Hm. Okay, well, I suppose it's been a while since I've given an update so I'll chime in on this a little:
Following up from last time, the general problem(s) with long term stealth was:
1. There was no way for the opponents to get an inkling of how clever the stealth player was being, and thus there was no good way to get a sense of how that player operates.
2. Stealth is claustrophobic in the way that it makes you play.
3. Stealth gives very powerful scouting information while simultaneously hiding that information from your opponent.
We tried some iterations past the first few tests, with Paranoia, alternate resource bars, footprints, phasing and mark systems but in the end, we settled on the current system because it was the simplest solution for long-term stealth. In short: "Everyone has reduced Oracles, but Evelynn and Twitch are perma-stealthed."
Some Partial Stealth Details
Disclaimer: I fully understand this destroys a *lot* of the current stealth gameplay changes. Unfortunately, through lots of iteration, I was unable to capture the feeling of pure invisibility while in stealth while having fun gameplay. In the end, I decided to opt for a very simple system that was highly understandable over some more fiddling mechanics.
1. Evelynn and Twitch are permanently stealthed when they rank their level one stealth abilities. However, Evelynn and Twitch can be seen when they are within X units of an enemy champion (Slightly under vision range), or when they are within a true sight radius.
If they attack, they are revealed briefly for 2 seconds before going back into stealth.
This 'X' is being adjusted for feel between the two champions. 'X' is smaller than champion vision radius, so you can "stalk" an opposing champion, but it will be farther away.
2. Evelynn and Twitch have a "sight gem" above opponent's, telling them when the enemy can see them or not and whether they are "safe" (green sight gem), "warning - you are close to being seen, but still unseen" (yellow sight gem) or "being seen" (red sight gem.)
Results
Long Term Stealth, in this case, has been removed as a primary initiation mechanic but allows Eve and Twitch to cross minion vision and regular sight bubbles with impunity and sneak into brush patches by circle/stalk their opponents. Their opponents can likewise spot-check areas with their own reveal radius and create zones were stealth characters "probably aren't, otherwise they'd be seen."
The sight gem allows the Eve/Twitch player to take much of the guesswork out of figuring out when they were being seen or revealed and allows them to put more of their thoughts on clever positioning and sneaking around their opponents, especially for lane ganks.
This also lets us make them more combat oriented characters that don't immediately blow up on start. In general, this stealth has proven to be very difficult to use but allows characters to have some bluff gameplay and interesting circle/stalk gameplay in testing. Your characters can still scout, but at a highly diminished effectiveness (due to the increased range.)
In team fights, stealth proved to be less effective than before, so the character's combat viabilities are being looked at through reworks/remakes.
What is blocking us on releasing this:
1. There's a pretty big problem with the concept known as Oracle-Sweeping. We'd want to replace Oracle's elixir with someone that doesn't cause such weird gameplay but as to what would be a *good* replacement is a little up in the air.
2. General particle/kit rebalancing work - We need to heavily redo Evelynn and Twitch's kits and that comes different visuals and graphical effects.
What I am testing right now - Additionally
Sight wards as being partial motion sensors - Sight wards signalling when a hostile is moving nearby?
"Robot Chicken" scout drone
"Wriggles" for supports?
I probably shouldn't do this but as compensation, some sneaks..
Evelynn can have her stun back, because now you have advanced warning of her when she steps in. She might need a short-step-stun in order to successfully initiate. Testing required. Twitch has proven to be a slightly harder problem in internal testing.
As an aside: Hate spike is now awesome (for me, at least). Evelynn now has Champion prioritizing Lurker Spines. This makes her lane less bad.
As usual, feel free to ask questions for a little bit as I stick around. I don't know all the details of the full remake (as Live better understands that new environment). Sorry for the delay, but with Orianna/Champion pipeline and such, this has been somewhat of a lower priority for me.
