Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
An idea on how to do stealth properly and be fair.
Avarishd
Member
Just a simple way to do stealth in a proper way, it can start at let's say 70% and gets improved to 30% by talents/items. And can work the following way, if you're stationary it becomes harder to be spotted as you blend in, but as you begin to move the outline can be seen if you focus your vision on it.
You can obviously expand on the idea, this is just a quick input by me. Best of luck!
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You can obviously expand on the idea, this is just a quick input by me. Best of luck!
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Comments
member of Gray Sentinels
Human eyes are so spectacularly good at detecting movement, that literally 'the reflection of the shadow of someone's hand on the slightly curved part of a can of Sprite as they lift their cup to take a sip' gets my attention instantly.
So I believe that unless you are in an area with lots of movement already (might work in Siege for example), or some other factor is blocking their vision of the movement anyway (smokebombs or other spell effects) this isn't Stealth at all for many people. The visual acuity varies by person too much, as well. Some people's vision will literally never fail to pick up movement in a game like this due to their higher motion acuity and others will have issues because some aspect of their optic processing isn't as good.
If your aim is to make people stealthed only when standing still, this is great.
I don't think games are good when stealth doesn't work while the stealthed player is moving, and I definitely don't like the idea of 'stealth that works on some people because they don't see as well', no matter how realistic that is.
I'm no longer sure about that. See reference in this thread (no need to read the main post, just the replies, but the full main post is also the answer to your question).
I liked your tactical ideas with the smoke bomb. It’s a much more thought out version of the WoW Distract ability.
I think your take on stealth was corrected through the thread, which is fine and sorta meh since my guess is that ‘what stealth is’ will go through a number of increments during A1/2.
In WoW you can't tab-cycle a stealthed enemy until they are in that "visible" range.
Tab-cycle targetting is very important to many in a tab-target game.
How would that be handled in your scenario?
There literally is invisibility, it’ll be a part of the Rogue class. Unless you’re only referring to what is currently playable.
Can you find something that confirms that’s the case? I’d be happy if invis stealth is in. But everything I’ve seen / read to date depicts stealth as the Predator effect, not invis.
There’s like a half-nod toward invis stealth on the wiki, but it’s far from definite.
We still have to actually see it.
Unlimited stealth makes those classes the only ones that can go to the bathroom or stand around resource nodes. If you look at wow, rogues farm 80% of all the good resources in a very unbalanced proportion. Also don't like the idea of players standing invisible in someplace and forever ganking lowbies that pass through.
Having a timer makes sure this doesn't happen, and helps keep dungeon mobs from being skipped entirely.
EDIT: what the fuck, only 2 likes on your idea? now you have 3.
I oppose Tab Targeting in general in Ashes, but in a situation where it was definitely going to stay/stick, Tab Target would falter and be unable to retarget a stealthed character. To me the most 'fun' thing to do would be to have the Tab Target just target 'the general area of the smokebomb' so that certain AoE attacks could be used on the entire smokebomb position quickly.
I like how stealth and reveal work in GW2 that stealth don’t have long invisibility, I like it create a kind of tempo and delusion for players who encounter rogues think they really have control to predict the timing of rogues may open on them, but I don’t think that Dagger/Pistol combo to stealth or Dagger/Dagger hit to stealth things work in Ashes, but I do think Blinding Power and Shadow Refuge are and a trap they changed I don’t remember the name it will mark the opponent step on then you can dive into stealth teleport behind the opponent these can work in Ashes.
I also think this: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/49951/solving-a-specific-rogue-problem-with-smokebombs is a good Ultimate Skill example for Rogue, this reminds me Valeera’s smoke bomb in HOTS, I imagine that you can only use abilities that don’t require target to hit the rogue hide in smoke bomb( so this make action oriented skills important to deal with rogue), but you still can see the shadow/afterimagne of the rouge clearly while rogue attacking and intermittently while rogue moving.
I don’t really care about stealth is 100% invisible or not, I just want Ashes have a cool stealth effect and mechanic, because I personally think those good players who play stealth class they are not strike from the blind spot of your vision they strike from the blind spot of your mind.
It was directed to everyone responding in general, but mostly towards the original post's idea
I'm surprised I finally got a response on it, I thought it got lost in the discussion
I think you misunderstood though. I know targeting falters when stealth begins in most games, my question was about re-acquiring them as a target after they've gone stealth.
In WoW if you mash the Tab button, you will only acquire them as a target when they get into the "visible" stealth range.
In the OP scenario, they will always be "visible", so how will the Tab button work?
If they can't be targetted, does that mean stealth characters are just immune to all tab-target-only attacks?
This system does seem to leave Tab-target combat in a heavy disadvantage, because TT won't be able to act upon them, while anyone with an action-combat ability or non-targetted ability can just strike towards them to hit.
Personally, I was never a fan of this. I don't think rogues should have the ability to cross the whole continent without being noticed.
It makes sense in dark areas or at night, I also don't mind it near bushes etc. But a rogue spending 24h a day in the middle of a well-lit BRIDGE in 100% stealth doesn't make much sense and serves for little more than for to griefing newbies.
I understand this is a gameplay mechanic many enjoy, but I don't like how it can be easily used for game-breaking mechanics like skipping all mobs and going directly to a boss. Especially not in a game like AoC, where classes can be combined. I fear that we might end up with an army of players that all have rogue as one of their archetypes just so skip whole areas of content directly to bosses, resources, and loot. (is that possible?)
Maybe they should learn to actually be stealthy instead of relying on a game mechanic to make them completely undetectable?
If you've played or heard of Planetside 2 you'd know about the Infiltrator class, it has an invisibility tool or cloak that makes it invisible at long range. However, if you're standing within a few feet of them and they move, you can see slight visual shimmers as to alert you to their presence. The average player honestly doesn't notice them, but for myself and others, once you know what to look for, they can't hide too well. Against mobs, 5% invisibility would actually be fine, because mechanically, they wouldn't be able to see you, but with PVP you need balance. Another reason I find tab-target an odd choice is because if I physically see an invisible player and can't lock onto them, how can I attack them?
Nowadays, these design choices can be replaced with more natural feeling systems in which the player's intent is translated better into the game, either with full free-actio-combat like darksouls, or with target-lock-action-combat like in Zelda (important for ranged heroes).
I even think the threat system could/should be revisited, since nowadays it looks a bit stupid when the boss targets only one player from the whole raid like some braindead zombie. Now we can program better AI, and don't need a system like that anymore.
But the AoC team seems interested in innovating and have done a lot already. I think/hope they will keep some aspects like they are to not alienate the MMO community right now, and will innovate even more in future updates or expansions.
Regarding stealther walking in dungeons through whole areas to skip mobs and walk to he bosses:
I believe it was in EQ2 that there were different sights to begin with. so simply let different Mobs have different types of sight.
For example:
some might react on visual sight (stealthable)
Some monsters will react on heatwaves (maybe stealtable via Alchemistic potions)
Some might react on vibrations or sound
maybe others will react on a certain aura like magical auras
I believe there are far more possebilities.
In the end you might still be able to skip almost every mob in the game, but the efford to do so would mean to keep a bunch of variables in mind and have knowledge of several monsters to begin with.
Mages or player races might even be able to switch between different ways of sight.
I think you can just use weapon attack on them, or use actin oriented skills, these situations already in there in GW2 only thieves are 100% invisible in stealth, but we don't know hit stealth rogues will or will not reveal them.
And I don't feel odd, in my opinion tab targeted mode and action targeted mode are just a choice to decide how you take a target, every skills under these two modes just do no big difference, target oriented skills still require target in action targeted mode, action oriented skills still require camera turning to aim in tab targeted mode.
Last I really don't think bring actual action game combat or any element very close to that into a MMORPG is a good thing, because MMORPG just don't limit player's camera distance like action game and monsters or player characters don't react to player's attacks like action game, and the latency is always there in MMORPG.