The weird implementation of stealth and its counter measures.

[Ornias]

I have gone from a stealth pistol/bow build to a straight up Fortitude build with an AK. I can do twice as many POI's now with my run and gun vs stealth builds. Speed was always the balancing factor with stealth. 

[Viktoriusiii]

Quote

It's sneaking, and sometimes you just get seen.

Only when you do a mistake. The problem right now is that you can do everything right and still get seen for no discernable reason.
 

 

33 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But then you have misread Sylen, I can't see anything in his response about realism. He is arguing along the same lines I did now that it is more dynamic now. And yes, it is more random this way. You still control it, but not like a chess player but like a general in the field who has always to react to unforseeable events in the battle.

 

I will try and give as precise examples as I possibly can.
If you have the time, you can watch this video as it explains it REALLY well:
https://youtu.be/Ay-5g36oFfc?t=272 (the whole channel is interesting, but this section of this video is relevant)


Basicially:
It does not feel fair when enemies hear you for no reason.
This isn't a stealth game, so there is no need to "favour" the player (see video), but to outright favour the game to increase difficulty will always feel punishing.
I have talked about punishing mechanics a lot on these forums, since TFPs used punishment A LOT in previous alphas (and still do).
Don't punish the player for your lack of creativity. JUST DON'T.

If you can't somehow make zombies that are actually challenging, while staying consistent with the gamerules, don't cheat to gain the same effect.
(gamerule: stealthbar is directly correlated to zombie detection. The lower it is, the closer you can get to it.
rulebreaking: zombies suddenly know where you are, even though your stealthmeter was perfect)




One more thing:
If stealthperks actually gave you an adequat way of fighting with a lot of Z's at the same time, this wouldn't be THAT much of an issue.
But basicially every attribute has ways to defeat many Z's at once. Except for the agility one.
Sure you still CAN use pistols and machetes to fight. But it is far FAR less powerful. To a point where it is borderline useless.

In normal circumstances, this would be fair, because it is all up to the player.
Didn't sneak well enough? Tough luck, go figure out how you deal with it.
But if the game CHEATS and puts you in this position, it is no longer fair.

*edit*
Fortitude gives you better survivability
Strength gives you far higher dps and good weapons
Perception isn't a fighting skilltree. If you skill in that you better are in coop or just that good that you don't need dmg. You know what you get yourself into.
even Intellect hast AWESOME CC with the turrets. Even though it is not meant to be a combat attribute.

And NO, just because the machete is an absolutely broken weapon does not mean that you can fight as a stealthchar. It means the machete needs a nerf (since I think A17)


Feral sense, better detectionrate, trashpiles making sound, trapfloors etc. are all great ways to increase difficulty for stealth.
Rolling a dice to determin if the player gets seen IS NOT. Persiod.

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by Viktoriusiii (see edit history)

[Boidster]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

passive=0, active=1 and agressive=2 . Mixed means a POI has rooms with different values, not all 0 or not all 1, or 2.

 

The interpretation is likely (I'm just guessing, this is one thing I want to find out with the test game):

passive -> All the zombies are sleepers

active -> The zombie are wandering aimless around or standing there, but they don't automatically notice you.

agressive -> The zombies get a roll whether they will notice you. If not they will just stay active, if yes they will attack you

 

Pretty much, yes. OOPS, nope! I misunderstood the same way you did.

 

Active = 0, Passive = 1, Aggressive = 2

 

So there are no POIs where all volumes are "passive". More details on this active/passive stuff in a later post.

 

A minor quibble <pushes glasses up nose> technically the numbers correspond to "sleeper volumes" which might span several rooms, or only cover a small portion of a room. Some POIs have (or did in A19 anyhow) volumes which span floors of the building.

 

And for clarity I'd note that the descriptions of passive/active/aggressive that you gave are in effect after the player crosses the boundary of the volume. Prior to that they are all "sleepers" (motionless in their starting position).

Edited December 14, 2021 by Boidster (see edit history)

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Only when you do a mistake. The problem right now is that you can do everything right and still get seen for no discernable reason.
 

 

Just like in an RPG or a wargame. If you do everything right, you just maxed out your chances. And you win by always doing the stuff that gives you a better chance than the enemy. This is a design philosophy you seem to profoundly dislike, but it is nevertheless a valid design philosphy that many people like.

 

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

 

 

I will try and give as precise examples as I possibly can.
If you have the time, you can watch this video as it explains it REALLY well:
https://youtu.be/Ay-5g36oFfc?t=272 (the whole channel is interesting, but this section of this video is relevant)


Basicially:
It does not feel fair when enemies hear you for no reason.
This isn't a stealth game, so there is no need to "favour" the player (see video), but to outright favour the game to increase difficulty will always feel punishing.
I have talked about punishing mechanics a lot on these forums, since TFPs used punishment A LOT in previous alphas (and still do).
Don't punish the player for your lack of creativity. JUST DON'T.

 

Enemies hear you because you always do noise. Ever seen your noise meter go to zero? It doesn't. By avoiding noisy activities and having high stealth perks you are maximising the chance you are not noticed. 

 

A real stealth game needs to give you much more control over this because if you are detected it is almost always game over (I'm sure the video talks about stuff like this). The rooms and enemies have usually fixed routines, everything is more like a puzzle you have to solve. Random puzzles generally don't work. 7D2D does not give you carefully crafted puzzles for stealth players, it can't.

 

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

If you can't somehow make zombies that are actually challenging, while staying consistent with the gamerules, don't cheat to gain the same effect.
(gamerule: stealthbar is directly correlated to zombie detection. The lower it is, the closer you can get to it.
rulebreaking: zombies suddenly know where you are, even though your stealthmeter was perfect)

 

Yes, only that your stealthmeter never is perfect. And you are citing rules made for stealth games while saying 7D2D isn't one just a few sentences before.

 

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

One more thing:
If stealthperks actually gave you an adequat way of fighting with a lot of Z's at the same time, this wouldn't be THAT much of an issue.
But basicially every attribute has ways to defeat many Z's at once. Except for the agility one.
Sure you still CAN use pistols and machetes to fight. But it is far FAR less powerful. To a point where it is borderline useless.

 

Read the perk description, it gives a hint: "Enemies will search for you for up to x seconds.". And x goes down with every additional perk point.

 

AGI has light armor for a reason, and there are a few items to make you run faster. You can run out of their range and restealth. It isn't exactly the easiest thing in the game you can do, but it actually is a fun thing to do in a high adrenaline way. Naturally it should not happen in every room that you have to run for your live (as any such event slows you down). Therefore only some rooms can be agressive rooms (or areas) and the dice roll that determines whether zombies wake up has to be well balanced so a stealth player feels his perk points well invested.

 

 

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

In normal circumstances, this would be fair, because it is all up to the player.
Didn't sneak well enough? Tough luck, go figure out how you deal with it.
But if the game CHEATS and puts you in this position, it is no longer fair.

 

RNG is not cheating, even the universe does it, much to the chagrin of Albert Einstein 😉

 

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

*edit*
Fortitude gives you better survivability
Strength gives you far higher dps and good weapons
Perception isn't a fighting skilltree. If you skill in that you better are in coop or just that good that you don't need dmg. You know what you get yourself into.
even Intellect hast AWESOME CC with the turrets. Even though it is not meant to be a combat attribute.

And NO, just because the machete is an absolutely broken weapon does not mean that you can fight as a stealthchar. It means the machete needs a nerf (since I think A17)


Feral sense, better detectionrate, trashpiles making sound, trapfloors etc. are all great ways to increase difficulty for stealth.
Rolling a dice to determin if the player gets seen IS NOT. Persiod.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Boidster]

Here is a little context. This is store_book_02 as seen in the POI editor. The blue areas are Sleeper Volumes (you can see the little sleeping zombies in them). The roof has three different volumes, and the rear loading dock has a single volume. There are various volumes inside the building.

 

 

This is a look at the first volume you'll encounter if you go in the Crack-A-Cafe door. The Sleeper Volume Trigger option can be "Passive", "Active", or "Attack". These settings correspond to SleeperVolumeFlag settings (in XML) of 1, 0, and 2 respectively. For this POI it looks like this:

 

<property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,0,2,0,0,2,2,2,1,1,2,2,2,2" />

 

That reads "Active,Active,Attack,Active,Active,Attack,Attack,Attack,Passive,Passive,Attack,Attack,Attack"

 

You can see the glowing X-ray shapes of the sleeper positions behind the counter.

 

 

This is the same view for one of the rooftop volumes. This one is set to Attack ("2").

 

 

If you playtest this POI, you can sneak right up to the "Active" sleepers in the Cafe area, but as soon as you cross the border of the rooftop area set to "Attack", the Z's wake up and shamble towards you.

 

I checked out army_camp_01, which has this set of flags:

 

<property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,1,1,1,1,1" />

"Active,Passive,Passive,Passive,Passive,Passive,"

 

It looks like this. The big green volume encompassing the entire camp is the Active volume; the buildings and huts are Passive.

 

 

I playtested this POI and couldn't discern any difference between Active and Passive. I could sneak around in any of the volumes, but if I made noise the zombies would wake up and come after me. There's more going on here, but I don't have time at the moment to dig deeper.

 

Edit to add: one idea might be that Passive volumes are used in POI designs like above so you can have one big area (the whole camp) spawn in zombies and activate them if you make noise while also having smaller volumes within the bigger one which remain quiet/sleeping in spite of the hubub going on outside. Without this idea, the POI designer would have to use elite Tetris skills to craft a bunch of volumes for the outside areas which cover everything but don't intersect the huts.

 

The volumes marked "Attack" do seem to have clear behavior - as soon as you cross the boundary, all of the sleepers wake up and attack. Which is the root of OP's complaint I think.

 

Nope. See this post later in this thread for a brutal takedown of this idea. Turns out that with high enough stealth (low enough visibility number) you can still sneak around even in "Attack" volumes.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by Boidster (see edit history)

[Viktoriusiii]

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Just like in an RPG or a wargame. If you do everything right, you just maxed out your chances. And you win by always doing the stuff that gives you a better chance than the enemy. This is a design philosophy you seem to profoundly dislike, but it is nevertheless a valid design philosphy that many people like.

If you perk into stealth it effectively becomes one. You have basicially descided "I forgo the chance of dealing with active zombies (like on hordenight), but can therefor clear pois much more effectively.

 

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Enemies hear you because you always do noise. Ever seen your noise meter go to zero? It doesn't. By avoiding noisy activities and having high stealth perks you are maximising the chance you are not noticed. 

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

A real stealth game needs to give you much more control over this because if you are detected it is almost always game over (I'm sure the video talks about stuff like this). The rooms and enemies have usually fixed routines, everything is more like a puzzle you have to solve. Random puzzles generally don't work. 7D2D does not give you carefully crafted puzzles for stealth players, it can't.

 

 

Yes, only that your stealthmeter never is perfect. And you are citing rules made for stealth games while saying 7D2D isn't one just a few sentences before.

No. They hear you because someone played dice when I stepped into that room.
those two things are not the same. I can stand right next to a zombie at night (with visibility < 20), but if I make that one step with <5 visibility, the whole room wakes up.

This is not fair. And not in the "this needs to be balanced" kind of fair, but in the "fair for the player" kind of fair.
There is no indicator that this can happen. There is no counterplay (except running away, which is often prevented by zombies in walls and so on).

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Read the perk description, it gives a hint: "Enemies will search for you for up to x seconds.". And x goes down with every additional perk point.

 

AGI has light armor for a reason, combined with a few items to make you run faster you can run out of their range and restealth. It isn't exactly the easiest thing in the game you can do, but it actually is a fun thing to do in a high adrenaline way. Naturally it should not happen in every room that you have to run for your live (as any such event slows you down). Therefore only some rooms can be agressive rooms (or areas) and the dice roll that determines whether zombies wake up has to be well balanced so a stealth player feels his perk points well invested.

Okay if TFPs want me to play that way, fine. Then they do not know what makes stealth so fun.
Yes it can be very fun luring awake zombies to a position and hiding, killing them from sneak.
And I think it is a great mechanic. But not because they forced it down my throat, but because I made a mistake and now need to find a creative solution to the self-made problem.

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

RNG is not cheating, even the universe does it, much to the chagrin of Albert Einstein 😉

There is different sorts of RNG.
And most games cheat by displaying a much lower chance, so that the player does not feel cheated. (the psyche is a very dasterdly thing after all).
This isn't a competative wargame. We play this game to have fun, not to have things happen to us that is beyond our control.


A CERTAIN AMOUNT of random chance is great. But the point at which it becomes frustrating is hard to see for devs. And once crossed is a big detriment to the game.
 

 

Quote

The volumes marked "Attack" do seem to have clear behavior - as soon as you cross the boundary, all of the sleepers wake up and attack. Which is the root of OP's complaint I think.

Correct. Thank you @Boidster.
If they only wake up if I am above a certain sneak value... that is still kind of bad (it should follow the rules, like every other zombie, namely every Z' has their own detection based on range), but at least that is somewhat understandable.

If the chance to wake up is random, or even 100% (as it seems certain rooms are), that is not a good design.

I have already given quite a few solutions and I think they still hold up.
IF THEY HAVE TO KEEP THIS SYSTEM then they need to change it drasticially. Even if I think it should be scrapped entirely.

[meganoth]

15 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Here is a little context. This is store_book_02 as seen in the POI editor. The blue areas are Sleeper Volumes (you can see the little sleeping zombies in them). The roof has three different volumes, and the rear loading dock has a single volume. There are various volumes inside the building.

 

 

This is a look at the first volume you'll encounter if you go in the Crack-A-Cafe door. The Sleeper Volume Trigger option can be "Passive", "Active", or "Attack". These settings correspond to SleeperVolumeFlag settings (in XML) of 1, 0, and 2 respectively. For this POI it looks like this:

 

<property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,0,2,0,0,2,2,2,1,1,2,2,2,2" />

 

That reads "Active,Active,Attack,Active,Active,Attack,Attack,Attack,Passive,Passive,Attack,Attack,Attack"

 

You can see the glowing X-ray shapes of the sleeper positions behind the counter.

 

 

This is the same view for one of the rooftop volumes. This one is set to Attack ("2").

 

 

If you playtest this POI, you can sneak right up to the "Active" sleepers in the Cafe area, but as soon as you cross the border of the rooftop area set to "Attack", the Z's wake up and shamble towards you.

 

I checked out army_camp_01, which has this set of flags:

 

<property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,1,1,1,1,1" />

"Active,Passive,Passive,Passive,Passive,Passive,"

 

It looks like this. The big green volume encompassing the entire camp is the Active volume; the buildings and huts are Passive.

 

 

I playtested this POI and couldn't discern any difference between Active and Passive. I could sneak around in any of the volumes, but if I made noise the zombies would wake up and come after me. There's more going on here, but I don't have time at the moment to dig deeper.

 

Edit to add: one idea might be that Passive volumes are used in POI designs like above so you can have one big area (the whole camp) spawn in zombies and activate them if you make noise while also having smaller volumes within the bigger one which remain quiet/sleeping in spite of the hubub going on outside. Without this idea, the POI designer would have to use elite Tetris skills to craft a bunch of volumes for the outside areas which cover everything but don't intersect the huts.

 

The volumes marked "Attack" do seem to have clear behavior - as soon as you cross the boundary, all of the sleepers wake up and attack. Which is the root of OP's complaint I think.

 

Info about stealth perk level for your test is missing

[ZehMatt]

I have to agree with some aspects of what the Op says. I generally disagree with the spawn system for a couple of reasons.

1. The spawn distance is way too short, I suspect this is the limit of how many chunks are loaded, you can see them usually snap into existence especially during horde nights.

2. Zombies in biomes spawn randomly, there is no logic or weight or anything to it, the game should focus on simulating an actual zombie population so when I clear areas they stay clear unless new ones wander in which could be a constant stream from the map border or have the horde night respawn all around the player which gives it also a natural cycle to it.

 

As for the POI zombies,

one thing I always had my gripe with in this game has been the Zombies spawning in absurd locations such as the Closets or maybe even in the Ceiling, its somewhat hard to sell that they just willingly hang around in there forever. I also know its planned to have them wandering in POIs which would change everything, then I would however try to avoid static ones.

[ZehMatt]

I also think that it might be a bit too drastic to tell every zombie in that zone to immediately attack the player, instead they can just wake up and be in an aggressive state which would still keep stealth intact.

 

Probably time to make a new mod!

[Darklegend222]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

 

Your rant comes a little too soon. You haven't played this system enough too know its in and outs and it probably still needs balancing as the system changed in a significant way. Make a test game, play the church with stealth perk 5 to experience what full stealth would mean (to get to know the extremes). I actually wanted to do that test yesterday but didn't have the time

 

Secondly this is an RPG and survival game. A part of your performance will always be dependent on perks and luck. Including stealth now so it seems. In previous alphas stealth was already a very fun endeavour, but also very dependable, a routine.

The trigger room concept was a first attempt at making stealth more dynamic. This is another attempt I would guess and one that might get less controversy than the auto-trigger rooms of A19. And we at least have to check it out whether it is able to accomplish that task. Accept it for now and at least wait for 2 balancing rounds before ordering TFP to change it. 😉

 

 

 

passive=0, active=1 and agressive=2 . Mixed means a POI has rooms with different values, not all 0 or not all 1, or 2.

 

The interpretation is likely (I'm just guessing, this is one thing I want to find out with the test game):

passive -> All the zombies are sleepers

active -> The zombie are wandering aimless around or standing there, but they don't automatically notice you.

agressive -> The zombies get a roll whether they will notice you. If not they will just stay active, if yes they will attack you

 

 

I'd like to say as an extremely avid Skyrim player, Bethesda and the entire 400k team learned that the bone traps which make noise weren't enough. They went out of their way to put torches in weird places and have lights in crucial places so you physically can't stealth everywhere.

 

This game personally doesn't have that entire implementation into POIs, and they are trying a new system. In skyrim, if I don't have perks into stealth then there is very little way I'm going to get that 30x backstab damage.

 

In 7 Days, if I don't have that stealth perk maxed, then I'm just having a higher CHANCE to not get seen. It's certainly an improvement, I will not deny that. However, if Skyrim was all rolls in the background instead of all your stats combined vs each NPC type, you'd never get stealth done.

 

I'm not going to mention the stealth perk that makes you invisible for 1 second when crouching in Skyrim since I'm avoiding magical effects from perks as they're very OP and can often break mechanics so badly that it's impossible to fail.

 

Enchanted gear is different as the devs are talking about adding gear sets which we can assume magic. Where stealth stands now, we're taking steps into a better direction, but we need less auto triggers and more lights so your stealth perks can shine better. As for the set bonuses, I can only assume the stealth armor buff becomes a thing that will allow stealth to be as it should.

 

 

[hiemfire]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

RNG is not cheating, even the universe does it, much to the chagrin of Albert Einstein 😉

Bull@%$#. Random chance as a concept only exists because we needed a way to account for things that we had insufficient information about to include as a separate variable or if the inclusion would increase the needed calculation/assessment "time" outside of what would be feasible.

 

Re: Attack volumes. Supposedly this is how they function in A20:

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/22366-alpha-20-dev-diary/?do=findComment&comment=455644

Edited December 14, 2021 by hiemfire (see edit history)

[warmer]

of the 50 poi I have cleared on my current run, only 3 had trigger/trap rooms. The notion they all do is totally wrong. I can get through most POI without waking a single zed

[Viktoriusiii]

11 hours ago, Roland said:

Stealth has been changed for A20 and will require some adaptation. There are no longer any auto trigger zombie wakeup areas. When you enter a volume there is going to be a check vs your stealth for each zombie to see if it wakes up. If you fail the check one or more zombie will wake up. If those zombies are in a position to see you then they will attack but if they don't see you then you can still enjoy stealth gameplay that you spent your points on. A zombie that wakes up doesn't automatically negate your stealth. It all depends on how you react.

 

We do need feedback on the system but you should know that the system is not automatic guaranteed aggro as soon as you pass an invisible line like some areas were in A19. Maybe you could give us a seed and the location of the POI where it seemed the zombies aggroed automatically.

 

On 12/13/2021 at 8:04 PM, Viktoriusiii said:

rural_church_01 (should have 2 triggers. Once when going down the ladder and one inside the main lootroom)

store_book_02 has one when you drop down from the ceiling into the main lootroom
utility_refinery_01 (right after you get into the first big room they start to fall from the skies)

 

I am VERY certain that there still are auto-aggro rooms.
I actually never noticed them in A19. Either they were SUPER rare, or actually made sense (after trapfloors and stuff)

In A20 every POI has them. And they feel very much not like a chance, but like a certainty.

I have 2 points in stealth, a sneaklevel that is constantly under 20 and the same poi done 4 times... every time the same room triggered at the exact same point.
It feels VERY much arbitrary.

[meganoth]

12 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

Bull@%$#. Random chance as a concept only exists because we needed a way to account for things that we had insufficient information about to include as a separate variable or if the inclusion would increase the needed calculation/assessment "time" outside of what would be feasible.

 

Einsteins quote was just too good to not bring up. But anyway wikipedia thinks I'm right too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness#In_the_physical_sciences

 

12 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

 

Re: Attack volumes. Supposedly this is how they function in A20:

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/22366-alpha-20-dev-diary/?do=findComment&comment=455644

 

[hiemfire]

1 minute ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Once when going down the ladder

Ya, stealth perks don't do @%$# when you aren't crouched. If you're climbing a ladder they will hear you. Better to find another way of getting up or down if you can. If you get lucky and find the Urban combat book that removes fall noise while crouched then just dropping down should be an option.

5 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Einsteins quote was just too good to not bring up. But anyway wikipedia thinks I'm right too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness#In_the_physical_sciences

 

Not entirely. From the section you linked.

Quote

Hidden variable theories reject the view that nature contains irreducible randomness: such theories posit that in the processes that appear random, properties with a certain statistical distribution are at work behind the scenes, determining the outcome in each case.

[Roland]

14 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

It feels VERY much arbitrary.

 

I think you mean not arbitrary.

 

At any rate, no need to argue. I just summarized the expected behavior based on the changes of A20. If you can show a video of it happening so consistently that it can't be believed to be a failed skill check and must be scripted event then post that in the bug forum because the intended result is that every sleeper volume should involve a stealth skill check vs each zombie individually in the room. There are not supposed to be any scripted auto aggro volumes any longer.  Could be the auto-aggro flags were not removed by mistake so we are getting those AND failing some checks as well so it seems like a much greater occurrence over A19. But the QA guys are going to need to know what to try and reproduce so a ticket can be made for the programmers.

[Viktoriusiii]

1 hour ago, hiemfire said:

Ya, stealth perks don't do @%$# when you aren't crouched. If you're climbing a ladder they will hear you. Better to find another way of getting up or down if you can. If you get lucky and find the Urban combat book that removes fall noise while crouched then just dropping down should be an option.

i know. I was describing where this trigger was approximately.
No it is "go down a ladder"
*nothing*
"go foreward a few steps (while sneaking)"
*suddenly all zombies have aggro*

Edited December 14, 2021 by Viktoriusiii (see edit history)

[Roland]

There was a team meeting where Joel brought up the auto aggro rooms and said that he didn't think it was fair for zombies to just wake up without any chance at all for them to possibly stay asleep. After discussion it was decided that instead of auto aggro the game would do a skill check vs the player's stealth and only if that failed would the zombies wake up. A ticket for that was made and I assume since it was talked about on the forum that the change had gone in. 

 

Perhaps it didn't since Boidster is showing attack volumes existing in current POI's. It is definitely planned though and I think supposed to be in.

 

Like I said, I've noticed in my gameplay that zombies that wake up when I enter don't always auto target me. They just wake up and start walking towards the noise or whatever. Sometimes they just go to a wall and start beating on it. Only when they can clearly see me have they actually moved to attack immediately. So it isn't always a case of losing stealth when sleepers aggro. Sometimes you still maintain stealth in that they woke up but are still unaware of you.

 

At any rate, if a room is waking up and attacking like clockwork every time and simply by crossing the border and no matter how many levels in stealth perks you have seems to make any difference then I call that a bug. It is not behaving as intended. 

 

As an aside, I am perfectly happy with auto attack rooms as I've stated many times. I was okay with the proposed change because I knew that attack experiences would still happen at times but they would be more random rather than always on at the same locations and be rarer for those who perked into stealth as they should be. I don't want sleepers to always stay asleep and have that be the only dimension of stealth gameplay so even if fully perked there should still be a rare chance that a sleeper could awaken as I draw near even if I made no mistakes. 

[hiemfire]

6 minutes ago, Roland said:

Sometimes they just go to a wall and start beating on it.

From what I've seen on YouTube this isn't just isolated to stealth triggers. In A19 it was just the fat tourist that would "ignore" the player and beat on random blocks around it when it noticed the player. Now in A20 the fat tourist seems to have been fixed but the rest of the zombies are doing it at random when they've noticed the player.

[Viktoriusiii]

1. thank you for the update. That at least gives me hope.
Although I can say that my experience with 2/5 sneak perks were very one sided.
Thing is that many (or most) of these "triggers" are within viewing distance of the Z's. And they instantly see me as if I wasn't sneaking.
So I suppose it isn't implemented yet.

5 minutes ago, Roland said:

I don't want sleepers to always stay asleep and have that be the only dimension of stealth gameplay so even if fully perked there should still be a rare chance that a sleeper could awaken as I draw near even if I made no mistakes. 

I don't like sleepers at all.
I think basicially all the now called sleepers should be set to wander. Makes the world feel more alive.

There should be sleepers and "fake sleepers", so that you can never be sure if they are dead or not and always have to check (maybe even causing a sound to alert other z's?).

But I generally don't mind walking sleepers. What I dislike is them being automatons that just wake up for seemingly no reason. It feels weird.
I know they only spawn once the player is in range, but that should change.
Once you enter a POI, every Z should be in place and be set to be either idle or wandering. (then you would need to buff stealth again)

 

 

 

But thank you for reporting this. Means a lot.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, hiemfire said:

Ya, stealth perks don't do @%$# when you aren't crouched. If you're climbing a ladder they will hear you. Better to find another way of getting up or down if you can. If you get lucky and find the Urban combat book that removes fall noise while crouched then just dropping down should be an option.

 

Not entirely. From the section you linked.

 

To be expected with such a philosophical topic where probably nobody even knows how it could be decided either way. But if we take that section at face value I would say "bull$&&" is definitely too strong a word for countering my opinion 😉

[Roland]

I asked Shawn about it and he said that if you report any bugs regarding stealth you need to be sure to pay attention to and include your stealth level. If you have any light on you then you will be seen. If your stealth level is 2, then a zombie won't be able to detect you unless it is within 2 blocks of you. If you have light on you and your number increases then you will fail  your stealth check. Many POI's have light sources to be aware of.

 

If there is a POI that you suspect is auto aggro no matter what and there is no actual stealth check going on then share the seed, location, and POI name and describe where it was in the POI to make sure it can be reproduced.

 

It is a new feature and so we are in that ambiguous time where devs are suspicious of players making mistakes and players are suspicious of devs of not having coded it right and the only way to prove are examples that can be reproduced. Devs are also getting reports of people who are experiencing super stealthiness and zombies can't seem to see them from a few meters away so there are mixed signals coming in.

 

Shawn assured me that the stealth check is in and that it does scale with perks. The level design guys also chimed in and said that attack volumes are simply a reality. They use them for effect and especially for loot rooms to ensure that loot is well guarded and they don't plan to stop...lol. 

 

So we have all these stake holders who have a different view on attack volumes.

[Boidster]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

Info about stealth perk level for your test is missing

 

I was playtesting in the editor. Naked level 1 character, zero perks. Not in God mode.

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

In A20 every POI has them. And they feel very much not like a chance, but like a certainty.

 

Categorically untrue. I even provided concrete numbers and POI examples. Hyperbole only undercuts your argument.

[Boidster]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

After discussion it was decided that instead of auto aggro the game would do a skill check vs the player's stealth and only if that failed would the zombies wake up. A ticket for that was made and I assume since it was talked about on the forum that the change had gone in. 

 

Perhaps it didn't since Boidster is showing attack volumes existing in current POI's. It is definitely planned though and I think supposed to be in.

 

I should reiterate that I don't have any knowledge of the changes for A20. It's entirely possible that all of the XML structure is still there for "Attack" volumes, but that the actual mechanism of sneaking & sleepers just ignores that now. My playtesting seemed to show it behaved mostly like it did in A19, but it was only against a couple of POIs and a couple of volumes. In short, "Active" volume = naked level 1 me could sneak around a bit. "Attack" = as soon as I cross the threshold the zombies attack.

 

Absolutely could still be a failed check, and that the check is simply much harder for "Attack" volumes. Someone would need to test with max sneak perk to get evidence. It's ridiculously easy to load a POI and playtest it; I encourage others to try it out and report back.

 

I should note that individual sleepers within a volume have their own sight angle, sight distance, and hearing, but in the few I checked they were all set to -1, -1, and 100% respectively.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Boidster (see edit history)

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Absolutely could still be a failed check, and that the check is simply much harder for "Attack" volumes. Someone would need to test with max sneak perk to get evidence. It's ridiculously easy to load a POI and playtest it; I encourage others to try it out and report back.

 

@faatal seemed to be saying that if you have light shining on you at all it is an auto fail for your stealth check. It would be interesting to test some of those attack volumes at night provided there are no interior lights on and see if it makes a difference. If you can get your stealth level down to a 2 or 3 and move across that line and they wake up and come straight at you and kill you then that might be sus.