Thread 715859507

Stealth games have become too easy. In many games its more practical to either fight guards or run past them since alerts are too lenient. What innovations or improvements can the genre make to change this stagnation?

>>715859507 (OP)
Guards should remain cautious if they have spotted something and call for help.
Being in line of sight of a guard should always get you caught.
If you peek behind the corner and someone sees your head there's no way they wouldn't know what it was.
Even if it was dark, they should go on full alert mode until more backup has arrived and full sweep have been done.
If he's alone and can't call for anyone, then he should simply lock place up and do some sweep that covers every area.
If it was merely a sound you make, they should just go check it out.
Guard obviously knows the place better than some random intruder so he should know where to look if something suspicious is going on.

Something like that maybe.

>>715859507 (OP)
>Make alerts instant failures
Wow that was hard.

>run out of sight
>multiple places you could hide
>hide
>guard beelines into you like he got xray vision
Remove this and you improved immersion immensely

Making actual stealth games instead of action games with optional stealth would be a good start. There's no tension about getting caught if you can just switch to shooting everyone mode and succeed anyway.

Savescumming should be removed or at least extremely limited. As long as it's possible, it's always better, easier and faster to just load a save after getting spotted. There's no point in trying to recover from your mistakes.

>>715860789
>savescum multiple times
>game keeps record how many times you have done it
>eventually some mage faction comes to investigate and prevents you from doing so because you are messing with the timeline
>you can fight them

>>715859507 (OP)
Just give the guards a bunch of different states and stages of alertedness, and I don't mean fucking 3 at best. It's one of the main mechanics of the game, why is that so hard?

>>715861308
Thief 1 did this in 1998.

Stealth games are fine as they are. Play nu hitman or old splinter cell. Stealth games have not become easy since they no more exist. Stop playing action games and demanding good stealth mechanics from them.

>>715860762
an actual stealth game would be supremely boring
>guards may deviate from their pre-coded routines and glance back or upward just because. if the rng decides to fuck with you you have no recourse
>if you make the AI notice missing guards the game becomes unwinnable the moment someone goes missing (call for backup, permanent high alert, etc.)
>if success focuses on taking advantage of one-time scripted events (e.g. call from boss, guard change, snow falling on guard) you basically lose the mission once the distraction is gone, long before anyone is alerted

>>715861554
You don't need to go that far. Just make it so that going head on and killing everyone isn't meant to be just as viable as sneaking. There are lots of games which try to do that for some reason and it makes stealth pointless.

>>715859507 (OP)
Hitman WoA on the higher difficulties really squish your balls to get SA.

>>715860076
I'm a fan of the stealth missions in Arma for some of the reasons you said. The original cold war crisis had the best ones imo. The AI is not competent enough to do full area sweeps or anything complex like that, but they do a lot of things other guards wouldn't.

If it's not night time the enemies can you see you from large distances, at night though you can often get very close as long as they can't hear you. staying still is always better than taking cover because you are easier to spot when moving and moving makes sound. When the enemies spot you, they do so silently unless you are very close so you get absolutely no warning when they get alerted, you could just get one shot killed by a guard you didnt see at anytime, they also stay alerted permanently, alert all enemies in like an entire mile radius, call reinforcements immediately in which further stealth becomes almost impossible, and fighting them is literally impossible, even alerting a few enemies to kill just them is unviable mainly because of the reinforcement tanks and helicopters which you have no tools against.

Never felt more scared in a game than after I tried to beat Cold war crisis without save/loading and I'm 45 minutes into a stealth mission and I alert a random fag patrol in a forest and there's a helicopter trying to find me through the trees.

>>715861345
Did it? Its guard AI was fucking shit.

>>715861308
MGS2 did this

>>715861554
But everything you just said shortens the failure margin even further, nobody's asking for that. The failure margin should be in the nuances of sneaking correctly and everything this would entail, not in how good you are at combat, and certainly not in the sort of trash you're describing.

>>715859507 (OP)
Speaking of stealth and enemy sweeps check this bad boy out
I am looking for suggestions other than thief and that one ninja game
I liked
This
Mgs gz+pp
Mark of a ninja
Hitman
Dishonored
Sneak ops

Desperados too but it's more of strategy game ig

>>715862107
Are you talking about arma 1?
Because it sounds really interesting

>>715859507 (OP)
games like this will always suck until somebody advances npc ai to be much more dynamic but the problem with that is devs can't cater to the widest audience possible, and you'll have /v/tards calling the game "autistic" because you might actually have to use some neurons and be creative.

>>715863581
People like you are also a problem.
It's not impossible to make more complex behaviour tree, even a mid wit can do it after doing some research about real protocols
Problem is game design
It should be challenging
It should feel like odds against you
And most importantly you should be able to win
And ideally there should be a lot of way to win
Like one designer once said how just getting out of your cam and getting shot in the back of the head is realistic but not fun

All those things are very unrealistic, that's they just bomb the weddings instead of sending teams in well armed hideouts

>>715859507 (OP)
Guards should react to their fallen comrades.
See your brother in arms dead by a knife, bullet or arrow? Mourn them and move their body to a room.

Origins and odyssey did. As does hitman. But Valhalla removed it, and shadows didn't bring it back.

>>715859507 (OP)
Modern stealth games are best referred to as games with "stealth elements", much like "RPG elements".
Most modern games use stealth mostly to make controller players feel better about their competence, giving them an opportunity to actually line up a shot or use a context sensitive takedown.
>What innovations or improvements can the genre make to change this stagnation?
Smaller development teams. Stealth games need coordination between level design, enemy AI, programming, etc.. A lot of what is important in stealth games is verisimilitude and that can only be achieved with ample coordination.
>>715861554
This is why verisimilitude is more vital than realism.
>>715863581
FEAR managed to hit the nail on the head. Enemy AI doesn't need to be infinitely complex, but it needs associated design that makes it feel complex.
>>715861308
>Why is that so hard?
Increasing complexity of the system results in more test scenarios and more damage done if anything ends up cut or changed.

Step 1. Remove ranged, silent, instant, non-lethal takedowns (tranq gun)

>>715860183
>make the game just constant resets until you learn to play
Nice learning experience. Very fun

>>715863960
Eslsaar, apply yourself

>>715864892
I guess you've been missing all these types of games ever since Hotline Miami and Super Hot came out?

>>715863152
Yes Operation Flashpoint, but fair warning a lot of it hasn't aged well in some ways, graphics are really shit, and although the game isn't as buggy as the later games, on some newer computers it just doesn't work lol.

also half of the game is not stealth, most of those missions are fine but some are not particularly fun. Particularly the last mission is just utter bullshit (clearly they just wanted a sandbox mission where the AO is the entire massive map and you have to hunt the final objective which could be anywhere, in practice its dreadfully hard and obnoxious unless you do some cheese) and of the top of my head I also remember the jet mission being terrible because of the controls and also there was a mission where you have to ambush a tank column and you are given nothing but a single infantry squad with c4 and if the satchels aren't PERFECTLY dispersed along the road to be under every single tank as it drives through, you lose, and obviously you have no idea ahead of time how far apart the tanks will be. Utter bullshit. Luckily iirc if you fail you can just run away and still complete the mission but still.

Tbh thoughever you should expect some level of jank going in from slavslop but i stoll find it to be not as bad as later entries. There's also an Arma 3 mod that replicates the campaign but don't play it, it sucks dick.

>>715864742
What if I like to make a silent takedown.

>>715865417
Then you do it in melee range and it takes time and/or kills the target.

>>715862995
I recently found out that I have Intravenous 1 on Steam, but I see there's 1 "remaster" DLC for 2. Should I just play the original?

>>715859507 (OP)
yeah that's true

>>715862995
invisible inc

>>715860789
So you want daddy government developers to restrict you because youre unable to govern yourself. Sounds like a good idea.

>>715859507 (OP)
Games where you immediately lose when spotted are glorified puzzles, it's not fun even if you're good at them and rarely fail.
All the real fun happens near the edge, games that blend stealth and combat like Dishonored and MGS5 are the best.

>>715862995
I've been playing this today. Its actually pretty hard on the intended difficulty.
The weapon variety feels a bit mediocre though. Its not that there isn't a lot of weapon variety, but there's not that many niches for the different weapons. Ultimately I'm mostly just using the throwing knife since you can lure two guys into a dark room, stab one, then sling your knife at the other. Its literally a case of
>let me guess, you want more

Stealth sucks as a concept in games tbqh fampaitachi. You're just abusing AI and nonsensical behaviour. I suppose you could argue all gameplay involving NPC interaction is doing so, but stealth is particularly blatant