Open Discussion: Stealth

[Maiyannah]

I would like to approach stealth in a way that makes it viable both for people trying to detect it, in a way that rewards player knowledge and care to attention to details as much as just skill numbers

One idea I had for this was after reading the CEP2 thread:



We could have different materials have different DCs for move silently/listen, a la Thief.

Thoughts on that, or further ideas?

My design aim here is to have it be a system that has some degree of player skill involved, and not just be "get big number, ninjaloot everything not nailed down"

[wilkins1952]

One concern I have with this is lag. That many triggers over a floor directly related to Stealth which fires checks at 7 times a second Per creature in range regardless of Detection is possilbe. Would significantly cause slowdown if too many existed. That said... I would not be opposed to having this be added as a limited option we can use in areas. mixed with visual triggers and good old yellow text explanations that "Hey this area is filled with crunchy leaves it might be hard to sneak over."

[Maiyannah]

From some initial testing if you have it just at the entry/exit of the room its not bad at all, but you do have to design around limiting exits in and out.

[Maiyannah]

Also worth mentioning if you put the script onEnter and onExit only, then its not a huge performance impact if you're not making areas with like 129009490439043 verticies.

[wilkins1952]

Keeping it as an option would be good then, But I'd limit it to specific areas and clearly identify that these areas are like this through area description triggers as people enter. But I think it's a neat idea. Could also go the otherway and have dark areas give a bonus to stealth where needed as well.

[Maiyannah]

I think its not too egregious if its used consistently. There is a valid question about performance using it consistently, but I'm of the view that if we keep the system relatively simple, the performance won't be a problem.

To explain a little, on the scripting side what will make the performance problematic is the complexity of the conditional. So for instance, if we had it only based on the flooring you have, the conditional is simple, and the performance is nto that bad. But every other variable we add increases the conditional's complexity exponentially.