Thread:Willbachbakal/@comment-26815373-20161225053323/@comment-26815373-20170211100926

Sorry for the long delay. I have no excuses. Your last line paragraph is exactly it. There are so many things Riot could do, if only they would do them. They would make this game so much richer, because the whole sight-stealth dynamic, this gameplay of getting intel and using it and preparing ambushes and psyching out the enemy is the least explored design space, right? And the gameplay around it thus far seems to be very... IDK how to put it. Minimal? I see the enemy with a ward in inventory, they wander off out of sight, the ward is no longer in their inventory - I know they've warded, but beyond relaying that info to my jungler, their is no way to avoid that ward beyond just choosing another gank path or using invis?

I don't think Riot would do away with wards. Ward skins, if only a tiny part, do profit Riot. The jungle would also feel cluttered (potentially, maybe) with all of these plants. It'd be one thing if Riot had made all the plants associated with vision at the start, but going back and adding new plants specifically for vision while we still have the Honey Fruit and Blast Cone (the non-vision plants) seems. . . wierd to me. (I have this thing about designs that I want them to be perfect from the start, if possible. I don't like ret-con'ing or errata'ing things.)

I do like the idea though, and your ideas specifically are fine. You bring up a point though: "sight wards are really terrible at conveying their power, especially at lower elos, and their own invisibility just makes things worse." Riot has to put emphasis on how their game is a stealth-action game, as stealth is a fundamental part of it. To quote Sven Bergström who wrote A 2014 Manifesto: Does The Stealth Genre Even Exist? :

"There are almost no “pure” stealth games, but there are many many action games with stealth mechanics. Thus, the stealth genre does not exist. Stealth games were born in action, from which they grow – and still remain."

This goes back to something you mentioned earlier, about there being a limited number of states (I assume you mean alarm levels?) the level and NPCs could be in. That's what makes or breaks single-player stealth games. How advanced the AI is, how they respond to your actions and changes in the world, how they respond when your position is compromised are all really important things. The biggest one is probably this: the stealth failure state. Once the player has failed stealth, the NPCs will chase him until 1) he dies, 2) he kills or disables them, 3) he somehow resumes being stealthed. In most stealth games (I've been thinking about Thief: The Dark Project as I talk about this example) the world-state can eventually become 'solved'. You can KO all the guards and they'll never wake up. Resuming stealth is often as easy as ducking out of sight for a few seconds and then the guards forget all about you. Even if they don't forget, rarely do they alert / inform other guards (the reverse of this is all the guards operating with a hive-mind regardless of distance or proximity, which is not an enjoyable experience) or leave a predetermined area.

But the stealth failure state in League is combat which is the driving force behind the gameplay. Failing stealth (while probably not good for you or your team) doesn't result in the game-world progressing towards 'solved' status. And dying returns the player to the stealth state. And it works this way for both teams.

I guess I'm just rambling at this point - I'm not sure what my point was - but Riot needs to give us enough vision options that we can 1) create a multilayered defensive information system (I called this a 'network of vision' earlier, similar to an obstacle course that demands precise timing and careful cautious movements to avoid being seen / detected, i.e. stealth); 2) ways of gaining vision 'offensively' - scouting, gaining information, misleading enemies; 3) ways to avoid and preempt both 1 & 2, preferably by telegraphing and good clarity. All of your plant options meet these criteria, which is great. (The 'lantern' plant is the possible exception - it seems like you can only use it for no.2, as it can't be 'set up' to provide a defensive line of vision.)

I'm still very partial to trinkets, and I would love to see Riot trim the fat from the trinket system (remove the upgrades) and really focus on giving us specific and defined vision tools. For example, I think the Sweeping Lens is great for scouting and anti-invis detection purposes, but in my ideal world I'd have the 'disable wards and traps' be another trinket entirely. I don't like how the Scrying Orb upgrade places a ward - I'd much rather it hold more charges to allow multiple quick peeks of key locations (this also gives makes it useful during a chase, as dropping wards over walls and into brush during a chase would be replaced by multiple activations of the Orb.)

I feel like I'm just repeating myself, not that I don't enjoy talking about stealth and coming up with cool ideas that enable stealth gameplay. I've still got so much work to do in that regard, and I don't want to bore you. Again, sorry for the delayed response. X.X

P.S. I just remembered my point about the stealth failure state and League and multiplayer: there are several stealth game designers who've all said that multiplayer is the way of the future for stealth. :D