PC Why are the devs screwing over agi/stealth in their POI design?

All this date really proves the devs stance that this is not a stealth game and was never designed or intended to be. Instead its a run and gun zombie survival game to its very core with base building and defense thrown in. Which begs the question of why include stealth in the first place as a option when that it's clearly not the point of the game.

Well in all honestly from all I've seen on the subject and the perks, mechanics, and game design its clear that stealth only exist to help enable run and gun. In other words the whole point of stealth is to reduce the resource requirements and danger of sustaining the core run and gun play style. While insuring that it will never over shadow or be able to challenge said core play style.

Basically stealth allows you to raid POI's while using resources that are mostly not needed by run and gun in large number if cases. All the while also reducing the number of dangerous encounters where run and gun resources are needed. Which then allows you to better build up resources to allow you to use run and gun.

Now I know what you are about to say for example that with mining it is trivial to sustain run and gun. Well what of the people who hate mining and would struggle with out its near limitless resources especially when the traders are so heavily rng based. Well those situations is where stealth shines the brightest as a alternative to mining and dealing with trader rng.

 
Danidas said:
All this date really proves the devs stance that this is not a stealth game and was never designed or intended to be. Instead its a run and gun zombie survival game to its very core with base building and defense thrown in. Which begs the question of why include stealth in the first place as a option when that it's clearly not the point of the game.

Well in all honestly from all I've seen on the subject and the perks, mechanics, and game design its clear that stealth only exist to help enable run and gun. In other words the whole point of stealth is to reduce the resource requirements and danger of sustaining the core run and gun play style. While insuring that it will never over shadow or be able to challenge said core play style.

Basically stealth allows you to raid POI's while using resources that are mostly not needed by run and gun in large number if cases. All the while also reducing the number of dangerous encounters where run and gun resources are needed. Which then allows you to better build up resources to allow you to use run and gun.

Now I know what you are about to say for example that with mining it is trivial to sustain run and gun. Well what of the people who hate mining and would struggle with out its near limitless resources especially when the traders are so heavily rng based. Well those situations is where stealth shines the brightest as a alternative to mining and dealing with trader rng.
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Iirc both Gaz and madmole were pretty clear a few months back in the A19 Dev Diary that run and gun wasn't the game's focus and the game was supposed to be open to multiple play styles. Misremembered the discussion I was thinking of.

 
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hiemfire said:
Iirc both Gaz and madmole were pretty clear a few months back in the A19 Dev Diary that run and gun wasn't the game's focus and the game was supposed to be open to multiple play styles.
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And it is.... I quite often stealth through a POI.   And when that fails, I switch to melee.   If there are too many to melee, I pull out my firearm.   If there are still too many (or I haven't found a firearm yet) I run like hell.   So I've engaged in up to 4 different play styles in the same POI.

 
hiemfire said:
Iirc both Gaz and madmole were pretty clear a few months back in the A19 Dev Diary that run and gun wasn't the game's focus and the game was supposed to be open to multiple play styles.
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To me that just means different styles of run and gun mixed with different styles of base building with varying degrees of tactics. Basically I over simplified it by lumping everything but stealth into one category.

 
Kalen said:
And it is.... I quite often stealth through a POI.   And when that fails, I switch to melee.   If there are too many to melee, I pull out my firearm.   If there are still too many (or I haven't found a firearm yet) I run like hell.   So I've engaged in up to 4 different play styles in the same POI.
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Removal of the stealth perks wouldn't hurt your playstyle then.

Danidas said:
To me that just means different styles of run and gun mixed with different styles of base building with varying degrees of tactics. Basically I over simplified it by lumping everything but stealth into one category.
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Yah, you did.

 
Kalen said:
Sure it would.... I'd hate to lose the extra benefit they provide.   
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The benefit is negligible, in fact the movement speed increase from FTS may actually be a hindrance. With no perks invested in either FTS and HS it is fully possible to stealth every single POI that does not contain aggressive volumes if you're willing to accept the occasional single or dual zombie pull. Can even stalk at night in the open with minimal issue.

 
hiemfire said:
The benefit is negligible, in fact the movement speed increase from FTS may actually be a hindrance. With no perks invested in either FTS and HS it is fully possible to stealth every single POI that does not contain aggressive volumes if you're willing to accept the occasional single or dual zombie pull. Can even stalk at night in the open with minimal issue.
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Not to me.... the damage increase on sneak attacks is substantial.

 
Danidas said:
In other words my argument boils down to this "Stealth is to Agility what Mining is to Strength".
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With the exception of the mining perks affecting all block damage, not just against the earth blocks (the various soils, "natural stone" and ores), and what you get from the palletized resource stacks and not having anything that completely negates them... At worst with the mining perks you have to swing longer for the same end result. With Stealth you completely lose access to what you've invested in and have to do something else. Imagine having random clumps of resource blocks strewn through out the underground that could only be harvested by a timed charge, and all you get out of them is stone... That's an Aggressive Volume equivalent for Mining/Strength.

Danidas said:
Also the reduction in time it takes zombies to forget you is a life saver.
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Even if you get it down to 20 seconds (iirc that is the result of the final point in FTS), they should either be dead or you should be long gone by then.

Kalen said:
Not to me.... the damage increase on sneak attacks is substantial.
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Maybe. You're probably getting more out of the headshot crit chance from increasing your weapon's primary attribute than you are from HS.

 
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Kalen said:
Maybe... but they're not mutually exclusive. 
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Maybe you are wasting points into something that really isn't benefiting you much if at all. You can do everything much more efficiently and faster not spending a single point in the stealth perks. Stealth needs a huge buff and aggro rooms should be removed so that there are multiple ways to play the game. The devs cannot come up with a better concept than heat seeking zombie rooms?

 
Danidas said:
The main misconception with this is that people do not know that there are three different types of sleeper volumes.

1) Asleep sleepers - They are the ones that will not wake up unless damaged or they detect noise over a set threshold. In other words they will ignore that your standing right in front of them until a strong enough noise event goes off with in range of them or they get damaged. They are also the vastly most common sleeper type in all tiers and what most players expect to find.

2) Awake sleepers - They are just the same as normal zombies and just as aware but set to not wander from their spawn point. Which allows them to be better able to detect the player as they have both sight and sound to work with. As a result it is a lot harder to stealth around them especially during the day and if one sees you than it is a good chance that his friends will be alerted too. They are also rather rare to run into as they are most often used in choke points or traps and commonly mistaken for the next group of sleepers.

3) Auto Aggro Sleeps - Theses will auto lock onto the player upon entering their spawn volume regardless of what the player does. However if the player is able to evade them and escape out of line of slight they can restealth to reset the zombies into plain Awake ones. Now as for how common they are the truth is that they are extremely rare and in almost all cases only exist at or very near to a POIs loot room.

The vast majority of times players think that they ran into hopeless to avoid sleepers they are in fact running into the second group. Which are possible to use stealth on but at a much higher difficulty then the first group that tend to lull people into a false sense of security. As for the third group unless your near the end of the poi where the devs want to create a boss fight or ambush your not going to be running into them. Grant it there are a few rare exceptions like the a fore mentioned Firestation that is bugged with all sleeper volumes being auto aggro.
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Based on the disdirbution of sleeper volume flags posted in this thread earlier, it appears that this assesment is not entirely true. Only 1.6 % of POI's have "awake" sleepers, while approx third have auto agro sleeper volumes according to this distribution. 

So as far as I can see "vast majority" of players who think they were victims of an auto-agro sleeper volume actually are entirely correct. As "awake" sleeper volume flag is utterly under-represented in the distribution, compared to the normal sleeper volumes and also compared to auto-agro-sleeper volumes. 

 
Boidster said:
Sorry, I edited it right after you posted and forgot to alert you. The first numbers were taking into account all POIs including the remnants and others which have no sleeper volumes. I excluded those to get the correct numbers.

This is just not true. There might be a single volume in the POI which will auto-aggro, when 75% (as in Red Mesa) or more of the rest of the POI can be cleared without risk or challenge by one-shotting the sleepers.
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The problem with auto-agro sleeper volumes (for example, in Red Mesa) is that this argument about it being "mostly sltealthable" based on internal volume distribution of auto agro volumes is that this is not really representative of the difficulty/danger of the POI. The "normal" sleeper areas are not low difficulatly because they are normal sleeper, but because regardless of your build the zombie distribution is low enough where you can do these parts relatively easily without stealth as well. The zombies in there come in ones or twos, which is kinda fine, stealth or no stealth. 

When you reach an area where stealth would actually matter (a room with 8+ opponents, some being feral/irradiated at higher gamestages) THIS area is set to auto-agro. Completely invalidating the points invested into the stealth perks WHEN IT WOULD ACTUALLY MATTER THE MOST. So that is where the argument that the POI is "mostly stealthable" fails, because it is not in the parts where it actually matters, i.e., the POI is, for practical purposes "not stealthable". Unless one cheeses ofc by triggering,  blocking the doorway or going through the wall and doing the POI backwards. But that is not stealth - that is just cheesing the POI by using workarounds outside of stealth. 

 
On my combat focused characters, I play stealth a lot, especially in the starting out of the game.

It is annoying to have this issue where the Devs seem to have programmed in an invisible trigger that suddenly activates a group of Zeds to rush at you when you get to a certain point on the map, in these POI's.  Makes me glad I played Neverwinter Nights and messed with the level creators for that old game.  Gained an understanding of "invisable location triggers."

Because of that, I have had to work around these triggers, I can't see, by simply smashing the heck out of the buildings, so I don't have to walk over the trigger and start CrossBow sniping the Zeds that should very clearly be unsuspecting, in the first place. 

Sometimes I even have to setup new caged/door access area's, to control Zed movements, should stealth fail me, often times due to these invisible triggers.  A method that started out with busting a Doorway into a 3 block wide, 2 block high, hole in the wall, before adding a new door and 2 wood bars wall replacements, so I could shoot at any Zeds that are in the next room over as well as have it as insurance, if they wake up, especially unexpectedly due to invisible wake triggers. 

With the Introduction of spears I since then changed my insurance corridor method to 2x2, place only 2 wood bars on the lower block area and have the door sideways.  If a Zed wakes now, and starts bashing the door, I can still stab it with thew spear from a safe distance.

Still, the fact that the use of invisible wake triggers is being used is quite bothersome and does feel a bet like cheating.

 
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Lesdeth said:
Maybe you are wasting points into something that really isn't benefiting you much if at all. You can do everything much more efficiently and faster not spending a single point in the stealth perks. Stealth needs a huge buff and aggro rooms should be removed so that there are multiple ways to play the game. The devs cannot come up with a better concept than heat seeking zombie rooms?
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Maybe I'm not interested in doing things faster.... maybe I'm more interested in doing things I find enjoyable?

 
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