While playing Morrowind (again) recently, I began to notice something that sparked a bit of worry regarding how ESO will treat an aspect of gameplay I enjoy. That is, assassinating foes: striking before they know I'm there and either outright killing them or (in an MMO, more likely) severely wounding them before they can engage.

In some games, EVERYONE is a target and you can just go willy-nilly attacking everything and anything. But one of the strengths of the ESO games is that not everyone IS a foe. In Morrowind, for example, almost everyone has a NAME, even "throw away" bandits and marauders. If you see "Mighty Bandit" then you can probably figure he's not important, but if he has a NAME... well, maybe he serves a purpose?

In a single player game, of course, the solution is simple. I save the game, then approach the NPC brazenly. If he attacks, I reload my save game and assassinate him. But in an MMO it's not possible to save your game before you try to gauge an NPCs hostility.... which leads me to Assassin's Regret --- suppose I creep around and assassinate a foe and it turns out he was involved in some mission?

Now that I think about it, though, it may be a moot point --- in an MMO they can flag NPCs as friendly, in which case we cannot hurt them (thank goodness there's no friendly fire!).... there's still the gray area where an NPC is not overly hostile but CAN be targeted.

Of course even if there is a non-hostile but target-able NPC and I "accidentally" kill him instead of interacting with him, in an MMO setting he'll respawn... question is, will he "remember" that I killed him earlier (that is, my 'faction' reputation with him and his buddies harmed) or will I get a clean slate and a chance to talk to him for a potential mission?

An easy solution would be just to approach EVERY fight openly and wait to be attacked... but that sort of flies in the face of the assassination / sniper style of play which I enjoy. The Nightblade's ability to re-stealth during combat at least gives some measure of recovering this playstyle, but I doubt that the in-combat stealth will make up for the loss of an out-of-combat stealthed attack.

Be interesting to see how they handle this kind of situation. Maybe there ARE no target-able NPCs that offer missions / dialog...

You won't have to worry about that, friendly NPCs you won't be able to kill, plus they respawn like you said.

Sneak is going to be severely nerfed compared the SP games and from what we know, not only is it going to be much harder to not be caught but the damage will be boosted by no where near as much. IT will be a good kick off, but not a major hit.

You will be unable to hurt or even attack NPC's that are not enemies/hostiles to begin with

Nameplates (and probably the colour) will answer this, and if important, no FF will be possible.

For mobs/enemies the nameplate or name will answer it, so perhaps the will include special colour or nameplate for rare mobs, instead of the normal trival red name plate / health bar for normal mobs.

So what problem do you see? Fighthing against the good guys will not be possible (FF) and fighting against the bad guys will be displayed in different ways I guess/expect. So, if there is a special border around the name plate (just as example, I don't know how the devs will mark this), than this is the sign for: Hey, that' is a rare mob, I've to take care. If the rabbit in the forest only has a red health bar / red name plate, you know, easy going.

Nameplates is probably something which can be catched with mods, as this is clearly UI.

Yet another argument against FF. "oops. Sorry dude, was so focused on sneaking properly I didn't notice that DC symbol next to your name. My bad". >_>

I would certainly hope sneak is not as effective in ESO than it is in the single player games, in Skyrim you could pretty much one shot everything as a stealth archer or similar, if this was in ESO, well, need I say more?

Will not happen due to massive QQ coming up, as ESO includes PvP.

I guess my issue was with the potential existence of target-able, attack-able NPCs that COULD offer dialog / missions if approached. If there ARE no such NPCs, then everything's fine and dandy.

But if they have, like, yellow-flagged NPCs that you CAN attack but that are non-hostile (instead of red-flagged NPCs that ARE hostile) then there exists the chance that they could converse peacefully. I guess since they would be non-hostile, I could approach them and find out (assuming they were not guarded by hostiles, in which case one would hope that they would not aggro if I attacked the hostiles and drew them away)... if ~hostile~ NPCs offered dialog/missions you'd need some way to calm them down first (like, perhaps "defeating" them to a set health level when they change to non-target-able friendly).

I'm sure sneak won't be as powerful as it is in the single player game and I am GLAD of that --- just last night, my nearly-maxed Sneak character (with a few Chameleon magic items) could basically walk right in FRONT of an NPC, pick a locked chest, loot it, and sneak away undetected. While loot is always nice, and I do love sneaking gameplay, that wasn't even fun --- no challenge at all.

As for sneak and combat, it seems like I read somewhere or saw in a video that if you attack from sneaking (or perhaps just from un-awares, not sure if actual sneaking is required) a full power attack would stun a foe briefly... often giving enough time for an additional stun-inflicting power attack. So while not immediate one-shot kills, sneak will hopefully still be WORTH using.

Sneak is definitely worth using if you like that sort of play, you will get bonus damage if you successfully land an attack while sneaked, just don't expect it to one shot and wipe out an entire group using it, I recall in Skyrim you could assassinate some enemies, their friends would be 5 feet away and not notice them fall to the floor dead. It seems to be a very effective opener though, especially if you do it in PvP.

this, to some extent. It looks like it is an effective opener IF you are really good at it, but an opener is all it is, you will likely be unable to sneak through entire dungeons unseen, or kill someone(or groups) without being seen..

Well at some point of time the challenge is over and you are the hero. That's what it's about. I like, after the way of progression (which I also love), that at some point things are "easier", because, yeah, the character is well skilled now, he should be in a position to perform well.

For stealth I really hope that this will be a nice solution and that it's possible to get in range to an enemy (from behind it's obvious, but also in front the stealth radius should allow to start (if fast enough) an attack. But this depends on stealth mode in general and how long it can last (so how fast stamina will decrease) and the question about real invisibilty, because it looks so stupid when the character is sneaking in front of another NPC or player but is still visible but just ducked.

But I like the assassin / rogue design of ESO, as I saw several stun skills as well, which will lead to a funny stealth gameplay with probably heavy suprise attacks out of stealth and perhaps stunlock possibilities (if not countered correctly). Sure this kind of melee characters are strong so called opener-characters, but they are normally no fitting for long lasting fights, so they need to balance they damage output withint shorter timeframe (burst potential is usually quite high for assassin types, if the build is done appropriately). The compensation is, that you, once catched, will have more problems in survivability compared to a heavy tank with sword and board and heal skills

What about diminishing returns? Will ESO feature this combat mechanic? I'm asking due to availability of CCs like stuns, blind, and so on.

You can see from one of the videos, and they've said in one of AUA, (or it might have been the ESO alliance interview), that you can't simply sneak in front of an enemy, because they'll see you, you don't turn invisible, so you'll have to be behind them.

So the demand for real invisibility is high, otherwise pointless in large areas with no or not enough stealth opportunities. Hopefully invisibility is possible with a suitable duration, the sneak only mechanic is in PvE fine, but in PvP not enough, especially for melee stealth assassins, as there is simple no possibility so "sneak" behind an enemy on the wide open field. For this invisibility is needed, so it should last long enough with still possibility to fight appropriately, so talking about stamina resource left after invisibility/stealth. Sneak is a PvE or single player mechanic, stealth/invisibility is a MMO PvP mechanic. Sure I'm talking especially about NB who should have advantages here. Sneak is for everybody, but it's weak, so not worth to discuss it. Real stealth is what the assassin needs, otherwise I see no right to exist in good PvP combat, not talking about backstabing a weak enemy not taking care, but fighthing against skilled other players.