Stealth Design and the Effects of Non-Guaranteed Stealth Attacks

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When experienced players play elimination-based Stealth games, they are never looking at just the SINGULAR guard in front of them. Players know very well that guards function in Groups, so in order to Take Space, Control Areas, they must kill the entire Cluster in one sequence.

They look at the two, or three guards in front of themselves, and in their head, string together a sequence of actions. They then attempt to Execute that action-chain, and if they are successful, they now Control this Space.

Smoke Grenade the farthest guard, Sleep-Dart the one a little bit closer, rush forth to kill the only awake guard left, then kill the other two who are under the effects of a Temp-Disable.

This is a Flow.

Expert Stealth players play in this manner. Set-Up and Execute Flows.

I would like you to take a moment to imagine what happens to this kind of psychology, this kind of gameplay, if you suddenly lose the ability to Trust any point in the chain. And, to make matters more muggy, you do not know WHICH point in the chain is the Unreliable one.

The Approach in a Stealth game is everything. It is well, and truly, and quite literally, everything. The button-press at the end, is nothing. Landing on your chosen platform is not the gameplay in a platformer, right? It's all the little decisions you made, the timing you chose.

Mario, or Sonic, or Rayman, or Alucard, or Samus, landing on the platform at the end, that's just a formality.

Stealth Kills are like this too.

They are not the Sentence. They are just the Period that defines where the Sentence ENDS.

Imagine if a Mario game asked you to make all the same decisions in your head that you would normally make to get through a complex sea of platforming obstacles, but with one of the platforms, and you don't know which one it'll be, decides, "Mario's Jump isn't High Level enough."

How would you feel?
Don't answer that, since we're so very close, beloved Reader, and since I know you so very well, I can tell you how that'd make you feel.

Cheated.

Like you did everything right, and through absolutely no fault of your own, were told that you failed.

If the fundamentals of Elim-Stealth gameplay involve the Set Up and Execution of Flows, of Chains, and various but totally unpredictable Nodes in this Chain are no longer Reliable, what impact does this have on the moment-to-moment play experience? What's affected?

Pacing.

In the best-case scenario of such a game, designers may deign to throw your mangy, shriveled form a bone, in the form of a Damage Prediction on enemy Health Bars. This seems nice, but these Health Bars have no hard Numbers attached to them in the UI, so you're doing guesswork.

Though visible from a Distance, the Damage Prediction is *not* shown for a Stealth Attack, *only* for a loosed Arrow. So, for this purpose, it is entirely unhelpful. You still have to find out if your Stealth Attack will Kill, and to do so, you have to put yourself in danger.

What would Metal Gear Solid feel like if Snake had to stand *right behind* his enemy to *DECIDE* whether he feels like knocking him out in a single grab, or whether he thinks it'd be a hoot to alert the entire base today, instead?

What would Dishonored feel like if Corvo Attano, Royal Protector to the Empress, or Daud, the Knife of Dunwall, snuck up on a foe and didn't know until the moment their blade tasted blood, whether their hands will fumble with their weapon or make a clean strike?

They'd feel unstable, volatile, messy. Experiences that cause their players to be incredibly risk-averse. Risk-averse players DO NOT ENGAGE with systems because Success and Failure is not in their hands. The only way they can ensure any control is to refuse to engage outright.

Here's a little experiment. Humans like to think in Threes, right? 3 is a pretty number. Very sexy. Very cute. Let's bring out some Threes.

3 Guards. 3 Outcomes.

Normal Stab Kills.
Crit Stab Kills.
No Stabs Kill.

You see a Cluster of 3 Guards, one facing away, two having a conversation, and those two just broke off and now all three are bread-crumbed between you and a Shiny Objective. This is the PERFECT time to just connect-the-dots, right? No items needed, nothing crazy, flashy, fancy.

You crouch up to Guard 1, pause, your normal Stab will Kill. You kill him. So far so good, but man, that pause really kind of takes the thrill and pleasure of smoothly moving between everyone, doesn't it? Just a teensy bit, but it's there, you notice it. It's not AWFUL but c'mon.

You walk up to the second guard. Pause. He moves out of range a little because he's walking. Ah, crap, his HP flickered out just before you could see how much you'd do. Was it a third? Less? That matters because your "Super-Stab" only does 3x as much as your normal one.

You come a little closer, see his HP flash up and you'll do about 40% Damage with a normal stab. Not bad, you're eyeballing because there are no precise stats given to you, but you reason your Super-Stab will work. You hold the button down and it goes through. Relief. Next guy!

Guard #3. He's standing still and he won't notice you yet. He looks Tanky... You walk close up, and argghhh! You're NOT SURE if you'll do a 3rd of his HP, or LESS... There are no precise Numbers displayed! Just a red Bar so... Well, you try it!

...Now everyone knows you're here.

Not only did you do everything right if this were a normal, stealth game, you ALSO properly played and adhered to THIS SPECIFIC game's ruleset, engaging with the previous two guards on ITS terms, on ITS rules.

And for that SAME obedience, you're penalized RIGHT at the end.

What do you do the next time you're in that situation? What do you do if you're a reasonable, thinking, feeling human?

Well, two options immediately rise as most attractive:

1) Just stop trying to engage with stealth mechanics or bypass them with something like Invisibility.

2) Realize that "But Thou Must..." You MUST kill these enemies. And since you're likely to get into a fight ANYWAY, you just switch your entire character to focus on Combat.

Can you squint for me, just a little bit, and kind of try to see what both of these have in common? Come on, I believe in you~! ^__^ YES! THAT'S RIGHT! You did SO well for me!

BOTH OF THEM DISSONATE WITH STEALTH PLAYSTYLES, FUNDAMENTALLY.

Both of these communicate to the player, "The way you are playing, which we have Advertised to be viable and enjoyable, will never ever be as viable or enjoyable as fighting, because we have not built the systems necessary to support it, and you are a fool to keep trying it."

"We have attempted to determine whether you Succeed or Fail not by your decisions, but by grafting statistics onto an existing play-experience, WITHOUT taking into consideration the additional work needed to support the new game-design that has Emerged as a result."

Stop doing this. Please.

It's bad.

I've danced around it for long enough.

This is long as hell.

Don't make me make it any longer.

It's bad. It's bad. It's bad.

STOP.

You're not winning hearts and minds. You're just giving the players you care about a bad time.

~ Leo K

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