As leader of the Nightingales I am extremely stealthy at the worst of times. With 100 sneak most people don't see me even when not in sneak mode. I don't need it most of the time but once in a while I invoke my invisibility to just sneak in and take what I came for from right under the bosses nose. I could just wipe em' all out, my level 56 Dark Elf is very tough or just drop em' all with a bow, my Deadric bow hits at an amazing 190 now, with baubles on, but it's just fun to stealth the entire dungeon.

Actually, if you ever try going invisible in the middle of a fight, you'll find that the AI is fairly competent at seeking you out, especially if you aren't silent.

That's cool. I have never have tried invisibility before so I wouldn't actually know. I thought you'd consume a potion and the enemy would just return to their spot.

If you aren't silent, then you're not properly prepared for that situation In that particular case, it's not so much their competence in seeking you out that will get you, as your failure to get the perks and gear and skills to make the best use of your invisibility to escape effectively. If you just go invisible and then run around standing up and without any silent/muffled boots on, you might as well not have bothered using invis. If you've perked Stealth and acquired muffling gear, and use them after going invis, it's awfully easy to escape the AI with impunity. I was 99% successful with it, before I gave it up as overpowering. The few times I got detected, it was my fault for getting myself into a bad spot with no escape route, before attacking.

Sounds like you made a cool character who is fun to play. If your friend doesn't like it, he can go fly a kite.

As for "cheap", well, what is an assassin? A guy who kills someone by surprise while exposing himself to as little risk as possible. Doesn't that make them cheap by definition? So your guy found a way to do it even smarter. Good for him, I say.

I was wondering the same thing and was about to ask if Quiet/Silent Casting didn't apply to the invisibility spell for some reason. Otherwise, it would be difficult not to notice that every spell cast makes noise and garners attention from enemies.

I disagree. An assassin kills by any means necessary along with the idea in mind of not getting caught. It's true that you can and should be able to be a good assassin without ever casting a single spell but I wouldn't call it a hard and fast rule. I've played two assassin characters and never used magic but that was one of the parameters for those characters. With my current character, he'll eventually convert over to thief assassin, but I'm going to use a lot of magic when doing so, simply because I've never played the game that way before. It keeps things interesting.

There's no such thing as "cheap."

Are you kidding me? It goes away if you do anything! And you need to join the bloody Winterhold College in order to even GET the spell.
In past games we had the Chameleon effect... which while causing only partial transparency, does NOT go away until the duration runs out. And if you could enchant items to provide 100% Chameleon... then you were completely invisible and undetectable to enemies as long as you wore the gear...

... And now we don't have that.
And your friend is calling Invisibility "cheap"?
Well... your friend is the freaking plague that is killing the Elder Scrolls. Tell your friend that they'd be better off dead.

I didn't say that the AI was unrealistic. But the post I was responding to was from someone who seemed to think that it was like other games, where going invisible makes it as if you were never in the room. In Skyrim, they'll search for you where you were last seen, even if you're silent, and if you make any noise, they'll seek you out there.

In a solo player game, each player makes their own subjective opinion of that. You state that like it's a fact, when it is solely your opinion. In my opinion, there are quite a few really cheap gameplay elements in Skyrim, that sadly detract from the overall experience. YMMV.

"Cheap" is a term people use when they can't figure out of how counter something.

There is no logical reason that Invisibility should ever be considered "cheap," especially in a single player game, and a properly balanced game, or a game with smarter AI, would be able to have ways to actually counter Invisibility.

If the parts highlighted in red applied to Skyrim, and if Invisibility were less god-like without having to gimp yourself and only use it with less than sensible preparations, then it wouldn't be cheap. As it is, it is cheapcheapcheapcheap*



* in my opinion, of course.

The difference between a "hero" and a regular person in Tamriel is not a matter of actual power.... It is just a matter of lateral thinking.
There is a very VERY obvious way to see through invisibility that USED to be in the Mysticism school until the numpties in Skyrim forgot what Mysticism was and put it in Alteration or something instead (where it obviously doesn't belong).......... The Detect Creature effect... known now as Detect Life.... We also used to have the Dispel effect (also Mysticism) to handle the removal of invisibility and similar effects. No longer.
And yes, it makes sense that a spell be countered with a spell. Well, that and they used to be available in potion form too... so it isn't such a big deal.

But we can just assume for now that the various NPCs of Skyrim are too damned stupid to figure these things out.... (not that NPCs in previous games were much better)...
And for that matter, I suspect a large portion of players and non-player commentators are equally inept in the lateral-thinking department.

Yes, I totally agree with you, somewhat.

I don't call it cheap because I'm the one using it, it's not my fault the computer hasn't figured out how to stop me.

Thus, the AI should call it cheap, not me.

I will not argue you on either of those points, my good man.

How can a tactical advantage be cheap? If your life is on the line yous should take advantage of everything you have to influence events in your favor. This is a game though. If you want more challenge don't use it. Having max sneak with perks and muffle might as well be invisibility anyways.

There are beggers hounding you for single gold coins while surrounded by boxes and barrels full of produce which are worth rather more than that.
There are NPCs going through caves, leaving dead enemies lying behind... completely unlooted.
NPCs and wild animals alike will respond to any slight by attacking in a suicidal fury.
EVERYONE has a magicka pool, but only mages cast spells.... more severely so in Skyrim than previous games.
Guards taunt and insult player characters orders of magnitude stronger than they are and capable of caving their puny heads in with a single hit.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg where stupidity is concerned.
Tamriel has always been full of ways to become rich and powerful, and millions of people too damned stupid to figure out even the most rudimentary of them.

Maybe your not using the quiet casting perk??? Just a thought.....

While that is true, and it's always an option for players to NOT use the basic tools that the devs put into their game, I am of the opinion that it is a better example of the game-making craft, to balance all of the things you put into your game so that your customers aren't forced into gymnastic feats of self-denial and cheap pet tricks of avoidance, in order to avoid or negate all of the poorly made and imbalanced features in it. That is putting the onus on the player to jump through unnecessary hoops in order to make it a semi-balanced and challenging game, when that should rightly have been the responsibility of the developers in the first place.

Unless all they were really interested in making was a big nature sim...

I've noticed this too. You can be completely hidden in a shut room and cast invisibility and someone 4 floors above you will be alerted. And to top it off they can SEE you when yo are invisible. Wtf

Hard games often force one to use undesirable tactics as the only means of achieving success.
Easier games give much more leeway in the potential routes to victory as suits personal taste.

What I can't understand about your post is that it seems the goal isn't to seek success... but to seek failure. Why would you want to seek failure?

That might be the most obvious statement since someone said water is wet.

I don't seek failure, but I appreciate the fear of failure in a game, based on it being balanced enough so that there isn't ready access to god-like abilities that remove almost all risk from the undertaking. Success is much sweeter when you achieve it after overcoming real risks, not by ROFLstomping enemies who don't have a chance. And as I posted above, I don't want to have to think about how to make my character LESS than it can be, literally 'gimp' it and my playstyle, in order to put that actual fear factor back in the picture. I want the developers to make a game that actually has the word 'BALANCE!' written as a goal on the whiteboard, at development meetings. If it ever was, it got erased by somebody.

Quiet. Casting.

And no, they can't see you when you're invisible. Enemies will naturally head for the spot where they last saw/heard you, and if they bump into you, or if they hear you again, they'll move towards that spot. It's actually a fairly good display of enemy AI.

Why are people constantly surprised that their spells can be heard when they haven't invested in the only perk that says in big letters, "Quiet Casting"?