I already said it in the post about assassins, but having such a thing as assassination will in all case be too powerful.

The assassin in real life is supposed to study his target for several days, sometime weeks, before striking, that's why they rarely miss and are that feared. And that's why you can't have them in MMOs, you want them to have the same firepower but with much less to no preparation time, you then don't have assassins, but supersoldier commando stuffed with enhancing drugs, way superior to any other character.

If you reduce the firepower to let the target have a fair fight, then the stealther doesn't desserves the name of assassins, something like a commando name would be more appropriated.

I'm only talking about the name of the class, but if you change it like that the players won't expect to be able to kill somebody in 10 sec and get away, so they won't be disappointed if we put something more like a light tank with stealth.

Originally posted by Ziftylrhavic

I already said it in the post about assassins, but having such a thing as assassination will in all case be too powerful.

 

The assassin in real life is supposed to study his target for several days, sometime weeks, before striking, that's why they rarely miss and are that feared. And that's why you can't have them in MMOs, you want them to have the same firepower but with much less to no preparation time, you then don't have assassins, but supersoldier commando stuffed with enhancing drugs, way superior to any other character.

 

If you reduce the firepower to let the target have a fair fight, then the stealther doesn't desserves the name of assassins, something like a commando name would be more appropriated.

 

I'm only talking about the name of the class, but if you change it like that the players won't expect to be able to kill somebody in 10 sec and get away, so they won't be disappointed if we put something more like a light tank with stealth.

So far everything that we say on this forum or any other is purely theorical. I dont think it would be too powerful (stating your 1st paragraph) if there was lets say a cooldown of 1 hour, hell maybe 2 hours, 3 hours (who knows, not me for sure) regarding an eventual assassination skill, as this would "simulate" the strategic value and the time spent "studying" the target's movement, whereabouts etc. Thus removing the pure ganking aspect too.

And who knows, maybe "assassins" (if there are any) WILL have to locate someone specific (for an RvR quest) and kill him/her.

So many things are possible, so i'm merely exploring possibilities.

We'll eventually know, since then i love to throw in ideas and imagine how it COULD be, not how it will be :)

Edit : i do agree on your last paragraph, makes sense :)

I love stealth classes in games. I like the way daoc did it. I never thought they were too powerful.

I chose the ganking option, even though that is a bias phrasing because I want stealthers to be able to materialize out of thin air attacking someone. Often people are in groups, so if an assassin targets someone and kills them, most likely they are going to die.

I liked how they couldn't restealth in daoc until out of combat.

It seems a lot of people not wanting stealthers in the game are people that always got killed by them. You would think from my support that I was a stealther, but that is not the case. I usually played a caster, which was a prime target of stealthers. I also won a good amount of the time when I got jumped. Probably less than half, maybe 2 out of 5. For a cloth wearer being totally surprised and still winning against a stealther is great.

If I were to surprise anyone, even a stealther, with my caster (meaning seeing them before me and attacking), My win rate was near 100%.

Also most stealthers couldn't really dominate non casters, so not like they're all powerful. Add in that there will be a lot of grouping, stealth being OPed really loses its luster. That is where the other attributes of stealth come in such as scouting, sieging, etc.

As for the realism thing, there are plenty of novels where assassins have innate or learned magical abilties that turn them invisible, phase them out of sync, bend light around themselves, create an illusion of nothingness or air, or gather shadows to them that creates a distortion that is hard to see. Often it is just a poor explanation of the lore of the assassins in games rather than them being unrealistic.

I don't like to use the term "realism" when we talk about games. i think that the important factor is that there is a certain balance in game, and that any skills, spells abilities, etc. fit into the game, and brings something to it to make it whole, complete.

EDIT : typo

You certainly have a point here.

Also, to those that complain about stealth groups popping out of nowhere, i would answer than the only difference with a visible groups nowaday, in DAoC, is that you can see the visible coming, but with the speed bonus it's still near impossible to escape unless you are close to a friendly structure. Well, there is one more difference, the stealth group don't have any heal and will take more time to come back unless it's some albs with a minstrel to give them the speed.

Realism is a terrible excuse to not have stealthers in a fantasy game where half the classes can and do things that are totally un realistic.

Balance the game around abilities / roles / classes. In rock paper scissors you have freedom to do things that you want, but don't do things just because they are "more real"

ie. don't remove stealth, and don't include collision detection. :)

Edited original post to show the results of the same poll i did on a french CU community forums.

Funny (and very cool to know) that french and english both agree with the same % on how stealthers dont belong in CU. (low %).

As unrealistic as it is to hide in plain sight, some of my best memories in DAoC, WAR, and elsewhere was when I played stealthers.  I also love playing the counter-stealth role, for looking for other stealthers and taking them out!  I also enjoy being able to watch, climb walls, and relay information back to the realm on force activity.  Wow, memories are flooding my little brain right now -- feeling very nostalgic!

bump.

There is quite many new visitors, i'd like their opinion, without making another thread.

Ok discussion seems to have stop in the thread I posted this in so I will copy / paste is here as well.

The typical being invisible in the wide open in broad daylight 24/7 stealth of most MMOs is pretty done to death, and it would be cool to try something different.

I'm interested to see where MJ goes with it, he mentioned the stealth system he wanted to test was batshit crazy. So I guess we will see what happens.

I could imagine a cool system using disguises and / with short duration stealth (like warhammer), would have a kinda assassin's creed like feel to it or something.

Also sounds like they could do a different camouflage system built along side of it as well, which can be influenced by distance, shadow , decor, movement, etc.

Which could be used for both stealther / assassin type classes as well as archer / scout like classes.

Would make it more tactical and "realistic", could be a cool system, where you become invisible not because no one can see you but because your blending in and not being noticed till the time you strike.

But of course there is always the meta game, where if your disguise or stealth skills aren't high enough certain classes like enemy assassin / archer classes or possibly other classes with a high enough "perception" can see through it. I'm sure there is a lot of fun things you can do here.

It would be a lot of deception and misdirection, could be interesting.

It would be more like Social Cloaking /  Disguise Mastery instead of Invisibility. So you would be more like Batman / Assassin's Creed instead of being like the Predator.

I'm flexing my nerd muscles now :-P

actually i would go with "all of the above" 

since it's missing i won't vote i'd say   :)