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

[theFlu]

5 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

 

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.

Sure, I don't know the master plan of the universe, let alone of the mighty TheFunPimps. Both of them have tested plenty of ideas and discarded them soon after, and I'm willing to bet that plenty of changes will still be made on both sides, so even the current state of things isn't indicative of much. We're all just shouting into the void for a lack of more pressing things to do. Maybe our shouts will be heard, maybe they won't, but at least we didn't bother to step outside instead of typing into the interwebs.

 

Forget my silly mine-ideas, and go for fixing some of the already existing oddness to reach a similar goal; like why wouldn't an aggravated zed occasionally make enough sound to wake all their friends? Maybe just by punching a fridge for the frustrated feeling of hunger combined with the faint memory of there being food there, but not having any idea how the handle on it works? Having "active sleepers" trying to live human lives but failing.. like sitting on the couch, trying to use the remote in an infinite loop.. trying desperately to walk out the front door .. sitting at the dinner table as a happy family, staring into the void in each others arms... each ready to shriek in frustration... sure these would get old too, fast, but... so do all silly tricks.

 

Might actually be damn creepy to see somewhat well done "old lives being lived"..

[Roland]

10 hours ago, theFlu said:

When that thing is localized to dozen rooms in the entire game,

Well, at least we agree that the “problem” is truly insignificant.

 

What’s funny about this idea that people can notice an auto aggro room on their own without any meta knowledge is that we know there are auto-aggro volumes and we also know they are rare and yet we have people who claim that every other room is auto aggroing. 
 

I bet they could remove every auto aggro room from the game and we would STILL have people complaining about them because it is so much more ego-friendly to blame a game mechanic than your own failure. 
 

I know this to be true because it has already happened with people complaining about auto aggro rooms in the hospital and the sky scrapers when in fact...those POIs have none. 

[theFlu]

Yup, now that the dozen rooms have been a topic of discussion for a while, there's no getting away from the endless complaints about them. Worth.

 

I don't know about what other people do, I used to do bug verification for a living - I still have a "suspicion file" on my desktop with the poi id "business_strip_old_04" as a suspect. I think that's the little shotty store in the middle and possibly the store room crew on top, but I never verified them as "real enough to report" before the topic popped up in the forums. There might be something fishy about the file, but it has a modify date in Oct '19..

[Aldranon]

42 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Sure, I don't know the master plan of the universe, let alone of the mighty TheFunPimps. Both of them have tested plenty of ideas and discarded them soon after, and I'm willing to bet that plenty of changes will still be made on both sides, so even the current state of things isn't indicative of much. We're all just shouting into the void for a lack of more pressing things to do. Maybe our shouts will be heard, maybe they won't, but at least we didn't bother to step outside instead of typing into the interwebs.

 

Forget my silly mine-ideas, and go for fixing some of the already existing oddness to reach a similar goal; like why wouldn't an aggravated zed occasionally make enough sound to wake all their friends? Maybe just by punching a fridge for the frustrated feeling of hunger combined with the faint memory of there being food there, but not having any idea how the handle on it works? Having "active sleepers" trying to live human lives but failing.. like sitting on the couch, trying to use the remote in an infinite loop.. trying desperately to walk out the front door .. sitting at the dinner table as a happy family, staring into the void in each others arms... each ready to shriek in frustration... sure these would get old too, fast, but... so do all silly tricks.

 

Might actually be damn creepy to see somewhat well done "old lives being lived"..

 

Or... would it be more scary that something (aliens, hive-mind, evil scientist) can control the Zombies and knows where you are (evidence: BM hordes, ambush rooms).  It/he/she wants you dead appears obvious.

 

Expanding on my hypothesis, this "something" is getting stronger each BM night and can control/create stranger minions each passing day.  The plot almost falls into place as the player must find clues and piece it all together.  Perhaps an end game fight on Day 666 or Day 777?  

 

Of course, TFP would not spend time to satisfy less than 1% of players who get that far.  Would they?

[Aldranon]

19 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

Expanding on my hypothesis, this "something" is getting stronger each BM night and can control/create stranger minions each passing day.  The plot almost falls into place as the player must find clues and piece it all together.  Perhaps an end game fight on Day 666 or Day 777?  

 

Of course, TFP would not spend time to satisfy less than 1% of players who get that far.  Would they?

OR!

A large POI appears every BM night in the exact middle of the map. The player has until dawn to explore the POI to try and stop the destruction of humanity!  At dawn the player has to be out or something bad happens to them.  What they damaged/killed inside the POI stays for next BM as it might be too hard otherwise. 

 

The POI is chocked full of legendary items as it should be as you're fighting the Blood Moon Horde AND what's in the POI

!!!!  (Note four exclamations were used, making it all very important)

[theFlu]

Scary as in dangerous/challenging, sure. Creepy as in spiders, I'm not convinced. Both goals would fit well for the game though

 

I'd guess the storyline will be designed for max 70 days, but I might be pleasantly surprised.. wouldn't be the first time. Combining horde nights with story progression would be pretty neat, although with the current mechanics, you'd be safe as houses in a massive POI in a horde night... The spawning would have to happen under separate rules, but that could easily be made interesting

[Aldranon]

18 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Scary as in dangerous/challenging, sure. Creepy as in spiders, I'm not convinced. Both goals would fit well for the game though

 

I'd guess the storyline will be designed for max 70 days, but I might be pleasantly surprised.. wouldn't be the first time. Combining horde nights with story progression would be pretty neat, although with the current mechanics, you'd be safe as houses in a massive POI in a horde night... The spawning would have to happen under separate rules, but that could easily be made interesting

 

Well, you would always start outside the massive POI, with the BM horde hot on your heels as you worked your way deeper into the POI the BM horde would be less of a threat as reinforcements take longer to get to you.

 

But, I brought all that up just to point out we just have very little idea what is going on with the lore or the plot. 

I suspect that TFP are not positive which direction they want things to go, as yet, but we are giving them possibilities and feedback. 

[Danidas]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Well, at least we agree that the “problem” is truly insignificant.

 

What’s funny about this idea that people can notice an auto aggro room on their own without any meta knowledge is that we know there are auto-aggro volumes and we also know they are rare and yet we have people who claim that every other room is auto aggroing. 
 

I bet they could remove every auto aggro room from the game and we would STILL have people complaining about them because it is so much more ego-friendly to blame a game mechanic than your own failure. 
 

I know this to be true because it has already happened with people complaining about auto aggro rooms in the hospital and the sky scrapers when in fact...those POIs have none. 

 

As we learned in this thread if the zombies exist and can be seen before they aggro then they are not auto aggro sleepers. Now if they popped into existence and immediately the whole room of zombies tried to maul you with out delay or any sound on your part then that would most likely be a auto aggro sleeper room. But even then it can be hard to tell with out repeated testing or looking at the POI in cheat mode to see how that room was flagged.

[Roland]

10 hours ago, Aldranon said:

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.

Whew! I needed that. I'm finally picking up what you're putting down... ❤️

[Aldranon]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

Whew! I needed that. I'm finally picking up what you're putting down... ❤️

My body looks human, but my brain was probably formed when a Vulcan and a Klingon had mind-meld while watching sitcoms!  It's a burden, but I did make lots of money from my interesting brain, so I can't complain too much.  

The best, was I could always make people laugh at work and home.

[Solomon]

On 11/20/2020 at 11:08 AM, theFlu said:

Forget my silly mine-ideas, and go for fixing some of the already existing oddness to reach a similar goal; like why wouldn't an aggravated zed occasionally make enough sound to wake all their friends? Maybe just by punching a fridge for the frustrated feeling of hunger combined with the faint memory of there being food there, but not having any idea how the handle on it works? Having "active sleepers" trying to live human lives but failing.. like sitting on the couch, trying to use the remote in an infinite loop.. trying desperately to walk out the front door .. sitting at the dinner table as a happy family, staring into the void in each others arms... each ready to shriek in frustration... sure these would get old too, fast, but... so do all silly tricks.

These actually sound good, they dont even need to get aggravated about how things dont work just make them generate enough sound that technically all zeds are awake around them.

[GreenGril76]

I don't think it's that bad.

Once you figure out what to look for (flimsy doors or broken floor blocks), sneaking around the POI is easy. Only the ones that bust out of bathroom stalls, or fall through the ceiling, will force you out in the open.

[JukkaZ31]

Just wow... reading this thread (and some others) i'm starting to think being an @%$# is a requirement for working at TFP. The mighty and noble devs can never be wrong and all differing opinions must be shot down and/or deleted. All i'm saying is yall could be a lot nicer and less confrontational with your FANS and CUSTOMERS.

[alanea]

1 hour ago, JukkaZ31 said:

Just wow... reading this thread (and some others) i'm starting to think being an @%$# is a requirement for working at TFP. The mighty and noble devs can never be wrong and all differing opinions must be shot down and/or deleted. All i'm saying is yall could be a lot nicer and less confrontational with your FANS and CUSTOMERS.

 

TFP itself rarely react in fiscussions ... dont judge them by moderator behavior lol

roland have  his own special way to treat people:D

 

he can tell whatever he want about "auto aggro room delusions"

 

but when you walk in melee range of sleeper withou waking him up or even shot in his room  .... and then walk out of room by doors 15 blocks away and trigger him thats what i call auto aggro room

[Danidas]

6 minutes ago, alanea said:

 

TFP itself rarely react in fiscussions ... dont judge them by moderator behavior lol

roland have  his own special way to treat people:D

 

he can tell whatever he want about "auto aggro room delusions"

 

but when you walk in melee range of sleeper withou waking him up or even shot in his room  .... and then walk out of room by doors 15 blocks away and trigger him thats what i call auto aggro room

Which is actually wrong as the auto aggro flag only comes into the play the exact second the zombies spawn into the world. As a result it's impossible to see auto aggro zombies in a sleeper state and the closest they can come is the awake state if your able to break their initial aggro on you.

 

The way zombies work with in POIs is that none exist until your just about to enter the room/area the level designer wants them to exist at. At which point they will spawn into existence according to one of three flags the designer can place on that encounter. Which are the default sleeper, very rare auto aggro, and lastly the almost non-existent awake flag state that is the rarest of all. Now as said before the zombies act on their flag the second they spawn into the world and do not change their state with out player interaction.

 

Lastly the level designers tend to do an amazing job hiding the spawn in mechanic and breaking the players line of sight of zombies literally popping into existence. As for how they do it the system uses a 3d box that is drawn over the whole encounter area and encompasses the intended a long with some of the unintended path to it. So the second a player enters the cube the zombies with in spawn into existence. Also note that no other triggers exist or come into play after the zombies are spawned in.

[Yark]

There are two rooms I know for certain that are auto-aggro. It's a very poor argument to just say to plan ahead and adjust your playstyle, especially if you're the type of person to talk about realism. Imagine putting on heavy armor, and then having a few rooms in the game where your armor value is set to zero. This is the equivalent of having rooms where your stealth is simply negated.

 

This type of design - giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was intentional - is about as cringe as "The Fun Pimps" as a company name itself.

[JCrook1028]

16 minutes ago, Yark said:

is about as cringe as "The Fun Pimps" as a company name itself.

Best name for a gaming company EVER! I absolutely love it. 

[Danidas]

5 hours ago, Yark said:

There are two rooms I know for certain that are auto-aggro. It's a very poor argument to just say to plan ahead and adjust your playstyle, especially if you're the type of person to talk about realism. Imagine putting on heavy armor, and then having a few rooms in the game where your armor value is set to zero. This is the equivalent of having rooms where your stealth is simply negated.

 

This type of design - giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was intentional - is about as cringe as "The Fun Pimps" as a company name itself.

The game is designed so that all you have to do is run away far enough to break aggro then you can swing back and restealth to take them out with sneak attacks. In other words no need to change your play style or load out at all and instead you just need to plan ahead just enough to be able to run away in the event they aggro. Which is no different then any other time that normal sleepers decide randomly to wake up after ignoring you for a uncomfortably long time.

 

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Yark said:

There are two rooms I know for certain that are auto-aggro. It's a very poor argument to just say to plan ahead and adjust your playstyle, especially if you're the type of person to talk about realism. Imagine putting on heavy armor, and then having a few rooms in the game where your armor value is set to zero. This is the equivalent of having rooms where your stealth is simply negated.

With a good explanation, why not? It would just be a special challenge (in other games it would be called a boss fight).

 

[Kalen]

7 hours ago, Yark said:

especially if you're the type of person to talk about realism

You can pick up your 4x4 and put it in your backpack.... lets not focus too much on realism.

[Ramethzer0]

Roland is prolly one of the most communicative but also well-spoken forum mods I've seen in action.

 

[Vaeliorin]

12 hours ago, Danidas said:

Which is actually wrong as the auto aggro flag only comes into the play the exact second the zombies spawn into the world. As a result it's impossible to see auto aggro zombies in a sleeper state and the closest they can come is the awake state if your able to break their initial aggro on you.

What are you basing this on?  I've seen (admittedly in modded POIs) zombies that were in a "sleeping" state suddenly get up and auto-aggro (and I know they auto-aggroed because they were like 30 blocks away and I had max From The Shadows, all the stealth books and was sneaking.)

 

It's not really a big deal as I don't mind auto-aggro rooms so much (though in late game they make me want to carry a firearm which I don't normally do outside of horde night.)

[Aldranon]

I'm just talking game fun/excitement here as I don't know any lore that could explain it beside some evil spirit thing and maybe that's what it will be.

 

Back to fun:

-For me, getting hit by an auto-argo room/area is what makes the game exciting as it's the only chance I get to be injured to the point where I have to think fast.  Dog/wolf packs falls into this category.

-I also try to not remember those rooms so it becomes a surprise again (slowly not working).

-If it wasn't for those rooms/events, the game would feel pretty flat and lifeless as most everything else feels too simple. 

-Food, early game, is fun too. 

[Kandrathe]

12 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Best name for a gaming company EVER! I absolutely love it. 

I appreciate the courage that it takes to stand up against the ever critical PC forces that would de-fang every FPS or gritty fantasy game until it was yet another "my little pony" adventure.  I have respect for TFP, and others like Rockstar, who deliver entertainment to their audience.  As a parent of two boys, I also never allowed them to play games for which their level of maturity were not prepared.  Just like, while I am responsible as their parent, would not allow them to engage in drinking, smoking, or other activity which requires mature discernment.  They are now both adults, and so they are free now to choose for themselves and without my opinion.  I don't want judgmental mobs removing my choices, even though in my personal morality, I may not choose those options.  I like freedom.

[Kandrathe]

On 11/20/2020 at 3:40 AM, Aldranon said:

 

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.

My own "lore" explanation is close to this because AGI/Stealth is focused on sound.  Humans, and therefore Zombies, have other senses which some feral zombies might react to and alert others.   I have no game mechanic for controlling my scent, for example.