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

[meganoth]

9 hours ago, hiemfire said:

(about digging zombies)

Aside from Bloodmoon hordes they really don't if the player keeps their ears open and takes their time (unperked crouch walking works) when moving around, digging or accessing their chests & workstations. Do need to take it down to at least one block below the first layer of stone, 1 layer of stone above the player's head I mean, before branching out though.

Yes, it is easy to defend against digging zombies if you follow some rules. And with stealth it is the same. "Have a gun for such rooms ready and loaded" is such a rule. In the early game that is a blunderbuss or two (in a20 it might be pipe pistols). Later you have excellent weapons with pistol, SMG and vulture. The second rule is: "You are fast, run". If you didn't fall in a trap you can always just run back from where you came and even ferals and glowies won't be fast enough to get you. And "run and gun" is in your perk tree.

 

 

[hiemfire]

3 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Yes, it is easy to defend against digging zombies if you follow some rules. And with stealth it is the same. "Have a gun for such rooms ready and loaded" is such a rule. In the early game that is a blunderbuss or two (in a20 it might be pipe pistols). Later you have excellent weapons with pistol, SMG and vulture. The second rule is: "You are fast, run". If you didn't fall in a trap you can always just run back from where you came and even ferals and glowies won't be fast enough to get you. And "run and gun" is in your perk tree.

 

 

So bring triple the gear, learn to jump high enough to clear 2 blocks (The POI that started me on this has a 1 way entrance, a 2 block drop into a small garage, with an auto-aggro volume trigger right at the entry to the next section waking that section up) and perk for something you're not using. Got it...

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Jenshae said:

I don't mean a bee-line. I mean, just knocking out walls 2-3 blocks away, so you enter every room without a chance of hitting a trigger. In a wood or flag stone house this is easy and now that my mining skills are maxed out, I even knock out a block in steel and concrete walls to shoot zombies I hear active on the other side.

In the rooms that auto aggro it shouldn't matter how or where you enter. Just by crossing into the volume is what triggers the zombies. If you are triggering zombies by going through the door but not by going through a wall, then you are failing at stealth in a situation where a perk or some prep work will actually work. It isn't an auto aggro volume if you can enter the volume and the zombies don't auto aggro. These rooms are rare in any particular POI (other than the new Firestation apparently) so if you are going into POIs and triggering room after room of zombies....you're doing something wrong.

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, hiemfire said:

So bring triple the gear...

That would be one way to go about it.  Probably even easier now that we have 2 more toolbelt slots added recently.

 

The prepared survivor is the alive survivor. 😀

[Tehnomaag]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

In the rooms that auto aggro it shouldn't matter how or where you enter. Just by crossing into the volume is what triggers the zombies. If you are triggering zombies by going through the door but not by going through a wall, then you are failing at stealth in a situation where a perk or some prep work will actually work. It isn't an auto aggro volume if you can enter the volume and the zombies don't auto aggro. These rooms are rare in any particular POI (other than the new Firestation apparently) so if you are going into POIs and triggering room after room of zombies....you're doing something wrong.

As far as I am aware these "agro volumes" actually have some specific trigger point. For example, in Red Mesa one of the trigger points is the few tiles in the corridor leading to the doorway of the loot room waking up all the sleepers around the corner. 

So the "correct" way of doing the Red Mesa is, apparently, going to the bunker tower, doing the hole into the wall of it and then shooting all the sleepers in the head through that hole and they will not wake up even if you step into the corridor they are sleeping in. You can even sneak right past them until you hit the trigger in front of that loot door doorway. 

The "aggro room" does not really provide suspense and excitement, in my opinion. It just specifically targets a "stealth gameplay" approach, but you learn these after the first three times getting raped and after that they are just there to ensure that a player just cheeses the POI by strategically avoiding the trigger tiles (by going, for example, through walls in key locations instead of using doorways). What these are, basically, are the trash-in-the-doorway but with NO VISUAL CUE THAT THEY ARE THERE and no proper way to do something to avoid these, because I consider it personally a form of "cheating" to go through a wall because I have a meta-game information that this particular patch of thin air in that doorway or entrance is a trigger. My character should not know that, but I do. 

The next level of "screw you", I have observed is, ofcourse, the scenario where the POI spawns the zeds at you from thin air. But I am not sure if this is somekind of a bug or is this the next level answer of to the POI designers to the players "cheesing" the room by going through a wall and killing their precious "surprise" sleepers before going through the sleeper volume trigger. Cant kill what is not there, after all, until you are served a dish of dozen ferals rushing you out of thin air. I am hoping that this is some kind of bug. But considering what I have observed in regards of POI design I would not put it past the devs for it to be deliberate. But if it is deliberate, then, please, at least have the decency of spawning the zeds few rooms away out of my direct sight, at least. Will not help in multiplayer as there could always be a player present to observe spawning of them, but at least when solo it would not be as immersion-breaking, maybe. 

[th3s0n1c]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

If you are triggering zombies by going through the door but not by going through a wall, then you are failing at stealth

Are you sure THAT is the problem? I think if you can kill a sleeping zombie after breaking the freaking wall but not by going quietly through the door, that speaks volume on what is failing here... and it's not the player.

[Jenshae]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

In the rooms that auto aggro it shouldn't matter how or where you enter. Just by crossing into the volume is what triggers the zombies. If you are triggering zombies by going through the door but not by going through a wall, then you are failing at stealth in a situation where a perk or some prep work will actually work. It isn't an auto aggro volume if you can enter the volume and the zombies don't auto aggro. These rooms are rare in any particular POI (other than the new Firestation apparently) so if you are going into POIs and triggering room after room of zombies....you're doing something wrong.

The big Shotgun Messiah, where you get to the roof with two towers and the arched roof frame you can drop down the middle.
There is a furnace with burning zombies hidden in the ceiling. I knock out some high blocks and create an angle to head shot them. I used to run in backwards, trigger them and run out and jump up onto the small furnace, which is easier but I hate this mechanic so much, that now I spend some extra time making sure to not hit the trigger and kill them. My small, "Screw you," that no one sees. *Shrug.*
I am at the point where I can rush through that room, turn around and blast them all away with the auto shotgun, blast the ones coming out of the medical room and then blast the ones coming through the door leading to the next room if I want. I still take the time to knock out blocks and head shot the burning zombies first.

As suggested earlier, there should be a way of stealthing it right. A zombie you have to shoot first, a trip wire you have to see and disarm, a control box with a motion sensor you need to shoot, etc. This way, there is a cause and effect. The player can still get the "fright" of doing it wrong the first few times and by the time they have memorised the room, they should have figured out how to disarm it. This would give the player ability to take control of the environment and not give them a powerless, *magic* mechanic, that has them irritated and cheating in retaliation to the game cheating.

I get the developers intentions and I don't disagree with them.

I disagree with the way they have implemented them.

[pApA^LeGBa]

It´s getting more riddiculous. Freaking high school has two triggers where no matter what they wake up., Looting the house next to it after that, i accidentally shot a shower curtain with the smg and the zombie that was standing right behind that curtain did not wake up. WTF? It´s so random and arbitrary. Frustrating af. 

 

And you can stand right outside that volume where they get triggered and shoot a gun. The Z in the drop ceiling won´t wake up. Even if you shoot the block he is standing on.

 

This is a fkn joke. 

 

@Roland Yes, you do trigger a room no matter where you enter. But it´s not always the whole room that is covered by the trigger area.

[meganoth]

8 hours ago, hiemfire said:

So bring triple the gear, learn to jump high enough to clear 2 blocks (The POI that started me on this has a 1 way entrance, a 2 block drop into a small garage, with an auto-aggro volume trigger right at the entry to the next section waking that section up) and perk for something you're not using. Got it...

It is your choice how you prepare. In your example the fitting preparation would be 4 wood for one ladder segment (or a wood frame) you put there so you can exit again.

 

To me such a drop into a confined space immediately rings all alarm bells. Even in a new POI and no matter which weaponry I have I always craft an exit before going down. Survival games tend to punish you for careless behaviour

 

 

[Jenshae]

Oh and if sneaking and smacking blocks made enough noise to wake the zombies in that furnace? I would frame my way around it, planting dynamite and just blow the whole room up.

Don't you all feel a bit foolish tripping the same *magic* trap over and over?

[Kalen]

4 minutes ago, Jenshae said:

Don't you all feel a bit foolish tripping the same *magic* trap over and over?

Nope.... I love that room.  10 or so zombies that can only come at you one at a time?   Like shooting fish in a barrel. 

[Jenshae]

Top of the Shamway factory, I knock a hole in the roof and snipe them from there, instead of walking into the collapsing floor and dropping onto the trash.

6 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Nope.... I love that room.  10 or so zombies that can only come at you one at a time?   Like shooting fish in a barrel. 

If that is your jam, you could still trip a wire or motion sensor with an alarm but at least you would have an option of how to handle the room.

[Kalen]

7 minutes ago, Jenshae said:

If that is your jam, you could still trip a wire or motion sensor with an alarm but at least you would have an option of how to handle the room.

Well, we're sort of going round in circles on this topic.   The fact of the matter is that, at this point, TFP do not want you to have options.   Now, people can discuss whether or not there should be options, but thats just one persons opinion against another persons opinion and if the history of this message board tells us anything, neither side is going to budge making the entire conversation an exercise in futility. 

 

Personally, I don't mind the way it is.... stealth is useful in some places (most places) and not useful in others.   I don't really worry about why that is the case and just adapt as needed.

[Jenshae]

52 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Personally, I don't mind the way it is.... stealth is useful in some places (most places) and not useful in others.   I don't really worry about why that is the case and just adapt as needed.

I will just cheat rather than being herded into the same trap repeatedly.

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, Jenshae said:

I will just cheat rather than being herded into the same trap repeatedly.

That's certainly your prerogative.  It's your game play how you like!

[Scyris]

6 hours ago, Tehnomaag said:

As far as I am aware these "agro volumes" actually have some specific trigger point. For example, in Red Mesa one of the trigger points is the few tiles in the corridor leading to the doorway of the loot room waking up all the sleepers around the corner. 

So the "correct" way of doing the Red Mesa is, apparently, going to the bunker tower, doing the hole into the wall of it and then shooting all the sleepers in the head through that hole and they will not wake up even if you step into the corridor they are sleeping in. You can even sneak right past them until you hit the trigger in front of that loot door doorway. 

The "aggro room" does not really provide suspense and excitement, in my opinion. It just specifically targets a "stealth gameplay" approach, but you learn these after the first three times getting raped and after that they are just there to ensure that a player just cheeses the POI by strategically avoiding the trigger tiles (by going, for example, through walls in key locations instead of using doorways). What these are, basically, are the trash-in-the-doorway but with NO VISUAL CUE THAT THEY ARE THERE and no proper way to do something to avoid these, because I consider it personally a form of "cheating" to go through a wall because I have a meta-game information that this particular patch of thin air in that doorway or entrance is a trigger. My character should not know that, but I do. 

The next level of "screw you", I have observed is, ofcourse, the scenario where the POI spawns the zeds at you from thin air. But I am not sure if this is somekind of a bug or is this the next level answer of to the POI designers to the players "cheesing" the room by going through a wall and killing their precious "surprise" sleepers before going through the sleeper volume trigger. Cant kill what is not there, after all, until you are served a dish of dozen ferals rushing you out of thin air. I am hoping that this is some kind of bug. But considering what I have observed in regards of POI design I would not put it past the devs for it to be deliberate. But if it is deliberate, then, please, at least have the decency of spawning the zeds few rooms away out of my direct sight, at least. Will not help in multiplayer as there could always be a player present to observe spawning of them, but at least when solo it would not be as immersion-breaking, maybe. 

 

yeah there is one poi that is really bad for the zombies out of thin air thing. the path leading into the room is a tunnel and to actually get into to the room (its the loot room) you have to go down a 2-3 block drop, and second you do, about 10-12 zombies just all spawn instantly out of thin air and immedatly chase you. I've kinda solved this room by getting parkour so I can jump a block higher, or, putting a wood frame down before I go in so I can quickly hop back out and remove the frame. Its not just this though that the devs screw stealth builds with. Have you every really looked at where they position sleepers? They are usually always in a spot you cannot get a clear shot at them from, always behind furnature or pallets etc. Then there is the trash piles always in front and behind doors in the intended path.

31 minutes ago, Kalen said:

That's certainly your prerogative.  It's your game play how you like!

Thats not allowed in 7dtd by the devs though as they consisitantly take away options from the player, it started with the digging zombies, then the vultures that can keep up with vehicles especially on horde night, now we have swimming zombies that can swim 2x as fast as the player can. I'd be less annoyed with it if they put a options in the new/continue game to disable digging/swimming/vultures, or if the digging was done properly. For example the only things that should be able to dig should be wolfs, zombie dogs and bears. On horde night for example, if you get on a vehicle, vultures get a speed boost, and also the game will deliberatly start spawning a ton of vultures till you get out of the vehicle. DO the same for digging zombies, and make them be dogs/wolfs/bears only. If you go underground on horde night, more of them spawn to dig to you, on non-horde nights those 3 types can still dig, but normal zombies cannot, so it makes underground bases viable again. This way digging enemeis would make sense as dogs and bears are known to dig.

 

The devs of 7dtd have been removing choice away from the player starting with a17, with the removable of learn by doing, and they other ways they keep removing tools the player has to play how they want.

 

P.s. Devs please fix sound aggro, a zombie should not hear me thru 10-15 blocks of material, I mean if I am firing a gun or using a auger/chain saw yeah it makes sense, but if I am just walking around?

[Kalen]

10 minutes ago, Scyris said:

The devs of 7dtd have been removing choice away from the player starting with a17

Thats one way of looking at it.... another way of looking at it is that they're removing the choices that don't fit with their vision of the game, which is their prerogative.   You can chose to accept these changes, mod them out, or play an older version.... plenty of choices, if you chose to exercise them.   They may not be choices you like, but they exist.

[Scyris]

5 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Thats one way of looking at it.... another way of looking at it is that they're removing the choices that don't fit with their vision of the game, which is their prerogative.   You can chose to accept these changes, mod them out, or play an older version.... plenty of choices, if you chose to exercise them.   They may not be choices you like, but they exist.

Yeah, but the most recent removal of choice is the worse, the a19 loot system, its just terrible and does not fit in a sandbox style game at all. Its removed much of the fun of the game for me and many others, as now loot is so linear its just boring to go looting. Needs to go back to A18 where you could find anything on day 1 (albet at a low tier due to low gs) as it was random and it'd make every game different. It still was gamestaged loot, as higher material items like steel and such had a very low chance to be in loot at low GS with the chances rising as Game stage went up. I play permadeath, I die I delete the save, so the removal of choice/randomless from loot really has hurt this playstyle as now every game is the exact same loot wise. Its made it boring, a19 has been my least played alpha to date, just too much removal of choice from the player and too much linear tunnel style gameplay choices by the devs. I've been around since a9-10.

 

As for difficulty, playing above nomad means nothing if you allow respawns, only time difficulty above nomad matters is when its permadeath, then it becomes an actual threat/challenge imo. If your gonna allow respawns you might as well play on nomad, as no matter how many times you die you can't actually lose.

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, Scyris said:

Yeah, but the most recent removal of choice is the worse, the a19 loot system, its just terrible and does not fit in a sandbox style game at all. Its removed much of the fun of the game for me and many others, as now loot is so linear its just boring to go looting. Needs to go back to A18 where you could find anything on day 1 (albet at a low tier due to low gs) as it was random and it'd make every game different. I play permadeath, I die I delete the save, so the removal of choice/randomless from loot really has hurt this playstyle as now every game is the exact same loot wise. Its made it boring, a19 has been my least played alpha to date, just too much removal of choice from the player and too much linear tunnel style gameplay choices by the devs. I've been around since a9-10.

Eh, I mostly like the current system.   I've made the argument before that I'd like to see a chance (a very small chance) for being able to find better items at any GS, but I also feel that item degradation needs to be included to balance that.   But, this is a discussion for another thread, as it doesn't really have anything to do with this topic.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Scyris Could you please stop. This is about stealth. We understood that you don´t like the new loot system, that is still in progress and nowhere near it´s final form, the first 1000 times you posted about it.

[hiemfire]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

To me such a drop into a confined space immediately rings all alarm bells. Even in a new POI and no matter which weaponry I have I always craft an exit before going down. Survival games tend to punish you for careless behaviour

1st room (which is the first "room" of the POI) had 1 tough (big mama) and 2 regular (a joe and a skater) which were fully expected and dealt with. Looted & salvaged that room while clearing noise traps and trash plies with no aggro while doing so. Move onto the next section. Single noise trap just past the doorway. Brightly lit. 4 high walls either side. Exit door from section is about 5 blocks across from entry and up a slope. Exit door is bracketed buy plywood covered windows. Break the noise trap, enter the "hall", begin to step to the side and both sets of plywood break dumping the staggering zombies, they did not faceplant, down the slope and into my face...

I'm just going to cm in a Rocket launcher a load of HE rockets and level the ranger stations whenever I start a new save from now on.

[Boidster]

5 hours ago, Jenshae said:

I will just cheat rather than being herded into the same trap repeatedly.

What you described above - creating better opportunities to take care of them before they take care of you, using the tools the game gives you - is not cheating. It's smart gameplay. Same for fashioning an exit before entering a potentially dangerous area. Same for putting down climb-able escape blocks before any (obviously a trap) 2+ block drops into rooms you can't see. These are S-M-R-T smart tactics.

 

11 hours ago, Tehnomaag said:

As far as I am aware these "agro volumes" actually have some specific trigger point. For example, in Red Mesa one of the trigger points is the few tiles in the corridor leading to the doorway of the loot room waking up all the sleepers around the corner. 

Sleeper volumes are actually volumes, not trigger points (though I suppose it's possible to set up a 1x1x1 volume to act as a trigger). For the loot room at Red Mesa, there is a volume that covers the room itself (but not tall enough to cover the hatch at the top, so you can open the hatch without triggering the volume) as well as the area outside the vault door.

 

There is another sleeper volume which wraps around behind the loot room. Surpisingly, only the 2nd volume appears to have actual sleepers in it. They both have the same Group ID, though, which I assume means that both volumes apply to the same sleepers.

 

Only the vault-room volume (the one bordered in green) is set to "Attack" on activation. The other is "Active" which I think activates their hearing, but does not automatically wake them up. So if you somehow entered this area from behind the room (in the blue-bordered volume), you could conceivably stealth-kill the sleepers before you enter the main (green-bordered) vault volume. Of course the One True Path leads you into the vault-room volume which sets all the zombies to attack immediately.

 

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, hiemfire said:

1st room (which is the first "room" of the POI) had 1 tough (big mama) and 2 regular (a joe and a skater) which were fully expected and dealt with. Looted & salvaged that room while clearing noise traps and trash plies with no aggro while doing so. Move onto the next section. Single noise trap just past the doorway. Brightly lit. 4 high walls either side. Exit door from section is about 5 blocks across from entry and up a slope. Exit door is bracketed buy plywood covered windows. Break the noise trap, enter the "hall", begin to step to the side and both sets of plywood break dumping the staggering zombies, they did not faceplant, down the slope and into my face...

I'm just going to cm in a Rocket launcher a load of HE rockets and level the ranger stations whenever I start a new save from now on.

What do you want to tell me with all this? It seems nothing is preventing you in this situation from running back from where you came, to regroup, restealth. Or is there?

 

[hiemfire]

Just now, meganoth said:

What do you want to tell me with all this? It seems nothing is preventing you in this situation from running back from where you came, to regroup, restealth. Or is there?

 

In the time it takes to turn to go back to the door, much less uncrouch while doing so, they were already attacking me and blocking the door to the garage thanks to the new break out --> stagger mechanic + going down a slope movement speed increase. 

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, hiemfire said:

In the time it takes to turn to go back to the door, much less uncrouch while doing so, they were already attacking me and blocking the door to the garage thanks to the new break out --> stagger mechanic + going down a slope movement speed increase. 

I mean if you're trying to prove that there are instances where stealth doesn't work.... mission accomplished.  Though, I don't think anyone doubted that it was true.   The majority of the time stealth is quite effective.   For the cost of 2 perks, that's a pretty good ROI.