I do not jest. And don't call me Shirley. Since Todd Howard himself dutifully watches this board and is furiously taking notes on anyone and everyone's ideas for future TES games, here's the idea:

Make it so crouching is not a sufficient means of sneaking unless you are in total shadow or darkness, and only if the enemy cannot see in the dark or has other means of sensing a presence like bodyheat or sonic. If you are in their line of sight and you are partially illuminated, however high your sneaking skill is doesn't matter.

Instead, in order to remain hidden, you would have to use cover, dangle off ledges, walk along ceiling beams, extunguish lights, hide inside things (wardrobes, coffins, chests, etc). Some sort of amalgam of Splinter Cell and Theif's gameplay. TES' gameplay is great for warriors and mages, but not so for theifs, which I imagine is why they make it so easy to sneak around despite all you're doing is squatting.

Well there's my two cents. And Mr. Howard, I'll expect my check in the mail.

Of course the 30x damage has nothing to do with this.

Damage bonuses would be ok if you couldn't simply squat-walk over to someone who's facing square in your direction and is still oblivious to your presence

bump

last bump

There is no need to further balance any player skill in the game with any other player skills. The only thing that needs balance, is the player skills\abilities to the npc skills\abilities.

Just because it seems too easy to you, in general, doesn't mean that it's not great fun for others. I have fun just being crouched. I don't care if your just squatting, and it makes no sense that the npc can't see you. I like it.

Its bad enough that Invisibility is broken now, and will only work with stealth. Why should I HAVE to be a thief to remain undetected. It's MAGIC. It's already doing more work than I want to do. I have to squat, then cast muffle, THEN cast invisibility. And then I have to have leveled sneak some.

I should be able to cast invisibility and just run through the mobs, like Oblivion. I'm a mage, why do I have to be a thief/mage. And just being able to hear the player is not advantageous, in hand to hand combat. The npc doesn't have a gun, it can't blanket the general area that it can hear you in with bullets. It cannot see your count-attack coming in, so can't defend against it. You should be able to one-shot it, if it tried to keep attacking you. It should really just drop combat and move away from you.

It's already broken...don't keep messing with it

So it's better for us to strike a death-lord, not be able to kill it and have him fus-ro-dah us to oblivion? Stealth kills need to kill on the first hit, limitation is to get behind the enemy when doing so.

I'd change it so that there's a sound when the enemy corpse falls to the floor, nearby enemies would hear it, so move out quickly. Or, enemies are able to recognise dead friends and grab their weapon and go stand with their back against a wall, scouting for danger. Really any kind of intellectual behaviour that makes getting behind the enemy a bit harder, would balance things. Instead of having a bandit just stand and look to one direction, he should be doing stuff like cooking, eating, sleeping, walking and investigating. Anything to make them change location at least at some point to make less easy-to-stop patterns in their walking around, or standing about. I mean come on, why would a guy stand in darkness, alone, looking at a wall, just asking for to be backstabbed?

Well you are wrong, keep your Thief, Assassins Creed, Splinter Cell the hell out of my Skyrim/Elder Scrolls. There is my 2 cents.

Maybe a mod, I already have assassin creed for that.



replace death-lord with a mammoth, then no, stealth kills need not to kill on the first hit

I don't agree. All I say always keeping in mind that I talk when using Sneaking with the appropiate character, not with a full armor warrior just because it's cool to have the skill and perks.

I agree that it's not very realistic to be able to sneak on day light, but if someone decides to play a sneak character (rogue / thief / assassin), will need all the advantages that lacks from a normal warrior (melee damage / armor). Unless we are able to shoot some kind of "water arrow" that turns torches off, to be able to sneak (let's say it was some kind of perk for sneaking skill), then you can't force the player to always have shadows around, or else the skill training + perks are completely nonsense. And also, having no light would mean that anyone is able to sneak, so no need of sneaking skill either.

Sneaking on this game is some kind of "hiding" skill, so you can think on this as someone that is able to hide himself next to a wall, while walking, even if a light is around. Something that a mage or armored warrior should not be able to do (when talking about RPing).

With my rogue I'm enjoying the sneaking, and I have also fun training it slowly, while playing (not force-training) so for now I'm not either overpowered, neither still good enough at it, so I have to be really careful when sneaking. Of course when I train it more and have more perks, it will be easier and I will feel more powerfull, which will be also cool, because it's hard earned, and it's what I was looking for. But when I start the game again with a warrior, the sneaking skill will be a no-no, meaning I will never use it.

Don't take all the sneak perks.

Makes a big difference.

if you want this game to be realistic then a 1 shot steath kill should be the normal. I am fairly sure if I snuck up behind someone with a knife they would be dead in 1 hit. However the problem would be sneaking up to them undetected which is where the problem lies in Skyrim, Stealth is far to easy and really not realistic at all.

Skyrim could be a insanely awesome stealth/thief/assassin game if they added the stealthyness from the splinter cell series added with the somewhat good AI from MGS series (alert phases, calling out for help ect.)

The big problem with sneak is that you can chain sneak attacks. They should be openers only.

The only time I can chian stealth kills together on people remotely close to each other is when I get the slow-mo neck slitting move. Other than that....