Making Perception a valuable stat: Psyonics!

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:18, topic:2464”]Stealth has… almost nothing to do with dexterity. We’re talking about stealth, not acrobatics or mechanical manipulation here.

Why the heck would stealth be dex-based?[/quote]

Traditionally, in pretty much every game I can ever remember which included both stealth and attributes, stealth has been linked to Dexterity or Agility. That doesn’t make it a reasonable choice, but it is pedigree.

Stealth is obviously a very complex thing involving empathy, perception, planning, and kinesthetic awareness.

Avoiding making noise is often a function of agility and kinesthetic sense. A clumsy bumbling person will not avoid brushing against things and stepping on things and bumping things as well as a dexterous person. If you are stalking through the woods surrounded by twigs and branches and things that crack and snap, then body control is a major factor in whether or not you can successfully maneuver without making noise. Even though it doesn’t take an especially perceptive person to notice that these branches/twigs/etcetera are there.

The rest of stealth often comes down to planning and strategy. Which should be up to the player, not a stat.

Dexterity should determine how effectively the character can move through the environment without making noise, and because noise is what generally gives people away when attempting to hide from a pursuer, this would be important. It isn’t enough to duck into a closet, you need to do so without drawing attention. That means careful footing and careful hands so as to avoid making noise.

Perception is a weird choice IMHO. While it helps to be aware of where people are, I don’t think that is the kind of thing which affects stealth. It tells you where people are. Maybe a perceptive person hears a zombie around the corner that is too close to sneak past. A non-perceptive person might be very stealthy but not give the player enough information to make the right PLAYER decisions in order to succeed. Ie, they can’t create a plan, they can’t choose their path in such a way that it avoids detection.

If you are going to roll any stat for whether or not a zombie spots/hears the player on any given turn, then the only active stat the character has that can reasonably be applied in that isolated moment is dexterity. Body control/awareness (kinesthetic sense) despite being a kind of perception, cannot be divorced from dexterity. Without it you cannot be agile. It is one of those things that has overlapping categories, but as we understand dexterity, it is practically another word for kinesthetic sense.

22

Well this is off topic.

But anyway I see there are two different opinions on what perception is.

One side is saying that perception is how much you can see. Like that picket fence has holes, or that tree has 4 branches.
On the other hand we have some people saying that perception is not what you see but sorta what you feel/sense. Such as there are some footsteps around the corner, or kinestetic awareness.

You might want to solve this difference before getting into further mechanics.

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[quote=“Rivet, post:19, topic:2464”]Just check out this guy’s awesome sneaky walk and try to say that doesn’t require catlink agility.

In all seriousness I think PER seems like the better choice, though perhaps high enough DEX could grant a bonus because you move so smoothly that you make less noise/are less noticeable than usual or something.[/quote]
There is absolutely nothing stealthy about the way that man is moving, hah.

Avoiding making noise is often a function of agility and kinesthetic sense. A clumsy bumbling person will not avoid brushing against things and stepping on things and bumping things as well as a dexterous person. If you are stalking through the woods surrounded by twigs and branches and things that crack and snap, then body control is a major factor in whether or not you can successfully maneuver without making noise. Even though it doesn't take an especially perceptive person to notice that these branches/twigs/etcetera are there.
Perception is about being able to see things and notice their relationships. It tells you whether or not someone can see YOU, and let's you spot the place to put your foot that will actually be quiet. It tells you the best way to hold your body so that you won't be noticed, because stealth is all about [i]blending in[/i], not about being quiet. Perception is what you need if you want to blend in.

Perception is about more than “seeing”, but about your senses in general. It’s about hearing, seeing, smelling, and just plain noticing thing. Bringing in lots of data and picking important elements out of it to build up a high quality representation of your surroundings.

Strength and Dexterity certainly play a role in pulling it off and sure, they should both give bonuses (since agility is a combination of the two of them, fine motor control and the strength to remain motionless in awkward positions). But when you are being stealthy, you will be spending most of your time not moving in the right place, until the right time. How does dexterity aid you in this, what is the central and most important aspect of stealth?

But for stealth, Perception should far and away be the most important stat.

Now, it might not give direct bonuses - that’s true. Perhaps it will be the most important stat primarily by informing player decisions - the higher your Perception, the more likely your assessment of a given squares visibility and noise-making potential. While a low perception picks a value from a wider range.

So, say the range is (20-perception)*2.

So a perception of 10, when looking at a square with a stealth value of 25%, might see that square at ±20. They might see it as having a stealth value of 5% or as having a stealth value of 45% (significantly better than it is)

And stealth isn’t about “sneaking” so much as it is about “hiding”. The point is to avoid being noticed, not to be an uber-silent acrobat.

But having played a large number of games (I’ve played large-field paintball, HvZ, and Assassin, all quite extensively) where stealth is a central component, NO ability is as useful as perception. I’d like to see that represented in the game.

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I think I see the misunderstanding here, GlyphGryph wasn’t talking about a “stealth check”, but rather how perception will influence your ability act stealthily.

In the trivial extreme, if you can’t percieve your opponent, you will be greatly hampered in trying to hide from them. Spotting an opponent is key to avoiding detection. If you approach a town, you know from experience that the zombies are “over there”, but until you spot the individuals, all you can do is try to take advantage of every piece of cover between you and the town, and once in a town, when you may be surrounded, it becomes effectively impossible to hide and still move unless you can spot what you’re trying to hide from. There are meta-issues like cutting through houses, crawling through ditches, etc, but your options will generally be wider with higher perception.

In the other extreme, you might percieve where your opponent is, where they’re headed, where they’re looking, and whether they can detect you or not, and can percieve all of the above at a great distance, this gives you a godlike ability to avoid detection. Consider MGS, now imagine trying to play it without the extra input it gave you about the enemy LOS arcs, that’s the power of perception. We’re not solid on how the stealth system is going to work, but it’s not out of the question that we would provide a perception-based map overlay of some kind that would inform you of what squares are visible from monsters you can see that you can use to navigate while hiding. With a low perception such a map would either be unavailable or unreliable to some extent.

In a competitive sense, the advantage goes to the side with the higher perception. By default the player has a much greater perceptive ability than monsters, but the monsters have numbers on their side.
Dex would enter into it, by e.g. adjusting how much noise you make when moving around, possibly mediated by a stealth skill, but that only matters when you’re at medium range (or short range with an intervening barrier), and even then, hearing is also adjusted by per, so greater detection range and location precision also helps.

Your ability to stay hidden is going to be almost entirely tactical, and consist of keeping obstacles between you and opponents to block their sight and maintaining enough distance to prevent detection via sound or scent. The only thing dex changes in this equation is how far away you can be heard.

Having said that, the player will generally have a large advantage in stealth. Like now, your spotting distance will generally be greater than most if not all enemies, what being proficient at stealth will do is allow you to push it and possibly achieve feats like looting within a zombie-populated town.

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When compared to zombies anyway. There is at least one enemy I’d like to implement that has a significant advantage over the player.

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I pretty much covered the same stuff re: perception being vital in planning movement.

I wasn’t trying to make a case that higher dexterity aids you in being invisible. The focus here seems to be on vision and I think sound is the more passive control. The player needs to make good choices about where to be based on their perception to avoid being seen. I agree, and I mentioned that in some detail. Games that use stealth as some kind of invisibility cloak irritate the heck out of me and I don’t want that any more than anyone else.

But not being heard is a function of body control. Being aware of where your body is, having precise control over your body’s movements, that is muscle control and that is covered by dexterity/agility. If you want to climb over a fence without being heard, you want dexterity, not perception. If you want to walk across gravel without being heard, you want dexterity, not perception. If you want to slip between some bushes without being heard, you want dexterity, not perception. Perception only tells you those things are there. Dexterity affords the fine muscle control to not make a great deal of noise while traversing.

Stealth is one part mind games and one part not drawing attention. Just because someone isn’t looking in your direction doesn’t mean they won’t hear or otherwise sense your presence, and if you have ever tried to sneak behind someone without them noticing you, it’s difficult. You can’t just wait until their back is turned and then walk past. Avoiding their line of sight is a big part of stealth but it’s not the part I’ve been talking about.

I actually like the interplay of Perception to detect enemies (and thus plan your character’s movements) and Dexterity to avoid being heard when enemies aren’t looking in your direction.

27

Off-topic, but the title got me thinking. I wish people would stop coming up with new names for psychics. First 40k started calling them Psykers, now everybody’s got their own spelling of it. It’s like calling magic Magick.

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For the record I’m not really in favor of psionics either.

I worry about this turning into more of a post-apocalyptic superhero game. Even the mutations can be a bit much at times.

That said, I think a lot could be done with artifacts to enable some interesting effects and possibilities which could mimic psionic effects. Kinda like in STALKER, I suppose, where you would find objects which granted you abilities.

So anyway, psionics aside, I do think Perception will become invaluable when stealth gets put in. Knowing where zombies are is gonna be a huge deal for survival.

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Kinda-sorta, on an open field it’s not that big a deal, but once you factor in smoke or scents flowing around obstacles, it becomes problematic really fast, and updating the particle and field effects (smoke and scent) is already the source of most of the lag the game experiences.

30

Why would psychic powers be determined by perception?

Okay, I can see ESP, precognition and clairvoyance being part of it (being skills that allow you to sense something, be it the future, waveforms or etc)
but force lightning certainly don’t.

We’d need a WIL stat.

Perception: Senses of the human boday. Sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing.
Note where ESP/Clairvoyance could enter the perception of man, while mind lazors don’t.

That all said I’m all in favour of pyromancy and telekinesis-like stuff though, I just think you guys need to think the implementation through a bit more.

[edit] I’ve been up all night, it’s 6am so if this seems weird I’m probably out of it lol.