What Happened to Stealth?

[Chirios]

I'm talking good stealth, with clever enemies. I'm talking about knocking on walls then running around and snapping mofos necks. I'm talking about genuinely shitting yourself when the alert came up because hundreds of soldiers were about to rain down on you like you just smacked their girlfriend. I'm talking about not being some sort of weird titanic superman who's a cross between the Hulk and a minigun, but being a weak, vulnerable, badly-equipped lone gun who has to infiltrate a complex and hunt down the leader.

What I'd really like to see in a videogame, is just being one guy, with a pistol, a knife and some body armour. No grenades, no infinite ammo. If you get shot in the leg, you walk with a limp until you can lie down and heal, if you get shot in the arm, you'll have to shoot one handed and your aim will be off, and if you get shot in the head or midriff you die.

[Stark]

It generally sucked. Are you old enough to have knowledge of the horrors of insta-fail stealth, MGS, Splinter Cell 1, etc? Memorising camera patterns actually isn't any fun.

A well-implemented stealth assault game would be so difficult the market would be tiny, anyway. Games like AssBros and Conviction have enough stealth for most people.

[Chardok]

Agent 47 told me to tell you to F* off.

[Stark]

He wants a stealth game, not a puzzle game with a little bar.

[weemadando]

Best stealth game I ever played was TFX.

[Chirios]

It generally sucked. Are you old enough to have knowledge of the horrors of insta-fail stealth, MGS, Splinter Cell 1, etc? Memorising camera patterns actually isn't any fun.

A well-implemented stealth assault game would be so difficult the market would be tiny, anyway. Games like AssBros and Conviction have enough stealth for most people.

Yeah I am. And I liked MGS1, and all of the Playstation Splinter Cells.

[Stark]

If you're into vision cones and spawning enemies, why didn't you say so! Shouldn't MSG4 fixyou up?

Stealth is one or the things that means different thing to many people. When you said 'smart enemies' I thought you were looking for a game with smart enemies you had to outwit in a situation of constant threat, for instance, something like Thief, more advanced. It's a shame mist stealth game levels rely so heavily on scripting that you can't just generate infinite warehouses.

[defanatic]

What I'd really like to see in a videogame, is just being one guy, with a pistol, a knife and some body armour. No grenades, no infinite ammo. If you get shot in the leg, you walk with a limp until you can lie down and heal, if you get shot in the arm, you'll have to shoot one handed and your aim will be off, and if you get shot in the head or midriff you die.

Deus Ex?

I'm having a faction called Stealth in my video game. :/

[TheHammer]

Ever tried any of the Theif series?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_(ser ... rk_Project

[Chardok]

TheHammer wins the TL;DR award.

[Sarevok]

You don't necessarily need a game built around "stealth mechanics". All you require is enemies with realistic senses and reaction. Games that implement this enable stealth gameplay even though they are not advertised as stealth games. For example Halo is as far from Thief or Splinter Cell type games as you can get. But you can do amazing sneak attacks and ninja style combat in Halo 1. This is because the AI in Halo 1 has fairly realistic vision, hearing and reaction times. They cant see behind them, they investigate sounds and they need a while to decide what to do when surprised. All of these combine to allow the player to use classic stealth gatactics against them.

This is what I tried to do in a game I am developing. In the bottom video you can see me fooling around with a lone grunt type alien soldier. Obviously he does not see me from behind. When I throw a Coca Cola vending machine at him he does not magically turn around and start shooting at me. Instead he takes a while getting back up, coming to his senses and then decides to go after me. Pretty elementary stuff but it is surprising how few games do this properly.




In this video I shoot a single bullet in a room full of enemies. They run around and search for me in vain (I am cleverly hidden in a corner). They dont have magic hearing that lets them pinpoint exact coordinates of a gun being fired.


Now these are not really realistic or lifelike. But giving the AI limited and flawed senses makes them exploitable. I think it's way better than deliberate stealth mechanics. I never liked "stealth meters" or "visibility gems".

[Stark]

Yeah, who needs player feedback?

BTW, Alpha Protocol used LOS for stealth with little feedback and everyone in the entire world hated it. Whoops. AP doesn't fit the OP's needs, though, because stealth is really a style choice; you're never in the situation where you must stealth or you're doomed. That said, the old Splinter Cell games only created that situation by preventing the player from picking up ammo, so who knows.

[Sarevok]

You don't need a meter to tell how "stealthy" you are. It's lot more fun to figure out what the enemy is thinking by watching them. .

[CaptHawkeye]

Too bad a game communicating through a video screen will never be able to the convey the same sense of situational awareness that one would have being the in that situation?

[Sarevok]

Too bad a game communicating through a video screen will never be able to the convey the same sense of situational awareness that one would have being the in that situation?

How much information you need ?

[Stark]

Hey I thought YOU were the lecturer here!

Watching the enemy doesnt help if you have no LOS on the enemy, and in a stealth focused, high threat game players will be severely punished for being wrong about what anyone entering the room will see.

Like in Alpha Protocol. Which everyone hated.

Declaring player feedback some kind of bad thing just because is a pretty extreme design decision.

[Covenant]

I like MGS games but their enemies are dumber than a wet sack of hammers, and I just accept that. I don't play those games for the stealth. It's more for the overall gameplay, the crazy-ass storylines, and the spectacle. I get a lot of entertainment out of one of those even if only a portion of it is actually "gameplay." Hell, I half play them for the music. For a stealth-focused game to work with 'intelligent' enemies and high-risk for stealth failure (but hopefully not instant failure) you need a fair set of balancing factors. It's not really ability, it's design focus. Stealth is just a tool.

If the badguys are helpless against you, Stealth is irrelevant. I'll walk up and shoot you in the face if I know you can't stop me. But having it be "if they see you, you lose," sucks and nobody likes that. Those old "stealth sections" were so bad that they're an F- on the "Stealth Game Success meter." A lot of games sit in the F range.

If you design challenging opponents then stealth becomes an option to help eliminate or avoid them. Furthermore, if your character had assets that you didn't want to expand on those foes, a stealth mechanic is an integrated tool for handling situations, on-par but not in-opposition with the guns and bombs and shit. An example of fun-but-dumb stealth was, for me, early on in Fallout 3 where I had a broken-down rifle and was sneaking around in the dark ruins of DC, avoiding mutants with sledgehammers and machineguns. They had predictable patterns, sure, but my stealth kills weren't instant and I certainly couldn't take them head-on at the time. That's like a C+ on compared to the festering failures most are. My objective wasn't to kill the mutants, but to get to point B. I could get killed if they saw me. And fighting them would burn assets I was trying to keep. That's pretty decent.

A "Thief" game had horrible stealth too, but the game was fun with how it used it, so that's more like a B+ in rating. Lots of assets you want to preserve, combat as a fairly secondary feature, great use of environments and dangerous foes so you had to balance all your tools.

Making a 'smart stealth game' that qualifies as an A or A+ would be a serious undertaking in breaking the agreed-upon tropes of gameplay that people are used to. I think it'd be fun, and it's certainly not conceptually hard, but that's not usually the kind of game they want to make. It's also important to remember that it would be next to impossible to make an A+ stealth game if you set out to make it a "really good stealth game." The tropes of the Stealth Game itself work against it in a lot of ways. If every option needs to be able to be solved without being spotted, you've ruined much of the purpose of stealth suspense--the risk of being spotted.

The best stealth game would be the one where you fail to remain stealthed quite often and where stealth is, itself, not a victory--but just part of your limited ability to handle the threats you face.

[Stark]

The balance between 'required stealth' and 'desired stealth' is the area where most 'stealth' games fail.

[Chardok]

I actually thought Crysis 2 did stealth fialry well, and struck a nice balance between required and desired stealth. the major failing with that game, I think, is that (On consoles) so much processing power was devoted to ZOMG PRETTY GRAFICS that the AI only worked when you were retarded close. Once it kicked in, though, it was pretty competent. (Protip: For maximum win use weapon with range greater than 100 meters; for maximum fun, use pistol/SMG/shotzgun)

[Stark]

I don't think so; in Crysis 2 stealth is unstoppably powerful and is only saved by the laughable duration limits from power on the cloak. The AI around it (especially uncloaked) is pretty bad. I guess Chards didn't notice that at close range the AI simply magically knows where you are and will either stare at you until your power runs out or will walk slowly towards you until it crosses the 'spot invisible man' threshold. :V

As Cov suggested, I think making stealth a core mechanic requires a very non-standard game (certainly non-standard level design) which is why it's either a magic power that lets you win or a horrible trial you have to get past by memorising spawns.

[Chardok]

Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree on Crysis 2 - But I'm generally in agreement with you on the "2 basic types of stealth" mechanics. You either "Crouch to become invisible" or you memorize guardpaths/spawns. It's a real shame, too, I think a well-executed stealth mechanic can enhance games to a really amazing level. The problem, of course, is that it makes the game really stressful as well. So I think if you make stealth too "realistic" it just cuts out a large slice of the demographic pie.

I think we should face the fact that we're reaching a point in this rapidly developing/maturing/evolving/whatever medium where everything is going to start to blur together and games will become uniform masses of grey sludge (Thank you GamesRadar) in terms of gameplay/plot/mechanics, as the market becomes more homogenized, specializing in one particular area or mechanic over another will be seen as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[Chardok]

Man, my posts in here always boil down to "WAAAH NO ONE IS 'innovating'!" My posts are the most boringest ever.

[Covenant]

I'm gonna keep making games so just buy my crap when it comes out!

Really, it's several issues. One is that people do innovate, but when they do it ends up being shit. A second problem is that a lot of people enjoy the thrill of sneaking around, feeling powerful, and excavating the back of someone's skull from a hidden position a mile away. They like sniping and stealth and not letting the badguys have a chance. So 'intelligent' stealth mechanics will only decrease someone's fun-value.

I would call most games that focus on stealth to be "Stealth Puzzlers." Puzzle games, like Portal, are fun. And a game like Thief is really like a Stealth Portal game, where you have a bunch of different environmental doodads you can use. Water arrow on the lantern! Moss arrow on the metal floor! Vine arrow on the gazebo so now I can climb up! Problem with puzzle games ends up being that once you know that Square Pegs go in Square Holes you will simply push all your Pegs into their Holes and go "okay, what'd I solve?" In a stealth game this usually means that once you can sneak up and kill someone, you do so, and then that area is essentially defused.

One of the games I've got mapped out will include stealth elements in the way I've reasoned out that they should be used. Hopefully it'll be innovative and fun, but I'm sure it'll be a bit of a struggle to balance. The real goal with stealth is getting that heart-racing "Did he see me? Does he know where I am?" moment to kick in, and to build in more run-and-hide mechanics. Even AssBros, which has a good run-and-hide theory to it often grants their enemies Psychic Visions of your location rather than having them simply run off the wrong direction or otherwise reward you for misdirection. So it ends up being "run until the timer goes away" or "kill all your pursuers in ten seconds" instead of anything to do with being clever.

The best thing going for it, in my opinion, is that the game is not designed to be won via stealth, and that your moments of "Did he see me" panic will be more than justified by a stealth engine that isn't designed for a Metal Gear style unsighted playthrough. Hiding from the raptors in the Jurassic Park kitchen is a more genuine 'stealth' experience than I've seen in any game to date.

[Chardok]

I think one thing I'd like to see is different reactions to being discovered in a stealth game.

I'd like there to be the guard who sees you , does nothing, rounds the corner and quietly calls your position in without letting you know that he knows you're there, and you have no idea you've been spotted until the lights come on and the swat team storms the warehouse. The at other points, you get the guard who does the whole "HE'S OVER HERE!" thing, then maybe you get another guard who sees you, runs away, but doesn't hit the "ALL GUARD COME KILL" button until he feels like he's safe, then maybe also the tough guy lone wolf who spots you and then sprays the general vicinity with lead, relaying instead upon the sharp reports of his gunfire to alert his buddies.

Just the simple idea of different, perhaps randomized, reactions to a failure on your part to stay hidden or be sneaky would add an almost irresistible incentive to replay the game just to see what happens when different "guards" reat to you in different ways. (I use guards as generic terms, replace with...you know, whatever you might be sneaking around.)

Hell, you toss in some collectibles and concept art, and Stark will tell you, I'll play that shit for a damned year.

[Stark]

I agree that an essential part of any 'stealth' game (ie, a game where the act itself of being sneaky is the play element, and not LOL NECK BROKKIN stuff) must be randomness. If you know the layout and the movements, the game gets boring and the only difficulty is memorisation.