[Lethality Check] - New Weapon - Daggers & Sneaking!

As much as I absolutely love Hitman games and being stealthy, I just don't see how it blends in with SOT without feeling too OP. As much as I would want it, I think it would require a lot of balancing to feel fair.

Technically tucking is sort of sneaking, but tbh a sneaking mechanic probably isn't necessary, as it's already fun to try and swim to someone's boat and hide there.

Then daggers like you suggested. I'm assuming this means you sneak up behind someone and insta-kill them. Thing is, I'm not sure this would really work, in games with this sort of thing combat is (comparatively) slower paced, R6 comes to mind here.

In SoT combat is fast and based around moving quickly. What would be the criteria for a dagger kill? Simply going behind someone would be way to op as you could just bounse behind your opponent in the chaos and instant kill them. And once you are trying to sneak up on someone, problems arise as well, because people rarely stand still for long enough to sneak up.

So personally I don't think stealth kills or sneaking mechanics really need to exist, but of anyone has a better way of implementing it then maybe it could work.

I think that the inclusion of a crouch button would change the game big time. If it hid your name, all the better. The element of surprise can play a huge part in player/player interactions and being able to sneak around imo would allow more options in said interactions. I'm also not opposed to the idea of a dagger, and the ability to get "critical damage" with it if you sneak up behind someone. While some might be worried or against this idea, it's really no different then blundering someone from behind, except that it would definately feel more "thiefy", and arguably would enhance immersion/role play. I feel like this won't happen though and most likely daggers will eventually be added as another throwable, with maybe the option to attach status effects to them (ie poison, fire, grog, sleep ect).

@scurvywoof definately hoping for Season 9 or 10 to be a pure combat overhaul, but I'm not holding my breath

@mrstinkyfart169 said in [Lethality Check] - New Weapon - Daggers & Sneaking!:

I'm also not opposed to the idea of a dagger, and the ability to get "critical damage" with it if you sneak up behind someone. While some might be worried or against this idea, it's really no different then blundering someone from behind, except that it would definately feel more "thiefy", and arguably would enhance immersion/role play.

True but the problem being that if someone has a blunderbuss and dagger equipped, they would effectively have two chances at one-hit kills. Or can only a blunderbuss or dagger be equipped at the same time?

Does the dagger have a bonus only applied from behind the opposing player or just out of their vision? If so, can you just jump behind them and get a critical hit in a fight? If there's always critical damage, why is the dagger stronger than the cutlass?

If there is a critical hit bonus from behind the player, I could see plenty of "hit reg" like scenarios where a player doesn't appear to be behind but manages to get the one hit kill anyway. That would also benefit players on KBM who have much quicker turning speed than controller (even on the controller's max sensitivity).

If someone can figure this out, I would love it. I just don't see it being balanced and fair at the moment.

EDIT:
Okay, a little thought occurred to me, if the dagger was one hit only from crouch (which @MrStinkyFart169 does mention as something that could be added, in fairness) and standing up from crouch incurred small delay, then I could see this potentially being balanced. Also crouch movement should be slower.

@realstyli said in [Lethality Check] - New Weapon - Daggers & Sneaking!:

@mrstinkyfart169 said in [Lethality Check] - New Weapon - Daggers & Sneaking!:

I'm also not opposed to the idea of a dagger, and the ability to get "critical damage" with it if you sneak up behind someone. While some might be worried or against this idea, it's really no different then blundering someone from behind, except that it would definately feel more "thiefy", and arguably would enhance immersion/role play.

True but the problem being that if someone has a blunderbuss and dagger equipped, they would effectively have two chances at one-hit kills. Or can only a blunderbuss or dagger be equipped at the same time?

Does the dagger have a bonus only applied from behind the opposing player or just out of their vision? If so, can you just jump behind them and get a critical hit in a fight? If there's always critical damage, why is the dagger stronger than the cutlass?

If there is a critical hit bonus from behind the player, I could see plenty of "hit reg" like scenarios where a player doesn't appear to be behind but manages to get the one hit kill anyway. That would also benefit players on KBM who have much quicker turning speed than controller (even on the controller's max sensitivity).

If someone can figure this out, I would love it. I just don't see it being balanced and fair at the moment.

I'll try to hit this from start to finish.

It is true that a pirate would have access to two 1 shot kills, but at the same time they become completely obsolete at mid/long range.

In my mind, the only was a dagger sneak kill would work, is if the added a crouch mechanic. You'd have to crouch behind a player, and only they could you achieve this one hit. I would argue that this would make it exceedingly difficult to pull off a sneak attack once open combat has started. I also think that the dagger should be 15 damage/hit, with the chance of a 1 hit kill achievable as mentioned above. This would then make it less immediately stronger than the sword. You've also got to keep in mind that you do need to sneak behind another pirate to get the kill, which is definately not the easiest of tasks (sometimes it can be).

Hit Reg will remain an issue until we get a combat overhaul unfortunately, so I've got nothing there

As for balanced and fair, we can absolutely get it balanced as that's just a numbers game. Fair though? You've already touched on the gap between playing on Controller vs MKB. I think that it's an objective truth that MKB have a significant advantage in combat over Controller. Arguably since the release of the game (I cant recall if MKB was inital) the game hasn't been fair. Further I've encountered my fair (lol) share of 4v1 encounters in which I (a solo sloop) know that the odds aren't on my side. That hasn't stopped me (an Xbox player) from enjoying the heck out of the game and putting a stupid amount of time in. I'm personally more than okay with adding daggers, or even other weapons at the price of fairness.

@mrstinkyfart169

Yeah, I think the crouch mechanic is key to this whole idea really. It would provide the buff to the attack but come with its own disadvantages (slower movement being the main one).

@realstyli absolutely! I agree that if they just added the dagger, it would be chaos as the time to wipe an entire crew could be seconds. Crouch definately needs to be implemented before a dagger (unless they just add it as a throwable)

I actually love the idea of the dagger. I think a way that it could work is to make right click the “enabling of Sneak mode” once you hold down right click instead of blocking your character hunches over and starts walking slowly, this also does a small animation with the knife so it isn’t immediately ready to strike, once the animation is over and you are still in sneak mode you can insta kill someone from behind.

The knife animation is so if you’re behind someone you can’t just right click and kill but have to wait a second or two before you’re allowed too. Maybe the knife could make a sound when you start sneaking almost like unsheathing a cutlass.

Not sure on the implementation of this and how it would fit in the game.

My concern is that I see no way this weapon is better than the blunderbuss or it becomes broken and janky.

Either you sneak behind someone to then backstab then with a delay before you can which would make it worst than blunderbuss.

Or you can instantly use it to backstab someone in which case why ever run sword where the fight will just be try to jump behind someone and one shot them.

The issue is that the ttk in this game is fairly high compared to other games with the one shot backstab mechanic such as cs go and with overall much closer range combat than TF2.

@nitroxien said in [Lethality Check] - New Weapon - Daggers & Sneaking!:

My concern is that I see no way this weapon is better than the blunderbuss or it becomes broken and janky.

I think the main advantage is that it would be a silent takedown while still letting you conserve ammo. There's not much point sneaking onto a ship just so you can alert everyone to your position when you 1 blunder someone, but with the dagger you could stealthily take them out.

@mferr11 then they yell that they have been killed....

@mferr11 thats not accounting for every crew being on disc together lol