Guild Wars 2

I was reading another post that compared Stealth in GW2 with other MMO’s. The main thing that stuck out to me was the ability for players to detect invisible characters in other games.

I know a lot of Stealth and Reveal mechanics have been thrown out there already, but what about this one?

A passive ability to see Stealthed foes only when they are in front of you (the front quadrant), and only in the “ghost” form that you and allies see yourself as when Stealthed. Think of Halo’s active camouflage.

The “ghost” form will only be visible from the front quadrant. From the sides and rear, Stealth will be completely invisible. There will still be no way to target a Stealthed enemy.

This will reduce the need for the Revealed debuff. It will also allow for more/longer “balanced” access to Stealth.

Yes, there are many ways to bring skills in line with the mechanic, and some things would need to be changed (eg. Shadow Refuge). And I’m sure there are many refinements that could be made (fading into and out of visibility as you move into/out of the visual cone).

But I can see advantages for Thieves. Especially if given a trait that allows them to remain in Stealth while out of combat (and outside of a capture point… unless Stealth no longer prevents capping).

Anyway, it’s just a general concept. I’d prefer it over the Revealed mechanism.

I find an even easier way is to implement that “bug” for intentional reasons a long while ago. Bug being that if you were in a party in sPvP but were split up and you stealthed, the other people in your party on the enemy team could still see your transparent form instead of not being able to see you at all. They could make reveal do that, let the enemy see us still (like Halo camo) if revealed, but we still keep our stealth benefits.

A condition on the enemy you are targeting in stealth called suspicious gaze, does nothing but let them know they’ve been targeted (as any war-worn fighter would probably become aware of in a sixth sense kind of way after lots of exposure).
Still player skill focused because a player might target moments before attacking, low experience players or players who refuse to understand how stealth works would get the moment to judge their surroundings and ready for a fight (or very obviously burn their protection skills early so the thief has an easier time killing them 6 seconds from now).

Want to avoid trolling with the feature? Give the affected player crit bonuses against the source of the condition if they suffer from it for too long or something to discourage unsportsmanlike behaviour.

The main problem is a hoarding of information on the stealthing player’s side, so to balance the stealthed player should also not get perfect information, being unable to tell enemy player’s health total or condition/boon status would be a equivalent exchange for a properly powered backstab.

A big side effect of the stealth and spike focused builds on thieves is that with all the patches and nerfs; to make the same play-style successful as the metagame advances the player had to get better, learning to judge other players most likely next actions, learning to time your attacks for when an opponent is most vunerable, learning how to survive on less than 20% health for about 7 seconds so your heal skill comes off cooldown, all of this forced thief players to get good in the same way Dark Souls does with its unforgiving mobility and positioning focused gameplay.
Except Mesmer (where the player needs to learn how to act like one of their own clones to appear invisible) none of the other classes force the player to git gud to stay alive, even in PvE a thief is never safe.

So in conclusion as an alternative to revealed, the game should also teach new players how stealth works in the racial starting areas in the same way they teach how dodging works. Litter the zone with enviromental weapons that put the player into stealth for 4-ish seconds so they can get a flanking attack on an unsuspecting NPC that swaps from having aegis and retaliation to not.

Overworld.9613:

…
The main problem is a hoarding of information on the stealthing player’s side, so to balance the stealthed player should also not get perfect information, being unable to tell enemy player’s health total or condition/boon status would be a equivalent exchange for a properly powered backstab.
…

That’s quite an interesting idea I like. Provide alittle less information for the stealthed party as well with the idea that their focusing so much on stealthing that it’s difficult to analysis targets true condition. Not that it’s a true lose of information as all the stealthed build needs to do is look at the target to see ingame boon, condition effects, but this takes alittle more work.

My thoughts:

Tracked – any skills that would inflict Revealed would now inflict Tracked. The Thief is visible as an outline, but still retains all the benefits of stealth (e.g. health regeneration, condition cleanse, etc. if specced into Shadow Arts). It nullifies the advantage of stealth while not completely countering a mechanic that helps Thieves survive.

Revealed – Only occurs when the Thief attacks from stealth.

SacredSkies.8134:

My thoughts:

Tracked – any skills that would inflict Revealed would now inflict Tracked. The Thief is visible as an outline, but still retains all the benefits of stealth (e.g. health regeneration, condition cleanse, etc. if specced into Shadow Arts). It nullifies the advantage of stealth while not completely countering a mechanic that helps Thieves survive.

Revealed – Only occurs when the Thief attacks from stealth.

luv this one