Trainable Stealth

A Proposal

The ability to train stealth would add a large degree of unpredictability to the game. It would enhance and enrich play greatly and force players to think much more strategically about both the way they develop their own character and the way they approached play with others. It will blow the understood methodology of assassins wide open. It will force a counter focus on Info/vision skills and put a huge amount of emphasis on player interaction and politics. no one will be 100% safe, it will be wonderful.

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Overview:

Currently stealth is the only static stat in anyone's character. As such the way it affects play can be measured and accounted for. Even a player on full stealth answers, as hard as it may be, can be taken care of. What I propose would change all that.

- It will create different types of hitter.
- It will cause a large increase in activity in aspects the game that deliver vision skill. Primarily Streets and Business District forums.
- It will create more roles for players within the game.
- It will cause the Hit List to be a point of great activity and interest.
- It will mean no leader was ever safe and force them all to constantly maintain their relationships with other leaders and the public in a way unlike anything we see now.


Practical Application:

The mechanics are very simple. All the surface features already exist and are currently not busy.
Pickpocketing will be used to train stealth. +1 per successful pickpocket just like a hitter gets +1 per kill. The attack timer would remain the same. This will force the individual to decide which was more important to them at that time, +1 stealth or +1 wack.

Implementing this kicks off a complete rethink about how a hitter might train their skills.
Some may pay no attention to stealth and carry on as normal. Marching around blasting away and leaving a trail of witness statements behind them as they go. Others may decide to dedicate the first few months of their character's life pickpocketing until they had a very high level of stealth. Then start shooting once they were almost impossible to trace.


Knock-on Effects:

The potential of invisible assassins would be enormous. The knock-on effects, perhaps even more significant. Knowing hitters existed that could carry out any contract with only a minute chance of being caught, would open up a field of opportunities and increase activity in several existing areas.

Vision/Info Skill:
The threat of stealth assassins would create work for people with near perfect vision. There would be a general up-swing in vision delivering activities. Street and business district life would liven up considerably. Also there would exist a strong need in most families to have at least one or two 'vision experts' around to try and counter the threat of stealth hitters. People who's sole focus in the game was simply to develop and maintain as near perfect vision as possible. A Crew Leader may even want a vision expert to travel round with him or her as a deterrent.

Hit List and Contract Killers:
Players would be able to post anonymous contracts on the Hit List but instead of those contracts sitting there for months as they do now, there would be a very real possibility that a stealth assassin might take the gamble and shoot the target. The individual may see the contract target in town, look around and think its worth the risk to gamble his own stealth against the Info skill of the people he can see around him. You may get other assassins that have trained their stealth to such an intense extent that they will almost never be seen unless they are unlucky or happen to be in the same city as a 'vision expert'. In every scenario there are varying levels with a huge scope for play in between.

War:
The ability of any family to effectively track or estimate the gravity of an opposing family's hit-squad would be greatly diminished. The rise in uncertainty would place far more emphasis on other areas of play. War would be come very difficult to predict. This could in turn increase the relative benefits given by the proposed 'War Mode' system. Making it as useful to the very experienced players as it would be to those less so.

Leadership:
The increased threat on both a multiple and singular level, to any leader, would place a much greater emphasis on that leader being more publicly active in the streets and other areas in order to build and maintain a visible presence and popularity. Sitting tucked away in silent HQs would no longer be a viable way to lead. This would not only apply to leaders of course. All players would be just as much at risk and so all would have to think about what they were doing much more.

IA's and PPs:
The flexibility in approach to training would probably cause a healthy decrease in intensity with ia racing. People might take different approaches or if they lose a race, may just elect to Pickpocket someone instead. In turn Pickpocketing becomes less of a consequence free, passive action. People would be watching Pickpockets in the way they watch hitters now. Collecting witness statements for pickpocketing would be as relevant to family security as those for shots are now.

Individual efforts:
Right now the art of rogues is not what it was. These days they rarely get past one or two kills. The one person, alone with a plan, style of play is not what it once was. Three day rogues would never exist now. With the application of trainable stealth however, the ability for one individual to make a plan and execute that plan, becomes a very real possibility. "If I train my stealth, I can be strategic and take out this guys BGs for days before he sees me, but by then I'll have him weak enough that I can one-shot him." There are so many possibilities.

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Whether it causes an increase in street activity from all those wanting to prove themselves to be a valuable member of the community, or an equal increase in paranoia and second guessing, the level of general activity and player turnover is bound to rise. I can see no detrimental effects from implementing this change and only an increase in activity and diversity of play. I genuinely believe it would be a hugely beneficial step forward.

I do see a couple of cons to this idea:

1) The Streets:  You mentionned this would lead to people needing to post in the streets more to raise their vision, I feel as though this could possibly hurt some street prescence.  As we all know the streets can get a little testy sometimes and more then one mafioso as seen an early grave due to stuff they have said in the streets.   Some of these deaths have been deserving others have been questionable.  With some players knowing that it is unlikely theyll get caught for shooting people, its a lot more likely that debates in the streets will turn bloody.  Lower ranked players may shy away from debates if their views conflict with some higher ranks.   While it is arguable that this will lead to people being forced to be respectful, I could also see it as an excuse in some peoples mind to kill those who disagree.

2) Accountability: There are all people who we dislike, this is natural.  However the reason, I feel, that a lot of us don't just carelessly shoot them is accountability.  It takes a lot of time to train a gun good enough to shoot some people, and a lot of us don't want to throw it away shooting someone when there is a high likeliness well get caught.   Now if there is a low probability...  whats to stop us?  Surely the high vision people will be running around and could possibly see you, but again the low likeliness really makes it seem that these stealth shooters can just get away with murder.   You mentionned that if you lose an IA race maybe youll pickpocket someone instead.   Yes, or you could potentially just shoot a sponsered gangster/goomba, or heck maybe even the shooter who beat you to it.  There would have to be a huge influx in people on vision answers to counter those on stealth.  And when that happens it kinda makes the stealth obsolete to begin with.

Now I know I stated some negatives to this idea but Im not 100% against it.   Like you stated this could put an edge back into the game, which is somewhat stagnant.   People will have to be more careful and not be so confident every time they log in theyll be alive which really ads excitement.   I also like the idea of boosting the importance of info/vision answers, and having one travel around with the CL.

I think that you should have a way to train it, like a shooting range, except like, with missions.

Or a 'shooting range' that raises your stealth and weapon stats, like 'infiltrate a mogul's compound and assassinate him' for a lasting time of 8 hours, that would raise your stealth and weapon skill. Or anything else. That's just an example/

i think its a wonderful idea it would make things alot more interesting

one point i forgot to mention is maybe the CL would get the notification that one of their members has shot and give the name of the victim...so the CL has some control over their hitters it would stop people running around aimlessly whacking people they dislike

that kind of takes the realism out of it, maybe if the CL's could pay a fee for people to be on the streets and report murders, for like a couple million $ or something. But only in the home city, like if you're in a NY family, but you're in CH and kill someone, noone would know unless a CL had men on the streets to see the kill.

Not the street forums but metaphorically, like men just to view what's going on.

maybe the CL would get the notification that one of their members has shot and give the name of the victim...so the CL has some control over their hitters it would stop people running around aimlessly whacking people they dislike

That already happens if the hitter has permanent auth. The CL gets a message in their personals saying:

XXXXX has used their permanent auth to shoot XXXX.

This may be by far my favorite suggestion to come along in a long time.

It is a great shame none of the admins have replied to this yet. Fantastic idea in my opinion, Kurtz.

Personally I love this idea. From a coding perspective the addition wouldn't take long to implement. If someone wants to make Squishy aware of this post, we can see if it is something he would be interested in.

As for the cons, GTL has pointed out a few, but I personally feel those cons could be overcome by stricter playing by other players. MafiaReturns is a self governing body, so if someone starts killing people that they don't like, they will eventually get caught. The thing I love about this idea is that it removes any chance of 100% stealth, but creates a balanced weight of 1 to 1 for stealth and info. so if you have say 100 points of stealth and they have 100 points of info, you have a 50% chance to stealth. Makes sense in my eyes.

And as Kurtz has stated, when someone takes a shot they have to request Auth if it's not within a +3 or -3 rank range, which means that if someone dies there is either an auth request, an auth personal, or the pool of people whom have the gun to hit, and the stealth to stealth the shot, is narrow. And you never know who's stealth is good, who's info is good, or what your chance of stealthing a specific person is at any given time. Right now if you do enough shots you can work the math out.

This has been discussed with Squishy. He seems very receptive to the idea and I'm sure if someone sat down with him and bashed out the ins and outs of the basic code...

Coughs GO ON NUBBY LAD! cough

...Then this idea could be implemented and become a practical working reality in the near future.

The ingame politics this would bring is just amazing! Their may be a few Caesar moments, where the stealth family hitter teams with the family info man, to take out the CL, or even the godfather! The blackmail opportunities where an info man would catch a WS and a deal is sent out, their life or 2 mil? Pro shots will be taken constantly. Putting cities on edge as shots fire out hourly. Loyalties, alliances, friendships all will be put to the test. Again amazing idea!

I love this idea. I have spoken about it with lots of people and i truly believe it will bring a whole new aspect to the game that will make it loads more interesting

I've always been a fan of this kind of thing, in fact I believe I've discussed similar suggestions with some of my good friends in the past. It's always amazed me that stealth was a fixed entity and that picking pockets was relatively useless beyond getting a rough estimate to the number of bodyguards some one has.

Whilst at the moment it is possible for someone on stealth answers with a good gun to sit in a well populated city and wack bodyguards to their hearts content, the ability to wack individuals and possibly remain incognito would add a whole new dimension to the game and add a greater degree of realism to takedowns and the politics.

It would herald a return to the early days of .org where assassins could often go undetected. I also think that Adding a limit to the maximum number of HQs available at any one time based on a percentage of the active populace would further enhance Kurtz suggestion, allowing for hostile take overs from those seeking leadership when there are no crews available.

Just my two cents on the subject.

As I have said in private I think this would be a great addition to the game and it gives an added edge on people pickpocketing rather than just a way to use your attack timer and gain some xp.

It makes new use of the hitlist and can be used as a great weapon before wars start.

Great suggestion Kurtz.

Is there any word on the plans for this suggestion? IRC chats or even better the date of when it's being implemented? Curious is all.

Squishy has informed me that this is currently being developed. It will be introduced to the game once the coding has been completed.

Thank you Kurtz, for both idea and the reply.

Kurtz, can I haz your babies?

I love this idea. I really do. Being a fan of PPing in general this was always going to appeal to me, but the fact it changes the dynamics of things and could spark some life in the old dog is most appealing.

I am actually genuinly excited to see this in place.

Kudos to you, Kurtz. And well done to the Admins for picking it up and implementing it, really shows that when an idea is available to be implemented and the structure is there, they are willing to listen and implement when possible.

Any news on when this was/will be implemented?