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Many Role Playing Games that are mainly based on combat also have a "stealth" mechanic that can ostensibly be used to get past monsters without fighting, thus enabling another choice of strategy. However, this stealth often turns out to be close to useless, for the following reasons:
Similarly, Real Time Strategy games often have a few units with stealth capabilities. These are typically useless for anything but scouting, because:
- They're overpriced and underpowered.
- Counter-stealth defenses are often cheap, easy to build, or so ingrained into even a beginning player's routines that only a computer player deliberately hamstrung by the programmer wouldn't use it.
- There's no strategic benefit to infiltration. Things that are expensive to build are generally hard to destroy, and a lone infiltrator can only do so much damage before being spotted and killed. Base structures usually aren't highly interdependent anyway, so there are no "weak links" that can be targeted to cripple a base.
- There's no tactical benefit to ambushes. RTS units generally suffer no drawbacks for being surrounded, taken by surprise, caught in bad terrain, or attacked at point-blank range, and (like base structures) there usually isn't a particular unit that can be taken out first to gain an advantage. (Except hero-type units, in games that have those, but heroes generally have too many hit points to be killed quickly.)
- In addition, since The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, they are often useless against AI opponents. They may be restrained by the same attack rules, but The All-Seeing A.I. knows where your stealthed units are.
See also Stealth Run.
Examples:
Action Adventure
- In Overlord, there is a temple guarded by ghost elves that attack anyone they see. Your advisor instructs you to avoid being seen and the level is built with a stealth mechanic in mind, including doors behind which you can trap the patrolling ghosts in certain rooms. However, it's far easier to just take a group blue minions and kill all the ghosts. They don't even count for the Karma Meter.
- In the original Wizards And Warriors for the NES, the Cloak of Invisibility only turned your character invisible to you; the enemies could see you just fine.
Action Game
- The WWII-based tactical squad game Hidden & Dangerous had a stealth mechanic that was absolutely worthless, which was probably due to the fact that the game in question was so damn buggy.
- Played with in Batman: Arkham Asylum. While most of the trope applies, the game was designed around stealth-as-a-predator rather than stealth-as-hiding. Thus being sneaky is a very pro-active task in the game and is always useful, barring a handful of encounters to break up the gameplay.
- Cloe Walsh's stage in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Right from the start, you are encouraged to hide from the stage's spotlights and guards, but getting caught only means that you have to fight all the guards instead and they each go down in 2-3 hits. Plus, the poorly implemented stealth mechanics make it far more difficult not to get caught.
Adventure Game
- Averted in the first four Quest for Glory games, where playing as the Thief class often means you can sneak past or trick your way through every combat in the game. Played entirely straight in the fifth, where most of the tasks involve killing monsters/notable bad guys.
- Deadly Premonition allows the player character, York, to hold his breath. Somehow, this makes him invisible to the zombie-ghost-like enemies. However, he can't do it for long and he slows down to a crawl while walking that way, so there is practically no situation that calls for you to sneak past an enemy you'd be better off just killing.
Fighting Game
- Any fighting game that includes an invisibility, such as Mortal Kombat, will end up being completely useless against A.I. opponents.
- The cloaking device from the Super Smash Bros. series is fairly useful against human enemies, but its secondary effect is much more useful against both humans and computer players. While cloaked, your character still takes knockback, but doesn't take damage. Just don't lose track of yourself and fall off a cliff.
- It's generally not that useful against human opponents either. Being a fighting game, the stage has very limited space, and thus there's not much room for you to hide.
First-Person Shooter
- Deus Ex progressively conforms to the trope. In the beginning, the player has few weapons or enhancements; at least some stealth is essential, if only for sneaking up on enemies for a nonlethal takedown in one hit. Minimising bloodshed is also rewarded by positive interactions with some NPCs. Later in the game, enemies become more difficult to stealth by (but you can become entirely invisible to either humans or robots), and while they also become more dangerous, the player has been gaining enhancements such as regeneration and ballistic protection that let them survive combat, better equipment (or improving equipment they've had since the start), and improved skills. Plus, by this point in the game, you're fighting definitive bad guys. In fact, later attempts to stealth can often backfire: when a player gets into trouble and has to retreat, they can easily run into lethal crossfire if they haven't been killing as they go. Averted, naturally, for no-kill runs.
- Stealth was useful to take out unaware guards with single headshots, without alerting his mates. But stealthing by without killing them was a dangerous game.
- The sequel, Invisible War, kind of plays this straight as close combat weapons become virtually useless at the end as the two classes of tough enemy introduced late in the game explode and release poison gas on death respectively, making that unique new sword you just found virtually worthless against most major threats. Stealth is also of little use against armoured enemies as they have too much HP to be killed in a single sneak attack, even if you hit their ridiculously small weak(er) point, and are often placed so as to be harder to avoid than enemies in the prequel. However, using cloaking, radar invisibility, and running past them at full speed is an acceptable speedrun tactic, but doesn't work in cutscenes.
- Stealth is actually very useful later in the game, as long as you're trying to sneak past them and not trying to use sneak attacks. Unlike the first one, you can have both invisibility and thermal cloaking, making you invisible to humans and robots. You can also use the silent stepping biomod, so they can't hear you running either. Stealth makes it entirely possible to run past an entire squad of armored enemies and mechs without them even realizing you were there.
- The prequel, Human Revolution, brings back stealth as a viable alternative to brute force. In fact, the game emphasizes three types of gameplay: combat, hacking, and stealth. Unlike the first game, all vents are unlocked and can be used at will, although some are protected by laser grids. The game also allows the player to hug walls and hide behind covers in a Splinter Cell-like manner, which is invaluable to both stealth and combat. In fact, stealth is encouraged, as Jensen is not particularly tough in a firefight. You also get extra XP for using vents and performing non-violent takedowns, which knock out any non-boss human target instantly. Some levels pretty much require stealth, as sneaking into a police station is generally more preferrable than trying to shoot your way through.
- This, however, helped turning its boss fights into the Scrappy Mechanic: If you've been stealthing through levels using only your trusty stun gun, punches, and that stealth enhancer augment, the boss fights are going to chew you up and spit you out.
- In the Call of Duty series past the second game, the player may opt to use smoke grenades to cover movement. While not really a stealth item, this Trope is subverted in the fact that if you throw one to obscure your movements, it actually works. This is one way to approach machine gun posts. Of course, smokescreens are a double edged sword, as the enemy also uses them against you during Hold the Line segments.
- In Command & Conquer Renegade, Nod players can use the Stealth Black Hand, which is fairly cheap and comes with a decent all-purpose laser rifle. If weapon drops are enabled, they can use sniper rifles... And of course, the Stealth Tank, which has overrun many an unaware GDI player. The base defenses detect stealth, though.
- Semi-averted in Unreal - the invisibility pickup can let you sneak by Titans without being detected (that said, half the times you encounter them are unavoidable Boss Battles - natch) but the Skaarj will almost always know you're there. Then again, this might be justified as Skaarj are far more intelligent and alert than Titans in terms of programming and backstory both.
- Hiding used to be an effective strategy in Left 4 Dead, until tanks gained the ability to detect players who should be invisible.
- In the Mac port and many other ports of Wolfenstein 3D, the enemies only have a forward-facing sprite, making it impossible to sneak up on them, unlike in the PC version.
- Strife gives you a punch dagger and a poisoned crossbow to make stealth kills on living targets. However, most areas have alarms that you can't avoid triggering and/or robots that can't be killed with stealth.
- In the Command Post level of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, it is nearly impossible to avoid setting off alarms in the houses, as the guards always know you're coming, no matter how stealthy you try to be.
- Averted in Dark Messiah: Heroes of Might and Magic where stealth is a viable approach throughout most of the game, at least when in dark poorly-lit areas.
- The Alien vs. Predator games are built around averting this trope for the Alien and Predator when fighting humans. Marines have enough ranged firepower to drop you very quickly in open battle but suffer heavily from The Guards Must Be Crazy: Staying hidden and taking them down one-by-one is pretty much mandatory. Played straight when the two fight each other, as both Alien and Predator can see through each others' stealth (and the Marine never gets to be stealthy. Ever.).
- Bioshock actually has a viable stealth mechanic, but 95% of players won't even notice, since your character is tough enough and ammo/health is plentiful enough for you to simply Rambo your way through the game. Combine this with the fact that you can't die in this game. This is in sharp contrast to System Shock 2 (which was on turn built on the Thief engine), where your character was much weaker and ammo/health was much less plentiful, pretty much forcing you to stealth through much of the game simply to survive.
- In the small but loyal fan community of the original Doom, most players see the "partial invisibility" powerup as more of a burden than anything else. This is because monsters fire much less accurately at invisible players, which sounds like a good thing, except that's it's usually harder to dodge projectiles when they're scattering all around you than when they're flying predictably towards you in a straight line (to the point that the sphere seems to make enemies more adept at leading their shots rather than making you harder to hit). Also, partial invisibility doesn't really make it harder for the enemies to actually SEE you and thus start attacking (and even if it did, your gunfire alerts them anyway). This is abused in some user-made levels where the player is required to pick up an invisibility sphere, just to make a fight harder.
- The Spy of Team Fortress 2 manages to subvert this, but Spy is still inarguably one of the three hardest classes in the game to play well, up with Scout and Sniper. The Spy can do truly horrifying amounts of damage to Sentry nests with Sappers and to enemies (especially the feared Heavy-Medic combo), so the difficulty is worth it. The Spy combines various kinds of invisibility with disguising as the enemy team's players for maximum effectiveness. All forms of disguise hide the spy from sentry guns. The Spy's disguise options are as follows:
- Invisi-watch allows the player to go invisible at will. Features: invisible, strategic latitude, ammo recharges invisibility. Drawbacks: Doesn't last a long time. The barest outline can be seen at close range. Can be decloaked by: fire, any projectile, jar-based karate, Milk, bumping into an enemy, or just running out of invisibility.
- Dead Ringer allows the player to appear to have died, while really simultaneously going invisible. Features: invisible, most players don't double-check 'kills', user will not be visibly invisible if touched by an enemy. Drawbacks: can't cloak at will. Can be revealed by: fire, Jarate, Milk.
- Cloak and Dagger is like the invisi-watch, but favors camping by reducing the amount of invisibility, making one unable to recharge invisibility with metal, and makes standing still recharge invisibility. Makes defensive spying much more viable.
- Disguise allows the user to appear as a teammate to the enemy. Originated as a glitch, but became canonized. Lasts forever. Appears as a spy wearing a literal Paper-Thin Disguise to teammates.
- Note, though, all of the spy strategies have to get around one major factor: spy-checking. Since there's no friendly fire and everyone has lots of ammo, spy-checking comes at almost no cost. It's a de-facto job of the Pyro class to spy-check, because setting someone on fire means they stay on fire, and each time that being on fire does damage, the spy is revealed with a team-colored damage aura. This makes Pyros the spy-paranoia class of choice.
- There are some items that affect the spy's disguise - trading off damage for cloak, or allowing instant disguising as a victim (Your Eternal Reward), or temporary protection from fire (Spy-Cicle).
MMORPGs
- In World of Warcraft, as the main goal is to fight and kill enemies, stealthing by them is not very useful. Stealth is generally used as a way of "front-loading" damage at the beginning of the battle, as stealth enables powerful attacks which can only be used once and then you come out of stealth.
- That's not to say it's completely useless though. Within the large community, tactics have arisen for "stealth runs", which generally consist out of sneaking through large parts of an instance, therefore saving time, to kill a specific target for valuable drops. Since druids are passable stealthers in addition to also being able to tank and heal, even tougher bosses can be done in that manner. Rogues can also use Vanish to stealth in combat for a nearly guaranteed survival in dire situations.
- To say nothing of PvP, where it is the furthest thing from uselessness conceivable.
- Once upon the time when the game was new, stealth runs were feasible in many dungeons. Dungeons in the original, vanilla game were huge, taking hours for even a dedicated, competent group to completely clear. Some had potential shortcuts built in, some didn't. So if a group of rogues and/or druids could go for just two or three predetermined bosses, quests or other goals and get that in a fraction of the time it would take without stealthing. However, that has been scaled back more and more in later expansions of the game. Almost every dungeon from the Burning Crusade on has at least one early boss which makes a gate open when it dies, can't be skipped because it patrols a chokepoint, or calls all previous Elite Mooks you haven't already killed them, and/or some guards with All Seeing AIs. Fortunately, almost every dungeon since the original vanilla game is also significantly smaller than original ones, so stealth runs wouldn't save as much time anyway.
- This is also averted for many quests. A Rogue can do certain gathering quests very very easily by stealthing, using Sap on any nearby mobs, looting the item, and restealthing. You miss out on XP and loot this way, but it lets you get the quests done much faster than they would be if you fight every enemy,*
(and XP rewards for questing generally outweigh XP gained from grinding mobs, as a function of player time invested so it tends to balance out in the player's favor) and stealthing also lets you fight enemies on your terms and control the opening.
- City of Villains has an entire archetype, the Stalker, who gets the best stealth in the game at level one and relies on it as they are designed to be a sneak attack class. Unfortunately, anti-stealth powers become ridiculously commonplace in the late game amongst both players and NPCs. The Rikti War Zone is the worst example, as nearly every group of Rikti has Drones that can see through stealth, making Stalkers aggravatingly difficult to play. Recently, however, a patch increased the power of Stalkers, with increased damage, increased criticals, and status effects on their best attack while also increasing their base HP considerably.
- There is also the aggravation in that ambushes tend to be The All-Seeing A.I. variety and will home right in on you while you're stealthed.
- In Dungeons & Dragons Online, the Invisibility spell is mostly useless because, unless the player is actively Sneaking, enemies will hear them pretty much automatically. Sneaking slows the character's movement and only works for for characters who invest considerable resources in it. Some enemies, like spiders and oozes, automatically detect sneaking characters. Finally, once an enemy has noticed a character under any circumstances, that enemy will always notice the character once it's within range, even if he breaks line of sight and then successfully Sneaks.
- Perfect World puts a spin on this; all non-Assassin characters and mobs have an Awareness Level equal to their level if they're not using pots. Assassins have, as an added stat, a Stealth Level, which, discounting other skills/pots, is equal to Character Level+Stealth Skill Level. Any character that has an Awareness Level higher than or equal to an Assassin's Stealth Level can see and target the Assassin, but if it's lower, you're dead. However, making Stealth slightly more (and less, at the same time) useful are the Catlike Tread and Sharp Observer skills: the former increases Stealth Level by 2*Skill Level, and the latter increases Awareness Level by 3*Skill Level.
- Don't forget the mana cost of stealth that decreases when you level your skill, going from 24 to 15 mana/second.
- Further complications arise when you take into account the fact that early-game "Sins" can only use stealth outside of combat mode, until they reach Level 29, when they get the Shadow Escape skill, allowing them to activate stealth in combat.
- In Ace Online, B-Gears gain the ability to stay Invisible, emulating a stealth bomber. Other Gears are able to do this through Stealth Cards as well. In the case of B-Gears' invisibility, it allows B-Gears to be untargetable by opponents. To attack, B-Gears forcefully decloak. However, due to B-Gears' nature to be able to kill almost anything in one hit most of the time, a successful sneak attack is a devastating tactic. Furthermore, anti-stealth countermeasures rely on the M-Gears' Scan ability or the Search Eye semi-rare item, making Invisible very useful to briefly elude pursuit to be able to return later to execute an attack when the opponent least expects it.
- One of the biggest complaints from Federation players in Star Trek Online in regards to the Klingon faction is the cloaking device. Per canon, the Federation is not supposed to use stealth technology. Since Klingons are primarily a PVP faction, what this ends up meaning is that you go into a match with the Klingon team automatically cloaked and the Federation team sitting ducks, with no way to know where the Klingon attack will come from. This led to the "Fedball" tactic, where Federation players would sit in a sphere shape so as to cover everyone's backs, and hope someone's finger would slip on their cloak button. Naturally, this makes for very boring matches. Klingon versus Klingon was even worse, because both teams would spend the entire match cloaked, so people would end up wandering around fruitlessly searching for an exposed player to pounce on. This has been fixed to some extent with enhanced Cloak detection techniques and a Federation starship with a cloaking device, but it can still be quite frustrating.
Platform Game
- The original ToeJam & Earl has a sneak button. Its only uses are to walk by the occasional sleeping enemy without waking them up, and to sneak up on Santa.
- And there are some caveats; if you just drank a root beer (for health), you will burp often for the next minute or so. Also, Toejam or Earl might spontaneously sneeze at any time, though this is rare enough that you can go a whole game without sneezing (much less doing so while sneaking).
- In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, it's possible to 'Speed Kill' enemies by sneaking up on them and completing a Quick-Time Event. This can be very difficult to get right, and it's almost easier to go for an all-out fight.
Real Time Strategy
Roguelike
- In ADOM, being stealthy tends to be rather more simply annoying than either productive or counterproductive. Most of what it does is make monsters that you'd have easily killed anyway not come to you, so you have to actually go up to them and bop them in the head.
- Stealth (and Invisibility) can be very useful, however, if you go through a dungeon that is comparatively dangerous at the given point in the game (Small Cave, Dwarven Halls come to mind). Avoiding monsters that could otherwise one-hit kill you (sometimes with ranged attacks) is very useful. Cavern levels are also easier when the enemies do not see you, because you do NOT want to be swarmed by monsters, even weak ones. You want to pick them off one by one. And finally, the Backstabbing skill works only when stealthy/invisible on hostile characters, and it can give a very nice damage bonus for certain characters.
- Heavily averted in DnD-derived roguelike Incursion, where stealth is one of the best tools avaliable to stay alive. Stealth in this game is also much more useful than the ones in other roguelikes.
- Dungeon Crawl uses stealth as part of a healthy assassination-based gameplay. You'll still be killing as much of everything as you can, you'll just be doing it by stabbing monsters while they're sleeping.
- The 7DRL kusemono
 has you sneak up to angry mutant ants and stab them to kill them, but also lets you go around them to get to your actual goal pretty easily. Thus, a fairly well-executed aversion of the trope.
- Interestingly, Elona does have some use for stealth. Stealth's usage is not readily apparent, as it looks like the enemy always spots you, however sometimes it is just the AI guessing. Certain powerful units like dragons and blades will move up right next to you then turn around and walk away until they get a * over their head, meaning they have just spotted you. Their 'hearing' is about 8 squares, so its possible to dodge them, fight whatever is following you out of their 'hearing' range, then continue normally. The fact there are no real concrete indicators of have-they-or-haven't-they until the * makes this somewhat useless, however, as you might begin attacking them only to realise they hadn't seen you yet. Many times you get ambushed by dragons, it's because you just announced your presence to them in a really stupid way because you thought since they were approaching you they already knew you were there!
- Angband variant Steamband has something one can choose at the beginning of the game called Wonderland Mode. This is Disc One Nuke coupled with Nintendo Hard pure bragging rights as in order to complete your game you will have to climb back down normally. You start with your new character at the level before the last, but can't go down and face the final enemy. Instead, you must make your way to the top floor then go back down, collecting completely out of depth loot as you go. How might a level 1 character survive you ask? On every floor in wonderland mode every single enemy begins the level ASLEEP even the ones that CAN'T be put to sleep. Hitting an alarm trap or accidentally awakening one monster can lead to a full-on death stampede especially if near enemies that can pass through walls like Ghosts and Vampires. Still, even this can have its use. If you pick up something that fires a particular elemental bolt, you can wake up monsters weak to it intentionally, then fire and rebound it off a wall to kill wildly OOD monsters while near a staircase (as where you find the rod-equivalent determines its strength) catapulting you 20 levels ahead. Averted with loud and noisy PCs like golems and steam-mecha. They might not have the hit dice to go toe-to-toe but they certainly have the strength to take out something 10 levels higher than them, playing one of them turns this into Glass Cannon mode instead. Slap down some of the british soldiers or Nemo's men, then smack around a couple vampires, then mangle some martians, and you'll have a fighting chance from then on. (note that some post-30 monsters are such heavy sleepers even mecha can't wake them!) Also if you're lucky and find a ____ of return, you can leap straight to the top, but if you find two you can't cheat. Reading a second moves you to level 1 only instead.
Role-Playing Game
- Knights of the Old Republic suffers from all of these. Most monsters that you can stealth by can easily be attacked and killed a few at a time - but if you stealth by them then if you are exposed you could be in the middle of a lot of enemies. Also, stealth is only possible in "solo mode" where you are only controlling one character at a time and it is very easy to accidentally switch back into normal mode and expose yourself.
- The sequel makes it somewhat more useful with the addition of high-end Jedi classes that focus on Sneak Attack, as well as several sections where the protagonist doesn't have allies with him anyway.
- Stealth can be extremely useful in large bases with security computers. Stealth to the computer, hack and overload circuits/gas rooms/override droids/slaughter everything in the base, then all that's left is to mop up any survivors.
- There are also specific puzzles that force you to use Stealth for things like eavesdropping to get a password. Note that these are pre-scripted cut-scenes that only check if you have the skill — you still gain no benefit from pumping points into it.
- The character it comes in handy for is Mission in the first game, and only in a couple places. The rancor in the sewers is usually too strong for your low-level characters to take on directly (especially if you're postponing leveling up until Dantooine), and her low hitpoints on the Leviathan level make stealth an attractive option if you choose her for the breakout. She also gets sneak attack bonuses that are devastating if played right.
- Stealth is also useful for clearing minefields because of the way party AI is handled: normally, if there are enemies behind the mines, your companions will charge straight ahead and blow themselves up on the way.
- Neverwinter Nights 2 falls squarely into this trope. Most of the enemies are simply cannon fodder that your party should have little trouble dealing with, and in the event you're up against a challenging one (i.e., a red dragon), stealth isn't an option anyways. It's egregious if you take the Shadow Thief line of quests; for one mission, for which you're encouraged to remain stealthy to break into a house, it makes zero difference if you just barge in waving your sword, and you might even get complimented more for doing so.
- Unless you use Hide in Plain Sight, an ability that hide in front of enemies, and by hide in front of enemies, we mean "step back to disengage form combat, hide under the enemies nose". While hiding you can't be targeted, leaving you vulnerable only to area of effect attacks and letting you attack for sneak attack.
- Stealth is doubly useless in Neverwinter Nights 2 due to the fact that the game pits you against a disproportionate number of undead opponents - which are immune to critical damage inflicted by sneak attacks made while in stealth mode.
- It does, however, have one very useful application: If you play an evil assassin and join the King of Shadows at the end, you have to fight your entire party singlehanded. Hide in plain sight, Death Attack, lather, rinse, repeat.
- Stealth is further undermined by the extremely generous rest system, which can be used almost anytime you are not in direct combat. Spellcasters are much, much more effective than normal because they are no longer required to conserve spells for more difficult encounters. Normally, you wouldn't use a ninth level spell to take out a couple Mooks, but use lower level spells and hold the ninth level spell until you found a more difficult foe. In NWN 2, you can spam ninth level spells in almost every encounter by resting after each fight, which only takes a couple of seconds. The only major downside is that if you are buff heavy, you have to recast them after every fight.
- The stealth section on St. Marguerite Island in Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a rather funny example of this. It's a Let's Split Up, Gang for Blanca, who must sneak into the heart of the base to free the rest of the party; if caught by the guards, he fights them. But by this point it's almost a given that Blanca can take out any number of guards by himself (especially with the right Crests), so there's no point in hiding — and if you do use stealth, you miss several items that are only reachable if you kill certain guards.
- The Elder Scrolls both uses and averts this with the Stealth skill, as well as spells for Invisibility and Chameleon. A basic Invisibility spell has always made you invisible to everything but the undead (and sometimes, Daedra), until you try to manipulate or attack something. Chameleon operates by giving your character a percentage of transparency and it sticks for as long as the spell lasts, even if you do stuff; less than 100% Chameleon, however, and enemies are liable to see you if you move around a lot or hit them. 100% Chameleon can double as invincibility and almost break the game.
- Immensely averted because none of the games feature an experience-based system (except the first, which has no stealth option), very few enemies must actually be killed to complete quests, and almost all great items are available very early through the five-finger discount. It makes money near-useless for anything but buying spells, which cannot be stolen.
- In The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall you had a Stealth skill that somehow governed whether enemies would react to your presence. Sometimes an enemy would wander around despite you; sometimes an enemy would not turn if you approached from behind; despite it, enemies were still more than likely to rush towards you. There were spells like Invisibility True (constant invisibility until the time ran out) and Shadow (conceal yourself in shadows better?), but any lesser concealment spell was useless in practice unless you stood still. The combat ability that made Stealth worthwhile, Backstabbing, required a Stealth check, but, despite doing more damage on the first stab, stronger enemies would then notice you and pommel you like normal. Other thief skills were based on separate skills, and the really powerful, bothersome enemies - the undead and the Daedra - could see an Invisible opponent.
- In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the Sneak skill, now set to a button, was tremendously useful. If proficient enough with the Skill, one could pickpocket (no longer a skill), and open and loot locked containers right in front of characters, though striking someone still brought their attention to you. Pickpocketing was now dependent on the Sneak skill, however, and backstabs were no longer given bonus damage. As for spells, Invisibility (True) was removed from the roster but could still be substituted by a costly 100% Chameleon spell. The Shadow spell was also removed.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion turned a proficient stealth-based character into a Game Breaker, averting this trope until it was suddenly demonstrating the trope again. While Invisibility (normal) and Chameleon work the same as in the predecessor game, stealth-based characters using the Sneak skill now had the chance of remaining undetected regardless of what they did in the game world! The only enemies this didn't work on were animals (which makes sense, as they can most likely smell you no matter how well hidden you are).
- This becomes incredibly apparent in the Arena, the entire questline of which can be won legitimately without even moving from the battle starting area.
- This trope is usually applied when you're trying to stealthily kill enemies. If they're in a group, every other enemy will immediately know that you're there and where you're hiding no matter what you used to kill them. It's understandable if you stabbed them or used a spell, but not when you shot them with an arrow while hiding in a bush half a mile away.
- In Chrono Trigger, guards snuck up on grant mid-tonics when looted, which come in handy for the next few bosses. This is the only reason to even bother.
- Later, the party is captured and stripped of their possessions, meaning they need to sneak around the air ducts of their prison until at least one party member gets a weapon back. Unless, of course, you had Ayla in your party, whose fists can't be disarmed.
- One of Live A Live's seven character quests falls into this, at least at first — Oboromaru can sneak past any enemy in the stage except its final boss, but doing so means you have to face the final boss with no or very little experience (since there are few enemies you can fight without breaking stealth), and your only reward for doing so is an Infinity+1 Sword that's not as helpful in the boss fight as having levels would be. However, if you get Oboromaru back in the game's final quest, you can level him up and have the sword... except that when you're that early in the game, you don't even know the final quest exists.
- The original Paper Mario had sleeping enemies in one dungeon that would wake up if you walked past them at full speed. However, they are easy to avoid even awake, and depending on your timing, weren't even that much of a threat in combat anyway.
- In Baldur's Gate 2 invisibility does work pretty well until you encounter a creature that can cast True Sight. Which it will immediately cast to dispel your invisibility, showing that the computer does know you're there anyway, it just isn't allowed to attack you.
- An exception is the overpowered Staff of the Magi, which basically grants an infinite uses of the spell Invisibility. The staff's version of the spell is also the only kind of stealth (besides the hide in shadows skill the thief classes get) which work successfully with the somewhat buggy "Cloak of Non-Detection". Combining the two items on a single character subverts the trope so entirely it's better classified as Game breaker. Enemies will cast True Sight (in some cases infinite times) and stand there twitching, trying to attack you because they can see you but are at the same time forced not to attack you.
- Perhaps the best example of this trope, however, is the Cloak Of The Sewers. Despite the fact that it allows you to turn into a rat, and the game is (surprisingly) full of plot-irrelevant rats running around (they can be killed for 1xp and never have any drops), all NPCs instinctively know that this rat is different, to the point that trying to sneak past a band of high-level thugs in the sewers as a rat results in them trying to shake that rat down for 500 GP, and unleashing spells fit for fighting an army if it refuses.
- Interplay's Lord of the Rings allowed you to use the `sneak' skill to get into a lot of inaccessible places. You could walk around the wall of a haunted mansion, and a sneaking NPC could slide in from some unknown place offscreen and you were in. You could also get into the town of Bree at night, when they locked you out, just by walking along the wall away from the guards. Unfortunately, it was not so good for avoiding fights. Sneak into the mill without the One Ring, and the Orcs quickly slaughter your wimpy characters. Also, the sneak command didn't work against certain obstacles or guardians, since there wasn't any way to move offscreen and get a guy inside, or if the force of a character's personality was so great that the whole party had to stand directly in front of them and not go anywhere until they said "none shall pass!"
- The first person RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines averts this by the grace of several factors - one, XP is only awarded for fulfilling quests, not killing random enemies. Two, if a stealth route is available, it usually comes with bonus XP. And if all else fails, the game allows for one-hit stealth kills in the form of a brutal Neck Snap (or Back Stab, or having the enemy Impaled with Extreme Prejudice).
- If the stealth in Bloodlines hadn't been as smooth as it was, the Nosferatu would have instantly become the game's Scrappy due to the fact nobody but other vamps and certain NPCs can see them without running away in fear and disgust. They're actually quite fun to play.
- On the other hand, Obfuscate IS pretty much useless in the Absurdly Spacious Sewer level - the Tzimisce creations will instantly see through it if they look at you.
- Using stealth in Dragon Age to bypass enemies isn't a terribly bright idea. However, there are plenty of other uses for stealth, i.e. a rogue who strikes while stealthed gets an automaic backstab, and a rogue with the second tier and higher version of stealth can use items while stealthed without being seen. This includes grenades. That's about as broken as it sounds. A rogue soloist with a huge supply of grenades will never take damage again, except from certain bosses who see through stealth.
- Not entirely useless. The fight against Kolgrim is traditionally considered fairly difficult. Stealthing past the warriors and assassinating the Mages (pretty easy for any Rogue, even in straight combat) is an option that makes it almost trivial. Kolgrim is tough, but without the Mage support he can't do that much damage.
- Fallout 3 rewards stealth-based players by giving them "Sneak Attack Criticals". If the enemy doesn't see you and you get the first strike, a more damaging critical occurs. Particularly noticeable with shotgun-type weapons since criticals in free shot are calculated per pellet, ie, if your shotgun fires 9 pellets per shot, and Critical (Sneak Attack or otherwise) occurs, all 9 pellets gain tremendous damage. Indeed, there are perks that amplify Sneak Attack Criticals For Massive Damage.
- It can be made even more of a Game Breaker by using the Stealth Suit from Operation: Anchorage and one of two weapons: The double barreled shotgun from Point Lookout, which fires twice the pellets, and the Infiltrator from The Pitt, a silenced and scoped assault rifle.
- Players can also Reverse Pickpocket live grenades and mines into opponents leading to a One-Hit Kill when the grenade or mine detonated.
- Even without an invisibility field, this game can both avert and be this trope. It can be averted that you are counted as sneaking as long as nobody is looking at you, meaning that as long as you avoid enemy sight you never get jumped on, but shooting an enemy and failing to kill him will result in a "They are there!", but due to a general lack of silencers that is probably for good reason. Oddly enough, if you do manage to get a one hit wonder on an enemy, all buddies are surprisingly unaware that their friend just went into a quick nap, thanks to lead. If you do well enough, you can sneak past all issues in game while gunning them down at the same time.
- The infiltrator class in Mass Effect 2 has a cloaking skill. It's useless for sneaking past enemies entirely because in most encounters you are required to kill every enemy before the next door unlocks. However, the skill is useful for outflanking enemies, escaping close-range attackers, and lining up headshots without worrying about enemy fire. The later is particularly deadly, as higher levels of the ability also add a damage bonus to your attacks.
- Alpha Protocol is an interesting case, in that it gives you (normally very viable) stealth options that you can level up, but the game also has mandatory boss encounters where stealth isn't a viable strategy and fighting will be much harder if you've not put any levels into suitable combat skills.
- On the other hand, you can use stealth to sneak into melee, beat their endurance down, then shoot them in the head with Chain Shot.
- Fable features an early story mission where stealth is required. From then on out it has practically no use whatsoever. Sure, once you get a high enough level in Guile you'll be able to steal items from stores and pick locks, but the former is negated when you learn you have to remain unseen as you hold down a button to steal said item (hard to do when you have countless yokels following around remarking on how famous you are,) and the latter becomes a problem when you learn that most citizens of Albion stand in front of their doors all night.
- In Persona 3 and Persona 4, Shadows roaming the Eldritch Location du jour manifest as blobs that claw their way across the floor. Players are encouraged to approach them from behind and sneak-attack them in order to get a free round at the start of the battle (though Shadows can gain their own advantage by striking from behind as well.) Since the line of sight of map-roaming Shadows isn't that great, sneaking past them is relatively easy in order to avoid wasting resources on minor foes.
- Radiant Historia eventually gives you the ability to vanish and completely avoid enemies. Not only are you missing out on money and experience this way, you're going through MP faster than you would by fighting. Generally not worth using during the main story, but can speed things up greatly when backtracking through locations during sidequests, especially since how annoyingly persistent enemies tend to be in following you when they spot you.
- In the Pokémon games that let you catch and raise Pokémon, there are trainers that will force you into a battle if they see you. You have the option of fighting them right away for money and experience or avoiding eye-contact and battling them at a later time.
Shoot 'Em Up
- The Ilwrath Avenger in Star Control has a cloaking device as its secondary ability. Not terrible, but any competent player can figure out where it is because the screen automatically zooms in and out to keep both ships in the picture, and, well, the AI automatically knows. Without speed or weapon range, it's easy prey for almost anything.
- A savvy player can also locate the Avenger by watching for it to eclipse the background stars. The cloaking device turns its sprite black rather than transparent! And what's more, the Ilwrath player is hampered by his own cloak just as much as the opposition.
- The cloaking device has two other features which are far more useful than the visual invisibility: homing weapons fail against invisible targets; and attacking while cloaked automatically rotates the Avenger to face the enemy ship despite its normally mediocre turning radius. These effects just emphasize how useless the actual invisibility is due to the aforementioned screen-scaling issues.
Stealth-Based Game
- In some sidequest missions in Assassins Creed it is necessary to assassinate people without being seen. If you have the stamina for it, you can often just slaughter your way through hordes and hordes of guards to get to your target without any stealth at all. However, this is also subverted with some missions that fail you for detection. Also, quite a few of the plotline assassination targets cannot be assassinated without a confrontation that results in them making a break for it and Altaďr or Ezio having to chase them. Starting with Assassins Creed Brotherhood, the devs try to avert this by making a Stealth Run of several missions necessary for 100% Completion.
- Rise Of The Kasai averts this for the most part; generally speaking you can just run into combat head first with decent odds of coming out alive, but stealth is the suggested method of advancement, both for an added challenge and the satisfyingly brutal stealth kills. The only time the game truly falls victim to this is when your AI partner decides its time to run headlong into danger, disrupting your attempts at stealth. Its predecessor, Mark of Kri, makes stealth a completely viable method in that your character always goes it solo.
Third Person Shooter
- Army of Two gives the option to put silencers on guns. This is kind of useless considering that the game is all loud fire-fights.
- Not really. The idea behind silencers is for one person to use them and low agro parts while the other person uses high agro parts. Person with the high agro setup distracts and the low agro guy takes advantage.
- Star Wars Battlefront 2: Bothan spies. It's extremely annoying when they pop out of nowhere and burn you, but since the AI is able to see them while stealthed (though they appear to be less inclined to shoot than they would normally be) they are rather useless to play as.
- In the first Mercenaries game, Jennifer Mui's special characteristic is enhanced stealth compared to the other two playable characters. Considering that the gameplay in the series is mostly based around Stuff Blowing Up, it's not clear why anyone would value this, and indeed it has no discernable effect on the game. The sequel scraps this in favor of making her the fastest sprinter of the three.
Turn Based Strategy
- Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance has Chapter 10: Prisoner Release, which one could ostensibly stealth through, given the advice "stay near the walls and don't get too close to anyone", without mentioning more useful advice like "only a specific type of enemy (soldier) can spot you". The reward for stealth is extra experience (more than you get for fighting and can be assigned to any character, even the Magikarp Power ones) and a rare (but almost useless) Master Seal item.
- Nintendo Wars: The submarine cannot be targeted once submerged, except by a unit whose only purpose is to kill subs. You cannot see a sub unless you are right next to it, and it blocks your path, wasting time. On the flip side, submersion costs a lot of fuel and the sub must return to base frequently to fuel up. Dual Strike added stealth jets, which can hit land, sea and air units while cloaked but have even worse fuel consumption.
- In the Total War series, units do get tactical advantages from ambushes, as being charged in the side or back (especially when already engaged) incurs a massive morale penalty. A good ambush can break armies, but it takes a very good commander to do so and it's usually pointless against the AI, who will either rush at you with all his units in a big mob or break into a defensive formation and stand still (depending on its numbers compared to yours); ambushes are very seldom applicable in either scenario.
- There is one unit of ninja equivalents that can hide in open country. However for scouting it is better to spend the money on cavalry (almost never in the game does it matter that the enemy knows you have spotted them) and it is difficult to effectively ambush as there are only six men in the unit (most infantry have 60-100). Also you are only allowed to have 16 units in a battle so picking any number of these means you will be heavily outnumbered.
- Stealth appears in Sword of the Stars. While it can be potentially devastating for a first strike, stealth-detection is a universal tech available to all races (in a game where the tech tree is randomized) and is easier to acquire than stealth is. Furthermore, stealth takes up the command section on a cruiser and slows down the ship, in comparison to the detector that is only needed on a single ship in the enemy fleet to reveal your entire stealthed fleet.
- On the other hand, you can tell which enemy ship(s) have stealth detection command sections. If you kill them first, you can restore your stealth advantage. And with the right techs, your ships can shoot while remaining stealthed. So, not so useless after all...
- Even without stealth detection, the AI always tries to shoot at the last location your invisible ship fired from, making it important to stay on the move. If you don't, then the enemy will zero in and blast you. You can do the same, by the way (i.e. force-fire at a location).
- In Battle for Wesnoth's basic head-to-head multiplayer stealth abilities tend to be impractical. Firstly, most stealth-able units can only be acquired by leveling them in combat, so the enemy knows exactly when and where you got them. The only recruitable stealth units in default play are Rebel faction's Wose - a slow-moving highly specialized unit used against only a few specific enemies (so they're easy to see coming) - and the Undead faction's two Skeleton units, which can move unseen in deep water - a terrain which cuts down their movement rate and defense so much that it's difficult to actually ever take advantage of this ability. And secondly, the abilities themselves only function under specific conditions, either keyed to certain terrain types like forests(in case of the aforementioned Wose), which tend to be mostly isolated and make fairly obvious hiding locations, or a particular time of day, such as nighttime in case of the Shadow unit... which also happens to be the time when it's most advantageous for the Shadow to fight instead of hide.
- Heroes of Might and Magic IV manages to avert this despite being a Strategy game with RPG elements. Heroes with the Stealth ability can sneak past monsters on the map to claim the treasures and resources the monsters are guarding. Not only does this allow you to gather resources faster (by giving one hero your entire army to clear out monsters, while your stealthy hero goes a different way and sneaks past any monsters they come across), but sneaking past monsters actually gives your hero some experience points.
- Partially averted in Star Trek: Birth Of The Federation, where all Romulan ships, some Klingon ships, and a single Federation ship can cloak. For the Romulans, this is a big advantage, considering they also have the slowest ships. The entire fleet enters the battle cloaked, which means that they get a free turn. This often means the enemy has no chance. If the Romulans are outnumbered, they can just escape during that first turn without being shot at. Also invaluable during fights with monsters, such as the Borg or the Crystalline Entity. The ships are also invisible on the strategic map. The Federation's heavy escorts (Defiant-class) is a unique class that features the most powerful buildable ship in the game. They're fast, can cloak, and have enough firepower to take out a small fleet on their own. Definitely a Game Breaker.
- Played straight due to how infantry mechanics work in Battlefront's Combat Mission series, unfortunately. For every casualty/wound you cause, you WILL lose one sniper to all but rifle conscripts. The problem? That one sniper costs as much as that rifle conscript squad, and the conscripts can hold out for a heck of a lot longer and even accidentally kill AF Vs with their grenades. (though most of the time if they see a tank that close they flee before getting off a shot) See also: Steel Panthers, which has many of the same problems. Two benefits to snipers there is that it is 2D and not 3D, so the calculation for explosive damage to a unit is far lower for a sniper, as his 'unit' is just one man, and they can disable 'open' or unarmoured vehicles easier with their better accuracy. Gameplay-wise he also remains hidden longer, while in Combat Missions after the first or second shot, the enemy squads converge on the building/hill the muzzle flash came from and fill it full of lead. Snipers are basically only useful in CM for decapitating a battalion by wounding its command unit (which is a 4 man squad so there is still a chance he shoots the wrong guy)
Turn Based Tactics
- Speaking of buggy WWII-based tactical squad games, anybody ever try to use a Scout-class character in Silent Storm? You know, the ones with which you can sneak silently up to within a metre of that oblivious guard, at which point he turns and annihilates you with a heavy machinegun? Every single time? FFFUUUUUUUU-
- Actually, stealth is very useful if your scout has shurikens or throwing knives and has trained to use them well. These can result in lots of damage to unsuspecting foes with their allies being none the wiser. If your stealth skill is high enough, you can even get close enough to use the katana (if you manage to obtain it in a Random Encounter).
- While you typically don't get the opportunity to use stealth in the Jagged Alliance series, similar to the Army of Two example your meaty healthy gunner guys can draw fire with their machinegun bursts while your medic swaps to a rifle and spends extra AP on aiming. Amusingly, this can even work in an open field if the sniper is BEHIND the enemy soldiers and lying down. They will continue to spray&pray at your SMG squad while not noticing the entry wounds are coming from the opposite side.
- Fallout Tactics grants no XP for sneaking past enemies and most maps can only be solved by fighting: Sneak is (in the long run) only useful for positioning units before engaging in combat. While this is hardly that useful against your average raider or tribal, once you hit St. Louis and your enemies start toting rocket launchers or M2 brownings that can kill your entire party from halfway off the map with a lucky shot, you will learn to love a high stealth skill on every character you have.
- In addition, there's also a map involving a hostage situation (Springfield) where stealth (and a great deal of luck) is mandatory to save the town.
Wide Open Sandbox
- This even shows up in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. There are two or three stealth-based missions, in which you can evade detection entirely by hiding in shadows. The game tries to tell you after the first one that you can also use stealth to hide from police, but anyone who's played a video game before that point knows better. In fact, "stealth" kills with a knife outside of missions seem to attract more attention than waving a sword around or even firing a silenced gun at someone.
- There's also robbing houses, which the player is also introduced to through one of the aformentioned stealth-based missions. It's supposed to be an easy way for the player to make cash without actually playing the storyline, but in 90% of the houses you can try to infiltrate, its occupants are in the front room, ready to discover you as soon as you enter.
Non-video game examples:
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons And Dragons has had sneaky rogue classes and invisibility spells since the beginning. Whether or not these powers will come in handy depends purely on the Dungeon Master and the kinds of situations he throws the party into. A high-level rogue with good stealth can get a massive sneak attack damage bonus if they aren't noticed, often doing more damage in that shot than the designated heavy-hitters.
- Mutants & Masterminds allows for impressive levels of stealth, including a "hide in plain sight" feat that can be taken even at the lowest levels and allows one to hide without cover and while being observed. On the other hand, the system is supposed to model Comic Book superheroes who commonly have such abilities. Becoming invisible (or unable to be perceived by other senses) is similarly easy to do. On the flip side of things, there's often heated discussions on the Atomic Think Tank message board about whether the vanilla stealth skill applies to super-senses with or without some degree of preparation for said skills, and it's similarly cheap to buy powers that will counter any and all invisibility effects.
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