Recent Stealth Changes aka Major Nerf

[SatchelleDeBaglady]

While I appreciate that one shouldn't be able to just sneak to the end of every single quest kill the boss and bail, let's discuss what was happening before.

Approach a group of mobs in Sneak and Invised and assassinate one of them, they would swing wildly around where the buddy was standing and then swing around the room "kind of" and in many instances strait up tracking you until you broke line of sight. If Both Invis and Sneaked, once LOS was broken they would lose track of you but continue to swing/shoot around and sometimes they get lucky, or even run strait toward you around the corner you ducked behind and swing.
After about 90 secs they would lose agro altogether (which was dumb). This to me was the brain dead part.
This made it difficult but not impossible to get away from them have the mobs lose track of you sufficiently to continue to assassinate them one by one, while taking a lot longer than zerging in and killing everything, was a satisfying playstyle for me.
This also took having both invis and sneak to work properly and frankly was challenging on a toon with few past lives to survive at all.

Fast Forward to today: You assassinate one mob and THEY ARE JUST COMING FOR YOU, non-stop, no escape, a dimension door or jumping to a different elevation where they cant follow is the only way to lose the agro. It's like once your presence is known despite having stupidly high Hide/Move Silently and being invisible, they just see and pursue you. It makes soloing a sneaky assassin rogue no fun and would have no basis in any reality I can think of.

If someone was invisible even if you knew they were there you would have a hell of a time finding them once they moved and if you were out of your possible line of sight impossible. The way the mobs reacted before this last update save the giving up after a while part was how they should react. Nothing was wrong with it.

SSG Please reverse this change

 

[Bjond]

If someone was invisible even if you knew they were there you would have a hell of a time finding them once they moved and if you were out of your possible line of sight impossible

I think you're discounting all the senses. I've done and seen others do blind-folded sparring (jujitsu & kendo) with attackers trying to be sneaky. It's ridiculously easy to tell where they are by sound. Invisible would leave other physical traces that would be easy to spot once alerted, too.

However, I despise RL arguments for a game and for a game the above arguments are both nonsense. Your implicit premise is 100% correct that DDO skippy & stealth play has become "not fun at all". This makes zero sense, since their goal is to sell "fun" and those are the styles with the least server load.

IMHO, ESO right now has the best PVE stealth play by far -- it's got two entire mini-games built around it (assassin & theft) and it's a TON of fun. For PvP stealth, it's Aion, but SWTOR is pretty good there, too. If DDO devs want a lesson in how to make stealth fun, they should try ESO and maybe the others for ideas.

BTW, the best tracking mechanics for MOBs goes to old FFXI. They had critters that tracked by sight, sound, scent, or blood -- drop to 10% hp in an undead zone and the ENTIRE zone would agro on you and come running from all over. I would adore this style of agro for DDO undead.

Run across a river with scent trackers chasing and you could watch them loose your scent and stop chasing. Drink an invis (unfortunately rare) and same for sight.

If DDO ever wants even 1/10th the success of BG3 or even just to recapture a smidgin of that true D&D feel, it has to support creative solutions for "getting it done" including and most especially NOT KILLING EVERYTHING as an unlock to the next area.

 

[Anurakh]

In its early days, DDO had a near-perfect stealth and perception system, very faithful to pnp. Every time they've changed it, it's only gotten worse.

 

[Jasparius]

In its early days, DDO had a near-perfect stealth and perception system, very faithful to pnp. Every time they've changed it, it's only gotten worse.

It even had dungeons which rewarded you with extra XP for hardly killing anyone.

What we have now is lazy and cheap. They dont want to think about designing content for different play styles so we get packs of mobs in front of locked doors which only unlock after the final mob in the pack is dead.

 

[Phoenicis]

It even had dungeons which rewarded you with extra XP for hardly killing anyone.

What we have now is lazy and cheap. They dont want to think about designing content for different play styles so we get packs of mobs in front of locked doors which only unlock after the final mob in the pack is dead.

To be fair:

Designing a quest that accommodates both stealth and murderhobo probably takes longer, lets say and additional 25% time invested. (WAG, granted)

If less than 1% of the player base (Another WAG, also granted) uses the alternative path, was it a wise time investment?

A couple personal examples: in the archons trial, the first quest has a agility trial and an alternative, the mechanics path. Even when running a trapper I always do the agility trial. The agility path is simply easier. (yes I did the mechanics path once, took way longer than the mario option)

Same with Vecna denied. One of the paths has a combat and trap option. Even on a trapper the combat path gets done, it's faster.

edit:fixed a typo

 

[rabidfox]

A couple personal examples: in the archons trial, the first quest has a agility trial and an alternative, the mechanics path. Even when running a trapper I always do the agility trial. The agility path is simply easier. (yes I did the mechanics path once, took way longer than the mario option)

I do both sides so I can get all the trap boxes for that XP bonus.

Same with Vecna denied. One of the paths has a combat and trap option. Even on a trapper the combat path gets done, it's faster.

I often do trapper side, because as long as one has evasion (and good saves) then you can zoom zoom it (no reason to do the traps).

I like having choices like that. It gives the game flavor and D&D to me should have a lot of flavor; without it we just become even bigger murder hobos.

 

[OG DM]

Another example where they broke D&D and went with a generic system. An assassin in a group is fine and works, but apparently stealth soloing a quest is something they don't want to allow, so the supported playstyle boils down to needing to be able to directly confront anything you run into and overpower it.

 

[LurkingVeteran]

I agree with the OP. I don't like dumbing down game play. Complex game play was what set DDO apart from the competition. Did this change actually solve the problem? I doubt it.

 

[Nokowi]

They initially had an issue with (not stealth players) players invis-running to the end of quests. They chose not to make agro work in a more sensible manner to discourage this but instead to destroy an entire play style that was never doing this. We were completing most quests in 2-3x the amount of time. Why? Single target dps plus much of the tool-kit was about killing trash mobs.

The next stage of poor design was mass agro where you would preferentially get detected without a check prior to if you had simply not been sneaking. That's right, stealth became a tool for getting agro. Combine this with their angry bee design where all mobs instantly know your exact location and you have about as bad of a stealth design as one could implement. What could be worse than ignoring all the stealth skills and preferentially giving agro to an archetype that is supposed to be based on avoiding agro? (see phase 3)

The side effect of phase 3 of poor design was to diminish the ability to use player skill of the now destroyed playstyle. What could be worse than preferential agro? The answer is removing the benefit for being in stealth by allowing assassinate without a stealth requirement, along with diminishing circles (actually squares) of listen and spot checks. Add on to this that monsters with no proximity to the player or any monster could also share agro as you progress through the dungeon. It was as if a very large red exclamation point was over your head at all times.

To all still enjoying their play I can only say how much better the game used to be. It was not necessary to destroy player fun to "mix it up", sell progress, and/or monetize the game. It has been a real failure of design choices.

-Nokowi (10,000+ hours of play)

 

[Frisson]

They initially had an issue with (not stealth players) players invis-running to the end of quests. They chose not to make agro work in a more sensible manner to discourage this but instead to destroy an entire play style that was never doing this. We were completing most quests in 2-3x the amount of time. Why? Single target dps plus much of the tool-kit was about killing trash mobs.

The next stage of poor design was mass agro where you would preferentially get detected without a check prior to if you had simply not been sneaking. That's right, stealth became a tool for getting agro. Combine this with their angry bee design where all mobs instantly know your exact location and you have about as bad of a stealth design as one could implement. What could be worse than ignoring all the stealth skills and preferentially giving agro to an archetype that is supposed to be based on avoiding agro? (see phase 3)

The side effect of phase 3 of poor design was to diminish the ability to use player skill of the now destroyed playstyle. What could be worse than preferential agro? The answer is removing the benefit for being in stealth by allowing assassinate without a stealth requirement, along with diminishing circles (actually squares) of listen and spot checks. Add on to this that monsters with no proximity to the player or any monster could also share agro as you progress through the dungeon. It was as if a very large red exclamation point was over your head at all times.

To all still enjoying their play I can only say how much better the game used to be. It was not necessary to destroy player fun to "mix it up", sell progress, and/or monetize the game. It has been a real failure of design choices.

-Nokowi (10,000+ hours of play)

Totally right. And thank you for carrying the torch for us stealth-enjoyers as much as you did- even when it brought you scorn.

If only they listened, all those years ago- we mightn't have ended up where we are today...

I still think DDO has the potential for interesting and engaging stealth play. It did have it, once upon a time. But the devs will have to showcase a bit of bravery and craft, in this regard, to make it happen.

And there is always the problem of "what else could break", as a result of changes to the system. Being forever hamstrung by spaghetti code, means we often end up with less creative/effective solutions and non-solutions, like we have with stealth.

I guess SSG needs to invest in magical spaghetti sauce

 

[Svirfneblin]

You have not watched the daredevil show

 

[Nokowi]

You have not watched the daredevil show

That would actually be a nice boss fight with the old mechanics. You would be throwing things around the room to distract and using sonic traps to confuse. DDO had the meat and bones to do so much with their 2013 stealth system that was designed by Torc (Brent ... I think... ) to reduce lag and improve gameplay. That was back when it was possible to meet design goals (lag reduction) and improve gameplay simultaneously. Take a look at a supported playstyle back in 2013...

Stealth System Updates (2013)
We have comprehensively looked at stealth, invisibility, detection, blind attacks, noises, and the visual or audio feedback from all of these systems. Major work has been done to monster AI as well as player avatar and ability behaviors to improve the opportunity for characters to successfully use stealth in the game.

Changes are as follows:

• Performance improvements have been made that significantly reduce AI-related lag and frame rate issues, especially in large group and raid situations.
• The game is now much better at determining when you are in or out of combat, so that you don't appear to stand there idly while getting clubbed over the head by attackers.
• Combat animations and avatar behaviors have been adjusted. It is now possible to perform some actions while being stealthy that you previously could not (such as tumbling or jumping.) The previous ability to jump while stealthed was horribly overpowered, and has been summarily nerfed.
• Monsters now display a question mark icon whenever they are investigating a suspicious noise, instead of performing a search animation while walking, which made it appear as if they had "sliding feet."
• Monsters who can see a player despite hide or invisibility will now display an icon over their head to let the player know they have been seen! Situations where this occurs can include:
  1. You are invisible but the monster has True Seeing, See Invisibility, tremor-sense, or is within 2 meters and facing you.
  2. You are hiding, but the monster's spot plus all modifiers is sufficient to beat your hiding skill plus all modifiers, or you are within 2 meters and it is facing you.
  3. You are hiding AND invisible, but some combination of both 1 and 2 are true.
  4. If they are swinging and hitting you but don't have the icon over their head, they are making blind attacks where they hear you making noise, and you're making so much running around and getting hit that they can figure out where you are.
• To better help players understand when they are making noise:
  • Sneaking players have always made red footsteps when they were making noise, but now players who are invisible will display "hot footsteps" to indicate when a monster can hear them as well. This is only a visual change - they could always hear you when you were running around while invisible...
  • White footsteps that indicate you are approaching a monster who might hear you if you get closer will still play only if sneaking.
  • All red footsteps now only play when a monster actually hears you. If you see the red splash, your position has been given away! It used to play any time you might be heard, but weren't necessarily actually being heard. The footstep will also be darker and redder the more monsters hear you!
• Monsters will display a red ear with an exclamation mark whenever they hear you make a loud noise, such as when you are hit.
• Fixed a number of bugs, and re-wrote blind attack and search AI, to allow players to escape monsters when using stealth:
  • Fixed a bug where monsters would re-evaluate their target's position every time another monster's missile attack hit anything, giving the monster better awareness of a player's location than they should. This will now only happen when a character makes the noise.
  • Fixed a bug where monsters would cheat and get their target's location every 6 seconds or less.
  • Fixed a bug where being both stealthed and invisible was worse than just being invisible at ranges greater that 7.5 meters.
  • Search attack algorithms have been improved. Monsters will expand their search radius when making blind attacks, hate the target less after a few missed attacks, and eventually give up after a number of fruitless attacks where they are unable to hit anything.
    • If a monster manages to get a relevant clue as to their enemy’s whereabouts, they will resume their search.
  • Monsters should no longer shoot projectiles directly at targets that they can't see!
• Added icon feedback to highlight increased monster spot bonuses over the length of time that a character hides or sneaks in front of them.
  • This comes in three levels, based on distance. The color and number of eyes that blink over the monster’s head indicates how fast their spot bonus is increasing.
• The eye icon over your character's head when sneaking now only shows when a monster is looking at you. Use it to tell when a monster is building its spot bonus, and get out of sight quickly!
• Invisibility still makes it so that monsters cannot clearly see you while invisible, unless they are directly adjacent to you. When combined with sneak, it lessens the ability of monsters to start to spot you at far distances, and reduces the bonus that they get at closer distances. The enemy’s spot bonuses gained while invisible will not reveal you as long as you remain invisible, but will hamper your ability to hide if your invisibility is later broken.

In the scenario of sneaking through a room full of monsters to pull a lever when their backs are turned, then re-hiding and continuing past them again:

• Doing so with just sneak puts you at risk of being spotted the more time spent in front of the monsters; Be careful! The higher your hide skill is, the more of a buffer you have before the monsters see through it!
• Drinking an invisibility potion to get you to the lever will still raise awareness when in front of the monsters as you sneak by, but not as much. They also cannot spot you (unless you are directly adjacent to them) until after you pull the lever, breaking invisibility. When you re-activate sneak after pulling it, you will have less chance of being detected, as the invisibility helped you sneak in front of them on the way there.
• For players who prefer a minimal UI, there is an option to turn off all of the new overhead AI awareness icons in the options menu! “ShowMonsterOverheadAwareness”
• Sneaking characters can now jump and tumble.
• Because of changes made to Stealth and AI Awareness, a couple of abilities were no longer as useful. We have updated them to better suit the new stealth changes:
  • Shadowdancer: Shadow Training II updated to be: "Activate: For 30 seconds, while sneaking you gain: Full movement speed, +5 Attack bonus to-hit with Sneak Attacks, +2 Sneak Attack dice, +3 Hide, +3 Move Silently."
  • Hide in Plain Sight (Ranger Feat) has been updated: "You are a master when it comes to hiding in places others think impossible. You gain +1 Hide and +1 Move Silently for every three seconds you stand still, up to +5. While you are sneaking and standing still (for 3 seconds), enemies don't gain Spot bonuses until they get much closer to you, and the bonuses are smaller."

Totally right. And thank you for carrying the torch for us stealth-enjoyers as much as you did- even when it brought you scorn.

Thanks, I was critical of SSG and provided actionable feedback and many others deserve credit for their time and thoughts. My tone was not pleasant but that was an accurate representation of feelings towards the design changes. I think if I am being critical in the hope that the criticism will be acknowledged it is only fair for me to be open to criticism of my ideas as well.

 

[Jasparius]

To be fair:

Designing a quest that accommodates both stealth and murderhobo probably takes longer, lets say and additional 25% time invested. (WAG, granted)

If less than 1% of the player base (Another WAG, also granted) uses the alternative path, was it a wise time investment?

A couple personal examples: in the archons trial, the first quest has a agility trial and an alternative, the mechanics path. Even when running a trapper I always do the agility trial. The agility path is simply easier. (yes I did the mechanics path once, took way longer than the mario option)

Same with Vecna denied. One of the paths has a combat and trap option. Even on a trapper the combat path gets done, it's faster.

edit:fixed a typo

That is bad game design. They should know people choose the quicker path. With 5 minutes thought they could have made the mechanics path quicker - if you had a trapper.

 

[danzig138]

I think you're discounting all the senses. I've done and seen others do blind-folded sparring (jujitsu & kendo) with attackers trying to be sneaky. It's ridiculously easy to tell where they are by sound. Invisible would leave other physical traces that would be easy to spot once alerted, too.

Okay but there's at least two issues with your anecdata:

1. You're assuming the attackers actually had points in HiS and MS. In my experience, most people don't, including martial artists. People don't realize that stealth is a skill you train.
2. You seem to be forgetting that the defenders may have had the Blind Fight feat. Does every mob in DDO also have this feat?

Benefit​

In melee, every time you miss because of concealment, you can reroll your miss chance percentile roll one time to see if you actually hit.

An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible. The invisible attacker’s bonuses do still apply for ranged attacks, however.

You take only half the usual penalty to speed for being unable to see. Darkness and poor visibility in general reduces your speed to three-quarters normal, instead of one-half.

Normal​

Regular attack roll modifiers for invisible attackers trying to hit you apply, and you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC. The speed reduction for darkness and poor visibility also applies.

Special​

The Blind-Fight feat is of no use against a character who is the subject of a blink spell.

A fighter may select Blind-Fight as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Basically your entire post is built on faulty logic.

 

[Blerkington]

What irritates me the most about recent developments is the new stealth model was obviously broken yet it was pushed into production anyway. Was it really so urgent that we couldn't have kept the old one until the new one was functioning properly?

Now we have to wait God knows how long for it to be fixed. I've hardly logged into the game since it all went to Hell, and no playing means no spending.

 

[J1NG]

From what I understood, the Devs felt that either (and/or) the deployment would show up any immediate issues as there's more players using the older forms of Stealth/Invis/DD, etc to manage aggro and will have more eyes on the changes. And if needed brought up so they can go about adjust things.

The other thing is to observe actual effects on server performance. Which probably doesn't help given it's going to be giving a biased view due to it not working entirely as intended.

They likely were not expecting that there was several steps involved that permeate throughout DDO that become troublesome with its launch. (Vol Raid)

So it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't moment.

I just hope they are adjusting things and not leaving some aspects as "WAI" and hoping we just accept it. There's things that are acceptable. The constant aggro at the moment (on detection) is not.

J1NG

 

[Tyran Thraxus]

Whenever I entered a dungeon using a stealth character, it felt amazing. In the past.

Nowadays, I feel so bored running through a dungeon while AOE murdering everything. I'll return when stealth is fixed; heading back to ESO.

 

[1Th13rteen3]

That is bad game design. They should know people choose the quicker path. With 5 minutes thought they could have made the mechanics path quicker - if you had a trapper.

Just wait till you find out what the players did who using inviz to zerg quests. They all started rolling warlock when it came out. You saw nothing but all warlock groups doing reaper 4, 5, and 6. It was always nothing but warlock groups. I once joined one of those (back then) to see what all the fuss was about. They were just running and blasting non-stop... I wasnt a warlock and definitely got carried a few times because of this, that's when I decided that wasnt the kind of 'fun' I was chasing. This was me as a stealth player and it just wasnt my cup of tea. It actually felt like an abuse of sorts and then when the devs were doing nothing but buffing and FIXING warlock while totally ignoring the stealth debacle, after spending quite a lot of money over the years, it felt like a huge slap in the face. That was the last straw and I was out.

Saekee, Nokowi, and a few others still carrying the stealth torch are 'forever MVP's' as far as I am concerned.

 

[MrBill]

While I appreciate that one shouldn't be able to just sneak to the end of every single quest kill the boss and bail, let's discuss what was happening before.

Approach a group of mobs in Sneak and Invised and assassinate one of them, they would swing wildly around where the buddy was standing and then swing around the room "kind of" and in many instances strait up tracking you until you broke line of sight. If Both Invis and Sneaked, once LOS was broken they would lose track of you but continue to swing/shoot around and sometimes they get lucky, or even run strait toward you around the corner you ducked behind and swing.
After about 90 secs they would lose agro altogether (which was dumb). This to me was the brain dead part.
This made it difficult but not impossible to get away from them have the mobs lose track of you sufficiently to continue to assassinate them one by one, while taking a lot longer than zerging in and killing everything, was a satisfying playstyle for me.
This also took having both invis and sneak to work properly and frankly was challenging on a toon with few past lives to survive at all.

Fast Forward to today: You assassinate one mob and THEY ARE JUST COMING FOR YOU, non-stop, no escape, a dimension door or jumping to a different elevation where they cant follow is the only way to lose the agro. It's like once your presence is known despite having stupidly high Hide/Move Silently and being invisible, they just see and pursue you. It makes soloing a sneaky assassin rogue no fun and would have no basis in any reality I can think of.

If someone was invisible even if you knew they were there you would have a hell of a time finding them once they moved and if you were out of your possible line of sight impossible. The way the mobs reacted before this last update save the giving up after a while part was how they should react. Nothing was wrong with it.

SSG Please reverse this change

While not an assassin, I solo a lot as a DH with 2lvl rogue and sneak has become almost useless to me. I agree with you about how the game is in a dilemma about killing with sneak or killing at long range with a bow/x-bow. But now coupled with the dynamic of the many mobs not being targeted until they are activated pretty much destroys sneak attack or long range killing, to the point of why did I waste skill points into move silently and hide.

Sadly I have no suggestion on how to find a balance for the game for this. Like so many things from the early version of the game many abilities/skills are now almost useless. Now I'm not a completionist, only 3rd lifer, so maybe I'm just missing something in my play style. But I have been playing off and on since 08.

The same as the loot from those old chests should be updated along with changing the loot tables so when you spend 15 minutes solo'ng the dragon in MD and your reward for a lvl30+ chest is 200plat 1500gold 2 diamonds and some lvl 2 spell components.
But that has been posted on many other threads before my little rant here. And I know that it will never change. :-(

 

[TedSandyman]

I think you're discounting all the senses. I've done and seen others do blind-folded sparring (jujitsu & kendo) with attackers trying to be sneaky. It's ridiculously easy to tell where they are by sound. Invisible would leave other physical traces that would be easy to spot once alerted, too.

However, I despise RL arguments for a game and for a game the above arguments are both nonsense. Your implicit premise is 100% correct that DDO skippy & stealth play has become "not fun at all". This makes zero sense, since their goal is to sell "fun" and those are the styles with the least server load.

IMHO, ESO right now has the best PVE stealth play by far -- it's got two entire mini-games built around it (assassin & theft) and it's a TON of fun. For PvP stealth, it's Aion, but SWTOR is pretty good there, too. If DDO devs want a lesson in how to make stealth fun, they should try ESO and maybe the others for ideas.

BTW, the best tracking mechanics for MOBs goes to old FFXI. They had critters that tracked by sight, sound, scent, or blood -- drop to 10% hp in an undead zone and the ENTIRE zone would agro on you and come running from all over. I would adore this style of agro for DDO undead.

Run across a river with scent trackers chasing and you could watch them loose your scent and stop chasing. Drink an invis (unfortunately rare) and same for sight.

If DDO ever wants even 1/10th the success of BG3 or even just to recapture a smidgin of that true D&D feel, it has to support creative solutions for "getting it done" including and most especially NOT KILLING EVERYTHING as an unlock to the next area.

Yes, but this is a game. Stealth has no use in the game if you cant use it as a play style. Most people don't care about stealth at all, they just run through and kill everything. Investing in stealth for the few places it might be useful just isn't worth it. It might as well be removed from the game. Playing a stealthy assassin USED to be a blast. You could kill everything in the dungeon. It wasn't at all the kind of build you would make to get fast XP. It wasn't the kind of build that most zerging end gamers would play. But it was, hands down, one of the most fun builds to actually play. Then they ruined it.

I personally would love it if they could somehow relax the stealth rules for solo play. I bet A LOT of people would make one and even maybe enjoy the game.