Stuff I like in A20.1 and Stuff I don't like.

[Scyris]

Love the RWG, its nice seeing cities that look like well cities. Graphics got a nice update as well. Pipe weapons. Performance at least for me seems to be better. Love the trader changes in A20 as well.

 

Stuff I don't like.

 

Stealth being made completly useless, I'm sorry but ambushes and zombies coming of the close and cieling every single sleeper volume is just stupid. Once in a while would be fine but its far to often. IMO when the ambushes are triggered the zombies should NOT know where you are already they should just wander around the room. Early game these ambushes aren't that bad, mid/late game with ferals and radiated zombies they get extremly annoying as now you have 4+ ferals running at you in a small room that droped from the cieling.

TL:DR get rid of most of the stupid ambush sleeper volumes as some poi's are full of nothing BUT these and its tiring, they are not fun or engaging they are just an annoyance. Stealth is also useless as zombies seem super sensitive to the slighest sounds. I walk on a wood block and zombies 30+ blocks away somehow hear it. Also stop with the sleeper positioning to always be behind blocks so you cannot use sneak attacks on them, it looks stupid for one thing, as they are too well positioned for zombies, and it hurts stealth builds.

 

The zombies GPSing to poi's the player has entered also needs to be removed. Its extremly annoying to have to at times kill more zombies that wander in from outside than are in the actual poi. Case you don't know since A17 TPF put in a AI thing where second the player walks into a POI every spawned zombie in X distance will start to walk towards that poi, doesn't matter how quiet you are, or how good stealth is. You can test this, go into a enclosed room, where stealth is 1, use a kill all command, then advanced time so natural respawns happen and watch as they all start walking to the poi your in.

 

Like what type of a game is TFP going for here? As it used to allow player choice in builds, and now currently it really doesn't, you pretty much have to go in guns blazing due to how useless stealth has become. Do they want a more arcade like experience? is thats what they are aiming for? or do they want more of a survival game experience like the game USED to have. I still can't see a clear vision they have yet, which is sort of sad when its been in dev for close or even more than 10 years now. Most devs have a clear vision and plan before they even start to make the game, while TFP here seems like they just decide on things on the fly.

 

 

 

[bloodmoth13]

Stealth is currently very binary. Either you kill every zombie while its sleeping or some wake up and 'stealth is useless!'

 

The ambushes are a necessary evil since stealth gameplay is so low risk and skill isnt really too much of a factor, but i dont like that much either.

 

I suggested this elsewhere but we need a way to trigger the traps before stepping into them, zombies already have semi alert stages between sleeping and attacking, we need more of that in PoIs that actually affect stealth players. If you know a zombie is in a closet, shooting the door open should wake them up, its silly seeing a zombie standing still when you blew the door off right in front of them, but at the same time if you cant then stealth (and investment in its perks) simply wont work.

 

So my suggestion is having rocks awaken sleepers to 'semi alert' just like they do now, the zombies all come out and you can pop them off but if you make too much noise they will chase you, adding a huge element of skill to the gameplay.

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, bloodmoth13 said:

Stealth is currently very binary. Either you kill every zombie while its sleeping or some wake up and 'stealth is useless!'

 

The ambushes are a necessary evil since stealth gameplay is so low risk and skill isnt really too much of a factor, but i dont like that much either.

 

I suggested this elsewhere but we need a way to trigger the traps before stepping into them, zombies already have semi alert stages between sleeping and attacking, we need more of that in PoIs that actually affect stealth players. If you know a zombie is in a closet, shooting the door open should wake them up, its silly seeing a zombie standing still when you blew the door off right in front of them, but at the same time if you cant then stealth (and investment in its perks) simply wont work.

 

So my suggestion is having rocks awaken sleepers to 'semi alert' just like they do now, the zombies all come out and you can pop them off but if you make too much noise they will chase you, adding a huge element of skill to the gameplay.

 

Not a bad idea.

 

Can a rock be used to remove closet doors in one throw? And if yes, is there a noise difference to arrow? I'll have to test that.

 

Anyway, AFAIK the old auto-attack rooms were changed to something similar. If none of the zombies succeed at the stealth check, they will run around alert but not notice your position. Possibly after some fine-tuning they will change all rooms to this new mode but maybe that would look a bit artifical if it happens everywhere

[12pack]

my most favorite change is that when you are in a traders, you don't have to listen to that

incessant DING....DING....DING....DING... when Z's are beating on the walls outside....

 

unless that comes from a mod im using, but i dont think any of them do anything with the trader area...

[Roland]

11 hours ago, Scyris said:

Stealth being made completly useless, I'm sorry but ambushes and zombies coming of the close and cieling every single sleeper volume is just stupid. Once in a while would be fine but its far to often. IMO when the ambushes are triggered the zombies should NOT know where you are already they should just wander around the room. Early game these ambushes aren't that bad, mid/late game with ferals and radiated zombies they get extremly annoying as now you have 4+ ferals running at you in a small room that droped from the cieling.

TL:DR get rid of most of the stupid ambush sleeper volumes as some poi's are full of nothing BUT these and its tiring, they are not fun or engaging they are just an annoyance. Stealth is also useless as zombies seem super sensitive to the slighest sounds. I walk on a wood block and zombies 30+ blocks away somehow hear it. Also stop with the sleeper positioning to always be behind blocks so you cannot use sneak attacks on them, it looks stupid for one thing, as they are too well positioned for zombies, and it hurts stealth builds.

 

Stealth is still a WIP. It was changed significantly for A20 in that auto aggro volumes were almost completely removed and all volumes were replaced with stealth checks to wake up individual zombies. So those rooms are not ambush rooms in the way that we had them in A19. You are just failing most of your stealth checks. Being as how this is the first iteration of stealth checks, they will need some time and testing to get them tuned well so that as you perk into stealth  you start passing more and more of them. It is not TFP's designed intention for every single room to always wake up. Currently, removing all nearby light sources so that you are in what the game considers pitch blackness is just as important if not more important than clearing rubble piles that cause noise.

I agree that they have some work to do to fix stealth so that it is not an impossible playstyle but I think the idea of doing stealth checks rather than automatically waking zombies is a step in the right direction.

 

11 hours ago, Scyris said:

The zombies GPSing to poi's the player has entered also needs to be removed. Its extremly annoying to have to at times kill more zombies that wander in from outside than are in the actual poi. Case you don't know since A17 TPF put in a AI thing where second the player walks into a POI every spawned zombie in X distance will start to walk towards that poi, doesn't matter how quiet you are, or how good stealth is. You can test this, go into a enclosed room, where stealth is 1, use a kill all command, then advanced time so natural respawns happen and watch as they all start walking to the poi your in.

 

This is the breadcrumbs feature that was put in to cause wandering zombies to head into your general direction. I know it seems like they are coming to get you and know exactly where you are but they actually are not alerted to your presence yet and are not targeting you. They just are following a tasty breadcrumb trail of scents and signs that a living brain is in the vicinity somewhere in your direction. This can be tested easily by throwing a rock out of a window. All the wilderness spawns that wandered over to your POI will chase the rock which they will not do if currently targeting a player.

 

Now if they are able to bash their way into the POI and keep wandering to the point that they actually see or hear you nearby they will then aggro and target you.

 

11 hours ago, Scyris said:

Like what type of a game is TFP going for here? As it used to allow player choice in builds, and now currently it really doesn't, you pretty much have to go in guns blazing due to how useless stealth has become. Do they want a more arcade like experience? is thats what they are aiming for? or do they want more of a survival game experience like the game USED to have. I still can't see a clear vision they have yet, which is sort of sad when its been in dev for close or even more than 10 years now. Most devs have a clear vision and plan before they even start to make the game, while TFP here seems like they just decide on things on the fly.

 

I still stealth and get headshots with arrows or bolts that kill immediately and do not wake other zombies. They do wake up a lot more often for me as well but it definitely isn't 100% guns blazing. It is a mix of stealth kills with other kills. If you want to be able to do a POI 100% stealth kills you will probably have to wait for them to tune things in some more and you probably won't be able to do it without destroying light sources and/or completely unperked even after they make changes.

 

I think if you look at the stealth footprint in the perks you can see what they have always been aiming for. There is no "stealth build". There is an Agility build that has a few stealth enhancing benefits. But this game was never aimed at being a stealth sim. I talked to the level designers about the complaints back in A19 with the auto aggro volumes and they said "There will always be some auto aggro ambush rooms because we are designing the dungeons to have specific types of encounters so it is our intention that people won't be able to stealth every POI 100% of the time. They are going to have to mix up their approach and response at times"

 

You've interpreted the change to A20 as them intending to make every room an ambush but I know that is not their intention. The end result of them changing auto triggered rooms to stealth checks per zombie has made it seem that way but they just need to adjust values so that the stealth check isn't so easily failed-- especially as you purchase stealth perks. I do agree with you that it isn't in a good place right now and needs some attention.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

11 hours ago, Scyris said:

TL:DR get rid of most of the stupid ambush sleeper volumes as some poi's are full of nothing BUT these and its tiring, they are not fun or engaging they are just an annoyance.

 

Have a POI in mind?  Monster closets in general are part of level design and won't be going away but perhaps there are specific setups that are too heavy handed with them and/or not working as intended.  For example, one of the motel POIs has the player drop in from a ceiling hole where the sleepers don't spawn in until the player hits the floor.  This was fixed relatively easily once we knew about it.

 

As Roland mention, stealth was updated in A20 so you will need to have more specifics on what you are experiencing.  As a side note, with feral sense off and default difficulty I rarely experience many zombies swarming into POIs from the outside unless I didn't do a good job clearing the surrounding area before going in. (downtown areas and wasteland cities are an exception as their spawn rates are a lot higher).

Edited January 31, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[Whorhay]

I think that zombie closets getting broken should wake up the zombie inside of it. However I also think Arrows, Bolts, Bullets, and spears should be able to penetrate them and hit the zombie inside. So you can shoot every zombie closet but you risk missing the zombie or not killing it and causing a ruckus. Maybe make the closet doors not even readily breakable but instead you have to activate them to open them like a normal door, but the block just vanishes. And even better would be doing the same for all of the stuff like shower curtains that zombie hide behind.