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Stealth Feedback & Suggestions Thread


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Since I have played a ninja kind of game before, I feel that anybody who plays this game doesn't care about stealth. The game I played before which in English is called Tenchu Z. The absolute idea of the game was BASED upon the key factor of stealth. 

 

When it comes to Warframe, people simply see it as a third-person shooter. When I go into a mission at times, I really do try to be stealthy. The issue is that when I'd like to play with other players and be stealthy as well, before I can tell the person: "Hey I'm trying to do this mission in a stealth way." It's already too late. They start firing off shots, guards get alerted, and alarms go off. I am now seen on the ship's scanners, thanks to the fault of the other player(s).

 

What I'm getting at is, yes the stealth factor of this game is broken. This game technically can be called a ninja-like game if everyone is just firing off they guns every chance they get, all willy nilly. I, personally, would love for there to be a real stealth form of gameplay and not be interrupted by other players. Now I know that some people will just say something along the lines of "play solo". Solo can be "fun" for a bit but dulls just playing alone after a short period of time. From the fix/suggestions/etc. for stealth, some I absolutely agree with. A stealth kill being an insta-kill. More exp for being stealthy, ability to turn off the flash light to reduce presence further. That whole jazz. However, if I had to say bosses being stealth killed, I would give the suggestion of only certain bosses should have that (ex. The first time the player fights Vor, or J3 Golem). As an idea for a possible update of sorts, have some form of a way to separate or find players who like to play in a stealth manner apart from those who just run and gun.

 

A balance is needed to be made in terms of stealth against going gung ho (with just about everyone who does it). If changes cannot be made well enough to make up for the lack of stealth elements, then I'm afraid the term "Ninja" in the ad for this game should simply be removed for the fact of Ninjas are stealthy. Period.

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I don't agree with more bonus XP for a stealth approach, it suggests that stealth is the "correct" way to play. I do agree with making stealth more viable though, but don't make it so stealth is the hands down statistically best approach.

I especially agree with point #6, it would be a great motivator for stealth, but in that case there should be an XP bonus to balance out what you'd lose for not fighting waves of enemies.

 

 

well if a stealth approach gives less kills, added XP would make sense, since if you don't stealth you instead get more enemies to make up for the lesser xp rewarded

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As complicated addition.

Thinking with Narbacular Drop: A.K.A Portals

Outside of the rewards for stealth there is the ongoing issue that maps are linear, because the generation engine is going to be unable to wrap back on itself with multiple paths. The way tiles vary so much would make it hard for the system to generate a primary path and then branching secondary paths that connect back, through, and to the main path. Having secondary routes for escape and backtrack is big part of many stealth games.

The system also is unlikely to be able to handle things like 'vents' very well, although if you look around many of the tiles they actually do have sneaky back ways around. Again the issue is with the random generation system. Stuff is just going to get in its own way.

The solution to this is to 'teleport' the player to a different map section altogether. Back in the day this was done with a cutscene transition, which can be a bit disruptive to co-op game play. Fortunately in Narbacular Drop the use of a teleporter plus dynamic textures produced from secondary 'cameras' at the destination end of the teleport frame/box made such transitions nearly seamless, in a practical way disguising that a teleport was happening at all. Valve took this and ran with it in the Portal series. A similar kind of 'teleport' mechanic could be added to a 'vents' system to shunt players into secondary paths toward the objective tile.

======

As to the reward system in Stealth. The actual mechanic could actually be fairly simple.

- AI starts in Patrol mode.

- Every time an alert is triggered the AI goes active.

- Alerts can be hacked to return the AI to Patrol.

- The more Alerts are triggered in a mission the more/faster AI spawn. The Stealth Reward bonuses are lowered. The harder the hacking to silence them become.

- The longer Alerts remain triggered the more/faster AI spawn. The Stealth Reward bonuses are lowered. The harder the hacking to silence them become.

This creates a system where by if you do screw up you aren't boned. However the more you screw up the hard it is to get back into stealth.

Figure out what the typical, fully alert reward layout would like for a successful mission. Make that the max Stealth Reward. Eventually you're going to cross a line where you'll get more loot for continual killing but at the risk of failing due just being swamped in AI-Respawn rates.

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As to the reward system in Stealth. The actual mechanic could actually be fairly simple.

- AI starts in Patrol mode.

- Every time an alert is triggered the AI goes active.

- Alerts can be hacked to return the AI to Patrol.

- The more Alerts are triggered in a mission the more/faster AI spawn. The Stealth Reward bonuses are lowered. The harder the hacking to silence them become.

- The longer Alerts remain triggered the more/faster AI spawn. The Stealth Reward bonuses are lowered. The harder the hacking to silence them become.

This creates a system where by if you do screw up you aren't boned. However the more you screw up the hard it is to get back into stealth.

 The idea of such a system sounds good as well as having some balance to it. However, you have to also take into the account of the Devs set ideas of possibly the system hacking which is pattern based and how it would get harder. Would they have to change it or would they possibly have to drastically shorten the time to hack? Also the factor of when an alert is triggered and the AI go active, after so many times of going onto and off of alert, wouldn't it make sense for them to simply stay on alert.

 

Logically speaking, say you were a mercenary guarding so kind of warehouse. The alarm goes off you and several others go to investigate and then the alarm goes away. The idea of a possible false alarm could be something, only for the first time. However, if that same alarm goes off several more times, lets give it a number of like 7. Logically thinking, you know that something is up and is going on. In turn, you'll be on alert for the rest of that period even if the alarm turns off or is "disabled". I know the Devs are wanting a semi bit of realism but I can also see from a player stand point as for more of a chance to improve/encourage stealth gameplay.

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The idea of such a system sounds good as well as having some balance to it. However, you have to also take into the account of the Devs set ideas of possibly the system hacking which is pattern based and how it would get harder. Would they have to change it or would they possibly have to drastically shorten the time to hack? Also the factor of when an alert is triggered and the AI go active, after so many times of going onto and off of alert, wouldn't it make sense for them to simply stay on alert.

 

Logically speaking, say you were a mercenary guarding so kind of warehouse. The alarm goes off you and several others go to investigate and then the alarm goes away. The idea of a possible false alarm could be something, only for the first time. However, if that same alarm goes off several more times, lets give it a number of like 7. Logically thinking, you know that something is up and is going on. In turn, you'll be on alert for the rest of that period even if the alarm turns off or is "disabled". I know the Devs are wanting a semi bit of realism but I can also see from a player stand point as for more of a chance to improve/encourage stealth gameplay.

Logically most of the ships and bases should have internal sensors. On ships especially when they finally figure out where you are and 'lock down' the room you're in the logical 'realistic' thing to do with rampaging super solider would be to pump out all the air as fast as the systems allow. And then NOT send in waves of grunts with extra air packs. Sadly there is a limit to 'realism' which is compromised by a Dungeon Crawl format.

The part I let out was how different kinds of enemies would/should play into the formulation of 'alert/not-alert'. Start with the different Factions. Grineer are a fairly thuggish group and demonstrably beat on each other frequently. Things like repeated alarms, gun fire, and even a body or two are likely not all that uncommon. They would be the group that is the moderatly tolerant to repeated alarms but also the with the fastest ramp up. Corpus have security all over much of it automated and aimed against intrusion. They'd be the least tolerant to repeated alarms but have a slow ramp up as they bring the various Moas and automated defenses online. Infested would have instant ramp up but near infinite alarm triggers, you can actually kind of see this behavior already on Infested as you can get the AI to go back to Patrol mode with enough stealth power usage.

Actually over all you can get the current AI to go back to a patrol mode. The only problem is once they go Alert once they suddenly overcome the 'I can't see you crouched' blindness. Until the AI can be nudged into respecting shadows/cover/partial-views of the players without freaking out the 'I crouch to hide in the middle of a brightly lit hallway' kinda renders 'realism' a moot point. This isn't Splinter Cell. We don't have the option of hiding in the roof mounted duct work 'ninja style'. Also doing a 'stealth' kill pops you out of crouch and can blow your stealth where it really shouldn't.

In terms of hacking I hope the Devs are thinking about how to handle increasing difficulty. I'm actually kinda waiting for the hacking rank tests to make their way into higher level missions. Both complexity (pulling from high level mission pools) and time could be used effectively, and make things like the currently fairly useless Intrusion Mod card useful.

Edited by Brasten
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Okay, so here's a fundamental problem I see with stealth that I haven't really realized would have the potential of becoming a gamebreaking issue.

 

In this game, the main mechanic of playing in stealth is being invisible. There currently aren't any other mechanics allowing a player to pass by enemies undetected or sneak up to them, than cloaking himself. We currently don't have any reliable way for players to stun enemies without being detected, distract enemies or hide in the badly illuminated spots. Patrol routes are apparently being introduced to tiles, which at least allows us to outmaneuver enemy viewcones(which aren't visible). However, the main mechanic even with patrol routers will still be the ability to become invisible, and since some frames have a huge advantage(Ash/Loki) when it comes to cloaking, any rewards the game would provide players with for passing by enemies, or assassinating them undetected will be too easy for those frames to accomplish.

 

I intended to write a suggestion on giving players affinity for each enemy they passed in a tile as they step into the next, or introducing vault like rooms for Grineer and Corpus tilesets that are open at the beginning of the map but lock down as soon as the alarm is being raised. While those mechanics would be a very solid base for rewarding stealth play, it would give Ash and Loki just too much of an advantage. I'm just throwing these ideas out there as food for thought, maybe someone else has an idea on how to properly balance invisibility without nerfing Ash and Lokis abilities.

 

The only idea I have that I think will work at the moment is regarding solving the loot disparity issue between normal and stealth play. It's similar to another suggestion about stealth kills I made, although requires even less actual coding work: Pickpocketing.

 

Players are able to attempt to steal anything an unalerted enemy might have on him by sneaking up on him and interacting with him[use key]. Depending on the NPC level and difficulty setting of the game it will take less or more time for the player to frisk an enemy. A small meter shows how long the frisking is going to take. Being detected while trying to search an enemy will abort the procedure.

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- Disable enemy vision displayed on HUD upon being detected (when enemy alerts rest of ship via control console).

     The implementation of the MGS interface is a great idea, however, speculation would suggest that a significant advantage will be gained from it, especially if kills are going to be guaranteed when done from stealth. There should be conditions and consequences integrated with it to balance, otherwise we're just making the game easier for no reason.

 

- Separate loot drop table for stealth kills (To promote stealth play w/out discriminating against other types of play.)

     One of the arguments that seems to be addressed often in this thread is that rewarding stealth with more XP and Credits, etc. upon completion of a mission implies bias towards stealth. However, by rewarding players on a separate degree, the notion that stealth is best or better is no longer being implied, because players aren't getting something more, instead they're just getting something different. All while retaining a players freedom to choose how they complete missions. In addition, as far as enticing players to stealth their missions without too much fuss, loot just seems more of an incentive than XP or stats.

 

- Have some stages packed with only Heavy/Elite/Enhanced units. (To encourage stealth play)

 

And/Or

 

Create missions with: Non-detection benchmark/objective. (To force stealth play)

      With the current format there are plenty of areas and mission types where a frontal/confrontational approach is presented not only as the popular choice, but also the most logical/only choice. As Warframe is often portrayed with a Ninja theme, having the stealth oriented counterpart to those places is justified. Above is just a few suggestions on how to implement them without straying too far away from the game's current layout.

Edited by R1K1M4RU
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I totally agree with AuroraSonicBoom. Though the Shade sentinel is not a bad way to handle things, it is downright annoying that it instantly breaks cloak whenever the last enemy breaks LOS (yeah, stairs tend to screw my stealth gameplay up pretty hard for example because of this). This could, however, be solved by giving Shade a few seconds of delay before turning off stealth after breaking LOS.

 

Another thing I noticed: when I was cloaked and waiting for a group of enemy to go away - they usually did not. Instead of looking for me throughout the room or the whole ship/station, enemies just kept seeping into the room, forming a nice little crowd on the spot that they saw me last.

 

Oh, and one more thing. The mission objectives. To be honest, I did not completely read the opening post (shame on me), but I have a question: how can one complete a rescue mission in stealth for example? Or a defense? How about survival - sure, with Shade you can avoid even hordes of enemies, but the key to survival missions is to acquire life support units from killing enemies -, or a mobile defense mission?

 

Okay, the reward system can not be based on stealth kill imho, because that would actually give the players a statistically optimal way to play the game ("go stealth, murder everyone in stealth, enjoy bonus XP"), thus basicly forcing players to play stealthy. But if it is not based on kills, then the game modes that are built around the idea of the massacring hordes of enemies need serious reconsideration. How about adding different stealth rewards for different missions?

 

TL;DR: For stealth gameplay, it would be nice if you could add some delay to the Ghost ability of Shade, before it turns off after breaking LOS with last enemy, and please think about how the different game modes should reward the players for being stealthy (and how would you define "stealthy" in different game modes)..

Edited by Wardrum
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Hi everyone,
My name is Carlos and first of all I want to thank the developers of the game for the excellent work they've made so far, its been a long time since a game grabbed me and some of my friends so much like no other one before. My suggestion is about all the duplicated items that you grab in game and the possibility to share them or in any way gift them to people in friends list or only to people of same clan/dojo or maybe create a Locker in the dojo where you can store all those items that you dont need for yourself and others members get access to it.
When I start playing the game and wasn't really aware of all the features one of the mistakes I've done was to craft in the foundry almost everything I saw I had the required items to do so, the result is that now I have for example in my inventory 3 Banshee chassis already crafted among other things with no possibility to do anything with them ( it would be ridiculous to craft 3 Banshees), not even sell them, when I look at it, for me the best use for those items and even some of the Mods I have would be gift them so someone could benefit them.
Carlos.

Edited by Camarimore
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Possibly unrelated, but minimap is still borked. Allow us to hit tab to see a 3D map. I believe implementing a 3D map would eliminate a lot of the issues involved with messed up waypoints on a 2D map. 

 

Also, Loki and Ash need reworks of their invis abilities. I imagine decreasing duration and cost. As it is, Invisibility cloaks for 12 seconds when maxed (without mods) with a cost of 50 energy. Let's make it 10 energy for 3 seconds of invisibility (at max rank). Duration mods will increase efficiency, not duration. The casting delay of 0.75 seconds and cooldown of 0.25 seconds leads to at least 1 seconds in between "cloak bursts". This'll force players to think about how they're using the ability. It will still allow for a sneaky, evasive style while eliminating "beast-mode". 

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Also, Loki and Ash need reworks of their invis abilities. I imagine decreasing duration and cost. As it is, Invisibility cloaks for 12 seconds when maxed (without mods) with a cost of 50 energy. Let's make it 10 energy for 3 seconds of invisibility (at max rank). Duration mods will increase efficiency, not duration. The casting delay of 0.75 seconds and cooldown of 0.25 seconds leads to at least 1 seconds in between "cloak bursts". This'll force players to think about how they're using the ability. It will still allow for a sneaky, evasive style while eliminating "beast-mode". 

 

Also, Banshee's Sonar could use some help in the stealth aspect, along with Silence. Silence barely seems to function at all, whereas Sonar should allow you to see enemies through obstacles, the way you can see allied players.

 

But first and foremost, there needs to be a reason to go stealth mode. Stealth attacks absolutely need to be instakills and possibly also instantly dispose of the body.

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Heres my Idea for stealth gameplay, I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before but here it goes. Stealth gameplay should be a specific mission type like let's say extermination, defense, assassination etc. and it should be a single player mission type and here's why. Anyone interested in stealth is usually going solo as other people would be able to ruin their sneakiness in a matter of seconds. Making stealth it's own mission type would ensure that the devs could focus on it and make it feel proper and solid, instead of just tacking it on in every mission type, as a matter of fact having stealth gameplay in every mission type just doesn't make sense... How are you going to stealth through a defense or mobile defense mission?

Making it its own mission type would ensure a higher level of quality, not only that but it would also break up the run and gun gameplay giving the game more variety.

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Okay, the reward system can not be based on stealth kill imho, because that would actually give the players a statistically optimal way to play the game ("go stealth, murder everyone in stealth, enjoy bonus XP"), thus basicly forcing players to play stealthy.

 

You have to keep in mind, though, that the time it takes to line up a stealth kill(Loki/Ash aside) is on average a lot longer than just running through murdering everybody. The time spent playing/affinity ratio in this case would be far more balanced than say playing normally versus farming cyath/kiste/kappa. Whether you reward players with affinity for stealth kills of passing by undetected, the reliance on actual invisibility allows some frames to outperform the others with no way of evening the odds to a reasonable level.

 

And even in a (just IMO)near ideal case where the unalerted enemy's FoV was decreased significantly and we would have sentinel precepts that give us color coded auras around unalerted/semi/full alerted enemies and visual representations of their viewcones, Ash and Loki would still outperform any other frame.

 

There is hope, though. DE mentioned that they are looking into the possibility of adding new abilities for warframes. Maybe we will end up seeing a set of warframe abilities geared towards stealth that somehow put everyone on a level playing field with Ash/Loki. But then again, do we actually want that? If every frame could run around invisible all day long, the main obstacle of stealth would simply cease to be. Unless we added stealth detecting mechanics to enemies that could uncloak you... Yeah, I can see why DE is having such a hard time advancing stealth.

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We'll need more stealth paths to move undetected like underground tunnel and ventilation pipes. Make them to be only accessible by using the parkour skill. The stealth paths will sometimes be blocked and force us to go to regular path again then we can find another stealth paths to move closer to the objective.

Just my thought of stealth gameplay.

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As someone who would loves stealth, but is unhappy with stealth as it is in game, this thread has offered so many logical fixes I can't see how they could be refuted.

 

Stealth as it stands in game offers no real bonuses, except in the case where enemies deal too much damage for your frame to survive guns blazing.

Except the mechanics still make this stealth nearly impossible.

 

These proposed alterations address nearly all of these issues, and offer considerable incentive to make the effort to stealth in missions that may not need stealth. I could only hope that DE see's these proposal and considers working it in to the next big update.

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I'd be all for replacing the flashlight with a night vision filter. It would make the infested maps about 10x scarier.

I don't agree. I was kinda scared in my first infested mission because of the light aspects of the tiles. Imagining the mission with a night vision filter seems less scarier to me.

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I think Stealth gameplay and the Codex system should tie into each other.

 

In order to get top tier info for codex, you have to interrogate the enemy.  In order to interrogate the enemy, you have to capture it without killing it.  In order to do that, you naturally need stealthy non-lethal takedown.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/127144-stealth-mission-and-codex/

Edited by ssh83
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I think Stealth gameplay and the Codex system should tie into each other.

 

In order to get top tier info for codex, you have to interrogate the enemy.  In order to interrogate the enemy, you have to capture it without killing it.  In order to do that, you naturally need stealthy non-lethal takedown.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/127144-stealth-mission-and-codex/

agreed!

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Stealth attacks should really be assassinations (and that'd make the [assassination] nodes *challenging* to execute in this way (no pun intended)).

 

Also, control consoles:

 

  • Either should be hackable to broadcast a "false alarm" (i.e. when the mission is already under alert, this cancels it out), with a much harder puzzle and/or only limited to 3 hacks for this function
  • Or hacking an untouched console will temporarily render ALL consoles in the mission unusable by the enemy (e.g. spawn > find console in the initial empty tile > hack > freeze all consoles > alert an enemy > enemy tries to alert console > either fails or gets electrocuted)

 

 

And don't mention destructible consoles - what will you do in a lockdown!?

Edited by Syzodia
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I totally agree with AuroraSonicBoom. Though the Shade sentinel is not a bad way to handle things, it is downright annoying that it instantly breaks cloak whenever the last enemy breaks LOS (yeah, stairs tend to screw my stealth gameplay up pretty hard for example because of this). This could, however, be solved by giving Shade a few seconds of delay before turning off stealth after breaking LOS.

 

Another thing I noticed: when I was cloaked and waiting for a group of enemy to go away - they usually did not. Instead of looking for me throughout the room or the whole ship/station, enemies just kept seeping into the room, forming a nice little crowd on the spot that they saw me last.

This.. enemies crowding around feels like poor game code.  Needs polished.  A few extra seconds of stealth after breaking los is a good idea too.

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Building on something that Lotus says in the middle of a mission... Why not have an actual "stealth mode". You activate stealth mode by putting away your weapons (hold down weapon swap key?). While in stealth you're a little harder to spot, you move faster, and your movements don't cause any sound. Obviously while in "combat mode", movements should not be silent.

 

Also, while you are in stealth, pressing your "attack" button causes you to throw something small to create a distraction. Enemies will become suspicious and investigate the sound you made, giving you an opportunity to slip around them or stab them in the back.

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