After posting the "Your opinion on combat in Skyrim?", I've noticed that the awful stealth mechanics is another, of the many, systems that people dislike. One of the many things is the logic of killing an enemy right in front of his buddy but his buddy going "I guess it was just my imagination." Another would be being able to literally bump in an enemy and them not notice you. What, are we supposed to imagine they thought we were the wind?

So here, you can discuss what you think should be added/removed to the stealth aspect of Skyim.

I misread the post, so I deleted everything that I previously typed. Disregard.

Apologies.

I do really like stealth a great deal, my complaint is just again with the combat tier about how painfully easy stealth is in the game. I have had characters with full heavy armor able to sneak with the best of them. Minor personal complaint is that a sneak attack with a dagger should be an insta-kill against a human or draugr regardless of whether it is an Iron Dagger or a Daedric Dagger, but that just is based on the fact of slitting a throat or impaling them in their head would be a 100% kill. But as I said that is a relatively minor complaint. Also a ranged sneak attacks if not an insta kill should still severely cripple the fighter because he now has an arrow lodge in the proverbial knee. Kinda wish there were traps besides rune spells as well, like setting bear traps down that do what they are actually designed to do, such as injure and hold the prey in place.

Ultimately I prefer stealth due to the fact that it is realistically more efficient than charging in there with a big sword and means that the stupid warrior and his plate armor and giant axe is about as threatening to me as a bumble bee. But Beth needs to look at some of their other games like DIshonored for its stealth mechanics to make it more challenging because as it stands it is a bit ridiculous and man does it level fast with melee sneak attacks.

I like it. If I wanted realism I'd do Live Action Role Play, not a computer game.

Gosh there are tons of things Skyrim stealth needs to be more realistic. The main thing to add would be NPC's reacting properly when they found a slain companion. At that point they should look for the killer until they found them. SkyRe addresses this by drastically increasing the time enemies spend searching for you.

At lower Sneak skills, stealth is pretty realistic. Shadows hide to to an extent, sudden movements betray you, enemies' line of sights works well. If you want a realistic sneaking experience, then take only one Stealth perk so you can move up to realistic perks such as the dagger double damage perks and Muffle; but no more.

I learned the hard way that once they've found you- they've found you.

My stealth archer attacked some bandits inside a fort, in one of those rooms where you have multiple levels. I took out 2 before I was "seen," and the stairs and what not gave me time to run back down a hallway before they were able to close.

I entered another room, quaffed an invisibility potion and re-stealthed, hoping to get another hit on one (since I wasn't too hot in melee).

Nope.

Despite having gotten out of line-of-sight, being invisible and motionless, they bee-lined right to me with power attacks.

You would think that invisibility would at least force a re-calculation of detection chances.

My biggest complaint about the stealth system is the inability to 'break' being revealed at low levels. Once you're found, you should be able to still slip back into 'hidden but under scrutiny' and require them to re-establish audio/visual confirmation of the player's actual location.

The other problem is with the AI - even if it can't detect you, but can get a ping on your general location, it should try taking a few 'stabs in the dark' (Any chaos caused by them stabbing their buddies is a perk, not a flaw) that may or may not hit your character if you're hidden well enough - at least at max level. Another problem is the voice files - NPCs giving up the search isn't a problem. Denying the events is the problem - "Must be my imagination" works for sound detection - but if they find an object/see their buddy get killed, they should panic, look around, and, if they don't find anything, the response should be "I hope it's gone", then go about reacting to their slain buddy (Read: checking him, going through his pockets for loose change, and promising to take care of the body later), not "Must be my imagination"

I don't mind "Stupidity" in the AI, such as simplified/incomplete search patterns that allow a somewhat bad-at-stealth player to recover from accidentally blowing his cover, or NPCs that can be distracted and run on a merry fox chase through misdirection.

Slitting their throat/impaling their head implies you manage to strike exactly where you want to/penetrate the skull/armor with a single blow (instead of have the dagger glance off and 'merely' half-scalp them), or actually manage to slit the throat - it is harder to actually do than most people realize. And while almost always a death sentence, a slit throat still takes time for the person to bleed out or suffocate - it's not an instant-death attack.

Lol, impaling them in the head through a helmet would be dumb. I ignore that too much because if armor worked like it actually did then 3/4 of all weapon attacks would be useless against an armored opponent in the game. In reality though slitting a throat effectively is not that difficult as long as you have some understanding of the anatomy of it, same for impaling in the head. If you aren't very good at it you wouldn't survive long in the field of stealth anyways.

I like it.I just wish that certain events (like seeing their friends corpse) will keep them from letting you go completely unnoticed,so that they would keep searching for a much longer time.It would still go down,but not all the way.

My issue with stealth is how a target dies and nearby friends go from a relaxed state, to alarm, and if they cant find you they go back into a relaxed state. Just like the OP said...i think it's rediculous that a bandit can take an arrow to the face or maybe a near miss, but after a few seconds they do the 'must be my imagination'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbF9ynGZV0

Sneaking in skyrim is pretty dumb but it makes me laugh.

First off - Hit points are an abstraction of a variety of protections(Including skill, narrative importance, and luck), and those extend to protections from sneak attacks. Also, only sneak attack killcams use the slitting throat/stabbed skull. Most sneak attacks aren't a careful and precise blow to a vital spot - they're a quick "Try to stab him somewhere I normally couldn't while he can't fully protect himself before or his friends realize I'm here."

*Reads title*

"Probably going to be another Skyrim bashing thread"

*Reads op*

"Yep."

On a serious note, I've seen stealth in different games and most of them aren't realistic. You often find yourself in a situation where you think "lol, how can they not see me?"

Not really a bashing thread. I enjoy the Stealth in Skyrim and the Combat as well. Posts like these are better than: "OMG Skyrim is the best gaem evar 10/10 al day waey." posts, wouldn't you agree?

I agree, the generic dagger swing to the back of the knee is sort of an irrelevant thing realistically speaking, I mean it has certain advantages but ultimately if they don't detect you just slit their throat, stab them in the head, stab in the throat and twist the neck, stab in the base of the skull, etc. These would all be lethal assuming the person knew what he was doing, but the actual gameplay dagger swing to health points things I understand is just the way games ultimately are.

I've actually known a few SEAL's that were so well trained at CAMO they could be five feet from you and you would never see them without using IR Goggles. They are often "loaned" to other military branches for exercizes in detecting the enemy.