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Stealth Gameplay Features

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Halae
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Stealth Gameplay Features

So, recently in the Super Speed wall crawling thread, Shadow Elusive stated that enemies will have Line Of Sight character detection; you can see that here. This brings up an interesting thing that doesn't get a lot of discussion in games like these, actually - What of the stealth gameplay?

Back in City of Heroes, I'll admit, I'm likely not the best informed due to my not having played a Stalker past level 5, but it seemed to me that it was a very feast-or-famine setup. You'd go in, take down one target immediately, and then you'd be engaging 3-4 others much like a standard scrapper would rather than playing like the stealth badass you might have envisioned. Other MMOs I've played have fallen flat on this as well; in Guild Wars 2, you can use "stealth" to go invisible as a thief, but it's basically meant as an opener or an in-combat disruption tactic than any sort of particular playstyle. In Neverwinter, if you play a rogue you can go invisible, but it actually works a little worse than the guild wars 2 variant, in that if you try to walk past enemies they'll notice "something" as you pass by them and aggro anyways, meaning there's no enemy bypass at all in that game unless you simply hop on a horse and run like the dickens so much that you get out of their aggro range. Not exactly stealthy.

Frankly, that's not good. It's a destroyer of stealth gameplay, which kicks many character concepts in the head, and for a game like CoH or CoT... well, that just won't fly.

By contrast, there's the game Warframe, which has stealth elements even if it's not really about that. Cover blocking line of sight, bonus damage (often enough to kill weaker enemies in one hit) for stealth attacks, stealth finishers, and the Spy missions are all about getting through puzzle rooms without being detected. Admittedly, Warframe is a different sort of game than CoT will be, there's no question about that, but these systems are all auxillary; you can ignore them completely and still have a grand time, or use them to stealth around and be a ninja.

That's the sort of thing I want for CoT. Stealth attack modifiers so that you can take down weaker enemies from stealth to go with the Line of Sight detection; that alone would make stealth gameplay a viable strategy. It'd basically affect nothing for the bruisers, but open up new character options.

But, I'm curious; what sort of stealth systems would you like to see added to the game? I've stated mine, what are yours?

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I wanted to try the stealth

I wanted to try the stealth in City of heroes, but never got a chance. Really, the biggest issue with 'stealth' in my mind is that you don't want to bypass enemies in a MMO. Enemies you don't fight are enemies that you don't get Exp and/or possible loot from.

(that said, I think loot is over-pressured in the vast majority of MMOs, but that's a different issue.)

Therefore, the issue with stealth becomes making it a part of ongoing combat, not just a part of movement and opening combat. This has been mentioned in an update before, while discussing masteries, here. It mentions things such as dropping from above (Hello LOS stealth!) or getting your teammate to distract them.

Personally, the main issue I find with LoS stealth is that it works really well with a cover system, like the Batman games. Which means that the coders would need to code in a cover system, and a dynamic one at that.

However, a functioning line of sight system in and of itself will be great. The other day I was playing a different MMO and I ducked behind a pillar in hopes of forcing a ranged enemy to have to run around it so I could get him in melee. He proceeded to shoot me through the pillar, killing me.

An actual line of sight system is the kind of thing that you really miss when it's not there.

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PvE Cox had like perma

PvE Cox had like perma-stealth if you had Super speed with that Proc in it. PvP is another story, but I personally don;t think they should have made it last any longer. Stalkers would decloak, kill you, then scoot as it was. What do you want, permanent invis AND the ability to one-shot most other toons? That would be totally broken.

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I don't want that, Radiac. I

I don't want that, Radiac. I was speaking from the perspective of PvE. Besides, how would you even accomplish an "unaware" state where a player is vulnerable to stealth multipliers? With NPCs it's easy; they have either detected you or they haven't, but players don't work like that

I'm also not asking for permanent invisibility, and frankly I have no idea where you got that from. I want the option to fly under the radar and get through a level in stealth - not invisibility, stealth. Serious difference there.

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The LoS mechanic that I would

The LoS mechanic that I would like to see cloned is from ESO/Skyrim. The little floating eye in the middle of the screen that lets you know when you are getting closer to being discovered. In CoX, it was all guess work where the danger zone was. Personal experience was your only guide to telling you how close you could come to the baddies.

ESO also has sentries (with better visual acuity) and lantern bearers (which knock you out of stealth). This would increase the challenge of stealthing your way to your goals. The sentries could be a camera system like TSW has. The lanterns could be anti-stealth field generators.

In CoX, to maximize your stealthiness, you layered your stealth with additional powers and/or enhancements. Is this something we want to emulate in CoT? If so, to what degree?

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

PvE Cox had like perma-stealth if you had Super speed with that Proc in it. PvP is another story, but I personally don;t think they should have made it last any longer. Stalkers would decloak, kill you, then scoot as it was. What do you want, permanent invis AND the ability to one-shot most other toons? That would be totally broken.

Here's an IGC sink for you. You can buy anti-stealth generators to protect your team. Limited battery life. Want to rid yourself of pesky stalkers, "Buy 'Revelation's' decloaking device. Hunt your enemies if a safe and secure envelope."

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Nyxz wrote:
Nyxz wrote:

The LoS mechanic that I would like to see cloned is from ESO/Skyrim. The little floating eye in the middle of the screen that lets you know when you are getting closer to being discovered. In CoX, it was all guess work where the danger zone was. Personal experience was your only guide to telling you how close you could come to the baddies.
ESO also has sentries (with better visual acuity) and lantern bearers (which knock you out of stealth). This would increase the challenge of stealthing your way to your goals. The sentries could be a camera system like TSW has. The lanterns could be anti-stealth field generators.

Yeah ESO handled stealth fairly well - it'd probably be a good model for CoT to follow.

Basically if stealth is handled well enough it could be a tactic that any character could use, not just a dedicated "one-trick pony" class like Stalkers were.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lost Deep wrote:
Lost Deep wrote:

I wanted to try the stealth in City of heroes, but never got a chance. Really, the biggest issue with 'stealth' in my mind is that you don't want to bypass enemies in a MMO. Enemies you don't fight are enemies that you don't get Exp and/or possible loot from.
(that said, I think loot is over-pressured in the vast majority of MMOs, but that's a different issue.)>

Why not? That's one of the best things about the stealth toons in CoX; you didn't have to defeat everything in sight. I'm not relegating stealth toons to only stalkers. Stealth toons had the best ability to experience the maximum amount of content because they didn't get "bogged" down with the need to defeat everything. Using stealth philosophy, I could complete missions at a minimum of 5 to 1 compared to the time required to clear all. Needless to say, when playing a stealth toon, the clear all missions were annoying because they slowed progress and increased the likelihood of out leveling content. So ... the objective of a stealth toon was to get in, get the mission accomplished, and get out. That's the play style of the stealth character, and too too many games don't support it.

What you described is a standard character with stealth abilities. Nothing wrong with that play style since that's primarily the play style I used with most of my toons. It's just not a stealth centric play style.

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ESO certainly made Stealth

ESO certainly made Stealth tactics an "everyman" sort of thing. All you had to do was Crouch (and move slower) to be "in Stealth" so as to limit the aggro radius/line of sight of your Foes. Each Foe got an icon overhead which clued you in to how likely they were to detect you, and it was a simple "eyeball" that opened (they can see you!) and closed (they don't know you're there) which gave the necessary feedback to tell you how close was TOO CLOSE and let you do the "backstab" routine and so on. You could also use it as an Archer to do some interesting "sniper" shots from a "stealthy" Crouch (although doing so would make you uncrouch). It's definitely something to look at as a decent precedent to follow.

Star Trek Online has the idea of the Cloak vs Battle Cloak vs Enhanced Battle Cloak for space combat.

Cloak can only be toggled ON while Out of Combat, but can be toggled OFF at any time. Attacks and use of Skills is severely restricted while Cloaked.
Battle Cloak can be toggled ON while In Combat and can be toggled OFF at any time. Attacks and use of Skills is severely restricted while Cloaked.
Enhanced Battle Cloak can be toggled ON while In Combat and can be toggled OFF at any time. Energy Weapons can't be used while Cloaked, Torpedoes will temporarily suspend Cloak for 4 seconds (and then automatically raise it again) as will use of Skills affecting others, and Mines can be deployed without interrupting Cloak at all(!).

All of these types of Cloaking all have a cooldown/recharge before they can be engaged again. I'm thinking that STO is also offering an important pointer here for how to "tier" any sort of Stealth in a game like City of Titans is aspiring to. Basically ...

Stealth that can be turned ON only while Out of Combat and which must be turned OFF to enter combat.
Stealth that can be turned ON (again) while In Combat but which must be turned OFF to "do stuff" other than move around.
Stealth that can be turned ON (again) while In Combat but which will temporarily "suppress" for a limited duration when doing certain things (attacking, mezzing, buffing/debuffing, you know the drill) and will NOT SUPPRESS when laying certain types of Traps.

Note that the first of these options could equate to ESO's "Crouch for Everyman Stealth" ... while the second could equate to a Pool Power (Tertiary in City of Titans?) ... and the third would be for a Primary Powerset along the lines of Stalkers that is all about Stealth and Sniping and so on (and so forth).


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

and the third would be for a Primary Powerset along the lines of Stalkers that is all about Stealth and Sniping and so on (and so forth).

From what MWM has said there will most likely be no primary/secondary powerset that will be focused around stealth but will rather be a Mastery option for some AT's.

The example they have used is the Gladiator AT which "replaces" CoH's Scrapper Bruiser and Stalker AT's as one single AT and what you choose as mastery is the difference that makes it effectively the same as a Scrapper Bruiser or Stalker in mechanics and/or gameplay style.

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The typical systems design to

The typical systems design to derive xp points (or its equivalent) from combat encounters limits the usuability of steath. After all the gimmick of stealth in this design is the heavy front loaded damage through special stealth attacks (the archetypal backstab). For balancing reason this must be paired with making the character fragile. Same reason why blasters and controllers needed to be frail. A class that can one-hit kill enemies need to run a significant risk setting this up. Which puts the class at a significant disadvantage once they done their thing and now are fragile melee fighters in a group of enemies. At this point the designers have the option to either make the stealth character into a regular scrapper (bringing the risk-rewards ratio out of whack) or by altering the enemy groupings to not contain sizes the stealth characters can't handle.

If combat were /not/ the primary dispenser of rewards, then it would be much easier to allow for a variety of approaches. (e.g. the way guildwars 2 attempts to create variety in their reputation missions by allowing different tasks to work towards completion, some of them combat others gathering or clicking glowies, and presumably other tasks at higher levels).

Characters with a weak offense could instead find a different approach to 'winning' the encounter that relied on their actual strength, rather than forcing them to act like scrappers with only a slight balance twist (the way a lot of the modern games have all classes within a 90 to 95% baseline when it comes to DPS and tanking ability and only marginal differences on top of that exactly because every class must be able to solo, and every class must be interchangeable instead of complimenting each other). Why not have alternative win conditions from taking out key enemy npcs? Or stabilising and defending an injured civilian until he or she can be evacuated? Or sabotage critical resources for the villains' plans?
It's still basic buildingblocks for encounters, only it is not limited to x minions plus y lieutenants plus z bosses to make up a standard group that gets spawned at predetermined locations.
Instead it would be static stealth detection (that a combat group ignores though it will simply summon a standard combat encounter grouping), and roaming patrols that may detect stealth, and groupings tailored towards defensive rather than offensive play. The game can even bias the distribution of these groupings in each mission towards the number of classes in a group fitting the roles (so a full defender group would see protection and evacuation encounters a little more often than straight up combat ones). Stealth characters may try to avoid all combat entirely, but if they mess up they run into group sized combat encounters that they really are not equipped to handle.

This only works though if the rewards come primarily (or exclusively) from completing the mission, not from individual combat encounters.

It allows class design to focus on role and strength rather than requiring all classes to invest significant amount of either skills or base abilities in DPS and survivability, to the point that they start to blend together.

(unfortunately it also severely degrades the possibility of PvP gameplay if you go this route, as it would pretty much guarantee that blasters are king of the arena, unless PvP skills are almost complete redesigns from their PvE counterparts).

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Nadira wrote:
Nadira wrote:

If combat were /not/ the primary dispenser of rewards, then it would be much easier to allow for a variety of approaches. (e.g. the way guildwars 2 attempts to create variety in their reputation missions by allowing different tasks to work towards completion, some of them combat others gathering or clicking glowies, and presumably other tasks at higher levels).

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.


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Of course, 'arresting' all of

Of course, 'arresting' all of those minions is hard work, and takes a lot of time! So, if you ghost through the map and complete the objective without wasting time on those idiots, then your rewards are boosted AND you finish faster. Reward for time-spent would be higher that way And you don't have to lug the accumulated broken wristwatches and toe-nail clippings to a vendor!

Be Well!
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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Of course, 'arresting' all of those minions is hard work, and takes a lot of time! So, if you ghost through the map and complete the objective without wasting time on those idiots, then your rewards are boosted AND you finish faster. Reward for time-spent would be higher that way And you don't have to lug the accumulated broken wristwatches and toe-nail clippings to a vendor!
Be Well!
Fireheart

Nah, that's what the Junior League is for. To mop up he minions while the big names are dealing with saving the world (again) and battling the supervillains themselves.

Which, I come to think of, would make it extra sweet if the climactic final chapter of the epic story lines not only were staged in the open world as opposed to a private instance, but would be zone wide events too. With the (team of) heroes battling it out in the sky (or in the park for those ground pounders among them) in a highly visible manner with lots of crashing into skyscrapers, toppling buildings and pyrotechnics.
Meanwhile the police have cordoned off part of the city and only registered heroes are allowed past the yellow tape to assist with the search and rescue operation, and to arrest any minions trying to escape during and after the battle.
I mean any building somebody smashes into is another search and rescue operation, any downed minion transport is an opportunity to make arrests and then there is the damage control, the opportunistic lieutenants seeking to use their team for a quick smash and grab. The game can just keep spawning these events near hero characters within the zone for as long as the big fight lasts.

This would create a semi-dynamic event for a lot of players, would give new players an aspirational view of just how awesome this game is going to be at the higher level when the entire city is going to be your stage as you fight godzilla or giant mechas or supervillains throwing entire buildings at you, with the smoke and explosions visible from across town...

(I am waxing a bit nostalgic here about the rikti invasion event where I was a lowly street scrapper mopping up, with impromptu teams of other heroes, invaders while overhead a group of fliers was trying to take out the bomber. The only thing that was really missing was the progressive damage that would have made it feel even more like you were in the middle of a war, fighting for your life and for the freedom of the entire city. I understand why this did not happen though as it would have slowed the game for most players to a slideshow)

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Sadly, as the years go by, I

Sadly, as the years go by, I’m losing more and more of my City of Heroes knowledge. But, I do remember that I always tried to equip my characters with some stealth ability. The stealth ability wasn’t stalker-grade, but I found it useful during solo missions

I had a controller with mind control and teleport foe. The stealth allowed me to get close enough to tp a foe from a mob to me - hit him with mez, then confuse and then pummel him into nice fade-away defeat. Without that stealthiness, I would have been able to get close enough without drawing the entire mob onto me, which often happened before I got the stealth.

I also had a PB with the stealth power pool who could actually go up to a mob unseen and get in the first strike, then rain damage on the mob until they were defeated, or I was forced to switch to White Dwarf form and run/ teleport away.

So, I hope stealth is an option in CoT.

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Surprise Incapacitation

Surprise Incapacitation Strikes

It would be nice if our characters with hold/mez attacks could get a magnitude increase to their effects if they successfully execute surprise attacks with said powers. If a DPS character can do increased damage, a control character should be able to leverage greater magnitude effects.

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Nyxz wrote:
Nyxz wrote:

Surprise Incapacitation Strikes
It would be nice if our characters with hold/mez attacks could get a magnitude increase to their effects if they successfully execute surprise attacks with said powers. If a DPS character can do increased damage, a control character should be able to leverage greater magnitude effects.

Actually CoH had already upgraded Controllers after launch with the Containment mechanic. This allowed them to do more damage to targets that were already Mezzed.

While your idea of getting a Mez magnitude bonus while stealthed is interesting I'd almost want to stick more with the "more damage after Mez" bonus than a "longer Mez from stealth" bonus. Getting more damage would ALWAYS be useful, your bonus would only help on a situational basis. Remember if a Controller can Mez a target first they can always keep that target locked down so getting a one-time magnitude "bonus" would be of questionable benefit at best.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Nyxz wrote:
Nyxz wrote:

Surprise Incapacitation Strikes
It would be nice if our characters with hold/mez attacks could get a magnitude increase to their effects if they successfully execute surprise attacks with said powers. If a DPS character can do increased damage, a control character should be able to leverage greater magnitude effects.

I would think that doing anything from stealth takes advantage of the target's natural defenses being down, whether they are physical or mental defenses. Accordingly, a mez from stealth would mean a greater chance to hit and possibly even a deeper effect. So if mez can be broken by dealing damage to the target then it would take more damage to break it if it were mezzed from stealth.


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My character concept is that

My character concept is that my character is a ghost who cannot be touched, burned, frozen, or electrocuted and thus takes no physical damage of any kind, ever, is always invisible, can float through all walls, can fly anywhere at arbitrarily fast speeds, and can deal massive amounts of damage to targets via magic and/or psionics. Can we make stealth work so that I can always one-shot everything and never take any damage back because they cant see me in the first place and I'm totally immune to damage in the second?

Many things are possible, given computers and code, many such things are not advisable in a game where you have PvP as an option, or where making players have to defeat foes is supposed to be something more than a foregone conclusion. Good game design doesn't always mean adding in more powerful powers just because we can, it often means reigning in the powers such tthat the game is still interesting and challenging. There may be times when that prevents people from fully realizing a character concept, but for the sake of keeping the brokenness to a minimum it's important to place limits on stealth and so forth, I think.

I know nobody, including me, would ever seriously suggest Super Invulnerable Ghost Man, but the closer we get to it, the wosre the game is. You have to respect the desired limits of what you can and can't get away with in a game that's supposed to be fun, interesting and challenging.

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