Very limited invisability

Here are my thoughts. A PVP game (or most games for that matter) is a battle of cause and effect. Damage vs. healing vs. tankiness vs. skill in an endless loop. Abilities can aid in this or break it. The more powerful the ability the more on the breaking it causes.

When you have someone that can go invisible for extended amounts of time it cause an arms issue in that one character will always get the first shot. The issue with this is simple: all other classes have to be tweaked to catchup to the initial damage that an invisible charcter does. This leads to some classes being a bit tougher than they should be when balancing the classes, ergo the fighter might need an extra stun or a DPS needs an escape, etc... So any counter to invisibility other classes might have tends to make them more painful to classes who were not the initial problem in the first place. Gear, abilities, etc....will have to be implemented and the Devs will never strike a balance or even come close to it. "here is your stun break ability ....that you will have to use from the very start when running into a class with a stun and invisibility". An opening move is static, it is not dynamic and I would like to see the game be one in which you would have to be fluid in a fight and not rely on having a set of keybinds specifically tailored to counter one specific class and his predictable invisible class opener.

We see this issue with WOW. One of the biggest issues that game has is that invisibility has so skewed the PVP field that there is no coming back. Heck, even the DH was given the ability to see invisible targets just as a counter to the classes that can pop out of veiw and in turn other classes were given the ability and to no avail. No balance achieved and nor will it ever exist in WOW. I am not saying that classes with invisibility are OP but the ability is and that hurts any chance of really having balanced classes because you cannot balance if one or 2 classes has one of the most potent abilities ever put into a game.

I might be late to the game here but thoughts?

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Vhaeyne

I always felt like invisibility and stealth were never fully thought out in MMOs.

An invisible character should leave behind footprints, and you should hear their footsteps. This would force the invisible character to put some sort of thought into not getting detected in PVP. Realistically the only characters that should have invisibility outright is casters that spec into it. Invisibility is magic. And should make them fully rendered or maybe slightly noticeable when moving invisible units in star craft.

As for scout classes they should have stealth. With stealth they should not have their footsteps or footprints detectable. They should also not be rendered unless the character is facing them, but fully visible when looked at. This would allow scout classes to actually pay attention to the direction that the target player is facing and try to move in accordingly. You should not be able to hide in plain sight.

Another thing I would like to see more of is like the bushes in league of legends. It is such a obvious game mechanic that I feel like is underused in MMO's. I remember when my friend found a bush in TERA that he could clip into and use it to gank unsuspecting targets. The bush was just big enough to hide the model and the HP bar. A unintentional use of the bushes, but it worked and always made me wonder why more games don't do it.

You do bring up a good point about how sometime when a scout starts combat there feels like there is no coming back from it. I have been on both sides of the play style. It does not feel satisfying for long to just flatten people, but when you do kill a stealth character that thought they were going to one shot you... Well that is divine. I feel like the nerfs I suggested above to invisibility and sneak might help the play style be more focused on risk vs reward. IDK though they are untested ideas. MMOs have been trying to get this right forever.

KnightPixie

As someone who played FF11 (2003-2013), I think they did invisibility great. Invisibility did not make one step silent and you could still see their footprints depending on the environment. To get rid of the noise a "Silence" effect had to also be applied to a person. So usually you would cast both Invisible and Silence on a person, though you could still see their footprints left behind. As an aside an invisible person in heavy armor made a lot more noise than say somebody in mages robes.

My thoughts about invisibility is there should always be a way to detect it depending on the senses of the other players. I believe the dev's stated there will be a way to detect them and they won't be completely stealthed, but I could be misremembering. Anyways my ideas would be something similar to FFXI or to have invisible players be cloaked like @Vhaeyne mentioned. I imagine this similar to Protoss units in StarCraft or the Preditor's cloaking field. They are for all intensive purposes invisible, but its due to a trickery of light and when moving it looks sort of "off".

EMT

Vhaeyne wrote: »

MMOs have been trying to get this right forever.

They never will. It is offensive, defensive, allows the first hit, allows the first stun....there is literally no other ability in any MMo I have played that is so balance destroying as invisibility. All this combined forces the class to be a glass cannon by default and forces other classes to have counter/catchup mechanics, which makes them more deadly to non invisible classes, who will need to be able to catchup/counter in turn. What you get is a crude circle that by default cannot be balanced. My theory is this is why WOW threw their hands up in the air in regards to PVP and quit even trying to balance....it was an impossibility even with todays simulation programs.

I like the foot print idea but that sounds system heavy. But I would take that over pure invisibility any day of the week.

Sendbackup

EMT wrote: »

Here are my thoughts. A PVP game (or most games for that matter) is a battle of cause and effect. Damage vs. healing vs. tankiness vs. skill in an endless loop. Abilities can aid in this or break it. The more powerful the ability the more on the breaking it causes.

When you have someone that can go invisible for extended amounts of time it cause an arms issue in that one character will always get the first shot. The issue with this is simple: all other classes have to be tweaked to catchup to the initial damage that an invisible charcter does. This leads to some classes being a bit tougher than they should be when balancing the classes, ergo the fighter might need an extra stun or a DPS needs an escape, etc... So any counter to invisibility other classes might have tends to make them more painful to classes who were not the initial problem in the first place. Gear, abilities, etc....will have to be implemented and the Devs will never strike a balance or even come close to it. "here is your stun break ability ....that you will have to use from the very start when running into a class with a stun and invisibility". An opening move is static, it is not dynamic and I would like to see the game be one in which you would have to be fluid in a fight and not rely on having a set of keybinds specifically tailored to counter one specific class and his predictable invisible class opener.

We see this issue with WOW. One of the biggest issues that game has is that invisibility has so skewed the PVP field that there is no coming back. Heck, even the DH was given the ability to see invisible targets just as a counter to the classes that can pop out of veiw and in turn other classes were given the ability and to no avail. No balance achieved and nor will it ever exist in WOW. I am not saying that classes with invisibility are OP but the ability is and that hurts any chance of really having balanced classes because you cannot balance if one or 2 classes has one of the most potent abilities ever put into a game.

I might be late to the game here but thoughts?

I dont know if we have been playing the same wow, but in the beginning, yes rogues were abit of a pain as there was no immediate counter for say warrior class. However this was later rectified with potions that prevented you from being stun locked etc. Not to mention many of the classes had an AOE ability of some sort that would break rogues stealth and nullify their back stabs etc. I mean heck, the healer priest had an AOE heal that did damage at the same time as heal and could be very potent against rogues. So if we were to to say that there is no balance in regards to rogues stealth would be incorrect but as long as there are craftables or abilities that could potentially help break a rogues stealth would be balanced enough. Imagine a warrior class being tanky, able to dish out huge amounts of burst damage and also having ability to see rogues stealth'ed! Why would you bother playing a rogue if you are far weaker and lose elements of surprise!?!? The only use of the rogue then would be to only find hidden entrances in dungeons and thats it.

This also leads into the questions/concerns I have regarding how subclass augments will really be effective when a pure class spec seems like it will be stronger in their chosen class as opposed to a hybrid.

Daedrik45

I believe DAoC did a good job at it. When you stealthed your movement was tremdously decreased and you had to put skill points into it or you would be seen and you couldn’t be a certain distance to someone, also all of there hard hitting moves where positionally conditioned, meaning backstab you had to be behind target and perforate artery you had to be in front, now perforate artery came with a huge risk reward, At the last second if someone saw your shadow they would turn thus preventing the frontal execution, quick cast stun or root the stealther and gain distance then destroy them, when you got higher realm rank you could get vanish which you could stealth while in combat. The problem with wows stealth isn’t stealth itself it’s the fact they have now made there movement speed faster in stealth then if they weren’t stealthed, that’s why it’s so overpowered also giving a stealthed class a self heal that can be used while stealthed just made it worse. My 2 cents

TheBlackLamb

I look at it this way, theirs a average time to kill, meaning most classes has something that would prevent them from immediately getting 1 shot in a sec, but also, just because a Rogue can go invisible and might also have the chance to extend that timer, doesn't mean the rogue is now op for being able to get the first hit, that's the point of the invisibility, to run or to get the first hit, but I don't think rogues would be good tanks, to allow for balance, a rogue may beadle to kill a healer and a mage easily, but the healer and mage might have some survive ability effects/ability's so making that time to kill longer then a sec, and I imagine a rogue killing a fighter or a tank would be kinda hard, because they would likely be tanky, and more hp heavy.

I like the idea for sound and maybe some sort of signs being available, and have maybe ability's or leveled up effects of the ability or augments to effect the sounds and signs to be none or to close to none, but I wouldn't want the sound and signs to be super telling,

I think the general rule is that players should always keep there guard up, watch out for close players and if they are worried about getting killed, Keep your Buffs active as your going about your day,

If you lower your guard, I would want that to be the time for a rogue to abuse you with there invisibility, its only fair, also If you really are worried about it, don't fight, let the guy/girl gain corruption.

Anyways, we wont know until alpha 1, and any issues with things would likely be settled before launch, most games don't have a corruption system like ashes, so it would be interesting if that would help balance how things are done, as will as the time to kill theory, I believe your argument might not be much of an issue in the end.

FuryBladeborne

The invisibility will be like the predator movie. You can kind of make out the translucent outline while they are still if you pay attention. They are much more visible while moving. It is possible for anyone to see them. Some classes will probably have abilities or traits that make them easier to see. We do not know how long invisibility will last except that it will not be permanent.

Example of the effect from Apocalypse play test:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/images/6/6c/Invisibility.mp4

EMT

I read all of these up unto this point in the thread but some of you have me wrong or I was not clear. I will explain better. Invisiblility does not make a class OP. Invisibility is a mutant power. Lol.

When we break combat down to the simpliest form my pixels are doing something to your pixels. All range is just that, my pixels hitting your pixels at a distance. Melee is the same but pixels affecting yours but only when you are near. Silence, sleep, stun, etc....are just me making your pixels not do what they should. So far all of the above examples all fall nicely into groups. Same goes with speed, dash, teleport, rush, etc...all fit into a group. Invisibility is my pixels disappearing. What is important to note is that it does not fall under any of the above groups. That is why it is problomatic to balance. Again, invisibility does not make you OP it just makes balance inpossible.

I am glad that Intrepid is going to have some form of detection, I don't mind being hit by a stealthy, but my issue is with balanced classes and dynamic gameplay that involves the least amount of hearing "so what is my opener when I stealth". All classes should have to react differently depending on the class they run into and get away from the classes with stealth that will use the exact same rotation on all the classes they encounter.

Warth

Stealth doesn't make it impossible to balance, it's just another type of utility move.

Something being hard to balance doesn't mean it should be removed otherwise that would mean that they should scrap 55/64 classes and 2 of the 4 schools of augment.

The inherent advantage of stealth classes is the first shot in 1v1s. This doesn't apply to classes that have stealth detection. They also usually suffer from a bad place in group/raid sized combat.

They don't aim for perfect 1v1 balance, it will be much more rock-paper-scissor type in terms of builds. Stealth classes will have advantages and they will have disadvantages. Just because people associate Stealth type characters with being ganked, doesn't mean its a bad mechanic to have in the game.

TheGoodzilla

Given that they said the rogue will have the ability to find secret doors and traps (which is why I plain to main one), it would make sense if they could also have a form of non-combat invisibility for scouting. I feel like the common mmo theme is to give rogues invisibility for getting a free opening shot in combat. But it would be nice to see two different skillsets offered in Ashes: a scouting non-combat undetectable skill, and then a potentially detectable but useable for combat openers skill.

bloodprophet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehx6mQ-EiW4

This video shows their idea of what they are going for with invisibility .
More of a Predator type feel.

TheGoodzilla

I would be ok with that. I guess my only concern is that rogue can couple with many different classes, and those classes with rogue. Admittedly we dont know specifics about how 2nd class will modify rogues, but it would be nice to see an opportunity to specialize in a sort of invisible spy build for scouting out dungeons in advance, rather than only having the standard "turn invisible to sneak attack".

bloodprophet

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Stealth

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