(I understand this topic has been discussed at length in the past, but all the threads I saw were lacking any input from admins/coders. So I'm hoping to get a response from Squishy or someone on the admin team to perhaps explain why this hasn't really taken hold.)

I'll make this quick. I think your ability to be "stealthy" should decrease as you rack up bodyguards. Why? Realism, mostly. It's silly to think that an individual can waltz around a city followed by over a hundred people and still remain unseen. I think as far as game mechanics go, stealth seems to be one we haven't really tinkered with; and that confuses me.

Stealth has the capacity to be one of the most exciting game stats, but we make it untrainable (which makes poor sense) and permanently high or low. It is for this reason that I propose the following changes:

• Stealth becomes a universally trainable skill. It is trained only by killing non-IA accounts; and those on the stealth answer sets acquire the stealth skill at an increased rate in comparison to other stats. I think it would be cool to see this in effect with the other stats; as in, the increments at which stealth is trained is based on your answer set (ranked highest to lowest: stealth, wack, defense, info). Additionally, higher-profile kills could be rewarded with additional stealth bonuses (i.e. being able to sneak in and kill an IWP target would grant more stealth stat than an unsponsored goomba).
• Stealth has a higher base gun stat OR training ranges increase stealth stat.
• Bodyguards offset stealth stat. The more BGs you buy, the easier it is to see. This could be based on BG count or effective BG count.
• Remove the "not in your district" message you get when trying to wack someone you can't see. If you can't see them in locals, you shouldn't be able to know that they aren't in your district. Either you can see them and shoot them (by putting a hit on them) or you can't see them and can't shoot them. 

I think this will turn stealth into a high-risk offense/defense strategy. You take enormous risk by foregoing BGs, but you put all the money saved from that into training your gun. Then when it comes time to fight, you'll rely on your stealth to both veil your WSs and keep you out of the locals for people with poorly-trained info skills.

What do you think?

I think I mixed up my phrasing at the end there:

"Either you can see them and shoot them (by putting a hit on them) or you can't see them and can't shoot them."

Should be:

"Either you can see them and shoot them, or you can't see them and have to put a hit on them to see if they are in your district or not. If they aren't in your district, you just get a generic "You can't see them." message that gives no indication that they're in your city but not in your district."

If I'm in a crowd of 150 people, and we're all dressed exactly the same and we're wearing wide brimmed hats (or something), would you say I am harder or easier to single out?

Now say I am just walking along on my own. Am I harder or easier to single out?

Whilst I appreciate what you're trying to say, I can't say I agree with the logic.

I don't think stealth should be trainable either. Can you imagine someone starting on full defence answers, posting to get full info and killing to get full stealth? That's just too much in my opinion. People should have to choose between stats, it keeps more than one answer set viable.

"Remove the "not in your district" message you get when trying to wack someone you can't see. If you can't see them in locals, you shouldn't be able to know that they aren't in your district."

If you wanna push in that direction, you should suggest that we can't shoot at someone at all unless we can see them in our locals. I mean if we can't see them, how could we possibly shoot at them?

Sorry, but I don't agree with any of the suggestions you've made and can't see a good way for any of them to be added in. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise, but I don't see my changing my mind unless you come up with something that literally blows me away!

There are certain features that are a staple of the game that exist entirely outside of realism. For instance, pro-wacking. That makes no sense from a realism perspective, but it's absolutely necessary for this game to function. I mean, the admins now even code in features with exceptions for pro wacks (the "Take a bullet" feature), because despite its unrealistic functionality it is absolutely crucial to gameplay. Now, bodyguards aren't wholly unrealistic, but the concept of employing a hundred to follow you around everywhere is a bit unrealistic. Even the U.S. President doesn't have 100 bodyguards surrounding him at all times; it makes very little sense.

So I don't think the purpose of the bodyguards, from a realism perspective, is to create a "crowd" around you. Otherwise, you could even make the argument that BGs should increase stealth. I think there is an obvious assumption that people can differentiate between nondescript bodyguards and real people; and that if an individual were being followed by a horde of bodyguards it could not be conspicuous. You could not sneakily escape a crime scene with 150 people following you. You could not sneak into a house with 150 people following you. If someone asked, "Hey, where's DeadlySin?" and they knew you had a mass of BGs following you, that would make you easier to spot on the Street. Or at least, you would be recognizable by the Bodyguards who are defending you. Since bodyguards are completely non-transferable, non-reusable (after the death of the user), and follow you everywhere, I think it would be more fitting to think of bodyguards as your own personal team of protection; and each of those men has some badge saying that they protect you. That's how we know where to find leftover BGs after their employer is dead; they wear badges showing who they protect, and our profile (the Bodyguards count) represents a count of all those who wear a badge with your name on it, regardless of how well trained they are.

So, instead of thinking about it as one man walking in a crowd, think of it as a massive team of people walking along the street. They're bodyguards, as every person on the Street can identify (as we make distinctions between BG wacking and normal wacking, you must assume there is a distinction between BGs and people), and you immediately know who they're protecting, because that's one of the necessary attributes of each bodyguard: their employer. Without the employer, they don't exist. So it's easy to pick out from the crowd of bodyguards the player who employs them.

Can you imagine someone starting on full defence answers, posting to get full info and killing to get full stealth? That's just too much in my opinion.

As I mentioned, "killing to get full stealth" would be much more difficult for defense or info answers. Additionally, 2/3 of that can already be accomplished on a single account, so I don't think it's fair to consider "info" as a uniquely trainable skill that could make an answer set obsolete or overpowered. As in, starting on pure wack, posting for info, and buying up to BG cap gets the best of three worlds as well. Does that make it too much? Of course not, because acquiring the info skill takes work. Acquiring that many BGs takes work. The counterplay is in how much work it takes; not in the final state of that answer set. Plus, it would be foolish to get full defense answers and not get any BGs. And on Defense answers, your stealth stat would go down at the same rate per BG as any other answer set, but your ability to increase your stealth stat is lower, offsetting the ability to gain all of these traits at once. The point is that (1) a lot of work is required to post your way to perfect info, (2) a lot of work is required to get BG cap, and (3) a lot of work would be required to train up your stealth stat, especially if you're on defense answers. And all the effort you put into (2) would hinder (3). So you'd have to choose between BGing up or stealthing up; because you couldn't effectively have both.

If you wanna push in that direction, you should suggest that we can't shoot at someone at all unless we can see them in our locals. I mean if we can't see them, how could we possibly shoot at them?

The reason I threw that in there was because it seemed like stealth people should get something in return for this nerf. Making stealth a trainable skill and hindering it with BGs is a decent setback; so I thought it would be prudent to add an incentive to using stealth. I didn't plan on having that as a part of my original suggestion; I just threw it in because I figured there'd be a lot of people claiming stealth would be unusable.

I don't mind! I like discussing my thoughts. Let me know if anything is unclear.  

DeadlySin, while I agree that people should not be able to train every stat, I do hate that Stealth is the only stat that matters that isn't really improvable, because I think it does massively overpower stealth. I'd rather see either trainable stealth, or untrainable other stats... but I'm not such a fan of this situation where one can and others can't.