Abhorrent response from the developers

[Shadow_Jumper]

And give stealth minded capstones a + bonus to H/MS.

[changelingamuck]

Uh, Sev, aren't Reapers IMMUNE to insta-death? So what's the point of enabling an assassin to position to Assassinate a Reaper again if the Assassinate isn't going to work ANYWAY?!

I'd prefer being able to sneak up to a reaper and at least get sneak attack damage on them initially compared to how it is now. Or sneak up to the group and assassinate one of their companions without being auto-detected by the reaper.

Anyways, this quote:

We'd love an Assassin to be able to sneak up and take out a Reaper

says "take out a reaper". Not 'assassinate' a reaper.

[Grace_ana]

Our current thought - which totally needs vetting and testing - is maybe Reapers are changed to have Detect Invisibility plus a huge Spot and Listen instead of the detection method they use now, and somewhere in their tree Assassins get to activate a short but huge bonus to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows so they can position for an Assassinate but not just stealth by as the buff will wear off. But that might not be something that works well in testing.

Sev~

This matches what many of us have suggested, so I think you guys are on the right track with it. My assassin and I would be very, very happy to be able to stealth again. I appreciate the thoughtful response.

I'm not sure why this wasn't the answer to our questions instead of "we have no intention of supporting stealth in reaper," which I mention not to beat up on anyone, but to illustrate that upsetting a large number of players could have been avoided with some better communication, and that seems to be a recurring issue. As I would much prefer better communication leading to better relationships between the players and devs, this is something that needs to be worked on.

[changelingamuck]

There's not a single quest in the game where you could rely on even an incredibly sophisticated bot to stealth-run it simply because monsters move around somewhat randomly and if you run into one, hey, HERE COMES EVERYTHING!!!!

Like I said, I can't *think* of a quest that could be cheesed by a reaper stealthing macro. I'm not entirely confident in either of us and our memories though that we would be able to be sure that out of the hundreds of quests in this game that there isn't a quest like that. And if there was just one quest like that, it would be exploited like mad for reaper xp.

Invis-running is NOT the same thing as stealth gameplay, btw. PLENTY of non-reaper mobs can detect merely invisible characters ALREADY. Invis-running is less "skip the quest" and much more "skip the red alert". And even that is substantially limited by a "do the optionals to get the high-end rewards" style.

Yah, trust me, I understand both stealth and invis in this game. I'm not new.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'd prefer being able to sneak up to a reaper and at least get sneak attack damage on them initially compared to how it is now.

Bluff, Improved Feint or Shiv them, then.

Or sneak up to the group and assassinate one of their companions without being auto-detected by the reaper.

If the reaper doesn't share aggro, you can pull the reaper away and kill it first, THEN deal with the group however you see fit. This means that you're not skipping the Reaper, you still have to DEAL with it. BUT the reaper also doesn't FUBAR your stealth OTHERWISE. I gather the reapers are meant to be functional obstacles to ALL playstyles, which I'm fine with. It makes a certain amount of sense.

says "take out a reaper". Not 'assassinate' a reaper.

Yeah, he also uses the words "for an assassin" and indicates that positioning is important. Anybody can "take out" a reaper--you charge the thing and beat it to death. In the context of specifically an assassin getting in position, he means using the actual assassinate ability to "take it out", not just *attacking* the thing. If the point is just to get really close so you can attack it more better, that applies equally to Rangers, Monks, Bards, and everybody else who might be inclined to use stealth to close on enemies.

[Morroiel]

Like I said, I can't *think* of a quest that could be cheesed by a reaper stealthing macro. I'm not entirely confident in either of us and our memories though that we would be able to be sure that out of the hundreds of quests in this game that there isn't a quest like that. And if there was just one quest like that, it would be exploited like mad for reaper xp.



Yah, trust me, I understand both stealth and invis in this game. I'm not new.

Except for the fact that ransack affects reaper xp, and since you have to kill 10 mobs anyways theres no way to macro the whole thing. By maxed out ransack, you'd be better off timewise just doing other quests, etc. for reaper xp. Additionally macros are highly susceptible to lag spikes.

Its honestly not that big of a deal. As someone, who has written macros for other games, I wouldn't consider this worth my time to write.

[DYWYPI]

Severlin, have you considered removing the current additional Reaper XP bonuses from Reaper, or the aspect of the Trees (that add any Character power)? That would be a possibly a positive step and game improvement.

It of course wouldn't address the current Stealth [Sneak] issues, either; within or outside of Reaper. However, it'd be more honest approach regarding Reaper Difficulty "challenge" aspect.

It'd also remove any possibility of a Player applying Sneak (Hide and Move Silently) or even Invisibility, to achieve perhaps the equivalent of "Insidious Cunning" for the purpose of gaining [Reaper XP rewards]. Since the additional "Reaper experience" [power] reward or bonus, would not be present in the first place.

[...] Assassins specifically need to be looked at, because their play style is particularly impacted. ...

Well, I wouldn't say it's just specifically Assassins that need to be looked at, so much a dungeon design or the current illogical "(mis)behaviour" of the some of the monsters. That can easily cause illogical "chain-reaction aggravation", and so forth with regards to a Character in Sneak. Though the Assassin Prestige, requires successful application of being unnoticed, requiring Sneak to Assassinate, etc.

For example of "chain-reaction aggravation", within the http://ddowiki.com/page/The_Mask_of_Deception you can wander casually down to the quest objective room in plain sight; wearing a stolen Cultist Mask (Dragon Mask). Without any prior combat within the compound (avoiding touching White Dragon Mask). Therefore no Cultists have "changed to active hostile mode". Albeit if you do something unwise like; summon a Flaming Sphere near the Shrine on the lower floor, sphere touches a Cultist... It will likely result in the entire dungeon building aggravating and charging to that spot (including the whole of upper floor)!

Unfortunately your main concern seems to be focused around using Stealth to bypass - nearly all - combat and gain Reaper XP. Like mentioned prior, that shouldn't be a major worry if it [Reaper Experience] that resulted in power benefit was aptly removed.

[...] I suspect players will see us testing some things for Assassins in the near future. ...

However, the current "malfunctioning stealth system" is not just limited to Assassin stealthy movement - potentially stealth can apply to any class. Though I'd agree it might be worthwhile your team actually playing some pure Assassins on a regular basis. Allow testing different and alternative aspects of the Assassin's stealth abilities within quests and their performance regarding Sneak and evading unwanted attention, etc.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. So hopefully you'll devote some resources into investigating why Assassins are being specifically targeted by erratic mob aggravation behaviour, etc.

[changelingamuck]

*snip*

I'm happy with what I've heard in this thread about them making assassins workable in reaper.

Been playing an assassin since 2011. Was my first character and has always been an assassin build in every life. Not really looking to get in a long conversation about how-to rogue.

Imma just be happy about the news.

[changelingamuck]

Except for the fact that ransack affects reaper xp, and since you have to kill 10 mobs anyways theres no way to macro the whole thing. By maxed out ransack, you'd be better off timewise just doing other quests, etc. for reaper xp. Additionally macros are highly susceptible to lag spikes.

Its honestly not that big of a deal. As someone, who has written macros for other games, I wouldn't consider this worth my time to write.

Those are good points. Maybe it isn't something they should be worried over (or weren't worried over to begin with. I was just imagining they might be).

[Severlin]

This matches what many of us have suggested, so I think you guys are on the right track with it. My assassin and I would be very, very happy to be able to stealth again. I appreciate the thoughtful response.

I'm not sure why this wasn't the answer to our questions instead of "we have no intention of supporting stealth in reaper," which I mention not to beat up on anyone, but to illustrate that upsetting a large number of players could have been avoided with some better communication, and that seems to be a recurring issue. As I would much prefer better communication leading to better relationships between the players and devs, this is something that needs to be worked on.

That's my fault. Sometimes if I have a lot of meetings or calls we will send out an initial response after a short hallway meeting so players see dev participation. So people are trying to communicate some initial thoughts (in this case that we really don't want players finding exploit dungeons they can stealth through for Reaper XP) while we discuss the problem.

Sev~

[Shadow_Jumper]

That's my fault. Sometimes if I have a lot of meetings or calls we will send out an initial response after a short hallway meeting so players see dev participation. So people are trying to communicate some initial thoughts (in this case that we really don't want players finding exploit dungeons they can stealth through for Reaper XP) while we discuss the problem.

Sev~

Thank you for finally clarifying.

Not to be pushy, but could we get an official thread to discuss suggestions for improving stealth? And is there a rough timeline of when we could see the end of reaper autospot?

[Saekee]

Thanks Sev for clarifying. Remember that the need to kill 10 mobs will always prevent cheesing reaper quests. To kill 10 mobs in Claw of Vulkoor, for example, means slaughtering all the giants. No easy task for squishy stealth builds...There are so many easy reaper quests for someone with a vorpal repeater (like the wilderness Threnal quests) that I would hardly be concerned about easy stealth reaper runs...

Thank you for finally clarifying.

Not to be pushy, but could we get an official thread to discuss suggestions for improving stealth? And is there a rough timeline of when we could see the end of reaper autospot?

This^^^^^.
Please make an official thread & let us pack our observations in there. There are lots of weird DA things happening right now, for example, as well as peculair laisons between slimes and higher functioning species. And I am not referring to my ex.

[HAL]

The bolded part is what I have an issue with.

Stealth is NOT a method of "bypassing" content. It takes LONGER to successfully stealth a quest

What if the issue isn't that a quest should take a certain amount of time, but that in a Reaper-difficulty quest the point is to encounter the Reapers...

[HAL]

That's my fault. Sometimes if I have a lot of meetings or calls we will send out an initial response after a short hallway meeting so players see dev participation. So people are trying to communicate some initial thoughts (in this case that we really don't want players finding exploit dungeons they can stealth through for Reaper XP) while we discuss the problem.

Sev~

You mean that the devs aren't purposefully being mean to their paying customers as was the conclusion so many jumped to? I'm astonished!

[HAL]

Thanks Sev for clarifying. Remember that the need to kill 10 mobs will always prevent cheesing reaper quests.

So there aren't ANY quests in which killing only 10 mobs would be trivial?

[blerkington]

Our current thought - which totally needs vetting and testing - is maybe Reapers are changed to have Detect Invisibility plus a huge Spot and Listen instead of the detection method they use now, and somewhere in their tree Assassins get to activate a short but huge bonus to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows so they can position for an Assassinate but not just stealth by as the buff will wear off. But that might not be something that works well in testing.

Sev~

It's good to see some action on this, both communication wise and in terms of adjusting how the game might work. But I can't help thinking after looking at your reply, we might not have really gotten the key issues across.

1. Stealth completions are slow and finicky compared to regular play. Before you do anything at all, you yourself and some of your colleagues should run some quests with the aim of minimal detection and kills. See how long it takes you to complete on elite and overall how it compares to other approaches, particularly using builds that are set up for AoE damage and/or instakills and also have access to invisibility to avoid combat. Try some old and new content at various level points. Try Saekee's stealth challenges too.

2. The solution you are considering is too much and contains unnecessary changes that might have other adverse affects on game play. There is no need to change the Assassin tree (or any other) by giving it new special abilities. Before you even consider this as a solution, just try changing reapers so they lose tremorsense, gain see invisibility, and so they have competitive (but not ridiculously high) spot and listen scores and are somewhat resistant to bluff. Preserve the challenge, but make it doable in the same way difficulty for other tasks scales in reaper. There is no need to overdesign a solution to this problem and making changes to one tree will result in people lobbying for changes to others too.

When you guys actually fully appreciate the pace of stealth play, and how many of your quests have obstacles to that style of play requiring combat, you will see that the great majority of quests are not a problem. Being in stealth doesn't lower barriers, open locked doors, advance quest objectives which have a minimum number of kills, cause monsters hand over keys that are normally only available upon their deaths, nor does it kill boss monsters.

And please note, we are NOT asking for the ability to assassinate reapers. There's no reason at all for rogues to be given a special pass on this when other forms of instakill do not work on them. Just leave that as it is.

If you try these two things first, most likely you will gain a new perspective on this issue. The people invoking the bogeyman of fast and easy stealth completions as an approach that commonly works in the game might as well be holding up signs that say 'I don't know what I'm talking about but listen to me anyway'. The pace and attention to detail required means stealth will never generally supplant just going through dungeons and tearing the place up as an optimal method of getting progress in this game.

Thanks.

[chrysahor]

Our current thought - which totally needs vetting and testing - is maybe Reapers are changed to have Detect Invisibility plus a huge Spot and Listen instead of the detection method they use now, and somewhere in their tree Assassins get to activate a short but huge bonus to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows so they can position for an Assassinate but not just stealth by as the buff will wear off. But that might not be something that works well in testing.

Sev~

Could you incorporate a solution for all the stealthy class? Ninja spy is the 1st think that comes to my mind as they can be played almost the same way as assassin, but that also incorporate ranger and bard. They all have hide and move silently and hide as class skills.
While bard doesn't have thematic tree based on stealth, both ninja spy and deepwood stalker are linked to stealth play.

Also thanks for your previous answers.

[Mindos]

What if the issue isn't that a quest should take a certain amount of time, but that in a Reaper-difficulty quest the point is to encounter the Reapers...

Kill 10 mobs AND 1 Reaper. And at R10, kill 10 Reapers.

I like it!

[Odysseus2011]

Our current thought - which totally needs vetting and testing - is maybe Reapers are changed to have Detect Invisibility plus a huge Spot and Listen instead of the detection method they use now, and somewhere in their tree Assassins get to activate a short but huge bonus to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows so they can position for an Assassinate but not just stealth by as the buff will wear off. But that might not be something that works well in testing.

How would the agro mechanics change though? Currently if a reaper detects someone who is sneaking they inform the rest of the room, which then proceeds to target that one target. Even if everyone else is not sneaking right next to them.

Under these changes all it would do is make it possible to sneak, but the other side of this coin is how the agro mechanics change once you’ve been spotted. As proposed, the best way for a tank to intimidate an entire room would be to sneak into it.

[PermaBanned]

That's my fault. Sometimes if I have a lot of meetings or calls we will send out an initial response after a short hallway meeting so players see dev participation. So people are trying to communicate some initial thoughts (in this case that we really don't want players finding exploit dungeons they can stealth through for Reaper XP) while we discuss the problem.

Sev~

Unless Stealthing Quests is faster than killing through them, Stealthing wouldn't be an overly rewarding cheese tactic. So many quests featuring "kill mobs to unlock door" help ensure this.

Even so; if all y'all are this concerned over the possibility of Stealthing content for the easy win, are you as equally concerned about "Safe Spots" for the easy win? How about the relative ease Charm builds have? Not that I need specific answers, I'm just not seeing how Stealthing content would be any more or more-easily rewarding than the other "easy button" options which seem fully supported.