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

[Danidas]

Why would you fail?  Maybe because being in frail cloth armor and relying on 100% stealth as your only tool is a losing strategy in SP.   In the rock-paper-scissors of game theory, you need to be able to deal with more than rocks.  Or, be prepared to fail 2/3rds of the time.

Even in cloth with your only weapon being a bow it is trivial to deal with these rooms as the key is to never stand your ground and to instead run away while tossing a rock in another direction. The zombies will ignore you and go for the rock making it easier to stay far enough away for long enough to break your aggro on them. At which point they become standard unaware awake zombies that will path back to the room they came from and be fully open to sneak attacks to pick them off.

Now sure it is far faster to just stand your ground and kill them but doing so normally takes better gear/weapons than your average stealth player.

 

[Roland]

Because removing variables decreases variables. Just as i pointed out in my example by making zombies what heal from fire doesnt offer you more diverse strategies but actually decreases them.

Diversity is when you have a great number of dealing with an obstacle, like for example in this game if you find a hole filled with undead you can build over it, move over it with the edges normally, stealth throught the edges or slaughter the undead. If you take one action out or make another mandatory you just decreased the diversity on how to get over the obstacle.

Ha! Sometimes removing variables actually increases variables as in this case. What was the variable removed? Answer: Zombies that remain asleep upon entry into their volume. How does that increase variables? In two ways:

1) They were not just removed but replaced with a new type of zombie that does wake up as you move into their volume. So something was not simply removed but it was changed to something new.

2) When a variable represents 100% of the use cases and then is removed so that now 90% of a POI is one way and 10% is another way all of a sudden you have more diversity. 100% sameness = less diversity than 90% sameness and 10% different.

But, you are talking about diversity of player choice. I don't believe you can separate that out from diversity of challenges or situations facing the player. They are intertwined. I'll not mention it all AGAIN because those particular keys are getting worn at this point but as has been stated over and over and over again in this thread, there is incontrovertible proof that because of the auto aggro rooms there is more diversity in actual Stealth gameplay over what there was when every volume was deep asleep all the time.

One of the hallmarks of survival games is that events out of the control of the player happen and the player must choose how to react to those events. If you want to play a game in which you have 100% control over everything that happens and nothing can throw a wrench into your plans or sidetrack you or, yes, force you to adapt and alter your normally preferred strategies then go play a straight up shooter. Survival games are about striving to survive and without uncontrollable (not your fault) events that throw you out of your groove then there really is nothing to survive against.

 

[Ramethzer0]

But, you are talking about diversity of player choice. I don't believe you can separate that out from diversity of challenges or situations facing the player. They are intertwined. I'll not mention it all AGAIN because those particular keys are getting worn at this point but as has been stated over and over and over again in this thread, there is incontrovertible proof that because of the auto aggro rooms there is more diversity in actual Stealth gameplay over what there was when every volume was deep asleep all the time.

One of the hallmarks of survival games is that events out of the control of the player happen and the player must choose how to react to those events. If you want to play a game in which you have 100% control over everything that happens and nothing can throw a wrench into your plans or sidetrack you or, yes, force you to adapt and alter your normally preferred strategies then go play a straight up shooter. Survival games are about striving to survive and without uncontrollable (not your fault) events that throw you out of your groove then there really is nothing to survive against.

I would like to take a moment and make sure certain folks in the back of the room re-read this part again, and with special emphasis on what's underlined.  And yes, I play stealth too.

 

[Solomon]

I never said it increased the diversity of player choice.   I apologize for not being clear, but I thought it was obvious that I meant that it increased the diversity of the challenges a player faces.    Not sure how you feel this somehow restricts you.... as it has been mentioned and proven multiple times in this thread.... you can still stealth the entire POI, it just takes a little more effort and may not always be the optimal choice.

For diversity of challange it makes some sense thought due to how the game is set up its not exactly a challange but a minor annoyance. See the suggestion lower in quote, it introduces a sceniario where you must fight a certain type of enemy what is hyper aware while it still lets you stealth throught the room the fight happened near.

2) If they are already awake and twitching violently their head and body around the room it would make more sense as you would attribute it to a zombie type and not to a boundary check

3) See upper zombie type

4) Again see upper zombie type, infact you could make a heavy sleeper type of zombie what awakes if a player tries to stealth attack a twitcher so the strategy would be to lure out the twitcher ferals and then stealth remove the sleepers.

considering we already have zombies that  reduce/ignore head shot bonuses .... its not as  big issue as some may think

 <passive_effect name="DamageModifier" operation="perc_set" value="1" tags="head"/>

Thats an overall constant resistance but i would want something what is 1 time only.

Only your point 5 is relevant as you try to show that the auto-aggro does not achieve a challenge. But you can circumvent it through skill, if you see zombies running at you, run away, restealth and throw stones to kill them. No need to know beforehand what happens. I did try this strategy at insane difficulty and it worked.

This may be a problem with me only but this sounds like somekind of bug in the system what will get fixed later on.

 

[Solomon]

But, you are talking about diversity of player choice. I don't believe you can separate that out from diversity of challenges or situations facing the player. They are intertwined. I'll not mention it all AGAIN because those particular keys are getting worn at this point but as has been stated over and over and over again in this thread, there is incontrovertible proof that because of the auto aggro rooms there is more diversity in actual Stealth gameplay over what there was when every volume was deep asleep all the time.

You can technically do both of this in a form where it makes sense and establishes that "the stealth players must fight here" sceniario.

Upper in a comment i suggested 2 zombie types, twitchers who have various hidden vision cones to make sure its extremely hard to sneak up on them working along with a hivemind setup where if one is awake the others too come for you and the heavy sleepers what spawn alongside with the twitchers who have timer and condition systems on when to awake.

Sceniario you are in a cave POI where you found the loot room. There are 7 undead inside 4 twitchers and 3 heavy sleepers, the twitchers are convulsing violently and atleast one of them always have a viewcone on the door to see you even in the next room.

The heavy sleepers always awake if you attack a twitcher from stealth because they scream when hit this way and they also dont like gun combat to sleep next with, they also dont sleep well in general next to active combat and looting. Your opinions are the following:

1. Lure the twitchers out and shot/melee them
   
2. Enter the room and melee the twitchers hoping the combat wont wake up the sleepers
   

Once the twitchers are done you can enter stealth and take out the sleepers or leave them there. The heavy sleepers are all running a random countdown what react to certain noise, melee combat and looting counts down the normal amount, gunshots awake them fast, killing another heavy sleeper in the room while not in stealth also is risky.

In this form you kept the stealth player's option to deal with an enemy their way while offering them an almost impossible but still doable way to stay in stealth.

 

[Danidas]

21 hours ago, meganoth said:
Only your point 5 is relevant as you try to show that the auto-aggro does not achieve a challenge. But you can circumvent it through skill, if you see zombies running at you, run away, restealth and throw stones to kill them. No need to know beforehand what happens. I did try this strategy at insane difficulty and it worked.

This may be a problem with me only but this sounds like somekind of bug in the system what will get fixed later on.

Well it is the intended way for stealth players to deal with these rooms and any other time stealth fails as indicated in the help tips that appear while loading that point out the rock mechanic. If I'm not mistaken it was also confirmed by the devs as being intended behavior so it is not a bug at all and the way we are suppose to handle these rooms if we're not geared up enough to take them directly. Note that Agility has Pistols and Knives for a reason a long with tougher armor that trades a bit of stealth for better defense.

It was also confirmed that this is not nor is ever going to be a stealth game and stealth is nothing more then a tacked on mechanic to pad out diversity. So do not expect anything beyond minimal effort from the devs in regards to stealth and a less is more approach of making small low effort changes to get the most bang out of the smallest of changes.

 

[Yark]

I would like to take a moment and make sure certain folks in the back of the room re-read this part again, and with special emphasis on what's underlined.  And yes, I play stealth too.

Artificial loss of control is neither interesting nor challenging. As half a dozen people in this thread have already attested to, you aren't really at risk of dying if you're even moderately prepared and experienced.

A better example of events outside the player's control would be the wandering hordes. I personally cannot predict when one will approach, and when it happens, I have to stop what I'm doing and deal with it. This is a reasonably interesting mechanic that doesn't violate any of the existing game "rules" so to speak. 

 

[Kalen]

Artificial loss of control is neither interesting nor challenging. As half a dozen people in this thread have already attested to, you aren't really at risk of dying if you're even moderately prepared and experienced.

Ok, so you've been very vocal about this being a bad design.... but have offered nothing in return.   What would you consider a good design that accomplishes what it seems like the level designers intend?   

 

[meganoth]

Artificial loss of control is neither interesting nor challenging. As half a dozen people in this thread have already attested to, you aren't really at risk of dying if you're even moderately prepared and experienced.

This is not a good argument as zombies in general aren't a risk for a prepared and experienced player in vanilla (at least outside horde night). And you won't argue for zombies to be removed, right? There are players who are at risk, the inexperienced and unprepared, and for those this feature can be a challenge.

By the way, I occasionally get into hubris mode that zombies are no threat anymore and play careless or reckless and that state of mind sometimes still leads to me getting killed. Mostly I have to blame myself for this, but a sudden appearance of too many zombies surely helps.

A better example of events outside the player's control would be the wandering hordes. I personally cannot predict when one will approach, and when it happens, I have to stop what I'm doing and deal with it. This is a reasonably interesting mechanic that doesn't violate any of the existing game "rules" so to speak. 

Yes, a better feature, but also more implementation effort. Wandering hordes took probably a few weeks to implement, balance and debug over the years. You get what you pay for.

By the way, I disagree that you have to stop what you are doing. The majority of wandering hordes one sees can be ignored, and some even walk by without anyone noticing they were there.

 

[Kandrathe]

By the way, I disagree that you have to stop what you are doing. The majority of wandering hordes one sees can be ignored, and some even walk by without anyone noticing they were there.

I recall the wanderers were all alert prior to 19.3, but they are changing them in 19.3  to "sleep walkers". 

• Wandering horde zombies are not alert, so stealth attacks work on them
  

I would guess this will be more adjustable with the A20 user scalable zombie sensitivity mechanics.  If they are "sleep walkers" so long as you don't alert them they would walk on by.

 

[alanea]

I gave those reasons because Yark said the feature is senseless because there are no real reasons to have this feature. I listed reasons which proves him wrong on that account. That the same effects can be done with other measures (often with more implementation effort) does not change that in the least, it is simply irrelevant.

Only your point 5 is relevant as you try to show that the auto-aggro does not achieve a challenge. But you can circumvent it through skill, if you see zombies running at you, run away, restealth and throw stones to kill them. No need to know beforehand what happens. I did try this strategy at insane difficulty and it worked.

well stealth should have its role ..  but you probably shouldnt be able sneak kill boss rooms 1 by 1 as long as you  1 shot zombies

like it works now  its quite overpowered feature .. and you dont even need any sneak perks to do that auto triggered rooms are weird ... but boss rooms should all wake up once someone die

The devs at TFP created that feature so that POI designers could use it when they think a room should be that way. The designers are surely free to add that flag to a room or not. If a designer thinks some boss zombie should have such a protection he can turn it on, otherwise he won't.

The designer of Grace's "room" did not want to give Grace that protection it seems. Example #1 is still a valid reason why such a feature is implemented and might be used by a designer if he so chooses. Hence the feature is not senseless. That is all I wanted to show by listing those 5 examples.

err last time i seen grace she was passive like normal boar until attacked so its bit hard to tell if she detect you or not

sneak attack isnt problem they can always have high enought health  to counter it  keeping both  advantage of health .. and boss that survive sneak bow shot and  have to be finished off

honestly some zombies with  2-5k  HP immune to exploding head would  be lovely .. even if they just jogged or walked (to prevent .. "omg immortal runner killed me") .. as long as they offer some reward for effort currently we have  bears with  2k and demolishers with  800(60%reduction)= realistically 2000 since armor pen doesnt work  and bear can still be shot down even with  bad ish weapon before he reach player (15 block distance warrior difficulty(halved player damage) .. smg , ak ,sniper rifle,desert vulture)

so nope there isnt any tough boss that can take more than few shots= the only boss like experience is room full of irradiated zombies

This is not done. I don't think it is possible to kill every zombie without the stealth mode easily.

wait what ? of course you can kill any poi even at 150 days  on  warrior or higher difficulty easily with no stealth at all

stealth is too slow use it constantly .. but atleast light armor users can sneak on most zombies easily ... atleast if you want shot them with bow or gun ... melee range is usually problematic

so sneak perk isnt .. that great  considering real impact

for sneak attack modifier perk  0 or 1 point is enought to  1 shot most zombies   base sneak modifier + 200%  from bow  * 2-3 is usually enought to deal with any  feral /walker/cop even on higher difficulties

meaning unperked person with bow is almost as effective as stealth focused sure you wont 1 shot green mom or soldier but those dont appear until  +- GS 100 and after that .. you can still quietly kill squishy targets and then deal with few tanky leftovers

tldr  unperked = perked in early/mid game  and only little bit weaker in late

+ most people use stealth just to land sneak shot on sleeper when they get chancefor free bonus damage  .. instead sneaking through poi and you wont wake most sleepers even with guns ... especially silenced

so yeah.. almost everyone use stealth in some way but as small addition to gameplay .. rather than sole focus

Thats an overall constant resistance but i would want something what is 1 time only.

well if i understand it correctly it  its immunity to headshot damage by seting modifier to 1x

and that practically prevent " boss" from taking significant damage from first shot because its not sneak damage itself thats OP its sneak damage multiplied by x2  or x3 from  headshot leading to insane first hit  i cant say i tested specific numbers   but with good bow  perked sneak damage and  agility it can surely go over 1000 damage on first hit   333 damage  with negated headshot bonus isnt  strong enought to need some  "armor mechanic" if boss have  1-2k hp counting in armor

 

[Ramethzer0]

Artificial loss of control is neither interesting nor challenging. As half a dozen people in this thread have already attested to, you aren't really at risk of dying if you're even moderately prepared and experienced.

A better example of events outside the player's control would be the wandering hordes. I personally cannot predict when one will approach, and when it happens, I have to stop what I'm doing and deal with it. This is a reasonably interesting mechanic that doesn't violate any of the existing game "rules" so to speak. 

I'm not sure I can agree with that statement.  The entire reason why I love the horror genre is precisely because of that loss of control and challenge.  I like the idea of a close battle where I come out covered in blood and victorious.  I like the adrenaline, as well as the sense of accomplishment (even if its in virtual form.)

 

[Roland]

I'm not sure I can agree with that statement.  The entire reason why I love the horror genre is precisely because of that loss of control and challenge.  I like the idea of a close battle where I come out covered in blood and victorious.  I like the adrenaline, as well as the sense of accomplishment (even if its in virtual form.)

Plus, "artificial" is just something people say when they don't like it. When something "feels artificial" that is like saying something "looks pretty or ugly", or "plays boring or fun". Who can predict the imagination of the player or the player's capacity to successfully overlay suspension of disbelief on the abstract mechanics that the game utilizes?

Games are abstractions of reality. For every person who says that an auto-aggro room feels like an artifical loss of control there is someone else for whom the abstraction works. People used the term "artificial" to describe the landmines in the wasteland when they were implemented. Made perfect sense to me but to others they couldn't fathom a scenario that made sense to them as to why there could possibly be live mines in the wasteland. To them, the only imagination they could muster was that the developers were trying to force players to stay on the roads and they found that lazy and artificial and idiotic. 

 

[Yark]

Plus, "artificial" is just something people say when they don't like it. When something "feels artificial" that is like saying something "looks pretty or ugly", or "plays boring or fun". Who can predict the imagination of the player or the player's capacity to successfully overlay suspension of disbelief on the abstract mechanics that the game utilizes?

Games are abstractions of reality. For every person who says that an auto-aggro room feels like an artifical loss of control there is someone else for whom the abstraction works. People used the term "artificial" to describe the landmines in the wasteland when they were implemented. Made perfect sense to me but to others they couldn't fathom a scenario that made sense to them as to why there could possibly be live mines in the wasteland. To them, the only imagination they could muster was that the developers were trying to force players to stay on the roads and they found that lazy and artificial and idiotic. 

Artificial is something that violates the established structure of the game. Another example of this would be the room in the 6-story apartment building, where you're meant to fall through the floor and subsequently be ambushed by the half dozen zombies in the room below.

Except, there are no zombies in that room until you fall into it. You cannot simply break the floor and attack them from above, because the enemies do not even exist until you've landed on the floor next to them.

This is artificial, it's insulting, it's not challenging, and it should not be defended. 

 

[meganoth]

Artificial is something that violates the established structure of the game. Another example of this would be the room in the 6-story apartment building, where you're meant to fall through the floor and subsequently be ambushed by the half dozen zombies in the room below.

Except, there are no zombies in that room until you fall into it. You cannot simply break the floor and attack them from above, because the enemies do not even exist until you've landed on the floor next to them.

This is artificial, it's insulting, it's not challenging, and it should not be defended. 

This is a bad example as the very late spawn isn't designed to be this way as a challenge but a consequence of the technical limitations the game has (in this case the limit on number of zombies a miminal spec machine can handle)

 

[Roland]

Artificial is something that violates the established structure of the game. Another example of this would be the room in the 6-story apartment building, where you're meant to fall through the floor and subsequently be ambushed by the half dozen zombies in the room below.

Except, there are no zombies in that room until you fall into it. You cannot simply break the floor and attack them from above, because the enemies do not even exist until you've landed on the floor next to them.

This is artificial, it's insulting, it's not challenging, and it should not be defended. 

lol...there’s your problem right there. Anyone who has spent enough time with this game to learn its established structure knows that zombies never exist until you are proximate to their spawn location.  Whether you find it artificial or insulting  or not is immaterial. It is a limitation of the voxel environment and an unfortunate downside that must be lived with for the possibility to be able to play the game in the first place.
 

it may not be defensible, but it is inevitable and a permanent attribute of this game. It’s one of those things you just have to accept and forgive if you plan to spend time playing. If it is such a deal breaker that you actually feel insulted by it then move on now because the devs didn’t put this in as an intentional feature because they thought zombies spawning around you would be cool— it exists as an unavoidable by-product of their chosen world building structure that has many other unique benefits compared to other games that use static non-interactive worlds. 

Now auto-aggro rooms ARE an intentional feature that the level designers want to exist and in that case I contend that the beauty of the design is in the eye of the beholder. 
 

 

[Ramethzer0]

Artificial is something that violates the established structure of the game. Another example of this would be the room in the 6-story apartment building, where you're meant to fall through the floor and subsequently be ambushed by the half dozen zombies in the room below.

Except, there are no zombies in that room until you fall into it. You cannot simply break the floor and attack them from above, because the enemies do not even exist until you've landed on the floor next to them.

This is artificial, it's insulting, it's not challenging, and it should not be defended. 

I looked up the definition of artificial, and this is not it.  This is an opinion, and should be treated as such.

You aren't speaking for everyone.  If you don't like something, fine.  Why not just say that?

 

[Danidas]

Artificial is something that violates the established structure of the game. Another example of this would be the room in the 6-story apartment building, where you're meant to fall through the floor and subsequently be ambushed by the half dozen zombies in the room below.

Except, there are no zombies in that room until you fall into it. You cannot simply break the floor and attack them from above, because the enemies do not even exist until you've landed on the floor next to them.

This is artificial, it's insulting, it's not challenging, and it should not be defended. 

Actually it doesn't matter if you touch the floor in the room at all. Since all you have to do is go down one or two blocks to enter the box shaped spawn volume the level designer drew in the room below. At which point the zombies will get triggered to spawn into existence. Which is the same exact mechanic that every single zombie that exist in a POI follows and is perfectly consistent with the established structure of the game.

Also note it doesn't matter how you cross into the box shaped spawn volume as the same exact thing will occur no matter the angle of your approach. Which the same is true with every single room/area in any POI in the game as they all use the exact same mechanic. As not a single zombie exists with in a POI until you some how cross into their spawn volume box.  Which is tightly drawn around the specific area the level designer wants the encounter to take place at. While normally they include a wall/barrier to block line of sight of exactly where the zombies spawn at.

 

[Blake_]

I contend that the beauty of the design is in the eye of the beholder. 

Thank you for calling me beautiful. It's been a while.

 

[meganoth]

Thank you for calling me beautiful. It's been a while.

I think he called you a beholder,