I personally think they could make the feature dynamic. It becomes
HIDE during exploration, but turns into
COVER once in combat.
That way it would make more sense and make Rogues more enjoyable and free to play. Because right now you cannot do anything to HIDE as a feature without butchering Rogues as a class, as they depend on hiding in combat.
It's been suggested to add circular hearing range, mmso at the very least it requires stealth check to sneak up to enemies.
Apparently that is already being implemented in some shape or form. When I reported a bug with NPCs detecting me by stealing things behind them despite not being in their vision, this is what I was told by support;
"This is working as intended, at least for the detection. If a crime is audible, any NPCs within a certain distance will investigate, which will cause them to turn towards the noise and continue with the usual crime reactions."So they might be implementing actual hearing system that doesn't leave people confused and actually uses stealth checks, but I am not sure because nowhere in Patch 8 was there any mention of NPCs getting any audio detection system. Right now it's just terrible and looks like a detection bug.