Stealth: Tools, Rewards

[UnrelentingFarce]

Stealth gameplay is going to be fantastic, of that I have no doubt. This post is not trying to address how stealth gameplay should be fully realized, but rather examines some of the surrounding problems and approaches them with a suite of possible solutions.

The first problem, after the incomplete gameplay, is that stealth gameplay cannot compete with standard gameplay in terms of rewards. This problem is especially exacerbated by trying to play stealth by not killing any enemy units; storage containers and lockers become the primary source of resources. Related in a way I will make clear is that upon examining the mods available to me, I noticed that several of the mods seem to benefit stealth gameplay much more than others: loot radar, enemy radar, and Master Thief in particular. Incorporating these mods into a Warframe limits combat capabilities, while providing situational awareness that benefits stealth. Now I come to my first recommendation:

The few mods that benefit stealth gameplay should be put into a reward pool to be awarded at the completion of a mission when the alert has not been raised. This would function much like the Nightmare mode mod pool, but for the improvement of stealth capabilities. To address the lack of resources earned, some number of crafting resources should be awarded that would help compensate for not getting the resources dropped by enemies. Both normal gameplay and stealth gameplay would still have access to loot from lockers, with the Master Thief mod being more available to those who play stealth, thus creating a way to increase their rewards. Thus, stealth would compete with standard gameplay for Warframe advancement.

The second problem is the lack of readily available tools suited for stealth, which hurts new players in particular. From the beginning, players should be able to embrace the subterfuge aspect of our robot space ninja Warframes. Related is the issue that several weapons do not see much play in experienced hands: the Lato, Sicarus, Burston (yay buffs!), Furis, and Braton MK1 come to mind. These all have in common that they are older weapons and that they are easy to acquire, if not already owned on account creation. I see two ways to approach expanding the stealthy Tenno's arsenal, and I also see that I want a new paragraph (or two) to write them in.

The first way is to make suppressed/silenced variants of these guns. Take the Bolto, for instance. Its recipe includes one Lato. Why not make a silenced Lato in the same way? I could see the Lato, Sicarus, Burston, Braton MK1, and Furis making great stealth weapons. To keep them not strictly superioer to their relatively inferior counterparts, adjusting the accuracy or damage stat on the guns would keep things in balance.

Alternatively, we could take a cue from the Aura mods and add some kind of weapon Specialty Slot. The possibilities for these guns are mind boggling; we could have mods specifically for Grineer weapons, that increase magazine capacity and rate of fire, or Corpus mods that make our lasers flash different colors. But, I won't chase the rabbit too far on this one. We could make stealth a physical modification available only to certain weapons, such as the ones I have already advocated. Take out the mod, and the gun is no longer silent.

I think I know which of the recommendations I like better. But, the cool thing is, the components for making advanced stealth weapons in the Foundry, or to modify the weapons via the suggested new mod slot, can be acquired like the parts of any of the Prime weapons in the Void. From successfully stealthing missions.

Is your mind blown by how neatly I brought that back around? Mine is. Organizing thoughts is hard.

EDIT: I completely forgot Affinity in this equation. No kills means no affinity. Stealth needs to award affinity, as well.

Edited July 28, 2013 by UnrelentingFarce

[Vaskadar]

Alert levels, for this to work, must be clearly explained to the player through gameplay. There should be obvious environmental cues as well as varying levels of enemy types. The weakest and slowest versions of enemy classes should be present until higher alerts go... but rewarding stealth gameplay this way seems balanced. A stealth pacifist run should be rewarded too.

 

I would like to see some of the older weapons get the facelift treatment most  definitely. A large suppressor on a Burston would look really great.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Vaskadar

[Tomorbaatar]

This is a good idea overall. Stealth gameplay really is neglected right now, even though it is becoming much more viable. But there are 2 problems I see:

 

1) Due to how the alarms were changed, it's completely possible to beat the hell out of everything so fast that the alarm just never gets raised. That'd yield a stealth reward for people that didn't go stealth. It isn't a big issue, but it is something that can happen.

 

2) You'd still get crap for affinity for your gear, which means that you'd still level your stuff slower. As of now, having affinity come exclusively from kills as a fixed amount per unit killed is going to ruin stealth in any way.

 

I do agree that stealth needs to be addressed somewhat if it's going to be a feature in the game, and all of your ideas are good, but even with those, some things still won't quite work out. Great first step, but stealth needs just a little more than that if it's going to be a viable alternative.

[UnrelentingFarce]

It's silly that pacifist runs have nearly zero reward. To my mind, those are the epitome of stealth success. The effort to reward ratio is something like this:

 

19:0

 

I have no doubt that this will change; these devs have amazed me with every update. I imagine that their priorities have been elsewhere, as evidenced by the mass of content we've received, the new UI, etc. But when they do get around to finishing stealth, this is the system of reward I want.

[UnrelentingFarce]

Affinity? I forgot about that. Whoops.

 

As for running through and killing things before the alarm is raised, that's a way that people play other stealth games (except we don't have ways to drag the bodies into the shadows, so to speak). I do not doubt that this would be a concern for the devs, when they go to finish stealth gameplay.

 

EDIT: I don't know how to prevent people from killing lots of enemies while not raising the alert. Maybe this is the ultimate way this game should be played, and thus should yield the highest reward, of both the enemy drops and the end mission rewards.

Edited July 28, 2013 by UnrelentingFarce

[Mateodon]

As for running through and killing things before the alarm is raised, that's a way that people play other stealth games (except we don't have ways to drag the bodies into the shadows, so to speak). I do not doubt that this would be a concern for the devs, when they go to finish stealth gameplay.

 

EDIT: I don't know how to prevent people from killing lots of enemies while not raising the alert. Maybe this is the ultimate way this game should be played, and thus should yield the highest reward, of both the enemy drops and the end mission rewards.

Why not have a no-detection requirement for stealth completion?  You are penalized if an enemy sees you, even if he doesn't have time to trigger the alarm.

 

And now I want a suppressed Mk-1.

[UnrelentingFarce]

I like that, but I definitely want some room for forgiveness. So long as the penalty is not too large, I agree. Maybe the reward can have several parts to it, including "Undetected" or "Unseen."

[Mateodon]

I like that, but I definitely want some room for forgiveness. So long as the penalty is not too large, I agree. Maybe the reward can have several parts to it, including "Undetected" or "Unseen."

I was thinking of penalties along the lines of a 3-strike system.  First detection: little to no penalty.  Second detection: slight penalty, maybe less credits for the mission reward.  Third detection: You failed to meet the requirements for stealth completion.

 

Something along those lines, with a counter on the hud so you know how careful you need to be.  Truthfully 3 strikes might be too rough, at least while the stealth mechanics are unpolished, 5 strikes might be better.

 

But I like your idea of multiple stealth rewards too, no-alarms = reward, undetected = bonus reward.  Maybe another bonus for 0 kills to reward the true pacifist.

[UnrelentingFarce]

This is good feedback. 5 degrees of reward, without delineating them, sounds about right.

 

You raise a good point by saying that the hud needs to display this kind of information. I think that, in conjunction with environmental cues, such as enemy behavior, lighting, and presence of increased patrols, we would have a lot more of the feedback that makes the stealth genre work.

[UnrelentingFarce]

Any feedback?

[EinRyu]

I can hardly say Stealth Gameplay is even viable still. I mean honestly, I try doing a stealthed Tyl Regor run with Loki, Paris, Despair and Orthos all silent weapons combined with a Shade and 1 Grineer sees me and all hell breaks loose, they don't even touch the alarm and I'm getting mobbed by everything, and even when I kill those guys with no alarm, suddenly the amount of Grineer in the area doubled and there all on guard. Fix the way enemies react to you, and also fix that damned alarm system, make it so you can shut the alarm off, make it so if the alarm goes off for "x" amount of time it actually causes problems for you, instead of 1 Grineer tapping a panel and suddenly 30 others come rushing at you.

 

Also, why is that if you do a boss run perfectly, no alarms triggered or anything, that when you actually reach said boss, even using a silent weapon, you take 1 shot on em and suddenly 50 freaking random mobs appear and bum rush you. I can't even speed run Tyl Regor because of that one problem, I mean I can stealth run Corpus fairly well, there not that bad, but Grineer? Forget it. Stealth just becomes completely pointless with the way they work.

[UnrelentingFarce]

These are major problems with stealth. I am sure that the dev team knows that things need to be done for stealth to be completed, but maybe not specific examples. I know that I struggle with stealth gameplay for similar reasons; only thing I'd add is how the patrols work.

 

Assuming those issues get fixed, I'd want a reward system like the one discussed here.