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

[Roland]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Look. That horses head is still moving a little!!

He's "stealth killing" a sleeper horse....

[meganoth]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

He's "stealth killing" a sleeper horse....

and it is not waking up, that would be unfair.

 

[Tahaan]

On 9/23/2020 at 3:34 PM, Roland said:

It works in all the rest of the areas of that POI. Stop pretending that one room of a POI invalidates stealth for that entire POI. It’s one room where you have to change up your strategy. 
 

You keep comparing Stealth which is one aspect of the Agility build to all of the Strength build. How about more fairly comparing all of Agility to all of Strength?  If you just want to look at stealth from the agility attribute then let’s just look at Master Chef from the Strength attribute. How does stealth fare for clearing POIs compared to how cooking helps to do the same?  All of a sudden, stealth looks better...

Joking aside, I get what bothers you. We can already sneak around unperked so buying perks should gain us advantages like being able to avoid whatever triggers a room to aggro for unperked players. That would create a more defining line between perked and unperked stealthing. But after buying those extra skills we are still subject to the auto aggro like everyone else.  The answer is simply that the level designers want everyone to experience these particular rooms as a direct confrontation. 90% of the rest of the POI you still have your advantages plus any other Agility skills like parkour that you can bring to bear. 

This is a good answer and should be pinned and put in a FAQ somewhere because this keeps coming up.

 

Really cool would be if they had a sniffing annimation ... let the zeds that auto-wake-up start with an animation where they sniff the air and look arround for a second before they locate and rush you!!!!

 

While on this topic though at the same time I do wish the game would have zeds wake up when I stand outside that door and I just shoot them with any gun.  How does none of them hear the gun shots or even see the zeds beside them dropping dead?

 

My understanding is that the source of sounds is always the player and as far as the game is concerned I'm making a noise outside of their area within which they will wake up.  

 

So it would be better if there was some kind of audio drop-off.  Different actions should have different loudness (or range, perhaps). Loud noises from near-by should wake them all up even if the sound is outside of their little box.

 

The second thing about this that bothers me is that there is no difference between sneaking up on a zed from behind to coming up from the direction they are watching.  I'd expect to have more success when sneaking up from behind.  This is probably less of an issue but still I think they should see you before they hear you if you are not behind them.

 

 

[Solomon]

4 hours ago, Tahaan said:

This is a good answer and should be pinned and put in a FAQ somewhere because this keeps coming up.

 

Really cool would be if they had a sniffing annimation ... let the zeds that auto-wake-up start with an animation where they sniff the air and look arround for a second before they locate and rush you!!!!

It would still not fix the key problem which is an auto failure.

 

I never really seen many people who advocate of auto failure systems, those are hated regardless of genre and gaming age.

Your game could have an auto failure where if you dont escape within 1 minute the alarms go off and you now need to fight off the guards, an accuracy check where if you dont reach 90% your are now subjected to the harder mode, enemy design offering an undodgeable, sure-hit attack incase you cant remove a wall torch, etc...

 

Simply giving the zombies a line of sight system where with proper movement and careful planning you can get throught is always going to be better than "You exist in the room therefore you are target."

[Aldranon]

I don't know.

Maybe a 100% stealth 7D2D might be interesting as long as one thing is added...

Wandering hordes of no less than a dozen vultures that are all 100% stealthy and have hyper senses.

 

Then, the first moment you know your being attacked is:

Your stunned, bleeding, infected and with a broken leg.   

I'll leave it to your imagination on how your health is doing. 

[theFlu]

6 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

Wandering hordes of no less than a dozen vultures that are all 100% stealthy and have hyper senses.

 

Then, the first moment you know your being attacked is:

Your stunned, bleeding, infected and with a broken leg.   

I'll leave it to your imagination on how your health is doing. 

That sounds good.. Or we could just wait for bandits with a similar deal; they got stealth, your character can't see them so they're not rendered in the world for you to see. Taking headshots with decent accuracy whenever you're outdoors. Stabbing you with one of those 5x multis indoors whenever you open a door or turn a corner.

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, theFlu said:

That sounds good.. Or we could just wait for bandits with a similar deal; they got stealth, your character can't see them so they're not rendered in the world for you to see. Taking headshots with decent accuracy whenever you're outdoors. Stabbing you with one of those 5x multis indoors whenever you open a door or turn a corner.

Agreed. Balance. Those bandits have trained being bloodthirsty maniacs as much as you, so for every bandit you kill there must be a bandit who has killed you.

 

[Roland]

The bandits that "stealth" players hope for....

 

 

 

The bandits that "stealth" players will rage against...

 

[Provin915]

I haven't put any points in the stealth perks yet, but I do have most of the books unlocked. It's pretty fun and works quite well but sometimes the zombies wake up when I'm not close to them and they start running.

[Ramethzer0]

On 11/15/2020 at 5:33 PM, Roland said:

People who want every single enemy they stealth against to be unconscious obviously have a tremendous threshold for repetitious activity without feeling much tedium....

 

On 11/16/2020 at 2:55 PM, meganoth said:

Look. That horses head is still moving a little!!

Perhaps they should play an ACTUAL stealth game with ACTUAL stealth content?

40 minutes ago, Roland said:

The bandits that "stealth" players hope for....

 

 

 

The bandits that "stealth" players will rage against...

 

I cheered when they put snipers in bandit camps in Mist Survival.   I got tired of the camps being too easy to take out with a bow and basic arrows.

The bandits had patrols and assault rifles and should NOT have been super exploitable.

 

[hiemfire]

On 11/18/2020 at 9:53 AM, Roland said:

The bandits that "stealth" players hope for....

 

 

 

The bandits that "stealth" players will rage against...

 

🤨 Looks like sleepers and wanderers to me. Simple enough to observe their movements and adjust accordingly without being seen or heard if you're paying attention.  Not sure what there would be to rage about there...

 

Or are you still straw manning about our hate for attack volumes that you're assuming a simple wanderer or two is somehow comparable to stepping over an invisible line and having every zombie it is tied to knowing exactly where you are at that instant and immediately moving to attack? 

[meganoth]

I'd say it was a great running gag. And that excuses everything, even misrepresentations, one-sided insinuations and the death of horses.

 

[Roland]

16 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

Or are you still straw manning about our hate for attack volumes that you're assuming a simple wanderer or two is somehow comparable to stepping over an invisible line and having every zombie it is tied to knowing exactly where you are at that instant and immediately moving to attack? 

I'd say that the results are what really matters. If you get what you want then the POIs are 100% full of sleeping zombies that you can "stealth kill" while they remain unconscious. If you don't get what you want then the POIs have a variety of zombies that you can stealth kill by using stealth skills to evade, hide, and kill from the shadows.

 

Those results are stone facts and not strawmen. You may not be presenting your argument as a desire for always sleeping enemies but the results of your argument would lead us there in any case. Even if some triggering device was added that could be disarmed it would only be a challenge once and then forever after it would be as mundane as clearing trash piles and broken glass piles from the ground and avoiding jumping. Disarm the trash piles, the broken glass, that tripwire and---oh GOODIE! Kill more unconscious foes.

 

As a result of this thread we now know that you are not forced to take out an auto aggro volume openly guns blazing. You can still go the stealth route and that stealth route is decidedly more engaging for the player than lining up an immobile head into the sights of your weapon.

[meganoth]

 

Don't remember all the points of the discussion anymore, but maybe a compromise would be possible: For example that the trigger has a chance to fail at waking up the zombies that is higher the more you perked into stealth. It does not make it a skill test for the player, but a skill test for the player character in best RPG tradition. And naturally the maximum chance you are not noticed has to be maybe 30-50%.

 

[theFlu]

Round and round this goes..

 

For me the problem with auto-aggros is that it feels broken, compared to the rest of the game. You don't even need to use stealth to notice that some rooms are much more enthusiastic about that delicious player scent than most. Normal sleepers keep sleeping quite often, these guys never. So, the rooms this happens in become known as 'different'. (This is what happened to me, at least)

 

Slapping on a percentage for these rooms to act like normal would just make it feel more buggy.. "this room is different, but only sometimes. Am I insane or is the game just borked?"

 

Slap on a mine in the only doorway in and have it have a chance of being a dud, now you have a) an auto aggro that works as the zeds wake up from the boom-boom, b) can't easily be avoided if it's a live one c) can really mess you up by itself, just for giggles (as some are prone to accuse TFP of enjoying), d) can be disarmed with the help of an atypical stealth perk from perception (pick up mines) e) if dud and the player is bold enough, maybe disableable without aggroing the room and, for the ultimate F) you can use a plate mine flat at the floor, painted like the surrounding floor for extra special enjoyment.

 

Please don't take that too seriously. Seriously

[meganoth]

13 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Round and round this goes..

 

For me the problem with auto-aggros is that it feels broken, compared to the rest of the game. You don't even need to use stealth to notice that some rooms are much more enthusiastic about that delicious player scent than most. Normal sleepers keep sleeping quite often, these guys never. So, the rooms this happens in become known as 'different'. (This is what happened to me, at least)

 

Slapping on a percentage for these rooms to act like normal would just make it feel more buggy.. "this room is different, but only sometimes. Am I insane or is the game just borked?"

So when I woke up zombies in my last stealth test sometimes and it wasn't in rooms that were autoaggro, why didn't I get confused too? Why did I simply think "bad luck, chance"? Like a basketball player still misses the basket with a chance that is always greater than zero. And it is the norm in random-based games

 

But yes, that idea does not solve everything, it just makes the stealth perk somewhat more valueable in a situation where stealth is at a disadvantage. As I said, a compromise.

 

13 minutes ago, theFlu said:

 

Slap on a mine in the only doorway in and have it have a chance of being a dud, now you have a) an auto aggro that works as the zeds wake up from the boom-boom, b) can't easily be avoided if it's a live one c) can really mess you up by itself, just for giggles (as some are prone to accuse TFP of enjoying), d) can be disarmed with the help of an atypical stealth perk from perception (pick up mines) e) if dud and the player is bold enough, maybe disableable without aggroing the room and, for the ultimate F) you can use a plate mine flat at the floor, painted like the surrounding floor for extra special enjoyment.

Sure, solutions that work once as a skill test and then never again. See a mine, go through the wall. Done. It does not solve what the developers want to do with auto-aggro rooms.

 

13 minutes ago, theFlu said:

 

Please don't take that too seriously. Seriously

 

Then you have to suffer through even more running gags 😉

 

[theFlu]

13 minutes ago, meganoth said:

So when I woke up zombies in my last stealth test sometimes and it wasn't in rooms that were autoaggro, why didn't I get confused too? Why did I simply think "bad luck, chance"?

Because that's the consistent experience everywhere in the world..? Some zeds wake up easier than others. Sometimes you do mess up. But once you get a number of zeds  faceplanting all around you in an entertaining and completely harmless manner, with you knowing you did not mess up this time, things start feeling weird. When that thing is localized to dozen rooms in the entire game, you figure out that game is just ignoring its rules in those locations. The wallpaper comes off, and the drywall looks nasty.

13 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But yes, that idea does not solve everything, it just makes the stealth perk somewhat more valueable in a situation where stealth is at a disadvantage. As I said, a compromise.

 

Sure, solutions that work once as a skill test and then never again. See a mine, go through the wall. Done. It does not solve what the developers want to do with auto-aggro rooms.

 

 

Then you have to suffer through even more running gags 😉

 

For your solution of making the auto-aggro rooms random, I'd add a small chance (2-5%) for every volume to auto-aggro. I'd Rather remove the "magic" of it by giving it an explanation in the room (whatever noise maker you want to go with, with or without the ability to avoid/disable it); but if we absolutely need magical moments where some zeds just know you're there, make it a feature of the whole game, not just couple specific rooms.

 

The mine idea was a lil snarky, but an attempt at making a mechanism that would work with the current game to recreate an auto-aggro.. you can also tune the room to wake up once you start beating your way through the well-placed-metal-walls into there, or gasp, even make them wake up while you destroy a wooden wall. Or heck, just replace sections of the outside wall with mine plates for maximum fun and challenge ..

 

Running gags are prolly the best part of this forum, that's probably why I post my dry snark here... caveat emptor, though ..

[Kalen]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

with you knowing you did not mess up this time

But how would you know that?   Its not like there is some indicator in the game that says, "You screwed up!".   What you do looks exactly the same whether the zombies wake up and see you or not.  I still maintain that a lot of this heated debate is because people are aware of the existence of auto-aggro rooms.... if no one knew they were there most people would attribute them to failing their "stealth roll".

 

[theFlu]

45 minutes ago, Kalen said:

But how would you know that?

Because that's how I figured out a couple of the auto-aggros by myself, before it started turning up in the forums. Because it's a game. If you play enough, you get good at it. You learn the mechanics of it. There's Always an indicator of "you failed"; because if there isn't, there isn't really success either. I've never burnt my Bacon and Eggs because I can't leave them for too long in the campfire. But if I could, and the game wouldn't specifically tell me I failed with a timer, I could still figure it out over repeat efforts. With the feedback from your failures, you learn the ways to fail, you learn when something is random, how it applies. You may be mistaken, of course, which means you have to re-learn something, which is discomforting. That's fine, part of the process normally.

 

But when something like this is changed, that discomfort is directed at the change. It's annoying. I do actively try to temper it, and I do recognize I'm annoyed by the change here. That in mind, I still don't see a reason to leave it to a "forced fail." Forced fails are just out of place, by definition. Having it done without any explanation is worse, so I'd advocate at least having a noise maker. Some advance warning would also be nice, but even without, you'll learn the dozen spots quickly anyway, a lot faster once you decipher the cryptic mechanic.

 

End bosses fall under special rules anyway, I suppose, so not exactly wanting a warning for loot rooms or the like. Clearing the hospital roof of sleepers with a hunting rifle feels wrong too, (it's been a while since the last time I did it, prolly possible still).. just stand behind the trigger line and no-one cares of your little firing squad. Sleep tight, big momma, sleep tight. Not good either.

[Kalen]

41 minutes ago, theFlu said:

There's Always an indicator of "you failed"

But there isnt.   You crouch to be in stealth and you try to sneak up on a zombie.   It either wakes up or it doesnt.   There is no indicator that shows that you did something wrong.... the zombie just detected you.

 

There is thematically no difference between a zombie that awakens because it detects you and a zombie that awakens because its in an auto-aggro room... it's only your outside knowledge of the game mechanics that tells you there is a difference.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Kalen said:

But there isnt.   You crouch to be in stealth and you try to sneak up on a zombie.   It either wakes up or it doesnt.   There is no indicator that shows that you did something wrong.... the zombie just detected you.

 

There is thematically no difference between a zombie that awakens because it detects you and a zombie that awakens because its in an auto-aggro room... it's only your outside knowledge of the game mechanics that tells you there is a difference.

Sure, I agree. Entirely. The knowledge of these silly game mechanics has been obtained purely by playing the game for myself. (EDIT: Oops, I guess I misspoke a little.. that means there has to have been an indication of "abnormal failure", repeatable, and I guess that means there would need to be a "normal failure" .. I do disagree that much, but no more, maybe.. ) They're silly enough to warrant wanting improvements, no? Just for sake of improvements, if nothing else?

 

I don't mind "the challenge" of watching the clown car full of zombies just blow up for no reason, most of the time it just makes trying to wake them up easier... I'm arguing that the mechanic IS bad, regardless of how well it is disguised and that the disguise is pretty terrible at the moment.

[Aldranon]

On 11/18/2020 at 8:53 PM, Roland said:

The bandits that "stealth" players hope for....

 

 

 

The bandits that "stealth" players will rage against...

 

 

AS LONG AS THE FIRST GROUP ARE HOLDING LEGENDARY WEAPONS AND THE SECOND GROUP IS OUT OF AMMO!!!

(Don't make me use four exclamation marks...)

 

Edit: And, if someone took me seriously:

With stealth, a player should never know the state of alertness of unmoving zombies or bandits.  

-They might look sleeping but they could have become more alert by other noises that just happened in another room.

-Some zombies might be more "fresh" or are turning ferial and are much more alert. 

 

TLDR: A player should only know what noise they are currently making.  But again, that doesn't include the state of others. 

 

[Aldranon]

3 hours ago, theFlu said:

Sure, I agree. Entirely. The knowledge of these silly game mechanics has been obtained purely by playing the game for myself. (EDIT: Oops, I guess I misspoke a little.. that means there has to have been an indication of "abnormal failure", repeatable, and I guess that means there would need to be a "normal failure" .. I do disagree that much, but no more, maybe.. ) They're silly enough to warrant wanting improvements, no? Just for sake of improvements, if nothing else?

 

I don't mind "the challenge" of watching the clown car full of zombies just blow up for no reason, most of the time it just makes trying to wake them up easier... I'm arguing that the mechanic IS bad, regardless of how well it is disguised and that the disguise is pretty terrible at the moment.

You sound like you're looking for a "reality game engine". 

To put you in good company before you imagine I'm insulting you: Albert Einstein, wanted a "reality engine" for reality. 

 

Everything was going great, until someone stepped on the huge, poopy pile that is Quantum Mechanics.

-Where some "things" travel instantly, no matter the distance.

-Where time is a fantasy and 90% of the mass of the universe, is there... and yet not there.

 

So your version of reality is what you want... just like Einstein.

[theFlu]

23 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

You sound like you're looking for a "reality game engine". 

To put you in good company before you imagine I'm insulting you: Albert Einstein, wanted a "reality engine" for reality.

Heh, thanks, I guess. And well, maybe - if I even get what you're saying .. I've loved the game for its simple and straightforward nature. Keeping it simple, tuning the good and relying on "added tricks" as little as possible. This is one of those little irksome changes where I can't really see the reason, and the gain is questionable at best.

Quite like that quantum mechanic "instant travel" .. of a preformated message that had to be delivered by some mundane means, unread, before both the sender and the receiver can now read it at the same time and pretend that the information traveled when they read it...

[Aldranon]

2 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Heh, thanks, I guess. And well, maybe - if I even get what you're saying .. I've loved the game for its simple and straightforward nature. Keeping it simple, tuning the good and relying on "added tricks" as little as possible. This is one of those little irksome changes where I can't really see the reason, and the gain is questionable at best.

 

That 7D2D zombies all pop up and attack simultaneously sometimes, could be a simple game balance trick and that's probably the long and the short of it all.  Almost every game has Game Balance as it's "Prime Directive", so to speak.

 

However, the point I was trying to make with Quantum Mechanics, was we the players don't really know what the final lore will be with the 7D2D Zombies/Infected/Whatever.

The list of what they could be and how they operate or are controlled even, is almost a complete unknown right now.