PC The weird implementation of stealth and its counter measures.

[Roland]

Well Boidster was maxed in perks so his stealth score was a 1 which is the lowest possible. We need to see at what threshold the attack volume triggers. If it’s 2 then it is pretty much as you say— basically guaranteed. But if 6 or 8 then at least for indoor areas, covering windows and breaking lights might be enough.  Sneaking onto a roof top with no cover in broad daylight probably should be pretty automatic. 

 

[Viktoriusiii]

Well Boidster was maxed in perks so his stealth score was a 1 which is the lowest possible. We need to see at what threshold the attack volume triggers. If it’s 2 then it is pretty much as you say— basically guaranteed. But if 6 or 8 then at least for indoor areas, covering windows and breaking lights might be enough.  Sneaking onto a roof top with no cover in broad daylight probably should be pretty automatic. 

I like the general idea of light affecting it.
The problem is the counterplay.
Since basicially every lightsource has >50hp we can't simply shoot them out (without waking the Z's).
If lightsources had two states (a functioning one with 1hp and a destroyed one with the normal HP) that would help A LOT and would actually make stealth a lot more challenging.

Covering the windows is a neat idea, but basicially impossible, since light levels are given out so easily.

W=window |xx| = block lightlevel

W ||14|| ||13|| ||12|| ||11|| ||10|| ....

We could never reach those windows. So that would need to be changed somehow. Either by making the block-light requirement like... 13 so you only need to cover adjacent windows/holes, or... in some other way.

Granted I'm no expert in lightlevels. So this I leave up to the experts.


But in general I like the general idea of the implementation, even if the current one is completely unenjoyable.

Categorically untrue. I even provided concrete numbers and POI examples. Hyperbole only undercuts your argument.

I mean it was a hyperbole... but actually based on what you said, I was actually right... or did I misinterpret something?

Examination of 479 POIs with Sleeper Volumes


POIs with All Volumes Active (flag="0")


157 (32.8%)


POIs with All Volumes Passive (flag="1")


0


POIs with All Volumes Aggressive (flag="2")


75 (15.7%)


POIs with Mix of Active & Aggressive


247 (51.6%)

There are 0 "passive" pois... so every POI has this mechanic now... right? Even if they don't always aggro.

 

[HungryZombie]

If stealth is based on light levels then they really need to plan the POI's better so you have some logical path around it or else add something like a Stealth Boy from Fallout into the game. Maybe crafted at max perk level or something.

 

[Boidster]

There are 0 "passive" pois... so every POI has this mechanic now... right? Even if they don't always aggro.

There are no POIs where all sleeper volumes are Passive. There are 157 (32.8%) of POIs where ALL volumes are "Active", i.e. NONE are "Attack". I thought your original complaint was about un-stealthable auto-attack sleepers. Note that based on my playtest of the Army camp described above, even zombies in "passive" volumes will wake up if you make noise. I don't think passive means what I used to think it means. That is, it doesn't mean "zombies in this volume won't wake up or pay any attention to you regardless of what you do."

And in any case, we now know that even "attack" volumes can be stealthed. As Roland said, it would be good to know the threshold. I'll look into it if I get a moment.

 

[hiemfire]

There are 0 "passive" pois... so every POI has this mechanic now... right? Even if they don't always aggro.

322 out of the 479 poi's with sleepers have attack volumes. Just a smidge over 2/3rds (67.2%)

If stealth is based on light levels then they really need to plan the POI's better so you have some logical path around it or else add something like a Stealth Boy from Fallout into the game. Maybe crafted at max perk level or something.

Or let us turn off/destroy the lights. Sneakers will still have to clear POIs at night and hope for a cloudy sky even then since they also tweaked the night time ambient lighting and "covering windows" ain't happening in any volume in 7D2D without waking up the occupants. 

It looks like, with default settings on including Horde night, a Sneak player that is leaning into getting the most out of their perks is limited to clearing 6 tier 1/2s , or 2 tier 3/4s or 1 tier 5 quest POI a week since they have at best, default setting on, 15 minutes real time of darkness to work with per game night and can't turn in quests in the middle of the game night.

Edit: Just remembered that the factories and hospital share tier 5 with the skyscrapers. I don't see a Sneak player clearing any of the skyscrapers before Horde Night hits if the player is hard leaning into their perks.

 

[JCrook1028]

but can therefor clear pois much more effectively.

Why would you ever think stealth clearing a POI is more effective? Hint - it's not, never has been and never will be. The most effective way is charging in guns blazing. I say this as a player that rarely uses guns and I still know it's true. How do you not?

 

[Boidster]

Well Boidster was maxed in perks so his stealth score was a 1 which is the lowest possible. We need to see at what threshold the attack volume triggers. If it’s 2 then it is pretty much as you say— basically guaranteed.

I was able to sneak up to that same rooftop zombie with 3 levels in From The Shadows. Sneak level standing still was 4 (naked), when moving it would go as high as 12. Interestingly - and sure to create a lively discussion - after I was successfully in the volume I was able to hold and place torches without waking him up. My stealth value went up to 20 while moving in this situation.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

There are no POIs where all sleeper volumes are Passive. There are 157 (32.8%) of POIs where ALL volumes are "Active", i.e. NONE are "Attack". I thought your original complaint was about un-stealthable auto-attack sleepers.

Yeah but even "active" volumes wake up by the same principle (so they wake up when oyu enter that room). They just don't auto-aggro on you.
Which often times means the same seing as the layout of basicially every poi is zombies behind walls.
So if you can see them wake up, they already have aggro on you.


Again I generally think the idea is... okay. I don't hate it per se.

Just the current implementation.

I play on insane. And I have ZERO reason to try and sneak a poi.
Going in guns blazing is FAR faster, way safer and way more fun.



I am going to describe my experience with T4 POI hotel with 2 points in sneaking:
*sneak*
-zombies wake up, fight them
*sneak*
*get a nice headshot with a silent crossbow*
-every other zombie in the chunk wakes up, fight them
*repeat a few times*


In that whole T4 poi I only had ONE room (funny enough the loot room) where I was able to sleathkill most Z's.
Why am I even trying to use sleathy weapons? Why not simply use a sniper? Faster rate of fire, stronger and more accurate.
Since Z's mostly wake up anyways after one shot, I might as well.



My point/recap:

Most POIs (2/3rds which in politics is a large majority) have auto aggro rooms which auto wakeup after an rng roll (that is modified by stealthperks yay)
Stealth has become harder with more stuff on the floor
Light can now cause them to see you instantly
silent weapons have a chance (and not a low one, based on my experience) of alerting every zombie in the room, meaning the entire point of silent weapons (less damage but stealthy) is mute.

Stealth right now is a joke. A bad gimmick that came about because TFPs want players to fight the zombies.
Generally a good thought but they, as so often, did it by punishing the player instead of rewarding them.
Even if all these probabilities are lowered by like 80-90% it is still not a good system, but at least then stealth can finally be enjoyed again.

Until then, my stealthbuild will no longer be played, because there is not a single reason for it.

Why would you ever think stealth clearing a POI is more effective? Hint - it's not, never has been and never will be. The most effective way is charging in guns blazing. I say this as a player that rarely uses guns and I still know it's true. How do you not?

no that is the fastest, not necessarily the most efficient.

Efficiency has more values than time:

Time, ressources (like ammo or bandages) and risk are the three values that I think are playing a part in efficiency.
If you were sneaking before this auto-wakeup, you could have no costs (iron arrows or even kniving is basicially 0 cost) and since Z's would basicially never wake up, the risk was very low as well. Also you would notice traps better because oyu are slower.


But yes if it was purely about time, then going in guns blazing was always more efficient.

My stealth value went up to 20 while moving in this situation.

so... they behaved just like every other zombie that is not in a poi? (basicially blind if the value is below 25)?
Yeah... shocker ^^ (but thx for confirming)


this is what I mean. The world sets certain rules. Like Z's being super blind. And these auto-triggers break that rule because even with a sneak rating of <10 they still often hear you. And there is no (in game)explanation for it.
That would be like shooting a penalty and 9/10 times you need to fill the meter 50%, but 1/10 times (which you never know which one) filling it up 50% causes the ball to go flying out of the stadium. WHY? "Because we don't want you to be a perfect penalty taker!"

 

[JCrook1028]

no that is the fastest, not necessarily the most efficient.

Read what you wrote and what I responded to.

https://community.7daystodie.com/tf...pic&content_id=26147&content_commentid=455826 On 12/14/2021 at 12:56 PM, Viktoriusiii said:
but can therefor clear pois much more effectively.
You did NOT say efficient, you said Effective. For God's sake if you can't even understand what you yourself wrote then there's no reason to even bother speaking to you.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

efficient and effective are both subjective terms.
It could be more effective to save the bullets for hordenight, or to clear the poi quicker to gain money to buy more bullets.
I am not quite sure why you are making this big of a fuss about effective/efficient.
If you die because you had to fight zombies because you went in guns blazing and made a mistake, it is less effective at clearing pois than a stealthmode (if it still worked like it used to)

But honestly, this is splitting hairs. IF by chance I have learned the wrong definitions or misinterpreted, feel free to correct me in a non judgmental way.
While I do consider my english to be very much sufficient, it is still not my mothertongue, so there can still be thing I don't know.
(for example I just recently learned that cannot is a word and is actually used far more often than can not)

 

[Roland]

I was able to sneak up to that same rooftop zombie with 3 levels in From The Shadows. Sneak level standing still was 4 (naked), when moving it would go as high as 12. Interestingly - and sure to create a lively discussion - after I was successfully in the volume I was able to hold and place torches without waking him up. My stealth value went up to 20 while moving in this situation.

Interesting. So much of stealth appears to be simply about crossing borders.

 

[Boidster]

auto wakeup after an rng roll (that is modified by stealthperks yay)

Setting aside the inherent contradiction between "auto wakeup" and "after an RNG roll"...yes and? Isn't this how every game since ever has handled this mechanic? "Roll your sneak skill" says the DM. The enemy has a chance to detect you. Your stealth (or lack) affects how likely that chance is to succeed. You can make a valid argument that the current balance regarding the chance to detect you leans too strongly in the zombies' favor. And that argument might not require 40 lines of text.

Yeah but even "active" volumes wake up by the same principle (so they wake up when oyu enter that room).

This is not true. I playtested the Cafe area of the bookstore POI - which is an "active" area - and naked, level 1 me was able to sneak right up to sleeping zombies. In daytime.

You seem to have taken a position that is unassailable by evidence.

Interesting. So much of stealth appears to be simply about crossing borders.

Well in the POI editor the setting is called "Sleeper Volume Trigger", so it sort of implies that the behavior - passive, active, attack - is determined at trigger time i.e. when you first cross into the volume* but I guess not while you're sneaking around.

*Another test I need to do - place the torches, exit the volume, then re-enter. BRB

 

[Roland]

This is not true. I playtested the Cafe area of the bookstore POI - which is an "active" area - and naked, level 1 me was able to sneak right up to sleeping zombies. In daytime.

You seem to have taken a position that is unassailable by evidence.

I think the main problem is that we don't have definitions for passive, active, and aggressive in the context of these volumes. People are making assumptions about what they might mean and those assumptions seem to be coming from the  "Worst Case Scenarios" part of their brains.

I think it would take @faatal to tell us what a passive, active, or aggressive volume expressly is in terms of zombie AI.

for example I just recently learned that cannot is a word and is actually used far more often than can not

Can not is how we ferret out non-native ESL speakers. Your discovery is going to put you under the radar for sure!

However, much like LOTL 2, using "cannot" is just a stepping stone to using "can't". I suggest skipping "cannot" altogether.

 

[Boidster]

Another test I need to do - place the torches, exit the volume, then re-enter. BRB

And I'm back. I did two tests. In both cases, I had 3 levels in From the Shadows, but I wuz naked.

1. Place torches in the volume before entering, then enter the volume. Result: wakey wakey!



2. Enter volume, place torch, exit volume, re-enter volume. Result: be vewwy vewwy qwiet...I'm hunting zowmbies.

(I took this screenshot while I was walking, so the stealth value is 14)

This is not true. I playtested the Cafe area of the bookstore POI - which is an "active" area - and naked, level 1 me was able to sneak right up to sleeping zombies. In daytime.

"Pics or it didn't happen"

(This is behind the counter; I have snuck in through the Cafe door, destroying one trash pile right where I'm standing. Level 1, 0XP, no perks, naked.)

I think it would take @faatal to tell us what a passive, active, or aggressive volume expressly is in terms of zombie AI.

Yarp, and not just for this discussion. Super useful for POI designers. (I fully expect it to be in the XML comments, and we will get RTFM! in response. Well deserved.)

Especially passive vs active - I can't see a real difference yet, except for use in e.g. that Army camp, where there was one big container "active" volume, with little "passive" volumes inside it. Maybe it prevents all of the interior volumes from waking up at the same time.

 

[Roland]

So I wonder if you could place frame blocks past a doorway that marked the edge of a volume to create a completely dark small space and then move across the trigger point in darkness and pass the skill check and then remove the frame blocks... lol

Would that be like Solid Snake and his cardboard box....?

 

[Boidster]

So I wonder if you could place frame blocks past a doorway that marked the edge of a volume to create a completely dark small space and then move across the trigger point in darkness and pass the skill check and then remove the frame blocks... lol

Yes you can. I built a box with just one opening (sort of a tunnel; I was experimenting with how stealth value changed with how far the "open to air" block was). Mr. Sleeper is right behind the wall where the cursor is pointing. Note that my stealth only got down to 12 (3 levels in FtS). The volume boundary is in green; I've crossed over it to stand on the wood blocks - normally he wakes up at this point.



He didn't wake up so I destroyed most of the blocks and then just snuck right up to him in broad daylight.



For my next test, I built just a wall offering some shade and blocking line-of-sight to the sleeper. He was not fooled this time. Kind of a bummer that LoS isn't part of the check for a volume trigger. Seems to only based on how much light is hitting you even if the Zs can't see you or the light.



This doesn't work either:

 

[hiemfire]

Kind of a bummer that LoS isn't part of the check for a volume trigger. Seems to only based on how much light is hitting you even if the Zs can't see you or the light.

I hope this is a bug since it doesn't match up to what I recall @faatal describing as the intention. Iirc LOS from the player to the zombie was needed for the zombie to attack, though even with that having large amounts of light in an aggressive volume completely defeats the purpose of the perk check part of the stealth rework. Iirc from A19 the POI designers also love to set the volume thresholds across access points that the player cannot sneak through too which makes the perk check pointless in those instances.

Have you tried sneaking away from where you enter the volume staying within the volume before the sleeper acquires LOS? Might need a ramp down to the rooftop to do so without setting up too big of a bread crumb.

 

[Boidster]

I hope this is a bug since it doesn't match up to what I recall @faatal describing as the intention. Iirc LOS from the player to the zombie was needed for the zombie to attack

I think we both could be correct (and obviously we assume that faatal is correct). What I meant was only that for the purposes of determining whether a sleeper in an Attack volume wakes up, LOS doesn't seem to matter. The last image was kind of a joke, but it illustrates the point. The sleeper was encased in a light-proof tomb of wood and yet it still detected me. Note that sound-based detection wouldn't explain it since in the circumstance where I encased myself in a dark box, but all other things equal, the sleeper wasn't able to detect me (i.e. it couldn't hear me shuffling around in my dark shelter). That led to my suggestion that - in cases where you're being quiet enough - it's only the amount of light falling on the player that determines detection, not LOS.

As for the zombie targeting the player, I didn't really test that. Your test (trying to sneak away and hide) would be a good one. I could also change zombie speed to Run when aggroed so I could easily tell whether they were just investigating or really locked on. I will say that in the test where I just built a tall wall which blocked LOS (but I and the zombie were both in daylight), the zombie immediately walked around the wall to get to me. It couldn't see me, it couldn't hear me, but it woke up knowing where I was. Kind of odd, but wouldn't really bother me too much in an actual game.

 

[hiemfire]

I will say that in the test where I just built a tall wall which blocked LOS (but I and the zombie were both in daylight), the zombie immediately walked around the wall to get to me. It couldn't see me, it couldn't hear me, but it woke up knowing where I was. Kind of odd, but wouldn't really bother me too much in an actual game.

I suspect it was pathing to where you entered the volume, which fits what I recall being explained was planned.

Anyway, having light level affect the trigger is really messed up since it effectively ends up being no change from A19 for most of the gameday, POIs are pretty well lit up inside during the day in A20 from what I've seen in vids, and possibly puts sneaking in a worse place than in A19 with the expansion from about 1/3rd of the POIs having aggressive volumes to just over 2/3rds of the POIs in A20, per your analysis in a previous post, having aggressive volumes with about 1/7th of all of the POIs in game that have sleepers being nothing but aggressive volumes.

 

[meganoth]

Did a test now with rural_church_01 which isn't quite as good for testing as I had hoped. I made a new game and immediately buffed myself to Shadow perk level 5, also gave myself the urban combat books that made jumps and walking over trash silent. I wanted to see the "optimum" in stealthiness against basic zombies, i.e. it should be a cakewalk. Spoiler: It wasn't

I first tested the church in broad daylight and sadly the interior of the church was really flooded with light (I had hoped for dimmed light to give my stealth a chance). So no surprise that crossing the line immediately woke up all zombies. So far so expected.

Then I went to a new rural_church_01 somewhere else and repeated the test at midnight. Outside it was still possible to see silhouettes, inside I didn't think my (real live) vision would suffice so I added night vision goggles. I went in and none of them woke up. When I shot one with a silenced Desert Vulture the rest woke up though, so my stealth didn't go that far. Naturally that begs the question what use a silencer in that gun has at all.

So I ran outside and tried to restealth after running for about 30 meters. Success. They had come after me a little but were standing around now again.

But then I tried to walk to a better position and with my stealth meter going up from 2 to about 8 immediately all 3 zombies spotted me!

Now this were only basic zombies, it was night (though outside with a bit of light presumably) and I was perked as far as possible. And still all 3 immediately noticed me. There might be random rolls involved and I just had bad luck, but if not then stealth has been nerfed drastically I would say.

This conforms with my SP game where I am playing stealth at the moment and where stealth has lost much of its value. At day time it has almost no effect and i hardly have 1-2 stealth kills in a POI. And only or mostly doing quests in the night seems fairly limiting and as can be seen fails a lot too. The problem might not be the aggressive rooms at all but simply stealth being nerfed too far at the moment.