The issue of stealth (and other oddly implemented mechanics)

[Dr Meta.3158]

So I've had quite a few discussions with high end players (strictly talking PvP here) about stealth. There are some talking points I want to get through because invisibility in guild wars 2, is the weirdest implementation I've ever seen in a game. So I'm going to break this down into points so it is easier to read and understand the issues here.

Invisibility in Guild Wars 2 has one of if not the strongest implementation of invisibility in gaming history.

I haven't played too many different games but the closest implementation of invisibility I've seen in games as it is implemented in Guild Wars 2, is Starcraft 2. So invisibility or "cloaking" in StarCraft functions similarly to Guild Wars 2 in which the user cannot be knocked out of invisibility and the user cannot be seen at all. The later is not completely true because if you look carefully you can see the shimmering lines of the cloaked unit but in an intense matchup, you'd likely never noticed unless the unit attacked something. However, there are detectors available to completely counter stealth and every race has easy access to it in multiple ways. This is the counterplay and makes a mechanic that's immensely powerful, possibly to nullify to which the user must counterplay by removing the detectors or switching to a different strategy. This is good game design and one of the many examples of good game design to which reasons why Starcraft 2 has been an esport for a very long time.

A close game to this one, Lineage 2, which is under the same publisher, NCsoft has their own version of stealth which is quite strong but, until the Ertheia, hard to maintain and easy to counterplay as you could take people out of invisibility by hitting them. This wasn't great counterplay as all the classes with invisibility also had the highest mobility in the game (more on that later), but it was counterplay nonetheless.

Overwatch, another esport, has invisibility on one hero, Sombra, and has, what is in my opinion, the best implementation of invisibility I've seen in gaming that also makes a lot of sense. The way it works is that Sombra can stay in stealth indefinitely if she wants to, but cannot contribute if she does. Like Lineage 2, if she takes damage, the stealth is dropped. And the stealth is linked to her mobility which means that if she loses stealth her mobility goes with it and her only option is to disengage from the fight entirely using her translocator. Sombra is revealed partially if she gets too close to an enemy which is absolutely great mechanical design. Lastly, Sombra is (was possible soon) greatly balanced with this great survivability and mobility by not being able to burst people out of stealth. She has to drop stealth first to attack and the delay between stealth dropping her ability to fire along with her audio cues give time for players to react. This is counter to Guild Wars where you can suddenly burst people out of stealth, stealth usually bugs and delays dropping the invisibility even after damage is done and can be repeatedly reentered after dropping. Overall, Sombra's main role as essentially a thief, is to disable the enemy team but, like thief in guild wars, she has tools to allow her to chase down low hp targets and enough damage to win the duel. Overall, Sombra cannot really 1v1 the other heroes because she is the only hero that can just leave whenever she wants and do whatever she wants in the game due to her invisibility and mobility which I think is a critical element that is sorely missed in this game. As such she has to fight lower HP targets to have a chance at winning, and it is still a chance as you can still lose the fight since it is down to skill from there. It is great design and one of many reasons why Overwatch is an esport although not as great as Starcraft.

Invisbility is too heavily relied upon to warrant the necessary balancing.

So there's two main users of stealth here. Thief and Smokescale. Smokescale, personally, I think should be removed from PvP in general along with the odd reality that the smokescale is the threat and the ranger is the companion as is the case with a few other pets as well. I want to focus more on thieves, but smokescale has the same inherent issues that thieves have as a core. The is their entire gameplay revolves around attacking, very hard, while not getting hit in return. So Back in February 2020. Arenanet mentioned that the idea of high burst damage while avoiding damage is not something they want to pursue despite the many, many examples of this sort of strategy enabled in the game, especially on mirage which has been the biggest abuser of this specific problem. Now Guardians do this to an extent as well but while there was a little counterplay with unblockable, there is no counterplay to evasion beyond things like spectral wall and dragon's maw which are very problematic skills in themselves. Mirage again being the worst offended since while there is technically counterplay to evade spam, there is no counterplay to distortion effects at all. Coupled with the old design of torment and how confusion works and you had a class that could attack while invincibile and preventing any counterplay in the brief windows of vulnerability by punishing you for moving and punishing you for pressing skills. Essentially you are punished for playing the game which... Well... If this was a game design class and someone turned in the mirage to me, you'd not only fail, but you'd be kicked out of the school and possibly sent into medical for examination for possible sadistic tendencies. The funny closing to this side rant is that mirage also has access to stealth. That brings the focus back to the main user of stealth thief. Thief is so heavily reliant on stealth that changing it into a reasonable mechanic would warrant an entire redesign of thief itself which is very more complicated through its elite specializations... And that may be necessary for the health of the game.

Invisibility is not fun to play against.

Now while GW2 has a lot of things that aren't... fun (like all the chore-like missions in the game), in a game which games are meant to be fun. We don't want to use the excuse of there being unfun things in the game to just leave the game like that. Guild Wars 2 is a game with a great base system with some good implementations and some very questionable implementations. One of the very questionable ones being not only invisibility but the tendency to give invisibility to high burst damage, high mobility, and as of the past few years, high range potential classes as if there were a competition to create the most oppressive combination of qualities rolled into one. Which then invites the need, after too many players lost, to destroy a class into uselessness rather than just thinking carefully about how you go about designing things in the first place. Then on a side note, this typically attracts and encourages the gameplay of more disturbed individuals to go out of their way to make the game as unfun for other players as possible and further contributing to the decline of the game population along with increasing levels of toxicity in the game.

 

So overall, I'm not even really expecting a change but at least I can say, I said something. But, it would be very wise from a business standpoint to take care of issues like these before Guild Wars 2 launches on Steam. Just saying. 

Now then to the players: discuss, troll, whine, do whatever you like.. I'm not going to read anything below this message. So go nuts.

 

 

 

[Alcatraznc.3869]

While heavy burst are annoying, they are part of how Thief work with all the backstabing and the deadly rifle shot on Deadeye. Well Deadeye actually gives you a window where you can dodge the bullet so it's not too bad. Backstab is where it can become really annoying and Anet did "nerf" it by applying a 1 sec CD between every backstab.

 

But what I really hate is how stealth + condition work. I've played a lot of condi thief and mesmer where all I did was basically apply condition --> stealth-->wait for any dispell skill or healing skill to be used --> apply a burst-->stealth again and wait. If it doesnt die rinse and repeat.  There's no real difficulty to use such build and they work very well. I cannot speak for SPVP but in WvsW they've added a bunch of good stuff like sentinels that removes all stealth if you get too close to them and such which helps but doesnt really deal with the issue. 

 

A potential fix could be to give all melee stealth attack a "preparation" time where the character slowly render on your screen before doing its thing. For range, I like how they did for the Deadeye. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

Stealth is really stupid in this game, but people have been complaining about it from the start.  Nothing will be done about it.

[Mungrul.9358]

The irony is that they thought of adding stealth to the first game (in beta, Ranger even had a Stealth stat!), but judged it too powerful, and therefore introduced shadow stepping as an alternative.

Shadow stepping gave Assassins a lot of the functionality of stealth (get in quick, burst, get out), without the over-powered invisibility aspect.

 

That they forgot that this was why they added shadow stepping in the first place, then made a profession with both shadow stepping and stealth only shows how out of touch they were with their own game.

 

[Fueki.4753]

I think that Stealth should have visual and audio detection based on proximity, so that players have a decent chance to detect stealthed enemies, if they are close by.

And Arenanet needs to remove Stealth from the Trapper rune.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Funky.4861]

I'm wondering what the OP is smoking...

 

If they're coming from a high-end pvp viewpoint, how many thieves are there in the top 10 in NA and EU servers? If they were so dominant, oppressive and easy to play, shouldn't there be an abundance of thieves in pvp? Yet there isn't.

 

Stealth is fine as it is.

[Morwath.9817]

2 minutes ago, Funky.4861 said:

I'm wondering what the OP is smoking...

 

If they're coming from a high-end pvp viewpoint, how many thieves are there in the top 10 in NA and EU servers? If they were so dominant, oppressive and easy to play, shouldn't there be an abundance of thieves in pvp? Yet there isn't.

 

Stealth is fine as it is.

"Thieves too weak, only one per team in each team since pre-HoT".

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

6 minutes ago, Funky.4861 said:

I'm wondering what the OP is smoking...

 

If they're coming from a high-end pvp viewpoint, how many thieves are there in the top 10 in NA and EU servers? If they were so dominant, oppressive and easy to play, shouldn't there be an abundance of thieves in pvp? Yet there isn't.

 

Stealth is fine as it is.

It's like saying that, just because your area is infested with snakes, everything is alright, because most of them are just some Grass Snakes, so there's no point worrying about Black Mambas in your garden.
I'll probably never understand people that try to defend broken mechanics in this game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Funky.4861]

You're entitled to your opinion but my point stands.

[Fueki.4753]

23 minutes ago, Funky.4861 said:

If they're coming from a high-end pvp viewpoint, how many thieves are there in the top 10 in NA and EU servers? If they were so dominant, oppressive and easy to play, shouldn't there be an abundance of thieves in pvp? Yet there isn't.

Just because the top end minority has learned to deal with a mechanic, doesn't make it less broken.

[Burial.1958]

And the next thread about stealth beeing op.....

 

[Funky.4861]

4 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Just because the top end minority has learned to deal with a mechanic, doesn't make it less broken.

 So you're saying that the OP's original premise is wrong, because it can be countered quite easily? I'm sure you're aware that the only thing you can do in stealth is move around/interact with objects. Any attack you make will reveal you; it's almost as if stealth attacks and mechanics are some occult mystery which is both difficult to understand and not public knowledge at all...https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth

[Crab Fear.1624]

5 hours ago, Morwath.9817 said:

"Thieves too weak, only one per team in each team since pre-HoT".

Better than 3 necros per team for over a year, even winning MATS, until the last scourge nerf.

 

Is 1 per team really OP suggestive? Or could it just mean useful?

[Fueki.4753]

6 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

 So you're saying that the OP's original premise is wrong, because it can be countered quite easily? I'm sure you're aware that the only thing you can do in stealth is move around/interact with objects. Any attack you make will reveal you; it's almost as if stealth attacks and mechanics are some occult mystery which is both difficult to understand and not public knowledge at all...https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth

It's not easy or even adequately to be dealt with. I can't even fathom how anyone could get to the conclusion that top end people being able to do it makes it easy.

Most people can't deal with it and that's the issue. There's no real way to detect stealthed enemies, even if they are directly next to you breathing down your neck. Anyone should be able notice the glaring issue there.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[ollbirtan.2915]

Imaging actually having issues with invisibility in WvW with all the reveals.....or in sPvP....Honestly, this is purely OP's l2p issue. 
P.S. I absolutely hate fighting thieves myself - but I don't think stealth is OP. 

[Genesis.5169]

Stealth is pretty unruly to use compared to other game's most of the time it is not a one button press like in most mmorpgs but a combo in this one. Because of this you guys really need to change your views or actually play a thief. Thief simply cannot access stealth whenever it wants to the thief must save initiative to do so. Stealth attacks have a internal CD and there's 6 seconds of reveal.

This does not include your classes access to reveal or just swinging the air when the thief is nearby.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Genesis.5169

[Lacdanon.1483]

In SPvP stealth doesn't seem to be much of an issue, WvW is a different story

[Avatar.3568]

I said it a trillion times and say it again, you can see the area Effect of a skill when it's used, even in stealth, you see every bow/rifle shot that the stealth player is doing and you have still the audioxso you have 2 things to locate a player + when you are in a conquest match, often not that many ways a stealthed person can use. Stealth is pretty strong but it's not unbeatable broken

And when you are coming from starcraft, you should know that some things are impossible to handle until you reached some point of skill (AIRTOSS AHHHH) 

[Kanto.2485]

It wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were better reveals in the game. Some classes/especs don't even have any, rev has to use its only stunbreak to reveal in a 360 radius. I belive better access to reveal would make the mechanic more interactive at least.

[Bazsi.2734]

I swear I had legit points, criticisms and things to say, but after reading this there is no way I'm typing them out:

On 11/8/2021 at 4:06 AM, YaminoNakani.7083 said:

Now then to the players: discuss, troll, whine, do whatever you like.. I'm not going to read anything below this message. So go nuts.

Stealth bad, me no likey, wall of text REEEEEE!

Edited November 9, 2021 by Bazsi.2734

[Burial.1958]

7 hours ago, ollbirtan.2915 said:

Imaging actually having issues with invisibility in WvW with all the reveals.....or in sPvP....Honestly, this is purely OP's l2p issue. 
P.S. I absolutely hate fighting thieves myself - but I don't think stealth is OP. 

 

The fact is, Thief is the only class ingame which has hardcounters in form of NPCs (Guards, Towers) and Items (Traps). There are also several classes who has Reveal in form of skills.

 

It IS a L2p problem here. That most thiefs running D/P is the fault of ArenaNet because they nerfed every other set to oblivion or it was straight bad since realese.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by Grebcol.5984

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

On 11/8/2021 at 1:11 PM, Morwath.9817 said:

"Thieves too weak, only one per team in each team since pre-HoT".

Keep in mind that having more than one thief in your team makes your team significantly weaker.

On 11/8/2021 at 1:35 PM, Fueki.4753 said:

Just because the top end minority has learned to deal with a mechanic, doesn't make it less broken.

That's kind of exactly what that means though.

If there is an avenue for dealing with it reliably that can be mastered, then that plays into the mechanic's balance.

Quote

 I'm not going to read anything below this message.

Your opinion deserves just as much attention as you are willing to give to others. 

Edited November 9, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Morwath.9817]

Just now, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Keep in mind that having more than one thief in your team makes your team significantly weaker.

So does not having one as it can't be really replaced.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

4 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

So does not having one as it can't be really replaced.

Fair point. We do need some faster classes. Maybe EoD's role reversal of less mobile classes to more mobile ones and thief to support is onto something. 

Just be aware of that precarious position they have. where they're good at literally one thing and them being excellent at that one thing is a large part of why they get taken. I'd say that's something adjacent to being op, given you cannot stack them. 

And that isn't fully related to their stealth mechanic, further. 

Edited November 9, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Morwath.9817]

11 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Fair point. We do need some faster classes. Maybe EoD's role reversal of less mobile classes to more mobile ones and thief to support is onto something. 

Just be aware of that precarious position they have. where they're good at literally one thing and them being excellent at that one thing is a large part of why they get taken. I'd say that's something adjacent to being op, given you cannot stack them. 

And that isn't fully related to their stealth mechanic, further. 

We could argue, if ability to disengage at any time isn't stealth related, espcially when most popular build is D/P.