Hi everyone

Can we assume that stealth gameplay in F4 will work in the same exploitative fashion, as it did in Skyrim?

Clearing a room out, saving the game and moving on to the next room. If you accidentally get spotted, you wait for the eye-thingy to shut and start over. Yes, it's a flawed system, that can be exploited endlessly, but I love it.

So, what do you think? Can we assume the same room-clearing, blind-npc, stealth-resetting stealth system is back in F4?

Or do you think that the loud weaponry will give our location away instantly - even with perfect attributes? Will enemies keep searching until they find us?

Thoughts?

I would assume going loud with guns would kinda give ya playing away, be no point having silencers as a gun mod otherwise.

Scenario: You are crouching in a dark corner, far away from the enemy. You have a Hunting Rifle, shoot and hit an enemy. Takes him out and alerts 3 nearby enemies, that start searching for you. Or do you think that they instantly run towards your location - even with 10 in corresponding attribute?

I'm guessing once you get sneak maxed out the game will get really easy, that seems to be the sense of progression that Bethesda likes to provide with stealth. Although it is not my style of game play, I can see how it makes sense since once you have maxed out sneak you should be theoretically as good at it as is possible. That being said, I do expect it is improved over FO3 and NV so that sounds from guns warn nearby NPCs even if the target is killed in one shot.

I will probably be getting mods to make it more life-like and nerve wracking to sneak around places (no UI indicators, better AI). Normally I would include lighting in the list of mods, but it looks like they have some pretty nice lighting in Fallout 4 so might not need lighting mods. Maybe if they have a lot of areas with overly bright interiors or overly bright nights I might tweak that.

Probably depends on how far away you are. If you are using a scope you would probably be out of their search range and could pick them off one by one like in previous games. If close enough to be in search range, I'm not sure. My hope is that they run in your general direction if they only heard the shot, but run directly at you if they saw you shoot (it would be very visible if you shot from a dark area).

I would assume so, the loud bang of a modern rifle is different to the soft twang of a bow.

Man I hope we get the Chinese Stealth Suit effects as they were in Fallout 3 back in full force or stronger. That was the ultimate perfect stealth gameplay experience as it always should be.

I'm more interested in knowing whether or not you can still sneak past people while your PipBoy radio is blasting out music. That was hilarious in the previous two games.

Honestly though, I don't think stealth will work much differently than it's worked before. These aren't stealth games, they're RPGs with an optional stealth component, and that component isn't going to be as complex or fleshed out as what you would get in a game where stealth is the focus. Stealth gameplay has always been pretty lackluster in TES, and Fallout... I don't really see them improving it by a great deal for Fallout 4.

Maybe the pip-boy hooks up to your neural system so all the music you hear is only electrical signals from your wrist instead of air vibrations transformed into electrical signals by your ear. Would also explain how the pip-boy is able to display your SPECIALs, skills, and health.

I don't see why not....wireless headphones/bluetooth type stuff. What's supposed to be the problem?

Radio never bothered me, I always figured it was in headspace or whatever.

As for stealth, I think it's completely possible for Bethesda to improve it drastically without drawing from the RPG aspect or other playstyles. They can't really go full Kojima and have level design that necessitates sneaking on rooftops or hiding inside barrels, but they can have NPC AI that reacts accordingly to detecting corpses, or raising alarm and searching the area, and proper stealth weapons and perks.

The best way I can say it, I think, is that I hope Bethesda took a few hints from Dishonored. (you'll also notice that as soon as they hired Emil Pagliarulo, who worked on some of the Thief games, that stealth went from a frustrating mess in Morrowind to something actually enjoyable in Oblivion and downright OP in Skyrim)

Too bad you probably won't be able to choose whether enemies hear the Pipboy radio or not, like you can choose to use headphones with your Walkman or not in MGSV. I think it would be pretty hilarious to kick in the door to a raider den while blasting your music at them. Or fusion powered speakers on your Power Armor blasting Mighty Mighty Man. Sacrifice all stealth, but gain that psychological advantage.

I'm hoping they've continued to improve the Stealth system, with sound, light, etc. effecting your chances. And hopefully Raider's will now notice their buddy is a Bloody Mess in the center of the room and start a general alarm and a search for you. I'm not asking to hide bodies or anything, but it would be nice if Stealth were better for AVOIDING combat, and if you used your OP stealth to whack someone from the shadows, you'll probably get an instant kill, but it'll dramatically rise your chance of having to fight your way out of the area when the body was discovered.

It will just have the guards search around for your character for a couple of minutes and then say it must have been the wind.

A basic means of moving bodies wouldn't hurt. Hell, I'd love it if we could turn corpses to ash as a way to keep people from going on alert, especially if they still commented on the ash pile. "Who the hell made this mess?"

Bloody Mess might make hiding corpses a bit trickier, though...

What I've always found kind of overpowered was sneaking with a sniper. Even if you got 15 points in sneak, just crouch, shot, and get an automatic critical hit, because at long distance, your sneak is pretty much assured.

Well, it was what I was trained to do in the Marines. Set up position, hide and wait, take the shot, move location, repeat. Camping. It works in real life and games. It's just an inherently better tactic when you are out-numbered. If you are going to be a one man / one woman hit squad, you've got to be a little more sensible than kicking in the front door.

Gameplay-wise, I think Stealth kills are balanced in FO3 and NV. It takes longer to move and get in position, but you're almost assured of a critical hit / kill. Or you can just wade-in and shoot raiders in the face with a tri-laser, which is quick and messy. One way is patient, and you are rewarded for that. The other way is fast and expedient, and you pay for it with a little lost health or armor durability.

I think the biggest problem was the [censored] AI. Sniping was my favorite gameplay type though. Nothing like clearing out the surface of Fairfax or Bethesda without taking a scratch!

Yeah, really makes no sense. Not sure if sneak attacks in general make sense with the exception of melee sneak attacks, but there is certainly no difference between if you shoot someone from a mile away while crouched or while standing. At the very least, there should be a much higher sneak attack modifier for melee attacks than for guns.

The idea (role-playing reason) is that when sneaking, you have all the time in the world to line-up and make the perfect shot - thus getting a critical. Where as if you are NOT sneaking, you are considered to be making more of a "snap" shot, without having as much time to aim perfectly. So you may or may not get a Critical.

This. It's a bit of a compromise between RPG mechanics and realistic stealth mechanics, but it's done so that there's actually a point to remaining undetected and making sneak attacks.

If we compare it to casting fireballs while stealthed in Skyrim. Before the silencer perk. Even though more enemies might have reacted to it, you still just had to wait for the stealth to reset and cast the next one.

But then again, there must be some kind of progression to the game. Not only the attributes, but the perks as well. If you have everything maxed out, you should be able to stay hidden forever.

Yeah but if we step back to the last Fallout games, 3/NV I can assure ya, those NPC where coded to head straight for the source of ya gunfire if you used a unsilenced gun, so I imagen it will be the same here, whatever ya stealth "skill" is.

Who said anything about a problem? I thought it was entertaining, and I'm hoping we can do it again.

There's no in-universe explanation for it. It was likely either a developer oversight, or they just didn't care enough to factor the radio into the stealth mechanics.

They could, but it's more of a question of whether or not they would find it worth the time and resources it would take to program complex stealth game algorithms into the AI. I'm sure they could do it if they wanted to, but since they make RPGs nuanced stealth game AI like that isn't going to be as big of a priority for them as it was for the developers of games like Thief: The Dark Project and Metal Gear Solid where stealth is the actual focus.

In a perfect world Bethesda would be able to put as much time and resources into perfecting the stealth gameplay as possible, but I'm not sure how feasible this actually is in reality given the size of their games, and how many different systems they have to juggle. This is why I don't think we'll see foresee any drastic improvements. I can't see the future though, so who knows.

Did it? I thought it was the same thing in Oblivion and Skyrim that it has been since Daggerfall. TES and Fallout stealth is mostly just number crunching as far as I can tell - with the games constantly determining your visibility to AI based on your character's sneak skill level, and perhaps a virtual roll of the dice. I wasn't aware there was anything else factoring into the mechanics. Not saying I don't believe you, I just haven't looked into the stealth mechanics in any real detail - I only have my limited experience actually using them, so I'm curious as to what these differences actually are.

I hope the AI is greatly improved. The whole "Oh, my buddy got his head shot off, let me just look around for 10 seconds...oh, it was probably nothing" was total crap.

As long as they factor in more variables (skill, armor, lighting, NPS perception, ambient noise, line of sight) and improve the AI to where it doesn't give up looking for you, I hope I won't need mods.

I think it's safe to assume that we can't assume anything. They've completely overhauled the gunplay combat and re-balanced everything. I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the guaranteed critical hit mechanic while stealthed in favor of creating two stealth-related play styles: the "ninja" and the "thief". Note that under this setup, they would create a baseline mechanic for stealth and add features to it through perks.