Stealth Got Stealth Nerfed

[PurpleBomber]

THis stealth nerf is completely unreaslistic.

 

2 guys in a room, Tenno drops down between them

 

stabs 1, turns around, stabs the other before he can raise the alarm.

 

That is STEALTHY by any real defintion of the word.

 

Not anymore.... DE doesn't think that's stealty because the other guy was "altered" for a fraction of a second.

 

That's kind of the root problem with the change... While I can respect all the reasons WHY they made the change, the consequences can range from silly to downright bad. Chief among them is probably what has happened to the stealth weapon meta. Your melee weapon or bow does not help you in that situation, but if I whip out my Tonkor with my Hushed Invisibility Loki I can just kill both enemies at the same time and keep my stealth multiplier as a result. AoE weapons were already good in the previous patch just by sheer efficiency, but melee and naturally silent weapons were still perfectly viable for a stealth run. Now I basically have to use my Tonkor to maintain anything close to a decent amount of focus per run (a little over 6k with around 80 enemies, with a lens on both my Loki and Tonkor and no booster).

[Manelag]

The problem i have with this is that it feels more and more like DE isn't confident in thier Focus System, first the cap and now this obivious nerf to solo focus farming just feels like they don't have faith in thier End Game content that they have to gate it this much.

 

I get it that they want to encourage.. i dunno, farming Draco as an Excalibur, i guess?
This feels like the opposite they should try to encourage, they really should've waited with this change/fix until they actually added Affinity sharing for the Focus gain.

 

Oh well

 

Edited December 17, 2015 by Manelag

[Generic_Generica]

Welp. Time to run Draco for the 493,892,899th time. Because heaven forbid we feel like running any node other than Draco, amiright? Exterminate? Spy? Rescue? Nah, screw that, Draco's the only node that matters and the only node that the game's balanced around, amiright?

It's not like the entire affinity system is borked anyways, right? Right?

Edited December 17, 2015 by AsCaLus

[Nise127]

That's kind of the root problem with the change... While I can respect all the reasons WHY they made the change, the consequences can range from silly to downright bad. Chief among them is probably what has happened to the stealth weapon meta. Your melee weapon or bow does not help you in that situation, but if I whip out my Tonkor with my Hushed Invisibility Loki I can just kill both enemies at the same time and keep my stealth multiplier as a result. AoE weapons were already good in the previous patch just by sheer efficiency, but melee and naturally silent weapons were still perfectly viable for a stealth run. Now I basically have to use my Tonkor to maintain anything close to a decent amount of focus per run (a little over 6k with around 80 enemies, with a lens on both my Loki and Tonkor and no booster).

i think that part of the AI fix, is still broken, it don't think they meant for the guys to become alert if you kill them, remember they just implemented this, warframe's always had bugs, its an open beta, they will fix it.... eventually.

[TotallyLagging]

I killed a guy 5 meters behind another guy and that somehow alerted him.

 

What the f*** is this, why don't you fix your half-baked focus system before screwing up everything else?

 

EDIT : Just a little bit of clarification here ( And to make my post less salty )

 

Before U18 - Enemies won't be alerted as long as you don't use finishers OR shoot enemies in front of them. This means that yes, you could still slide around with Orthos Prime and still get the full stealth multiplier. 

 

U18 - Enemy AI was broken, they just flat out don't care even if they saw you axe-dunking their teammates or shooting them in the head. Which leads to :

 

U18.1 - AI seems incredibly random, they could ignore everything in front of them and still detect you when you perform a finisher just a few meters behind them ( which never happened even before U18 ).

 

In short, I'm not mad that they're trying to nerf focus farming ( I still refuse to look at my operator ), I'm mad that stealth is completely broken now because of their shoddy attempt at fixing things.

Edited December 17, 2015 by TotallyLagging

[Chhkt]

A clanmate of mine finished some testing and he concluded the changes have left results of stealth killing vs alerting an enemy unpredictable at best. He thought the system was bugged at first. That's how inconsistent stealth kills are now.

[Kobi_Blade]

I'm happy I got Ivara, before this hotfix.

 

Seems like they totally broke Stealth with this one.

 

Just because some players abuse Stealth to get Focus, doesn't mean all the other legit Stealth players have to suffer with it.

 

Stealth before was already a pain in this game, due to how the game works, now it's outright impossible and not viable.

Edited December 17, 2015 by JoseSnake

[akira_him]

while this fix make sense

it is implemented poorly because

1. horde of enemies

2. we have no idea/little clue where enemies are alerted or not

3. we have no clue how far the view range of an enemy is

[Ventose]

at first I didn't understand what's happening, my stealth multiplier reset at every second guy, then I realized they caught on to me, more precisely they caught on to the likes of me. I got 75k focus cap in 2 runs on Merrow, camping with Ivara in the assassination chamber; this was the first time in a long time, I played stealth frame and sniper and actually enjoyed it, cause for the first time my stealth loadout wasnt just a fashion statement but had actual purpose and meaning. 

while the "fix" brought a whiff of realism to the game, it also #*($%%@ stealth viability to oblivion. I honestly don't get what they had against this farm method; it got ppl to play stealth, and no matter what they try stuff's gonna get farmed, ppl (including myself) don't have the patience and chill attitude to just gradually unlock the focus system; it's new, it's hot, it's a ton of fun and that makes unlocking it a priority goal, goals come with obsticles to which players find solutions , in other words they find a way to farm it. this was a genuin instace of players choosing other stuff over Draco and DE comes out with a "fix" for that?!!!

[akira_him]

a quick fix is that as long as they don't actually see you or trigger an alarm, the bonus continues

and after you disable the alarm, it needs a little bit of time to have stealth bonus

seriously I think DE should play MGS2

[weezedog]

Might have to try Deception but just switching to Excalibur and use radial blind and exalted blade. Blinding them opens them up to to stealth bonus.

Edit: tried it, blinding them only grants stealth damage bonus not stealth affinity bonus.

Edited December 17, 2015 by weezedog

[fatpig84]

Might have to try Deception but just switching to Excalibur and use radial blind and exalted blade. Blinding them opens them up to to stealth bonus.

 

 

Shh in b4nerf !!!

[Flibbertigibbety]

This was like this for some time, where you didn't want other enemies to see a baddie die. They go into a psudo alerted mode which wears off after maybe 15 seconds. This wasn't happening for a little while there. Not sure why. They didn't nerf it. They just changed it back to how it was.

 

One nerf that you might not be thinking about is the extreme loss of accuracy with sniper rifles. If you're not zoomed in, and have multishot equipped, the bullets fly all over the place. They're not even dead on when you're fully zoomed. You might accidentally be missing headshots due to this change. Get rid of multishot, and you might see an improvement.

[alexmach1]

This was like this for some time, where you didn't want other enemies to see a baddie die. They go into a psudo alerted mode which wears off after maybe 15 seconds. This wasn't happening for a little while there. Not sure why. They didn't nerf it. They just changed it back to how it was.

 

It actually feels a little more spontaneous now, where enemies who aren't even facing the dead guy are suddenly alerted or someone the next room over decides that something's amiss despite witnessing nothing. It's very unpredictable atm. 

[Flibbertigibbety]

It actually feels a little more spontaneous now, where enemies who aren't even facing the dead guy are suddenly alerted or someone the next room over decides that something's amiss despite witnessing nothing. It's very unpredictable atm. 

I dunno. I'd have to do a few more exterminate runs. My issue was with the sniper rifle. Once I got rid of multishot, it made a huge difference. I'd just make sure that I avoid the "spooked" enemies for a bit. They didn't seem to pickup deaths from too far away. Seems mostly normal to me. I think they do need to provide some sort of clear indicator showing that an enemy has seen something. Can be hard to tell between different enemies.

[StinkyPygmy]

I'd argue this is a good thing.... if of course enemy AI and perception wasn't wonky and we actually had a stealth system to begin with. If that ever ends up on DE's hit list then great.

As far as focus farming goes, eh, it doesn't bother me because focus isn't supposed to be farmed as such. Its a long term endgame goal after all so I'm happy to take my time.

I know much of the community doesn't share my sentiment though.

[Toom1275]

I think punch through is now also detrimental because they also seem to have gone back to noticing errant bullets/bolts/arrows hitting walls nearby them as well. So using punch through for Ivara's 2 now ruins your stealth at the same time.

[DSMatticus]

1) The enemies are not really alerted. They are put into that weird state where they still walk around 100% calmly without a care in the world, except attacking them will break your stealth chain. This is not a stealth fix, this is an affinity farming nerf. Stealth is exactly as wonky, awkward, and undeveloped a game mechanic as it always was, but now that mechanic is less rewarding and you have even less reasons to engage with it than before.

 

2) It's broken. I don't mean in the sense that it's unbalanced, I mean in the sense that it 100% does not work and was implemented with all the loving attention to detail of an abusive father who also happens to be blind. Sometimes, enemies will alert when they see their ally die. Sometimes, enemies won't alert when they see their ally die. Sometimes enemies will alert even if they don't see their ally die. There is no consistency and there is no predictability. How it actually works is that your stealth chain is just going to randomly break for no reason and there's nothing you can do about it. There is no skill to it whatsoever - the mechanic is simply far too poorly implemented for there to be any skill involved.

 

Let's say you hit two enemies in one swing - they die literally microseconds apart from one another. You'd think that'd be two stealth kills, and 75% of the time it will be. But that other 25% of the time the one you hit first (again, by microseconds) will "alert" the other and then you'll hit them and break your stealth chain.

 

Let's say you have two enemies patrolling, one behind the other - you kill the one lagging behind, and 75% of the time that will work fine. But that other 25% of the time the second enemy is alerted by the murder he did not witness.

 

Let's say you murder an enemy directly in front of another enemy - the situation that the nerf is supposed to address! You'd think that'd be a guaranteed alert, but it's actually basically a coinflip.

 

3) It's very important to remember that they implemented focus affinity in such a way that it is competitive. My kills deny you affinity, even if you are a support frame or CC frame and the only reason I'm able to get those kills in the first place is because of you. Taking advantage of the stealth affinity multiplier is the only way in the game to compete with the affinity you earn from running a four-man Draco, and as such is the only way in the game to earn focus affinity at a reasonable pace without stomping on other people's toes (or having your toes stomped on) by going to Draco with a kill-frame and trying to outspam other players in what is actually the most boring pissing content imaginable. And they are trying to take that away from us without fixing the underlying issue. DE's priorities are awful; fixing their mistakes seems to be the last item on their list, while nerfing the band-aids we use while waiting for them to fix those mistakes is at the top.

Edited December 17, 2015 by DSMatticus

[(PSN)RocketPunch1221]

DE just wanted to make sure that cancer map Draco is the absolute only node that is populated.

An obviously they absolutely hate all the solo players. So they fixed an issue where solo player are having fun.

Great stuff.

Edited December 17, 2015 by (PS4)RocketPunch1221

[bubbabenali]

Additionally, enemies in Exterminate missions no longer despawn when you leave them a couple of rooms behind.

Well that sucks, considering I had yesterday alone at least 5 times Enemies spawned in unreachable tiles or under the bottom.

[PhiZero]

Actually, stealth missions broke on the U18 launch. Previously if an enemy saw a unit die in front of them, they would no longer qualify for stealth multipliers; which, broke on U18 as they stopped caring that their allies died for no good reason in front of their eyes.

 

To be honest though, I don't think the stealth nerf was all that meaningful. I'm still managing about 25k a run, just a matter of picking off enemies in a room in a specific order dependant on line of sight and proximity. The only time that I dipped below 20k tonight (17k run) was when I got complacent and slipped back into the bad habit of randomly targeting enemies, blowing the entire stealth combo due to me getting used to being lazy since U18 broke the original stealth system..

 

The gist of it: Stealth missions are still viable, the difficulty was just knocked up a notch by introducing proximity detection to line of sight. 3-5 runs of 10 minutes each is still enough to hit the cap in under an hour, so you don't need to farm Draco unless you want to do something else while you play; but, said hour fits perfectly into my schedule, so I will keep doing it...just need to kick that habit.

 

Edit: Side note, Ivara kind of breaks it again if you have Primed Flow. Just pop two energy restores, cloak, and spam sleep arrows until everything in the room is asleep.

Edited December 17, 2015 by PhiZero

[DSMatticus]

The gist of it: Stealth missions are still viable, the difficulty was just knocked up a notch by introducing proximity detection to line of sight. 3-5 runs of 10 minutes each is still enough to hit the cap in under an hour, so you don't need to farm Draco unless you want to do something else while you play; but, said hour fits perfectly into my schedule, so I will keep doing it...just need to kick that habit.

 

I do not think there is any proximity detection. I strongly suspect that what you believe is proximity detection is actually just the inherent wonkiness of enemy detection. It's possible there is proximity detection, but if there is, then it is exactly as wonky as the line of sight detection because you absolutely can murder two enemies right next to eachother without alerting the second. I farmed today's 75k focus affinity by going to Albedo, Ceres with an invisiloki and a tempo royale galatine. And here are real situations that actually happened:

 

1) Two enemies standing next to eachother, not facing one another. I kill both with one swing. The first dies microseconds before the second, alerting the second.

 

2) Four enemies standing together in a clump. I kill them all in one swing. My stealth chain is unbroken.

 

3) I kill an enemy directly in front of his friend, no more than a few shoulder-widths away. The friend is not alerted.

 

4) I kill an enemy, and across the room a shield lancer who is facing away (specifically, walking into a wall) becomes alerted.

 

Whatever detection systems are at play here, they absolutely do not work in any consistent or predictable fashion. It is a completely broken system.

[Nise127]

I'm happy I got Ivara, before this hotfix.

 

Seems like they totally broke Stealth with this one.

 

Just because some players abuse Stealth to get Focus, doesn't mean all the other legit Stealth players have to suffer with it.

 

Stealth before was already a pain in this game, due to how the game works, now it's outright impossible and not viable.

"Legit stealth" lmfao, pls.

[xethier]

It seems like mobs will detect any ally death within about 8-12 meters of their location. (regardless of their current angle of sight)

 

However, there are still mobs wandering around that are "alerted" regardless of what else is going on. 

They seem to be location specific. 

 

Ceres has a few locations that mobs will ALWAYS be considered alerted even if they're completely by themselves and nobody has been killed within 2 room tiles of them. (This was BEFORE this most recent patch, and it hasn't changed)

Another are the final rooms in the grineer spy missions that have heavy / eximus mobs in them. If you shoot them through the glass with a punch-through weapon from stealth with a silenced weapon without anything near them, they will still break your stealth XP chain. (very frustrating)

However, if you walk up to them within a few meters you can headshot / melee stealth kill them without penalty. Why?

 

I'm not at all against the fix they applied with this last patch. (and it is a FIX not a nerf)

However, with all the other inherent bugs that are replete throughout the stealth system, as well as the release of the focus system (and the explosion of folks farming spy missions for the xp bonus) the timing of this "fix" seems to be a slap in the face.

 

My frustration stems from the "fix" that makes maintaining the XP chain more difficult when compounded with the BUGS that have existed since inception. 

 

There's one suggestion in this thread that has popped up many times, the addition of an Alerted! indicator for mobs.

Add that in, and even the random Alerted mobs (that shouldn't be) become a manageable problem.

Please DE, make it happen!

[Azlen]

Crudest response I think I've had: Screw this stealth update.