Devs: can we talk about stealth?

[Qezuzu]

Around when To Curse the Sky was released, I made a little thread on the achievements forum for successfully completing the quest on LE with only one kill (Malicia.) For whatever reason, I enjoy sneaking in DDO, even with a stealth system that's, well, pretty archaic (compared to any actual stealth game, where you can't just crouch to become effectively undetectable.)

It's recently come to my attention that TCtS now features the ever popular kill-everything-to-open gates (http://i.imgur.com/qRcQKSj.jpg). TCtS may have been altered months ago. I don't know. I haven't been able to play lately, only recently been able to get back into it. Barely know how the new aggro mechanics affect sneaking, besides that getting seen more or less gets half the dungeon after you.

TCtS can't be invis zerged. There's too many see-invis mobs, the corridors are too tight. This change only stops me and the very few people who actually did stuff like this. Furthermore, the change is unnecessary because it's impossible to fight Malicia alone (pulling her into a corner) with the new aggro mechanics (or so I imagine, I haven't done it recently.)

I'm frankly fine with quests not being completely sneak friendly. How I did the final fight in TCtS was fairly silly anyway, she's got a whole bunch of guys but doesn't call them over while I beat her down. This isn't just an issue with altering quests to prevent something that is ostensibly not an exploit, this is a game design issue. It's just a bad change.

-Beating on a powerful devil while her underlings stare at a corner in the same room: completely inorganic, I'm fine with it being fixed. If it weren't for the new aggro mechanics, their patrol pattern (walking into the center of the room and then back) could have simply been put on a loop instead of just a one-time thing. That would have been a good change that would have made solo sneak runs appropriately challenging.
-Silently and invisibly going past devils as you go to assassinate their leader: completely organic. There was no reason to change this besides it not fitting into some concieved notion of how you want players to play.

I honestly don't want to write a big essay on this. Gonna stick to bullet points for the rest of it. Just some questions for the devs:
-Is not killing monsters/minimal-kill questing considered exploiting?
-Do you consider sneaking to be easier than steamrolling everything with extremely powerful builds?
-Why was TCtS changed specifically when many other quests are still possible to get very few kills in? (e.g: all of the slavelords quests, Good Intentions.) Are there plans to "sneak-proof" these quests as well? Will those changes be made apparent in release notes?
-How do you envision sneaking to be used in DDO?

I know that stealth, in any capacity, is a very niche playstyle among DDO players. I profess I don't do minimal-kill runs very often at all, mostly because if I'm playing DDO, it's in a group. I simply don't understand why dev time was spent specifically to stamp it out in one quest.

[blerkington]

Good post. It's really unfortunate that the game is getting closer to Gauntlet with every update. Red warlock needs food badly. Oh wait, he doesn't, he has 5000hp and 250prr!

Stealth play is (was) an enjoyable feature of the game which is normally also quite inefficient for xp/min and other rewards. So I really don't get this sudden fear the development team seems to be showing for this alternative style of play, especially since there is a part of the community whose enjoyment of the game is significantly diminished by making everything about dps or dps + cc.

It was appropriate for the developers to make the game's AI less stupid when dealing with ranged attacks and visible assassinations, but the implementation for stealth and aggro we have now is not very good and could use some more work. The game's AI is also still as dumb as a post regarding AOE damage builds and avoiding CC, but there's no sign at all that this will ever be addressed because apparently bulldozing content is what we should all be doing all the time.

I hope that if you can get a reply to the general issue of the place of stealth in DDO, it will lead to a discussion of specific improvements that can be made to support the style without making it too easy. Not everyone involved in this discussion is lobbying to make their characters more powerful; but getting some internal consistency and preserving some of the depth of game are worthwhile goals.

Thanks.

[Ellihor]

+1

I don't understand why are DEVs so scared of people skipping mobs with stealth. It's not like these builds are even close to the best build options avaliable. Theyre moslty flavor builds (not saying they suck, but that people only prefer these playstyles because of the flavor, not for power).

This thing with To Curse the Sky, really, I don't get it. It is obviously related to the implementation of reaper. Were DEVs scared of people getting reaper xp in To Curse the Sky? Doesn't make sense, it is one of the worse quests at lv 15 to do such thing. Why put this? Why hurt this playstyle? For god's sake, stop the dumbing down of the game and let people do different strategies other than burst everything.

[nokowi]

I think it was Saekee that asked for a stealth thread when agro was broken in U33.

Cordovan replied and said no.


Someone can look it up and link it - if you want your dev response.

[Jasparion]

Unfortunately the game only knows how to balance things around mob HP and mob damage output. If you are avoiding mobs then there is no way for the game to know how to balance things.

So they have to remove any method of avoiding mob HP and mob damage output.

Which is sad. A fun part of the game is being removed, and the replacement is an aggro system that essentially sends waves and waves of mobs after you - so that the AOEing Warlocks can clean them up quickly and easily.