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

[Solomon]

On 10/14/2020 at 4:03 PM, Kalen said:

Except, maybe they don't want you to know in advance.   Asking for some sort of notification letting you know what happened seems reasonable.   Asking for some sort of warning letting you know whats going to happen is probably not.

Even if they dont want us to know, just make the zombies awake and moving around.

 

Im not sure if theres anything in this game what looks worse then some random shambler doing a full 180 because you entered the room in full stealth gear. Also it doesnt need to be actual warning, these things can be used to set an atmosphere and also its quite possible to suprise a player without going for ceiling zombies and stuck in a furniture setups.

 

Examples:

 

1. Graveyard and other places where its ambient to find dead in the ground could have some random dead hidden by an instabreak dirt block so the player falls in the hole and has to wrestle with the undead there. Quite scary deal.
2. If every dead could crawl we could have some fake ventillation point like looking places all around factories and bunkers where the dead crawls out and rushes at us in feral mode after we passed throught that point a bit. Makes people paranoid towards walls.
3. One dead right behind where a door opens up so hes in coverage is always a good scare.
4. The runner strike i mentioned has no signs expect the runner rushing at you and exploding alerting every dead in the building.
5. Turn all the fake bodies ingame into zombie looking ones and randomly make one of them into zombies when hit.

[Tehnomaag]

Does anyone know if only and only the SleeperVolumeFlags determines the behavior of the zombies of the given sleeper volume or does there exist some other triggers as well that make the sleepers attack the player upon entry or reaching a certain point or touching a certain container?

 

For example, what does the SleeperVolumeGroupId determine considering there also exists a SleeperVolumeGroup setting that seems to point to a setting defined somewhere else of what type zombies can spawn in a given volume?

[Boidster]

6 hours ago, Tehnomaag said:

For example, what does the SleeperVolumeGroupId determine considering there also exists a SleeperVolumeGroup setting that seems to point to a setting defined somewhere else of what type zombies can spawn in a given volume?

There doesn't seem to be anything in entitygroups.xml which would tie to those group IDs. My suspicion (not tested yet) is that the group ID allows POI designers to tie sleeper volumes together, so that triggering any of them triggers all of them.

 

I think each sleeper has a setting which determines its type (or the entitygroup it's pulled from).

[Tehnomaag]

17 hours ago, Boidster said:

There doesn't seem to be anything in entitygroups.xml which would tie to those group IDs. My suspicion (not tested yet) is that the group ID allows POI designers to tie sleeper volumes together, so that triggering any of them triggers all of them.

 

I think each sleeper has a setting which determines its type (or the entitygroup it's pulled from).

Hm that would make some sense I suppose. Otherwise it would be very hard to make a zombie rush from a little distance away if one starts opening some looooong open time container (like ammobox, for example) I have observed in some custom POI's in compopack. But if it would be possible to define a relatively tight additional volume around the container, linked to some further away volume it would be easy to arrange. 

[AtomicUs5000]

On 10/20/2020 at 10:54 AM, Boidster said:

There doesn't seem to be anything in entitygroups.xml which would tie to those group IDs. My suspicion (not tested yet) is that the group ID allows POI designers to tie sleeper volumes together, so that triggering any of them triggers all of them.

That is correct. It is very useful.

[Jenshae]

Using Linux's command line, I ran this search command:
 

:~$ find '.../steamapps/common/7 Days To Die/Data/Prefabs/' -type f | grep --include=\*.xml -rnw '.../steamapps/common/7 Days To Die/Data/Prefabs/' -e "SleeperVolumeFlags" 

The :22: is the line number 22 in the file.
 

FileName:LineNumber: ResultFromThatLine

Here are all the POIs that don't have pure "0"s

[pApA^LeGBa]

On 10/13/2020 at 1:14 AM, meganoth said:

I probably should have specified exactly what I was after when I called for ideas: A clue that explains how zombies were aggroed without a way to prevent it. Bonus points if it is easy to implement since we can imagine how much time TFP wants to invest into a problem it hardly sees as a problem.

 

 

They don´t see it as a problem. Players do. The question is really can´t TFP create enough challenge without cheap tricks like that?

 

If they need to rely on that, i really don´t see any problem with a siren going off or something similiar. Make it indestructible and impossible to turn off. Still better than stealth not working for no reason at all and it could even trouble you more than now, because every zombie outside will also be alerted. So even more no stealth fighthing wich is what TFP wants.

 

Simply not making stealth work magically is bad game design and a huge immersion breaker.

 

 

[Kalen]

16 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Simply not making stealth work magically is bad game design and a huge immersion breaker.

it only seems magical because you know about sleeper volumes.   If you did not have that info, you would probably assume that you just weren't sneaky enough.  

[Roland]

26 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

So even more no stealth fighthing wich is what TFP wants.

As I’ve said before, I’m in favor of your idea to have some visible or audible cause for the zombies waking up. A siren, a stack of boxes falling, a slamming door deeper within out of sight, a chicken running through, —some “bad luck” event that occurs beyond the player’s control but provides an understandable reason why they woke up. 
 

But all this speculation about how the devs want us to not stealth fight is just paranoid silliness. You can run away, hide, and then re-emerge to kill them all through stealth. The devs wouldn’t have put a “forget timer” on the zombies if there really was some conspiracy to end more stealth in the game. 

[Solomon]

40 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

If they need to rely on that, i really don´t see any problem with a siren going off or something similiar. Make it indestructible and impossible to turn off. Still better than stealth not working for no reason at all and it could even trouble you more than now, because every zombie outside will also be alerted. So even more no stealth fighthing wich is what TFP wants.

It doesnt even need anything like that.

 

Make it trigger on entering the room to wake up all the zeds and place many of them around the poi so the player cant really get rid of them without risking triggering one.

[Kalen]

11 minutes ago, Roland said:

a chicken running through

Someone better mod this in!

[pApA^LeGBa]

56 minutes ago, Roland said:

As I’ve said before, I’m in favor of your idea to have some visible or audible cause for the zombies waking up. A siren, a stack of boxes falling, a slamming door deeper within out of sight, a chicken running through, —some “bad luck” event that occurs beyond the player’s control but provides an understandable reason why they woke up. 
 

But all this speculation about how the devs want us to not stealth fight is just paranoid silliness. You can run away, hide, and then re-emerge to kill them all through stealth. The devs wouldn’t have put a “forget timer” on the zombies if there really was some conspiracy to end more stealth in the game. 

That does work with auto aggro zombies? They don´t auto aggro the 2nd time? You sure? Also good luck doing that on a quest in the Red Mesa without leaving the quest area.

 

I really don´t have a problem with a normal fight when playing a stealth build, but that magic trick disabling a skill that you worked hard for kills the mood every time.

 

I am all for the chicken btw.

[meganoth]

19 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

That does work with auto aggro zombies? They don´t auto aggro the 2nd time? You sure? Also good luck doing that on a quest in the Red Mesa without leaving the quest area.

 

It does work with auto aggro zombies. Tested in the game. What you might be thinking of is when the zombies despawn and reappear as sleepers. But we are talking about running away and leaving them standing around but awake (using small stones is very effective there). They don't enter sleep state anymore, just clueless state.

 

19 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

I really don´t have a problem with a normal fight when playing a stealth build, but that magic trick disabling a skill that you worked hard for kills the mood every time.

 

I am all for the chicken btw.

 

[Danidas]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

That does work with auto aggro zombies? They don´t auto aggro the 2nd time? You sure? Also good luck doing that on a quest in the Red Mesa without leaving the quest area.

 

I really don´t have a problem with a normal fight when playing a stealth build, but that magic trick disabling a skill that you worked hard for kills the mood every time.

 

I am all for the chicken btw.

The trick is if they auto aggro is to break line of sight, re enter stealth, wait for the forget me timer to hit zero while staying out of line of sight. Now the higher your From the Shadows is the quicker the forget me timer will be and to make things way easier after you break line of sight you can toss a rock to distract the zombies to where it landed. This trick is very easy to use and normally you only need to retreat one or two rooms at most but with the rock tossing trick its possible to avoid retreating as long as you have a way to break line of sight handy.

 

Edit- Once you pull the trick off the zombies will forget about you and become normal awake zombies who will wonder back to their spawn location. From there it is a simple task to circle back around to sneak attack them while being mindful that they are awake and easier to aggro then sleepers but the same trick can be repeated to deal with them.

 

 

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Danidas said:

The trick is if they auto aggro is to break line of sight, re enter stealth, wait for the forget me timer to hit zero while staying out of line of sight. Now the higher your From the Shadows is the quicker the forget me timer will be and to make things way easier after you break line of sight you can toss a rock to distract the zombies to where it landed. This trick is very easy to use and normally you only need to retreat one or two rooms at most but with the rock tossing trick its possible to avoid retreating as long as you have a way to break line of sight handy.

 

Edit- Once you pull the trick off the zombies will forget about you and become normal awake zombies who will wonder back to their spawn location. From there it is a simple task to circle back around to sneak attack them while being mindful that they are awake and easier to aggro then sleepers but the same trick can be repeated to deal with them.

 

 

This description sounds like actual Interesting and engaging stealth gameplay as opposed to just shooting sleeper after sleeper in the head. People really want only that over and over again in every POI for 100’s and 1000’s of hours of gameplay?!

 

Not me. I appreciate some variety to the stealth gameplay experience. 
 

THANK YOU auto-Aggro rooms!!!

[hiemfire]

36 minutes ago, Roland said:

Interesting and engaging

Aren't those the buzzwords companies used to describe out of pocket purchase loot crates? 

 

37 minutes ago, Roland said:

as opposed to just shooting sleeper after sleeper in the head.

Way to completely dismiss 90% of stealth play. Being able to get that shot on an unaware target without being noticed is the reward. Stealth itself is getting to that position without being noticed by the prey, those near it or drawing attention from those enemies that might happen to be wandering around in the area. Which is why attack volumes are complete bull @%$# for completely ignoring that. What a person "can" do after they trigger is moot when compared to there being nothing that can be done to prevent them from triggering. There are other "tools" tied to the zombie spawns themselves that can make stealth more challenging (@%$#, the individual entity helpers for the zombies in a volume are able to be tuned to do so) and less of the "Skeweton King says @%$# you, you failed" lazy short cut these volumes are.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

I appreciate the occasional surprise also. I am a stealth player but if I was so good I could do whatever I wanted it would get boring. Besides, if you keep your eyes open you can tell in advance which rooms have surprises waiting for you.

[hiemfire]

20 minutes ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

I appreciate the occasional surprise also. I am a stealth player but if I was so good I could do whatever I wanted it would get boring. Besides, if you keep your eyes open you can tell in advance which rooms have surprises waiting for you.

Not always. I think you just haven't encountered the ones where the dev just decided they wanted it and didn't place anything to differentiate the area from the rest yet.

[Roland]

@hiemfire I didn’t discount anything. I said that if it was the only stealth gameplay there was, it would be utterly boring. The fact that there is a change up for 10% of stealth gameplay is a great thing. 
 

And you’re wrong about it not mattering that stealth gameplay is preserved after a scripted trigger event. That is all that matters. Sorry you don’t like it but the design philosophy is sound. 

[hiemfire]

3 minutes ago, Roland said:

Sorry you don’t like it but the design philosophy is sound.

So is the philosophy behind punching someone in the face repeatedly till they do what you want them to... Sound =/ good or right.

[Roland]

Your analogy of getting face punched would be spot on as long as you acknowledge that the target can feint, dodge, and counter. The game gives us those equivalents so...

You can’t stop the punch from happening but you can react in a fun and rewarding manner. 

[AtomicUs5000]

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

[Roland]

How is agi/stealth getting screwed over by the POI design? For that matter how are the devs punching anyone in the face to force them into one thing that they want them to do? Here are some reactions to the auto aggro rooms that I can think of off top of my head

 

1) Guns Blazing and kill them all (non-stealthy)

2) Break a hole in ceiling or wall and kill them (stealthy)

3) Retreat/ Hide/ Re-emerge/ Stealth Kill (stealthy)

4) Parkour to high safe spot and pick them off (agility)

5) Set traps and barriers to delay them and hurt them while you actively kill them (non-stealthy)

 

There's five which is a nice variety of options-- none of which are discouraged or stopped by the developers. There are probably even more. Only number 2 requires that you know ahead of time that the room is auto aggro.

 

The only thing you cannot do is shoot them in the head as sleeping, immobile, heaps simply by walking in the room. But since you can do that gameplay for 90% of the rest of the time what's the loss? Where is the screw over? 

 

I understand ya'all don't LIKE it and that you would rather be able to shoot every zombie every time while it slumbered every playthrough and there is nothing I have against you liking or disliking the situation. But the options we have to respond to the trigger are plentiful and varied and a far cry from being forced to only respond in the alleged one way TFP wants us to respond and also a far cry from POI design screwing over stealth. Yes, there is a scripted trigger but our ability to respond to that trigger in a stealthy manner is preserved. That is a fact. Opinion is liking or disliking it but-- proven incontrovertible fact is that all the player's stealth perks are preserved to be used in reaction to any POI event and hence there is no screw over. 

 

 

 

[AtomicUs5000]

5 minutes ago, Roland said:

How is agi/stealth getting screwed over by the POI design? For that matter how are the devs punching anyone in the face to force them into one thing that they want them to do? Here are some reactions to the auto aggro rooms that I can think of off top of my head

 

1) Guns Blazing and kill them all (non-stealthy)

2) Break a hole in ceiling or wall and kill them (stealthy)

3) Retreat/ Hide/ Re-emerge/ Stealth Kill (stealthy)

4) Parkour to high safe spot and pick them off (agility)

5) Set traps and barriers to delay them and hurt them while you actively kill them (non-stealthy)

 

There's five which is a nice variety of options-- none of which are discouraged or stopped by the developers. There are probably even more. Only number 2 requires that you know ahead of time that the room is auto aggro.

 

The only thing you cannot do is shoot them in the head as sleeping, immobile, heaps simply by walking in the room. But since you can do that gameplay for 90% of the rest of the time what's the loss? Where is the screw over? 

 

I understand ya'all don't LIKE it and that you would rather be able to shoot every zombie every time while it slumbered every playthrough and there is nothing I have against you liking or disliking the situation. But the options we have to respond to the trigger are plentiful and varied and a far cry from being forced to only respond in the alleged one way TFP wants us to respond and also a far cry from POI design screwing over stealth. Yes, there is a scripted trigger but our ability to respond to that trigger is preserved. That is a fact. Opinion is liking or disliking it but-- proven incontrovertible fact is that all the player's stealth perks are preserved to be used in reaction to the event and hence there is no screw over. 

 

 

 

So long story short, the question of the topic had a hidden agenda.
I have to agree. If this didn't exist, then there should be some kind of zombie where stealth isn't going to work at all. After all, when they come out with bigger and badder zombies that we can't one-hit with a sledgehammer, this doesn't mean they are trying to screw over a strength build. Maybe there should be a zombie immune to electricity to counter an intelligence build.

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, Danidas said:

The trick is if they auto aggro is to break line of sight, re enter stealth, wait for the forget me timer to hit zero while staying out of line of sight. Now the higher your From the Shadows is the quicker the forget me timer will be and to make things way easier after you break line of sight you can toss a rock to distract the zombies to where it landed. This trick is very easy to use and normally you only need to retreat one or two rooms at most but with the rock tossing trick its possible to avoid retreating as long as you have a way to break line of sight handy.

 

Edit- Once you pull the trick off the zombies will forget about you and become normal awake zombies who will wonder back to their spawn location. From there it is a simple task to circle back around to sneak attack them while being mindful that they are awake and easier to aggro then sleepers but the same trick can be repeated to deal with them.

 

 

I'm not sure line of sight is calculated. I seem to remember a statement by Fataal that it costs too many CPU cycles. ??