I don't know if anyone brought this up before but are there any plans to work around or with stealth characters when it comes to completing missions? I'm sure everyone knows that CoH changed how missions were completed when they made clickies(or glowies if you prefer) de-stealth your character for a few seconds when they were clicked. My opinion, at least how I played, was that skipping a lot of mobs and completing the mission through stealth did not really earn me an extraordinary amount of XP in a given time versus fighting my way to the end. Whether the data-mining done by the devs showed a different outcome of players destroying the XP curve, I can't say.
My thought when doing it was that it was just a refreshing change of pace which was only slightly diminished when we were punished for our alternative way of approaching missions. On a tangent but similar line, this goes with players coming up with creative ways to use powers but were punished with less XP if they did not do all the damage themselves. An example from my early play where I learned this was knocking foes off of the buildings in Perez Park. I thought it was a good tactic instead of trying to go toe-to-toe every time with every foe so I thought why am I being punished for thinking how I approach combat. Again, I did not believe this type of gameplay rewarded me with extraordinary amounts of XP even if I were to get the points from fall damage. But again, I don't know if there were players out there that skewed the devs datamining.
Any thoughts on this or do you even care if your XP is diminished for using powers in a alternative way? Do you think you should be rewarded or punished for your tactics? Is this something MWM can work around or work into the game? What I do know is that I don't want to be locked into a certain style of gameplay(ie I must fight everything, everywhere I go) and if I stray from that gameplay(not using cheats or obvious exploits), the game will remind me not to via a nerf to my progression.
Edit: just for clarification, when I say reward I mean the character gets normal XP instead of nerfed XP.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
I would like to see a possible form of renown system in every faction, a stealth character would become known by the group they do jobs for more than they would that they are working against. However if you go loud and proud you would be known in that other group as not necessarily very well either.
I think in one of their kickstarter blogs they mentioned something about being able to access instanced content from different routes such as the front door, certain windows etc.
MWM is supporting stealth gameplay; so you can ninja your missions to your heart's content. They are even planning on having a badge(s?) available to earn by completing missions by stealth.
There are several threads on the forum that cover stealth play/mechanics that you can check for more details. May the force be with your searchfu ...
As for knocking things off the top of buildings ... it was just too much fun to do so and never worried about the XP. Don't recall that MWM has ever mentioned whether we will be able to get credit for indirect damage or defeats.
Ok, I found a couple threads. I guess I could have necroed them and asked for updated info/discussion. Here they are, along with pertinent quotes for anyone interested and not wanting to search for them.
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/stealth-gameplay-features
This is where our Challenges and Achievements can come into play. Where completing missions using stealth options such as avoiding detection, completing objectives (which may include defeating the main target assasin style) provides achievement bonuses upon completion.
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/stealth-vs-perception <--- this thread is two years old so who knows what has changed, been tested, thrown out, etc
One thing we are going to attempt is to make basic stealth, that is sneaking around and avoiding notice possible for everyone.
There are 3 effects that we have which deal with the character ability to sneak around:
Powers may enhance Stealth making the sneaking around part easier.
Invisibility is a separate effect for design purposes,
Phased is yet another effect for design purposes.
Improved Stealth, invisibility, and phased can each be used independently to make avoiding notice easier.
And there will be effects to counter each. At least this is the plan. We have yet to test our Stealth system so things are seriously subject to change.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
I'll give you my two cents on this, in no particular order:
1. I have a philosophical, semantic bone to pick with the practice of calling less rewards "punishment". It's not punishment, in my book. You know going in that you're going to get less in terms of IGC and items if you stealth a mission, if that's the way the set it up. If you choose to do it anyway, you're getting exactly what they said you'd get before you started. Yes they tweaked the game after the start to make it like that, so it's less than you might have gotten at one time, but once those changes go in, it's not punishment. Punishment would be hitting you with debuffs or taking IGC away or something. It's just disappointingly less rewards than it used to be. Strictly speaking, it's not punishment, it's milder positive reinforcement than previously had. Just my OCD.
2. I think it comes down to the amount of rewards for completing the mission versus the rewards you might get for defeating the mobs (and not finishing the mission). In CoX, people would stealth through missions to make TFs finish faster, but they'd also farm soloable missions to milk mob-defeat rewards. Personally, I think the lion's share of the loot ought to come at the end. If you want to make it less rewards for having done less mob clean-up during the mission, that's fine, but I would still make the majority of the IGC and item drops (or the good ones anyway) happen only at the end of a successfully completed mission. There are a number of reasons for that, but mainly, I'm openly against mission repeat farming to the point of never completing a mission, on purpose, to keep milking it for the same rewards over and over, at least insofar as I would try to take away rules loopholes or "features" that encourage it and reward it. I know the devs don't really hate that as much as I do, but I dislike the features that might exist in the rules or reward scheme that encourage that and see them as flaws. I know other people who feel differently about that, and we have agreed to disagree, but I remain averse to making the rules intentionally friendly toward mission-never-complete-farming.
3. Having said 2, if you loaded the rewards at the end of the mission, you're encouraging stealthing missions, to some extent, but so what? If you've taken a stealth power (or combo) then that's what it ought to be for, I think.
4. Having said all of the above, I'm not against forcing people out of stealth while interacting with a glowwie, or putting the end boss in a large room full of mobs. If the bomb you're diffusing is in the middle of a well lit room, I'm okay with the game rule that prevents your ninja stealth skills from applying in that case. Regardless of the outcome or effect on the game, it sounds flavorful and immersive to me that it would work that way.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
If I don't get a #Foxhound badge I'll be upset.
Charles Logan
www.cloganart.com
Raidac ... that starts getting to a "put your numbers where your mouth is" kind of requirement.
It's one thing to say "lion's share of loot ought to come at the end" and it's another thing to put NUMBERS on just how proportionate that payout should be.
80% from mob defeats in Mission, 20% upon completion?
60% from mob defeats in Mission, 40% upon completion?
40% from mob defeats in Mission, 60% upon completion?
20% from mob defeats in Mission, 80% upon completion?
The statement of "lion's share of loot ought to come at the end" says nothing more than (0-49)% from mob defeats in Mission and (51-100)% upon completion. That's too wide a range of possibilities to be USEFUL. That simply indicates your leanings and preferences, but doesn't provide AN ANSWER to the question.
NUMBERS man ... give us NUMBERS! With numbers we can start making value judgements and analyze the alternatives, along with what the balance/mix does to the incentive structure and the inevitable "most reward for least work done" outcomes that everyone will be steered towards by the Path Of Least Resistance. Without putting numbers onto things, you're just dealing in Weasel Words™ and leaving things so fuzzy that nothing can usefully be extracted from the opinion to put into programming.
Put your NUMBERS where your mouth is.
Please.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Why award XP for defeating mobs at all?
Seriously.
Surely you should award violence points for advancing further along the violence alignment axis.
But XP should be rewarded for completing missions. This way you could defeat the mobs, bypass the mobs, or charm the mobs into a cult following. In any case the mission would be completed and the XP is awarded. The only difference being what the alignment result would be.
Of course there could always be the "kill 20 rats" missions for the killers among us, awarding extra credit bonus XP for enthusiastic overachievers. And there could always be "kill mobs for additional XP" riders on missions as well. But at the same time, there could be riders that award xp for the number of mobs left standing at the completion of missions also. In fact you could have both riders on the some of the same missions depending on who hired you and what your alignment is.
So someone who is trying to become the world's greatest assassin might get the most XP out of a mission by defeating the final boss without killing any of the underlings at all. And she could do this by mezzing them, bypassing them, or leaving them in a subdued state with their thumbs zip-tied together.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
That's a solution I didn't think of and could possibly address people who think like Radiac and people that think like me where straying just a little outside the box, yet not cheating, and your rewards are diminished, ie punished for thinking about combat instead of button mashing. Though, I'm assuming that feature is off when you are street sweeping? I'm not sure how you would handle XP in that situation.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
On point 1, to be clear the punishment was removing stealth when clicking glowies. I never really saw any punishment reward wise stealthing missions beyond that. I completely understood I didn't get mob XP because I chose not to fight them and there was never a reduction in mission complete XP for stealthing it. My pet peeve was when I used powers like knockback and a mob took fall damage so I was "punished" in XP loss for not dealing ALL the damage yet that foe would not have magically thrown himself off the ledge without my intervention. I still actively defeated him. I will disagree vehemently that using Tornado, Force Bubble, Energy Torrent, etc to knock a foe off a building or into lava was a cheat or exploit. I suppose you could say I was 'rewarded' with damage mitigation but many powers did that on their own by design. They could have just as easily removed fall or extraneous damage then from mobs if they are going to count a building or lava pit as a teammate. I would like to be rewarded for using tactics not slapped on the wrist. If the devs don't like it then explicitly deem it an exploit or cheat and I will have no problem refraining from the activity.
I agree with pretty much everything you said in point 4. I don't expect to stealth every mission and it would add more variety if my foes have ways of detecting the invisible. I actually liked that I could sneak up on my high level mobs but not things like Rikti Drones but that it was made it so frustrating is that did not happen in glowie missions. It was just a blanket standard with no regard to playstyle.
It appears CoT is taking a different avenue and from the sounds of it, more like stealth in some first person shooter games. With that implemented, stealth is not shoe-horned in so hopefully it will open up more variety in gameplay.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
As a reward, I would like to see the first tier stealth badge unlock a new contact(s). Shield(esque)/Hydra(esque) covert organizations that have only stealth based missions and an expansive story arc(s). You would also be able to function as a double agent.
Mission drops absolutely nothing on you while you're in it defeating mobs. Mission tracks how many mobs you (or the team you're on) have defeated since you started it (or since the last time you re-started it, if you had to do a reset for any reason), and at the end, IF you successfully complete the mission, you get total IGC rewards proportional to the quantity and quality of mobs defeated, plus mission reward bonuses of different sizes for different main objectives, lesser objectives, etc plus random item drops, again proportional to the quantity and quality of mobs defeated and objectives completed (by the team).
In that system, I can't see a reason why anyone would want to milk a mission for repeated incomplete runs, since you get nothing from them, at all. You only get paid by the NPC who issued the mission to you when and if you "deliver the goods" to them at the end of a successfully completed mission. Also, if you stealth it, you know you're not getting any of the juice from the mobs you didn't defeat, your call. Maybe you just want the mission completion rewards, or maybe you want to get through the mission, successfully, and don't think you can actually defeat the mobs, or don't have the time. Whatever. Personal choice.
In GW2, monsters rarely drop anything of real value upon defeat, inside or outside of an event, but almost everything you do, if it's an event of any kind, gives tangible rewards at the end. People don't do Octovine raids for the purpose of getting the loot drops that occur during, they want to complete it successfully to get the massive treasure bonanza that is the Tarir multimap loot fest at the end. It works. That game is popular, people don't storm out cursing, even when the Octovine raid fails, which does happen. YES there's sour grapes on the chat, but people also know that they'll have another chance to do it again in 2 hours, and that all they've lost is about 20 minutes of their time.
Mobs could drop loot randomly, to the point of not dropping anything at all, MOST of the time, and I think people would still enjoy the game. If you have to reset a mission due to getting DCed or time problems on your end, you go back and redo the mission, from the beginning, and you don't get loot rewards until you successfully complete it. I'm all for letting people repeat missions, to completion. I did the same tip missions on CoX many times over, to completion, for Hero Merits.
That's how I'd do it, YMMV.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think street sweeping can be put into the game as its own animal. Give XP for every open-world encounter you defeat, but with the following criteria:
If there were a bunch of hoodums standing on the street corner being all hoodlumy, and a hero came up and beat them into submission. That hero would have just violated the law and would be declared a violent vigilante. Maybe the player character is fine with that label and the violence and unlawful alignment points they just collected.
However, if the player character went to the police station first and told the precinct administrator: "I'm going on a street sweeping mission, do you have any outstanding warrants?" and then you get a mission to take out a couple random lieutenant level bosses and during the course of that, you also can interrogate any streetcorner hoodlums you come across against the mission briefing to see if any of them have outstanding warrants. It could be a simple tooltip that puts a flag on them or something when you con them.
So in that case the street sweeping mission could be an open-ended mission in any single neighborhood/precinct. It would be a daily mission good for 24 hours, and it would provide you with XP for every warrant collected. Furthermore, while your violence score could go up (depending on how you subdued them, of course) your law score would go up for each warrent you collected on, but down for each unwarranted beatdown you issued.
Of course, self-defense.is always warranted. So if you were operating without precinct approval and landed next to those same streetcorner hoodlums and they attacked you first, you wouldn't collect any unlawful points, but you wouldn't collect any lawful points either, and you would still get the XP for them.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
If Hero is to truly mean Hero, it shouldn't just be about how much ass they stomp.
If Villain is to actually mean Villain, it shouldn't only be about overt use of strength.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
People did almost zero street sweeping in CoX when there were more lucrative (in terms of INF and items) things to do, like TFs, Incarnate Trials, etc. I think it's fine to have some random mobs populating the outdoor areas, just as window dressing, but I don't expect anyone to go out and street sweep very much just for the heck of it. I would want them to have a series of smaller, regularly-occurring outdoor events that fire off on known timers so people can plan ahead and do them, probably getting a badge, or several, for ding them all. GW2 has that, well not the badges, but "Achievements" which are similar. I mean, it has wild animals and monsters populating the maps, but those are mostly just background. The real reason anyone does outdoor stuff in GW2 is to do the events that can be done. There are NPC contacts in every zone that have a mission for you (just one) and when you complete it, you can buy stuff from them (vend function unlocked). There are spots in every zone (like 5-10 of them in each zone scattered around) where you can do a heroic thing, called Hero Challenges. Those award a Hero Point when you do them, which is often "beat the boss and get the Hero Point he's guarding" type stuff, and you need those Hero Points to unlock different skills you want. Then there are events that fire off on a clockwork cycle at different times every couple hours or every day, etc, like Tequatl, the Sunless attacking Fabled Djannor, or the Mordrem unleashing the Octovine on Tarir. Repetitive, yes, but lucrative enough that they draw a crowd daily, if not more often. Then there are many many other smaller events that can be done, probably like a dozen in every zone, and people do them to level their characters because of the bonus XP for completion and so forth. GW2 gives you XP just for walking around and uncovering the map. Every time you hit a new little area and "discover" it, you get that area to be visible on your map (areas you haven't been to are obscured) and an XP bonus, then you get MORE XP for unlocking the Waypoints and points of interest on the map. Then you get another bonus for completing a whole zone map. In theory, you;re not going to be able to do this without fighting your way through the landscape and probably doing events that fire off around you, but the XP bonuses are given just for discovering new terrain itself, in addition to the fighting stuff you'd get anyway.
I'm not saying CoT should give XP bonuses for discovering different areas with your character, because exploration is not really a thing in superhero games, but I'm not against giving it out for various non-combatty things, plus combat. Finding a USE for XP beyond hitting the level cap is the hard part. In GW2 you use it to unlock Mastery Point skills, many of which just give you passive bonuses or unlock vendor functions in different areas you might want. This system really kind of encourages you to "do" the whole game, not just the same stuff over and over again because in order to unlock the Mastery Points, you have to go to different places and do different things. There are only so many places where a Mastery Point can be earned, and then once you get that one you have to go someplace else to get another one, etc. Some of them can be gotten for doing the same content in different ways, not unlike certain CoX badges.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Another thing I like about GW2 is that while CoX had a Weekly Strike Target, which was ONE TF to do, GW2 has multiple different DAILY bonus rewards offered which change every 24 hours. When you log in, or when the "Great Reset" happens, at 7pm every night, the game asks you to choose whether you want PvE Daily Rewards, PvP ones, or World V World ones. You pick, then there's a menu of maybe 4 or 5 different things it will give you a bonus treasure chest for doing that day, until it resets again. This gets veterans who've done that stuff back out in the different areas doing the events again for the bonus treasure, which isn't even all that much, actually, but it's something to do, you get rewarded for it, and you KNOW other people will be there doing it too.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I like the open-ended mission idea. I would still like to see 'street-sweeping' as an option because to me it keeps the theme of the patrolling hero keeping the streets safe. Yes, I know in CoH it appeared more like the "I'm itching for something to fight just to fight" mentality and yes, I'm guilty of feeling that way more often than not but there were also times I was RPing I was keeping the citizens safe. But then again, who knows as they may want a zone like that where it is constant battle where it is something like Midtown in Marvel Heroes, a very popular zone I kept returning to despite it being repetitive. I'm not sure what drove me there as opposed to Industry City but I still found it fun enough to just switch heroes and continue beating on mobs.
I'm interested in knowing what they have planned. Active patrolling or more mission oriented either through instancing or phasing tech or as Radiac pointed out, yes, you can fight foes out in the street but not often because they are more window-dressing. Lots of good ideas floating around here.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
What I hope is that missions will have both hidden, active and optional objectives.
For example say my merc is on a contract/mission, his job is to recover a VIP. well i don't necessarily care about any other civi in the area or all the enemies but if your in my way your eating the ground. However if his contract starts by saying I want you to kill all the buggers and recover the VIP. Welp all of the die etc etc.
hmm.. how fast DPS is TOO fast?
ex: is this char OP?
[youtube]ELZ7t1jgY-k[/youtube]
Not, that character is fine, it's the trusty canine sidekick that needs nerfing.
Be Well!
Fireheart
The formula most MMO's use to determine XP rewards is based on average time spent doing the activity. If stealthing a quest is quicker than fighting through the mobs then I would expect stealthing to be less rewarding. You can't just expect to hit a sneaking ability and run to the goal like you did in COH and get the same rewards as someone who spent twice as long fighting all the mobs.
There isn't a need to remove rewards from individual mobs in or out of instances to make stealth options more attractive. All you need to do is provide stealth challenges that require time and effort to complete on par with general combat. Patrols you have to avoid, laser trip wires, lock picking and so on could all be alternates to combat for additional xp in a quest.
There can also be a stealth combat elements like the Batman stealth take downs in Arkham, or games like Assassins Creed. Having to set up a good take down could take as much time as just beating the guy up so the same reward could be applied to both.
Well, [I]technically[/I] if the mobs drop XP and "loot" then the stealther would automatically find less rewards flowing in. ;^p
But yes - I imagine the devs will have to fine tune mish rewards according to some kind of average play time or other metric.
It may seem obvious to you but the OP was saying that he felt cheated when he stealthed in CoH without considering this aspect of reward design. He also felt cheated about using powers in alternate ways without considering how that changes the metric that rewards are based on but that was a different beast.
Others began to speak about removing XP rewards from individual mobs as a solution to the stealth problem that didn't really exist. I thought it was worth pointing out that being rewarded for alternate game tactics should require more than just clicking a stealth button.
Stealth = less rewards is only a possibility, not a guarantee. If I can stealth my way through ten missions and get mission completion rewards as fast as the non-stealth guy can wade through one mission and defeat everything on the whole map, it's still possible we might end up getting the same rewards, in terms of total market value gained, over the same time frame. Different play styles, not necessarily good or bad, and not necessarily better or worse in terms of IGC per minute spent.
I'm not saying there should be a formula or that it would be incumbent upon MWM to ensure that the stealth route is EXACTLY as lucrative as other options, just saying that stealth doesn't necessarily have to mean less loot per hour spent playing if they don't want it to be.
It's not written in stone that a given minion will definitely drop any IGC or random loot items upon defeat, in any case. GW2 is a game where you fight monsters, and half the time a given monster defeated will yield nothing at all, except XP, that's pretty much a given. Also, in GW2, there's a currency similar to Reward Merits called Karma, and monsters never drop Karma, you only get it from completing events and out of treasure chests, which generally are opened after completing an event or solving a jumping puzzle.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is part of the time=rewards formula I was talking about. Not sure what your point is.
CoH's version of stealth was a button click free pass through an instance. That's fine but the OP implied that the less rewards he earned in a mission (singular) with this faster and easier tactic, if you can really call it that, was some sort of punishment. It's not. It's by design.
Stealthing can offer the same as rewards as fighting mobs or even more rewards depending on how much time you have to invest in those alternate avenues of success. In many games the stealth option is harder and takes longer to complete than just fighting through mobs. Dishonored for example offered you the option to stealth through a mission and it was a challenge and took longer to complete but you got rewarded for doing so. If the OP really wants tactics to be rewarding then those tactics should be more than a single button click.
As far as I understand in this conversation the rewards that are being discussed are XP only. But since you brought it up. Reward drops can come from defeating foes but you are right, not all foes drop an item. Again this is part of the time vs reward formula the devs will work out. On average an item will drop within a certain time frame.
Using that formula, item rewards can then be applied to stealth tactics in the same way as XP rewards are. If a given mission should on average yield 4 item drops and 200 XP for fighting all the mobs then using the stealth tactics I exampled before like dodging patrols or picking locks should offer the same amount of items and Xp providing they take, on average, the same amount of time to complete.
As far as your GW2 Karma example. I really really really hope CoT does not try to control IGC by having a bunch of different types. I don't want one currency for regular gameplay, another for PvP, another for special events, yet another for trials, and still more for each of mobs, bosses, mini games, stars and whatever else they introduce. MWM has confirmed two types of currency, Stars and the IGC, but I hope MWM will have currency handled in a way that doesn't require many more than those two.
If anyone had read my comments fully, you would have noted I clarified I was OK with reduced mission XP when stealthing. The punishment in XP came from using mechanics in powers such as knockback to fling a foe off a building or into some lava. But yes, to clarify further I still feel overall you were sorta punished when using stealth on clickie missions more so because it was just a blanket standard rather than the ideas floated here where sometimes you are at an advantage and sometimes the mission will remove those advantages. I didn't mind Rikti drones but could still sneak up on many Bosses. There was variety. But if I chose to explore variety sometimes the game chose to diminish my progression.
It doesn't sound like that will be the case with CoT with their achievement system. If you want to give me badges or some alternative reward to XP for exploring different game styles and making me aware of that beforehand then I fully support it. My worry appears to be addressed by the devs' design.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
Yes I saw the post where you clarified what upset you about stealth tactics. Where you start by saying that it was a punishment to be un-stealthed when clicking a mission objective and then right after saying you were fine with it. I also saw all the posts that focused on the reward aspect of stealth and ways to increase it without looking at the stealth mechanic or stealth gameplay itself.
That same post where you clarified you opinion on stealth you also said you will deny any arguments about the exploitative nature of using powers in alternate ways thereby shutting down any argument I would make about your example of pushing foes off a roof as a 'tactic'. Your seemingly unwillingness to discuss that aspect led me to focus on your conflicting opinions of stealth.
Most of what you discuss in relation to stealth is about rewarding/punishing it as a tactic. Even here you still maintain that you were sorta punished for stealthing in CoH. The stealth that you speak of in CoH was not a 'tactic' or alternate gameplay style. Skipping the mobs to get to the goal quicker is the most basic and simple use of stealth in CoH. But then the only alternative CoH offered to that use of stealth was alpha strikes on targets. CoH did not have much in the way of stealth tactics.
This is why I tried to introduce true stealth gameplay elements into the conversation and explained how it can follow the same formula of rewards that pure combat does. I also tried to hint that this type of actual alternate gameplay style could allow the more tactical uses of other powers in combat by referencing setup time in take downs.
If you want to discuss alternate gameplay tactics by design then I will. I am not interested in discussing ways to keep the old quick and easy tactics of CoH while making them more rewarding.
I think the leveling was so fast in CoX and is so fast in GW2 that the problem isn't that you might get less XP when playing a given style, but rather that you might run out of uses for XP at some point. In CoX it did nothing after hitting the cap, in GW2 you can still use XP to unlock Masteries, but you need MAstery Points too, and those are hard to get such that you can and will end up wasting XP after you hit the cap there too.
If there's a problem in terms of rewards for stealthing, I would personally worry more about the non-XP rewards. XP will take care of itself, I feel confident in that. The game isn't trying to keep XP away from us, or shouldn't be. I'm ok with giving out XP for all kinds of stuff that isn't even combat, in fact.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Who are you talking to with this post?
Ive always liked the idea that leveling doesn't increase your hp but increases things like dodging, resistances etc etc
Here's a Stealth Optional Objective which ought to be interesting ...
Search all interior areas of an Instance Map without being noticed by any NPCs on that Instance Map
This basically amounts to an "Explore the entire map in Stealth" condition, which can then be rewarded with something comparable/approximate to doing a Defeat All simply by doing an "undetected" Explore All inside an Instance. That way, it isn't just a "ninja" from the Entrance to the Objective/Boss, but rather a "check everywhere" to make sure you haven't overlooked anything.
Or to put it another way ... it's about being Harry Tuttle, Heating Engineer ...
[youtube]dht_3NziwSw[/youtube]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I really like that idea, Redlynne. Flip the Defeat All on its head and get rewarded for the complete opposite. Or it would even have to be a defeat all. You get a defined amount of XP(most likely less due to risk) per foe avoided instead of per foe defeated as is so common in every game. Though I'm not sure if that would make for a more complicated design and possibly having to take in account foes that can see through stealth giving more rewards due to increased risk. Maybe that is why CoT chose the achievement option instead.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
Yeah, I would have to agree with that and leveling became much easier in latter half of the game's life. Especially after the devs adjusted the level curve, any loss of XP I experienced was really minimal but that also led me to believe why do it at all and give a perception I should not be engaging in that activity. Yes, I realize that was my own hangup but I'm my own player and have my own views. I also realize this is a new game and will have a completely different design.
I would not mind if alternative combat styles rewarded things like tickets(I have no idea if CoT will have anything remotely like this). I did not worry about XP in Architect and thought it allowed me to avoid other undesirable elements in the game such as not having enough influence or not wanting to pay a price for a certain component on the market. It was a good compliment to both combat and non-combat. Thank you for not assuming I want a one click I Win button in your responses.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
Me like. Could even be and either/or choice for some missions.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I view stealth as a means to solo something, a means to covertly accomplish a goal or to speed up whatever I am doing by skipping obstacles. The alternate objective approach to reward stealthing sounds interesting.
This also plays into the explorer (and min/max to a degree) nature in some of us. Finding a shortcut or alternate approach can be rewarding all by itself.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
If there are any XP rewards for finding and hitting Exploration badge markers in the outside world, Stealth could probably get you to some of them faster and easier than having to fight your way to them.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Oh the possibilities of stealth in a superhero game https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yI4ZTeVAX6U
I accidently ate a bowl of radioactive soup....ok I guess that makes me a Soup-er Hero
/me guffaw
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Maybe I'm just getting old... but that was disturbing. The thought of ending life so casually... as entertainment, just doesn't sit well with me.
We may not be throwing slaves to the lions any more, but we're just as F-ed up.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I agree that pure stealth should be, at least at times, a valid way to obtain a mission objective. Presumably the more a player puts into stealth the less they will be able to put into defense, offense, and other abilities--so this should be generally fair and encourage customization, diversity, and freedom of both concept and gameplay style.
Agreed. I understand the argument that fantasy is fantasy, but, personally, none of my fantasies include execution-style killings. And I think I'm grateful for that.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Don’t forget the possibility of being contacted by a fence because a buyer is looking for a particular valuable item (a painting, for example) and you’ve got the skills to get it (from where it’s hanging on the upper landing of the front stairway in a mob boss’s home).
Here's an idea for a "stealth" mission.
Your objective is to plant observation devices (cameras, microphones, motion detectors, insert gadget tech here) into a public location that is actively being patrolled by security (like a mall or something) [i]without security spotting you while you're planting your devices[/i]. Basically a condition of needing to do "work" without being seen doing that "work" by security.
If you can "mingle with the crowd" in that location (like a public mall or something) so you aren't dealing with an Aggro On Sight condition, then the requirement basically boils down to "don't act suspicious while security might be watching you" in the course of them doing their foot patrols. If they "catch" you planting your devices (you're channeling the glowie click and a security guard perceives you while you're waiting for the countdown to complete) then you get a "Hey you! Stop!" from the security guard and they aggro to try and arrest you.
The whole point of the exercise is that it's basically a non-combat (primary) objective which can be accomplished without any violent content happening at all. If you're able to click/complete all of the glowie installations without being seen doing them by security, you can just exit the building with no one the wiser ... because you either blend into the crowd or the security guards will only aggro on you if they catch you in the act.
A higher level difficulty of the same mission type would be basically the same objective, but with no crowd of people around the "screen" you so as to let you blend into a crowd. In this higher level of difficulty, you're explicitly NOT supposed to be there, which then basically means you need to NEVER be seen by security while they follow their patrol routes. With enough "terrain" to hide behind, the mission could be done WITHOUT a Stealth Power (just hide behind stuff to block lines of sight), but would obviously be easier to do WITH a Stealth Power (which would let you waltz right past security between patrols).
In both cases, you'd still be able to fight the security guards, if you were so inclined ... although doing so with a crowd of civilians around might cause the civilians to panic and run, [i]emptying the venue[/i], causing the first type of mission to convert into the second. Depending on secondary objectives (and how Violent your PC is) the mission could wind up any of a number of different ways.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]