A Detailed And Constructive Post As To Why Agents Are Unsatisfied With Concealment.

[___________Zeroshift]

I will ask you to bear with me as I stretch your imagination a bit...

Let's say you are a level 100 enforcer. You have QL 125 implants, a QL 200 hammer, and good armor...

Now let's say that combat is controlled mostly by a roll of the dice. Sometimes you can kill a deep dark red easily, while other times you die to a green. Sometimes you even die repeatedly to the same grey even though you have tried 10 times to kill him and even got your friends to buff you. Sometimes you have to fight for your life with a yellow only to turn around and kill a red in one shot.

That wouldn't be much fun would it? Who would want to play a game where their skills meant nothing and luck played the most important factor in killing stuff.

If you did not already know, what I have described is the life of an agent. Our concealment seems to have very little bearing on what we can accually sneak. Sometimes I will die on a 25% mission, repeatedly, because I cannot sneak past the first room. Then I will turn around and sneak a 75% missions with ease.

The real problem with concealment is a design flaw with the agent. Currently there is no way to balance concealment for the masses. If you balance concealment off what other classes can do, you make the agent insanely powerful with his buffs. If you balance it for the agent then you make it impossible for the other classes.

I am here not just to complain, but to propose solutions.

This is a bit far off, but conceal needs a complete rework and this is how I would envison it:

-- Concealment will have two variables that come together to form "sneaking" skill (similar to how many variables come together to form your "attack" skill). 90% of the sneaking skill will be based off the players base concealment skill + implants + cloaking pack addition. 10% of the sneaking skill will be based off concealment buffs.

-- Sneaking will be a hard capped Concealment Vs Perception check. If you have a higher concealment than the target you will ALWAYS sneak past it.

-- IF you fail the hard conceament vs perception check THEN the "dice" will be rolled and you will have a chance to sneak past or get caught. This makes it"possible" to sneak full hard missions, but very very difficult.

-- The "dice" will be rolled faster or slower based on how how high the monsters perception is relative to your concealment. Thus, if the concelment check fails against something slightly higher than you then the "dice" could be thrown every 5 seconds to check for random chance of sneaking past. Now, if you fail the check against something 100 levels above you, then the "dice could be rolled 3 times every second.

-- The agents mass concealment buffs do not go to waste either. First, they allow agents to overequip high level cloaking packs. Second, I propose that the concealment skill be tied to aimed shot. I suggest that your chance of a critial be multiplied greatly based on your concealment skill. Your "concealment crit modifier" will be calculated using ALL of your concealment skill (Base+imlpants+cloaking pack+buffs). NOTE: The crit modifier is not intened to be used with every shot. It only takes effect while in sneak. This makes it VERY good for aimedshot and sneak attack, but does little for regular shots.

-- Before these can be properly used though, you must bring back our ability to go into sneak and lose argo off a mob. Quite simply we need a way to break argo and continue sneaking a mission. The current system is extremely flawed, especially with the randomness of sneak... Once you are spotted, that's it, game over... leave the mission.

-- Of course if you were to make these changes, dont forget to properly twink the mobs perception to a realistic level.

-- What do I hope to accomplish with this? I am hoping this would make sneak attack weapons and sneaking viable for any profession really... even more so for adventurers, fixers, and MA. I also hope to remove the randomness to the sneak process. I want to be able to judge weither or not I can sneak past something, like how an enforcer can judge wiether or not they can solo something.

-- Will the agent be a gimp? I think not. With his green concealment skill, ability to overequip high cloaking packs, and the fact that 10% of those huge concealment buffs still work... He will still be the best sneaker.

-- Not only would linking concealment to aimedshot save our concealment buffs from gimpness, it would also do everything we ever needed to ungimp us in combat. Concealment IS our MAIN skill after all (even our rifle isnt green), it only makes sense that it has a role in combat.

[___________Zeroshift]

only two views? lol

[___________Zeroshift]

Something I forgot to put in the post:

-- Agent's sneaking ability should get exponentially better as they level (like how aimed shot use to get very powerful at later levels).

-- At low levels(1-30) the agent should be able to comfortably sneak 40% missions. At mid levels(40-80) it would be 50-70%. And at high levels(100-150) I would say they can reasonable sneak 70-90% missionss.