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Why stealth sucks and how to make it stop

DraQ

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There is something off about stealth in games (RPGs and non-RPGs alike). Even if it's supposedly the focus of the game it usually doesn't really stand on its own.
Curiously, this seems to be the case even in games where you can't really point anything wrong with their stealth system.

And I think I know why. Stealth fails to stand on its own as primary mechanics because stealth fails to be worthwhile resolution mechanics.
Why? Because it's pretty much always better to use stealth as tool enabling use of other mechanics for actually solving the situation than solving it on its own.
For example, you'll be better off using stealth to kill off or KO the patrols or get into superior position or mess around with any sort of security systems that can then be used to kill the guards and so on. Stealth (by its very nature) doesn't solve the problem permanently so it pretty much always better to use something that does, with stealth as, at most, intermediary step.

But what if:
  1. Patrols reacted to people being disappeared and environment changing and went into full alert, sounding alarms and shit? This would make any spurious interactions undesirable when stealthing, either you ghost, or detection becomes the question of not if, but when. Cleaning up the entire area, unless it's actually isolated should also trigger investigation of communication blackout and arrival of aggressive, fully alerted search team.
  2. Solutions involving violence or otherwise leaving traces would invoke delayed consequences? If your goal is obtaining something (especially information that doesn't need to be removed physically) from a hostile or neutral group, then letting this group know it's been taken is already a fuckup, more so if it can be tracked to you.
  3. There were no fast, easy and reliable KO mechanics? Even games that try to incentivize true stealth or at least non-violence tend to immediately trip over themselves by allowing "non-violent" solutions functionally identical to good old, reliable violence. What if any KO mechanics was unreliable, or at least partially violent by default (in addition to the whole people getting disappeared causing alert)? Missing Link had a step in that direction, but unfortunately it only involved words - one throwaway line to be precise. Whacking someone over the noggin with a blunt object or injecting them with some tranquilizer then leaving them unsupervised in a crumpled heap has a good chance of leaving them dead or crippled.
  4. The only way you can reliably disable someone without killing them is gagging them and tying them up, but it's quite a bit more involved than just bonking them or choking them out, requires resources, and let them be returned to action as soon as someone finds out. It also triggers inevitable search for the missing person, see #1.
  5. There was no lenient, "totally just rats" not-actually-seen mechanics allowing player to skirt patrols' FoV with ease?
Any additional thoughts?
So far I've seen #1, 3 and 5 in STALKER, but it didn't really incentivize stealth as shootan was always a viable, and usually preferable option.
 

J1M

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Creating an RPG is time consuming.
Creating a good combat system is time consuming.
Creating a stealth sub-game for a subsection of characters is time consuming.

Stealth is often represented as an in-game cheat option because most studios would feel like they had won the lottery if given appropriate time and money to build the first two.
 
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how do thief and hitman solve these problems?

Trouble with stealth is that when you roll some bad die the mission is screwed,in conbat you get hit and just need a healing spell
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
There is something off about stealth in games (RPGs and non-RPGs alike). Even if it's supposedly the focus of the game it usually doesn't really stand on its own.

Thief.
(yeah ok you can blackjack there and I usually blackjack everyone but it has a few levels with forced ghosting)
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
But what if:
  1. Patrols reacted to people being disappeared and environment changing and went into full alert, sounding alarms and shit? This would make any spurious interactions undesirable when stealthing, either you ghost, or detection becomes the question of not if, but when. Cleaning up the entire area, unless it's actually isolated should also trigger investigation of communication blackout and arrival of aggressive, fully alerted search team.
  2. Solutions involving violence or otherwise leaving traces would invoke delayed consequences? If your goal is obtaining something (especially information that doesn't need to be removed physically) from a hostile or neutral group, then letting this group know it's been taken is already a fuckup, more so if it can be tracked to you.
  3. There were no fast, easy and reliable KO mechanics? Even games that try to incentivize true stealth or at least non-violence tend to immediately trip over themselves by allowing "non-violent" solutions functionally identical to good old, reliable violence. What if any KO mechanics was unreliable, or at least partially violent by default (in addition to the whole people getting disappeared causing alert)? Missing Link had a step in that direction, but unfortunately it only involved words - one throwaway line to be precise. Whacking someone over the noggin with a blunt object or injecting them with some tranquilizer then leaving them unsupervised in a crumpled heap has a good chance of leaving them dead or crippled.
  4. The only way you can reliably disable someone without killing them is gagging them and tying them up, but it's quite a bit more involved than just bonking them or choking them out, requires resources, and let them be returned to action as soon as someone finds out. It also triggers inevitable search for the missing person, see #1.

Yeah thouse four points are exactly what I would change about the Thief system to make it a more challenging experience for veteran taffers. But I'd change 3 from could become crippled/killed to could wake up after a while if you don't tie them up, returning to their post fully alerted and warning everyone.
Also, alerted guards should run to other guards and tell them there's a thief in the area after they fail to catch you, making the whole place more alert.

Other minor additions I would make to a Thief game AI:
- the sounds you make are more likely to be heard when the room is silent, less likely when people are talking/guards are walking and hear their own footsteps/there is noisy machinery running
- footsteps might not raise guard alertness if you walk along a well-known patrol route (they'd just assume it's another guard or a servant walking there)
- things being different than they normally are should be noticed: a door that is normally closed being open/normally open being closed, lights being off/on when they should be on/off, etc; first time this happens the guard will not be suspicious but change the thing to its usual status again, and maybe ask a pal who is on the same patrol route "hey, you opened that door?" - "nah, didn't" - "eh whatever"; if it happens again, suspicion should rise and if it happens a third time full alert with search for intruder should commence
- some major artifacts might be noticed if missing; for gameplay reasons, I'd only apply that to some main quest items mentioned in the briefing, but the player will need to keep this in mind: switch the big golden artifact with a cheap fake, if you just steal it and it's gone everyone will notice the huge empty spot in the display case
- knocking someone out makes a sound and will alert those who hear it
- killing someone makes him bleed, dragging him to a hiding spot will leave a trail of blood which can be spotted by others
 

Johannes

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Well, if it isn't the sole focus of the game, those aren't necessarily as big problems. Moving undetected to a good position to start a fight, is interesting and crucial in a ton of games, from Jagged Alliance to Hotline Miami.
 
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The only time I do that is in relation to Obsidian games because they have, you know, such a fundamentally flawed understanding of stealth.
 
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Last edited:

DraQ

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Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Creating an RPG is time consuming.
Creating a good combat system is time consuming.
Creating a stealth sub-game for a subsection of characters is time consuming.

Stealth is often represented as an in-game cheat option because most studios would feel like they had won the lottery if given appropriate time and money to build the first two.
That would be a point if existing combat systems didn't look like designed from ground up by a blind simian (or more likely a committee - it's hard to tell).
Solid base design gives you a batter result and less work trying to work around issues that stem from inadequate design - yeah, I know - months of coding can sometimes save you even hours of thinking and planning. :M

Trouble with stealth is that when you roll some bad die the mission is screwed,in conbat you get hit and just need a healing spell
That's the problem with simplistic stealth implementation.
There are many intermediate states between "ghosting" and "come at me bro!" - starting with "what if it isn't rats?" (as long as it doesn't involve intruder run in front of your face it's good for guards to not be fully alerted by nearest sound), growing suspicion, having found clear sign of activity, knowing intruders presence, but not his location and ending up with having narrowed down his location to the point where he can be attacked.
You can always try to manage intermediate failure states before you're forced out of stealth.

Just needing an easily replenishable healing spell after getting fucked up is bad combat design too BTW.
But I'd change 3 from could become crippled/killed to could wake up after a while if you don't tie them up, returning to their post fully alerted and warning everyone.
I'd like both please.
The gist of it is that KO's shouldn't be pacifist-friendly way of dismantling the patrols and clearing the level, but rather desperate measure to maintain low-profile while minimizing kills after you have fucked up.
There could be safer methods of rendering target unconscious but they should be resource and situationally limited to the point of not being widely applicable.

Also, alerted guards should run to other guards and tell them there's a thief in the area after they fail to catch you, making the whole place more alert.
Of course. Alerted status should be "infectious" - coming near someone who's on your team, but less alert than you are, should make them as alerted as you.

- the sounds you make are more likely to be heard when the room is silent, less likely when people are talking/guards are walking and hear their own footsteps/there is noisy machinery running
- footsteps might not raise guard alertness if you walk along a well-known patrol route (they'd just assume it's another guard or a servant walking there)
Good ideas, but might be tricky to implement.

- things being different than they normally are should be noticed: a door that is normally closed being open/normally open being closed, lights being off/on when they should be on/off, etc; first time this happens the guard will not be suspicious but change the thing to its usual status again, and maybe ask a pal who is on the same patrol route "hey, you opened that door?" - "nah, didn't" - "eh whatever"; if it happens again, suspicion should rise and if it happens a third time full alert with search for intruder should commence
- some major artifacts might be noticed if missing; for gameplay reasons, I'd only apply that to some main quest items mentioned in the briefing, but the player will need to keep this in mind: switch the big golden artifact with a cheap fake, if you just steal it and it's gone everyone will notice the huge empty spot in the display case
- killing someone makes him bleed, dragging him to a hiding spot will leave a trail of blood which can be spotted by others
Good ideas and not that hard to implement.

Changing state of an object could attach instigator id to it and looking at something with wrong instigator id would elevate alert level. This is good because it could be expanded to instigator id propagating between objects themselves, allowing guards to be properly alerted by, for example barrel billiard.

Picking up objects could drop invisible objects with right instigator id indicating that stuff has gone missing.

Bleeding (if someone got killed in a messy way) could also work by having instigator (whoever caused the wound) id attached to blood decal objects.

- knocking someone out makes a sound and will alert those who hear it
Yes.

Well, if it isn't the sole focus of the game, those aren't necessarily as big problems. Moving undetected to a good position to start a fight, is interesting and crucial in a ton of games, from Jagged Alliance to Hotline Miami.
If the game has any sort of stealth system, those *ARE* big problems.

Countermeasures mentioned don't affect validity of using stealth merely as opener, but prevent pure stealth from being either pointless or completely game breaking.

I saw someone... maybe just a homeless guy.

*tap tap tap tap*

YEEEEAAAAARRRGHHH
My cheese is augmented.

I mean stealth.
 

JarlFrank

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- the sounds you make are more likely to be heard when the room is silent, less likely when people are talking/guards are walking and hear their own footsteps/there is noisy machinery running
- footsteps might not raise guard alertness if you walk along a well-known patrol route (they'd just assume it's another guard or a servant walking there)
Good ideas, but might be tricky to implement.

Yep, especially the second point. First point could be realtively simple to implement in regards to background noises, if those noises are constant or based on an on/off switch (like machinery running inside a machine room): if noisy machinery is switched on, likelyhood of player's footsteps to make guards suspicious = X% lower, or sound radius of player footsteps = lower, something like that. Making sounds interact with each other dynamically, like player footsteps not being noticed among many guards walking and making footstep sounds, a servant maid humming a song and some guy pulling a noisy wagon along the hallway, is harder, but could be doable using a similar principle. It's definitely something that would be worth trying for skilled programmers.

- things being different than they normally are should be noticed: a door that is normally closed being open/normally open being closed, lights being off/on when they should be on/off, etc; first time this happens the guard will not be suspicious but change the thing to its usual status again, and maybe ask a pal who is on the same patrol route "hey, you opened that door?" - "nah, didn't" - "eh whatever"; if it happens again, suspicion should rise and if it happens a third time full alert with search for intruder should commence
- some major artifacts might be noticed if missing; for gameplay reasons, I'd only apply that to some main quest items mentioned in the briefing, but the player will need to keep this in mind: switch the big golden artifact with a cheap fake, if you just steal it and it's gone everyone will notice the huge empty spot in the display case
- killing someone makes him bleed, dragging him to a hiding spot will leave a trail of blood which can be spotted by others
Good ideas and not that hard to implement.

Changing state of an object could attach instigator id to it and looking at something with wrong instigator id would elevate alert level. This is good because it could be expanded to instigator id propagating between objects themselves, allowing guards to be properly alerted by, for example barrel billiard.

Picking up objects could drop invisible objects with right instigator id indicating that stuff has gone missing.

Bleeding (if someone got killed in a messy way) could also work by having instigator (whoever caused the wound) id attached to blood decal objects.

Some Thief fan missions already implement some of that, and I think the Dark Mod does too with some things. I do remember one Thief FM (though I forgot the name) where a missing item would be noticed by NPCs and they would get alert when they see it missing, and I think I've seen a FM where switching off the lights in a lighted place would alert the guards who patrolled there because they know that the light is supposed to be switched on.

I am not entirely sure but it might be that in Thief, guards will notice pools of blood that appear when you kill someone (but I don't think carrying a corpse to a hiding spot leaves a trail of blood for them to follow).

If anyone's putting some thought into improving stealth gameplay/AI it's the Thief FM community and the Dark Mod team. Mainstream producers don't really seem to care about this type of gameplay all too much, beyond "you can kill people STEALTHILY!".
 

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- the sounds you make are more likely to be heard when the room is silent, less likely when people are talking/guards are walking and hear their own footsteps/there is noisy machinery running
- footsteps might not raise guard alertness if you walk along a well-known patrol route (they'd just assume it's another guard or a servant walking there)
Good ideas, but might be tricky to implement.

Yep, especially the second point.
Actually I have an idea regarding second point - make the (walking, not running) footsteps less alerting the closer they occur to some AI's patrol path and make the effect cumulative (if there is just one person patrolling there it's relatively easy to discern suspicious footsteps by them happening at odd times and in odd patterns, but if the area is busy, then pretty much no footsteps will be suspicious).

First point would just need having loudness level attached to all sound sources.

If anyone's putting some thought into improving stealth gameplay/AI it's the Thief FM community and the Dark Mod team. Mainstream producers don't really seem to care about this type of gameplay all too much, beyond "you can kill people STEALTHILY!".
I don't mind killing people stealthily, but it should be hard, if only because it makes people go missing.

I think STALKER was the only game I know where stealth kills pretty much put you on timer. Shame it didn't have enough incentive to sneak around, because systemically it was p. good (noise levels, alert AI, no obligatory detection pause, yet still had visibility levels and non-omniscient AI).
 

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I think STALKER was the only game I know where stealth kills pretty much put you on timer. Shame it didn't have enough incentive to sneak around, because systemically it was p. good (noise levels, alert AI, no obligatory detection pause, yet still had visibility levels and non-omniscient AI).

I remember the Commandos clone Desperados to have AI become suspicious when a guy is missing. It had pretty good stealth systems (although sometimes it was exploitable, like when you are at a point only reachable by a long ladder - you can shoot to lure them with the sound, and then kill them all as they climb up one by one), with AI noticing missing comrades, knocked out AI having to be tied up or waking up after a while, tied up AI being freed and knocked out being awakened if found by comrades, AI guards starting an area-wide search once they suspect something (like if they spotted you and you managed to flee, or if they heard a shot but couldn't find you, or if they saw a corpse/kocked out guy, or if they found someone missing from his guard post...) by shooting in the air and pointing everyone to the place they saw the suspicious thing...

As far as these types of Commandos-style stealth games go, Desperados had really cool systems.
 

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What's wrong with using stealth in conjunction with other mechanics? For me, it worked good in Manhunt and Skyrim with killing, in Dishonored with disabling, in Hitman and ADwR in different variations, sometimes even on it's own.
 

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I remember the Commandos clone Desperados to have AI become suspicious when a guy is missing. As far as these types of Commandos-style stealth games go, Desperados had really cool systems.
I was just going to mention Desperados ... I happen to be in the middle of a playthrough right now (just broke Sanchez out of the fortress/prison last night!) Great systems. One of my favorite things about it is that every enemy has his own unique AI. One guy doesn't care if he hears a noise. One guy freaks out if his buddy disappears. One guy will investigate a disturbance. One guy will get a subordinate to go check it out. One guy will run out into the open and fire his rifle in the air to alert everyone. This goes a long way to instill player uncertainty and a desire to not let anyone see you because god knows what they will do. Of course, it doesn't qualify as the "ghost" type of game that DraQ is talking about, but that's beside the point. As JF said, there are a lot of great systems at work here and I recommend Desperados as very worthy of examination when discussing stealth systems.

On the topic in general, I think that one very easy fix to most stealth systems in games would be to do away with "alertness cooldowns". There are too many games in which I blunder into a guard, he chases me, I get away and hide, and 2 minutes later the same guard is back on his patrol as if nothing happened. Once a guy is alert, he should stay alert, and possibly "pass it on" to allies he comes in contact with, possibly leaving his post to seek out others if suspicion becomes high enough. Also, a high alert search pattern should be harder to get by than a low alert patrol, but not impossible. Enemy suspicion should not be a fail state.
 

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What's wrong with using stealth in conjunction with other mechanics?
Nothing *if* the stealth itself actually works properly and if it isn't unconditionally inferior to just using stealth as helper mechanics for another approach.

Edit: Inferior. I meant inferior - durrr.

One guy doesn't care if he hears a noise. One guy freaks out if his buddy disappears. One guy will investigate a disturbance. One guy will get a subordinate to go check it out. One guy will run out into the open and fire his rifle in the air to alert everyone.
Haven't played Desperados, but loss of predictability indeed sounds like a good incentive for maintaining stealth.

Of course, it doesn't qualify as the "ghost" type of game that DraQ is talking about, but that's beside the point.
I'm thinking of ghosting as more of a playstyle here, actually.

On the topic in general, I think that one very easy fix to most stealth systems in games would be to do away with "alertness cooldowns". There are too many games in which I blunder into a guard, he chases me, I get away and hide, and 2 minutes later the same guard is back on his patrol as if nothing happened. Once a guy is alert, he should stay alert, and possibly "pass it on" to allies he comes in contact with, possibly leaving his post to seek out others if suspicion becomes high enough. Also, a high alert search pattern should be harder to get by than a low alert patrol, but not impossible. Enemy suspicion should not be a fail state.
Yes, fucking yes!

I really should have mentioned alert cooldowns in my OP as they are one of the biggies.
Unless we're talking of an open world game there shouldn't be such a thing at all, if we are talking of an open world game, elevated alertness should still last hours to days even in case of something as losely organized as bandit camp, with enemies trying to track the culprit down a good way across the gameworld.

Edit:
Fixed unfinshed sentence - that's what I get for not typing my posts in a single burst.
 
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The only game that does stealth right is Thief. I can't think of a single exception.

I deeply resented being penalized for electing not to use stealth in DX:HHR.

I agree with Johannes' point about the value of setting up a good ambush, and being able to use terrain to your advantage however (JA2).
 
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On the topic in general, I think that one very easy fix to most stealth systems in games would be to do away with "alertness cooldowns". There are too many games in which I blunder into a guard, he chases me, I get away and hide, and 2 minutes later the same guard is back on his patrol as if nothing happened. Once a guy is alert, he should stay alert, and possibly "pass it on" to allies he comes in contact with, possibly leaving his post to seek out others if suspicion becomes high enough. Also, a high alert search pattern should be harder to get by than a low alert patrol, but not impossible. Enemy suspicion should not be a fail state.

This brings us back to one of the current fundamental problems of stealth though and that's the binary nature of failure states. I don't think amplifying consequences of being seen is the right move to take when there's no accepted way of handling the core gameplay of a stealth character.

There are many little changes that can be made but I think most of them glance over the biggest problems of stealth.

I would say refining the mechanics that allow that character to go unseen (via shadows/lighting/line of sight etc) , vastly improving the information feedback during stealth (there are almost no games where you can know for sure how hidden you are and yet that's a pretty damn important part of stealth in reality) and giving NPCs more ways of detecting but at the same time softening their responses to detections would go the furthest to improving the current system (if someone sees you and the whole level gets put on alert (even if by that NPC) then it might be realistic but that's not conducive to good gameplay).

I don't think you need to get overly simulationist to make stealth better though. There are a few abstract mechanics that could be used that blend well with a character skill-based system.
 

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This brings us back to one of the current fundamental problems of stealth though and that's the binary nature of failure states. I don't think amplifying consequences of being seen is the right move to take when there's no accepted way of handling the core gameplay of a stealth character.
Good post, but I still think that having significant but not extreme consequences to detection is a good way to deal with it. Definitely need to be harsher consequences than "hide and wait 2 minutes".

It's also important that detection not be a failure state, which you agree with in your post. The "baseline" gameplay should be designed with the assumption that the player will be detected along the way. If he manages to totally ghost it, bonus, but it shouldn't be the only expected way to play through.
 
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Yeah that sounds good to me. Immediate consequences in stealth should be established at a base difficulty level in a given area or mission but lingering consequences are ramped up as failure frequency increases. So, you might be able to complete the mission after lots of slip ups but once it's over the amount of slip ups you had in the mission mean that longer term successes and/or rewards are impacted.
 
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- the sounds you make are more likely to be heard when the room is silent, less likely when people are talking/guards are walking and hear their own footsteps/there is noisy machinery running
- footsteps might not raise guard alertness if you walk along a well-known patrol route (they'd just assume it's another guard or a servant walking there)
Good ideas, but might be tricky to implement.

Yep, especially the second point. First point could be realtively simple to implement in regards to background noises, if those noises are constant or based on an on/off switch (like machinery running inside a machine room): if noisy machinery is switched on, likelyhood of player's footsteps to make guards suspicious = X% lower, or sound radius of player footsteps = lower, something like that. Making sounds interact with each other dynamically, like player footsteps not being noticed among many guards walking and making footstep sounds, a servant maid humming a song and some guy pulling a noisy wagon along the hallway, is harder, but could be doable using a similar principle. It's definitely something that would be worth trying for skilled programmers.

I believe one of the old splinter (Chaos Theory?) cells already done the first point. Besides having a light meter, you had a sound meter as well, and the sound meter would measure the ambient sound and the sound you make. If the enviroment had a high level sound, you could make any sound below that level, and you wouldn't attract attention.

The good thing about thief is that although it's not blessed to have this very elaborate system, You had lots of sound levels you make, plus some randomness of AI, that sometimes detect a sound you think it wouldn't attract attention. And the fact that there's no sound meter at all beyond your own ear. The point is even after being a seasoned thief player, sometimes AI would behave differently than expected. I aways have the impression that a cooled down AI in thief is more propense to hear quiter sounds and go to full alert immediatelly. I've experienced this man times. i never have the feeling that Cooled down AIs in thief are exactly in the same state they are originally. And that may be a bug, but it only adds to the game, as it looks like the guard is slightly more spooked, as when we see a dangerous big spider in real life, and minutes later is someone gently touches you you jump the chair just because you think it may be that spider.

The light-gem meter in thief works because it has various levels of lighting. But I'd like to try any mod that removes the gem but keeps the light system working as vanilla, and the player would have to really trust his guts as to what shadow is really dark enough to hide you, and forcing you to rely on totally on your own eyes. In some thief levels, you are in some corner that you see it's too dark but the gem indicates that you're at least partially visible. Taking the info away from the player would make thing more random.
 

JarlFrank

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Yes, that's not a bug, it has to be intentional. Any guard who used to be alert will be MUCH more sensitive to sound, it becomes most apparent when you try to knock out such a guard and he hears your footsteps just as you are a few steps behind him.
 

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Anybody else remember the Thief quote from the developers discussing AI triggers?
"It may be that he finds the sound of the arrow entering his body slightly suspicious."
 

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Video game stealth is pretty elementally silly, if you imagine yourself on the defense you can think of ten different bottleneck/dead man's switch type countermeasures that it would make it obviously impossible for some ninja to sneak past ten guards and cameras. Most realism/sim ways to do stealth will just encourage save/loading because as impossible as you could make it for an unknown ninja to sneak past 10 guards having another boring night of making it impossible to sneak in somewhere, it would be a hundred times... more impossible to sneak past those 10 guards alert and ready and looking for a ninja, much less able to know they should go check out that cardboard box that wasn't there the last time they turned their back.

Playing Deus Ex HR I wished they'd had some gameified Nu- Prince of Persia type rewind mechanic so I could do ghost-style puzzle game fake stealth without having to reload.
 

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Still no real mention of the Hitman series in this thread. Those games always impressed me with their approach to stealth itself, not their ability to deal with a failed stealth state. Multiple missions designed in such a way that you can sneak by avoiding being seen, dress up as a guard, sneak in as a guest, don't approach your target at all but find a lethal solution through indirect method. In terms of the actual failure state it was fairly well done. If you were fully noticed, no amount of time passed would make the ai go "I guess hes gone now herp." On the other hand if you managed to stop the npc from reaching other npc's to warn them.... then you could end the alarm. Sadly of course Absolution went full
:popamole:
Nice thread though.
 

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