stealth in available at all times. The nice thing about stealth was it added an element of the game that made it easier for noobs to traverse pve or pvp. Instead of riding horseback trying to get to the frontline where the zergs are. You can walk in stealth so nobody sees you. At the same time people wait in stealth right along travel routes and gank you the second you ride over them. Lots of back and forth play right there. In PVE a lot of people just wanna sneak past enemies and do quests. Helps a lot to ignore aggro.

Ganking wasn't always one shot in eso. It usually consisted of a full execute rotations that was preventable if you didnt want to be ganked. By tuning your gear a little bit more defensively or slotting anti gank abilities / passives stealth was never an issue.

Stealth in AoC could very well just hide you're UI (hp/name above model) and make you transparent and not target-able till revealed. Then adding in LoS and bushes and stuff that could very well be enough stealth for this game.

Those moments you talk about in Planetside 2 happen none stop in Elder Scrolls Online on the nightblade class. You can cask an invisibility spell that persisted for 3 seconds and you could refresh it. If you had enough regen or were magicka based you could basically spam it. Sneaking around keeps or open world pvp environments with the ability to take the fight on your own terms will always be the most overpowered pvp mechanic in the game in my opinion. However sneaking around always has a double edged sword in the efficiency of your movement and the impact your having on the battle in comparison to say a up front tank or fighter with high healing.

Having a strong stealth foundation that any class can utilize will exponentially increase the diversity and variability in combat metrics and group sizes.

Since this game is heavily derived on node based gameplay where players are siegeing each other and killing each other and all that. Having stealth where anyone can scout, relay information, ambush others, potentially setup traps (especially with the caravan system) would make AoC an incredible game.

BlackBrony

I don't like stealth. It should be used as a scout mechanic, or ambush.
But you shouldn't be invisible. You shouldn't escape combat by stealthing, and you couldn't ambush 20 vs 1 in broad daylight just because of a game mechanic.

Juk KO

BlackBrony wrote: »

I don't like stealth. It should be used as a scout mechanic, or ambush.
But you shouldn't be invisible. You shouldn't escape combat by stealthing, and you couldn't ambush 20 vs 1 in broad daylight just because of a game mechanic.

This is where this stealth mechanic could be exclusive to the rogue class and specific rogue subclass augments.

Honestly in my opinion theres no difference between a guild hiding in plain sight in comparison to a guild hiding in stealth.

I know one thing. The guild not in stealth can pre buff. The guild in stealth cannot cast a single ability or risk being revealed.

So theres a pro and con for both.

On one side without stealth guilds can fan out there numbers and sweep whole areas. With stealth solo players or corrupted players can sneak by not being seen and cause may ham somewhere else.

In ESO full guilds sitting in stealth was never an issue in eso's open world pvp. Simply because it served no purpose in comparison to the grander objective. You surely could grief as group in eso pvp but the players you kill can type to their faction that a guild is ganking at x,y,z. Youre guild in stealth would very quickly be met with by solo players who will pick youre group apart until you wipe.

Theres also nothing wrong with escaping while in stealth. Youre just running away. You can't just run away from someone if they are damaging you and stealth. You still have to wait 5 seconds of not being hit or damaging someone else to start the 3 second stealth cooldown to get into stealth.

Yuyukoyay

I don't really have enough information on how stealth is going to work or how classes fully work yet. I personally don't mind stealth how WoW does it. Being close reveals you, but I think it should probably be from quite a distance if they looking right at you. Depends how it is going to work. I don't like it when classes are built to cc lock you forever out of stealth. So stealth is heavily linked to how ccs are going to work in the long run. I think they should be careful how much burst stealth classes get too because stealth classes should not get a lot of burst.

They should do a lot of damage, but not all at once just dumped into you so they can immediately go invis and wait to do it again. I think that stealth should have a bigger strategic impact and it should not be that easy to go back into it while in combat.

Aardvark

They already have a stealth example it works like preditor the movie it does not make you invis

phdmonster

Eh, ESO type stealth kinda goes completely against how Intrepid wants to do stealth in the game. I like that the stealth in Ashes is a shimmer type thing instead of being completely invisible. It makes players be more strategic and thing about what they are doing.

Especially for the classes that are not rogues, but choose rogue as a secondary and maybe get a temporary stealth for a couple of seconds on one of their abilities. I'd keep it that way, as a more exclusive ability to rogues instead of every character and their mom being able to hide themselves and sit on my head waiting for an ambush.

Cold 0ne FTB

phdmonster wrote: »

Eh, ESO type stealth kinda goes completely against how Intrepid wants to do stealth in the game. I like that the stealth in Ashes is a shimmer type thing instead of being completely invisible. It makes players be more strategic and thing about what they are doing.

Especially for the classes that are not rogues, but choose rogue as a secondary and maybe get a temporary stealth for a couple of seconds on one of their abilities. I'd keep it that way, as a more exclusive ability to rogues instead of every character and their mom being able to hide themselves and sit on my head waiting for an ambush.

I like the shimmer aspect as well but the thing is that these stealth tactics almost never work on competitive groups. If you ever watch somebody trying to bomb Drac, VE, Tyr or LoM they almost always fail, its because you can't cast a lot of abilities in stealth (edit: a lot of abilities break stealth, mainly heals and attacks), counter engaging in ESO can be just as deadly as engaging and it really isn't as mechanically strong. It doesn't provide much of a benefit except to nightblades that get a guaranteed crit on their first ability.

My only concern with rogues is how selfish their kits tend to be and how this will effect group play. In my experience this archtype is often not wanted in groups because they don't offer a lot. Further if the Time To Kill is going to be 30 seconds to a minute they won't be able to effectively gank.

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