Deos social stealth work?

Social stealth has been an important feature of the franchise since AC1 and something the devs have talked about for every upcoming game. Imo social stealth has been pretty shakey so far. In AC1 there were a couple of techniques to use. Sit on a bench, or walk among a group of monks. Visually both of them are super unrealistic. Altair stood out like a sore thumb in both scenarios. In later games more factions were added (hiding among courtesans looked even more ridiculous) along with other crowd hiding techniques like for example just standing between any two persons (AC3).

The missions that uses social stealth are typically stalking missions. You follow a guy through town and try to blend in the crowd whenever he turns his head. Why standing between two guys would make you less visible than standing next to them is not clear. These missions tend to be tedious rather than fun. Another type of social stealth missions are the party missions (like the one in Venice or the art exchibition in Brotherhood). These make no sense whatsoever to me. The tradional sneaking missions works much better imo.

So the questions are: Have you enjoyed social stealth thus far? Do you think social stealth is a failed concept that Ubi should just give up on? What improvements/new features could save social stealth?

Edit: Lol I messed up the headline