PvP Sneak Mechanics

joshisanonymous

I should probably know this with as much as I've followed and played this game since November, but who are you actually visible to when you get detected while sneaking in PvP?

For instance, say you're "hidden" and an enemy player gets close enough to "detect" you. Are you now visible to all enemy players in the area, even that guy who's standing 150m away, or just to the player who detected you? Obviously, once they attack you, or you attack them, you're visible to everyone, but it's not very clear to me what happens before that.

I ask because sometimes it makes a big difference. As another example, say you're sneaking up to a resource and the mage up top "detects" you from a million miles away, are you now visible to any enemy player who's in the area or just that mage? This makes more of a difference than the previous scenario because you can expect to be detected by the mage without also expecting to immediately enter combat.

I'm also not talking about trying to go invisible with sneaking after combat and being blocked. That one seems a bit more obvious. I'm talking about if you're already "hidden" and get "detected."

I'm guessing that you become visible to every enemy once any single enemy "detects" you. This is a lot different from other MMOs I've played, though. In DAoC, an enemy might detect you, but only that enemy would see you until you entered combat (and you could tell you were still hidden because you were transparent until combat started). In GW2, it was actually impossible to be detected. Here, it seems like you may have an extra layer of difficulty in sneaking, probably since every player can sneak.

badmojo

From my experience everybody can see you. Which is a good thing because the communications are lacking in this game and in real life you would be screaming "ENEMY SPOTTED!!!!" if you saw someone hiding.

Xithian

I'm more wondering how the wait before being able to restealth works in Cyrodiil. If I kill someone literally before my opening stun wears off I can restealth immediately, but if actual combat happens then you're automatically "detected" for a while. I don't know if it's a timer or distance or line of sight from some random location. Sometimes it seems like any one of the three, but it doesn't seem consistent at all.