Buffing Stealth (and Style) Gameplay?

[Tyreaus]

We're space ninjas but we're lacking a deal of incentive to be space ninjas. There's Equinox Focus farming, but that's limited and ESO exists too. We get damage multipliers on finishers, but we have weapons that can put out enough DPS to compete with those multipliers—and with far less fuss. Not to mention the sheer difficulty keeping those stealth multipliers going: a few frames can trivialize it, but for most, you're better off going gun-ho.

It's not just stealth gameplay either. Most of the parkour system ends up being used for two things: avoiding damage and getting from point A to point B. We can jump between walls and hover in the air but most of our space ninjas are either cosplaying Sonic or leaping away from bullets and booms.

It's not horrible, per se, but there's a lot of those signature Warframe mechanics people aren't that encouraged to use. So a few suggestions:

1. Major reward / drop boosts. Maybe stealth finishers net guaranteed rare resources of the planet, plus a boon to affinity. Style kills and non-stealth finishers could take a page from Conclave (and a bit from K-Drives) and give boosts to drop rates and affinity as well. Reward players for that walljump-aimglide-wallcling-headshot combo they just pulled off, especially to help out those who'd rather play a little solo.

2. Enemy visual cones.

3. Give about 1-3 seconds (depending on the exact source, e.g. maybe excluding direct sight of the player) for enemies to leave unalerted states (whether going into full alert or combat alert). Whatever triggers them, whether alarms or gunfire, has to persist in order for them to leave those states. Mostly to keep from a "wave" of alertness spreading through the entire map just because of one mess-up. 

3. Allowing players "half-stealth" when enemies are minor alerted. I.e., they can perform finishers, but only get 50% of the affinity bonus, damage bonus, and other rewards. This lets players still play stealth tactics in the worst-case scenario (i.e. alarms are triggered) and have some benefit, but still encourages players to aim for perfect stealth (as much as possible).

2. Make back finishers always available (assuming target isn't looking at and/or shooting the player). If you can sneak up behind an enemy, you can do a finisher. Stealth multipliers on damage, affinity, or other rewards need not apply to finishers on combat-alert enemies (to keep full stealth gameplay and finisher-opening abilities a good option), but complete removal on alertness is a bit too "all or nothing".

3. Make stealth eligibility per-enemy and per-Tenno. One player with an unsilenced weapon removing just about all stealth options because of one enemy going into full-combat is just too disruptive. It's far easier if an enemy has to see a particular player for that player to be unable to perform a stealth finisher on that given enemy.

_{Mostly point 1: points 2 and 3 are just "make finishers easier" with a little less vagueness.}

As always, thoughts, feedback, and other improvements / things you'd like to (not) see are welcome!

Edited December 29, 2018 by Tyreaus

[Steel_Rook]

Here's a simple solution to encourage people to use the Parkour system more - give us infinite wall latch. I'd wager money that this alone would convince a lot more people to use it, as a decent perch point could offer both a powerful vantage point and safety from annoying melee rushers, while still keeping players vulnerable to grappling hooks and knockdown. Sometimes on a lark, I'll try to emulate Prince of Persia 2008 and see how much of the map I can traverse without ever touching the floor. Doors aside, the answer is "a great deal." I can even manage to fight without ever stepping on the floor in some cases, as well, though it's not exactly efficient since I have to manage my wall latches.

As to stealth, I doubt you're going to see much done there. The way the game handles its alert states seems very akin to Payday 2, where enemies aren't aware of a specific player but rather swap between discrete states. Unlike in Payday 2, though, one enemy swapping into an Alert state seems to automatically swap everyone else in the area even if he didn't shoot or otherwise do anything to alert them. Keeping part of the team in stealth might require substantial changes to core game systems, if my hunch is correct.

[MJ12]

Honestly if DE wants to make spy missions and 'heists' a thing, they should start by redoing the stealth system so it's more in line with an actual stealth game. Taking a look at say, Splinter Cell Blacklist or Metal Gear Solid V would be a good start-the game there gives you important stealth information that lets you actually manage a stealth run without the issues we have here, where stealth is either trivial (when you run a Warframe with invisibility) or finicky and often pointless (when you run anything else). 

Also, ideally they'd split stealth-enhancers from combat-enhancers, so any Warframe can be loaded up for stealth and for combat and you can switch seamlessly between the two, rather than forcing stealth mods to compete with combat mods (which also even more drastically increases the imbalance between stealth Warframes and non-stealth Warframes).

Giving incentives for stealthy gameplay is inadequate without the systems to make stealthy gameplay interesting-it'd just lead to more stealth cheese.

[Tyreaus]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Here's a simple solution to encourage people to use the Parkour system more - give us infinite wall latch

I mean, why not both?

There's two things:

1. A good perch point becomes practically meaningless in the face of mass slaughter abilities and weapons. It's great in theory when the content is hard, but with the power fantasy angle Warframe tends to take, that happens quite rarely.

2. Something like this helps address solo play and the spawning issues some people talk about. Fewer enemies aren't as big a hit to one's rewards if you have a means by which to boost drop rates.

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

As to stealth, I doubt you're going to see much done there. The way the game handles its alert states seems very akin to Payday 2, where enemies aren't aware of a specific player but rather swap between discrete states. Unlike in Payday 2, though, one enemy swapping into an Alert state seems to automatically swap everyone else in the area even if he didn't shoot or otherwise do anything to alert them. Keeping part of the team in stealth might require substantial changes to core game systems, if my hunch is correct.

I don't think it requires that much of a change if LoS mechanics are used—the same ones that tell enemies they can aim / shoot at a target.

Basically, 2 and 3 could be rephrased as such:

2 = "The enemy does not currently have LoS / targeting on the player, thus they can perform a back / front finisher"

3 = "The enemy never had LoS / targeting on the player (same as 2 but with the information saved), thus the player can perform stealth finishers"

Alertness, in that manner, would just broaden LoS / targeting areas - but not automatically remove stealth. And those changes should use data already present in the game to handle enemy targeting (and I think already distinguish between minor alert / full-combat alert on a per-enemy basis - I'd have to double-check).

_{It could be just as doable by allowing minor alert enemies to have finishers applied. I'm not solid on every technical detail, however.}

25 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

Giving incentives for stealthy gameplay is inadequate without the systems to make stealthy gameplay interesting-it'd just lead to more stealth cheese.

To be clear: it's not intended to reward just stealth, but to encourage more of the "ninja style" overall, be it sneaking around or leaping and rolling through the air. DE doesn't want people playing passively (see: Ember nerf), and something like this is meant to give positive reinforcement to being active—in quite a literal sense.

That said, I do agree with improving how stealth works—that's what points 2 and 3 are about, even if they're not particularly good ideas.

[(PSN)teacup775]

5 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

1. A good perch point becomes practically meaningless in the face of mass slaughter abilities and weapons. It's great in theory when the content is hard, but with the power fantasy angle Warframe tends to take, that happens quite rarely.

If they had mission (elements) that rewarded stealth, sneaking and kills, and more lua like areas it would help. i’d really like to stealth a vallis compound but non of the areas are at all designed for it.

i’d love to sneak up on a corpus supervisor and pickpocket then kill his ass after methodically destroying all those around him, alerting no one.

mono diet of zombie hoards has its limits. given the conservation is a bit of a hit, it is an example of that variety in game play is a draw,

[Tyreaus]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

If they had mission (elements) that rewarded stealth, sneaking and kills, and more lua like areas it would help.

The rewarding part is exactly what I mean with the first point.

_{And yes, levels really could use a bit of touch-up to help facilitate stealth and parkour.}

[Steel_Rook]

19 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Alertness, in that manner, would just broaden LoS / targeting areas - but not automatically remove stealth. And those changes should use data already present in the game to handle enemy targeting (and I think already distinguish between minor alert / full-combat alert on a per-enemy basis - I'd have to double-check).

The problem is I don't think the game makes that distinction, and it certainly doesn't seem to make it per-player. Enemies are either unalert to all players or they're fighting all players. If they hold a list of known targets, their behaviour doesn't reflect this. It seems to me that the AI is constantly aware of all players at all times, and some critters are simply instructed to ignore this. Once combat starts, line of sight and critter facing matter only for the purposes of deciding whether the AI should fire on the player. In fact, abilities that "open enemies to finishers" simply seem to force them back into stealth mode temporarily, whereupon the same stealth mechanics come into play. For instance, there's a MASSIVE damage buff to attacking players in stealth with a melee weapon, unless the enemy is alerted. Hitting an enemy with Inaros' Dessication or Excalibur's Flash gives you the same damage bonus... Unless you bump into the enemy, which voids it for 4 seconds. What you're proposing would require a redesign of how critter alert states work, and probably their targeting priority.

That said, being able to backstab any enemy also seems exploitable. For one, it SERIOUSLY diminishes solo play as all of the enemies are always going to be facing the solo player at all times. Sure, you can hit them with a control ability and circle around, but that then takes away a huge upside to abilities like the aforementioned Dessication and Flash, which to a large extent do exactly that. And yes, you could also assassinate enemies from the front with those... But quite a few enemies don't have front execution animations to begin with. That's also not really stealth gameplay at that point, it's just cheesing executions in combat.

Mind you, I'd LIKE for enemy alerts to not propagate to the extent that they do. Why not go with a Payday 2 like stealth mechanic, where only the enemy who actually saw the player would alert. That enemy would wait, say, 2 seconds after which point they'll either open fire on the players if he has line of sight on them, or run to the nearest console to raise the alarm if the player ran out of sight or went invisible. The OTHER enemies can become alert based on the loud weapons fire or on the alarm. Would certainly mean that stealth doesn't insta-fail the moment one guard spots the swinging end of your cape and everyone else in the room psychicly knows about it.

[Tyreaus]

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The problem is I don't think the game makes that distinction, and it certainly doesn't seem to make it per-player -snip-

It doesn't now, but the thought was that the LoS state could be saved only for the purpose of determining if a back / front finisher could be performed (without multipliers). Thinking about it more in-depth, though, it does seem a bit too complicated, mostly surrounding named objects. The central idea is that the AI objects save player objects that have entered LoS and, if that object is not currently in LoS, the object can perform finishers. It's the latter part that likely requires most of the work: the first is just getting an object name string and saving it, the second is having to use that with an interaction like a finisher to do some complicated check and comparisons. I still don't think it's that much work conceptually, since the framework for the events is already there (it just needs a few tweaks and conditionals to save data and allow for the new scenarios), but it's also payoff...

I had a different idea after doing some testing (see last section) so, yeah, scrap this one lol.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's also not really stealth gameplay at that point, it's just cheesing executions in combat.

As I said before: the thread's more for diversifying gameplay rather than improving stealth mechanics. I'm butt when it comes to figuring out how to do stealth well (as one can tell), but I'd like to see it and like to see it encouraged. Same with fanciful gameplay.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Mind you, I'd LIKE for enemy alerts to not propagate to the extent that they do. Why not go with a Payday 2 like stealth mechanic, where only the enemy who actually saw the player would alert. That enemy would wait, say, 2 seconds after which point they'll either open fire on the players if he has line of sight on them, or run to the nearest console to raise the alarm if the player ran out of sight or went invisible. The OTHER enemies can become alert based on the loud weapons fire or on the alarm. Would certainly mean that stealth doesn't insta-fail the moment one guard spots the swinging end of your cape and everyone else in the room psychicly knows about it.

I don't know if something's changed, but this seems to be how it works currently.

I can run into a tile with enemies on minor alert, get spotted by two enemies, and the three surrounding them (not looking my way) aren't upgraded in alertness. (Can tell with enemy radar - fully filled = combat alert, partly filled = minor alert, unfilled = unalerted)

If I sneak in, stealth kill one of two enemies (side-by-side so the other goes into minor alert), others in the tile aren't alerted.

If I get detected by one enemy (who goes into combat alertness), those nearby are put into minor alert - but that's also after the combat alerted one shoots at me, so that still fits with the others being alarmed by gunfire.

_{Tested using Ash on Earth, Marina.}

Maybe it's more that stealth shouldn't fail when put into minor alert, specifically. So you can get away with suspicious activity and it's much less finicky. Perhaps players can still perform finishers on minor combat alerted enemies and get the boosted drop rates mentioned in the OP, but not get the same full-stealth bonuses (like the affinity gain) they'd get with unalerted enemies? E.g. if they're minor alerted, you get 50% the damage and affinity bonuses instead of the full 100%. I'd be down for something like that IMO.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Tyreaus

[Steel_Rook]

That might differ on different tilesets, then. I know stealth in Orb Vallis is utter garbage due to issues of seemingly chain alert. For some reason, enemy line of sight is EXTREMELY long, easily able to spot me on a mountaintop 80 meters away. As soon as that one enemy spots me, the gig is up. I can kill them in complete stealth, nobody sees them... And someone trips the alarm anyway. You're right - having revisited the issue, it doesn't seem to be AS extreme in the more regular tilesets, where I can alert an enemy, hit them with Dessication and kill them stealthily (because I don't bring silent weapons otherwise), and yet still somehow get away with it. If I do this in the Vallis, though, I might as well just book it for the Spy objective because the alert is triggering regardless of what else I do.

As to the mechanics of a proper backstab - I wouldn't want to speculate too much about implementation. It's a programming challenge that's not unsolvable, but my suspicion is a lot of this stuff is hard-coded. The mere fact that the "execute" interaction doesn't check for sight but rather critter state leads me to suspect the function controlling it might not even have access to sight checks. There's also performance to consider. AI in stealth tends to be relatively less processor-intensive than AI during a Loud encounter, where vision, targeting and other checks would need to be done far more frequently to maintain a sense of responsiveness. I remember old-school Payday 2 where the AI was limited to 1 action per frame (that's one action for one enemy), so at 15-20 FPS you could literally run circles around them. Warframe being locally hosted, that kind of load falls on the Host's machine, and the size of Warframe's encounters is not insubstantial.

...But I started out saying that I don't want to speculate...

Honestly, my issue with stealth in general - not just in this game but in most - is the hair-trigger failure conditions most commonly present. As soon as one enemy alerts and fires a loud gun, stealth's over. Switch to a loud gunbattle. So far, I think the Splinter Cell and Arkham games have been the only ones that managed to maintain stealth mechanics even when the protagonist is discovered, mostly by requiring the AI to maintain constant sight lines against the player or else swap back to some kind of stealth mode. I don't know if Warframe can afford to go that route, though, due to the speed of movement of our characters and the size of the maps. Would make breaking engagement FAR too easy, and probably require some kind of additional "sensors" level for players to avoid, slowing down their disengagement.

[Tyreaus]

28 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

That might differ on different tilesets, then. I know stealth in Orb Vallis is utter garbage due to issues of seemingly chain alert. For some reason, enemy line of sight is EXTREMELY long, easily able to spot me on a mountaintop 80 meters away. As soon as that one enemy spots me, the gig is up. I can kill them in complete stealth, nobody sees them... And someone trips the alarm anyway. You're right - having revisited the issue, it doesn't seem to be AS extreme in the more regular tilesets, where I can alert an enemy, hit them with Dessication and kill them stealthily (because I don't bring silent weapons otherwise), and yet still somehow get away with it. If I do this in the Vallis, though, I might as well just book it for the Spy objective because the alert is triggering regardless of what else I do.

Vallis does seem to be having some weird issues with stealth overall. Someone reported that their pets are triggering alarms on stealth bounties, and I'm 99% sure they're not meant to do that (they don't in regular missions and they shouldn't because we can't control AI). Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire Vallis is a bit buggy with stealth: I know one of the Raknoids can see me through cloak—and not the others.

28 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Honestly, my issue with stealth in general - not just in this game but in most - is the hair-trigger failure conditions most commonly present. As soon as one enemy alerts and fires a loud gun, stealth's over. Switch to a loud gunbattle. So far, I think the Splinter Cell and Arkham games have been the only ones that managed to maintain stealth mechanics even when the protagonist is discovered, mostly by requiring the AI to maintain constant sight lines against the player or else swap back to some kind of stealth mode. I don't know if Warframe can afford to go that route, though, due to the speed of movement of our characters and the size of the maps. Would make breaking engagement FAR too easy, and probably require some kind of additional "sensors" level for players to avoid, slowing down their disengagement.

To be fair, the speed at which we can get through maps and disengage renders stealth mechanics moot regardless. You can have enemies at full combat alert and it won't matter if your only point is going to the objective.

That said, I don't think it's that bad of an idea (assuming, contrary to your speculation, it's not too processor-heavy to keep running LoS checks): it doesn't inherently make it easier, it just makes it easier to try again if you mess up. One has to remember that, in the purview of the game's alert system, they would still have broad vision in their minor alert states. If you were looking to stealth kill something in that manner—which is how you'd benefit from stealth in the first place, since just "stealthing by" confers no added benefits than just running through as normal—sure you could back off really fast for a second shot, but you would also have to loop around in some way to get behind them for that stealth kill.

_{On the other hand, though, it's trivial for Ash or Loki or Octavia to break LoS, so maybe it needs something a little more...}

Personally I feel like keeping stealth in minor alert levels is ideal. You can kill off the combat alerted enemies in cover and by the game's own design not combat alert the rest. If someone starts shooting at you, you kill them, and as long as the others don't see you, you're back to stealth. (or, at least, half-stealth)

Also I may need to test whether keeping out of combat for long enough lowers combat alertness...if so, that number could be tweaked too. EDIT: Yeah, if you get out of sight for long enough, even combat-alerted enemies will go back to minor alerts. And it's under 20 seconds, at least.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Tyreaus

[Steel_Rook]

A bit off-topic, but I tend to have an issue with the whole "super-speed through the mission just to get it over with quickly" mentality that - in fairness - this game itself breeds. If I wanted to be a jerk, I could recommend putting ALL rooms on lockdown as soon as the alarm is raised, requiring players to find and hack every single door along the way. That's probably overly-penalising, however, and would tend to annoy people. That's sort of what I meant before, though, with the "sensors" thing. The Kuva Fortress, for instance, is littered with unbreakable cameras that players can pretty much ignore if they're good at killing Turrets, but make it a bit hard to disengage if you're trying to keep the alarm from going off. In the same way, you could spawn a whole bunch of extra security measures once the alarm is raised which make disengaging from enemies more difficult. Think GTA 5 spawning cop cars into oncoming traffic when you're trying to disengage and drop your alert level. You can't just drive off in a fast car and expect to be scot free.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely convinced that the game's "alarm" system itself is very well-designed, from the perspective of having much depth. It's a bit like alarms in Helldivers, in that players are encouraged to disable them and have a much more boring game. Helldivers' "Hell Dive" difficulty can be trivial if you prevent alarms from going off, but it's also REALLY BORING! The same goes for Warframe. I generally like to explore, but even so I've entirely stopped disabling alarms because it results in me running through empty rooms opening lockers for 20 minutes. Inversely, for people who want to stealth an alarm is terminal because it ends stealth in a way that's REALLY hard to recover from, especially if you're at the location you wanted to stealth at. I'm not sure what a good solution would be, but it's something I've been wondering about, personally.

Sometimes I wonder if a Doom-like mechanic of finding keys and bringing them to the doors of loot rooms might be a good way to make players care about exploration and stealth a bit more, but I don't know...

[Tyreaus]

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

A bit off-topic, but I tend to have an issue with the whole "super-speed through the mission just to get it over with quickly" mentality that - in fairness - this game itself breeds.

Just to address this very quickly to keep from going off topic too long: I'm of the opinion that if we want to slow players down, there needs to be a (capped) bonus to staying in a mission longer. Something like giving incentive to slow, stealthy approaches is one option. The problem with lockdowns or blockades is that they're just about guaranteed to frustrate when players are so capable of getting around fast. If you do that when they also have a reason to stick around, however, it's still inconvenient (if they want to get out), but the frustration is mitigated in part by "you're not actually wasting your time".

4 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Inversely, for people who want to stealth an alarm is terminal because it ends stealth in a way that's REALLY hard to recover from, especially if you're at the location you wanted to stealth at. I'm not sure what a good solution would be, but it's something I've been wondering about, personally.

This is a big reason why I feel stealth should be (at least partly) maintained in minor alerts. Alarms don't throw enemies into combat alert: that requires the enemy in particular seeing you. If enemies don't see you, they don't enter combat alert. It's also something really easy to do because we already have the alertness level, we just need to tie in a little reward like we have for unalerted enemies.

There may also need to be other adjustments to enemy visual cones and maps, however, if that's going to be workable. ATM if they're minor alerted, it seems you can't so much as be in the same room with them without being spotted. But maybe that just gives a reason to use silenced weapons and snipe from afar...?

7 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Sometimes I wonder if a Doom-like mechanic of finding keys and bringing them to the doors of loot rooms might be a good way to make players care about exploration and stealth a bit more, but I don't know...

The funny thing is, now that you mention it, that's not a horrible idea for Spy missions: it gives player 4 something to do so players 1-3 can get their own stuff done.

In certain missions, players do care about exploration. Survival, for example, or hunting for Argon or Orokin cells. Part of the problem is that it's just samey. If I look down this particular corridor, what am I going to get? Not a visual experience, that's for sure. And that doesn't even get into what rewards. If I get a pile of plastids for running around the entire map, I'm not going to feel rewarded - but someone else might love that.

That's just a constant WF problem though.

[Steel_Rook]

I was mostly thinking something along the lines of Syndicate missions with their hidden pick-ups, or those Vaults on Orokin Derelict missions, except where the key is somewhere on the map rather than something you bring with you. The game actually does have that to an extent with the Hidden Caches, though these are fairly rare outside of Sabotage missions (if they pop up at all). And yeah, there are rewards to consider. I don't even know what people want out of Warframe any more...

[Tyreaus]

6 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I was mostly thinking something along the lines of Syndicate missions with their hidden pick-ups, or those Vaults on Orokin Derelict missions, except where the key is somewhere on the map rather than something you bring with you. The game actually does have that to an extent with the Hidden Caches, though these are fairly rare outside of Sabotage missions (if they pop up at all). And yeah, there are rewards to consider. I don't even know what people want out of Warframe any more...

Well, guaranteed locations for rare resources like Cells and Argon, maybe Tellerium, are always a safe bet. Plus Mutagen Masses and other rewards from invasions. </shrug>

Also updated the OP, let me know if I missed anything!

[Steel_Rook]

Looks good. I expect you'll see people jump in to say how "stealth is already too easy," but I feel your proposed changes to it with the half-alert state and delays in state transitions would go a long way towards making failing stealth feel less cheap. I'm still of the opinion that an enemy who saw you for a fraction of a second should still alert, but in a way that doesn't instantly trigger the entire tile. Even if you manage to break sight, that enemy should still attempt to raise the alarm via the nearest console, giving you an opportunity to intervene. No real disagreements at this point, though.

[Tyreaus]

10 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Looks good. I expect you'll see people jump in to say how "stealth is already too easy," but I feel your proposed changes to it with the half-alert state and delays in state transitions would go a long way towards making failing stealth feel less cheap. I'm still of the opinion that an enemy who saw you for a fraction of a second should still alert, but in a way that doesn't instantly trigger the entire tile. Even if you manage to break sight, that enemy should still attempt to raise the alarm via the nearest console, giving you an opportunity to intervene. No real disagreements at this point, though.

Updated, though I don't even know if they go into full combat alert if you skim by their LoS very briefly. I'd have to test but I suspect, until they start firing at you, they remain in minor alert.

[(PSN)teacup775]

On 2018-12-27 at 12:30 PM, Tyreaus said:

The rewarding part is exactly what I mean with the first point.

Yeh, but there are multiple aspects to reward. Simply buffing up affinity or what not when the basic stealth kill mechanic and enemy response is weak leave a half baked concept.

Stealth is more readily a solo gig. Stealth missions (ie missions with a heavy stealth modifier) are probably a practical necessity, because people will want to build a squad of the like minded if they plan to use a squad. it’s way too easy to have trolls in pugs.

Outside of spy vaults, riven challenges, and the odd mr test, there is no real stealth mission constraint or goal in wframe, despite the mechanic being available.

 

Enemies already run off to set off alarms if they see you.

[Tyreaus]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

Yeh, but there are multiple aspects to reward. Simply buffing up affinity or what not when the basic stealth kill mechanic and enemy response is weak leave a half baked concept.

Stealth is more readily a solo gig. Stealth missions (ie missions with a heavy stealth modifier) are probably a practical necessity, because people will want to build a squad of the like minded if they plan to use a squad. it’s way too easy to have trolls in pugs.

Outside of spy vaults, riven challenges, and the odd mr test, there is no real stealth mission constraint or goal in wframe, despite the mechanic being available.

So what precisely do you suggest? Missions with an instant-fail condition on stealth? I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at.

[(PSN)teacup775]

4 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

So what precisely do you suggest? Missions with an instant-fail condition on stealth? I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at.

It’s a possibility. That would be a very very sweaty mission because of the way enemies become alerted aound ally death. 

Enemies could one shot you if they see you as well.

But particular rooms might have the condition apply to it. Say stealth kill everthing in a room (cameras would detect a kill if they are looking at a victim) to collect an access key instead of hacking.

Spy vaults could be expanded on.. Lua was really extensive, but that mix of parkour and puzzles or back doors was pretty good.

[Tyreaus]

17 minutes ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

It’s a possibility. That would be a very very sweaty mission because of the way enemies become alerted aound ally death. 

Enemies could one shot you if they see you as well.

But particular rooms might have the condition apply to it. Say stealth kill everthing in a room (cameras would detect a kill if they are looking at a victim) to collect an access key instead of hacking.

Spy vaults could be expanded on.. Lua was really extensive, but that mix of parkour and puzzles or back doors was pretty good.

Okay: what for? The almost immediate problem I see is that a number of people are not going to want to play those missions due to the sheer frustration. Sortie Spies are already infuriating to a lot of people, and that's casual by comparison. I likely don't need to look far to find reviews contending instant-fail systems, either—made only more contentious in the atmosphere of an action game, I'd imagine. So do you hide really massive rewards behind those to try to create an incentive, but stoke the fires as a result? Do you put something minor there so next to nobody plays it?