The weird implementation of stealth and its counter measures.

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

So I wonder if you could place frame blocks past a doorway that marked the edge of a volume to create a completely dark small space and then move across the trigger point in darkness and pass the skill check and then remove the frame blocks... lol

 

Yes you can. I built a box with just one opening (sort of a tunnel; I was experimenting with how stealth value changed with how far the "open to air" block was). Mr. Sleeper is right behind the wall where the cursor is pointing. Note that my stealth only got down to 12 (3 levels in FtS). The volume boundary is in green; I've crossed over it to stand on the wood blocks - normally he wakes up at this point.

 

 

He didn't wake up so I destroyed most of the blocks and then just snuck right up to him in broad daylight.

 

 

For my next test, I built just a wall offering some shade and blocking line-of-sight to the sleeper. He was not fooled this time. Kind of a bummer that LoS isn't part of the check for a volume trigger. Seems to only based on how much light is hitting you even if the Zs can't see you or the light.

 

 

This doesn't work either:

Edited December 15, 2021 by Boidster (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

24 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Kind of a bummer that LoS isn't part of the check for a volume trigger. Seems to only based on how much light is hitting you even if the Zs can't see you or the light.

I hope this is a bug since it doesn't match up to what I recall @faatal describing as the intention. Iirc LOS from the player to the zombie was needed for the zombie to attack, though even with that having large amounts of light in an aggressive volume completely defeats the purpose of the perk check part of the stealth rework. Iirc from A19 the POI designers also love to set the volume thresholds across access points that the player cannot sneak through too which makes the perk check pointless in those instances.

 

Have you tried sneaking away from where you enter the volume staying within the volume before the sleeper acquires LOS? Might need a ramp down to the rooftop to do so without setting up too big of a bread crumb.

[Boidster]

12 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

I hope this is a bug since it doesn't match up to what I recall @faatal describing as the intention. Iirc LOS from the player to the zombie was needed for the zombie to attack

 

I think we both could be correct (and obviously we assume that faatal is correct). What I meant was only that for the purposes of determining whether a sleeper in an Attack volume wakes up, LOS doesn't seem to matter. The last image was kind of a joke, but it illustrates the point. The sleeper was encased in a light-proof tomb of wood and yet it still detected me. Note that sound-based detection wouldn't explain it since in the circumstance where I encased myself in a dark box, but all other things equal, the sleeper wasn't able to detect me (i.e. it couldn't hear me shuffling around in my dark shelter). That led to my suggestion that - in cases where you're being quiet enough - it's only the amount of light falling on the player that determines detection, not LOS.

 

As for the zombie targeting the player, I didn't really test that. Your test (trying to sneak away and hide) would be a good one. I could also change zombie speed to Run when aggroed so I could easily tell whether they were just investigating or really locked on. I will say that in the test where I just built a tall wall which blocked LOS (but I and the zombie were both in daylight), the zombie immediately walked around the wall to get to me. It couldn't see me, it couldn't hear me, but it woke up knowing where I was. Kind of odd, but wouldn't really bother me too much in an actual game.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Boidster (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

37 minutes ago, Boidster said:

I will say that in the test where I just built a tall wall which blocked LOS (but I and the zombie were both in daylight), the zombie immediately walked around the wall to get to me. It couldn't see me, it couldn't hear me, but it woke up knowing where I was. Kind of odd, but wouldn't really bother me too much in an actual game.

I suspect it was pathing to where you entered the volume, which fits what I recall being explained was planned.

 

Anyway, having light level affect the trigger is really messed up since it effectively ends up being no change from A19 for most of the gameday, POIs are pretty well lit up inside during the day in A20 from what I've seen in vids, and possibly puts sneaking in a worse place than in A19 with the expansion from about 1/3rd of the POIs having aggressive volumes to just over 2/3rds of the POIs in A20, per your analysis in a previous post, having aggressive volumes with about 1/7th of all of the POIs in game that have sleepers being nothing but aggressive volumes.

Edited December 16, 2021 by hiemfire (see edit history)

[meganoth]

Did a test now with rural_church_01 which isn't quite as good for testing as I had hoped. I made a new game and immediately buffed myself to Shadow perk level 5, also gave myself the urban combat books that made jumps and walking over trash silent. I wanted to see the "optimum" in stealthiness against basic zombies, i.e. it should be a cakewalk. Spoiler: It wasn't

 

I first tested the church in broad daylight and sadly the interior of the church was really flooded with light (I had hoped for dimmed light to give my stealth a chance). So no surprise that crossing the line immediately woke up all zombies. So far so expected.

 

Then I went to a new rural_church_01 somewhere else and repeated the test at midnight. Outside it was still possible to see silhouettes, inside I didn't think my (real live) vision would suffice so I added night vision goggles. I went in and none of them woke up. When I shot one with a silenced Desert Vulture the rest woke up though, so my stealth didn't go that far. Naturally that begs the question what use a silencer in that gun has at all.

 

So I ran outside and tried to restealth after running for about 30 meters. Success. They had come after me a little but were standing around now again.

 

But then I tried to walk to a better position and with my stealth meter going up from 2 to about 8 immediately all 3 zombies spotted me!

Now this were only basic zombies, it was night (though outside with a bit of light presumably) and I was perked as far as possible. And still all 3 immediately noticed me. There might be random rolls involved and I just had bad luck, but if not then stealth has been nerfed drastically I would say.

 

This conforms with my SP game where I am playing stealth at the moment and where stealth has lost much of its value. At day time it has almost no effect and i hardly have 1-2 stealth kills in a POI. And only or mostly doing quests in the night seems fairly limiting and as can be seen fails a lot too. The problem might not be the aggressive rooms at all but simply stealth being nerfed too far at the moment.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

13 minutes ago, meganoth said:

When I shot one with a silenced Desert Vulture the rest woke up though, so my stealth didn't go that far. Naturally that begs the question what use a silencer in that gun has at all.

From my experience in A19, firearms, even with the suppressor, make too much noise to stealth clear POI's. They're great for not pulling in extra wanderer's while you clear a POI or if you want to pop a wandering zombie from long distance without attracting the attention of others near it though. By long distance I mean from one side of a large parking lot to the other.

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

This conforms with my SP game where I am playing stealth at the moment and where stealth has lost much of its value. At day time it has almost no effect and i hardly have 1-2 stealth kills in a POI. And only or mostly doing quests in the night seems fairly limiting and as can be seen fails a lot too. The problem might not be the aggressive rooms at all but simply stealth being nerfed too far at the moment.

Ya, the lighting adjustment mentioned in the A20 change log raised my eyebrows when I first read it and I think it might be what "nerfed" sneaking. Hopefully they're able to get it tuned right since outside of POI's in A19 sneaking around at night was really easy even at low-no perk investment as long as you were patient, kept the headlamp/flashlight/etc. turned off and knew how to stick to the shadows. Not having sneaking viable outside at all during the day is problematic though.

 

Looking back over the change/fix log these being tweaked/fixed may have something to do with it:

Quote

Improved stealth ambient light calculation 

Stealth was affected by brightness option

Player stealth light level was not set correctly for PassiveEffects LightMultiplier

 

And if Aggressive Volumes reference the light level of the player when the volume's Stealth check is triggered...

[Viktoriusiii]

Point taken.

It FELT very much (and I thought it was explained like that as well) like basicially every room is a auto-wakeup room.
But if that is not the case, I withdraw my point. But yeah an official description WOULD help.

 

7 hours ago, Boidster said:

Setting aside the inherent contradiction between "auto wakeup" and "after an RNG roll"...yes and? Isn't this how every game since ever has handled this mechanic? "Roll your sneak skill" says the DM. The enemy has a chance to detect you. Your stealth (or lack) affects how likely that chance is to succeed. You can make a valid argument that the current balance regarding the chance to detect you leans too strongly in the zombies' favor. And that argument might not require 40 lines of text.

There is a difference though. A game where the player can not impact the results with skills is inherantly different than one where he can.
A game where skill matters should not use RNG (or at least the absolute minimum possible amount), because otherwise the player starts feeling cheated.
Like me right now. Even though I have 3/5 sneaking, it still feels like every room wakes up once I enter it, meaning I have stopped playing a sneaky character, because there is no use anyways.
If the game descides when a zombie wakes up, then what I do doesn't matter (enough). This is a bad design.

Yes 7d2d is not a pure stealth-game, but if you skill into stealth, it should be considered under the same rules:

Imagine if in splinter cell you sneak up to a guard and it suddenly, for no reason hears you. "Well you mjust have stepped on a pile of paper that wasn't visible, but who knows?"
Not only would it not be fair, it would actively hurt the stealthmechanics.
If I have the choice between two mechanics, but one of them punishes me for using it... why owuld I use it?



And all this still doesn't factor in the absolute HORROR of breaking the internal gamerules. But I have talked about that enough.
Staying consistent with behavior and rules is important or a game feels random.

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

The problem might not be the aggressive rooms at all but simply stealth being nerfed too far at the moment.

Thank you for testing.

But honestly, I have no problem stealthing outside. I can have 20 vision and still stand right next to a zombie outside.
I think it is just in POIs, which would point to these sleeper volumes as the problem...

 

 

But thank you. The fact that a mod actually confirms the uselessness of stealth is very reassuring.

5 hours ago, Boidster said:

 

Yes you can. I built a box with just one opening (sort of a tunnel; I was experimenting with how stealth value changed with how far the "open to air" block was). Mr. Sleeper is right behind the wall where the cursor is pointing. Note that my stealth only got down to 12 (3 levels in FtS). The volume boundary is in green; I've crossed over it to stand on the wood blocks - normally he wakes up at this point.

 

He didn't wake up so I destroyed most of the blocks and then just snuck right up to him in broad daylight.

AHAHAHA xD great mechanic! (sorry! Thank you for testing! But this is just silly!)

[Viktoriusiii]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

Can not is how we ferret out non-native ESL speakers. Your discovery is going to put you under the radar for sure!

 

However, much like LOTL 2, using "cannot" is just a stepping stone to using "can't". I suggest skipping "cannot" altogether.

haha I've always used "can't" but I always assumed it was short for "can not"

[JCrook1028]

23 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

efficient and effective are both subjective terms.
It could be more effective to save the bullets for hordenight, or to clear the poi quicker to gain money to buy more bullets.
I am not quite sure why you are making this big of a fuss about effective/efficient.
If you die because you had to fight zombies because you went in guns blazing and made a mistake, it is less effective at clearing pois than a stealthmode (if it still worked like it used to)

But honestly, this is splitting hairs. IF by chance I have learned the wrong definitions or misinterpreted, feel free to correct me in a non judgmental way.
While I do consider my english to be very much sufficient, it is still not my mothertongue, so there can still be thing I don't know.
(for example I just recently learned that cannot is a word and is actually used far more often than can not)

Efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing. Efficiency is defined as the ability to accomplish something with the least amount of wasted time, money, and effort or competency in performance. Effectiveness is defined as the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result; success

 

Your example of saving bullets for horde night is about efficiency, has absolutely nothing to do with effectiveness.  It's not at all "splitting hairs" they're almost 100% antonyms. In our example of clearing a POI, stealthing is the opposite of efficient. It is pure effectiveness (or lack of it actually). I understand it's a language issue but it's a fact, the message your words are conveying are just wrong, period.

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by JCrook1028
multiple posts of same response (see edit history)

[Scyris]

On 12/13/2021 at 12:31 PM, meganoth said:

In A19 auto-wakeup rooms were relatively seldom. Less than 5%, someone went through the code.

 

I don't know if that ratio changed, but I noticed that I have a much harder time to stay in stealth. Even removing noisy stuff on the floor to avoid making noise ironically wakes up zombies already. And especially shooting at a door to see the zombie behind wakes up the zombie (which it never did in A19). In other words, my problems seem not to come from auto-aggro rooms.

 

Now before we jump to remedies we should really find out, whether the cause of all the new difficulties is A) auto-aggro rooms, B) weaker stealth, or C) activated feral sense (which I thought was only affecting wandering zombies, not sleepers, but maybe I'm wrong?)

 

 

 

I been playing a20 exp as many have, and I've notice almost every poi now is full of ambushes etc, some of them like office_04 literally has a ambush and zombies dropping down from the cieling EVERY SINGLE ROOM. The main issues I have with stealth is the Auto-aggro zombies, and the stupid placement of sleepers with how they are always behind an object or in some closet, some might say its smart placement for anti-stealth and it is, but it kinda breaks immersion seeing all these zombies perfectly positioned to not be snipeable at all without waking them up first.

 

Stealthing thru a poi is already the slowest way to clear a poi by far. But because of that slow speed we gain saftey in exchange. However A20 has pretty much removed the saftey part, when every single sleeper volume just about wakes up second you walk into the room. I mean the loot room having a ambush or right before the loot room? I am perfectly fine with that, but this almost every sleeper volume just waking up the second you walk in is getting tedious, along with the placement of sleepers being a big F*** you to stealth gameplay as by the time you can align a shot your waking them up anyway from walking. The zombies in the closets and such really have to stop, it was cool back when it was first put in, as it was a rare thing, but now literally HALF the sleepers are inside the damn walls or cielings.

 

Tfp may think this is a great gameplay concept, but to most players these issues just annoy the hell out of them and are generally disliked especially people that like their immersion. Zombies aren't going to always be perfectly behind objects or in closets/fake floors in cielings.

 

I've pretty much stopped putting any points into the stealth skills are they are pointless in A20, they went downhill a ton in A19, now this is pretty much the final nail in the coffin to the point they might as well remove the perk entirely for how useless it is.

On 12/16/2021 at 12:44 AM, Viktoriusiii said:

Point taken.

It FELT very much (and I thought it was explained like that as well) like basicially every room is a auto-wakeup room.
But if that is not the case, I withdraw my point. But yeah an official description WOULD help.

 

There is a difference though. A game where the player can not impact the results with skills is inherantly different than one where he can.
A game where skill matters should not use RNG (or at least the absolute minimum possible amount), because otherwise the player starts feeling cheated.
Like me right now. Even though I have 3/5 sneaking, it still feels like every room wakes up once I enter it, meaning I have stopped playing a sneaky character, because there is no use anyways.
If the game descides when a zombie wakes up, then what I do doesn't matter (enough). This is a bad design.

Yes 7d2d is not a pure stealth-game, but if you skill into stealth, it should be considered under the same rules:

Imagine if in splinter cell you sneak up to a guard and it suddenly, for no reason hears you. "Well you mjust have stepped on a pile of paper that wasn't visible, but who knows?"
Not only would it not be fair, it would actively hurt the stealthmechanics.
If I have the choice between two mechanics, but one of them punishes me for using it... why owuld I use it?



And all this still doesn't factor in the absolute HORROR of breaking the internal gamerules. But I have talked about that enough.
Staying consistent with behavior and rules is important or a game feels random.

Thank you for testing.

But honestly, I have no problem stealthing outside. I can have 20 vision and still stand right next to a zombie outside.
I think it is just in POIs, which would point to these sleeper volumes as the problem...

 

 

But thank you. The fact that a mod actually confirms the uselessness of stealth is very reassuring.

AHAHAHA xD great mechanic! (sorry! Thank you for testing! But this is just silly!)

 

Well yeah if you place a block on the "trigger block" then walk on top of that, it usually is not gonna trigger as its expecting a player to stand on it, not a block. Same way for some of these triggered poi's if u bust the wall out to the side in and go in they sometimes don't trigger either. Like I get what they were trying to do, they are trying to create a experience, but this gets dull fast when its repeated multiple times per poi and in virtually every poi. I used to only get Agi for the stealth perks in Vanilla, now I don't even bother as the stealth perks are pretty much useless in the place you'd wanna use them the most: Inside a poi. I guess the sneak attack damage one is still mildly useful outdoors at least.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Scyris (see edit history)

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, Scyris said:

The zombies in the closets and such really have to stop

The closets are a little silly, but now there seems to be "closets" painted as a part of brick walls.. because, that's like a thing, right?

[Scyris]

Just now, theFlu said:

The closets are a little silly, but now there seems to be "closets" painted as a part of brick walls.. because, that's like a thing, right?

 

Don't even get me started on the fake walls with zombies behind them that are very rampant in A20, One Poi in A20 Exp almost every single sleeper was behind one of these.

[theFlu]

4 minutes ago, Scyris said:

Don't even get me started on the fake walls

Yeh... I haven't really started worrying about the stealth itself, that may well be just "waiting for proper tuning"; but these outright silly "surprises" have to be a conscious decision by someone - which doesn't fill me with confidence of a rework.

[Viktoriusiii]

5 minutes ago, Scyris said:

 

Don't even get me started on the fake walls with zombies behind them that are very rampant in A20, One Poi in A20 Exp almost every single sleeper was behind one of these.

The absolute WORST is when they are behind metal walls.
In that poi with the seperate garage and underground bunker, there is a hallway with like 14 fake walls that you need to check. It is super narrow so no chance to snipe the Z's behind. Once you break the wall and fail the check, even in stealth, all of them wake up. Now you gotta content with 4-6 radiated zombies in a narrow hallway. Running away is hard because you are alread overloaded and even if you manage, since it is such a narrow hallway with lights, reentering stealth only has limited usage.

Worst poi I had to do in a while!

[Scyris]

2 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

The absolute WORST is when they are behind metal walls.
In that poi with the seperate garage and underground bunker, there is a hallway with like 14 fake walls that you need to check. It is super narrow so no chance to snipe the Z's behind. Once you break the wall and fail the check, even in stealth, all of them wake up. Now you gotta content with 4-6 radiated zombies in a narrow hallway. Running away is hard because you are alread overloaded and even if you manage, since it is such a narrow hallway with lights, reentering stealth only has limited usage.

Worst poi I had to do in a while!

 

Oh yeah I could see that being a bad one, because even if you shoot the fake door, the noise from hitting a metal object is going to wake everything up anyway. So your kinda screwed no matter what in that poi, plus as you said narrow hallway, so no real way to snipe anything. I also voted No on your poll, I've never liked the auto-wakeup/ambush mechanic, unless its like in the loot room, nevermind the stupid placement of sleepers and how it completly makes stealth pointless.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Scyris (see edit history)

[theFlu]

4 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

there is a hallway with like 14 fake walls that you need to check.

I haven't seen that one, hah. Sounds like a stack of TnT is a required part of a stealther's toolkit.

[Scyris]

4 minutes ago, theFlu said:

I haven't seen that one, hah. Sounds like a stack of TnT is a required part of a stealther's toolkit.

 

I mean with how useless stealth is in A20 you might as well. Since second you walk into the room everything most likely is going to charge you anyway. Might as well start with a big boom.

[Lenny Lettuce Lips]

Solution for auto aggro is simple: throw a molly and boogie while they stumble around for a minute. 

I'm glad that if this mechanic stays, the balance is that they aren't all immediately bum rushing you but stumbling and falling first and you have the advantage for a moment while they stand up. 

[Viktoriusiii]

2 hours ago, Lenny Lettuce Lips said:

Solution for auto aggro is simple: throw a molly and boogie while they stumble around for a minute. 

I'm glad that if this mechanic stays, the balance is that they aren't all immediately bum rushing you but stumbling and falling first and you have the advantage for a moment while they stand up. 

great for fighters. Not so great for those who rely upon their 400% sneak damage (+ 250% headshot dmg :P)

[Zvex]

I agree that the stealth is broken right now, the most of points were brought there already:
 

1) there is a separate tree with lot of skill points, if you choose it - you loose the ability to use the most efficient open combat perks, so you need something to compensate it or the investment is highly imbalanced in the worst way for you.
2) it takes a lot of time to play stealth, it takes a lot of skill and attention from a player, playing stealth was a challenge in earlier versions as well, because a single mistake could wake the whole floor and you could get into a challenging open combat trouble ... so it had enough of downsides already. What you got for that is that you spend less ammo, which usually is not that big deal, actually - the game is made to give you opportunities to get enough ammo in one or other way, especially when the brass stopped being such big deal after we got tokens-brass conversion (too much "cheese" there, if you ask me).
3) you actually can't play stealth now, it is not even challenging, it works just unpredictably. Now it is a  "tool" which can work sometimes, you need to struggle to try your best to make it work, and sometimes it will ... in current state this "tool" in terms of points should be free for players who like to be masochistic sometimes and spend their precious time (every hour makes you closer to the horde moment) to perform some weird non-standard kills sometimes when it will work.

 

I saw these arguments about "cool" light-dependence. If you are quietly walking around the room, the light on you should not wake up a zombie that is over the wall. The only thing which should matter is noise there, otherwise it just simply feels like a bug, especially for new player.
 

As for killing a sleeping zombie ... if he gets a bolt into a head without being woke up, it should minimize the noise, I don't see troubles in that - there are many ways in this game to make the noise already, such as these piles of trash that are everywhere.
 

We need pros/cons for stealth gameplay style. But we have cons only ... simply at least because you are forced to change from stealth to open style constantly, which is a real struggle, making that open fight style your primary anyway, moreover, your open style is weaker due to loss of points. We can also add on top of that stealth being useless at horde nights, this is where the most combat challenge must come from, not the POI clearing.
 

I am more or less ok with everything said, as long as I have red cross on the stealth perks in my mind, which means "do not touch, it is a trap for fools" ... the bad thing is that the new player can be unaware and will be highly disappointed with his skill points investment.