A Stealth System
2004/10/20
I'm completely on board with the idea of stealthiness in MMOGs that offer combat. I agree that it would greatly increase tactical options and the need for good tactical decision-making. In fact, I suspect it would do for the ground game what "twitch" mode will do for Jump to Lightspeed in SWG: it would reward player ability, rather than just relying on RPG character skills (which lets players put their characters on autopilot, the bane of MMORPGs). More opportunities for good tactical creativity makes for a more entertaining combat game.
My own attempt to get at some of the issues you raised can be found in the "Environmental Consequences" thread from a while back. In it I spend some time talking about environmental issues. That's just one aspect of what you're considering in thinking about stealth generally, but you might find some ideas of interest to you there.
The idea of "stealth score" versus "awareness score" is one of those elegant ideas that's so simple it's beautiful. I'd suggest that the number describing how much presence a thing has in the world be called a "visibility score" -- that way the word "stealth" can be used to describe the comparison of visibility versus awareness as a whole. But that's quibbling; the idea as you've described it nails down what's important.
There's an interesting opportunity here that might be worth exploring: consider broadening the idea of a visibility score beyond creatures, NPCs and players to include all objects. What if the developers could imbue anything with a visibility score? This would create the ability for the developers (or possibly players) to be able to hide things -- there could be secret doors, loot dropped in the grass, false passages, unknown object capabilities, and so on, all just waiting to be discovered by an enterprising player with a sufficiently high awareness score.
The idea of visibility and awareness modifiers is also simple and powerful. If you don't mind, I'd suggest organizing the types of modifiers possible into categories. I suggest something like this:
In a system like this, everything has a "visibility profile" from which its visibility score is constructed. The profile would include numeric ratings indicating the degree of all the physical ways in which a thing exists in the world:
Certain types of things (NPCs and players, and perhaps certain creatures) would be able to consciously modify some of these ratings (through skills and gear). Other modifiers would be applied based on factors outside the thing's control (racial modifiers, location/environment, etc.). After all modifications, the thing's scores in every area of visibility would be added to produce the final visibility score.
Similarly, the final awareness score would be derived from the thing's natural awarenesses of each category of presence in the world, modified by any detection gear or enablers used and by any actions taken to increase awareness (active observation vs. normal activity).
It seems to me that a game that offered such a robust system for enabling stealthiness just might be so much fun that even non-combat players would be willing to give it a try.
2004/10/20
If you like the idea of being able to turn radars on and off, you might get a chuckle out of these two implications:
1. It might be necessary to have a kind of "fade-out" period for active radar. This would prevent players from turning on their radar to get a snapshot of the area, then immediately turning it off again to lower their visibility so they can't be found.
Alternately, it might be kind of interesting to let players move to a location, turn on their radar very briefly to "ping" the area, then turn it off and run to another location to escape patrols sent out to investigate the ping.
2. If player raders were active signal emitters, and we could have radar detectors (so that the cost of using one's radar is to risk detection from increased visibility), wouldn't it be interesting to have radar-specific devices?
For example, we could have droids with radar modules -- you could send them to a defined location, get them to ping the area, then return to your location to download their results. (Or maybe they get caught and destroyed... or reprogrammed with false results. /evilchuckle)
Another possibility is something we might call "radar caltrops" -- little metal balls you could plant in an area that emit fake radar signals, either on a timer or on an immediate user command. This would allow you to trick an enemy into thinking that a large radar-equipped force is massing in one location, possibly inducing them to send out a recon team or larger force... while you attack from their now-unguarded flank or rear.
The overall point is that once your environment is rich with signals and signal detectors that span the emission spectrum, your tactical options increase dramatically. Would it be worthwhile to implement everything I've suggested here? Maybe not... but if just some of it were implemented in the "it's-going-to-be-so-cool" Combat Revamp, that would be a helpful improvement.