Sneak is good at the moment, but needs a real investment into that skill (300% etc.). I tested it a bit and I find it still useful in various situations. Of course no more looting by sneak ninjas just in the middle of a crowd, no more sneaking up to 3 hexes with biggunner (or well, maybe it's possible if someone is really good ). I like sneak as it is now, maybe it could use few little fixes but no serious stuff.
Perhaps, sneak should work as a counter-measure against snipers in a well-known fantasy trio : fighter (big gunner) beats thief (sneaker), thief beats mage (sniper) and mage beats fighter. So sneakers could be effective against snipers but stand no chance against big gunner .
Then i a want to be Spock I think that stone scissors paper is good way where to start balancing game classes, but how can sneaker could be counter measure against snipers, if snipers have the biggest perception and perception is reducing the sneaker invisibility cloak. In fact, sniper is counter measure for sneaker now.
first of all sneak is combat avoiding skill not a bonus to you in combat. I would make sneak skill damn powerful for looters, thieves, scouts, and useless for those who handle any gun or armor (or maybe anything in inventory at all, so in this way looters, thieves will get detected once they loot, and in this way 3 hexes rule could be disabled (for 1 PE not ten of course )).
so you wanna make sneak ability usefull just for bastards which wanna loot (steal) items.and unusable for normal players.you better want to turn this ability completely off.Nobody, will have main character for stealing and looting stuff , nobody will want to have character which is usable just for staying in city and waiting for fight to loot items which he cant use because he dont have weapon skill, so as was said there befor.there will be a lot of alts with sneak which people will turn on just when they will see that somebody fights in town and he will go there and parasite on normal good people.
Ability against sneak is perception. Every sniper has very big perception (10, or less but perk). So sneaker as a counter sniper measure is totaly nonsense. What is the current situation? Every biggunner can sneak or what? Damn, why devs dont want to balance this game using their brains.. I think that we should made a real good suggestion about PvP combat, with players with brain and then hope the devs will find that there can exist role for 10 fighter class in the game, instead of 2 (Team Fortress 2)
Usually, Sneak is ALSO a combat ability, like the already said Sneak Attack, the "hit from shadow", the surprise attack...But should be HtH only. Or it makes a sense if is also usable by Snipers, but if you do so they need a nerf in something else (range or crits chance or damage...).
Damn, why devs dont want to balance this game using their brains.. I think that we should made a real good suggestion about PvP combat, with players with brain and then hope the devs will find that there can exist role for 10 fighter class in the game, instead of 2 (Team Fortress 2)
this ability is for that kinda bastards, watch perks like "thief" sneaking and stealing is very related. And you are very wrong, sneak scouts would be very useful for gangs, as they were when fov was turned off, sneak looters would be very useful for loners, who would want to grab this new lsw without any difficulty.
And i will repeat myself by saying this is the way how this skill suppose to work in first place.