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Make Invisibility Great Again!


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Invisibility, right now, is only used as damage mitigation/melee damage multiplier. There's currently no use to stealth outside of that. I'm not asking for the melee multiplier to be removed, but I have a couple of suggestions to make it worth using again.

 

  • Alter how enemies act when they notice someone dying from an unknown source: Make them panic or act in different ways. For example, one could run to the nearest console and set alarms, another could start shooting in the direction of the corpse, trying to hit the tenno, another one could flee. Make them move and regroup when something is wrong. They are not sheep, they are trained soldiers. Right now, their actions are what you would expect from a group of civils. Sometimes, civils with brain damage.

 

  • Make spy missions more challenging: Right now you can just run around shooting aimlessly, and as long as you are fast in the vaults, you can do everything setting all alarms, and get out with all data. That's the crappiest security system I've ever heard of. What we need is a tighter security system, less forgiving. Way less enemies would spawn, but if you raise an alarm, the vault doors lock, and you fail the mission. On lower levels, they may lock any vault you haven't already raided OR one you succesfully opened without raising alarms. While this may seem harsh, it gives a good reason to be careful; One slip on the wrong place may ruin the mission for you. To compensate for this, I suggest adding a new room to spy missions: a security mainframe room. Getting there and overriding it would make alarms not shut vaults, but the location won't be marked on your map, to avoid speedrunning to it and cheesing the mission. Near it there would be a way to get to the door unnoticed (a vent, a hallway with covers and detector bots or lasers) and take control of the alarm system. However, it would be only temporary, and a serie of hacks (about 40s between them, and 60s until control is lost again) would be necessary, to allow a continuous control as long as someone is defending the room and keeps hacking it. That would make at the same time more forgiving to play on public or with friends and allow stealth to take the spotlight on those missions.

 

A bonus for no kills would be also a good way to encourage the use of stealth in my opinion. 

Hope someone finds this interesting.

Edited by -CM-Limbo
EDITED: CHANGED STEALTH TO INVISIBILITY TO AVOID MISTAKES.
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Enemies already react to seeing corpses fyi. The only reason people complain about the enemies outside of most of them needing to be rebalanced or changed is because they never take the time to notice their behavior. Enemies love taking cover and re-grouping, but that doesn't matter when your weapon can headshot them through 5 walls. Which is why I keep saying that DE should change the way punch-through works. It looks like what they are doing is making a damage 2.5 instead of re-working the entire system.

And Spy missions are already good as is, if you made them insta-fail on alarm people would quit playing them altogether ((Even less than they already do)), since most of the community doesn't know how to do them to begin with, solo or in a group. And it wouldn't change anything for people like me who can ace any spy vault and variant thereof anyway, with and without Ciphers

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22 minutes ago, -CM-Limbo said:

Make spy missions more challenging: Right now you can just run around shooting aimlessly, and as long as you are fast in the vaults, you can do everything setting all alarms, and get out with all data. That's the crappiest security system I've ever heard of. What we need is a tighter security system, less forgiving. If you raise an alarm, the vault doors lock, and you fail the mission. On lower levels, they may lock any vault you haven't already raided OR one you succesfully opened without raising alarms. While this may seem harsh, it gives a good reason to be careful; One slip on the wrong place may ruin the mission for you. To compensate for this, I suggest adding a new room to spy missions: a security mainframe room. Getting there and overriding it would make alarms not shut vaults, but the location won't be marked on your map, to avoid speedrunning to it and cheesing the mission. 

Do you have any idea how tedious this could make Ivara's farming? I've heard of people who spent months on trying to get her parts on the current spy system we have

 

22 minutes ago, -CM-Limbo said:

 

  • Alter how enemies act when they notice someone dying from an unknown source: Make them panic or act in different ways. For example, one could run to the nearest console and set alarms, another could start shooting in the direction of the corpse, trying to hit the tenno, another one could flee. Make them move and regroup when something is wrong.

They kinda do this already tho lol

 

22 minutes ago, -CM-Limbo said:

 They are not sheep, they are trained soldiers. Right now, their actions are what you would expect from a group of civils. Sometimes, civils with brain damage.

and why should we make them more life-like? Aren't video games supposed to help dorks like us escape reality lol

should expect as much from a limbo main lmao

Edited by ZenDash
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Some of this is really interesting, but perhaps too harsh. Not knowing the exact location of vaults is neat; but being totally directionless isn't. Maybe something like a radar ping to show the general direction of the vault?

The idea of splitting the party to complete one vault is very interesting. Some spy rooms (Corpus laser wall room, for instance) definitely need more complexity. A security mainframe would be very cool, especially if the person operating it had a risky means of temporarily disabling certain traps in each vault. This would give DE an excuse to add more traps to vaults.

One thing I'm super not okay with is failure conditions outside the vault. Sure, it makes no sense for a security system, but realism is secondary to gameplay. As someone who routinely brings Mesa and Rhino to stealth missions, I would be screwed. Shoving players into a stealth frame just to complete the mission would suck. Instead, how about a risk/reward system? Not setting off alarms in or outside of a vault for an entire mission nets you two rewards from each vault, and affinity earned from the mission is doubled if you were completely undetected. This would make spies nearly comparable to leveling nodes for solo players, ease the Ivara grind, and make spy a good source of relics.

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36 minutes ago, (PS4)BlitzKeir said:

Some of this is really interesting, but perhaps too harsh. Not knowing the exact location of vaults is neat; but being totally directionless isn't. Maybe something like a radar ping to show the general direction of the vault?

The idea of splitting the party to complete one vault is very interesting. Some spy rooms (Corpus laser wall room, for instance) definitely need more complexity. A security mainframe would be very cool, especially if the person operating it had a risky means of temporarily disabling certain traps in each vault. This would give DE an excuse to add more traps to vaults.

One thing I'm super not okay with is failure conditions outside the vault. Sure, it makes no sense for a security system, but realism is secondary to gameplay. As someone who routinely brings Mesa and Rhino to stealth missions, I would be screwed. Shoving players into a stealth frame just to complete the mission would suck. Instead, how about a risk/reward system? Not setting off alarms in or outside of a vault for an entire mission nets you two rewards from each vault, and affinity earned from the mission is doubled if you were completely undetected. This would make spies nearly comparable to leveling nodes for solo players, ease the Ivara grind, and make spy a good source of relics.

I'm liking the idea of a risk/rewards system being implemented. The grind for Ivara is certainly...painful. Much like farming for Oberon was/is. While I'm okay with the idea of working as a team to get these sorts of missions accomplished...working as a team can be just as painful. There is also the issue of time spent in a particular mission. I'm not the slowest player around, but I'm certainly not the quickest and trying to be super stealthy (we're not counting going invisible, which I realize is the topic of the OP--at least somewhat, but this topic is morphing) only means taking that much longer.

Edited by (XB1)Spaztic Magic
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1 hour ago, 1tsyB1tsyN1nj4 said:

Enemies already react to seeing corpses fyi. The only reason people complain about the enemies outside of most of them needing to be rebalanced or changed is because they never take the time to notice their behavior. Enemies love taking cover and re-grouping, but that doesn't matter when your weapon can headshot them through 5 walls. Which is why I keep saying that DE should change the way punch-through works. It looks like what they are doing is making a damage 2.5 instead of re-working the entire system.

And Spy missions are already good as is, if you made them insta-fail on alarm people would quit playing them altogether ((Even less than they already do)), since most of the community doesn't know how to do them to begin with, solo or in a group. And it wouldn't change anything for people like me who can ace any spy vault and variant thereof anyway, with and without Ciphers

Yeah, they become alerted, but they don't act in a coherent way.

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@BlitzKeir

What if it doesn't make you fail, but locks all vaults and marks the position of the vault? More enemies would spawn if that happens, and things in the mainframe room would get difficult, but it would work.

On the reward thing, It's interesting, but DE would never agree on lessening the grind. They need to sell things, after all.

Edit: I also love the idea of the radar ping. Maybe we could just have a way of following a cable (leadinf from mainframe to the vaults) visible thru a scanner to help get to it, and would also give it an extra utility, apart from seeing enemies thru walls.

Edited by -CM-Limbo
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1 hour ago, ZenDash said:

1.Do you have any idea how tedious this could make Ivara's farming? I've heard of people who spent months on trying to get her parts on the current spy system we have

2.They kinda do this already tho lol

3.and why should we make them more life-like? Aren't video games supposed to help dorks like us escape reality lol

4.should expect as much from a limbo main lmao

1- That would be RNG's fault, the current spy system is easy to brush off as nothing, we have plenty of power/items to just halt enemies in their duties without triggering any alarm while we just make our way to the main Data Centre console. What I'm trying to say is that you've heard of people who spent months either having bad luck, or simply being terrible at staying out of sight.

2- As someone who regularly farms extermination maps while remaining completely invisible, they do not. If an enemy is killed in front of their line of sight, they'll become "Aware", however that state only lets them lift their weapon whilst walking in a straight line and removes the 100-500% stealth bonus if target is killed. They do not activate any alarms, they do not shoot anywhere, they don't even regroup or alert their allies ( This can be seen with the enemies arrow on the map being completely unaware despite the "Alarmed" target being in the same room ).

3- Why shouldn't we? Should all enemies in game be complete dorks that can't show any realistic behaviour?

4.One of the best frame to complete a spy mission without using invisiblity cheese.

Edited by (PS4)XxDarkyanxX
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2 hours ago, ZenDash said:

Do you have any idea how tedious this could make Ivara's farming? I've heard of people who spent months on trying to get her parts on the current spy system we have

 

They kinda do this already tho lol

 

and why should we make them more life-like? Aren't video games supposed to help dorks like us escape reality lol

should expect as much from a limbo main lmao

1- RNG, not the mission's fault.

2- They become aware, but nothing more.

3- A bit of realism is never bad. Would you prefer them forming a line and wait to get killed too?

4- Yeah, pick on a player based on his taste. Do that again and I'm reporting you. You don't like Limbo? That's perfectly acceptable. You want to use a player's choices to try and shame them? Then you don't belong in a civil conversation.

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More than anything I think enemy awareness in general needs to be dealt with. They seem to either be totally unaware of the steel headed towards of them, or perfectly capable of turning around 180 degrees to unload an ogris shot.

If the enemy was aware of my team but not of me, I would like to able to approach them from behind and sneak-attack them, then if they saw me, if I were to say, run around a corner and be completely unseen by them, then they would then move into a state where they didn't know about my position.

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@Ventura_Highway yes! that's exactly the kind of behaviour I'm looking for. Not just blindfolded enemies that suddenly become all-knowing and smite you because a shot sounded in the next room! This game has so much potential for a stealth aproach. Ivara's arrow, for example, is the clunkiest ability I've ever seen. That could totally fix it. I would be pleased just with an overhaul to enemy behaviour. It would be totally gamechanging.

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On 5/5/2017 at 11:10 AM, Ventura_Highway said:

More than anything I think enemy awareness in general needs to be dealt with. They seem to either be totally unaware of the steel headed towards of them, or perfectly capable of turning around 180 degrees to unload an ogris shot.

If the enemy was aware of my team but not of me, I would like to able to approach them from behind and sneak-attack them, then if they saw me, if I were to say, run around a corner and be completely unseen by them, then they would then move into a state where they didn't know about my position.

Recently, there were changes to enemies' perceptions. Reading through the patch notes for these was enlightening... To make it simpler, I'll break it down into alert states. State 1: an enemy is completely unaware. State 2: an enemy is aware of a sound source. State 3: an enemy is aware of an attacker.

Originally, enemies would gain awareness of you by sound, or by psychic link with an enemy that saw you, which would put them in alert state 3. This would cause all other enemies in the tile to immediately shift to alert state 3 as well. After the changes, enemies become aware of the position of a sound, but not the object that created the sound, which puts them in alert state 2. When an enemy hears a sound, they will not notify their buddies, so no one advances to state 3. When an enemy takes non-lethal damage, or gains LOS with a Tenno while their alert state is higher than 1, they will immediately put all enemies in the tile into alert state 2. If any of these enemies have LOS upon turning toward the indicated source, they will immediately rise to state 3. This will also occur if an enemy fires on a Tenno, even if no other enemies have LOS.

This makes it possible to retain stealth from accidentally being spotted, and also to trick enemies into examining a location after you've already left it if you weapon is quiet enough. However, enemies in alert state 2 may choose to set off the alarm. This should change imo. (Note: According to the wiki, weapons have three sound levels: 'quiet', 'loud' and 'alarming'; but this is not noted anywhere in-game. 'Loud' and 'alarming' weapons persistently alert enemies to your position in an open firefight, which is why enemies (looking at you, Scorches) are able to immediately fire in the frame they gain LOS while maneuvering around a corner.)

The way alert states are handled is fine. If stealth is to become more nuanced, it will have to be in the way enemies react to new information, or more information for them to react to. Unless my memory is full-on making S#&$ up, wasn't there a time when enemies would react by falling backward and crawling away when a nearby unit is killed unexpectedly? I swear I remember that, but haven't seen it happen in years.

My ultimate fantasy is for WF to have a 'Morale' system. Heavy units are designated 'commanders', and have a constructive influence on the formations and tactics of nearby enemies. Enemies would cluster, making them easier to kill with AOEs, but also synchronize and concentrate their fire, making them predictable but also incredibly dangerous. Killing these units would cause discord and panic in certain other units, and even have a chance to make them react in the maybe-not-totally-imaginary way I mentioned above.

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