Stealth and Perception

[jilliana]

Before I start...I know this is a topic that has been discussed constantly over the boards and in game. Anyone can roll their eyes at me and sigh, but I think most anyone would agree with my sentiments.

For as long as I've been playing, (nearly 3 years) perception and stealth have been an issue. I'm not much for mechanics and numbers so bear with me. I'm hoping someone with a mind for the numbers can throw in their two cents.

Stealth:
My only real complaint about stealth is that it increases incredibly slow for a skill that is needed/required for PCs for ability requirements and tasks. I have a couple of characters that can complete several lessons in other things and their stealth study is still pending even though they have been attempting to finish those lessons for a while.

Perception:
On the other side of that coin is perception. Whereas stealth is another form of combat, perception is more necessary to learn. There are those more advanced tasks that require a PC to seek and find those stealthy MOB. Add something like a greathelm so we don't insta-die and the task just got significantly more difficult and dangerous when it was already those things to begin with. One can cap dodge and still get beat up because perception is a much more time-consuming skill to learn compared to everything else.

Even after the skillgains changes were made, both perception and stealth were still slow. I even thought perception in particular wasn't affected but have since been corrected. It is just that bad.

I would like the GM staff to consider making changes to these two skills. For a place that prides itself on balance, it surprises me that these two skills have been such a source of frustration for balance reasons, yet nothing seems to have changed aside from the game-wide skillgains made some months ago. These two skills need special attention.

Looking forward to hearing everyone else's thoughts on this.

[galon]

I have a few thoughts on this as well. Firstly you have certain guilds that have places to train perception allowing it to advance faster. I pointed this out when I first started playing and was told that not everyone needs perception. This, In my opinion is bull. everyone needs perception to one degree or another. Example. Lets say you are in conflict with a pc. Said pc attacks from stealth and kills you. Had your perception been higher You'd posibly spot that pc thus avoiding being killed. My point is that I agree with jill. It takes way tooo long to raise stealth.

[Dovey]

Whilst I agree that perception is a pain to train and slow. Stealth to me isn't. I gain, gains in it very fast, just from attacking from hiding. Infact I raised it from 50 to well over a hundred in just over a day of casual task grinding. So I can't really see the issue with training it. It goes down quicker then my other combat skills I'm training at the time. Heh. Just my two cents as my PC relies on it heavily. :)

Edited to add, that it was harder at first but I found it gets easier the more skill I gained in it.

[jilliana]

Yeah...stealth is iffy in that it depends on what weapon you use. Archery is great for increasing it, but if your character prefers to use another range weapon, it would be much more difficult to increase. I don't really like having to force my character out of their comfort or preference zone just because stealth is easily increased by doing just this one single thing.

[Dovey]

Ahh, I didn't realise! Never really tried using different weapons other then archery :D And I agree with you not wanting to do that just because it's 'easier' to level up. Kudos for you for sticking with your character's IC concept! Sorry if I sounded like a know it all but was just giving my personal option of training it up. :)

[jilliana]

No worries! :) Grinding tasks is really a good way to increase skill in general.

[Dorn]

I do wonder if there was a larger variety of mobs to train Perception with it wouldn't be such an issue. Even taking into all the mobs currently in game who you can use for training, for the average person I don't think there is a clear path of progress from 0 skill to 2500. That would be a person who is willing to throw on full plate to train. Those unwilling to do so *definitely* couldn't make it to 2500 without constantly dying and retreating to a healer to wait it out. I do wonder if that is due to the old meta of those who didn't wear armor used stealth, and therefore didn't need perception because people who don't wear armor don't train perception and therefore unable to target those who stealth... minus a few specific Abilities for Guilds that will target those hidden.

I don't think just speeding up gains would fix things enough, nor am I entirely sure if it needs speeding up myself. Even pre-gain adjustments, in the right challenge area with things setup it did clok (aha) along at a decent if slow pace. Not hair pulling frustratingly, but not even average for most other skills. That's probably required. It is a very powerful skill. I'd much rather keep the pace of it, but have it a much less of a meta skill to train unless you're of specific Guilds or are an utter madman who had a pocket monk (I'm looking at you Maric).

More stealth mobs, with less no instant lethal attacks across the ranges would be a start. I don't consider Archer mobs good training for it, as you're playing Russian roulette for an eye shot. I've often heard people say, if you're going to get in some combat you should expect to wear armor if you don't want to get one-shot. Well. What if you *can't* wear armor if you want to get any gains? As it is, I find the new mobs in the Ebon's Pass Fort a huge improvement over Bandits for training in general. Dangerous weapons inside the fort, but nowhere near as deadly for most as a shortsword/dagger. You're still not going to get very far without being in a tin can however or knowing how to disarm.

I do worry that more mobs with less lethal would make it too easy for people who do wear plate to train it, but there definitely has to be a better happy medium than is currently in the game.

(Edit as I forgot about this) Also is there a specific reason why ranged attacks from hiding don't give a paranoia bonus compared to melee attacks?

As for stealth, having never really trained it I have no comment beyond the fact it's amazingly powerful, even with near enough 0 skill if you use it right.

[preiman]

Believe it or not, having a monk following isn't super helpful for stealth or perception, i mostly kept her with me, because that's just how we did things.
Don't get me wrong, pocket monk made a lot of things easier but just not this

[preiman]

Now that i think about it, you were probably referring to my own abilities in that area, and yes, those do help quite a bit.

[Tamsin]

Well, it's kind of a chore that the way to make decent gains requires... disarming someone and standing around in plate armor. It's a little weird to think about. For perception I mean.

[Jirato]

Stealth being difficult/slow to increase is intentional. It is the single most powerful skill in the game, allowing people to completely bypass all other combat skills. That's a pretty big thing. Ambushing is OP. Perception is the ONLY skill that can counter stealth, so yeah, it's difficult too. They both used to be much easier to increase, but we had to change them in a way they couldn't be easily scripted. Was the change a little bit too extreme from easy to way too difficult? Maybe, but I'm not really sure what else can be done easily... Also, I don't actually expect to see anyone running around with 2500 stealth or 2500 perception. I think I had that discussion in CHAT a few weeks back - the skill cap is intended to be a limit for extreme cases, not a goal. The game isn't being designed around the skill cap. It's just to prevent people from getting game-breaking levels of skill.

The whole disarming an ambushing critter thing for perception gains is kinda exploity, by the way. I'd love to code it up so if an ambushing critter loses its weapon and is unable to recover it, it walks away and despawns. But that's just another item of many on my list right now.

[Dorn]

Could you at least consider giving a paranoia bonus for people attacked by sniping instead of just melee attacks?

[Dakhal]

I agree with paranoia needing to be a thing for ranged attacks as well. I'm aware that ranged combat from stealth already faces penalties, but that doesn't denounce that the person that's being attacked isn't going to have the same stimuli that another being attacked from melee has.

There's only a handful of people that have either capped stealth or perception, anyhow.

[Jirato]

IMO, there's no reason paranoia shouldn't apply. I feel this is more of a bug that needs to be fixed than a feature request.

Random NPC getting shot at from stealth: "Hmm, that's odd, all these bullets and arrows and fireballs are being flung in my general direction. Hmm, oh well! Nothing to worry about! Just a normal day!"

[preiman]

for some of us that is a normal day

[Dorn]

for some of us that is a normal day

Amen.