Useless Useful Stealth: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* There are many enemies that players [[But Thou Must!|must kill to complete key objectives]], such as [[Boss Battle|bosses]], that are harder to kill than enemies that you can stealth by. Hence, if your character or party is powerful enough to kill the bosses (as is necessary in order to progress in the game), it is also more than powerful enough to kill the grunts, so it is unnecessary to stealth by them.

* Stealthing by enemies leaves them in place, so if you were to stealth by them and later end up in a situation where you had to run away, you would be sandwiched between two sets of enemies.

 

== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==

** 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.

* 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.

* Hiding used to be an effective strategy in ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'', until tanks gained the [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|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.

** 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).

 

* 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 [[Randomly Drops|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.

** 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 [[Load-Bearing Boss|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 [[The All-Seeing AI|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,<ref>(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)</ref> and stealthing also lets you fight enemies on your terms and control the opening.

** There is also the aggravation in that ambushes tend to be [[The All-Seeing AI]] variety and will home right in on you while you're stealthed.

* In ''[[Dungeons and 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.

* In ''[[Warcraft]]'' and ''WarCraft 2'', Invisibility spells are useless against computer opponents due to [[The All-Seeing AI]].

* The ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' series has some stealth units of questionable advantage. Stealth tanks are decent at scouting (as long as the gunner isn't stupid enough to shoot random enemies nearby), even against the AI. However, later games feature map obscurers. They might hide what's there, but there is the minor detail of a large (and often mobile) unknown region, which not even the computer falls for.

{{quote|However the enemy AI has disturbing luck sending a tank to "scout" (read: flatten) the exact location your invisible unit is, even if they are across the map. Play CnC Generals for the most blatant examples.}}

** In [[Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3]], the Spy exchanges the skill to steal technology and unlock new units for a truely useful ability of bribing enemy units to fight for you - a reasonable area of effect and costs $1000. No delay either, making his disguise ability incredibly worthwhile in combination.

** Plus the highest level of radar tower overcomes both cloaking ''and'' stealthing. This all makes life hard for the Cybran Nation, the faction that prefers unconventional tactics like stealth.

** The cloak and stealth defeating radius of that tower are much smaller than it's normal radar range though, and those radar towers are rather expensive to maintain. And thanks to the huge maps and the large number of weapons that can fire beyond visual range, there is an advantage to only being noticed once you're right on top of the enemy. Cybran fighters and bombers especially benefit from their stealth capabilities, since their high speed means they are unlikely to be spotted en route, and can be attacked by AA enemies for only a short time while they are within visual range.

** Stealthed Ghosts could stand next to your base and tell the nukes where to hit you unless you found out where they were fast enough to kill them before the nuke launches. And the Protoss had a stealther that could fly alongside a fleet of Carriers (making them invisible too) to make a slow but powerful death unit.

*** Note that the stealth-granting Protoss unit cannot, itself, become stealthed, not even with the help of another stealther. Given that the stealth-granting unit can also teleport friendly units from elsewhere on the map to itself, it's a popular target.

* Nearly all Romulan and some Klingon ships in ''[[Star Trek Armada]]'' have cloaking devices. This also includes the Romulan most powerful unit the ''D'deridex''-class warbird. True to Trek canon, cloaked ships can't fire weapons or use shields. While this is seemingly offset by allowing the Romulans to spring ambushes, if they happen to be detected, they ''will'' be destroyed before they have a chance to decloak and open fire. Also, scouts are cheap and cloak-detecting systems for them are one of the first upgrade options.

* Cloaking devices are much more useful in the ''[[Star Trek Starfleet Command]]'' games, but other ships can still be set to scan for cloaked targets which will sometimes result in a temporary reveal. Additionally, while it's easy for a cloaked ship to sneak up, decloak, and open fire, it also leaves the first ship vulnerable, as it takes a second or two for the shields to come back up. Even the ''Scimitar'' (from ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'') in a special mission of the third game acts like a regular Romulan ship when cloaked (i.e. lowered shields, can't fire), even though the fact that it could do both was kind of the point of the movie.

* ''[[Homeworld]]'' and its sequels have several ships capable of cloaking. However, this cloaking is temporary and is mostly useless, especially since it's very easy to research cloak detection. The Kushan in the first game have the ''Spectre''-class cloaked fighter, which wasn't particularly powerful and was really only useful in taking out lone resources collectors (for which regular, cheaper fighters would work as well). The ''Cataclysm'' stand-alone expansion features the ''Assassin''-class ion array frigate, which can also cloak. However, it's also incredibly slow, meaning that the cloak will run out before the ship can get within range and align its [[Wave Motion Gun]] for the shot. The Somtaaw have three stealthy ship classes that are actually a little more useful. The ''Leech''-class breaching pod is unmanned and is small enough to avoid being picked up by standard sensors. It can then attach to a larger ship and slowly drain its HP, until the ship suffered a [[Critical Existence Failure]], or just bring back the drained HP as resources. It can still be detected by scouts, but it's nimble enough to find holes in sensor networks. The ''Mimic''-class infiltration craft can use holographic projectors to impersonate an enemy ship or an asteroid, get close to the enemy and suicide-bomb them. Two ''Mimic''s can combine into a corvette-sized ''Martyr'', which can impersonate even larger ships or asteroids and has a bigger bang.

** Stealth could be really useful in the campaign, during one specific mission in which you had to destroy an entire fleet of enemy beam ships guarding a hyperspace jump suppressor. If you had three stealth generator ships, you could keep only one powered on and switch out their cloaking when they began to run out of energy, meaning you were permanently cloaked. Your permanent (but very micromanagey) cloaking field would conceal a fleet of salvage ships, with which you could steal the entire enemy fleet essentially undetected. Fifty free beam ships for your next mission.

* In [[Ancient Domains of Mystery|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.

* [[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 [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike.development/3mAS5sNE5bY 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.

** 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.

** 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 [[Leeroy Jenkins|charge straight ahead]] and blow themselves up on the way.

** It does, however, have one very useful application: If you play an evil assassin and {{spoiler|join the King of Shadows}} at the end, you have to {{spoiler|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 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 [[Game Breaker|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.

** 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.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==