Broadsword - Why do you have such disdain for stealth?????????

[DarthNillard]

I will respectfully call you Broadsword since that is your name now, but we all know it's mostly the same Bioware friends we've been dealing with for years.  Anyway, outside of it being debatably "cool", from a practical standpoint, literally the ONLY reasons to be a stealth class in this game are to be able to sneak by stuff and escape out of combat.  Yet meanwhile over the last 2 years plus, you have:

• Removed the ability to stealth out of combat in FP's and Raids
• Most trash mobs in recently added story content now have some jobber who will pull you out of stealth (people too, not just droids) even if you spec into having the higher stealth level (which now seems to serve no purpose in the skills tree)

Why?  No but seriously, why?  From Day 1 in this game it has been so much easier to be a ranged DPS, but the trade off for some of the melee dps classes is the ability to stealth.  Now that is way less viable and hardly useful.   I was just doing this latest story mission on my 9 millionth alt, an Operative, and damn near every trash mob on the ship we go to at the end pulled me out of stealth.  Forget about the fact this story has ZERO replay value, but you won't even let me do it quickly on my stealthers?  I call rubbish.

Please explain.

Edited July 23 by DarthNillard

[Traceguy]

It's very annoying that mobs, such as those in 7.5 story will pull you from stealth. There's no way around it. Let stealth players have their stealth. There's zero reason to nerf that aspect. So a player skips 60 seconds of killing trash, big whoop.

 

 

[grumpehcat]

THANK YOU. My Imp and Pub mains are stealthers. And this has been annoying as all heck.

[DarthNillard]

20 hours ago, Traceguy said:

It's very annoying that mobs, such as those in 7.5 story will pull you from stealth. There's no way around it. Let stealth players have their stealth. There's zero reason to nerf that aspect. So a player skips 60 seconds of killing trash, big whoop.

 

 

So annoying!!!!!  The whole Desperate Defiance 7.5 storyline has nobody's pulling you out of stealth everywhere.  The funniest thing is, you can actually sneak by all of them with Marauders/Sentinels and their temporary stealth, but actual stealthers get grabbed every time....  make it make sense 😭

[Darcmoon]

1 hour ago, DarthNillard said:

So annoying!!!!!  The whole Desperate Defiance 7.5 storyline has nobody's pulling you out of stealth everywhere.  The funniest thing is, you can actually sneak by all of them with Marauders/Sentinels and their temporary stealth, but actual stealthers get grabbed every time....  make it make sense 😭

They’ve been doing that since around the KOTET timeframe.  Sometimes it is worse than others.  Personally I think it is their way of making players ‘play’ the game so that it takes longer to finish and stretches out content.  

[Leoperaghost]

4 minutes ago, Darcmoon said:

Personally I think it is their way of making players ‘play’ the game so that it takes longer to finish and stretches out content.  

Jokes on them I still refuse to do this (as intended anyways) by just pulling the whole damb room and pray I survive. Playing the Game but on my terms 😤

[Darcmoon]

2 minutes ago, Leoperaghost said:

Jokes on them I still refuse to do this (as intended anyways) by just pulling the whole damb room and pray I survive. Playing the Game but on my terms 😤

Are you Leroy Jenkins?  😁  I do agree it is irritating but there’s not much we can do other than your example or just not pay it.  

[Traceguy]

45 minutes ago, Leoperaghost said:

Jokes on them I still refuse to do this (as intended anyways) by just pulling the whole damb room and pray I survive. Playing the Game but on my terms 😤

Sometimes I'll just run to where I need to be, type /stuck, and use a field medical probe to revive.

[DeannaVoyager]

14 hours ago, Traceguy said:

Sometimes I'll just run to where I need to be, type /stuck, and use a field medical probe to revive.

Thanks for the tip, didn't think of that.

Usually I just skip repeating content with mobs pulling me out of stealth. Replay value has been sacrificied at the altar of prolonged grind.

[DarthNillard]

4 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

Thanks for the tip, didn't think of that.

Usually I just skip repeating content with mobs pulling me out of stealth. Replay value has been sacrificied at the altar of prolonged grind.

In non-Flashpoints/Raids you can still just run through everything and then stealth out.  Use force shroud or the equivalents to fully get out of combat, but worst case everything de-aggros besides the last mob.  But still, this defeats the purpose of BEING a stealther, so I'm standing on my original point.

[DarthNillard]

I doubt anyone at Broadsword would actually reply in this thread, but the issue remains.

[Diamaht]

On 7/23/2024 at 11:02 AM, DarthNillard said:

I will respectfully call you Broadsword since that is your name now, but we all know it's mostly the same Bioware friends we've been dealing with for years.  Anyway, outside of it being debatably "cool", from a practical standpoint, literally the ONLY reasons to be a stealth class in this game are to be able to sneak by stuff and escape out of combat.  Yet meanwhile over the last 2 years plus, you have:

• Removed the ability to stealth out of combat in FP's and Raids
• Most trash mobs in recently added story content now have some jobber who will pull you out of stealth (people too, not just droids) even if you spec into having the higher stealth level (which now seems to serve no purpose in the skills tree)

Why?  No but seriously, why?  From Day 1 in this game it has been so much easier to be a ranged DPS, but the trade off for some of the melee dps classes is the ability to stealth.  Now that is way less viable and hardly useful.   I was just doing this latest story mission on my 9 millionth alt, an Operative, and damn near every trash mob on the ship we go to at the end pulled me out of stealth.  Forget about the fact this story has ZERO replay value, but you won't even let me do it quickly on my stealthers?  I call rubbish.

Please explain.

You guys will talk all day about not getting new content and then talk about not being able to stealth past all the content.

And I'm not trolling, I genuinely don't understand.  

Isn't requiring players to play the game, even a little bit, the developers job?  If content can always be skipped, wouldn't that be considered a flaw?

By the way you can still stealth past most content on FPs, you just need to do it as a group.  Did it all day Thurs and Friday last week, didn't effect much.

[DarthNillard]

1 hour ago, Diamaht said:

You guys will talk all day about not getting new content and then talk about not being able to stealth past all the content.

And I'm not trolling, I genuinely don't understand.  

Isn't requiring players to play the game, even a little bit, the developers job?  If content can always be skipped, wouldn't that be considered a flaw?

By the way you can still stealth past most content on FPs, you just need to do it as a group.  Did it all day Thurs and Friday last week, didn't effect much.

What's there to not understand? They have done away with having variations of the ongoing story YEAAAARSSS ago, so there's minimal to no replay value in any of the new story stuff since damn KOTET/KOTFE outside of doing the Imperial story and the Republic story one time each. 

At my max, I had literally ONE HUNDRED (100) level 70's when that was still the level cap. For context I'm a founder who has run a highly active guild since launch, and have re-rolled a million times to help guildies level, do mid-level PVP, etc.  Then throw in the nonsense like Dark vs Light, and then I rerolled every class on Shae Vizla last winter when I was bored, and the #'s got big quickly.  While that amount was always ridiculous, it became completely pointless once dual spec'ing came out, because I can now play all 16 spec combinations across 8 characters (not to be confused with every spec, this counts only 1 dps spec per class, but still).

Personally I'm someone who likes to not have missions in my log.  So I say all this to say, there's no reason to NOT skip the story nonsense on the 20th time through - or even the 3rd or 4th time through.  I'm only doing the story on characters to finish things out and get a clean log at this point, since they haven't given us a skip point past Ossus all these years later (hopefully there will be one after this Heta scruff is over and we start whatever is "next").

So the real answer is two fold: for the new content they do make, give us a reason to play it multiple times (branching decision trees that ACTUALLY have significance, etc) and people won't want to skip it.  Or if they plan to keep down the path they seem dead set on, give stealth back their abilities to be stealthers.

P.S. - Your question is also misleading; we're talking about stealthers skipping trash mobs, not bosses and such (which was never a thing). Why is that relevant to the content debate?  It's not, so this isn't an apples to apples comparison.  Trash mobs only exist to either rng some drops, for kill x amount of _________ missions, or to just generically make missions take longer.  It has commonly been a Biosword trick to make "new content" seem like its more than it actually is because of the time suck that goes into running around maps and fighting unlimited trash mobs that you can no longer skip past - hence this thread.

Edited July 29 by DarthNillard

[Diamaht]

5 hours ago, DarthNillard said:

What's there to not understand? They have done away with having variations of the ongoing story YEAAAARSSS ago, so there's minimal to no replay value in any of the new story stuff since damn KOTET/KOTFE outside of doing the Imperial story and the Republic story one time each. 

At my max, I had literally ONE HUNDRED (100) level 70's when that was still the level cap. For context I'm a founder who has run a highly active guild since launch, and have re-rolled a million times to help guildies level, do mid-level PVP, etc.  Then throw in the nonsense like Dark vs Light, and then I rerolled every class on Shae Vizla last winter when I was bored, and the #'s got big quickly.  While that amount was always ridiculous, it became completely pointless once dual spec'ing came out, because I can now play all 16 spec combinations across 8 characters (not to be confused with every spec, this counts only 1 dps spec per class, but still).

Personally I'm someone who likes to not have missions in my log.  So I say all this to say, there's no reason to NOT skip the story nonsense on the 20th time through - or even the 3rd or 4th time through.  I'm only doing the story on characters to finish things out and get a clean log at this point, since they haven't given us a skip point past Ossus all these years later (hopefully there will be one after this Heta scruff is over and we start whatever is "next").

So the real answer is two fold: for the new content they do make, give us a reason to play it multiple times (branching decision trees that ACTUALLY have significance, etc) and people won't want to skip it.  Or if they plan to keep down the path they seem dead set on, give stealth back their abilities to be stealthers.

P.S. - Your question is also misleading; we're talking about stealthers skipping trash mobs, not bosses and such (which was never a thing). Why is that relevant to the content debate?  It's not, so this isn't an apples to apples comparison.  Trash mobs only exist to either rng some drops, for kill x amount of _________ missions, or to just generically make missions take longer.  It has commonly been a Biosword trick to make "new content" seem like its more than it actually is because of the time suck that goes into running around maps and fighting unlimited trash mobs that you can no longer skip past - hence this thread.

But why should they cheapen the content by making the entire FP skipable just so you can clear you quest que faster?  Why have content at all?  Why not just have you log in and they could just mail you your rewards.  Shouldn't they be doing the opposite, by making the existing content more enjoyable?  Shouldn't they be making players earn what they are getting?

Also if you can simply stealth your way past all the mobs wouldn't that just incentivize all players to run only stealth classes?  Oh wait....

What good would alternate routes do if you are just going to stealth past them?  You would just pick the fastest one and choose that over and over.  Even if you didn't do that, by the time you were leveling your 10th character (or even your fifth) you would have done them so many times you would be complaining that they didn't have enough options.

The game needs to slow down and make people work for what they get, not strive to give it out faster (although I'm not sure that's possible with FPs right now).

You can still stealth past all the mobs just like always by the way, you just need to somewhat coordinate it with the entire group.  That at least brings it a small step closer to being a multiplayer experience.

[DeannaVoyager]

3 hours ago, Diamaht said:

But why should they cheapen the content by making the entire FP skipable just so you can clear you quest que faster?

No-one asked for the entire FP skipable. That's a strawman. 

 

3 hours ago, Diamaht said:

Shouldn't they be doing the opposite, by making the existing content more enjoyable?

Should they make content more enjoyable? Yes, definitely. However filling instances with trash mobs that pull you out of stealth, knock you over, root and knock you over again, then stun you and knock you over again is not enjoyable and it has a negative replay value. If they want people to kill all trash mobs in their path, they need to be fun to kill and also melee friendly, which has not been the case lately. No knock backs, roots, shields, stuns or slows for trash mobs. Reserve all that to bosses.  

 

3 hours ago, Diamaht said:

The game needs to slow down and make people work for what they get, not strive to give it out faster (although I'm not sure that's possible with FPs right now).

Yeah, and when you slow it down enough, people will stop playing it. 

3 hours ago, Diamaht said:

You can still stealth past all the mobs just like always by the way, you just need to somewhat coordinate it with the entire group.  That at least brings it a small step closer to being a multiplayer experience.

The point of this thread was there are too many mobs that pull you OUT of stealth. No coordination with the group can change that.

 

[DarthCasus]

13 hours ago, Diamaht said:

You guys will talk all day about not getting new content and then talk about not being able to stealth past all the content.

And I'm not trolling, I genuinely don't understand.  

Isn't requiring players to play the game, even a little bit, the developers job?  If content can always be skipped, wouldn't that be considered a flaw?

By the way you can still stealth past most content on FPs, you just need to do it as a group.  Did it all day Thurs and Friday last week, didn't effect much.

Players always seek the easiest way to do things, this isn't new. If they don't want people skipping through everything, give incentive to actually engaging. That is how bonus objectives for wiping out waves of enemies was used during leveling, its not just there to be there. There is NO incentive, just padding content. I'm still waiting on a level cap increase (I am exhausted with feeling absolutely no progression on my oldest toons narratively AND gameplay-wise), new story jump points to just throw my alts through, and selectable decisions that aren't locked based on faction so I would actually consider using said skips but it seems that they know where they want things to go.

[DarthNillard]

The two posts above get it, well stated!!!

But @Diamaht the ultimate point is, why invent stealth classes as a core of this game only for you to remove the usefulness and viability of stealthers?  That's a question only Biosword can answer I guess.  Your arguments would be fine if there was no stealth and we were in here asking for stealth, but its the opposite.  They gave us a play style - and not just one, multiple roles that can stealth - that some of us fell in love with it, and then they ripped the best part of it away.  Why????

[Diamaht]

2 minutes ago, DarthNillard said:

The two posts above get it, well stated!!!

But @Diamaht the ultimate point is, why invent stealth classes as a core of this game only for you to remove the usefulness and viability of stealthers?  That's a question only Biosword can answer I guess.  Your arguments would be fine if there was no stealth and we were in here asking for stealth, but its the opposite.  They gave us a play style - and not just one, multiple roles that can stealth - that some of us fell in love with it, and then they ripped the best part of it away.  Why????

You fell in love with skipping content?  Again, the point you guys are dancing around is why have content at all if you can just skip it?

Instead of pushing for more engaging content that challenges you, you fight for ways to not do it at all and just skip to the boss.

How will that produce a healthier video game?

[Traceguy]

8 hours ago, Diamaht said:

You can still stealth past all the mobs just like always by the way, you just need to somewhat coordinate it with the entire group.  That at least brings it a small step closer to being a multiplayer experience.

There are enemies in the story, and even some heroics what will turn your stealth off if you come within what seems like 30 meters of them. No coordination either solo or in group can solve this. It's a deliberate stealth sabotage by the developers. There's generally a circular pattern that overlays on top of your character moments before you're aggressively ripped from stealth.

 

Edited July 30 by Traceguy

[KyraMalakai]

Like it was said here, there are four combat styles(correct me if I am wrong) that have stealth and they are built around that, we have that ability plus choices on the tree to increase that stealth level, this also means that we are penalized on other areas, don't make as much dps, are squishier as tanks, that is the trade we make for stealth.

However now that is pointless, because we are weaker and we can't mantain stealth because for some reason they have a beef with us. 

If they don't want me to skip the mobs give me something engaging to play instead of filling corridors with mob after mob just to make me take longer to reach the end and having everyone plus their cousin somehow being experts at removing the stealth is just lazy design.

[Diamaht]

2 hours ago, Traceguy said:

There are enemies in the story, and even some heroics what will turn your stealth off if you come within what seems like 30 meters of them. No coordination either solo or in group can solve this. It's a deliberate stealth sabotage by the developers. There's generally a circular pattern that overlays on top of your character moments before you're aggressively ripped from stealth.

 

Yes, there are maybe 4 or 5 groups of mobs that you have to actually fight in a FP.  The rest you can path around.  You are making the arguement that there should be ZERO mobs in a FP that you should have engage with?  That's not reasonable.  Again why have the content at all?

2 hours ago, KyraMalakai said:

Like it was said here, there are four combat styles(correct me if I am wrong) that have stealth and they are built around that, we have that ability plus choices on the tree to increase that stealth level, this also means that we are penalized on other areas, don't make as much dps, are squishier as tanks, that is the trade we make for stealth.

However now that is pointless, because we are weaker and we can't mantain stealth because for some reason they have a beef with us. 

If they don't want me to skip the mobs give me something engaging to play instead of filling corridors with mob after mob just to make me take longer to reach the end and having everyone plus their cousin somehow being experts at removing the stealth is just lazy design.

Again, so instead of offering up ways to make engagements more enjoyable, you politic for not having to do it.

It honestly just seems like you want to roll stealth as a way to game your way to free, unearned loot.

[Traceguy]

28 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

 You are making the arguement that there should be ZERO mobs in a FP that you should have engage with?  That's not reasonable.  Again why have the content at all?

Me personally, I'm not speaking on behalf of flashpoints. Those are generally done in groups, and the chance of getting a full stealth team, and landing in a FP that is anti-stealth is rather too rare to be bothered by. I'm more addressing playing through the story (such as the one from 7.5) and heroics (such as Biological Warfare on Correlia).

 

Edited July 30 by Traceguy

[KyraMalakai]

40 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

It honestly just seems like you want to roll stealth as a way to game your way to free, unearned loot.

What loot? I am talking about story where most mobs don't even drop anything to begin with, besides we are not requesting this grand new feature that will let us bypass the enemies giving us an advantage over the favourite combat styles of the hour that cannot do it, we are simply wanting to use an actual class ability to the extend it is supposed to work otherwise what is the point of having stealth at all.

[DarthNillard]

4 hours ago, Diamaht said:

You fell in love with skipping content?  Again, the point you guys are dancing around is why have content at all if you can just skip it?

Instead of pushing for more engaging content that challenges you, you fight for ways to not do it at all and just skip to the boss.

How will that produce a healthier video game?

Slick, YOU are missing the point and this will be my last attempt to help you connect the easiest of easy dots that aren't connecting for some reason in your brain:

1) BIOWARE created the stealth classes in this game.  The point of being stealth is to sneak by things.  You cannot - now, or ever - sneak by anything that is consequential in the story, flashpoints, or raids.  All conversations need to be had, all bosses need to be fought, the end.

2) Trash mobs are NOT content, they are trash mobs. They exist in most games, and as long as gaming has been a thing, people have been finding ways to avoid them at all costs.  This isn't even unique to stealth.... non-stealth classes also try to pinpoint how to cut corners or go around trash mobs to avoid them.

I'm actually hoping you are trolling tbh, because it's impossible to not get what everyone is saying here....

Edited July 30 by DarthNillard

[Darcmoon]

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

Me personally, I'm not speaking on behalf of flashpoints. Those are generally done in groups, and the chance of getting a full stealth team, and landing in a FP that is anti-stealth is rather too rare to be bothered by. I'm more addressing playing through the story (such as the one from 7.5) and heroics (such as Biological Warfare on Correlia).

 

They’ve always had mobs that can see through stealth or disable stealth in story and heroics from the beginning.  They really haven’t changed any of that up to KOTET. That is where they really started turning the screws sometimes.  KOTET/FE was terrible for all classes due to the forced encounters no one had a choice to avoid.  Since then, BW/BS seems to have gone in waves of allowing stealth to a point then making stealt near useless (looking at you Spirit of Vengance).  
 

So while I agree they have been anti-stealth quite a bit since KOTET, before that isn’t bad and no worse than it originally was.