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

[theFlu]

Hmm, I smell trouble spawning in aggroed zeds from outside their volume. Sure, it depends on the floor plan. But, whenever such an encounter is meant to also trap the player - such as the apartment building trap room - wouldn't spawning the zeds early cause them to rush to the player's position via whatever path they find. They would end up breaking out of the apartment and going for the stairs to circle around the player. I guess that could also work as a trap, but it's not exactly the same encounter.. Point being, that wouldn't be a universal solution.

 

For the bears, they'd likely end up beating on a wall in frustration, negating the design of the encounter.

[Ramethzer0]

On 12/4/2020 at 11:48 AM, Yark said:

I can tell that you are an immensely intelligent man.

And I can tell you don't get fact checked very often when you use words improperly.

[Roland]

On 12/5/2020 at 12:37 PM, theFlu said:

Hmm, I smell trouble spawning in aggroed zeds from outside their volume. Sure, it depends on the floor plan. But, whenever such an encounter is meant to also trap the player - such as the apartment building trap room - wouldn't spawning the zeds early cause them to rush to the player's position via whatever path they find. They would end up breaking out of the apartment and going for the stairs to circle around the player. I guess that could also work as a trap, but it's not exactly the same encounter.. Point being, that wouldn't be a universal solution.

 

For the bears, they'd likely end up beating on a wall in frustration, negating the design of the encounter.

If the zombies spawned as you approached the spot where the floor crumbles beneath you, a first-time player wouldn't necessarily understand that the sounds of zombies aggroing somewhere nearby had anything to do with the trap. They would still likely move forward and possibly still fall into the trap. For repeat players, it would give them the opportunity to break the floor and shoot the zombies from above. I doubt that there would be time for the zombies to break free of the room and path up to the player. Also, it has already been established that the zombies that wake up in auto-aggro volumes do not have hordenight GPS ability on the player. Only those who see the player when they wake up make a target of the player and home in. Players that remain out of sight are not targeted and can hide and remain in stealth. In this case, the zombies would not be aware of the player above them being as how the player is out of sight and so they would be awake and aggravated but not pathing to specifically to the player.

 

I don't think that extending the y-axis of the sleeper volume in this particular case would be a bad thing and if @Yark's only real objection is that it is unfair that they spawn while you are in freefall so you have no options available to you, then that would be an acceptable solution in my mind. This particular case does not mean ALL auto aggro rooms are bad, however.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

If the zombies spawned as you approached the spot where the floor crumbles beneath you, a first-time player wouldn't necessarily understand that the sounds of zombies aggroing somewhere nearby had anything to do with the trap. They would still likely move forward and possibly still fall into the trap. For repeat players, it would give them the opportunity to break the floor and shoot the zombies from above. I doubt that there would be time for the zombies to break free of the room and path up to the player. Also, it has already been established that the zombies that wake up in auto-aggro volumes do not have hordenight GPS ability on the player. Only those who see the player when they wake up make a target of the player and home in. Players that remain out of sight are not targeted and can hide and remain in stealth. In this case, the zombies would not be aware of the player above them being as how the player is out of sight and so they would be awake and aggravated but not pathing to specifically to the player.

 

I don't think that extending the y-axis of the sleeper volume in this particular case would be a bad thing and if @Yark's only real objection is that it is unfair that they spawn while you are in freefall so you have no options available to you, then that would be an acceptable solution in my mind. This particular case does not mean ALL auto aggro rooms are bad, however.

Hmm.. I tend to stop and figure out what started to make noises in survival games, but that might not be common, sure. It is an early warning though, which is fine, preferable even, for the specific case of the apartment building. Not so great for the Bear Den-style "this is clearly a hole I'm meant to jump in with no way back" sort of places. Active zeds there would kinda spoil the trap, it's no longer just a bad idea, it's literally full of zeds down there.

 

I'm not entirely convinced about the auto-aggro-crew Not moving to the player. That's mostly because I haven't tested it to that level.. I know they don't have feral senses (GPS), and you can "lose" them, but they seem to start Moving Somewhere the moment they wake up. That Somewhere is likely the location of the player that triggered the room. Merely my gut instincts from normal playing, but I would have to see something that counters it to doubt it..   IF they start the normal "pathing to a spot", they will go through blocks to get there.. and the apartment building trap group is large enough to get through the door quite fast, especially later in the game with glowies and such.. not that I remember if the staircase there is even pathable; I just used that as an example.

 

But overall, it can be made to work, might just need to rework some of the places where auto-aggro has been used.

[Danidas]

In my experience they GPS to your general location when they aggro but quickly loss track of you afterwards. Which results in them pathing towards where you were when they got triggered to spawn in. But if you get far enough away to a safe distance they will begin to break aggro and go into search mode until they fully loss aggro or get close enough to redetect you. Now while in search mode they will head in the general direction of where they last saw you and can be distracted by throwing rocks. Lastly the higher your From the Shadows is the faster they will give up and fully loss aggro.

 

 

[Jenshae]

I was going to write a script to edit all of the XML flags, however, we switched to another game instead. 

[PinkLed5]

I'm not gonna read all the replies, but I main a stealth build.  Padded armor, advanced muffled connectors, From the Shadows, and Hidden Strike.  I love stealth in this game. I also love that sometimes I'm surprised by agroed zeds.  95% of the time though, I can clear a PoI without waking a single zed.

[Roland]

On 12/21/2020 at 1:56 PM, Jenshae said:

I was going to write a script to edit all of the XML flags, however, we switched to another game instead. 

Let me guess!

 

Fish-in-a-Barrel: The Stealth Shooting Game

 

[Jenshae]

On 12/23/2020 at 12:03 AM, Roland said:

Let me guess!

 

Fish-in-a-Barrel: The Stealth Shooting Game

Instead of being sarcastic, Fun Pimps could look to better stealth games for inspiration. Thief came out in 1998, I seriously doubt the mechanics used in that game would be very taxing on modern hardware (mileage varies with implementation).

7 Days to Die relying on a *magic* mechanic to always trigger a volume, is like films that rely on cheap tricks to startle the audience, half way through the film, it gets boring and you might hang on just to see the ending.

[Roland]

You think me being sarcastic in response to a “I was going to do something but decided to move on instead” post means that TFP can’t work to improve stealth? You have far too high a view of my powers. Believe me, what the programmers actually do and what I joke about have zero causal ties and they certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. 
 

Have fun with your new game. 😀

[Jenshae]

18 hours ago, Roland said:

You think me being sarcastic in response to a “I was going to do something but decided to move on instead” post means that TFP can’t work to improve stealth? You have far too high a view of my powers. Believe me, what the programmers actually do and what I joke about have zero causal ties and they certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. 
 

Have fun with your new game. 😀

You think don't think the developers read the forums? 
That the general annoyance at the steep game stage curve in Alpha 18 fell on deaf ears?

So, when you have a post mocking someone and a lot of people add reactions, laughing at what you said, it can look like everyone is laughing at the concerns of the players. That and it being you, probably has more impact than you think.

 

Most developers only read the forums because:

• It saves time to not type out replies
• It looks like they are undermining or do not trust their community staff and volunteers if they keep stepping in.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Jenshae said:

You think don't think the developers read the forums? 

I think you can't take a joke...

 

3 hours ago, Jenshae said:

That the general annoyance at the steep game stage curve in Alpha 18 fell on deaf ears?

I don't know what this means. I don't remember this being of any concern or annoyance. iirc, A18 still had different gamestage modifiers for each level of difficulty and that modifier could easily be adjusted-- same, in fact as A17 and A16.  It was A19 that changed to a uniform gamestage across all difficulties and tied loot quality and enemy difficulty to gamestage. So I guess if you were playing on Insane in A18 and then stayed on insane in A19 it might have felt like TFP softened the game stage curve which I guess they did-- but it was all done to unify the loot and enemy progression under gamestages and to de-couple gamestage from the difficulty option. It wasn't because the devs read about universal annoyance at how fast gamestage ramped up in A18 as opposed to A17 or A16. If someone express annoyance at how quickly Demolishers were appearing they would have probably told them to lower their difficulty or change the modifier value in the xml.

 

3 hours ago, Jenshae said:

So, when you have a post mocking someone and a lot of people add reactions, laughing at what you said, it can look like everyone is laughing at the concerns of the players. That and it being you, probably has more impact than you think.

You basically said you and your friends were done with this game and moving on. What do you care? Why are you still engaging here if your group isn't playing 7 Days to Die any longer?My joke was poking fun at the idea that people are essentially asking for enemies to remain asleep 100% of the time and calling that better stealth mechanics. It is a ridiculous stance, imo, and I don't think some people really even get that that is what they are asking for when they request for auto aggro rooms to be removed or create a mod that turns all the flags to zero. These people are not wording that way but when it boils down to the results of what the game would be like if they got their way it would be every room in every POI 100% of the time always filled with unconscious enemies that you always have first chance to shoot in the head AKA "fish-in-a-barrel shooting game". So my JOKE was just a general commentary on what I consider to be a detrimental request and not really at your personal expense. My dismissive TONE was in reaction to someone who feels it necessary to tell the community that their entire group has decided to drop the game and move on. That was all for you.

 

3 hours ago, Jenshae said:

Most developers only read the forums because:

• It saves time to not type out replies
• It looks like they are undermining or do not trust their community staff and volunteers if they keep stepping in.

The developers read the forums to get a sense of what people are concerned about. They also read twitter, facebook, discord, reddit, and steam. Not prolifically, of course, and not every team member reads everything. Some read this and some read that and we often talk about the concerns we read about. The number one reason they don't reply is because they don't know the answer or can't reveal the answer-- usually because things are still in flux and they know if they say something, readers will hold them to it as though it was a promise.

 

Worry about undermining my or any of the other moderator's authority is not even a conscious concern of any of the developers. If Joel felt he needed to put me in my place for some reason, he would not hesitate or hold back. If my joke offended you, then I'm sorry. It was meant as a tongue-in-cheek jibe at the potential end result if one faction of the community gets their way. It was not against you personally. I admit that I don't particularly care for goodbye posts. I find them melodramatic and unnecessary. When I'm done playing a game I just stop playing. I don't go to that game's forum and announce to all the people who still care about the game that me and mine are finished and have moved on. That is probably where you are feeling the tone of my posts hitting you personally.

Of course, if you're NOT really done with the game then my tone doesn't really apply to you after all so just shake it off.

[Jost Amman]

On 12/28/2020 at 5:32 PM, Jenshae said:

Instead of being sarcastic, Fun Pimps could look to better stealth games for inspiration. Thief came out in 1998, I seriously doubt the mechanics used in that game would be very taxing on modern hardware (mileage varies with implementation).

7 Days to Die relying on a *magic* mechanic to always trigger a volume, is like films that rely on cheap tricks to startle the audience, half way through the film, it gets boring and you might hang on just to see the ending.

Actually I do agree that the auto-trigger rooms should be removed or at least changed. In the past there has been a passionate discussion about this, and I've personally expressed my concerns to the devs after which I've been "educated" directly by faatal on the matter.

 

That being said the current stealth mechanic is not so bad, it's just that it isn't applied consistently all over. Auto trigger rooms are an example, but I also don't like that wardrobe doors (the ones behind which sleepers sometimes hide), when destroyed with an arrow don't wake up zombies. At the same time, if you destroy anything else nearby, the entire room immediately wakes up!

 

There's also the other, more technical problem of "sound dampening", meaning that currently the sound is not reduced by walls but only by distance. This creates situations in which you can inadvertently attract the attention of zombies outside a POI when breaking something that is deep inside the walls of a house while at the same time some actions won't wake up a sleeper in your same room!

 

So I think the main reason they used auto-triggers is because they couldn't reproduce the desired "alarm" effect by using the current sound/hearing system. This, in turn, has probably been done also for performance reasons, since checking how every sound is perceived by every zombie can take a toll on the game engine. BTW: as far as I know performance is also the reason they removed the already working smell mechanic and never reintroduced it. 

[Jenshae]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

You basically said you and your friends were done with this game and moving on. What do you care? 

Alpha 20.

[Yark]

Seems like this community is full of people who aren't quite sharp enough to understand this criticism in general. As Jenshae said, auto-aggro is just a cheap trick. In contrast to what most of you morons seem to think, it doesn't actually make the game more challenging. 

 

I guess you'd like it if medical bandages sometimes, instead of healing you, reduced your health by half its current amount. Wouldn't that be interesting and challenging? 

 

Most of you won't understand this comparison any more than you understand the topic anyway, so it's pretty pointless. Like trying to teach long division to Aboriginals. 

[Roland]

34 minutes ago, Yark said:

Seems like this community is full of people who aren't quite sharp enough to understand this criticism in general. As Jenshae said, auto-aggro is just a cheap trick. In contrast to what most of you morons seem to think, it doesn't actually make the game more challenging. 

 

I guess you'd like it if medical bandages sometimes, instead of healing you, reduced your health by half its current amount. Wouldn't that be interesting and challenging? 

 

Most of you won't understand this comparison any more than you understand the topic anyway, so it's pretty pointless. Like trying to teach long division to Aboriginals. 

 

Oh....we get it just fine. And I can teach long division to anyone....

 

As for your medical bandage analogy, you are the one who is proving your ignorance. What it would ACTUALLY be like is if when you used a medical bandage, instead of automatically healing 100% of the time without needing to do anything else, 10% of the time you'd have to go through a minigame of washing the wound and stitching it up carefully and applying some antibacterial ointment before applying the bandage in order to get the healing.

Since I know you won't understand this truer analogy unless it is painstakingly explained to you step by step I will do that for you-- Hey! Exactly the same as what I would do if teaching long division to an Aborigonal....

 

1) Putting on a bandage and having it automatically heal your wound with no other effort 90% of the time is like entering 90% of the sleeper volumes and being able to shoot unconscious enemies in the head-- practically an auto-kill.

2) Putting on a bandage and having it not work automatically 10% of the time and instead having you perform some kind of skill-based first aid mini game is like entering an auto-aggro  sleeper volume where instead of shooting immobile targets and getting your easy guaranteed kill you have to play a sort of minigame of retreating, hiding, re-emerging and shooting conscious roaming enemies in the head.

 

Finally, when you perceive that an entire community seems stupid beyond belief and it is only you and maybe one other person who is sane, it really is time to look in the mirror and do some soul searching

 

 

[Synvastian]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Oh....we get it just fine. And I can teach long division to anyone....

 

As for your medical bandage analogy, you are the one who is proving your ignorance. What it would ACTUALLY be like is if when you used a medical bandage, instead of automatically healing 100% of the time without needing to do anything else, 10% of the time you'd have to go through a minigame of washing the wound and stitching it up carefully and applying some antibacterial ointment before applying the bandage in order to get the healing.

Since I know you won't understand this truer analogy unless it is painstakingly explained to you step by step I will do that for you-- Hey! Exactly the same as what I would do if teaching long division to an Aborigonal....

 

1) Putting on a bandage and having it automatically heal your wound with no other effort 90% of the time is like entering 90% of the sleeper volumes and being able to shoot unconscious enemies in the head-- practically an auto-kill.

2) Putting on a bandage and having it not work automatically 10% of the time and instead having you perform some kind of skill-based first aid mini game is like entering an auto-aggro  sleeper volume where instead of shooting immobile targets and getting your easy guaranteed kill you have to play a sort of minigame of retreating, hiding, re-emerging and shooting conscious roaming enemies in the head.

 

Finally, when you perceive that an entire community seems stupid beyond belief and it is only you and maybe one other person who is sane, it really is time to look in the mirror and do some soul searching

 

 

Damn....I leave for 3 months without checking in and Roland is still swinging like a champ, people are still complaining about stealth (I was too, so don't think i'm immune to backlash lol) I've played a few hrs recently and noticed stealth still has issues, auto trigger rooms suck but are manageable with a thief mentality ("when in doubt know your way out", blind corners and a couple floor explosives if need be) but normal POIs are easy as heck with full cloth/stealth boots/machete/bow...playing only on nightmare/always run and doing POIs at night with either a helmet light or NVGs if im lucky is my favorite way to play...they aren't any harder at night than day so the low visibility is actually helpful

[Jenshae]

11 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Oh....we get it just fine. And I can teach long division to anyone....

 

As for your medical bandage analogy, you are the one who is proving your ignorance. What it would ACTUALLY be like is if when you used a medical bandage, instead of automatically healing 100% of the time without needing to do anything else, 10% of the time you'd have to go through a minigame of washing the wound and stitching it up carefully and applying some antibacterial ointment before applying the bandage in order to get the healing.

What you are describing, sounds like 10% of the time, you have to disable alarms or kill a particular zombie first because you can make logical actions to the desired out come.

The aggro rooms are more like the wound suddenly exploding with smurfs for no logical reason, which you then need to swat with a frying pan before you can stop the bleeding.

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Jenshae said:

What you are describing, sounds like 10% of the time, you have to disable alarms or kill a particular zombie first because you can make logical actions to the desired out come.

The aggro rooms are more like the wound suddenly exploding with smurfs for no logical reason, which you then need to swat with a frying pan before you can stop the bleeding.

 

First part, the exploding stuff, really sounds like a better analogy to the auto-aggro room. But applying the frying pan needs no skill at all, it is a boring single click action without choice or gameplay. Please go back to the drawing board if you want to improve Rolands analogy.

 

PS: In the old game "Thief", could the main character restealth himself after he was detected? I.e. if he hid in a dark corner or ran away for example

[Roland]

5 hours ago, Jenshae said:

What you are describing, sounds like 10% of the time, you have to disable alarms or kill a particular zombie first because you can make logical actions to the desired out come.

The aggro rooms are more like the wound suddenly exploding with smurfs for no logical reason, which you then need to swat with a frying pan before you can stop the bleeding.

Now see?  I can appreciate your joke. 

 

What I’m a little confused about is how you could berate me for my sarcasm against a particular play style but then approve the post of @Yark that blatantly calls people morons, insults the community, and skates the edge of racism against the indigenous people of Australia.  But they did it to defend you so that “thanks” emoji is warranted....I guess. 

[Yark]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Now see?  I can appreciate your joke. 

 

What I’m a little confused about is how you could berate me for my sarcasm against a particular play style but then approve the post of @Yark that blatantly calls people morons, insults the community, and skates the edge of racism against the indigenous people of Australia.  But they did it to defend you so that “thanks” emoji is warranted....I guess. 

You're playing a game where you turn the living dead into a mess of flesh and bone and blood. Don't be so thin-skinned over the inability of all human populations to perform on the same intellectual level. 

[Jost Amman]

22 minutes ago, Yark said:

You're playing a game where you turn the living dead into a mess of flesh and bone and blood. Don't be so thin-skinned over the inability of all human populations to perform on the same intellectual level. 

Thank God that Yark is here to educate us all! 

Just by reading your posts I already feel a bit smarter! Thank you so much! 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Yark said:

You're playing a game where you turn the living dead into a mess of flesh and bone and blood. Don't be so thin-skinned over the inability of all human populations to perform on the same intellectual level. 

Now look...you just completely missed that what I was actually being "thin-skinned" over was the hypocrisy shown by @Jenshae. But that's fine, because I actually do understand the variations of intellectual levels of people.

[Jenshae]

... and back to our regular scheduled programming before a mod closes down this thread for drama ...

I can think of one reason Thief mechanics would be challenging to implement. In Thief they have fixed scenes in which, they can simply manually demarcate where you are concealed in shadows and by how much.

7 Days to Die would have to add up factors and light sources. 
- Objects of one block or two between player and zombie, player using % of that concealment. (Moving to peak the corner, standing on a quarter block behind a single full block, etc)
-  Camouflage factors. (Under a tree, in grass, ect)
- Direction of light sources and where shadows would be, plus recalculating them if a light source is shot with an arrow. (This would be the worst one to figure out, however, I think it would have amazing aesthetic benefits with different depths to shadows.)

[Danidas]

2 hours ago, Jenshae said:

... and back to our regular scheduled programming before a mod closes down this thread for drama ...

I can think of one reason Thief mechanics would be challenging to implement. In Thief they have fixed scenes in which, they can simply manually demarcate where you are concealed in shadows and by how much.

7 Days to Die would have to add up factors and light sources. 
- Objects of one block or two between player and zombie, player using % of that concealment. (Moving to peak the corner, standing on a quarter block behind a single full block, etc)
-  Camouflage factors. (Under a tree, in grass, ect)
- Direction of light sources and where shadows would be, plus recalculating them if a light source is shot with an arrow. (This would be the worst one to figure out, however, I think it would have amazing aesthetic benefits with different depths to shadows.)

 

The thing is the devs have officially stated multiple times that this isn't a stealth game nor is it ever going to be as they have no intention of making it one. Instead stealth is nothing more then a tacked on feature to check off the "Does game have Stealth?" check box with just the basic framework to make it mostly work. The same as brawling checks off the "Can you play by punching zombies to death?" check box with a similar degree of effort from the devs to make it mostly work.

 

As a result of this it's foolish to expect anything beyond basic minimal effort from the devs with a "Keep it Simple Stupid" or KISS approach. Especially when you consider that multiple times the devs have indicated that their top focus is hitting the Gold status in the game so they can move on to the next game. Which they still have a large chunk of game to do including the most difficult part in the form of NPCs who will literally be a massive game changer. As we are getting enemies with guns who will be far more deadly than anything we have now. Also lets not forget the special infected who will impact the classic run and gun play style the most as combined with NPCs it will be far easier to deal with them via stealth. 

 

Now as for stealth in A20 we already know that they may tweak the very rarely used Awake Sleeper Volume to be less destructive and easier for them to use. As a result the zombies will most likely end up awake and wondering their spawn area but not destroying everything in their way. Which will create hyper alert zombies that are harder to predict to spice up stealth. Other then that the realist in me strongly doubts that we will see much more in regards to stealth.

 

Personally I still enjoy playing stealth in this game quite a lot but I know and respect the reality that it will never be good enough to forgo the rest of the game to focus completely on.