Thomas Mahler
Here’s some of my thinking:
- We have a way now to detect if players are within shadows or not, so I think we should make full use of that and even introduce a new UI element that clarifies to players if they’re ‘hidden’ or not.
- Once hidden in the shadows, I’d want players to actually pay attention to enemies patrol paths, etc. So you’d stay in a shadowy spot and have some enchantment that increases your damage while you’re hidden and then you could throw shurikens, knives, etc. at enemies once they’re in the spot you want them in. Another cool thing would be to introduce something like Scorpion’s ‘Come Over Here!’ spear move where you can directly pull enemies to where you’d want them.
- If I imagine just playing through Mariner’s Keep in a stealthy way, the player doesn’t have a way to really modify the environment itself, so we’d need to give the player some skills that could allow them to move the odds in their favor. For example, we have a Spectre Rune that makes players half-invisible, so you’re much less likely to get detected by enemies. You still can’t walk right in front of them and make a bunch of noise, etc., but you can basically cast spectre and become super stealthy while it’s draining your focus, but you could sneak behind enemies that way and try to just go for backstabs.
- I always fought against our team removing sidle because I’d want that whole MGS thing in there - Being able to sidle up against a wall, knock on it, have the enemy check out where that noise came from so you can then maneuver behind their backs to backstab, etc.
- Smoke Bombs could be interesting for multiplayer so that enemies would lose sight of any player who’s within the smoke for a short period of time.
- Setting Traps in general seems like a cool idea.
Question: what would say to a system that allows players extract a weapons moveset and put in another weapon of the same category ofc
Thomas Mahler
We discussed that before, but it’s not that easy. I mean, this is literally how I’m setting up movesets in our editor where every move in a combo just has a slot and I can chuck whatever action I want in there, but I have to be careful in doing so to ensure that the anims properly blend, etc.
Would also take away some of the uniqueness we have on weapons since if we do the full switch, every weapon could have every moveset, so this is quite low on our list.
Question: Would we get items to throw that are purely meant for distraction?
Thomas Mahler
We did have that at some point - Initially we had projectiles not just being auto-thrown towards the target, but you had to hold down a button and move a cursor around to specify where it should land, etc.
Given that we have sidle and knock, I’m not sure we need this one.
Question: and how about a belt type of armor or weapons slots with runes that support a grenadier type of character that can throw several bombs or other items in quick succession and set mines and stuff like that
Thomas Mahler
Don’t really want to add more complexity in equipment for things like that
Question: is stealth something you would go back and edit retroactively as you develop the game, or something you’re actively working implementing as the game is structurally developed?
Thomas Mahler
In general, I’d like to add on top. The enemy perception system is something I want to do a pass over in general cause I’m not happy with where we left things. I always wanted enemies to be more responsive, a bit smarter, etc. Some of that has already been done with Multiplayer since we needed to make sure that one player can’t just kite enemies while the other player backstabs, etc. - but I’d want the enemies to just generally feel more ‘human’.
The rest of the systems won’t be re-engineered for stealth, but we can nudge this or that so that stealth works nicer.
Question: melee only staff type of weapons ? like to be able to play a monk type character theres a staff i really like but it has magic runes on it
Thomas Mahler
Like boStaffs?
Yup, it’s on the list
Even have some anims and so on for this already
Question: also has the team ever talked about idle animations or weapon sheaths like having a way to put a weapon away in town but still be visible
Thomas Mahler
Yes, but that’s polish for later
Same with NPCs reacting to you doing combat moves near them, etc.
The current list of weapon types they are working on or already have.
Sneak peek! The weapons currently being set up.
Question: in that line of thinking would you be open to let players test incoming content in like test branch type of deal for later updates ?
Thomas Mahler
Don’t see a need for PTR yet. We have discussed doing a private beta for Multiplayer at some point just to test servers, etc.
I’ll post some more later. I prefer this format over pictures so people can search on it.
It didn’t even tell me you were typing anything.
