Roland

I think the main problem is that we don't have definitions for passive, active, and aggressive in the context of these volumes. People are making assumptions about what they might mean and those assumptions seem to be coming from the "Worst Case Scenarios" part of their brains. I think it would take @faatal to tell us what a passive, active, or aggressive volume expressly is in terms of zombie AI. Can not is how we ferret out non-native ESL speakers. Your discovery is going to put you under the radar for sure! However, much like LOTL 2, using "cannot" is just a stepping stone to using "can't". I suggest skipping "cannot" altogether.

OP uses the general abbreviation for multiplayer but what they really are talking about is Battle Royale. Our game definitely has a focus on multiplayer and so we do use EAC but the multiplayer we are mainly interested in for this game is cooperative PVE. The good news is that there are many options out there for Battle Royale gameplay and this game fills its own multiplayer niche extremely well.

Because there are 100s of dedicated servers using the same exact game and not having your problem. You even admit that your friends can connect to your local server on your machine while you host and you and they get better performance. So the game is working with other servers and even peer to peer. But it isn't working with your dedicated server for some reason. Maybe visit the support forum and post up the specs of the machine running your dedi and your settings and see if someone can help you troubleshoot.

Interesting. So much of stealth appears to be simply about crossing borders.

Well Boidster was maxed in perks so his stealth score was a 1 which is the lowest possible. We need to see at what threshold the attack volume triggers. If it’s 2 then it is pretty much as you say— basically guaranteed. But if 6 or 8 then at least for indoor areas, covering windows and breaking lights might be enough. Sneaking onto a roof top with no cover in broad daylight probably should be pretty automatic.

You fool! Never ask for features you don't want. Those are the only ones the devs add from community feedback!!

You haven't caught up in the thread yet but that is exactly the change in A20. If you hit one zombie there is a chance for others in the volume to wake up. Also the game runs a stealth check when you cross into a volume against each individual zombie to see if they wake. The difference seems to be that in A20 light matters a lot more than it did previously. I do like your ideas about being able to cut power to a POI and make it dark to enhance the stealth perks.

Well....faatal is right as usual. I just enjoyed splash damage correctness.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was stated that the level design team will continue to updated and add POI's throughout all the 20.x updates as needed. These are known.

There are no auto aggro rooms any longer in the same way that we had them in A19. The game now rolls a check against your stealth to see if you pass or fail your stealth check for each zombie and not just against the volume in general. Just because a zombie falls out of the ceiling rafters or out of a closet does not mean they initially know where you are. Just yesterday a zombie fell out of the ceiling while I was crouch walking into the room. It stood up after ragdolling and walked right past me. It was aggroed from falling but unaware of me because I didn't fail my stealth. I shot it in the head with an arrow and got my stealth bonus. That said, there could be a bug with the check as it is brand new but it is not the intention that every room will wake up and target you immediately. I've been sneaking through POI's and not every sleeper is waking up and that is me being unperked into stealth at all. The intention is that as you progress in stealth you will successfully pass the stealth check more often and zombies will more often be unaware of you. We no longer have the eyeball that opens or closes to tell us if we are being noticed and targeted by a zombie so it is pretty scary to just crouch silently and have faith that the zombie is just wandering in our direction randomly and not coming to get us.

I don't deserve....my own post? Does it mean I don't deserve your post if I admit I don't know what you're talking about? All I know is that I haven't heard a counter argument from you. Only a vague dismissal that my POV is tired and worn out and that I'm somehow not worthy of having my own post.

Oh brother...worn out? It's easy to just state a counterpoint as a worn out argument. Its more compelling to demonstrate why the reasoning isn't sound. I say that clicking to plant is no different than clicking to upgrade 100 blocks or even to place 100 blocks in function. The only difference is that if a person enjoys building they don't mind the mouseclicks and if farming is something they wish they didn't have to do then the clicks are boring. Automating replanting is great if you don't enjoy the farming aspect of the game but if you do enjoy it then you don't mind planting by hand. So explain where I am off rather than using that tired worn out type of dismissal to easily ignore someone's POV that differs from your own...

I think you should go ahead and use them for recipes and not just live on bacon and eggs. Once you get LOTL 3 then you can start a true farm. Starting a true farm on day 30 isn't really different than starting it on day 1. On day 1 you haven't stockpiled a whole bunch of crops. You grow the farm bit by bit. So use up all the crops to make recipes you can use now and after you take LOTL you can then start turning crops into seeds. I understand that. The whole game is an excessive amount of annoying clicking when you boil down what you do to kill zombies, mine ore, build a base, etc. Should we automate it all just to make it less tedious for those people who don't like whatever particular set of mouse clicks involved? I get that it feels more tedious in comparison though.

Dumbing down? A19: Guaranteed return of all plants upon harvest. Very little thought needed about whether to craft crops into seeds or use crops for food. Zero risk of farm failure. Automatic replanting meant plant and forget food generator. A20: 50% chance return of a plant so no guarantees on how your farm will continue. Careful planning and thought needed about how to use crops. Big risk of farm failure and then need to adapt and survive. Manual planting means you have to re-engage in the farming process each season. Now you might think that planting is tedious and hate the philosophy of setback-adapt-recover gameplay in a survival game. But puting the two designs side-by-side there is no way you can convince me that A20 is more dumbed down than A19. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on exactly how you think things got dumbed down in farming in A20 over A19.

Agreed. I hope @madmole does as well. It would be interesting if the traders only dealt in parts. Sounds like a cool mod if TFP doesn’t like it for vanilla.

That's the mistake. If you aren't level 3 of LOTL then don't craft seeds. Just keep all the crops you can and only plant the seeds you get back or find in the world. Your farm will wax and wain over time. Not a waste of time because you got a bunch of crops from it that you can use for recipes. That's like saying the meat you get from killing an animal is a waste of time because you can't use most of it to birth another animal. Of course we never have ever been able to use meat to craft new animals to hunt to get more meat and that is just ridiculous anyway so we therefore feel its okay to only get meat that we use for food. The crops you get from harvesting are worth it for their own value in cooking. No, plant your seeds and gain the benefit from them. You'll get more seeds later to get your large scale self-sustaining farm once you do spec into LOTL 3. There is more variety now in the farming aspect of the game. You start out just gardening and using every seed you acquire to grow food. Later once you progress to the point where its viable you can start truly farming and crafting seeds and move from a model of harvesting what you need to fulfill daily needs to being able to stockpile in the future. Post apocalyptic survival gaming shouldn't have guarantees. You should have to adapt to the circumstances that emerge. Get fantastic returns of seeds? Life is happy and fat. Get a season of blighted plants? Figure out how to deal with the consequences. Setbacks and redemptions are what make for interesting stories and memorable playthroughs. "Do you remember that time we ran out of seeds and had to live on all the cat food we had collected until we could get more?" is cooler than "Do you remember how we got a guaranteed seed after two crops? Its going to happen that way this time too."

Not random events. Wandering hordes are scheduled events. In the future, wandering hordes will most likely be handled by the event manager as well as other types of events as well. Possible scenarios: A group of bandits holding an NPC at gunpoint An infestation of screamers within a POI A group of bandits battling a horde of zombies A pack of dogs attacking an NPC A wandering horde like we have now A wandering trader There are all sorts of events that could be created by what we now call twitch integration and players would be free to interact with them or not. Save the NPC or kill him along with all the bandits. These things will be placed in our paths. That's the stated plan at least. Hopefully it will come to fruition.

It only feels negative to you because you are an early access player and experienced a different state of farming before this one. New players are going to come in having no idea that plants used to regrow automatically or that you didn't get a seed back for every single plant. If they are immersed in the post apocalyptic setting they'll even make a connection between only getting partial seeds back to the idea that they aren't farming in 2021 Iowa. New players also aren't likely to begin by trying to create a sustainable farm like we have done historically. They will plant their seeds and harvest their crops and then plant the seeds they get back plus others they find and harvest those and save the crops to use in recipes and have enough to make some stew to supplement other food they have. We on the other hand get to adapt to the new normal and realize that sustainable farming that generates crates and crates of food is most likely not going to happen unless we spend the perk points to make it happen. I haven't seen one person disagree that sustainable farms aren't possible with level 3 of LOTL. That is the ultimate state of farming. It is purple level farming and so shouldn't be easy to do without the highest level of the perk. That being said, I'm just trying to explain the philosophy behind the change. I'm not saying it is perfect as is. Obviously, there is already one change planned for the perk progression. I've got nothing against Madmole changing the 50% seed retention to something more favorable or changing seed harvest to just an automatically regrowing plant or increasing crop yields a bit more. I hope if they pendulum swing away from what it is currently they won't knee jerk it by a lot because I do think that farming before now was just a simpleton's game and resulted in way too much food way too early. We could be wrong as well. Maybe new players WILL be turned off of farming because they won't think it through carefully and craft all their crops into seeds at a diminishing rate of return and end up with nothing and didn't even know they were supposed to perk into farming at all to be able to be successful with a self sustaining farm. If the outcry is enough TFP may make adjustments in that case. They are unlikely to revert anything in the first full week of experimental on just the initial reactions.

So in my post above I talked about the two types of farming. I think that with the current LOTL perk you are only going to be successful at large scale farming at level 3 of the perk. If you would have just stuck to planting seeds and gathering food to use in recipes and never use food to craft more seeds you would have been very successful at farming. To create a self sustaining farm you have to have the full farming skills of level 3 to make seed crafting worth it. If you plan to try again and still only go to level 2 of LOTL then I recommend trying farming by simply planting whatever seeds you have when you have them and not crafting new seeds and save all your harvested crops for recipes and see how it goes.

I see you don't want to understand. I get it. The reality is not what you want to hear. Its human nature to want to cling to fantasized assumptions than to acknowledge harsh reality. The answer is not that TFP won't ever give options and add features to make the game tougher and fresh and alive again to those of us with 1000+ hours of playing, it is simply that now is not the time because the base default normal game for first-time players is still developing. The type of update you want goes beyond the scope of the basic game. That is just the reality of it. It doesn't matter that it has been 8 years and you've been playing for 100s of hours. It was your choice to start playing the game early. Do you know what game you aren't getting bored of or thinking that it has gotten too easy? Starfield. You know why? Because they didn't allow early access so all the updates they've done over the past several years were not playable by you. You aren't really aware that the devs of that game are probably not going to add a whole bunch of features designed for 1000+ hour veterans of their game. They are just polishing it up and finishing up the core and basic features needed to release their game. If you could have been playing Starfield for the last several years you would probably be really bored with its current state and disappointed that the devs weren't adding expansion DLC type stuff. But you didn't and so when Starfield comes out and you play it for the first time you will accept it for what it is and look forward to the future updates that will add content and features and options designed for existing owners of the game. Its been a fantastic ride witnessing the development of this game but it does come with a price. When the finalized version of it releases, it isn't going to feel super fresh to those of us who have been playing all along. But hopefully we will get a few expansions that give us exactly what you are wanting. I'm glad you have found kindred spirits in each other. What I hear most people saying to you bach is that the devs have priorities and they will fix things in the order that they see fit. Many things you want will get in the game when the devs are ready to do so. I just said that all the features that have experienced players like you in mind will be prioritized after the base game is released. So, yeah, when you make demands for things to happen right now you aren't celebrated but then when Madmole as a developer makes those changes then we celebrate.