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

[hiemfire]

That is still all traditional and acceptable stealth gameplay in ANY game involving stealth.

Many, not "any". There are quite a few that detection = automatic game over screen and many others that if you're detected you end up with either an unending stream of enemies that there is never enough ammunition to deal with or basically naked, wielding a butter knife, fighting a Tarasque.

It's like people want the perk to do all the work for them so that they are always hidden in the shadows no matter what happens. As soon as they actually have to employ some skill in getting out of sight and actively hide in the shadows until the aggro level calms a bit that means stealth doesn't work?

Maybe for some it is this way. For me it is more about being forced to not because I made a mistake but because the game turns off up to 14-18 levels (19-23 levels if you include HS) worth of time and resource investment without warning.

I realize I'm getting ahead of myself here because this really should be reproduced by others to see if hiding and returning to the auto aggro rooms and then killing the zeds from a stealthy position for full perk benefits really does work.

I suggest the Shamway Factory "boss room" without either Parkour or the fall damage removal Great Heist (5k Dukes in inventory, ignore first 15m of falling) to render it moot. It would be a good test of the feasibility of that portion of the stealth system.

While I hate a lot of things about this game and the direction it has taken the last few updates,

I gotta chime in and call bull@%$#, I love my agility build in a19. I can clear most of a POI (yes, even tier 5) with just my silenced pistol. For everything else, there is the SMG with drum mag. Stealth build isn't any worse off than any other build with the right equipment.

The new perk, stat and loot system might be complete trash (and don't even get me started on the map), but the pure agi is the most fun I've had with a19.

A Game Stage 200+ taking full advantage of trader quests and trader inventory not being inline with Loot Stage perspective noted... If you hate the loot system now, you're going to despise the game when they bring traders inline with it.

 

[meganoth]

Ok, I did the Jugginator test of stealth as well, level 297 and day 800, and difficulty insane. I knew stealth is not influenced by difficulty, but live testing is much more convincing.

Silenced military armor, two urban combat books with stealth bonusses, SMG and vulture with silencers and AP ammo, filled with mods, crossbow with steel bolts. I would have liked to use night vision googles for the night, but because of a bug that wasn't possible so in the night I increased brightness. I did not equip a helmet light because I usually forget to turn it off at daytime and then wonder why my stealth is so bad.

First completed the book tower, then half of dishong. Then thought to add some shotgun messiah factory as well. Didn't die or even come near dying even once. Checked again if it really was insane difficulty, but yes, it was.

Results:

* The initial shot from crossbow killed any feral and many irradiated (because of exploding the head), if not a few shots from vulture finished the deal

* Stealth worked very well in general. I could shoot zombies standing side by side even with the vulture and they wouldn't wake up. Only if I shot with the vulture and was myself very near to a zombie would it wake up.

* If I really woke up a few zombies I simply could run back a distance, enter stealth and go a little further. Most of the time that was enough for them to loose my trail and I could finish them off. If that didn't work, rinse and repeat, or if patience runs out it never was a problem to kill them with vulture or SMG.

* I made the ultimate test in the cafeteria of the shotgun messiah factory. I shot with a blunderbuss directly between the two toilets where a dozen zombies are hidden, then ran back. The zombies distributed themselves all along that way but were relatively active and alert. I still could generally get headshots with the bow, sometimes I had to run away again. If I had waited a little longer before going back I suspect they would have been less active eventually.

 

[Kalen]

Maybe for some it is this way. For me it is more about being forced to not because I made a mistake but because the game turns off up to 14-18 levels (19-23 levels if you include HS) worth of time and resource investment without warning.

How does it turn off 14-18 levels?   You still have a 10 agility and all the benefits it provides, right?   You can also use your awesome stealth perks to get out of sight and hide again, as Juginator tested.   

 

[hiemfire]

Ok, I did the Jugginator test of stealth as well, level 297 and day 800, and difficulty insane. I knew stealth is not influenced by difficulty, but live testing is much more convincing.

Silenced military armor, two urban combat books with stealth bonusses, SMG and vulture with silencers and AP ammo, filled with mods, crossbow with steel bolts. I would have liked to use night vision googles for the night, but because of a bug that wasn't possible so in the night I increased brightness. I did not equip a helmet light because I usually forget to turn it off at daytime and then wonder why my stealth is so bad.

I get that you and @Jugginator are trying to show how it works at the top end to "prove" stealth is "fine", but it's coming off to me as basically a MMO good rng/long play time flex, even with you two probably dipping into dm & cm to set up your runs. To be a bit less "Get lucky or just die." how about doing the same runs, lvl 23, day 28 using t3 iron age and/or t6 stone age, agility tree gear. And actually throw in a few Aggressive volumes to test the deaggro portion of the mechanic this time. The upper rooms of the Ranger Station 6 and Ranger Station 7 main towers or the Hospital cafeteria (?) would work for that. The skyscrapers you ran have none (unless Boidster's data is wrong, which I doubt), and the Shotgun Messiah cafeteria isn't one. I've stealth cleared that section, including it's bathrooms and roof with no aggro...

 

[KotCP]

I wish we knew what the armor values of the zeds where.  This would help us see how much damage mediation was occurring.

If Zed armor rating works the same as player armor rating, then it would go a long way to explain why some zeds require a heck of a lot of normal bullets, when you have no penetration skill points spent and can see the Zeds exact health numbers cause of a mod.

 

[Roland]

Many, not "any".

Meh...I would say my comment stands better if instead of crossing out the word "any" and changing it to "many", you instead insert the word "worthwhile" between any and game...

Maybe for some it is this way. For me it is more about being forced to not because I made a mistake but because the game turns off up to 14-18 levels (19-23 levels if you include HS) worth of time and resource investment without warning.

But its sounding more and more like it doesn't turn it off. The zombies auto wake up but don't necessarily auto target you and even if one does you can use the 19-23 levels worth of skill development to lose them, hide, sneak back, and stealth kill them. At best it simply changes the dynamics of your stealthing but the stealthing itself remains intact. You never lose your stealth. An event beyond your control causes an ambush but your stealth can still save you.

I suggest the Shamway Factory "boss room" without either Parkour or the fall damage removal Great Heist (5k Dukes in inventory, ignore first 15m of falling) to render it moot. It would be a good test of the feasibility of that portion of the stealth system.

I'll give it a go.

A Game Stage 200+ taking full advantage of trader quests and trader inventory not being inline with Loot Stage perspective noted... If you hate the loot system now, you're going to despise the game when they bring traders inline with it.

Provided, of course, the other changes aren't implemented at the same time that is. Never assume the game will be the same as it is now when looking at one future change. I certainly hope they don't nerf the trader as the only change...

 

[meganoth]

I get that you and @Jugginator are trying to show how it works at the top end to "prove" stealth is "fine", but it's coming off to me as basically a MMO good rng/long play time flex, even with you two probably dipping into dm & cm to set up your runs. To be a bit less "Get lucky or just die." how about doing the same runs, lvl 23, day 28 using t3 iron age and/or t6 stone age, agility tree gear. And actually throw in a few Aggressive volumes to test the deaggro portion of the mechanic this time. The upper rooms of the Ranger Station 6 and Ranger Station 7 main towers or the Hospital cafeteria (?) would work for that. The skyscrapers you ran have none (unless Boidster's data is wrong, which I doubt), and the Shotgun Messiah cafeteria isn't one. I've stealth cleared that section, including it's bathrooms and roof with no aggro...

There isn't only you claiming stealth is broken. A few pages previously someone claimed we unworthy lame players don't test at endgame insane where it is really broken. And he claimed it about tier4/5 POIs generally, not only a few auto-aggro rooms.

The cafeteria was not testing auto-aggro either but the ability to restealth, which is usefull to know whether your stealth failed because of carelessness or auto-aggro. The successful counter strategies are the same, whether 10 zombies are coming at you because of a blunderbuss, you stepping carelessly on a paper or  auto-aggro

You propose to test it in very normal conditions. Not only have we already a few people posting that they don't have any problem with stealth in normal game play, But I already played lots of lvl 23, day 28 runs at normal difficulty and had zero problems. Yes, even only with a pistol. I often played agility in mid-game with a pistol and left an available smg or magnum in the base because I liked the handling of the pistol a lot more.

I agree that "from the shadows" is too expensive for what it gets you, but at lvl 23 I usually had a few points in both stealth perks and my bow had no problems with anything at the time and the pistol was more than enough for any oh-@%$# situation except if I got cornered (I remember once dying because I ran into a small bathroom and 3 zombies left me no way out). 

What my test also showed: "into the shadows" may be too expensive but on the other hand I'd say in end-game you still need every point in it. I did get into stealth, sometimes easy sometimes less easy, but there were sometimes occasions where a zombie spotted me or I failed to restealth against one of them and I had to run further. I assume with less stealth these situations would be more often.

 

[hiemfire]

There isn't only you claiming stealth is broken. A few pages previously someone claimed we unworthy lame players don't test at endgame insane where it is really broken. And he claimed it about tier4/5 POIs generally, not only a few auto-aggro rooms.

Okay, fair. So caught up in it my part of it I forgot about the guy who thinks sneaking around in heavy armor successfully should be a thing...

 

[KotCP]

An easy way to tell if a room is an auto aggro room, just hit any paper/glass/whatever with a stone axe to kill it.  Then there is nothing to carelessly step on.  If you still get a sudden rush of zeds, it is an auto aggro room.

One of the down town/old town looking mom and pop stores with multiple floors is like that, when you get to the near top floor.  The one with a hole in the roof and corner of the building.  You can kill all the trash at the door and leave nothing to accidentally wake zeds up and still suddenly get rushed, even while sneaking with maxed from the shadows.

You can bust a lot of things while stealthed normally.  Heck you can take out an entire building before some zeds wake up if you wanted.  Hitting metal seems to be the only thing loud enough to wake some zeds that are too close.  Stone Axe is also the quietest tool, so if you take out trash on the floor and still get agroed, while stealthed, that room is usually an auto aggro room.

 

[hiemfire]

Hitting metal seems to be the only thing loud enough to wake some zeds that are too close. 

I've woken one up by breaking one of the sides of the wood "Zombie closet" they were hiding in. Broke the part right next their head.   I was seeing if I could get a shot on it that way because I couldn't get a good line of sight on it from where I was and it was too close to the entry for me to sneak past.

 

[hiemfire]

All of this. Stealth doesn't mean "ctrl to never be attacked again", heavy armor perk doesn't mean "wear steel armor to never be hurt again", etc.

The game also tells the player that armor is hard capped at 90% damage reduction in the Armor journal entry. That there are places where stealth is guaranteed to fail isn't mentioned in game at all, unless that's been added to the journal entry for Stealth in the experimental builds.

 

[linewalker]

The game also tells the player that armor is hard capped at 90% damage reduction in the Armor journal entry. That there are places where stealth is guaranteed to fail isn't mentioned in game at all, unless that's been added to the journal entry for Stealth in the experimental builds.

What would make you assume that stealth would ever be 100%? It's not like you're putting on the cloak of invisibility.

 

[Kalen]

The game also tells the player that armor is hard capped at 90% damage reduction in the Armor journal entry. That there are places where stealth is guaranteed to fail isn't mentioned in game at all, unless that's been added to the journal entry for Stealth in the experimental builds.

It doesn't tell you that there are blocks in the game you can't break either..... but by playing the game, you figure this stuff out.

 

[Roland]

That there are places where stealth is guaranteed to fail isn't mentioned in game at all.

Because it isn't true. That has been proven to my satisfaction. You can say that you don't like the scripted event of an ambush happening and I have no argument with that. But it has demonstrably been shown now by more than one person that stealth does not get switched off nor does it fail. You can react successfully to the ambush event by going guns blazing and kill them all quickly or you can retreat, hide (parkour could help with this), and then re-emerge and kill them all using stealth. The act of retreating to a shadowy hiding place has been established by multiple stealth games as being an element of stealth gameplay and so it is with this game as well. There is no FAIL screen that comes up when the zombies aggro. Credits don't roll and the Game Over message doesn't play. You are allowed to react to the event as you see fit. You can continue to use stealth or you can use direct and open force.

I played the Shamway Factory and while I did not do it in Nightmare mode, I was clearly able to see that zombies that woke up automatically after I crossed a threshold could be retreated from and shaken off of my trail. When I came back I could throw rocks to direct them and shoot them from a crouched position for full benefits. My stealth was intact the entire time.

 

[hiemfire]

scripted event of an ambush happening

stealth does not get switched off nor does it fail.

Amazingly you missed that these contradict each other.

 

[Boidster]

First completed the book tower, then half of dishong.

Not to argue the usefulness of your testing, but the skyscrapers have no auto-aggro volumes. If you want to test some POIs which have a mix of 0s and 2s in their sleeper volume flags, you can try:

business_burnt_02

docks_03

house_modern_05 (this one is quite aggro heavy)

house_modern_16 (100% auto-aggro)

 

[KotCP]

Oh, well, that sucks

 

[hiemfire]

Not to argue the usefulness of your testing, but the skyscrapers have no auto-aggro volumes. If you want to test some POIs which have a mix of 0s and 2s in their sleeper volume flags, you can try:

business_burnt_02

docks_03

house_modern_05 (this one is quite aggro heavy)

house_modern_16 (100% auto-aggro)

Their test wasn't pertaining to the discussion about the Aggressive volumes, but to one that is happening in parallel. Another poster who "stealths" wearing heavy armor (considers equipping armor that doesn't make a @%$# ton of noise a "downgrade") and plays on Insane difficulty was saying that stealth didn't function in Tier 4 and 5 POIs on Insane. I made the same goof up and misunderstood why they were doing the testing.

 

[Roland]

Amazingly you missed that these contradict each other.

We will just have to agree to disagree on that point, Hiem. I don't see a scripted event as invalidating stealth if you can react to that event through stealth.

Look at the game Thief in the final battle with the boss. He knows you are there. The scripted event of him confronting you happens and he is aware of you. But immediately you can use stealth in the ensuing conflict with him. I see this as a similar thing. You enter the room and EGADS! These zombies are awake and riled! But if you utilize your stealth skills you can still kill them in a stealthy manner and the skills you paid for were not wasted.

Your premise is that because of the auto aggro room you must fight directly gunning them down out of stealth because it was negated. Now we see that this assumed reaction is not necessarily a forced one. You CAN react by hiding and waiting and then killing. There is no forced open confrontation and therefore the scripted event does not contradict the use of stealth. The actual scripted event is over in a second (as soon as the zombies aggro) and then you are left to react and play however you wish-- including using all of your stealthy skills (both as a player and as a perked character)

 

[hiemfire]

We will just have to agree to disagree on that point, Hiem. I don't see a scripted event as invalidating stealth if you can react to that event through stealth.

Look at the game Thief in the final battle with the boss. He knows you are there. The scripted event of him confronting you happens and he is aware of you. But immediately you can use stealth in the ensuing conflict with him. I see this as a similar thing. You enter the room and EGADS! These zombies are awake and riled! But if you utilize your stealth skills you can still kill them in a stealthy manner and the skills you paid for were not wasted.

Your premise is that because of the auto aggro room you must fight directly gunning them down out of stealth because it was negated. Now we see that this assumed reaction is not necessarily a forced one. You CAN react by hiding and waiting and then killing. There is no forced open confrontation and therefore the scripted event does not contradict the use of stealth. The actual scripted event is over in a second (as soon as the zombies aggro) and then you are left to react and play however you wish-- including using all of your stealthy skills (both as a player and as a perked character)

No, my premise is that the moment the volume triggers stealth has failed. Being able to run and re-sneak in those places that it is possible (you never did specify if you tested the Shamway Factory "boss room" without parkour or the mag+Dukes, just that you tested the POI) does not change that stealth failed due to a Deus Ex Machina middle finger decision to set that volume as aggressive by the POI dev. At a minimum they need to disclose in the game itself that this is in place. I don't mean say where the volumes are, just that there are places where stealth will always fail. Iirc, the boss fight from Thief that you referenced was after a cut scene...