The only thing that really bothered me about fallout 3/nv is the enemy detection system, basically where they can stumble over the bodies of their comrades, and ignore the fact there are 6 dead fellows that you are silently killing right next to them. There are plenty of current, and even old games that have some sort of better threat ability that fallout 3 has.

Sadly in 3/nv there isn't any visual way for enemies to look for threats if they see dead bodies, or someone next to them is killed, etc. Other games like Deux Ex, metal gear solid, etc have visual detection where if a guard sees the body of another guard lying dead on the ground, they go into alert mode because hey, someone killed the guard and his dead body is lying right here!

Would hope there is something even remotely like that in the new FO4 so that i can't just sit far away silently killing a group of foes with headshots while they are just standing next to each other, or have enemies walk over the corpses of 6 of their fellows that i've killed and stroll along like nothing has happened. Would make stealth much more fun than the overpowering ability it is in fo3/nv.

Oh yeah! I really hope they make this better. NV was a step in the right direction with this, if an enemy saw his buddies body he would continuously look for you as long as he had line of sight with dead body. Not perfect but definitely better than F3's oblivious enemies.

Do these games not have a decent method for hiding corpses though? I feel like without the ability to easily and quickly dispose of bodies this could become tedious with enemies going on high alert every 2 minutes and running about searching for you. Could make stealth builds extremely frustrating to play through.

If they make the grab mechanic on corpses more useful, that would be a fine way of handling it. And, of course, any enemies turned into an ash pile would be effectively hidden; and humorous, if other enemies don't go on alert but still comment on ash piles they see. "Who the hell made this mess?"

If Bethesda took advice from id and Bungie for improving the FPS gameplay, I'd hope they did similar with Arkane and stealth mechanics. Dishonored was amazing, and a lot of the more mundane stealth mechanics and level design would fit in really natural with a Bethesda RPG.

In Bison Steve, for example, I'll stealth kill some of the Convicts in the hall ways and drag the body around a corner.

There is really no easy way to fix this without it becoming a Metal Gear Solid game. If they do think of some crazy awesome solution it would be nice. It's very awkward hitting a bandit with an arrow while stealthed only for him to look for me for a few seconds and then think the arrow sticking out of his head was just the wind.

How about this:
What does every assassin, sniper, guerrilla fighter, or spy need? Patience. Maybe make the enemies go alert after finding a body for a significant amount of time, hunting for you. If they don't find you, they acknowledge the body but only in a passive sort of way (think guards in Skyrim standing over the body saying they will find who did it even though they aren't really looking), after nothing out of the ordinary happens during the above mentioned "hunting period". This way they show they are aware of the body, but since nothing else has happened they are used to the body being around, allowing you to continue doing your sneaky kill thing. Of course all of this would be if you fail to pull a body out of sight of any enemies that might pass through an area.

I'd like it if they freaked out and spread out, giving a chance to walk forward into the area they were guarding. Especially if you can knock people out/tranquilize instead of killing. Would make a pacifist playthrough more viable.

Is there anything wrong I stealth attack enemy while listening to radio?

Scenario 1

*laser snipe, NPC1 turns to ash*

NPC2: Odd, there's a pile of ash here with my buddies clothes, where he was supposed to be standing guard. Ahh well, nothing to see here.

Scenario 2

*Laser Crit. NPC tuns to ash*

PC: I better hide the evidence

*PC equips handbroom & dustpan*

Jokes aside.

It might not be an issue, but I thought I'd share my experience with stealth games. Now I havn't played stealth games in a while but I've played many of them over the years.

One mechanic that seems be in every stealth game I've ever played, is the idea of very specific preset enemy paths. This allows the designers to setup the tricky situations that make stealth games interesting. Most stealth games work by restricting the movement of the player and only giving a handful of routes to solve the problem (stealth-fully). They almost always do this by making the majority of the levels indoors. Even more open world games that can be played as stealth Far Cry 3 (havn't played 4 yet) all npcs had very specific paths they followed. I havn't played some of the newer games stealth games like dishonored & mark of the ninja to see if they have this same mechanic or not (maybe someone could enlighten me). I'm not sure if Fallout being open world and it's enemies having less rigid pathing would take away to much from the stealth experience to make it worthwhile.

Also of note: There's a new trend in stealth games that allow the player to see/trace enemy paths: Hitman: Absolution, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Assassins Creed. Is this a new required mechanic of stealth games for the modern audience?

Sorry entire post was a little off topic.

On topic:

Yes would love better ai detection particularly where lighting & distance are concerned. "Sneaking" around in the middle of the night with your non-directional pipboy light on should alert npcs a mile away.

Skyrim actually did a lot better with this. Kill a bandit in a cave and if one of his buddies walks by and see's the corpse he would go into alert mode. I'm sure they will carry over at least that much into this game, hopefully even improve on it more.

They must have, Oblivion had guards react to dead bodies, no they did not react well.

after a fight in a city one guard who was wounded in the recent fight looked down on an dead enemy and said it had been an murder

Think this also has some gameplay issues as you say, still they should search and stay on alert for an far longer time, this does not have to compromise stealth as hard as it did in NV.

if well hidden you should be able to continue doing stealth attacks however enemies will be on watch so it would be harder, they would also be moving around.

A little. I was playing it last night and killed a bandit his fellow bandit searched for a few seconds then said something like it must be his mind playing tricks on him. Mind you he did walk over his pals corpse.

That's more a fault of dialog conditions then detecting if a friendly NPC died.

Actually, no - that comment is for the NPC AI going from ALert To Normal because the player or other enemy can no longer be detected. FO3, FNV, Skyrim are all the same - NPCs don't "care" much when their buddies are killed unless the player remains in a detected or combat search state.

Which is literally what I JUST said.

Its a failure of dialog conditions because they didn't exclude the more generic "guess it was nothing" phrases when going out of alert mode after going into it from discovering their ally's corpse. They should have conditionals placed on them to prevent them from playing and instead have had a phrase like "guess the attacker is gone now" play instead.

Hoping for a more refined version of FNV system. The only thing wrong with it was after they put away the weapon from the first time they notice a dead ally, they would come back and see the body again and act as if it was the first time they saw it, going on alert again. Frustrating for stealth, but better than previous games.

I just hope they do it right.

My point - it is not a failure of dialog conditions. It's working as intended. The NPC's AI will speak from an AlertToNormal topic when enemy detection is lost. The ally's corpse is not 'discovered' at all. It's just ignored by the AI. Skyrim has some topics for finding a dead body but they aren't combat topics.

While I'd bet there are a number of issues that would make turning it into an MGS-style "stealth game", some improvements wouldn't be a bad thing. I've noticed in my current play of FO3 that it's a bit silly to snipe a dude with a silenced weapon, and the guy standing next to him doesn't react much to the fact that his buddy's head just exploded.

When I said it would turned into a MGS game what I should have said is the stealth portion of FO4. Didn't to mean to insinuate that the entire game would be MGS.

Yes, an improvement would be nice.

Lol brain shower!

I don't expect much by way of AI improvement, though, at least some progression of sophistication.

Eventually, a decade or so from now, I would expect if a bandit leader had an unfortunate "accident", I could sit around, wait, watch the confusion, listen to the other bandits argue over who gets the (former) leader's boots and stuff, watch and listen as they argue and fight among themselves over who gets to be the new leader and other things.

It'd also be fun to have the old dwindling numbers thing where members of a group keep "disappearing", and the remaining members gradually catch on, maybe call out the names of their missing peeps, make scared commentary about the whole thing not being funny and if the peeps are playing a joke they're going to be sorry, eventually panicked blind fire at ambient game noises.

Also, Generic Enemy Name Whatever is fine for animals, and unknown humans you haven't met, but, I think it'd be nice if everyone actually had a name, and if you sat and watched and listened, instead of Itchy Raider with Bad Haircut, or Stinky Bandit, the HUD identifiers would then change to whatever their name is.

That, I think, should be the case with all NPCs, at least until introductions are made, or, you're in close enough area to hear their name said by another NPC.

That way, "Bandit Leader" wouldn't necessarily be so obvious from half a mile away, unless the NPC is broadcasting status some way.

eh. mebbe someone can mod something like that last bit.

aw man like in Morrowind almost every character has a name (except the guards strangely). Granted some of the Dunmer names are ridiculously hard to pronounce lol

Yes. That would be nice, and add a little more environmental ambiance, except, it'd be somewhat interesting if you didn't automatically magically know everyone's name, and had to engage with them to unlock their name, or be in close enough proximity to hear someone else call them by name, and even, perhaps, have some name confusion if you've only really seen someone in passing, or, you only met them once and have a low intelligence, so, you still don't automatically know their name, but, might have a foggy idea that their name starts with a "B", or something, or get their name completely wrong and they have to correct you with some annoyance.

Eh. It'd be neat, I think, and also make lower intelligence characters even more interesting to play if they have a difficult time remembering the names of NPCs they interact with, and, even for "smart" characters, there'd still be the whole discovery process of finding out a character's name instead of automatically knowing that Gold-Tooth Gary is Gold Tooth Gary from a mile away, through a scope, out of 10 other NPCs, none of which you've ever seen before.

It'd add a whole new element to the game and even a little bit of interesting mystery.