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A Short History of Stealth in MMORPGs and RTSs (and Why Stealth is so Problematic for Riot)

DrugsForRobots·10/23/2017, 6:20:43 PM·4 votes·1,088 views

There are almost no stealth genre games, but there are many many action genre games with stealth mechanics. Stealth games were born in action, from which they grow - and still remain.”

--- Sven Bergström, independent game developer

To understand stealth gameplay in League, we’ve got to go back, waaay back. Looking at the history and evolution of stealth games, we can see that RTS games (WarCraft, StarCraft, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, etc.) grew up alongside Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, Thief: The Dark Project, and Metal Gear Solid (aka the Class of ‘98) as well as MMORPGs.

While the potential for stealth gameplay may have been present in the early RTS games the mindset and playstyle wasn’t really emphasized the same way. The player’s ways of interacting with the FoW and gaining information were usually limited to building structures (to passively dispel the FoW) or creating units to scout for them (not that these units had any particular vision abilities, they simply dispelled the FoW around them passively.)

StarCraft deserves some special mention, as it's an example of what was to come. Certain units within the three factions that could become invisible. The Protoss had some units that were innately ‘cloaked’ (invisible) or could cloak others, the Terrans could upgrade certain units to be cloaked, and the Zerg had units which could burrow into the ground, all of these options rendering them functionally invisible to other players / the enemy AI. There were also a handful of units that acted as ‘Detectors’ that negated the effects of cloaking - i.e. they rendered the invisible units visible. Sound familiar?

StarCraft and WarCraft III eventually gave rise to Defense of the Ancients aka DotA which eventually gave rise to League of Legends. Before League though, there was another game that claimed the title as ‘The Most Played Game In The World’...

http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/216725-world-of-warcraft-macintosh-front-cover.jpg

World of Warcraft was hugely popular in the early-mid 2000’s. One of the character classes, the Rogue, had an ability called Stealth. How did this ability function? It made the Rogue invisible to the enemy players! That’s it. They did not appear on the enemy’s screen. It did this because the game’s systems for stealth gameplay were fairly limited (there was no taking lighting and shadow into account, for example.)

Each player and NPC had a Detection rating that was calculated against the Stealth user’s Subtlety rating. This determined the range at which a Stealth'ed target faded into view. A character’s chances of Detection were much, much higher in the direction they were facing, which encouraged the Stealth user to approach from behind, actually creating a semblance of stealth gameplay. This was somewhat counteracted by the games free-rotating camera and 3rd person perspective but it’s an interesting system, IMO.

However, what WoW did was popularize the use of the word ‘stealthed’ - this past participle form of the word that is new to the English language. ‘Stealthed’ is not a real word in the dictionary. You can be stealthy, use stealth, behave stealthily, etcetera, but the word ‘stealthed’ is gamerspeak for the status state of invisibility.

WoW solidified a trend that had been set by the earliest MMORPGs - using the word stealth to refer to on demand invisibility, especially in PvP environments. These games did not have the systems in place to truly support stealth gameplay, so they simply rendered the player character invisible to enemies and partially transparent to the player. It gets worse, much worse. Most MMORPGs before, and practically every MMORPG after WoW, have incorporated stealth as a stat check (which is not unexpected given that MMORPGs have roots in pen-and-paper RPGs.) They simply compared values to determine whether or not the PC was rendered visible to the mob. Some, like WoW, would also include other variables like the direction a particular mob is facing in when making the calculation, but this is in stark contrast to games like Thief: The Dark Project, which had multiple systems all supporting the player’s use of stealth to accomplish the mission objectives, including the audio system, the lighting system, model collision, and AI that recognized changes in the environment and went through several stages of alertness.

This same limited definition and use of the word stealth seen in MMORPGs influenced the design and production of League, because the people making League were heavily influenced by those games: Zileas & Ghostcrawler worked at Blizzard on WoW; Pendragon was closely tied to the DotA Allstars community; Ezreal played DotA Allstars fanatically; Guinsoo helped develop DotA Allstars and played WoW; Morello worked on Guild Wars I & II; Volty played several unspecified MMORPGs; Lyte & Geeves played EverQuest and were in the same guild together; Coronach played EverQuest and WoW; I’m sure the list goes on and on… I’d be surprised if there was a Riot employee who hadn’t played an MMORPG at some point in their life.

I’m not knocking or hating any of these guys, don’t misunderstand me, I think they’ve made an amazing game. The point I’m trying to make is that they are mostly MMORPG players, and were exposed to the idea of stealth through those games, and not the classic stealth games like Thief, Tenchu Stealth Assassins, Metal Gear, Dishonored, Hitman, etc. etc.

So it makes sense that when they think of stealth in their game (i.e. League) that they conflate it with the binary stat-check on demand invisibility of the kind we’ve seen in the MMORPGs. As I’ve tried to explain, stealth and invisibility are not synonymous, and Riot must realize this so that they can properly support stealth gameplay in League.

This was originally part of my Mega-Post on Stealth & Vision in League

17 Comments

Linna Excel10/23/2017, 8:26:05 PM2 votes

Stealth began in D&D. Not long after, the first rouge got murdered by some goblins after getting a little too far ahead of his party and failing his stealth check.

Bunnymap10/23/2017, 6:48:49 PM1 votes

The question is how would you possibly fix this. I think we can all agree on nothing to do with % chances to detect someone. I’m not also a big fan of having to face someone to see them in stealth. That might work in a game like DotA with turn speed, but with the instant twisting and turning our champions that we have in league it would just feel bad.

Camouflage could be changed to create a slight distortion of vision around where the area of the champion is (I’m not talking about a simple hard to see outline, silhouette. Something more like a slight shading difference, very slight light bending). The better solution would require more effort and be a bit more confusing, but would be much better balancable. That soulution would be to go and create a unique stealth mechanic for each champion (Not necessarily 100% unique for every champion, but different for those who need it). Say something like an ability that creates shadows that you’re invisibility while in (Nocturne VGU?), or Rengar creating distortions in the direction that he’s coming from. Champs could still have a detection range, but it would greatly reduced to make stealth champs feel better to play.

Edit: I completely missed the part about the Subtlety and Detection stats. Whoops. My opinion is that it’s too hard to balance for every champion, but it might be interesting to look into it. There’s also the issue of showing the detection range to the invisible champion. If everyone has a different detection range, there would be no reliable way to make it work.

Ambient Snow10/23/2017, 8:00:56 PM1 votes

Stealth isn't a problem for riot really, not sure where people believe stealth is a issue.

The problem is that people don't want to put the effort to actually " Being careful" hate to break it to you guys but usually the people who have the hardest time with steath are low elo's

simply because they refuse to ward, properly, they refuse to use items properly , and they refuse play properly

I love eve and twitch and other stealth characters in low elo cause its laughable on how many people don't use pink wards, how many people don't use or upgrade the Scan trinket.

how many people always wander off to a lane alone split pushing or trying to invade a unwarded jungle

its just like thank you for handing me a free kill.

And most stealth characters are super squishy. which is smart.

you catch them get to close or any thing like that BAM they dead..

**

Yes in this game its considered a sort "invisibility" but to be fair its a form of being stealthy because you're having having to maneuver your self in order to get to a point, much like hiding in a Box trying to move around guards to get the drop on them or kill them .

The problem with this is you're a idiot.

hate to break out the name calling but let me finish. You say that riot is using MMO's and other things for stealth mechanics instead of the actual Stealth of games like Metal gear or thief.

The issue you're seeing here is In thief and Metal gear, is that you're being Stealthy Around NPC's that literally run on predictable and set patterns. if you watch them for a time you can figure it out and be "Stealthy" around them

Games like Moba's You're playing vs a Actively live person who views the entire map form a top down formula with things like Wards. hate to break it to you , But that destroys any type of "Stealth" playing unless you actively give them a way around wards " example stealth / cloak" The issue is when you play a game like Metal gear, or hitman, or Theif you're play a Third person or first person game where you see in front of you or over the shoulder, you don't have a top down view of the map.

Also you're not playing vs NPC's that follow set patters, and have a Coned Vision sense. No you're playing from a top down view with people who move around randomly to no rhyme or reason who can place magical all seeing Eyes around a map that are invisible

so no you need a way around the all seeing eyes and around the fact that the map is literally a top down game. thus Moba's and RTS's have developed Stealth. Even with WoW the reason stealth was so big in MMo's cause a lot of the fields you play in Are Open flat worlds They aren't as clustered in design that a smaller Single person Action game would be.

you're not fighting in a Sky rise city with tons of buildings

MMo's you're usually out in a open Field plains, or a Open area' in a forest with ankle high grass

in Moba's you're fighting in a set lanes with no real structures to randomly hide behind ( not like you can cause I can see form above)

so your entire argument becomes invalid because you're trying to take one Genre of games and with out logically thinking of how those games were made, and comparing them to games that nothing alike

you sir are literally accusing riot of some thing that you yourself are doing

yea riot is looking at stealth from MMO's and other games like that..

well yea that's cause Stealth in those games matches and makes more sense when being applied to this type of game

then trying to add Stealth the sense of games like MG and Thief. cause those games again are Completely different in design and structure.

Metleon10/23/2017, 8:27:48 PM1 votes

I definitely agree that the wording is a bit bad. I think every Sejuani at worlds could be considered stealthy but not be able to be invisible.