PD2's stealthing compared to other stealth games

[Ailes]

I've recently finished Dishonored. A longer while back I played Hitman: Absolution. I'm not the greatest stealth fan, but I do appreciate it sometimes.

Stealthing doesn't seem to evolve. Dishonored works just like any older stealth game. So does Hitman. I don't remember anything special from MGS4 either. Splinter Cell I haven't touched in a long while, the Thief reboot game neither. Isometric games like Commandos never worked any different to their 3D counterparts.

There are guards, they patrol areas, they have a cone of vision, they get attracted by noises or "unusual" actions like running or climbing around (Assassin's Creed). If they notice you they hunt you down. You put them down and hide their bodies, or you hide somewhere for their alert status to cool down. If everything goes smoothly you just slip through or knock out every guard one by one emptying the level of all danger.

In Dishonored guards you take out are sometimes replaced. The replacements make remarks like "Hey, why is nobody patrolling here?" but otherwise act like always.

Payday 2 works almost the same. But one thing I'm surprised I've seen only in this particular game is that you need to answer pagers. When I was taking out guards in MGS or something I've always been wondering why no one would ever notice them disappearing and making no further reports. You often fight presumably highly trained elite units in such games, yet they don't have any visible chain of command. They have no shifts, they just do what they do forever, they are never replaced by new fresh guards who would notice them missing.

Why is it stealthing mechanics are seemingly stagnating? Is this the best the genre can offer? Is it because it would become too hard if guards were given more awareness to the overall situation? Did I just miss the more complex stealthing games? Did anyone here play that new Thief game? How does Splinter Cell fare?

[ReV0LT]

So... what are you comparing again?

[Unplanned_Organism]

Well I don't think Stealth made any progress since Splinter Cell 1 and Chaos Theory.
I do believe that Dishonored and Hitman Absolution have questionnable stealth mechanics, way under what used to be made. I'm not the nostalgic kind-of-person, but I do believe stealth games are evolving in the wrong way.
For instance, many Splinter Cell games like the 5 and 6 feature enemies that have their back turned of a windows/door/ledge, hence they're ridiculous and make no challenge at all. same thing in some Assassin's Creed "stealth" demonstations: these games include different gadgets and different ways to go through a level, but only one or two seem will seem doable - like if they were used to be showed in Expositions-.

In PD2 guards are patrolling and perhaps a little too efficient sometimes / a little too bad sometimes too. But they do have a wide field of view, not like most Stealth games nowadays.

The new Thief game is real bad though, I don't think it's related to the franchise by its stealth gameplay.

Stealth is a matter of gameplay, game mechanics and level design, and relations between those:

The game can have different animations for takedowns, a cover system, (moving from cover to cover animations), different stands from the player model.
That's what games have used since Splinter Cell or older.
The player uses the environmment to move on the map, hide and accomplish objectives, take down enemies. Vertical environments are good, vents as well, and they are a good standard.
The player has interactions with the map to hide, hide bodies, go through parts of the levels.

[Ailes]

Publicado originalmente por ReV0LT:

So... what are you comparing again?

The standard formular of "guard X sees and hears this far" + "remove all bodies and drag them to dark corner Y". And that you need to answer pagers in PD2, I can't recall anything like that from any other stealth game.

[Unplanned_Organism]

Well PD2 has quite the easy stealth mechanic. Pagers act like a difficulty tweak.
Right before recent updates, 5 guards could be seen on most maps, and the matter was to kill 4 and dominate one. Then the level was over.
PD2 was modified so that weapons, armors would affect the player's detection level.
Also skills would affect the use of silenced weapons (aka Shinobi).
Payday 2 uses nothing more than skill trees granting stealth bonuses.
I dont think it's an unatural. part of the game.

[Mutant1988]

Metal Gear Solid 2 had radio check-ins and I believe that 3 had it as well. Don't know about 4.

Basically, If you've taken out a guard and then stay in that area for too long, they would send a patrol to check on things. Of course, this is reset by simply leaving the area but it was a neat idea.

[Ailes]

Really? Well, I haven't played MGS in a very long while. I think I do remember something like that at least in some of them. You had to threaten the guards in MGS3 with a knife to the throat so they would make a positive report to some command center, hadn't you?

[Mutant1988]

Publicado originalmente por Clarity:

Really? Well, I haven't played MGS in a very long while. I think I do remember something like that at least in some of them. You had to threaten the guards in MGS3 with a knife to the throat so they would make a positive report to some command center, hadn't you?

Can't remember. Possibly? I'm horrible at MGS, could never get used to the controls (Analog face buttons is the worst thing ever).

But I do know that you could shot their radios to stop them from reporting in. Of course, this would eventually lead to a patrol being sent, but it would save you from an immediate alarm.

[Nothing.]

I wouldn't even dare put Payday 2 in the stealthing genre. It feels like 'stealth' was messily tacked on, so if you feel like stealth is stagnating by observing what Payday 2 does, you might be looking in the wrong place to get an idea of the genre.

[AmourBizarre]

Got this game in the last sale and i was quite surprised how well the stealth part works.
Guards are somehow incalculable and the dynamic placing of doors, cams etc. is really good.

The only thing that i dont like so much, are the static civs in some maps. But i guess if these civs would wander around, these maps would become a nightmare to stealth.

I still have a lot of fun to stealth missions, alone and with others, even despite the fact, that i finished a lot of these maps many dozen times.

[Ailes]

Publicado originalmente por Nothing.:

I wouldn't even dare put Payday 2 in the stealthing genre. It feels like 'stealth' was messily tacked on, so if you feel like stealth is stagnating by observing what Payday 2 does, you might be looking in the wrong place to get an idea of the genre.

Well, what is to you a proper stealth game then? I've played some, and honestly only few do much different. I should probably try MGS again though. I bet that new Thief game is rather cookie-cuttish and standard tpp. At least Deus Ex: Human Revolution was.

[AlexMBrennan]

Payday 2 works almost the same. But one thing I'm surprised I've seen only in this particular game is that you need to answer pagers. When I was taking out guards in MGS or something I've always been wondering why no one would ever notice them disappearing and making no further reports. You often fight presumably highly trained elite units in such games, yet they don't have any visible chain of command. They have no shifts, they just do what they do forever, they are never replaced by new fresh guards who would notice them missing.

This simply servers the player to evade guards instead of just putting a silcener on a machine gun and murdering everyone, which all the other games you mentioned do as well (Hitman gives you a significant score penalty if you kill tons of guards, as does Dishonored)

[CONTROLLER ONLY MAN]

Where's MGS?

[Anon]

The best stealth games are those you play against other real players.

Contagion is IMO a good example, you sneak around and try to kill others.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/238430/

Place is full of zombies, you need to kill them but when you shot them you alert other players.

What I would love to see is a new version of classic Rainbow Six games but I doubt that we will get one of those.

[Ailes]

Publicado originalmente por AlexMBrennan:

This simply servers the player to evade guards instead of just putting a silcener on a machine gun and murdering everyone, which all the other games you mentioned do as well (Hitman gives you a significant score penalty if you kill tons of guards, as does Dishonored)

You make it sound as if answering pagers was an awful thing to do. But I actually like it. Not to mention that Overkill has been stupidly creative with the countless - sometimes very funny - lines the crew uses to answer them. The pagers make sense to me, even if you are right with their design purpose it's still better than to merely apply some score penalties no one may care about. Just look at how no one cares about civilian casualities when it comes to stealthing either.

[CONTROLLER ONLY MAN]

Publicado originalmente por Clarity:

Just look at how no one cares about civilian casualities when it comes to stealthing either.

Remember, No Russian...