Why Stealth Attacks Should Kill Instantly

[LGear]

LOKI does NOT need More Buffs

 

This isn't a buff to Loki though, and more like a buff to ALL Warframes so that they can perform melee stealth kills better. Many Loki players don't use stealth kills to deal damage anyway: they just activate Invisibility, and then proceed to do a charged attack against the enemy, or in the case of Melee 2.0, a melee channeled attack. It's really strange to think that the most powerful stealth attack melee weapon back then was the GALATINE, aka the largest sword in the game.

 

 

Nice. Stealth thread.

 

Warning. Possibly unpopular opinion ahead.

 

1. Stealth in Warframe will probably always suck. No matter how much we'd love this game to be able to do face stomping action AND interesting stealthy gameplay the truth is it isn't so easy to go both ways and do it properly. Warframe is leaning far more in the direction of face stomping action, which means it'll struggle doing stealth right no matter what.

 

2. Warframe will always have baby-steps stealth elements. Just enough so that you can goof off with it. Chief among all problems is awarding stealth properly. The way players progress in this game is almost incompatible with the way a good stealth game needs to reward the player. A Tenno needs mountains of kills to rank up and grind through weapons, playing stealthily would significantly slow this process down for the player. You'll never be rewarded quite right for the effort you are putting in. That is just one issue with more complex stealth we have to keep in mind when discussing it.

 

3. Lets also keep in mind the sort of thing OP's topic brings to the table. Stealth attacks don't one shot kill in a game where enemies scale ever upwards with no particular ceiling on health and defensive stats. Even the stealthy Primary and Secondary weapons don't stay lethal forever.  Eventually you can be playing content you simply cannot possibly stay lethal AND stealthy in. This is a huge problem. A nonlethal Tenno is a completely useless Tenno.

 

 This is just where my head is at right now on the matter. Just my personal opinion.

 

Addressing points:

 

1. Hence why I used games like Crysis as reference examples, since those manage to combine explosive gunplay with stealth action seamlessly (in Crysis' case, one can say Stealth is more powerful due to not having EXP incentives for killing more enemies). Though yes, they need to address a lot of problems with stealth gameplay as of current before it can become viable.

 

2. This can be fixed simply by having a system that rewards stealth just as much as explosive shoot-em-up gameplay. For example, if you don't kill any enemies and did not raise the alarm by the time you extract, you get exp to all your gear equal to the amount of EXP all the enemies alive would've given on kills, and then add a multiplier on top of that. If you do raise an alarm or kill alerted enemies though, the multiplier is reduced. Thus, whether you go all guns or all stealth, you'll get a similar amount of EXP. This is just an example I thought up of just now, I'm sure many will have equally good ideas on how to do so.  

 

3. I already addressed this in my opening post if you read it. Stealth Attacks don't need to scale infinitely, they only need to scale up to the level that missions with stealth components - Exterminate, Capture, Sabotage, Deception, Spy, Rescue and Mobile Defense (up till the Defense part) - level up to, which is around Level 40 (which occurs from Alerts or Nightmare Mode missions). Enemies above level 40 are only seen in game modes where stealth gameplay is pretty much useless by virtue of their nature - Survival and Endless Defense. Thus, you don't need to balance stealth attacks for Survival or Endless Defense, you balance them to be useful in all the other game modes where Stealth should be useful. Thus, no need to worry about enemies scaling up against your stealth attacks, because you won't be using stealth attacks in game modes where you encounter such enemies.

 

We already have the rumors that Rescue Missions will receive a forced Stealth component in the future, along the lines of the prisoner being killed if the alarm is raised. If they want to make a game mode like that viable, then they need to make stealth itself viable, and not just passable.

Edited April 17, 2014 by LGear

[ArcusVeles]

As it is now, most abilities are stealthy so long as they one-shot the enemy outside of immediate view of others, so most of my stealth gameplay experience involves turning on World of Fire with damage and duration mods on and humming the Starman theme to myself as I "stealth" my way through the level.  There's little to no incentive to actually get in melee range except for the fun animations.

 

An improvement on stealth isn't impossible and can't be any more exploitable or ridiculous than putting Hush on an Ogris.

 

 

Not necessary. Ogris is a silent weapon.

 

Exactly why it is ridiculous.

Edited April 17, 2014 by ArcusVeles

[Worira]

Not necessary. Ogris is a silent weapon.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Worira

[LGear]

 

An improvement on stealth isn't impossible and can't be any more exploitable or ridiculous than putting Hush on an Ogris.

 

Odd fact: the Penta and Ogris are silent weapons by default. You can blow up an entire room with a rocket and you won't even raise an alarm even if there are enemies nearby.

 

As fun as that is, I wish they'd fix that particular problem, it really breaks consistency when the two most explosive weapons in the game don't raise a ruckus.

[Triburos]

LOKI does NOT need More Buffs

Loki and Ash already one shot mobs in stealth anyways.

Look, when your playerbase is avoiding your Stealth KILL mechanic on purpose because it doesn't KILL, you done goofed.

It's not something that can be argued against. The mechanic is called a Stealth Kill, animations have a grineer unit being stabbed in the @(*()$ throat or having their neck snapped or something, then they walk away like nothing happened. People are avoiding Stealth Kills to get actual stealth kills because the animation just takes up valuable time.

Inexcusable.

[Xrkr]

Something I haven't seen mentioned: After a successful stealth-kill, we'll maybe need (want, perhaps?) a way to hide the body so as not to alert the rest of the foes in the room or those who will patrol into the room before the body disintegrates. Otherwise, they'll be alerted to a hostile presence thus negating, or increasing the difficulty of, further stealthy action. This might be desirable in some circumstances, though, as luring an enemy with the corpse of one of his comrades may make for an opening to take advantage of, but may lure more foes than could easily be stealthily dispatched.

 

+1 for at least opening the discussion. Stealth kills exist in the game and I would like to see them given greater presence and impact (at least for some missions).

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[CatScratch]

WHY STEALTH ATTACKS SHOULD KILL INSTANTLY?

Because it makes sense?!

[Salganos]

Today I (accidentally) stealth attacked one desert trooper on Phobos three times in succession, while using Valkyr's Hysteria.  He didn't even notice.  I ended up deliberately walking in front of him to get his attention and properly get on with the killing.  His three identical comrades died from two punches to the face each.

 

?

[Lorane_Airwing]

WHY STEALTH ATTACKS SHOULD KILL INSTANTLY?

Because it makes sense?!

 

It's certainly a bit sad when the Ogris does about the same thing yet with zero skill. The grind to MR6 is rewarded more than players trying to use warframes stealth system with their own skill.

 

Heck why do we even bother with stealth? Stealth is currently stupidly unrewarding and ultimately pointless when simply giving away your position to the enemy and getting them to charge at you in endless droves is a thousand times more fun and lucritive, case in point: "[X]Trigger alarms".

 

Stealth could be wonderfully better, stealth attacks killing, or hell even knocking out enemies (forgoing mod drops etc if you don't drag them away to kill them properly or something )  would be an amazing first step towards better, or at least usable stealth in warframe.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Lorane_Airwing

[JohnMarkLee]

Nice. Stealth thread.

Warning. Possibly unpopular opinion ahead.

Stealth in Warframe will probably always suck. No matter how much we'd love this game to be able to do face stomping action AND interesting stealthy gameplay the truth is it isn't so easy to go both ways and do it properly. Warframe is leaning far more in the direction of face stomping action, which means it'll struggle doing stealth right no matter what.

Take a look at this. It'll probably let you understand my mindset slightly better.

Warframe will always have baby-steps stealth elements. Just enough so that you can goof off with it. Chief among all problems is awarding stealth properly. The way players progress in this game is almost incompatible with the way a good stealth game needs to reward the player. A Tenno needs mountains of kills to rank up and grind through weapons, playing stealthily would significantly slow this process down for the player. You'll never be rewarded quite right for the effort you are putting in. That is just one issue with more complex stealth we have to keep in mind when discussing it.

Lets also keep in mind the sort of thing OP's topic brings to the table. Stealth attacks don't one shot kill in a game where enemies scale ever upwards with no particular ceiling on health and defensive stats. Even the stealthy Primary and Secondary weapons don't stay lethal forever. Eventually you can be playing content you simply cannot possibly stay lethal AND stealthy in. This is a huge problem. A nonlethal Tenno is a completely useless Tenno.

This is just where my head is at right now on the matter. Just my personal opinion.

But Assassins Creed kinda has both >_> Edited April 18, 2014 by JohnMarkLee