The Changes to Stealth are Terrible

[DiabolusUrsus]

Seriously, stealth is broken now as a result of the enemies noticing corpses. I expected this when I read the notes, but trying it out has proven it even more miserable than I expected.

This kind of detail doesn't mesh well with Warframe's faster pace, and it is especially frustrating when you take into account these three factors:

• Players cannot move or "hide" corpses.
• Players cannot reliably destroy corpses.
• The enemy pathing is absolutely bonkers with no discernible logic behind it. Seriously, it's as though they pirouette on a whim!

I think the Nullifier change only adds insult to injury where that enemy is concerned, but it's not as big of a deal as the corpse awareness. It's one thing to want to make stealth more immersive. It's another to impose limitations on your players without giving them the appropriate tools to combat those limitations. Enemy numbers, behavior, and the stealth timer all impose a sense of urgency on stealth take-downs. The LACK of a method for dealing with corpses after a take-down combined with the slow speed of many stealth finishers (which you are shoehorning players into more and more with the detection logic) requires a slower and more methodical approach. It requires planning and prediction, which Warframe's environment does not fairly permit.

Can you get lucky? Yes.

Is there any skill to it? Probably.

But it's not enough to make a consistent difference. This is especially grating because stealth is already a less prevalent playstyle. To pull it off effectively you are basically barred from running public matches, and even in co-operative groups you're still usually better off going solo. Solo players are already penalized on the affinity front, but stealth helped take the edge off of that penalty.

This change should either be reverted, or additional tools should be put into place to allow players to compensate for the restriction.

For example:

• Corrosive damage dissolves corpses, preventing detection.
• Punch-through works on Nullifier shields while the Nullifier is not alerted.

These may not be the best options, and they may not even be entirely effective, but they're a start.

Thoughts?

[p3z1]

Even without the changes to stealth, the affinity loss was too much of a nerf already. Stealthing was a viable substitute against meta-missions like berehynia and akkad. This change just made things worse for solo players.

Why DE punishes players who can't play co-op is just weird.

Channeling doesn't work that much, since enemies can detect a slowly-fading corpse.

[polarity]

Try doing the MR 19 test when every time you get a kill, everything nearby starts roaming round looking for you with massive detection range.

[BansheePrime]

All I've got to say is in the meantime Ivara sleep arrow spamming with max range and duration works wonders.

[DiabolusUrsus]

Just now, maj.death said:

All I've got to say is in the meantime Ivara sleep arrow spamming with max range and duration works wonders.

Sure, there are things that can be made to work, but it kinda sucks to shoehorn players into a single Warframe when they're trying to make use of a core mechanic. With the system as it was, it was at least still viable to use pretty much any Warframe with silent weapons and enough caution. Were Loki, Banshee, and Ivara more effective? Absolutely. But  it should still be doable with other characters.

Not everybody has Ivara, either.

[AM-Bunny]

I agree completely.

Nullifier Changes

Let's say for the sake of optimal scenario you're doing a stealth run with Loki. You see a Nullifier (or 2 or 3) which leaves you with two courses of action:

• Enter the bubble, nullifying your Invisibility and alerting the horde of enemies inevitably huddled inside or nearby the bubble
• Try and pop the bubble by attacking it, alerting the Nullifier and negating the stealth bonus

Unless you get incredibly lucky and find a Nullifier by itself so you can sneak into its bubble from behind, these guys make stealth runs completely impossible, even in optimal Loki scenario.

Corpse Changes

It's realistic. Congratulations. However, it doesn't do to worry about this kind of realism when enemies still spawn in huge clumps and enemy AI has them continuously walking in circles. If enemy spawning and behaviour was more predictable (which is a must in stealth based games) this would be a great feature. However, it comes across as a really poorly thought-out idea that the devs stole from another stealth game without thinking about how well it would work in Warframe.

 

What really frustrates me about this is that there's the stealth bonus to XP for kills. So it seems as though they want you to try for stealth runs, but then implement needless features to steer you away from it. This is classic Warframe identity disorder, where it tries to do too many things and has mechanics that actively fight against each other. If you want to make a stealth game, implement stealth mechanics, if you want to make an action shooter, implement those mechanics.

I don't often ask for features to be rescinded but these are just bad.

[bowiespoon]

I'm not against fleshing out Stealth gameplay, but this current iteration doesn't work in warframe as it is currently.

If you want to keep the changes, the AI need to be reworked drastically, the spawning needs to be changed, and all tiles will need a look-over.

[NecromancerX69]

I was waiting for this post to appear since like, the day of the patch.

Farming focus now is a pain...

[motorfirebox]

Yeah, the new changes to stealth make an already twitchy system much worse. If enemies can notice bodies, there should be a way for us to hide/destroy them. And nullies noticing hits on their bubble is just... man, they're powerful enough already.

[xXDeadsinxX]

I absolutely agree stealth needs to be polished/tweaked.

[taiiat]

there's some problems but people exaggerating isn't going to help things that much.

11 hours ago, taiiat said:

Nullifiers being half alerted by their Shield taking Damage is rather boo (still completable quietly but requires inordinate amounts of waiting and Warframe isn't that type of game), and Enemies breaking the Stealth chain for seemingly no reason is also annoying, breaking Pots and such with Silent Weapons alerting Enemies is stupid - but the overarching changes mostly impacts people trying to play Stealth Missions like Sonic.

with each time 'Stealth has been completely ruined', i'm still playing Stealth Missions. while being Invisible not that often.

 

i'll continue to be in favor of Stealth working more akin to Shadow of Mordor - being able to quietly execute Enemies without them strictly needing to be completely unalerted of your existence.

4 hours ago, taiiat said:

it will only count as Failed once an Enemy that has been half alerted decides to start running to a Hack Panel (or starts shooting probably), Et Cetera.
in this regard it is quite lenient actually. more so than Stealth XP ironically.

it's flexible enough that you can half alert or alert Enemies and simply Damage Control them within the next second or two without failing the Challenge.

[heisthex]

Why Warframe, an action game is copying a stealth game design with a corpse sensory mechanic with so many patrol enemies in tiny hallway or room??

So much half baked idea and the more DE try to do, it just making the gameplay getting stale and worsen the experience for solo player and co-op.  (50m affinity sharing range in interception map, WTF??)

[DiabolusUrsus]

3 minutes ago, taiiat said:

there's some problems but people exaggerating isn't going to help things that much

It's not an exaggeration, though. Sure, maybe the Riven stealth challenges aren't completely broken, but those are a different animal entirely.

Why do people do stealth?

For the XP.

If they want the XP, they can't slow down. If they can't slow down, they can't time their kills appropriately for avoiding corpse detection.

DE could potentially fix this issue by removing the timer and just limiting the combo-breaker to an alert, but that would still need to deal with the issue that the pacing is just plain off. Camping around corners and waiting for things to look the other way just isn't suited to Warframe's normal gameplay at all. As I see it, DE has three options:

• Re-write enemy pathing logic so that they follow set patterns that can be exploited.
• Provide players with tools for concealing/destroying corpses, or messing with enemy perception that are not all Warframe powers (this would be easiest, and make stealth builds a thing).
• Take a few steps back, and put in the effort necessary to come up with stealth mechanics suited to a fast-paced arcade-style horde shooter.

Even less useful than exaggerating is pretending like a perceived difference in player skill is a good reason to argue against making a mechanic sufficiently accessible. Normally, I'm all for immersive changes like this. Immersion doesn't do anyone any good when it ruins the gameplay, though.

To put it as simply as I can, stealth is not impossible. Yes, you can conceivably go entire missions without triggering alarms... but before U19 having enough patience and caution meant you could go entire missions with a 500% multiplier after the first kill. That was rewarding. Breaking your multiplier because of wonky and inconsistent detection mechanics is frustrating and feels unfair. It's not worth the immersion.

[DiabolusUrsus]

2 minutes ago, heisthex said:

Why Warframe, an action game is copying a stealth game design with a corpse sensory mechanic with so many patrol enemies in tiny hallway or room??

So much half baked idea and the more DE try to do, it just making the gameplay getting stale and worsen the experience for solo player and co-op.  (50m affinity sharing range in interception map, WTF??)

I agree with you, but the whole affinity range thing is another beast entirely.

I think that the best way to address some of those issues would be to remove arbitrary team-play enforcers like Affinity Range, double-doors, AFK rules, etc. from Friends Only and Invite Only matches. Those mechanics are there largely to prevent griefing of sorts. I would hope that playing with friends would remove the need for anti-griefing mechanics.

[taiiat]

7 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

If they want the XP, they can't slow down

no, you can slow down. you don't need to be able to be at Bullet Jump + Air Dodge speeds.

there's problems (that i talked about in almost identical words as you did in the Posts i quoted - did you read them?) that clash with the fast paced nature of the game, and those are poo.
i fully expect Stealth to be very noticeably slower in moving through areas than going loud - but i do still expect a consistent rate of movement and Killing.

11 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

remove arbitrary team-play enforcers like Affinity Range, double-doors, AFK rules, etc. from Friends Only and Invite Only matches. Those mechanics are there largely to prevent griefing of sorts. I would hope that playing with friends would remove the need for anti-griefing mechanics.

'AFK rules' and XP Range is also there to reduce how effective Exploits or Metagaming are - they're not going anywhere.

[Zhoyzu]

1 hour ago, polarity said:

Try doing the MR 19 test when every time you get a kill, everything nearby starts roaming round looking for you with massive detection range.

is that the one where you have to sneak around killing everything without being detected or you fail?  I loved that one. was so fun. Just stand at spawn and snipe then you hunt the survivors.

#apexpredator

[low1991]

38 minutes ago, Zhoyzu said:

is that the one where you have to sneak around killing everything without being detected or you fail?  I loved that one. was so fun. Just stand at spawn and snipe then you hunt the survivors.

For me, i just eat a energy pizza, active WoF build ember, and walk around killing low-level grineer lancer, without being spotted.

 

[polarity]

7 hours ago, low1991 said:

For me, i just eat a energy pizza, active WoF build ember, and walk around killing low-level grineer lancer, without being spotted.

 

ORLY?  Go to a relay and try that.

[DoomFruit]

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

no, you can slow down. you don't need to be able to be at Bullet Jump + Air Dodge speeds.

The stealth timer dictates a minimum rate of (one-shot) kills. Focus being tied to a stupid flashing yellow thing instead of being at its original slightly higher rate of income mandates rapid killing. Both of these things are actively suppressed by the new stealth mechanics.

A very important measure of progression in this game is XP income. That's how you level stuff for mastery rank, or stuff forma into things. Other games which include stealth either do not tie XP income to killing at a sustained rate (Deus Ex) or don't have any kind of XP mechanics at all (Assassin's Creed). Warframe does. It relies on XP for a lot of things - including the focus mechanic.

And again, while the increased enemy awareness might indeed make intuitive sense, it's horrifically out of place with the core game mechanics here. Enemies noticing corpses and becoming alert does not belong in a game composed of randomly placed map tiles each containing (many) randomly placed enemies with random orientations and patrol routes, with absolutely no means of getting between tiles other than one narrow chokepoint door.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

10 hours ago, maj.death said:

All I've got to say is in the meantime Ivara sleep arrow spamming with max range and duration works wonders.

Until they make enemies aware of CC'd allies, which IMO is just as logical a change as them noticing bodies. What the change did was make it harder for every frame, including the cheese ones, to gain XP in stealth at the same rate as playing in spamming parties. The sleep frames are still mostly unaffected by it, but any other frame you could use effectively before the change now has a much more difficult time, resulting in the number of viable frames for stealth XP farming having shrunk.

I mean, I'd be cool with the effectiveness of invisibility and stealth being reduced compared to normal stealth any frame can engage in to close the gap, but when you reel in the top performers you need to make sure to compensate the rewards so everybody else can profit from it.

[low1991]

1 hour ago, polarity said:

ORLY?  Go to a relay and try that.

Weird, DE must have either patch it or i recall the wrong MR test.

[DiabolusUrsus]

20 hours ago, taiiat said:

no, you can slow down. you don't need to be able to be at Bullet Jump + Air Dodge speeds.

there's problems (that i talked about in almost identical words as you did in the Posts i quoted - did you read them?) that clash with the fast paced nature of the game, and those are poo.
i fully expect Stealth to be very noticeably slower in moving through areas than going loud - but i do still expect a consistent rate of movement and Killing.

Yes, I did read what you wrote.

From my understanding, you are approaching the issue from the perspective of "stealth is fine, because you can still avoid triggering alarms."

I am approaching it from the perspective of "stealth is not fine, because it is now ridiculously difficult to maintain a decent multiplier, which was the primary motivation to use stealth to begin with."

I'm not saying that players need to be able to go bullet-jumping around while "stealthing," but 30 seconds is NOT enough time to reliably wait for things to calm down so you can score another kill without breaking your multiplier. Enemy detection is too inconsistent, pathing is too random, and the corpse detection is the icing on the cake. What I was suggesting is that removing the 30-second time limit would make it so that players with enough patience could simply stay hidden in-between kills to keep their multiplier going.

HOWEVER

The corpse-detection changes mean that nearby enemies will be semi-alerted (breaking your multiplier if killed) on essentially every kill. Sure, there are some lucky situations where none of them are looking long enough for you to desecrate the corpse or wait for it to vanish, but those situations are not frequent enough to be reliable. That translates into a LOT of waiting for enemies to lose interest completely, and that breaks the pace of Warframe even more egregiously than the old stealth setup did, and the old stealth was already testing the limits of that disparity.

20 hours ago, taiiat said:

'AFK rules' and XP Range is also there to reduce how effective Exploits or Metagaming are - they're not going anywhere.

I can see keeping the affinity range, but the AFK rules are primarily aimed at punishing idlers and that shouldn't be an issue among friends. It would be nice to be able to accommodate those bathroom emergencies or other instances in which real life rudely interrupts the session, and if AKF players want to set up private matches to help each other idle, I say let them. That would ALSO be more effective at getting them out of the public pool where they annoy everybody.

Edited November 19, 2016 by DiabolusUrsus

[taiiat]

6 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

From my understanding, you are approaching the issue from the perspective of "stealth is fine, because you can still avoid triggering alarms."

The corpse-detection changes mean that nearby enemies will be semi-alerted (breaking your multiplier if killed) on essentially every kill. 

 

I can see keeping the affinity range, but the AFK rules are primarily aimed at punishing idlers and that shouldn't be an issue among friends. It would be nice to be able to accommodate those bathroom emergencies or other instances in which real life rudely interrupts the session, and if AKF players want to set up private matches to help each other idle, I say let them. That would ALSO be more effective at getting them out of the public pool where they annoy everybody.

Stealth is doable, but there's problems. that's my 'perspective'.
there's things that sometimes make for disappointing results in Gameplay.

but i'm not going to ask for the machine to change to fix a broken gear. i'm not going to ask for bandaids for Stealth. if there's problems, i want those problems fixed or addressed. NOT changing elsewhere to compensate for problems.

(also i play Stealth Missions from time to time and have since War Within and you're exaggerating - i freely use a mixture of Guns and Melee in Stealth and Enemies only notice other Enemies being Killed or Corpses sometimes - you are suggesting that they always do, this is absolutely not the case)

 

you might be surprised at how many Players already are in Private Sessions for Abusive Gameplay because it lets them be more efficient. so most of the Abusive Players are already out of sight from Matchmaking - what's left is just the people that don't know what they're doing or people 'playing' the game by imitating Youtube/Reddit.

one can already take a bathroom break or grab something to eat when playing with other Players(myself and friends have done so plenty of times - Random Players too even). if you get dropped from your Mission or miss Mission Rewards because of it, perhaps you should choose times to take a piss that aren't right before important points like Extraction or intervals in Endless Missions.

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

Stealth is doable, but there's problems. that's my 'perspective'.
there's things that sometimes make for disappointing results in Gameplay.

but i'm not going to ask for the machine to change to fix a broken gear. i'm not going to ask for bandaids for Stealth. if there's problems, i want those problems fixed or addressed. NOT changing elsewhere to compensate for problems.

(also i play Stealth Missions from time to time and have since War Within and you're exaggerating - i freely use a mixture of Guns and Melee in Stealth and Enemies only notice other Enemies being Killed or Corpses sometimes - you are suggesting that they always do, this is absolutely not the case)

Explain to me how adding utility to existing options (e.g., Corrosive damage, Heat damage, etc.) is a Band-Aid solution. It's addressing a problem without simply tacking on a new mod to accomplish what can already be done with existing content. That seems like the opposite of a Band-Aid to me.

Reverting a bad change isn't exactly the same thing either, but it's closer. In fact, I'd say it's even more akin to removing the broken gear so that the system starts working again. But hey, maybe I'm just delusional.

I still don't see how I could exaggerate my own experiences though. Before, I could reliably go most if not all of a mission running a 500% multiplier provided I was careful. Now, I can no longer do that consistently without resorting to Ivara. I believe I also specified that it's not entirely impossible to get some streaks in there. No, enemies don't always stumble across corpses. But they frequently do, and it's simply unfair to not provide players with some means of countering that issue.

Personally, I don't think picking up and hiding corpses manually would be suited to the game's pace, which is why I'm suggesting corpse destruction as a viable alternative.

I'm glad for you that you don't seem to be encountering this issue (though I think what it really comes down to is a different set of priorities). Perhaps you would care to elaborate more on your particular strategies? One thing I haven't really tried is bows and other pinning weapons. Does that tend to help get corpses "out of the way?" 

Otherwise all you're saying is "I don't have your problem," and that's not really constructive unless you can explain how you don't have my problem.

[taiiat]

55 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Explain to me how adding utility to existing options (e.g., Corrosive damage, Heat damage, etc.) is a Band-Aid solution. It's addressing a problem without simply tacking on a new mod to accomplish what can already be done with existing content. That seems like the opposite of a Band-Aid to me.

Perhaps you would care to elaborate more on your particular strategies?
One thing I haven't really tried is bows and other pinning weapons. Does that tend to help get corpses "out of the way?" 

that is exactly a band-aid, you want a game mechanic that lets you effectively revert Enemies noticing Corpses. rather than looking for ways for it to be made to work better.

i Kill them before they can notice Corpses.
using Bows to staple Enemies up onto the walls or other places away from Enemies i'm sure would work - i haven't intentionally done that myself but that sounds like a good idea.