Stealth, monster closets and clear quests

[meganoth]

20 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

As someone who opened TWO threads about this (although different issues) I can say that I like the idea of hidden sleepers.

 

The fix is twofold:

 

1: reduce hidden sleepers. By about 90% (maybe even more. I am serious. More than a hand full and you expect them, learn where they could be and check every cupboard kinda like how behind every picture was loot). Anything more than that feels cheap and you start expecting it.

 

2: auto wake up Z's when you LEAVE the volume at the exit

This is far more dramatic since your escaperoute is cut off and you solve the backtracking. (Dont autofocus them. Set them to wander and let stealth do the rest.)

 

3. NO RNG WAKE UPS!!!

Dont.

Increase sleeper hearing by 200%, but don't do it via checks/dicerolls

 

Too bad, my pointer was already poised over the "like" button, but then I read point 3. 😁

 

 

7 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

DnD and 7D2D are fundamentally different though.
D&D is storybased. So the game IS the story. So failure is part of the story.
7D2D is a survival game. So if we extrapolate this to the extreme, how would you feel if there was a dice roll for you to die or not?

The game should only punish you, if you do something wrong. So if you get hit, you have a chance to get debuffed.
If you are too loud/walked over trash, the Z's have a chance to wake up.

But if you did everything right and are still getting punished, it doesnt feel great.
The point at which it doesnt feel unfair anymore is the one where the chance is so small as to be nearly nonexistent (talking about <1%)

I see NO reason why you shouldn't just increase hearing from the sleepers by a large amount. I mean they don't wake up if I go over 30 for 1 sec, but if I continue to stay over 30 they wake up.
So lower this number to 20 for normals, 15 for ferals 10 for irradiated 5 for irradiated ferals (do those still exist?)

 

Chess is a deterministic game. A survival game/open world game on the other hand is not.

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Viktoriusiii]

48 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Too bad, my pointer was already poised over the "like" button, but then I read point 3. 😁

Pfff! I can live without your like! 😑

...

😕

...

☹️

...

🥺 okay, okay I will admit that point three was just a rant and not too serious (although I still feel it is valid :D) that is why I said I have 2 points

now please give me the like!  😫

 

48 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Chess is a deterministic game. A survival game/open world game on the other hand is not.

 

Ch-chess??? o_o Who talked about chess? xD Did I miss something?
 

But seriously EVERY game that is about survival and/or competition needs to be fair. And even if some games use rng to simulate drama, once the player notices, it is ONLY a detriment. And TFPs have not filled me with confidence when it comes to subtlety.
*sneaks through Hotel POI where EVERY GOD DAMN ZOMBIE is in a room that has auto-aggro behind walls*

Just imagine in darksouls, if attackpatters were recognizable 99% of the time and then suddenly, without a warning, you are dead because "you can't predict every hit in real life" WTF? Not fair, not fun, no reason.
Even worse: this doesn't happen unless you haven't been hit for 2 minutes, because you went the dodge build. And you need some drama or the game will get boring!
You don't lose anything, so why do you care?

                         NO!

[theFlu]

I'd have to agree with Vik here, deterministic is better, but it could well have a "realistic" random element to it.

 

The way I read "there's a random fail-check at entry to a volume" is basically just a 5% chance of "ok, they're all coming at me for no reason again." That feels bugged whenever it happens.

 

If you were to actually have a per-sleeper random level of detection, and no mechanic to aggro the full volume once you wake up one, you would at least see that not everyone wakes up and it would feel more natural. Plus it could even be useful for luring out some and not all at once. I think these elements are in the game already, watching some tubers occasionally wake up only some; but for my personal experience, it feels really binary whether a volume wakes up or not. Maybe it's just really out of balance at the moment.

[Viktoriusiii]

I say it again:
If you absolutely HAVE to have sleeper volumes (they have only downsides, when compared to the normal sneaksystem) use them in the whole room, not on a single block.

But the problems of sleeper volumes are so vast, I can't see any justification for them.

They feel unnatural
-why does the Z' 15m away wake up?
-I moved at snails pace with 1 visibility, this is just unfair!
-why did EVERY zombie wake up at the same time?
-so I can knock out the wall and it doesn't wake them up, but stepping on this magical block does?
-why do they only hear me on entry and not while I am in the room?

and a lot more that won't come to my mind right now.
Just use the basic system and lower the requirements for sleepers to hear you.
Hell you can still use the volume system by waking up every zombie once one zombie breaks a "hidden" wall (and makes a sound).

[ElCabong]

My problem with the monster closets is you don't know the monster is there. It doesn't show up on your radar.

 

So you can't properly clear the area unless you get out of stealth. 

 

 

[Uoipka]

Clears should not be 100% of the zombies anyway if hidden zombies will be in 10% of full poi and you need to clear 90%+final zombies on a loot of poi should it be better?

[pahbi]

Most mission POIs have a generator in them right?

 

Seems like starting up the generator and having all the lights come on in the POI should be enough to wake up any remaining zombies in closets so they can be killed to finish the mission.

 

 

[Laz Man]

Sleeper volumes get alot of hate but without them, performance would be horrible and there would be no pacing whats so ever in dungeon POIs.

 

Back in the day, there was only one big volume and all of the zeds would spawn in.  Not only does this strain the max alive zombie count but also made clearing POIs pretty one dimensional.

 

One reason ood movies and TV shows are entertaining is because they have good pacing and build up to a climax.

8 hours ago, ElCabong said:

My problem with the monster closets is you don't know the monster is there. It doesn't show up on your radar.

 

So you can't properly clear the area unless you get out of stealth. 

 

 

 

A well designed quest POI will lead the player the right direction without having to relay on the red dots on the compass.

 

Additionally, there is the orange dot for volumes that were missed by the player. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[BarryTGash]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

performance would be horrible

 

I'm assuming that due to the fully destructible environments, pre-calculated navmeshes (or whatever they'd be called in 7d2d - my familiarity only goes as far as Skyrim/FO3-4 modding) aren't possible, even for prebuilt POIs? Is this the main performance issue? Assuming so, and spitballing here: could groups of zombies close together share the same path until an individual zombie separates far enough away from the group to warrant generating its own path? 

 

edit: Acksherly... I've noticed quite a few zombies spawn outside a POI and converge when the player enters a POI. Is this really necessary? Doesn't this just add to the overhead? Perhaps those cpu cycles are better spent inside the POI, or at least have these external spawns randomised (10%/25% chance for example) and/or reserved for less demanding POIs so they come as more of a surprise and can't be so readily anticipated - see point below re over-curating.

 

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

no pacing

 

At times I wonder if TFP tries to control too much - build the POI, set the ai loose and what will be will be. Perhaps these curated experiences could be reserved for larger POIs that demand the optimisation? Houses and other similarly sized POIs could be left to their own devices? (Again, just spitballing - I don't have the expertise to determine feasibility)

Edited January 12, 2022 by BarryTGash (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

54 minutes ago, BarryTGash said:

 

I'm assuming that due to the fully destructible environments, pre-calculated navmeshes (or whatever they'd be called in 7d2d - my familiarity only goes as far as Skyrim/FO3-4 modding) aren't possible, even for prebuilt POIs? Is this the main performance issue? Assuming so, and spitballing here: could groups of zombies close together share the same path until an individual zombie separates far enough away from the group to warrant generating its own path? 

 

edit: Acksherly... I've noticed quite a few zombies spawn outside a POI and converge when the player enters a POI. Is this really necessary? Doesn't this just add to the overhead? Perhaps those cpu cycles are better spent inside the POI, or at least have these external spawns randomised (10%/25% chance for example) and/or reserved for less demanding POIs so they come as more of a surprise and can't be so readily anticipated - see point below re over-curating.

 

 

At times I wonder if TFP tries to control too much - build the POI, set the ai loose and what will be will be. Perhaps these curated experiences could be reserved for larger POIs that demand the optimisation? Houses and other similarly sized POIs could be left to their own devices? (Again, just spitballing - I don't have the expertise to determine feasibility)

 

No clue about nav meshes but probably to late in development to switch to a completely different system.

 

Those who experienced earlier alphas can attest how broken spawning was before sleepr volumes. 

 

A player could run into the middle of the old hub city at coordinates 0,0 and attract so many POI spawns then drag them out into the street kiting them for blocks until the spawn limit was reached causing  POIs all over the map to have no or delayed spawns.

 

After being around since Alpha 6, my personal feel is that a balance of non questable POIs and dungeon POIs is the gameplay sweet spot.

 

It allows some POIs (non questables)  to be free-form multiplayer levels with many ways in/out and others (questable) to have a strong character / story.

 

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[meganoth]

22 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Pfff! I can live without your like! 😑

...

😕

...

☹️

...

🥺 okay, okay I will admit that point three was just a rant and not too serious (although I still feel it is valid :D) that is why I said I have 2 points

now please give me the like!  😫

 

Ch-chess??? o_o Who talked about chess? xD Did I miss something?
 

But seriously EVERY game that is about survival and/or competition needs to be fair. And even if some games use rng to simulate drama, once the player notices, it is ONLY a detriment. And TFPs have not filled me with confidence when it comes to subtlety.
*sneaks through Hotel POI where EVERY GOD DAMN ZOMBIE is in a room that has auto-aggro behind walls*

Just imagine in darksouls, if attackpatters were recognizable 99% of the time and then suddenly, without a warning, you are dead because "you can't predict every hit in real life" WTF? Not fair, not fun, no reason.

 

Just imagine Darksouls were not a game where any small error means almost automatically your end. Just imagine Darksouls were not a game where you need to memorize what moves the enemy makes like in a jump-and-run. Then it wouldn't be Darksouls anymore but a game where you could add randomness without problem.

 

My point: When a room or part of a room wakes up because of a random roll you are not automatically dead, it is just a dynamic situation you have to adapt to. If YOU are automatically dead (or even most of the time this happens) then you play on a difficulty level too high.

 

Now since stealth was changed recently even I say that balance is probably not quite there yet. So if random wake now means almost all zombies wake up every time even with excellent stealth then that is not an intrinsic feature of randomness but just the balance of such randomness being out of whack.

 

7D2D on the whole should be fair (for some definition of fair). A good balance means any random element (before the die is thrown) is fair. But the random result is usually not fair. If two players each open a box with the same loot table, that is fair between them. But one finds the OP weapon, the other a stack of leather. That one box is not fair anymore. But after opening hundreds and hundreds of boxes we can again say it was fair.

 

Example war games: Each single game often turns somewhat "unfair" because one of the players seems to have much more luck with his dice. Still war games are played competitively. Because usually all that evens out and better players still win more often on average. For some definition of fair war games are fair and the random element provides variation and a chance for worse players to sometimes win.

 

So what is your exact definition of fair and at what level of the game you want to apply it? A competitive game and definitely a survival game only need to be fair overall. I see no reason for it to be fair on the micro-level of any situation.

 

You enter a room, ideally 0 to all zombies wake up, the more stealth you have and the more precautions you followed it should be more likely 0 or a very low number. This is how it easily can work in 7D2D, while in some other stealth games where detection means 90% sure death it would be clearly wrong.

 

 

22 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

 

 

 

Even worse: this doesn't happen unless you haven't been hit for 2 minutes, because you went the dodge build. And you need some drama or the game will get boring!
You don't lose anything, so why do you care?

                         NO!

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

Has anyone in here actually tried stealth (perked) with attack volumes (feral sense off)?

 

Light and shadows is very important now.  The zombie will wake up but they may not see you if you manage your light, shadows and noise accordingly.

[Reckis]

10 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Has anyone in here actually tried stealth (perked) with attack volumes (feral sense off)?

 

Light and shadows is very important now.  The zombie will wake up but they may not see you if you manage your light, shadows and noise accordingly.

 

In my somewhat limited experience (haven't played with feral sense on, yet) stealth is doable, and becomes easier the more you invest in it. As with the majority of changes made over the course of the development of this game, you just have to re-learn how it works and adapt.

[Viktoriusiii]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Has anyone in here actually tried stealth (perked) with attack volumes (feral sense off)?

 

Light and shadows is very important now.  The zombie will wake up but they may not see you if you manage your light, shadows and noise accordingly.

Yea I did. While I am not sure where these volumes are, I did extensive testing for my 2nd thread. And I actually found out that zombies lose you extremely quickly if oyu hide. Which is actually a lot of fun. (this wasn'T always the case and like most veterans, learning something new is hard so I just always acted as if they will know where I am once spotted. Now I hide in a closet and stab them from behind. Very rewarding)

But it does not feel fair, since the stealth indicator is actually not an indicator. I can have 8 stealth and everything wakes up 90% of the time and sometimes I just sneaksprint my way through half the poi with 30 visibility.
And "shadows are important" is the reason why this is so stupid. Because there is not a way to see where you are illuminated AND lightsources are either nearly indestructible (from afar) or obstructed. So it is like "hey this is the path!" but then there is a flashlight pointing right at it and you just think "oh god why??

It needs a LO'T more balancing before this feels anywhere near fair and good.

[ElCabong]

11 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Sleeper volumes get alot of hate but without them, performance would be horrible and there would be no pacing whats so ever in dungeon POIs.

 

Back in the day, there was only one big volume and all of the zeds would spawn in.  Not only does this strain the max alive zombie count but also made clearing POIs pretty one dimensional.

 

One reason ood movies and TV shows are entertaining is because they have good pacing and build up to a climax.

 

A well designed quest POI will lead the player the right direction without having to relay on the red dots on the compass.

 

Additionally, there is the orange dot for volumes that were missed by the player. 

 I will sneak right by them. I got to the end of a mission and only encountered three Z's. It was a fetch/clear and I had the package. There were no red or yellow dots showing up on my radar because they're all hiding in the walls.

 

I went back to the start, unstealthed, and went full Rambo on them with my SMG. That was fun too.

Edited January 12, 2022 by ElCabong (see edit history)

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Has anyone in here actually tried stealth (perked) with attack volumes (feral sense off)?

 

Light and shadows is very important now.  The zombie will wake up but they may not see you if you manage your light, shadows and noise accordingly.

 

My AGI single player game is with feral sense on. This is why I dance around the subject with "probably" and "maybe".

I also made a test game and I hope I didn't forget to turn off feral sense for that test. Ultimately I should bite the bullet and turn off feral sense in my SP game for a real check.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

19 minutes ago, meganoth said:

This is why I dance around the subject with "probably" and "maybe".

I am sure that my tests were without feral sense. How?
Well I increased the spawns by 4x because I like to feel like I am in a zombie apocalypse... but I forgot to turn off feral sense. Good lord killing 50 zombies with only a club is a chore... and then I went into the city xDDD
Needless to say without feral sense and 4x spawn, the game was much more reasonable xD

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, ElCabong said:

 I will sneak right by them. I got to the end of a mission and only encountered three Z's. It was a fetch/clear and I had the package. There were no red or yellow dots showing up on my radar because they're all hiding in the walls.

 

I went back to the start, unstealthed, and went full Rambo on them with my SMG. That was fun too.

 

F11 screenshot of the POI please.  Maybe there is a bug.

[ElCabong]

2 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

F11 screenshot of the POI please.  Maybe there is a bug.

I would have to get the mission over again, I'm not sure where it's at.  It's a church that has a little cemetery and three levels in a basement.

[Laz Man]

Just now, ElCabong said:

I would have to get the mission over again, I'm not sure where it's at.  It's a church that has a little cemetery and three levels in a basement.

That the one where you exit through a cellar door?  Let me know what your perk allocation, any game settings and any other pertinent info. so we can hopefully reproduce.  Thanks.

[ElCabong]

2 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

That the one where you exit through a cellar door?  Let me know what your perk allocation, any game settings and any other pertinent info. so we can hopefully reproduce.  Thanks.

Yes that is it. Four points in from the shadows and full set of padded armor.

Edited January 12, 2022 by ElCabong (see edit history)

[GreenGril76]

I think the stealth mechanics are still buggy, even with "feral instincts" turned on.

As an example, the smaller savage outdoor store. Once you're through the front door, the paths go both to the left and right. If you go to the right, you will trip a zombie closet with two zombies (no matter what). If you go left, you'll enter a bathroom with a broken wall into that same zombie closet. 

However, you can sneak in and stealth kill both zombies, without alerting either one. You can  sneak up to them, placing your head up their ass, and they still won't activate. This is regardless to whatever your "feral sense" settings are, or stealth level.

I've also sneaked into houses, usually through a window, only to realize I past two zombies that didn't trigger until I reached the stairs. 

I just don't know which is worse. Zombies closets and other script events that override stealth, or an "improved" zombies AI that breaks every other map that you load into.

Edited January 13, 2022 by GreenGril76 (see edit history)

[Shelgeyr]

On 1/11/2022 at 12:05 PM, Viktoriusiii said:

-I moved at snails pace with 1 visibility, this is just unfair!
-why did EVERY zombie wake up at the same time?
-so I can knock out the wall and it doesn't wake them up, but stepping on this magical block does?
-why do they only hear me on entry and not while I am in the room?

Been struggling with this in my current "Ninja" playthrough.

One of my least favorite / most reproducible encounters is with the zombie cop sitting on the floor behind his desk in the video store/police station POI.

 

I can see his big blue butt by looking between the legs of the desk, but the game treats that piece of furniture as solid so I can't shoot him.

If I enter the room, no matter how quietly, he will wake up and aggro on me as soon as I reach the appropriate spot on the floor which, by the way, occurs before I get a clean line-of-sight to pop him while he's still sleeping.

"Best" solution to that jerk? Demolish the desk with my axe, then shoot the cop with my crossbow.

That one encounter, right there ... that's enough to leave me feeling like the game is fighting against itself and losing.

Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.

[Spatch]

45 minutes ago, Shelgeyr said:

Been struggling with this in my current "Ninja" playthrough.

One of my least favorite / most reproducible encounters is with the zombie cop sitting on the floor behind his desk in the video store/police station POI.

 

I can see his big blue butt by looking between the legs of the desk, but the game treats that piece of furniture as solid so I can't shoot him.

If I enter the room, no matter how quietly, he will wake up and aggro on me as soon as I reach the appropriate spot on the floor which, by the way, occurs before I get a clean line-of-sight to pop him while he's still sleeping.

"Best" solution to that jerk? Demolish the desk with my axe, then shoot the cop with my crossbow.

That one encounter, right there ... that's enough to leave me feeling like the game is fighting against itself and losing.

Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.

Hate that cop!  Last time in the police station POI, I went into the office next to him, knocked a hole in the wall, and shot him in the head with hidden damage modifier!

[Xandyr78]

59 minutes ago, Shelgeyr said:

 

Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.

 

This is my biggest problem with the sleeper triggers that are location-based.  I get the need for pacing, but part of pacing comes from how the individual player chooses to approach a POI.  The auto-wake triggers force a particular type of pacing on every. Single. Player who enters that particular POI, regardless of their build, or their chosen playstyle.  This...isn't great.

 

I love playing stealth archers.  I rarely use handguns of any stripe until FAR late-game.  I enjoy the challenge of sneaking through a POI, finding the sleepers and taking them out.  When I hit an auto-trigger, it's almost always obvious, and it's hugely frustrating, because it has NOTHING to do with the choices I've made (for good OR bad), but simply because the POI is set to trigger this sleeper volume the moment a player steps on Block X.  It renders my stealth build completely moot, and is completely outside my control.  It's INORDINATELY frustrating.

 

I'd be fine if each sleeper volume was set to have a random % chance to hear me, and that some would sleep through stealth more easily than others, and you'd just never know.  Then, at least, my Stealth build would have a legitimate chance to allow me to move through a POI without triggering the zeds to wake, and make my Silent Assassin playstyle more effective.

 

The trade-off for me, is that playing the way I want to play takes copious amounts of time, as I sneak through POIs pretty consistently.  But I'm fine with that.  I can't clear things quickly (at all) in stealth mode, so I have to be a bit more choosy in which POIs I take on...as it should be.  Folks who don't care about stealth can just go full run-and-gun, and wake EVERYTHING UP, blow them all to oblivion with guns galore, and loot probably 3-5 POIs in the time it takes me to loot 1, and I'm okay with that.  It's the choice I make when I perk into Stealth, but that's what I want.

 

So there's no harm in making stealth ACTUALLY viable.  There's a speed/time factor that has to be considered for Stealth builds.  If a person's going to choose that option, they should be allowed the benefit of being TRULY stealthy.

 

Just my two cents' worth.