Stealth broken in V1.14

[ElCabong]

When you wake up a room full of Z's, you back out and stealth out. If you manage to get far enough away with obstacles in front of you, your nifty meter says unseen. Wait long enough and they will forget you and start wandering at random.

 

When you’re wearing T6 assassins amor they should forget you almost immediately. Not anymore, they haven’t forgotten you. You don’t get the stealth damage bonus and as soon as you shoot one, the entire crowd comes at you. Perhaps it’s the T6 that’s been nerfed. There’s a time element in this that gets shorter as you go up the armor tier and used to be almost instantaneous with T6.

 

Whatever, it's broken. I don't recommend upgrading to this version if you use an agility build.

 

The youtube posters who made videos about an OP build got what they wanted.

[theFlu]

Inspired by your post, I gave it a test.. T6 Infestation in the medical factory, full stealth setup. For sure it's a lot rougher now, as in some zeds will actually notice you and likely get a few hits in.

 

A lot of zeds died without waking up, most others didn't wake up anyone else; I think I woke up more with the glancing blows.

Some trigger rooms triggered partially, most didn't at all. (key-triggers of course triggered fully)

 

If a zed started wandering, after a few tries I didn't have the patience to wait for a chance at "new" sneak damage - they die faster just spamming machete at face...

 

On the upside, it's now "playable"; you'll actually be in some danger and will have to do _something_.

On the downside, the overall feeling of it now is .. back to punishing randomness. You can't really predict what will trigger and when, and how bad it'll be. The straight up combat route (even as Agi build) might be preferable more often than not.

Edited October 15 by theFlu (see edit history)

[stample]

The stealth changes definitely seem to have messed up the Assassin armor.  I've had the same experience as @theFlu, where stealth is more dangerous now, with or without Aassassin armor.  But as @ElCabong says, you can't drop aggro anymore.  I don't know if the Assassin armor was changed intentionally, but the text was not?  But I can wake a room of zeds, run back a hallway or two, around some corners, hide, and everything keeps following me.  It's like I still only get the 20s delay or whatever the min is for From the Shadows rank 5.  Maybe because the min stealthiness is like 15-17 now, even in a dark room at night, they still detect you and you're not actually hidden if they're awake.   Maybe they're still following breadcrumbs after they've lost you, and with the higher stealth they find you again from the last breadcrumb?  After several tries running and hiding several rooms back, I managed to drop aggro from SOME zeds a couple times total.  I never once dropped all aggro, even when I only had 2-3 zombies chasing me.

 

Something is wrong, but for the moment, Assassin armor is only good for the stealth dmg when sleeping.  Once they're disturbed, or come from an ambush, you're better off with heavy armor.

 

Don't get me wrong, 100% drop rate was way too powerful.  5 seconds would be more believable and better balanced.  But now it seems to be either not working at all, or stealth is so much harder to be fully hidden that its almost never good enough.

[theFlu]

19 minutes ago, stample said:

you can't drop aggro anymore.

This is a little vague to what seems to be going on. From the quick tests with AI info on:

 

Once you've agroed a zed, and manage to stealth again, the zeds will move towards the sound you last made - the spot you disappeared at. This looks like they're still agroed to you, even if they'll just walk to a spot. In this mode you can distract them with a stone; if they have sight/agro to you, you can't.

 

The duration required between two sneak attacks is long now, but I didn't do any proper testing.. I'm thinking there was something about it in the patch notes, but I can't find it now. Might be this, but I dunno:

"AI alert timer starts after investigation ends and with some random variation"

[Shame]

The stealth system just doesn't work anymore and it seems like the encounters are designed so that if you pass through the threshold of a door then it spawns in the zombies alert automatically. Like you hit an event trigger or something.

[stample]

On 10/15/2024 at 10:38 AM, theFlu said:

This is a little vague to what seems to be going on. From the quick tests with AI info on:

 

Once you've agroed a zed, and manage to stealth again, the zeds will move towards the sound you last made - the spot you disappeared at. This looks like they're still agroed to you, even if they'll just walk to a spot. In this mode you can distract them with a stone; if they have sight/agro to you, you can't.

 

The duration required between two sneak attacks is long now, but I didn't do any proper testing.. I'm thinking there was something about it in the patch notes, but I can't find it now. Might be this, but I dunno:

"AI alert timer starts after investigation ends and with some random variation"

Accounting for that.  That's the "breadcrumbs".  I'm stealthing and then moving around another corner to prevent LOS from that last known point.  They still come to me.

[theFlu]

6 minutes ago, stample said:

They still come to me.

Yeh, they do seem a little more curious/persistent than before.

[zztong]

I've been able to drop agro and get another sneak attack, but the time to do so is lengthy. Also, you're only going to get one sneak shot off before having to go drop the agro again from zombies if they were close. I suspect I can still 100% stealth a place, but it would take too long for a higher tier POI. And, by too long, I mean too long for me sitting in the chair playing the game. I could certainly arrange enough food/water for the character to be fine spending game days in a POI. I just don't want to spend real-life-days in the chair.

 

While V1.0 was super easy and had to be nerfed the V1.1 feels like it might have over-corrected a little. They got closer. Maybe 1.2 will hit the sweet spot.

 

V1.0 was stupid-funny. I hunted with stealth using an unsilenced AK. I saw a YouTube video where they were getting stealth shots off on a pack of zombies going full-auto with an M60. Overall I'm glad to have the V1.1 changes, but I'd be okay if V1.2 swung the needle back a tiny bit on the sensitivity.

[stample]

Not being able to get a 2nd sneak attack feels right.  I swear that was written somewhere somehow that you can't get a 2nd sneak on a zed within a certain amount of time.  Maybe 30s? Maybe a minute?  But I can't for the life of me remember where I saw it.  Thought it was on a perk description, but not there now.  It clearly wasn't working before, and if its fixed now, that's great.  Being able to crouch 2 feet from a  zombie and get repeated sneak attacks was kinda stupid, even if it was fun and hilarious.  So, yeah, glad to see that fixed.

[zztong]

18 hours ago, stample said:

Not being able to get a 2nd sneak attack feels right.

 

I can see not getting a 2nd sneak on the same target unless a great deal of time has passed.

 

But if the kill was successful, perhaps you should be able to get a sneak attack on another target. And, perhaps that should be randomized a little. I mean, sometimes a zombie makes noise when they're slain and sometimes they don't. Maybe instead of being purely random the chance depended on a few things:

• such as if the zombie was hit in the head
  • the placement of zombies can mean a headshot is not possible
  • range reduces accuracy making it possible to hit elsewhere
• such as if the player used a melee weapon versus a ranged weapon
  • melee being harder, so more likely to be a silent kill

Where things really slow down is when you wake an entire room (perhaps via a trigger or an attack volume) and the entire mass remains active for a long time not granting any sneak damage. If you're trying to remain patient and to clear by stealth, you'll wait a long time between kills. Maybe that's desirable, but how long? Perhaps sneak shots should still be possible against an alerted opponent if you hit them in the back?

[stample]

I assumed that "Can't do sneak dmg" was a buff applied to the mob when hit by a sneak attack.  At least that's how I'd do it given the 7d2d framework.  There shouldn't be any reason you can't stealth several sleepers in a row as long as you aren't waking them up. 

 

What you're describing sounds like a buff given when a zombie is alerted, or sees you.  I could see that, too, but don't like it nearly as much , or at least give it a shorter expiry time.  Maybe 10s.  Just enough time to say "Must've been the wind"