Please make stealth build CHEAPER

[theFlu]

Sorry to the OP for derailing the thread, we seems to have stuck to the "build cost" for exactly zero posts. But at least I'm doing it in good, green company

Anyhoo.. hey; let's consult a dictionary and decide based on that! It's a bit of a derail, so lets just hide it for no-one's convenience:

Spoiler

Aggro is Aggressive behaviour; loud, intimidating behaviour that convincingly threatens violence without necessarily actually becoming violent.

Auto- refers to self. For a simple example, auto-defenestration, while being nearly an equally fun pass time to these silly games, refers to tossing oneself out of a window.

So, auto-aggro would probably be self targeting aggressive behaviour, akin to something some gym rats seem keen on while trying to get their stress hormones up to support a PR attempt at weights or some such.

 

So, sure, semantically auto-aggro means that a zed will yell loudly at itself.

And that, indeed, doesn't happen in the game. Auto-aggro isn't a thing. OK, sorry about that

 

Now, using the new terminology the current A20 attack volumes, when triggered, cause a "circumference triggered, player-aggroed" state. This is indeed highly different from the A18 "circumference triggered, player-aggroed" state of days-gone-by. Wait, they sound exactly the same though? Hmm, the new naming just doesn't seem to cover the difference at all.

 

As the difference is, we can now avoid the circumference-triggering, I guess we'll need to add something .. hmm.. avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-aggro? That's getting a little long, but sure, I'll go with that.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Then a zombie waking up normally when you get too close to him must be called auto-aggro as well, because it happens automatically, right?

Sure, I'll go with that too. So, all forms of aggro are now called auto-aggro, and the attack volume triggerees will be referred to being "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-aggro". Wait, I guess that's "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-auto-aggro" then? player-auto-aggro sounds a little confusing, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

 

Anyone still confused? No? Good.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

In A18 "auto" meant that no matter what you do or have perked   all zombies wake up when you cross a specific line. Now you have a situation where neither of the first two conditions are true anymore. Only the "specific line" bit is still true. That should count for a rebrand in my opinion. I don't see anything that would deserve the label automatic.

I understand you want to bury the term, sure it is loaded, but the game is still in dev, the mechanics change and old notions get buried over time. The term will revert to normalcy before long. Or do you still hate "crafting" since it used to be done on the tedious grid?

 

But automatic does not mean unavoidable. That's what my "stealthing the automatic door" was trying to highlight. The "no matter"-part was merely a feature of the system, the automation is the automatic triggering of everything. Changing the "no matter what" to "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped" doesn't change the fact that everything still triggers in those volumes outside their normal detection routines. The "All" part, well, it's been rather rare that I haven't triggered either "All" or "None", so no, that part hasn't really changed in the game.

 

It's not as punishing to stealth players as it once was, but it still acts exactly the same for everyone not using stealth. It's not even a stealth issue as such - the way it interacts with stealth is its most annoying feature, sure, but I've been giggling at the clown car rooms for a long time just because they look so silly.. a well-coordinated faceplant whenever you walk into a room tends to get amusing... not a good look for your "terrifying" opponents.

 

And for the Hot Dog comparison... I'm not seeing a new feature to be named; I'm seeing the same feature, slightly modified, still in the game - and I'm not even saying it's impossible to make it into a decent feature. I don't see any reason For a rename of the same thing.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Sorry to the OP for derailing the thread, we seems to have stuck to the "build cost" for exactly zero posts. But at least I'm doing it in good, green company

Anyhoo.. hey; let's consult a dictionary and decide based on that! It's a bit of a derail, so lets just hide it for no-one's convenience:

  Hide contents

Aggro is Aggressive behaviour; loud, intimidating behaviour that convincingly threatens violence without necessarily actually becoming violent.

Auto- refers to self. For a simple example, auto-defenestration, while being nearly an equally fun pass time to these silly games, refers to tossing oneself out of a window.

So, auto-aggro would probably be self targeting aggressive behaviour, akin to something some gym rats seem keen on while trying to get their stress hormones up to support a PR attempt at weights or some such.

 

So, sure, semantically auto-aggro means that a zed will yell loudly at itself.

And that, indeed, doesn't happen in the game. Auto-aggro isn't a thing. OK, sorry about that

 

Now, using the new terminology the current A20 attack volumes, when triggered, cause a "circumference triggered, player-aggroed" state. This is indeed highly different from the A18 "circumference triggered, player-aggroed" state of days-gone-by. Wait, they sound exactly the same though? Hmm, the new naming just doesn't seem to cover the difference at all.

 

As the difference is, we can now avoid the circumference-triggering, I guess we'll need to add something .. hmm.. avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-aggro? That's getting a little long, but sure, I'll go with that.

 

Sure, I'll go with that too. So, all forms of aggro are now called auto-aggro, and the attack volume triggerees will be referred to being "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-aggro". Wait, I guess that's "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-auto-aggro" then? player-auto-aggro sounds a little confusing, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

 

Anyone still confused? No? Good.

 

I understand you want to bury the term, sure it is loaded, but the game is still in dev, the mechanics change and old notions get buried over time. The term will revert to normalcy before long. Or do you still hate "crafting" since it used to be done on the tedious grid?

 

But automatic does not mean unavoidable. That's what my "stealthing the automatic door" was trying to highlight. The "no matter"-part was merely a feature of the system, the automation is the automatic triggering of everything. Changing the "no matter what" to "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped" doesn't change the fact that everything still triggers in those volumes outside their normal detection routines. The "All" part, well, it's been rather rare that I haven't triggered either "All" or "None", so no, that part hasn't really changed in the game.

 

It's not as punishing to stealth players as it once was, but it still acts exactly the same for everyone not using stealth. It's not even a stealth issue as such - the way it interacts with stealth is its most annoying feature, sure, but I've been giggling at the clown car rooms for a long time just because they look so silly.. a well-coordinated faceplant whenever you walk into a room tends to get amusing... not a good look for your "terrifying" opponents.

 

And for the Hot Dog comparison... I'm not seeing a new feature to be named; I'm seeing the same feature, slightly modified, still in the game - and I'm not even saying it's impossible to make it into a decent feature. I don't see any reason For a rename of the same thing.

 

Well, for the first silly part, a word has several meanings. And surely "auto"="self" is not the right one for the old "auto-aggro" term. I won't even post a disambiguation page from wikipedia as I assume this was meant as a joke

 

 "circumference triggering" can't differentiate between old and new behaviour, certainly a fault. I didn't think very long to get at it and tit shows.  But at least it is not inaccurate (in my view). 

 

My point is that auto-aggro is not helping us in any way because every zombie gets auto-aggroed if we want to roll with your interpretation of automatic. Every room then is an auto-aggro room whether it has such a trigger line you have to cross or not. Every zombie auto-aggros on you even if its your shooting that he senses, because it still is an automatic reaction to some sensory data for the zombie.

 

Yes, we could still call it auto-aggro because it is a feature that developed out of the old auto-aggro feature and often acts similar, but that makes it very confusing as soon as the differences are important for the discussion.

 

If you want to keep calling it auto-aggro then sure, go ahead. But I can promise you that in 1,2 or 3 months when the topic comes up again you will again confuse me because we have a different understanding of the terms. And we will again have a discussion about definitions and nomenclature instead of the topic itself. 

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

8 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I assume this was meant as a joke

You would be correct; but it also carried the same implication as your first note: a word has several meanings. Indeed. They're also not that accurate in general.. "airplane" .. not exactly a plane, and while quite low in density, not exactly air either.

 

Random gaming terms; yeah, horribly inaccurate. I don't want to be making a bug report for the re-naming of the Auto Turrets due to the introduction of The Great Heist 7. You're free to, I'm happy calling them Auto Turrets. Although I tend to abbreviate that to turrets ...

 

17 minutes ago, meganoth said:

if we want to roll with your interpretation of automatic.

I honestly don't see how you landed on that position from what I've said - but I may well have misspoken and it's rather irrelevant. Just feels off. Feel free to reiterate if you think I'm badly off with something, but for now I'm just leaving it as a misunderstanding.

 

I'll revert to using the old lingo of mine for this post:

Normal zed (biome spawns) agroes on sight.

A normal sleeper agroes on sight. (both may investigate a sound, but agro is different)

An attack volume sleeper and all his friends in the same volume agro when you trigger the line. Not the sight of the zeds, most of them can't see you due to line of sight issues. Not their hearing. Just the trigger line. Not investigate, agro.

 

To call it "trap-agro" might be a tad more descriptive, but it got named "auto-agro" before.

 

All that matches for the old and the new. Including the delta in the name accuracy.

 

After that, the only thing that has changed is that the chance to avoid the trap has increased slightly. Most builds will never even see the difference.

But as I argued, and you haven't really countered (as far as I understand):

Making an automation avoidable, doesn't stop it from being an automation.

 

=> If the name was fine before, then it shall remain so.

 

And I'll try to remember to link here the next time you find me confusing...

[Kyonshi]

22 hours ago, The_Mosiah said:

I won't try to reiterate on the point of trigger rooms, as it has been mentioned 300 times already, and nobody's gonna rework all those POI - especially not for stealth builds, since ppl don't really play them that much anyway.

But please, as you're currently working on the perk system anyway, consider making changes to the stealth build, so that it is less expensive.
It feels bad having to invest bilion points into AGI attribute, 4 points into "From the shadows", few points into "Hidden strike", a little mandatory "Archery", buying night vision, military stealth boots, equiping noise reduction mod into all your armor, then moving slow as heck, only to have to go for your shotgun in the second room....

Good lord, what's with this incessant whining about stealth game mechanics?

 

There's always someone @%$#ing about this it seems. Why do people wanna breeze through 7DTD like it's Splinter Cell?? That's not this type of game at all. And there's a couple of misconceptions about your rant, if not completely inaccurate claims and wrong way to play.

 

I play 95% of the time, in all my playthroughs, using stealth. Big fan, big user. Building up your survivor in that sense isn't "expensive". NV goggles aren't fundamental, nor muffling mods. Wear Padded Armor, it's good enough and produces zero noise. Switch to something more sturdy for Blood Moons. All those cool items are just nice extras to add to an already efficient, basic stealth approach.

 

You don't need to max out From The Shadows... Already at level 2, you have a nice difference. Hidden Strike isn't an obligation. You have 3x flat damage bonus with arrows and since you already put points in AGI, you have a headshot bonus on top of that PLUS the level 2-3 bow you made. It's plenty enough of damage.

 

By putting point in From The Shadows will make you move faster while crouching. Do you read the descriptions at all? Of course you'll be slower though: people can't sprint while crouching. And if someone wants to be stealthy, the best thing to do is to... move slowly.

 

Building up AGI isn't more expensive than any other attribute. It makes sense. You don't become proficient at something easy-peasy. It takes experience, you know.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Kyonshi (see edit history)

[The_Mosiah]

36 minutes ago, Kyonshi said:

Good lord, what's with this incessant whining about stealth game mechanics?

 

There's always someone @%$#ing about this it seems. Why do people wanna breeze through 7DTD like it's Splinter Cell?? That's not this type of game at all. And there's a couple of misconceptions about your rant, if not completely inaccurate claims and wrong way to play.

 

I play 95% of the time, in all my playthroughs, using stealth. Big fan, big user. Building up your survivor in that sense isn't "expensive". NV goggles aren't fundamental, nor muffling mods. Wear Padded Armor, it's good enough and produces zero noise. Switch to something more sturdy for Blood Moons. All those cool items are just nice extras to add to an already efficient, basic stealth approach.

 

You don't need to max out From The Shadows... Already at level 2, you have a nice difference. Hidden Strike isn't an obligation. You have 3x flat damage bonus with arrows and since you already put points in AGI, you have a headshot bonus on top of that PLUS the level 2-3 bow you made. It's plenty enough of damage.

 

By putting point in From The Shadows will make you move faster while crouching. Do you read the descriptions at all? Of course you'll be slower though: people can't sprint while crouching. And if someone wants to be stealthy, the best thing to do is to... move slowly.

 

Building up AGI isn't more expensive than any other attribute. It makes sense. You don't become proficient at something easy-peasy. It takes experience, you know.

I don't understand what made you so angry about my post, but please, try to keep things civil.

 

I am relatively new on this forum, but, if people post this suggestion repeatedly, there might be some merit after all, don't you think?

 

To adress the point you were making, you don't need much in terms of equipment or perks from the start, of course. But, as the gamestage progresses, the game spawns more difficult enemies, you start going for higher tier POI's == you need more then just the basic stuff. But this is true for every build and every attribute, it's just that the stealth doesn't really help you all that much, but it's very expensive to invest into.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

You would be correct; but it also carried the same implication as your first note: a word has several meanings. Indeed. They're also not that accurate in general.. "airplane" .. not exactly a plane, and while quite low in density, not exactly air either.

 

Random gaming terms; yeah, horribly inaccurate. I don't want to be making a bug report for the re-naming of the Auto Turrets due to the introduction of The Great Heist 7. You're free to, I'm happy calling them Auto Turrets. Although I tend to abbreviate that to turrets ...

 

I honestly don't see how you landed on that position from what I've said - but I may well have misspoken and it's rather irrelevant. Just feels off. Feel free to reiterate if you think I'm badly off with something, but for now I'm just leaving it as a misunderstanding.

 

I'll revert to using the old lingo of mine for this post:

Normal zed (biome spawns) agroes on sight.

A normal sleeper agroes on sight. (both may investigate a sound, but agro is different)

An attack volume sleeper and all his friends in the same volume agro when you trigger the line. Not the sight of the zeds, most of them can't see you due to line of sight issues. Not their hearing. Just the trigger line. Not investigate, agro.

 

Huh? "An attack volume sleeper and all his friends in the same volume agro when you trigger the line".

 

That is factually wrong. I thought we are on the same page that they check a few parameters (stealthiness and distance are definitely among them) and only if your stealthiness is low and distance is low compared to the zombies senses then the zombie is aggroed. Yes, all the zombies make that check, but some will still be sitting motionless in their corner after that check and even if the number of these motionless zombies is too small for your taste you can't deny that those zombies are not in an aggro state. Right?

 

 

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

 

To call it "trap-agro" might be a tad more descriptive, but it got named "auto-agro" before.

 

All that matches for the old and the new. Including the delta in the name accuracy.

 

After that, the only thing that has changed is that the chance to avoid the trap has increased slightly. Most builds will never even see the difference.

But as I argued, and you haven't really countered (as far as I understand):

Making an automation avoidable, doesn't stop it from being an automation.

 

Because we are disagreeing on what part of the mechanism the "automation" moniker applies to. For me it isn't automatic anymore. What you are critizising about could be simply fixed through balancing, it isn't an inherent fault of the mechanism. Before that the old mechanism was automatic in all its consequences and there was no balancing possible, no knob to turn to make it different.

 

Yes, you can't really avoid crossing the line so it certainly would deserve the name auto-trigger. But you can avoid aggroing a part of the zombies through perking, armor, not having lights on and the place where you cross the line. And therefore auto-aggro is misleading, as that line is not automatically aggroing all zombies in that room.

 

 

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

=> If the name was fine before, then it shall remain so.

 

And I'll try to remember to link here the next time you find me confusing...

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Huh? "An attack volume sleeper and all his friends in the same volume agro when you trigger the line".

 

That is factually wrong.

The default behaviour; before the "now we've made it avoidable"-part. As in, not including stealth checks. Stealth checks change the behaviour somewhat, but the zeds are usually so close to one another and/or your stealth level is way over or under the "check level" to mostly make it an all or nothing event. There's variation, and we do agree on the mechanics for the most part there.

 

It just usually feels quite binary in actual game though.

 

"Lights off, light armor, crouch, spec to stealth" is going to make all the miners happy that the clown-cart rooms stop happening ... that's the automatic part. It's not just about working badly with stealth.

 

Also, something I haven't pointed to in this round (because it's a whole lot more confusion) .. the aggro state that ignores stealth until the zed sees you, that thing deserves a name as well. It's basically horde-night-like GPS-aggro, granted "automatically" by failing (or not even trying) the checks. It's actually different from normal aggro and annoying in just the same ways that the A18-auto-aggro is. So it doesn't even really refer to a different thing, just a rarer one.

 

But I can live with "misleading", as long as you don't start calling it misinformation ...

[Kyonshi]

1 hour ago, The_Mosiah said:

I don't understand what made you so angry about my post, but please, try to keep things civil.

 

I am relatively new on this forum, but, if people post this suggestion repeatedly, there might be some merit after all, don't you think?

 

To adress the point you were making, you don't need much in terms of equipment or perks from the start, of course. But, as the gamestage progresses, the game spawns more difficult enemies, you start going for higher tier POI's == you need more then just the basic stuff. But this is true for every build and every attribute, it's just that the stealth doesn't really help you all that much, but it's very expensive to invest into.

It's not because I use curse words that I'm angry. And there's nothing uncivil in what I said, I just tell things without beating around the bush.

 

Now, about the real issue here. People who claimed there was an issue with stealth in this game, with a panoply of skewed arguments and excuses, have either been explained the real functioning of the feature and/or had their statements debunked. You won't make any difference with your case.

 

You keep saying that playing stealthy is "expensive" and again, you're wrong. I crossed the 3300 hours mark on this game (and this number isn't even in the highest!) and like I've said, I play stealth on every map I generate. I know what I'm talking about regarding player-side.

 

I use Padded Armor for all my characters. During a normal progression, as you gain XP and your gamestage gets higher, your lootstage gets also high. Sooner than later, you'll be able to craft lvl 5 armor and find or buy lvl 6 ones, with all the money you made from quests and selling loot. If I ever find Military Armor schematics or find pieces of it, I'll wear them and put muffling mods on. I don't ever wear heavy armor, not even during Blood Moons. Tons of money saved here, very cheap to craft.

 

Stealth does help a lot, as opposed to what you claim. If there's a Feral Wight who spots you at night, you can run few meters away, crouch and it'll lose track of you withing 2 seconds, and you don't need to have From the Shadows at max level for that. You can't pull this @%$# with heavy armor on. Trust me, you'll be happy to have some points into the skill when wandering in the Wasteland 😉

 

Doesn't matter the tier of the POI. With stealth, I can clear out the whole Dishong Tower without issues, aside from the auto-trigger areas, but those will happen to anyone, stealth or not.

 

You see top end items like night-vision goggles and stealth Military Boots like it's mandatory, cuz they give tremendous advantages, but you're mistaken. Of course, I won't spit on them if I found some, but it never was a goal for me to reach and not having them never hindered my progress in frustrating ways. Stealth is good when done intelligently and with care.

 

My guess is that you're either new to the game, or new to the stealth playstyle, to have such misconceptions about it.

[stample]

I'm going to throw some more info into this, which may make terminology muddier, or clearer. No telling.  But this is what i've determined over years of stealthing and various patch notes and MadMole comments, etc.

 

There's a distinct difference causing what appears to be instant vs non-instant aggro drop, and that's what the zombie is aggro'd on.  It isn't always you, the player.

 

If a zombie sees you, he's aggro'd on you, the player.  He will continually path toward you, until he gets to you or loses sight.  Breaking LOS will make him stop searching when he reaches the last place he saw you.  If he's reaching that point about the same time you stealthed around the next corner, he'll appear to have dropped aggro instantly or very quickly.  But this is more-or-less coincidence based on distances we're moving and he's moving.

 

However, a zombie that heard a noise is not aggro'd on you.  He's aggro'd on the sound, or more specifically, the point where the sound originated from.  He has no idea you exist, though he suspects it.  If you run and stealth, he doesn't know or care if he doesn't see it happen.  He's on his way to the spot where the sound came from, and will continue to it regardless of whether you stealth or not.  And if that's a ways off from where he started, he can easily continue pathing to that point well after you re-stealth behind a corner 5m away.

 

I also play stealth basically every time.  Its a great build except on horde nights.  My end-game is a machete for the majority of kills.  A silenced SMG with reflex sight, and semi-auto trigger in case 1-2 things wake up or don't die in the initial hit.  Backup is a desert vulture when I need to go loud and proud, but that's very rare.  Compound crossbow with steel bolts for the feral wights, feral cops, glowy bikers, glowy grandmas and glowy tourists.  I've played with silencing a vulture for glowy wights, but that didn't seem any more effective than crossbow.  Saves a few perk points, but didn't seem worth it cause its still pretty loud and I end up carrying a bow anyway.

 

A few things are pretty mandatory to make it not feel like playing in molasses, though.  You need the magazine to remove stamina drain on crouch running, then you run everywhere.  You need the magazine to jump full height while crouching.  You want the magazine to reduce noise on landing.  SexRex is great addition to help refill stamina from the power attack stealth strikes, so you aren't draining food and water so fast.  You really need the magazine to not make noise crouching over trash.  Pretty much all other magazines and non-Agi perks aren't needed, though.  I start with the muffled connectors but remove them later.  I do use the stealth military boots if I find them, but it never felt like it made the difference.  Just saves a mod slot for something else until you stop using connectors anyway.  I never use the NVG, don't like them. (caveat, i'm playing on an older computer with an old gfx card, so shadows are off.  That makes indoors at night quite a bit more visible, so maybe that's why I never use NVGs)

[theFlu]

29 minutes ago, stample said:

I'm going to throw some more info into this, which may make terminology muddier, or clearer. No telling.

It's a pretty accurate description. For the muddiness, I'm used to agro referring to "attacking / intending to attack". That makes "agroed to a sound" feel rather odd, it's not going to hit the sound once it gets there I'd use interested/distracted/investigating for sounds.

[ElCabong]

If you're using a shotgun you're not strictly following a stealth build. If I only put points into gunslinger, archery, light armor, hidden strike, and from the shadows, I don't have any trouble. I'm annoyed by all those rooms that you run into that stealth doesn't really do you any good because you trigger the mob but if I can't use my crossbow to kill them, I mow them down with the 9 mm. Later on when I  get the SMG and some of the books that back automatic fire up, I generally start a new game because things begin to get boring. 

 

In the game I'm playing now I'm a little behind the stealth curve because I put some points into strength to get MasterChef up to two. I like to cook. I don't really need it. I also like clubbing zombies with a baseball bat. I find it a great stress reliever. So I have maybe 6 points not in the agility tree. Yet I'm doing just fine.

 

 

[theFlu]

13 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

the SMG and some of the books that back automatic fire up

Speaking of potential confusion...

Unless you're skipping some important bits here, the Automatic Weapons -book series does not cover the SMG. That's covered by the Pistol Petes, obviously.

[The_Mosiah]

On 11/16/2022 at 12:13 AM, Kyonshi said:

You keep saying that playing stealthy is "expensive" and again, you're wrong. I crossed the 3300 hours mark on this game (and this number isn't even in the highest!) and like I've said, I play stealth on every map I generate. I know what I'm talking about regarding player-side.

 

Those are some respectable numbers, I myself am little over 2K, tried different builds across a number of maps. I have no problem, with people who say they have played a lot, and say that the stealth is exactly to their liking, and that they don't want any changed. That is cool, valid, personal preference, I'd say exactly the same as me saying 'I've played a lot and there are issues'.

 

On 11/16/2022 at 12:13 AM, Kyonshi said:

Now, about the real issue here. People who claimed there was an issue with stealth in this game, with a panoply of skewed arguments and excuses, have either been explained the real functioning of the feature and/or had their statements debunked. You won't make any difference with your case.

Now, I don't know who the debunked people are and what they have been debunked with, they don't relate to me, I'm calling this paragraph completely irrelevant.
 

On 11/16/2022 at 12:13 AM, Kyonshi said:

aside from the auto-trigger areas, but those will happen to anyone, stealth or not.

Well, the auto-trigger areas trigger FOR everyone, but affect almost exclusively stealth build. When you play strengh build, and smash the door in with flaming sledgehammer, every room acts as an auto-trigger room, rendering the triggers themselfs completely irrelevant.  Honestly, I think logic is so obvious, I am amazed how people miss this.

 

This very fact, along with the fact that AGI attribute is the only attribute that doesn't provide any utility in form of building, resource gathering or survival, is making this build fall behind the others. Some quick-and-easy fix, like lowering the attribute requirement to pick up some perks, is something that would not destroy the game, and would help this dope ninja fantasy a ton.

Edited November 17, 2022 by The_Mosiah (see edit history)

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, The_Mosiah said:

 

Those are some respectable numbers, I myself am little over 2K, tried different builds across a number of maps. I have no problem, with people who say they have played a lot, and say that the stealth is exactly to their liking, and that they don't want any changed. That is cool, valid, personal preference, I'd say exactly the same as me saying 'I've played a lot and there are issues'.

 

Now, I don't know who the debunked people are and what they have been debunked with, they don't relate to me, I'm calling this paragraph completely irrelevant.
 

Well, the auto-trigger areas trigger FOR everyone, but affect almost exclusively stealth build. When you play strengh build, and smash the door in with flaming sledgehammer, every room acts as an auto-trigger room, rendering the triggers themselfs completely irrelevant.  Honestly, I think logic is so obvious, I am amazed how people miss this.

 

Even a strength build will not wake up every zombie in a room when he uses the sledgehammer (I'm almost sure of that). But that is beside the point, I would say that auto-trigger rooms were definitely implemented for stealth players. Exclusively.

 

Why? To make stealth not auto-sleep walking through pois shooting at sleeping puppets. Not that it didn't keep lots of stealth players amused, but a rule TFP designs with is that no gain should come without effort or danger. And maybe stealth was slow to play but it was almost devoid of risk.

 

 

2 hours ago, The_Mosiah said:

 

This very fact, along with the fact that AGI attribute is the only attribute that doesn't provide any utility in form of building, resource gathering or survival, is making this build fall behind the others. Some quick-and-easy fix, like lowering the attribute requirement to pick up some perks, is something that would not destroy the game, and would help this dope ninja fantasy a ton.

 

I would assume that for TFP the "resource" aspect was fullfilled because you save lots of ammo (the equivalent of getting more resources is saving resources).

 

We could argue that that isn't enough, especially since you definitely don't save anything with building materials and horde night is a sore spot for stealthers already. But then I (if I were a developer) would directly fix that by giving some resource gathering perk or making the savings even better. Making stealth cheaper has (IMHO) unwanted consequences, for example the AGI player will be fully perked faster after which the game looses incentive to continue or at least his further perk points loose in value as he can't boost his strengths any further. And it definitely will help everyone else to get stealth abilities cheaper on the side.

 

Now if you can convince TFP that AGI still needs a resource gathering perk they maybe would have to move perk points over from say stealth so the attributes have (somewhat or exactly?) the same points. Then you would get your wish through the back door 😉

 

Incidentally a resource just became scarce and could benefit from a resource gathering perk: water 😁

 

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

7 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But that is beside the point, I would say that auto-trigger rooms were implenemented for the stealth player. Exclusively.

Heh, I was thinking if I should ask you about that during our exchange. I chose not to, but it seems I should've.

 

"What is the reason for Attack volumes?". I'd say they're there for jump scares. One might want to say "combat events" due to the ridiculed nature of "jump scare", but that's not nearly as descriptive. They're traps, for Everyone. "Oh @%$#, five zeds coming at me at once!" Usable scripting tool for the POIs.

 

The way it was an FU to stealthers seems mostly a side effect; the detection routines weren't there and it majorly F'd stealthing for a patch. I highly doubt the Pimps saw it as a functioning mechanic FOR counter-stealth to be pushed in; and not pushing it in would've at worst been a matter of seek-and-replace in the sleeper volume xml:s.

 

They pushed it in to enable the trap designs they want to test, zeds coming out of ceilings and walls and what have you. Not as a stealth counter.

 

IMO, of course

[The_Mosiah]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Even a strength build will not wake up every zombie in a room when he uses the sledgehammer (I'm almost sure of that). But that is beside the point, I would say that auto-trigger rooms were implenemented for the stealth player. Exclusively.

 

Why? To make stealth not auto-sleep walking through pois shooting at sleeping puppets. Not that it didn't keep lots of stealth players amused, but a rule TFP designs with is that no gain should come without effort or danger. And maybe stealth was slow to play but it was almost devoid of risk.

 

I understand the reasoning - I think the implementation is problematic on many fronts, but I recognize the problem they saw, and them implementing this change to counter it.

I am not actively pushing for a change in this matter, but I think this big weakness is a fair argument for why the stealth build needs a little tunning.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

I would assume that for TFP the "resource" aspect was fullfilled because you save lots of ammo (the equivalent of getting more resources is saving resources).

Again, I can understand that this was the design intent, but as you stated, I would argue that this isn't nearly enough. In fact, this doesn't really make a dent, in my opinion.

As STR miner, I have all the powder and lead I could ever need, and brass is (fortunately) no longer the scarce resource it once was (Thanks, GJ Fun Pimps!).

Even when I play different attribute, or just plainly don't mine, I use melee a LOT. It's actually very well done, and can be pretty powerful. I save bullets for when I am in real trouble, or for the blood moon, and those are exactly the moments stealth is not an option either.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Making stealth cheaper has (IMHO) unwanted consequences, for example the AGI player will be fully perked faster after which the game looses incentive to continue or at least his further perk points loose in value as he can't boost his strengths any further. And it definitely will help everyone else to get stealth abilities cheaper on the side.

You have to branch out of stealth/agi anyway. For the mentioned utilities, but for the combat as well. Sneaking won't help you much on bloodmoon, or when you just get jumped. 

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Now if you can convince TFP that AGI still needs a resource gathering perk they maybe would have to move perk points over from say stealth so the attributes have (somewhat or exactly?) the same points. Then you would get your wish through the back door 😉

 

Incidentally a resource just became scarce and could benefit from a resource gathering perk: I'm speaking of water 🤪

That would be dope, a great suggestion 😄 I can picture it now - could be named "Be water, my friend" (~Bruce Lee,  so it fits the ninja theme 😄 )

Edited November 17, 2022 by The_Mosiah (see edit history)

[Roland]

The issue as I see it is one of expectation. If you spent all the points to max the stealth perks and have quiet armor with dampening mods and are using silent weaponry then there are some that expect stealth to work every single time in every room for every zombie unless the player makes a mistake and steps into a pool of light or on a crunchy piece of garbage. Because of that expectation, the fact that there are rooms that are designed to have the zombies possibly wake up (if checks are failed) and already targeting either the player or the location where the trigger happened feels wrong to them and they want the game fixed to match their expectations.

 

However, plan B would dictate that rather than the game being changed, players may need to change their expectations to align better with the developer's own design goals that this game will offer players a variety of interactions with zombies and that there has never been nor never likely to be a plan to allow players to 100% stealth every single room every single time. Even having spent so much time and dukes kitting out in stealth there still will be a small percentage of rooms where gameplay is going to change up and instead of killing an immobile, unconscious figure, you may have to kill a moving and alert figure. That can be accomplished by either abandoning stealth and going full throttle on the machine gun or it can be accomplished by retreating and restealthing and then killing the conscious zombies wandering around and hitting random walls.

 

So there is choice and variety and that is all by design.

 

Now, if there is a weird little unnatural action where you have to let the zombies reach the trigger point so that their special trigger point aggro completes and then you must let them see you so they start a normal player targeted aggro before you then retreat and re-stealth, then that sounds like some kind of a bug that faatal could probably fix.

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, The_Mosiah said:

 

I understand the reasoning - I think the implementation is problematic on many fronts, but I recognize the problem they saw, and them implementing this change to counter it.

I am not actively pushing for a change in this matter, but I think this big weakness is a fair argument for why the stealth build needs a little tunning.

 

Again, I can understand that this was the design intent, but as you stated, I would argue that this isn't nearly enough. In fact, this doesn't really make a dent, in my opinion.

As STR miner, I have all the powder and lead I could ever need, and brass is (fortunately) no longer the scarce resource it once was (Thanks, GJ Fun Pimps!).

Even when I play different attribute, or just plainly don't mine, I use melee a LOT. It's actually very well done, and can be pretty powerful. I save bullets for when I am in real trouble, or for the blood moon, and those are exactly the moments stealth is not an option either.

 

Not sure. When you increase difficulty melee becomes harder in later stages with lots of running zombies and only shooting gives you the dps to not get hit. Heavy armor is a solution as long as the zombies are not too numerous. But only the stealth player has the almost 100% safe combination of 1) being able to deal with most zombie groups one by one, 2) keeping a distance and still have almost no ammo cost and 3) being always faster than the zombies and flight is always the ultimate option.

 

2 hours ago, The_Mosiah said:

 

You have to branch out of stealth/agi anyway. For the mentioned utilities, but for the combat as well. Sneaking won't help you much on bloodmoon, or when you just get jumped.

 

I never had problems on bloodmoon with an AGI character. Maybe because I often (have to) play at a lower level than I could. But also because Desert Vulture and MPG are excellent weapons. You can't stand in an open doorway with them and just mow down zombies like madmole did in one or two videos. But you can kill any zombie with them that tries to destroy any of the important blocks in your horde base. And if you are not out for a record kill count then the only important fact about a horde night is whether you survived it. And that you can do with any of the weapons in the game.

 

And when I get jumped in POIs, then (as I said earlier) I will run, run and jump (if necessary, I love parkour).

 

2 hours ago, The_Mosiah said:

 

 

 

 

That would be dope, a great suggestion 😄 I can picture it now - could be named "Be water, my friend" (~Bruce Lee,  so it fits the ninja theme 😄 )

 

 

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, theFlu said:

Heh, I was thinking if I should ask you about that during our exchange. I chose not to, but it seems I should've.

 

"What is the reason for Attack volumes?". I'd say they're there for jump scares. One might want to say "combat events" due to the ridiculed nature of "jump scare", but that's not nearly as descriptive. They're traps, for Everyone. "Oh @%$#, five zeds coming at me at once!" Usable scripting tool for the POIs.

 

The way it was an FU to stealthers seems mostly a side effect; the detection routines weren't there and it majorly F'd stealthing for a patch. I highly doubt the Pimps saw it as a functioning mechanic FOR counter-stealth to be pushed in; and not pushing it in would've at worst been a matter of seek-and-replace in the sleeper volume xml:s.

 

They pushed it in to enable the trap designs they want to test, zeds coming out of ceilings and walls and what have you. Not as a stealth counter.

 

IMO, of course

 

Seems I missed that possibility. Yes, very possible that that was a part or even the only reason for the early aggro rooms.

 

[theFlu]

22 minutes ago, Roland said:

Now, if there is a weird little unnatural action where you have to let the zombies reach the trigger point so that their special trigger point aggro completes and then you must let them see you so they start a normal player targeted aggro before you then retreat and re-stealth, then that sounds like some kind of a bug that faatal could probably fix.

Potential confusions:

"Special trigger point aggro": that trigger point is inside your character's nose. The attack volumes have two options: either the zeds get triggered at the border and GPS-aggro to the player, or the non-triggered zeds revert to normal sleepers. Under no circumstance will an attack volume zed enter a search-for-a-spot-mode when triggered by the volume border check. (You'll have to provide some detailed repro-steps to convince me otherwise. I've never seen it.)

 

Something that faatal could fix? Maybe; I don't see how though:

- The Attack volumes are intentionally "more perceptive" than normal stealth mechanics. They have to be, otherwise they're no different.

- As they're more perceptive, they can't see the player within the normal rules. So they can't rely on the normal rules, the moment they start following the normal rules, they'd lose the player.

- So they need a special state to be a threat. That state must remain until the normal rules can be applied.

=> The first moment the game can "easily" decide that normal rules can apply is the moment where the normal rules give normal aggro.

 

So, given any design where the "heightened rules" only apply momentarily, something must fill the gap. I can't really imagine a way around it, trust me, I'd propose one.

 

If the zeds were to just "go to trigger location", that would make the Attack volumes trivial. Notice you agroed something - take a step back - place a land mine and stealth away. Boom. And not just bbooms of course, having the zeds just gather at where you triggered them would be insanely easy to exploit in all sorts of ways.

[katarynna]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

If the zeds were to just "go to trigger location", that would make the Attack volumes trivial. Notice you agroed something - take a step back - place a land mine and stealth away. Boom. And not just bbooms of course, having the zeds just gather at where you triggered them would be insanely easy to exploit in all sorts of ways.

 

That is exactly what seems to happen though.

 

I watched kage848's stealth play through. I especially remember one of the t5 pois he did at night. It was either higashi or dishong.

 

He would be crouched with no light. He would step over the trigger and the zombies would wake and head right for where he stepped over the trigger. He would remain crouched and back up 5 or 6 steps. The zombies would get to the spot je triggered them and just stand there. He would step forward a step or 2 and kill them from stealth with a machete. There would usually be 2-3 zombies at least, and they wouldn't even detect him when he killed the friend standing right beside them.\

 

It happened over and over and over. When they auto-awakened, they were just triggered to the spot, not the player. As long as you moved a few steps away, like literally 5-6 steps, they absolutely had no idea you were there.

 

I think stealth players see the zombies wake up and head towards them, and just assume they have been spotted and have aggro. Their reaction in pulling out a gun and starting to shoot is what actually gives them aggro a lot of the time.

 

If i get time, i'll try to find one of the videos from that series and link it, although it would be easy enough to find it yourself.

[theFlu]

23 minutes ago, katarynna said:

If i get time, i'll try to find one of the videos from that series and link it, although it would be easy enough to find it yourself.

Please do, I have watched kage quite a bit, including couple of his stealth build series, but I haven't seen anything too weird. He also posts way too much for me to find a video that might be the one you're thinking of, I'm not going to land on the one you're thinking about in any case...

 

I'm always happy to be proven wrong, it's just more knowledge for me ...

[The_Mosiah]

29 minutes ago, katarynna said:

watched kage848's stealth play through. I especially remember one of the t5 pois he did at night. It was either higashi or dishong.

 

He would be crouched with no light. He would step over the trigger and the zombies would wake and head right for where he stepped over the trigger. He would remain crouched and back up 5 or 6 steps. The zombies would get to the spot je triggered them and just stand there. He would step forward a step or 2 and kill them from stealth with a machete. There would usually be 2-3 zombies at least, and they wouldn't even detect him when he killed the friend standing right beside them.\

 

It happened over and over and over. When they auto-awakened, they were just triggered to the spot, not the player. As long as you moved a few steps away, like literally 5-6 steps, they absolutely had no idea you were there.

That sounds awesome, thanks!! I have to try it next time 🙂

[ElDudorino]

13 hours ago, katarynna said:

It happened over and over and over. When they auto-awakened, they were just triggered to the spot, not the player. As long as you moved a few steps away, like literally 5-6 steps, they absolutely had no idea you were there.

 

Yep, I learned about this in another thread complaining about stealth. This is exactly how it works. I still find it annoying, but to be fair I find the sleeper system super annoying in general.

 

Similarly, if you go zombie hunting at night, when a zombie hears you you can go into stealth and walk a few steps away then see them stop at the place where you stealthed. That I actually find kind of fun.

[8_Hussars]

19 hours ago, katarynna said:

I watched kage848's stealth play through. I especially remember one of the t5 pois he did at night. It was either higashi or dishong.

OT.  How did kage848 stay focused long enough to finish a POI?