More Info on Stealth and Invis Changes



We've uncovered more information on the beta changes to Stealth and Invisibility. Here's Turbine dev Sporkfire on the subject:

We've reviewed our changes regarding stealth and invisibility closely this weekend.


After that careful review, we will be checking in the following for the next beta update:



Changes



* Stealth and Invisibility *will no longer break* when you pick up an item (such as your soulstone)

* Stealth and Invisibility *will no longer break* when you equip any item that is not armor.

* Invisibility *will no longer* break when you equip armor. Stealth *will* still break when you equip armor.

* Stealth and Invisibility *will no longer break* when you drink something.

* Stealth and Invisibility *will no longer break* when you view the contents of a chest. They *will* still break when you open a chest.

* Stealth and Invisibility *will no longer break* when you harvest a collectible.



Staying the Same for Launch



* Resting, Opening a Chest, Using a Lever, or Using a Door, will continue to turn off both Stealth and Invisibility. Equipping Armor will continue to turn off Stealth.



Future (Post-launch) possibilities



We had planned on doing this change, or some version of it, for quite some time. Our main concern was the possibility that players could use Stealth and/or Invisibility to obviate most challenges in a dungeon. Yes, overall sneakiness is a big part of DDO. We don't want you to have to fight the whole time in order to conquer a dungeon. However, we also don't think it's D&D or good gameplay to be able to ignore any obstacle in a dungeon just because you're invisible/sneaking. We obviously overshot in our initial fix, and we'll correct in time for launch.



Post-launch, we will be looking to see if we have other ways of fixing the core issue of exploitation. This ranges from having more monsters (where it makes sense) have the ability to see invisible players; to having certain actions such as using a lever or opening a treasure *not* “break” stealth, but rather draw the monster's attention and lower your overall sneakiness; to integrating invisibility and hide/move silently better and have invisibility just give you a large bonus to your sneakiness. We may do a combination of these things, or something completely different, but longer-term we do have a desire to try to address the problem in a different fashion.



A game like DDO has a lot of moving parts. It's not always easy for us to catch all the ramifications for all our fixes (as this situation illustrates). Thank you for your play time and your feedback. It is invaluable to us and to the success of DDO.

And from Devilmouse:

Random facts about how monsters detect players:



* Currently, as the original post says, when you use a door/lever/etc, it doesn't make a "noise" and as such won't attract monster attention.



* As I'm sure you've noticed, monsters without Tremorsense don't see things that aren't in their sight arc (once they've detected you, it's different, but I'm just talking about the initial detection for now). Their sight arc has 2 states: normal and "searching". When they're searching, you'll see them do their animation where they look around and their sight arc will increase greatly.



Put these two things together and you can still be a little stealther and open doors, loot chests, etc without getting attacked, even if you're popped out of stealth when using interactives. You just have to wait until the monster is facing away from you, use the door/lever/etc and then hit hide/invis again before you start moving (moving makes noise if you're not sneaky!) or the monster turns around.



But wait, what if the monster is facing a direction you don't want it to? You distact them! If you shoot an arrow (or throw a dagger or many other things), it will make a noise where it lands. The monster (assuming it has no other goals in its monsterly life) will then go investigate said noise. Assuming it finds nothing, generally, it will just wander back to where it started... but while it was off wandering, you did your stealthly business and hid again, right? Doing this is tricky since you'll be forcing the monster to investigate and thus give him a bigger sight arc and potentially move more erratically as he wanders around.



An illustrated example because my compile is taking way longer than it should: Click Here



(Granted, if we end up making interactives make noise, this may become harder to do since the ogre in the above shot will hear you flipping that door switch...)



Anyhow, hopefully some of that was useful... it was my way of saying that even with the changes to stealth, it's still very possible to be sneaky.