What kind of a tradeoff would the community want of stealth?

I think the way the QOTW is worded that a cloak isn't part of a suit but a device.

Now I can't tell from the wording of the QOTW if the reference to suit power is a lore justification or an actual game mechanic. It could simply mean that activating a cloak greys out the abilities on your ability bar and may also negate some passive buffs your armor provide.

However, we do know that power/energy is a stat pool used to power tech based abilities. It could be that a cloak when engaged draws off a players power pool. Meaning that the size of the pool and its rate of regen determine the length for which a player can stay cloaked.

This could approach an almost EVE-ish  fitting scheme where you're free to choose the armor suit, the gear, and the skills to maximize power pool size and regen and minimize the cloaks consumption

An interesting feature would be differing cloak power consuption cost when  stationary and when moving. People could choose to fit/skill themselves out so they could cloak but had to remain stationary (the duck-blind hunters) while others could move (the prowlers).

Another interesting feature would be an initial high power cost to create the cloaking field and a continuous cost to maintain its stability. This would mean that people "pulled" out of stealth or people who already used some abilities in combat might not have enough power pool left to initialize another cloaking field.

edit -> Another thought:
A fade out time. In addition to, or in replacement of a high startup cost, it could take 1-2 seconds for a person to enter stealth. Getting hit during that time could destabilize the cloak field, interupting the stealthing. It could also prevent the cloakers from using a weapon or abilities due to the power being redirected to the cloak. It wouldn't prevent cloaking while in combat, but it would sure make it harder.

If you want to really punish a cloaker, you could say that their cloak field replaces their shield. I.e. they become extremely vulnerable while in stealth. If using the fade out mechanic presented above, it would be really risky to try to cloak during combat.

Referring back to the other thread as well, but some of the main concerns weren't really answered. Here's my #1:

Can people use stealth as a "get out of jail free card" to escape combat?

That right there is the game breaker for me.

I just hope its implemented simply and intuitively. Too many moving parts is bad.
The most simple balancing method would be to drain the power, thus leading to an ambusher beginning the fight with less power than his attacker. Also I like kole's idea where entering stealth would require like over 40% power level. Problem is we don't know how much power can be regenerated or potted.

Power as the critical drawback would basically create a strategy revolving around the ganker's power level at the initial moment of the ambush. A defender would have full power and the ambusher would be constrained on power. That right there could shape the whole battle such that the attacker can afford buffs/debuffs/CC where as the attacker is lower on power and must utilize his power specifically on damage output.

That wasn't the point of the question. I was referring to people popping stealth while in combat and running off to avoid being killed. We've seen that abused to the point of... well... these threads with a lot of people opposed to stealth. In past games, that wasn't the intent. But like many things, the inventive and unintended effect was overlooked and never corrected. Basically, a lot of anti-stealth people would accept it if it was a positional entrance into combat, or spying, sneaking past, et cetera... but once engaged in combat, the ability would need to be disabled.

The other complaint was the mention of the stealth detection. I believe "popular" was the term used. You can just replace that with "mandatory if you want to survive." Forcing a mechanic/ability/skill/gear upon the playerbase is NOT sandbox. Sure, folks will say you don't have to have it, noone is pointing a gun to your head and ... hey, where'd he come from... and why is there a gun to my head?

Actually I don't agree, if people are already at a disadvantage just for having a cloak suite, then why should we want to put them at an even greater disadvantage?
I think if you don't want a cloak suited guy to bail out on you, then you should equip the tools to prevent him from doing so!

I think mobs will end up being able to stealth as well, the more variety in mobs the better! I can definitely feel some kind of abuse on the invisibility will occur during the beta!   

Glad to see that you guys will make tradeoffs by using the cloaking device, and that it's already under testing.

Make sure to check some little details while stealthed, like the footsteps sound, which is something really important and some games have forgotten about them.