Why are the devs screwing over agi/stealth in their POI design?

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Krougal said:

Ok so now that I am aware that auto-aggro volumes are a thing, they are pretty @%$#ing annoying.

Am I going to abandon my stealth-build? No. Am I going to piss and moan about it incessantly? No. 

 

Speaking of, I'm at 8 agi with maxed skills. Lvl 54, so the bulk of my points are there. Do I go for 10 or put the points into other skills? We're talking another 11 points to finish it (6 for agi and 5 for skills). I am leaning towards maxing it, but 3 points per ability is painful.

Don AGI+1 glasses, so it only costs you 3 points to get to 10.

 

[JCrook1028]

Sigh. It boggles my mind that you find this a contradiction. In a stealth build you are counting on first shot kills. On INSANE you do LESS damage.... Fact. You made the choice when upping that setting to lower your effectiveness. The game did not make that choice for you. Now live with the results of your choice or make a different choice. Don't ask for the game to be changed so that your choice of extreme settings has no effect.

[meganoth]

43 minutes ago, Danidas said:

 

That sounds like normal sleepers as the auto aggro ones instantly know where your at and attack the second they spawn into the world regardless of what you do. It also sounds like your making too much noise too close to them and that is what's waking them up. Make sure your not using a helmet light and it will greatly help to try at night time as it is far harder to wake them then. Also use as many muffed connection mods that you can throw in your armor and armor with the lowest noise rating of the tier you want to use (armor stats can vary even between the same piece).

 

Now as for speed it's normal for stealth to be slower then run/gun as it is a more careful, slow, and methodical way to play with often more skill involved. However when done well it can easily match the over all speed of run/gun but doing so is not easy and tends to be a tortoise vs the hare situation.

Additionally you sometimes  have to wait between actions so your stealth-meter has time to go down. If I do nothing, my stealth-meter is at 2, moving or running in stealth gets it higher. If I immediately shoot after having moved my noise level will be substantially higher at the time of shooting.

 

[hiemfire]

Well this is interesting. Just did a test, every piece of padded armor I crafted has 0 noise level (even with a small sample of 1 of each, if there was a variable value then at least one of the would have shown something other than 0) as I said, but when I put in the connectors the chest and leg armors showed a -x% value (-4% for basic, -8% for advanced).

Muffled and Advanced Muffled Connectors state they're supposed to reduce the noise generated by armor:

Spoiler

Padded Armor adds 0 noise.

Spoiler

Adding connectors to the Hood, Gloves and Boots shows no change (boots shown here).

Spoiler

But both the Chest and the Leggings show a reduction in noise generation.

Spoiler

Edit: I went to check the character statistics tabs and there is no noise reduction stat listed on them in vanilla (not complaining, just pointing out) so I can't confirm that the reduction in noise is actually doing anything (possible -16% noise using advanced muffled connectors on both the legs and the chest). Is the noise generation from armor supposed to be able to be reduced below 0?

[Danidas]

24 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Sigh. It boggles my mind that you find this a contradiction. In a stealth build you are counting on first shot kills. On INSANE you do LESS damage.... Fact. You made the choice when upping that setting to lower your effectiveness. The game did not make that choice for you. Now live with the results of your choice or make a different choice. Don't ask for the game to be changed so that your choice of extreme settings has no effect.

With higher levels for Hidden Strike and Archery the added damage from a sneak attack combined with a good Bow/Crossbow should mitigate that. Which just means the higher your difficulty the more you need to work to get your sneak damage up to mitigate it.

[Krougal]

41 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Don AGI+1 glasses, so it only costs you 3 points to get to 10.

 

And give up the nerdy glasses XP bonus??? Never!

If you use a boost to get skills, they stop working the minute the boost is gone

 

29 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

Well this is interesting. Just did a test, every piece of padded armor I crafted has 0 noise level (even with a small sample of 1 of each, if there was a variable value then at least one of the would have shown something other than 0) as I said, but when I put in the connectors the chest and leg armors showed a -x% value (-4% for basic, -8% for advanced).

Muffled and Advanced Muffled Connectors state they're supposed to reduce the noise generated by armor:

  Reveal hidden contents

Padded Armor adds 0 noise.

  Reveal hidden contents

Adding connectors to the Hood, Gloves and Boots shows no change (boots shown here).

  Reveal hidden contents

But both the Chest and the Leggings show a reduction in noise generation.

  Reveal hidden contents

Edit: I went to check the character statistics tabs and there is no noise reduction stat listed on them in vanilla (not complaining, just pointing out) so I can't confirm that the reduction in noise is actually doing anything (possible -16% noise using advanced muffled connectors on both the legs and the chest). Is the noise generation from armor supposed to be able to be reduced below 0?

It's probably an oversight. Although if the bonus/penalty on all armor pieces combines it would help offset some noisier armor pieces mixed in. 

Chances are if you are wearing all padded armor you probably don't have a full set of adv muffled connectors to slap in there anyway.

 

Oh, also are you looking in the right place? You need to use the modify tab and look at the left side to see the real deal with the mods, I know, it's dumb and counter-intuitive.

[hiemfire]

1 minute ago, Krougal said:

And give up the nerdy glasses XP bonus??? Never!

Really should be baked into Intellect instead of the being on the glasses, even if the boost is spread out over several points worth of the attribute (IE starting at lvl 3, then increased at 5,7 and 9 where it caps at what the glasses provides).

[Lesdeth]

37 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Sigh. It boggles my mind that you find this a contradiction. In a stealth build you are counting on first shot kills. On INSANE you do LESS damage.... Fact. You made the choice when upping that setting to lower your effectiveness. The game did not make that choice for you. Now live with the results of your choice or make a different choice. Don't ask for the game to be changed so that your choice of extreme settings has no effect.

So I need to lower my difficulty in order to play an agi stealth build? That does mean it is quite unbalanced you know. It is easy to slaughter everything with run and gun on insane. So stealth just doesn't work at this difficulty?

[Krougal]

Just now, Lesdeth said:

So I need to lower my difficulty in order to play an agi stealth build? That does mean it is quite unbalanced you know. It is easy to slaughter everything with run and gun on insane. So stealth just doesn't work at this difficulty?

Now you just sound like a broken record.

Game isn't balanced around nightmare/insane. Get over it.

It doesn't seem like anyone else gives a @%$#.

[hiemfire]

5 minutes ago, Krougal said:

It's probably an oversight. Although if the bonus/penalty on all armor pieces combines it would help offset some noisier armor pieces mixed in. 

Chances are if you are wearing all padded armor you probably don't have a full set of adv muffled connectors to slap in there anyway.

With noise generation being a key factor in stealth, a full suit of Padded armor is more valuable than either leather or military with connectors & fittings. Not getting hit is always better than taking a hit and risking being crippled. Padded neither slows you down nor increases noise generated unlike Leather and Military (or any of the heavy armors for that matter).

[Roland]

15 hours ago, Lesdeth said:

Basically your conclusion is: If you want stealth to work, lower your difficulty. That is quite idiotic...

No, our conclusion, based upon tests by forum members in addition to a QA staff member, is that stealth works at your difficulty settings. That is the conclusion with evidence. Further evidence proves that there are actually very few auto-aggro rooms in any given POI and many do not even have a single one. These are now facts supported by actual evidence through reproduced testing and in looking at the actual code. Stealth works even at your difficulty settings.

 

Your publicly posted beliefs that many of the rooms are auto-aggro and that surviving using light armor is impossible says nothing about whether stealth is functioning or whether it is a playstyle that someone could not choose to employ. It simply shows that you don't completely grasp how stealth works in the game and that your skills to be able to survive in light armor are not quite at the level they should be for the settings you have chosen. Nobody is calling you a scrub. You are obviously very talented but everyone can still learn to be better and you still have some things you could learn about stealth.

 

If you're not interested in figuring out why you keep waking up rooms of zombies that are not set to auto-aggro, that's your call. But there isn't a glitch or a bug or a faulty game design reason that you are failing in this area. It's whatever you are doing that isn't working. The developers are not forcing you to only play one way.

 

Now, admittedly, playing with stealth is going to mean taking a longer time to clear a POI compared to running and gunning it. Based on what you have posted, what I really believe your complaint is, is that stealth can't compete with running and gunning for speed. If being able to clear a POI in the fastest time possible is non-negotiable for you then absolutely stealth isn't going to be something you can choose. So I can sympathize that you might wish that you could just stay hidden always and quickly headshot all the sleepers and speed run the POI dungeon in a comparable manner to what guns blazing can do. However, that would seriously dumb down and completely make stealth basic and unchallenging.

 

Isn't the 7 Days to Die proverb: "Stay aware and always have a backup plan" a worthy axiom? Making it so that you are guaranteed to waltz through a POI at top speed without worry that anything will wake up and headshot every sleeper means you don't need backup plans because there will be no contingencies and nothing will ever go sideways. Intermittent auto-aggro rooms keep us on our toes, breaks things up, and requires that we actually employ some stealth player skill (to get hidden and re-emerge successfully) rather than 100% reliance upon passive game buffs to carry the day.

[Lesdeth]

1 minute ago, Krougal said:

Now you just sound like a broken record.

Game isn't balanced around nightmare/insane. Get over it.

It doesn't seem like anyone else gives a @%$#.

I am so sorry that no one wants a balanced game apparently. I am sorry that you do not care about higher difficulty. I am sorry that you play on easy mode. But you need not write something like this my dude. It was quite pointless. Everyone else is basically making the same argument over and over again. I don't see you critiquing them, which is entirely possible to do.

[Roland]

5 minutes ago, Lesdeth said:

So stealth just doesn't work at this difficulty?

It does. It is just the more difficult choice. Probably more difficult for you because you would need to slow down a bit.

[Krougal]

2 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

With noise generation being a key factor in stealth, a full suit of Padded armor is more valuable than either leather or military with connectors & fittings. Not getting hit is always better than taking a hit and risking being crippled. Padded neither slows you down nor increases noise generated unlike Leather and Military (or any of the heavy armors for that matter).

Situational. Yes, better to not get hit, but I don't think fully perked out and fully modded armor the penalty is most likely a non-issue. Considering that most of the time I get caught is the auto-aggro rooms I'd rather have the extra protection. BM night I switch to heavy armor anyway (when I can remember to).

 

[Lesdeth]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

It does. It is just the more difficult choice. Probably more difficult for you because you would need to slow down a bit.

I am doing tests for time to clear, survivability, resource costs, and ease. Agi stealth is at a huge disadvantage in every category. On top of the abilities being completely useless on blood moons. Another huge detractor.

Also, I don't die running stealth. Many people do, so there is that for you.

[Roland]

14 minutes ago, Lesdeth said:

I am so sorry that no one wants a balanced game apparently.

We do. We appreciate your feedback. A QA staff member ran some tests based upon your feedback. The conclusion was that while stealth and run and gun are not necessarily equal, both are possible and rewarding tactics that people can choose to employ. There is no need for you to worry that your feedback was ignored by TFP.

10 minutes ago, Lesdeth said:

I am doing tests for time to clear, survivability, resource costs, and ease. Agi stealth is at a huge disadvantage in every category. On top of the abilities being completely useless on blood moons. Another huge detractor.

Also, I don't die running stealth. Many people do, so there is that for you.

Thanks for that information. The developers know and are okay with that. They don't want to make stealth equal to open attacks. It is a choice for a different way to play the game. You could speed run the game going with strength or you can slow down and sneak with Agility. The choice is not meant to be weighed by speed and efficiency but rather by individual player preference. If stealth was changed to make it equal to strength in terms of speed and efficiency and ease then it would be gutted. You would simply be rushing from sleeping zombie to sleeping zombie and one-shotting them with no variation in results. It would be extremely samey and become boring very quickly.

 

As for bloodmoons...it is one event every 7 days and Agility does have weapons that are effective on horde night. Stealth may yet get a perk or a book series that might make stealth kills during the bloodmoon possible but there is no guarantee. That event is one that the devs want to be a direct confrontation warzone experience. 

 

Stealth at your difficulty setting is possible. It won't be as fast or efficient as Strength tactics but it definitely is possible. You as an individual have to decide if it is worthwhile.

[hiemfire]

6 hours ago, Krougal said:

Oh, also are you looking in the right place? You need to use the modify tab and look at the left side to see the real deal with the mods, I know, it's dumb and counter-intuitive.

I was looking for combined total from equipped gear and iirc that isn't what is shown on the left pane when modifying an item.

 

Edit: @Krougal Looked at the left panel this time when doing a check of what Advanced Muffled Connectors + Light Armor Perks would do to detectability with the different types of light armor. Showed every piece of padded armor getting a -8% noise increase. 40% noise reduction with all pieces having the mod if it isn't a display bug, wow. Completely blows the +5% noise that perked + mod Leather and Military have (+10% with just the mod installed on the armor piece) out of the water even if it is a display bug (0% noise increase is allot better than a 5%>10% noise increase). The certain 25% damage reduction for 5 x Padded is also allot more attractive than rolling the dice and getting armor ratings below that on mil gear ( helmet rolled a stinking 4, gloves rolled a 5 so broke even, but that does mean the rng range for mil overlaps the set value of padded). The movement penalty perked + mod is +5% with all 5 slots being leather or mil as well...

 

Base durability is the only thing I know for certain is a consistent downside to using Padded since I cannot wrap my head around what they're trying to @%$#ing say with the "Armor Crit Resistance" stat (-6% is tagged as worse than -4% and the explanation in the Armor entry of the journal doesn't really clarify it, just says chance to resist crit...) and being able to possibly take a hit better with either full mil or full leather really doesn't offset the higher chance of getting noticed for me.

[alanea]

2 hours ago, Lesdeth said:

I can run and gun, kill everything extremely fast, one grenade to kill a room, and have heavy armor with insane survivability. Stealth is supposed to be completely subpar, with garbage survivability, and take an extremely long clear time? Seems to be to be completely unbalanced and useless.

 

Hell, it even takes more resources since you aren't using grenades which are cheap to make.

 nah triggering  whole house by grenade / guns is alot more dangerous than stealth ... .. since when  is ammo and grenades cheaper than arrows +knife .. grenades are pathetic for poi as 99% rooms have  1-3  zombies spread around .. grenades are complete waste  of resources unless you have  10+ zombies in explosion area on blood moon

 

sneak is safer option .. problem is speed

2 hours ago, hiemfire said:

Is the noise generation from armor supposed to be able to be reduced below 0?

clearly bug .. and likely not working (armor noise is increase its almost sure any negative value is considered 0)

doesnt seems to change anything ingame

2 hours ago, Danidas said:

With higher levels for Hidden Strike and Archery the added damage from a sneak attack combined with a good Bow/Crossbow should mitigate that. Which just means the higher your difficulty the more you need to work to get your sneak damage up to mitigate it.

you can  1  hit  greenies with  low quality bow and 0  bow/sneak perks on warrior   

max difficulty cuts dmg to  1/2 compared to warrior

iam quite sure youc an  1  hit  everything except bears with perked bow + sneak damage with that crazy multiplier  combined with  x3 head

1 hour ago, hiemfire said:

Really should be baked into Intellect instead of the being on the glasses, even if the boost is spread out over several points worth of the attribute (IE starting at lvl 3, then increased at 5,7 and 9 where it caps at what the glasses provides).

to make another boring  mass produced +1  ability item ?

nerdy glasses/goggles are  kinda OP but unique  ... if anything we should get unique stats for others to balance it out  like

agility  =+ 25%sneak multiplier bonus

perception = +10% headshot  dmg

hmm strenght and endurance doesnt even exist ?

 

1 hour ago, Lesdeth said:

So I need to lower my difficulty in order to play an agi stealth build? That does mean it is quite unbalanced you know. It is easy to slaughter everything with run and gun on insane. So stealth just doesn't work at this difficulty?

no  you need to invest into bow + sneak damage perk ... to  1hit stuff on high difficulties

stealth is just sub optimal for all difficulties due to low clear speed

1 hour ago, hiemfire said:

With noise generation being a key factor in stealth, a full suit of Padded armor is more valuable than either leather or military with connectors & fittings. Not getting hit is always better than taking a hit and risking being crippled. Padded neither slows you down nor increases noise generated unlike Leather and Military (or any of the heavy armors for that matter).

except mistakes happen ... same as random dog hordes and military halves  your damage taken compared to padded and significantly lower chance to bleed/ get crippled

drawback ?  +2% noise per piece = you wont tell difference at all

i would  say padded exist just to give sneak builds armor .... until they get 5x advanced muffled conectors needed to make  military super sneaky as well

1 hour ago, Roland said:

If stealth was changed to make it equal to strength in terms of speed and efficiency and ease then it would be gutted. You would simply be rushing from sleeping zombie to sleeping zombie and one-shotting them with no variation in results. It would be extremely samey and become boring very quickly.

yes if  stealth teleported fromzombie to zombie it would be just ridiculous .... but agility should have some advantages to balance out weaknesses  stuff like parkour is more quality of life than something that really make you stronger

Quote

As for bloodmoons...it is one event every 7 days and Agility does have weapons that are effective on horde night. Stealth may yet get a perk or a book series that might make stealth kills during the bloodmoon possible but there is no guarantee. That event is one that the devs want to be a direct confrontation warzone experience. 

blood moons are major part of game and likely hardest survival feature

please tell me what weapons agility have in " direct confrontation"

 

stealth is irelevant ...

sneak damage  is useless

jumping around with parkour would be funny but not really solid way to combat horde

i am also quite sure  zombies  dont throw mines/unstable floors on you ... so this perk is off too

bow + knife is  weakest melee/ranged weapon for direct combat

pistols .. are ok  not top tier .. or something you specialize on  with stealth build but ok

flurry of blows ?  melee ? combined with low armor and no perk to counter stun ?   fighting on foot is bad idea .... for melee base ....  you are pushed to knives  weakes melee weapon with  subpar  range,damage,stun compared to lets say club

 

whats left?   and minor hip fire accuracy?  nope ... agility is weakest for blood moon  ... by miles

 

if sneak perk allowed to deal  some %  of  damage bonus to  direct  hits  ... or agility offered different headshot bonus than other trees .... if  we had arrows making  fire/gas cloud  like molotov or stealth just reduced amount of zombies during blood moon because you are ... less visible  .. then i would call agility OK option

 

but now ... nope blood moon directly counter agility

[Lesdeth]

Some tests on my channel. I was interupted by a call from my son, but he takes priority of course 😛

 

Shotgun Messiah - Time to clear for agi build full stealth 40 minutes 20 seconds. 300 9mm, 150 7.62, 20 shotgun, 10 crossbow bolts. Time to clear for Run and Gun 26 minutes and 27 seconds. 250 7.62, 126 shotgun, 14 contact grenades. The agi build run was my high tier dude with t5-t6 weapons. The run and gun was my dead is dead playthrough with low tier gear, pump shotgun... With auto shotgun and a better m60 with more points, the run would be dramatically faster as well. Maybe 10 minutes give or take for a full clear. I will have to respec and test on my other playthrough.

 

[Diche_Bach]

Sneaky Sniper is my favorite build in FPS games, with shotgun leatherneck being a close second . . . I only have about 150 hours on 7DTD and have only reached Level 22 and still doing T1 quests, but noticed the "auto-wake up" zombies.

 

I can agree with OP that the (apparent) inconsistency is annoying, but I can also agree with other points made in this thread (no I did not read all of it and I doubt anyone has or will) that the auto-aggro zombies (a) are not THAT common and (b) spice things up so that a sneaky type cannot go around never having any fears or surprises . . .

 

My take on the game is: whatever you are having your character do that is not inside the double thick walled concrete bunker protected by auto-robbot flamethrower sentinels, assume that you could die at any moment, and play accordingly. Yeah, so you are a sneak, doesn't mean your perfect so expect that occasionally you'll screw up and your sneakiness will fail.

 

To the developers / level designers: maybe try to be a little more . . . um . . . consistent? and/or creative in how you place those auto-aggro zeds. Right now, the trigger is nothing more than player entity location being within a particular X,Y,Z coordinate space in the game world, and THIS is what most who are irritated by the mechanic find irritating. It doesn't matter what the player was doing at the time their entity entered that space, it always works the same. Maybe if these spaces were less accessible? Maybe if these spaces had entry features which made it essentially IMPOSSIBLE to pass into them stealthily? If sneaky players were FORCED to be loud and un-sneaky in order to get inside the XYZ space where these auto-aggor things function then no one would have anything to complain about.

 

So maybe now you are asking yourself: What mechanics should or could be used to "force" sneaky players to be unsneaky and thus account for how the auto-aggro zombies defy the prevailing rules of the game and respond to the player? Well lots of options, and all of them seem pretty cheesy and unappealing to me

1. Encase all the Zombie Auto-Aggro zones in impenetrable concrete and give one entrance, a wooden door that cannot be lockpicked and has to be chopped into: noisy, auto aggro makes perfect sense

2. Place the zombie auto-aggro zones at the bottom of an Indian Jones vault right on top of the bedrock and make the "entrance" a slide that the player activates at random while roaming the wastelands, player loses control of their toon, goes sliding down the Temple of Doom Sluice way, splash lands with great noise and un-sneakiness in the auto-aggro zombie chamber of doom.

3. Place invisible trip wires (only visible after the fact) that activate New Years noise makers.

4. Install spring loaded dart traps that cause the player to trip out and start blathering Linda Blair style = not sneaky enough to evade the auto-aggro zombie threshold.

5. Create a new zombie type, some kinda tin-foil hat nerd in past life who shambles around with his/hear hand up to their ear socket (bloody hole where their ear used to be). This Zombie you could call "Zombie_Radar" (heh, you could even give him the same look as that character from that old Korean War sit com!). This guy (or some variant of this guy)  is always present in every one of the locations where an auto-aggro zone is laid down = he has super sensitive sensory apparatus and THAT is why there is no sneaking to be done in his/her midst.

 

You see, there are LOTS of viable mechanics to make your auto-aggro zombie trigers "make sense." Now granted none of them (with the possible exception of Number 5, which is brilliant AF in my opinion) are any more fun than the existing mechanic, but at least then players could NOT legitimtely complain about the inconsistency in the game rules and mechanics.

[AtomicUs5000]

Why don't they just make it so that the noises of zombies can wake up other zombies, if they want to keep things spicy?
(not to be confused with a screamer that actually spawns in additional zombies).
When a zombie sees you, perhaps a 50% chance it will yell out, drawing in close by zombies, waking sleeping zombies.
Make it so that when you stealth kill a zombie, it has something like 25% chance to groan loudly as it dies.
As you level up in stealth, this percentage goes down... but cap it so that there is always at least a 5% chance.
 
To resolve blood moon, extend Stealth into Stealth and Evasion, which can be a big help during BM.
- chance to dodge melee attacks.
- significantly reduces the player being targeted by cops.
- significantly reduces the player being targeted by vultures.
- significantly reduces the number of vultures chasing you down while driving.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Diche_Bach said:

heh, you could even give him the same look as that character from that old Korean War sit com!).

M.A.S.H. forgotten....It is the end times indeed. 

[hiemfire]

3 minutes ago, Roland said:

M.A.S.H. forgotten....It is the end times indeed. 

At least they didn't describe Cpl. Klinger...

[th3s0n1c]

9 hours ago, Krougal said:

Ok so now that I am aware that auto-aggro volumes are a thing, they are pretty @%$#ing annoying.

Am I going to abandon my stealth-build? No. Am I going to piss and moan about it incessantly? No. 

 

Speaking of, I'm at 8 agi with maxed skills. Lvl 54, so the bulk of my points are there. Do I go for 10 or put the points into other skills? We're talking another 11 points to finish it (6 for agi and 5 for skills). I am leaning towards maxing it, but 3 points per ability is painful.

If you wear the agility glasses you actually "save yourself 3 levels" from 9 to 10. Unless you really need to keep nerdy or lucky looter goggles.. I'd say thats a great trade off.

By what people are discussing, it seems going for from the shadows 5 is sort of pointless, so leaving it at 4/5 wont make that much of a difference.. using muffled connectors and stealth boots are enough.

[Danidas]

4 hours ago, Diche_Bach said:

Sneaky Sniper is my favorite build in FPS games, with shotgun leatherneck being a close second . . . I only have about 150 hours on 7DTD and have only reached Level 22 and still doing T1 quests, but noticed the "auto-wake up" zombies.

 

I can agree with OP that the (apparent) inconsistency is annoying, but I can also agree with other points made in this thread (no I did not read all of it and I doubt anyone has or will) that the auto-aggro zombies (a) are not THAT common and (b) spice things up so that a sneaky type cannot go around never having any fears or surprises . . .

 

My take on the game is: whatever you are having your character do that is not inside the double thick walled concrete bunker protected by auto-robbot flamethrower sentinels, assume that you could die at any moment, and play accordingly. Yeah, so you are a sneak, doesn't mean your perfect so expect that occasionally you'll screw up and your sneakiness will fail.

 

To the developers / level designers: maybe try to be a little more . . . um . . . consistent? and/or creative in how you place those auto-aggro zeds. Right now, the trigger is nothing more than player entity location being within a particular X,Y,Z coordinate space in the game world, and THIS is what most who are irritated by the mechanic find irritating. It doesn't matter what the player was doing at the time their entity entered that space, it always works the same. Maybe if these spaces were less accessible? Maybe if these spaces had entry features which made it essentially IMPOSSIBLE to pass into them stealthily? If sneaky players were FORCED to be loud and un-sneaky in order to get inside the XYZ space where these auto-aggor things function then no one would have anything to complain about.

 

So maybe now you are asking yourself: What mechanics should or could be used to "force" sneaky players to be unsneaky and thus account for how the auto-aggro zombies defy the prevailing rules of the game and respond to the player? Well lots of options, and all of them seem pretty cheesy and unappealing to me

1. Encase all the Zombie Auto-Aggro zones in impenetrable concrete and give one entrance, a wooden door that cannot be lockpicked and has to be chopped into: noisy, auto aggro makes perfect sense

2. Place the zombie auto-aggro zones at the bottom of an Indian Jones vault right on top of the bedrock and make the "entrance" a slide that the player activates at random while roaming the wastelands, player loses control of their toon, goes sliding down the Temple of Doom Sluice way, splash lands with great noise and un-sneakiness in the auto-aggro zombie chamber of doom.

3. Place invisible trip wires (only visible after the fact) that activate New Years noise makers.

4. Install spring loaded dart traps that cause the player to trip out and start blathering Linda Blair style = not sneaky enough to evade the auto-aggro zombie threshold.

5. Create a new zombie type, some kinda tin-foil hat nerd in past life who shambles around with his/hear hand up to their ear socket (bloody hole where their ear used to be). This Zombie you could call "Zombie_Radar" (heh, you could even give him the same look as that character from that old Korean War sit com!). This guy (or some variant of this guy)  is always present in every one of the locations where an auto-aggro zone is laid down = he has super sensitive sensory apparatus and THAT is why there is no sneaking to be done in his/her midst.

 

You see, there are LOTS of viable mechanics to make your auto-aggro zombie trigers "make sense." Now granted none of them (with the possible exception of Number 5, which is brilliant AF in my opinion) are any more fun than the existing mechanic, but at least then players could NOT legitimtely complain about the inconsistency in the game rules and mechanics.

 

The main issues is that it has to be clear to the player that no matter what they do it will have no impact on the result.

 

Now I do like option 5 and proposed that my self a few times as a special infected alarm system. But the natural challenge of selling a inescapable trap in such a dynamic sandbox game that prides it self on player freedom will always be a tough sell. As players will always insist on a way to bypass it especially if they got burned by it one too many times.