CoE has emphasised making skills more realistic and fun by combining both PLAYER SKILL and CHARACTER SKILL
instead of a crouch and go invis game
, in terms of PLAYER SKILL: vision cones will matter putting more emphasis on information gathering (no. of guards/where they stand of a place you want to infiltrate), planning and patience.. this is where it should lie. you shouldnt make it easy to be in stealth by just going invisible, otherwise it would be overpowered. Also in an mmo, the one shot knock out from stealth should be nerfed aswell but more on that below*
for CHARACTER SKILL: i believe there has to be downsides to novice character stealth with more sound created but more importantly new gameplay mechanics should be introduced the more you develop your skill in stealth,
for example:
1)by learning to go PRONE (uknowthatthinghumansdotostayunseenthatnevermakesitintoanygamebutmetalgearsolid?) and being almost completely unseen that way, instead of through crouch invisibility.
2)combining parkour and stealth to be able to quickly jump to and hide in the corner of a ceiling/on top of a tight hallway
3) or getting to master level and being able to cover urself in mud maybe in a forest and stay prone in rain while players are walking around you
see what i mean? just EVOLVING THE STEALTH MECHANICS AS THE PLAYER LEVELS UP STEALTH and the other players wont expect those mechanics to be in the game at all they would be looking for an idiot trying to crouch in the middle of a fort
*in CoE, Getting knocked out is a huge deal, full on combat classes would take much more time on getting this done than a traditional stealth knockout we see in other games. but since that can leave no counterplay from someone who just decides to sneak up on the spot and grief you, ive come up with another way to keep the one hit knock out and still make it fair:
what if you have to stalk your prey and be a few feet a way in proximity for atleast a minute (ninjas are patient) before being able to deliver that knock out punch/assassination otherwise the action will fail and instead of being a knockout, the target will only lose a little health and now youre in a combat situation when youre specialised in stealth....being in proximity for that long and not detecting him means that the stealth guy did his job right and deserved to knock you out in one go, it also means that ninjas wont sneak around killing every single target they see cuz it would be too time consuming and too risky (more chance to get caught)
ANOTHER FEATURE if youre target has a high enough attention/perceptiveness skill they might get informed of the ninja thats stalking them through their character meaning ninjas will have to think of another way to kill target with high attention/perceptiveness instead.
SBS should consider mocaping a few unique animations exclusively for master tier mechanics when our characters level up that far. because imagine someone jumping out of a rooftop thats too high for normally to parkour but because his character is just that skilled , you the onlooker just see him do a front flip in mid air combined with a front roll to break the fall gracefully without breaking anything else