When i play my TES games ( or fallout) i always go about everything real stealth-like.
One thing that really bothered me in oblivion was that i could shoot a guy with a bow and arrow from a fair distance where i couldnt be seen, but still he would no where i was. You cant run away and hide, they know where you are.

any of you feel the same way and in what ways could they improve for a stealth-based player? should shadows be taken in account? do you know anything about upgrades to any stealth aspects?

I think its been said that Marksman is being changed into more of a "sniper" skill where shots will take longer but be far deadlier, so you won't have to worry about putting 15 arrows in your target before he can get to you. Plus in OB only some enemies would know where you are, for instance most monsters would kind of just flinch if one of my really sneaky archers didn't make any sudden movements after putting an arrow in them. I think it makes sense in general for an enemy to charge in your direction after you hit them, but if I agree that if you are in the shadows moving silently on a sneaky character they should not know where you are instantly like the npc's in OB did.

yeah, thats what really bugged me. id go to bruma, get on the roof's and shoot people but still they knew i was there :shakehead:
They need a field of view or something. if you outrun them around a corner and crouch behind some crates they shouldnt know your there. A bow and arow is silent s how are they suposed to know where im firing from?

It would probably be quite taxing on the CPU, but to have the NPC's vision rendered then anolyzed to see if they would actually be likely to see you would be awesome to see in a game one day.

This seems like such an obvious and sensible thing to be put into an RPG, it always bugged me that it wasn't. To be honest, in terms of stealth and some other gameplay devices (*cough*Horses, Bethesda. Horses.*cough*), the devs wouldn't go amiss to take some inspiration from the Assassin's Creed series.

you LIKE THIS

Didn't MGS4 do that? Actually didn't they all do that?

Few things on stealth....

I think they set up the detection on ranged attack in Oblivion the way they did for game balance. The realistic way to do it would be for the enemy to recognize, at least, that there's something out there somewhere, and to thus be more alert, but to only in some cases (depending on distance, light, the type of creature it is - that sort of thing) have it able to actually pinpoint you after a single shot. That's sort of the way they did it anyway - at least sometimes they do fail to pinpoint you if you're particularly well-hidden - but it's skewed toward things finding you unerringly after the first shot. Again, I would imagine that was done for game balance - if you could just stay in sneak and keep hitting and keep racking up stealth bonuses, archers would be too uber.

They still need to keep the game balanced, but yeah - they need to make it at least a bit less likely that a creature on the far side of a room knows exactly where you are after a single arrow comes whistling out of the dark and hits him.

I'd like to see sound dealt with better. There was a bit of that in Oblivion, but not enough, and it was a bit sketchy. It's more likely that you'll be caught if you brush up against a wall than if you jump down from a second floor and land directly behind the enemy. That makes no sense.

And too much of it relied on line of sight. If you sneak up in relative dark while a creature's facing you, there's a greater chance it'll spot you, but you can stand up and fight an entire battle with a creature and if another one is in the same room with his back turned, there's a good chance he'll still never spot you.

I think most of what they did in Oblivion was at least the right concepts - it just needs to be tweaked here and there. Make light and shadow more important, make reactions to sound at least more consistent, provide more of an opportunity to stay hidden from a distance (probably with a decreasing chance - the creature is unlikely to detect you after the first shot, but much more likely after the second, and pretty much certain after the third - that sort of thing).

The arrow would point right back in the direction you fired from. After that it is just a matter of distance and elevation.


When you go into sneak mode in Oblivion, that is exactly what the game does.


Aside from being alert, the sane reaction to being fired upon would be to take cover - or at least to run around to make it difficult for the archer to hit you. And to alert allies and start looking for the archer if he or she is not easily visible. As far as I remember, such a system were implemented for MMM in F3, but I'm not sure if it ever got out of alpha.

MGS did that.

Edit: :ninja:

Well if you are shot in the back by an arrow, regardless of how silent the bow was, you will know the shot came from... hmm... behind me! Unless you are carefully camouflaged or you get behind cover quickly without making much noise, they will usually see you. However, even in Oblivion, and I would presume Skyrim, they will know where you are, because it would take an incredibly complex AI to be able to react just like a person does.

I'm pretty sure that it will be implemented in Skyrim; we'll have crit strike and "silent" skills/perks, so it's pointless to have them if we can't give them any use.

Out of this, I'd love to see some kind of "assassination rush", as a perk, spell, combined perk (get crit strike and illusion to 75, i.e.), where you could disappear in shadows and reappear behind the victim :ph34r: :bolt:

This is what Beth should be looking at for FOV/stealth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egy40TYFut8&feature=player_embedded

That was programmed in a week, by one guy. Just think what Bethesda could do.

These posts are getting annoying ... Cause 80% of 'em are still questioning things that HAVE been confirmed .... COUNTLESS TIMES .. just shows , people are IgNoRaNt..