Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Kalex]

Did they completely break stealth? Fully maxed out stealth, no armor, no light, crouched, not stepping on noise traps and as soon as you cross the threshold of the sleeper volume, they all wake up and come after. I know a number of streamers have been complaining about the same thing in their streams. The invisible line in some POIs is making stealth builds worthless.

[Jost Amman]

4 hours ago, Kalex said:

Did they completely break stealth? Fully maxed out stealth, no armor, no light, crouched, not stepping on noise traps and as soon as you cross the threshold of the sleeper volume, they all wake up and come after. I know a number of streamers have been complaining about the same thing in their streams. The invisible line in some POIs is making stealth builds worthless.

It's not how it works. When you enter a "trigger area" in POI, the trigger will wake up zombies, but if you stand still or move a bit away, depending on the situation, they will wander around but may not actually "see" you.

[Kalex]

13 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

It's not how it works. When you enter a "trigger area" in POI, the trigger will wake up zombies, but if you stand still or move a bit away, depending on the situation, they will wander around but may not actually "see" you.

This invisible triggers line completely defeats the purpose of stealth. Hell, I have been seeing them not even spawn in until AFTER the trigger point is hit. If I look into a room, I should be able to see any visible zeds and eliminate them and not have them magically appear in front of me when I bump a trigger line without lights or making noise and that is exactly what I and others have been seeing happen.

[Javabean867]

19 hours ago, Kalex said:

Did they completely break stealth? Fully maxed out stealth, no armor, no light, crouched, not stepping on noise traps and as soon as you cross the threshold of the sleeper volume, they all wake up and come after. I know a number of streamers have been complaining about the same thing in their streams. The invisible line in some POIs is making stealth builds worthless.

Part of the problem is with clear missions.  If they don't wake up at the trigger points, then it will take forever to finish those missions.  That is assuming that trigger poi ts actually exist...

 

There is a fun story about the borderlands game where people complained about the characters movement speed being too slow.  So they added more terrain features, didn't increase the movement speed,  and the complaints disappeared. 

 

It could simply be people's perception vs what is actually happening. 

[NekoPawtato]

1 hour ago, Kalex said:

If I look into a room, I should be able to see any visible zeds and eliminate them and not have them magically appear in front of me when I bump a trigger line

Regarding zombies magically spawning in your view, if you are following the "intended path", and this is a consistent thing that happens in a particular area of a specific POI, that would be a bug that you can report using the red banner at the top, I have reported a couple of those already. It's just a matter of them adjusting when the zombies spawn in.

You can see some of my example reports here, here and here all of which have been "confirmed" by the QA staff.

Edited May 3, 2022 by NekoPawtato (see edit history)

[Kalex]

On 5/3/2022 at 6:13 PM, NekoPawtato said:

Regarding zombies magically spawning in your view, if you are following the "intended path", and this is a consistent thing that happens in a particular area of a specific POI, that would be a bug that you can report using the red banner at the top, I have reported a couple of those already. It's just a matter of them adjusting when the zombies spawn in.

You can see some of my example reports here, here and here all of which have been "confirmed" by the QA staff.

Honestly, it shouldn't matter if you are using the intended path or not. If they are in the sleeper volume, they should be visible triggered or not.

[Syphon583]

13 hours ago, Kalex said:

Honestly, it shouldn't matter if you are using the intended path or not. If they are in the sleeper volume, they should be visible triggered or not.

I could very well be wrong here, but I think the issue comes down to resources. Loading a bunch of zombies into a POI (especially large POIs where the sleeper volumes can be quite numerous) is going to be taxing on the players system. There are trigger points for several reasons, the biggest likely being that loading individual volumes at a time keeps the game running as smoothly as possible.

 

I don't disagree with you that it would be better the other way, but in a game like this with the engine they are using, I don't think it's possible. Another option I can think of is maybe there needs to be 2 trigger volumes, one larger volume that triggers the zombies to appear in the POI but keeps them as objects only (no AI enabled), and then a second slightly smaller that "wakes" them (not literally wakes them, necessarily, but enables their AI). This might keep zombie volumes from waking up that aren't supposed to wake up until a certain point.

 

To your original post regarding the ability to sneak around and kill all of the zombies silently – I never disregard someone else playstyle. I for one love being able to sneak through a POI to stealthily take out all of the Z's. However, I would find the game quite boring if I was ALWAYS able to do that, especially in high-tier POIs. It's those "oh s&*t" moments that really make the game more exciting to me and I have to actually strategize the way I clear a building.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Syphon583 (see edit history)

[Roland]

18 hours ago, Kalex said:

Honestly, it shouldn't matter if you are using the intended path or not. If they are in the sleeper volume, they should be visible triggered or not.

I agree that they should spawn into the volume before the player gets to it. However I don't agree that they have to all stay asleep. You can still be stealthy vs awake enemies and kill them before they are aware of you. Most of the time when the zombies wake up they are NOT aware of you. I do hope that they can fix those POIs that have zombies spawning into their spots right in front of your eyes but I disagree that "stealth" is defined as being able to kill only sleeping enemies.

[Kalex]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

I agree that they should spawn into the volume before the player gets to it. However I don't agree that they have to all stay asleep. You can still be stealthy vs awake enemies and kill them before they are aware of you. Most of the time when the zombies wake up they are NOT aware of you. I do hope that they can fix those POIs that have zombies spawning into their spots right in front of your eyes but I disagree that "stealth" is defined as being able to kill only sleeping enemies.

Every time in the instances I was referring to, all of them in the volume are instantly aware of you and come running.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Kalex said:

Every time in the instances I was referring to, all of them in the volume are instantly aware of you and come running.

 

It can seem like that and I'm not saying they weren't aware of you in those instances. But a lot of times they are aware of where they heard the noise and they start running for that and if you crouch and shift away fast enough they go to the spot you were and don't go after you at all but, of course, if you stay there or openly defend yourself they will then see you and attack you. You can even keep a rock on your belt and the instant they wake up throw the rock. They will often either go for the rock right away or they will go to the spot where the noise was and then go to where the rock landed. I have tested this over and over and many times it really seemed like they were coming right at me but they did not and if I didn't switch right away to melee or guns blazing I could remain in stealth and headshot them one by one. 

 

That being said, sometimes they do come right at you and there is no time to crouch into the shadows or around a corner so you are absolutely correct that it does happen.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[spud42]

mind you it is a bit silly to crouch just outside a door and see a line of 4 zombies that you can shoot 1 by 1 with a crossbow.

 

Should a zombie wake up if the zombie in front of it gets headshot and ragdolls a somersault over its head??? 

[meganoth]

12 minutes ago, spud42 said:

mind you it is a bit silly to crouch just outside a door and see a line of 4 zombies that you can shoot 1 by 1 with a crossbow.

 

Should a zombie wake up if the zombie in front of it gets headshot and ragdolls a somersault over its head??? 

 

That should depend on whether the judges give the somersault a technical score better than 4.0.

 

 

😉

[thornnnn]

i didnt even have arrow slits.. they could see me inside windowless base.. and shot thru walls with vomit.. damaging all my interior boxes.. if cops can shoot your boxes thru walls this game is broken..