PC Sleepers even worse now.

I don't care for stealth builds in any game, It's not my jam. .. One of the dudes on my 3 person team enjoys stealth. I don't think that it's so much a problem that this kind of mechanic[highlighted in the video above] exists, but: that you can count on it with certainty. If the behavior where they spawn in moving on the player was governed by dice roll against the player's stealth, I think that would be more engaging.

All this said -though I can't attest to it first-hand because I don't play stealth- My friend says, and I've seen other forum posters say, and Meganoth might agree in theory, [Though this may not apply in nightmare speed] A very fast retreat, sneaky[lucky?] retreat allows you to lose them and go back to attacking from stealth.

 
Mister Forgash said:
A very fast retreat, sneaky[lucky?] retreat allows you to lose them and go back to attacking from stealth.
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Not always possible, some POI are designed in a way that you have to fight after trigger (zombie spawns 3 blocks in front and back of you in narrow corridor, alert and going after you).

 
Mister Forgash said:
If the behavior where they spawn in moving on the player was governed by dice roll against the player's stealth, I think that would be more engaging.
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It is governed by "dice roll" against the players stealth with the spawned in sleepers moving towards the point where the player tripped the trigger. The trigger + spawn points are being set up by the poi designers to bypass the "dice roll" by having the zombies spawn in to both block/intercept evasion routes and give the zombies clear and direct line of sight to the player. That many zombies spawning also has a fairly good chance of triggering a lag spike which will interfere with the player being able to evade. (Why in the heck are the new and redone POIs screaming "Compo Pack Dev!" at me??)

 
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hiemfire said:
It is governed by "dice roll" against the players stealth with the spawned in sleepers moving towards the point where the player tripped the trigger. 
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This was how it was in A20. in 21, as my video shows, there is no dice roll. I have hit those 2 spawn points 10 times now, trying different ways to get them to not wake up, and they are always spawned in awake and seeking, no dice roll involved.

 
david01228 said:
This was how it was in A20. in 21, as my video shows, there is no dice roll. I have hit those 2 spawn points 10 times now, trying different ways to get them to not wake up, and they are always spawned in awake and seeking, no dice roll involved.
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It is the same exact rendition of the mechanic as A20, a rng check to detect on spawn in. If the check results in them failing to detect you when they are spawned in they seek out the trigger point, the point where you crossed into the volume, and muddle around there. If they gain LOS to you while enroute to the trigger point then they detect you regardless. A few seconds after they reach the trigger point they revert back to the detection rules for normal sleeping/wandering zombies.

The POI designer setup the first and third trigger points shown in your vid so that you had no escape option. The first one dropped a swarm tracking in from outside of the entrance to the building and going for the trigger point in addition to the ones in "front" of you through the door you opened and behind the door in adjacent wall (with the door you opened left closed instead and without the swarm of ferals coming in from outside you might have been able to evade). The second trigger point you might have been able to duck back down around the stairs. The third dumped them effectively right on top of you with direct los... 1 and 3 completely  bypassed the "dice roll" to detect you on spawn that was implemented in A20.

 
hiemfire said:
It is the same exact rendition of the mechanic as A20, a rng check to detect on spawn in. If the check results in them failing to detect you when they are spawned in they seek out the trigger point, the point where you crossed into the volume, and muddle around there. If they gain LOS to you while enroute to the trigger point then they detect you regardless. A few seconds after they reach the trigger point they revert back to the detection rules for normal sleeping/wandering zombies.

The POI designer setup the first and third trigger points shown in your vid so that you had no escape option. The first one dropped a swarm tracking in from outside of the entrance to the building and going for the trigger point in addition to the ones in "front" of you through the door you opened and behind the door in adjacent wall (with the door you opened left closed instead and without the swarm of ferals coming in from outside you might have been able to evade). The second trigger point you might have been able to duck back down around the stairs. The third dumped them effectively right on top of you with direct los... 1 and 3 completely  bypassed the "dice roll" to detect you on spawn that was implemented in A20.
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If the zombies spawn in awake and seeking a "target point" then they are not sleepers, and it is not a dice roll anymore. Furthermore if you cannot spawn them in this new awakened state without them INSTANTLY having LOS on you, it still proves my point that stealth is greatly diminished. For the record, at no point in A20 did I have a trigger point where the zombes would awake that I could not in some way kill them PRIOR to crossing that point. If you want to see how the "dice roll" system DID work in A20, go to Dishong Tower, go up to the pool level (6 i think?) and clear it from the elevator shaft to the stairwell like you are supposed to while being stealthed. There are 2 decent dice roll points on that floor, so it is a good show. then go up 1 more floor to see how the trap system made sense before, by having an OBVIOUS trap room that still could kill you by triggering the trap (almost impossible to actually kill all the zombies without triggering some of them awake because of the noise made by breaking floors, but in theory still possible because the zombies are in the world asleep).

 
david01228 said:
Furthermore if you cannot spawn them in this new awakened state without them INSTANTLY having LOS on you, it still proves my point that stealth is greatly diminished.
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We are 100% in agreement here. TFP's desire to force engagements has been an issue since they added the original "attack" volumes, which was before I started playing iirc.

david01228 said:
For the record, at no point in A20 did I have a trigger point where the zombes would awake that I could not in some way kill them PRIOR to crossing that point.
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/shrug The new rendition of the attack volume mechanic only got implemented towards the tail end of experimental iirc so the POI designers didn't have as much of a chance to make use of it in their designs. In effect they designed for the A19ish system and then how the volumes function changed on them after they'd finished making them. From what I saw in recordings of tests done during my forced break from the game (power supply on my PC died just before A20 dropped, waiting on A21 to go stable before maybe jumping back in, if they fix the damn lighting system so it doesn't give me a migraine from eye strain), and what was dug out of the xmls during that time and discussed here the proportion of POIs with the trigger volumes quadrupled from about 20% of them having attack volumes to 80% of them having this current rendition. From the looks of it there also weren't as many of the trigger volumes per POI in A20 that did have them as there are now in A21. Likely because TFP had the POI rework planned for this alpha. Custom POIs designers on the other hand had a field day with it during A20.

Edit: Spawn Volume and Trigger volume also don't have to be the same volume and there can be multiple spawn volumes per trigger volume now. I think that functionality was added in A20, it's similar to how the key/button activated doors in POIs work..

 
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Other than stealth I have another issue with the sleepers in general, why are they almost always perfectly hidden behind things? usually in a way that there is virtually no way to get LoS on them for a shot. Walk into a room, you see nothing, second you walk in you see 4 zombies all walk out from behind a block/obstruction, this annoys me more than anything as not only does it mess up stealth, it also feels artifical as hell and completly ruins any sort of immersion. in A16.4 for example the sleepers were in random spots in each poi's sleeper volume, usually in the open as the zombie just went into dormant mode where ever it was last, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why they would all go behind something to hide than go dormant. I feel it was a change just like the Ambush volumes (aka attack volumes) just to screw stealth playstyle over. Which btw, Stealth playstyle already cleared poi's far slower than just running in shooting, the tradeoff was it was safer. Now a days? there is basically no real benefit to a stealth playstyle anymore due to all the steps TFP has taken to make it non-viable. At this point they might as well remove the stealth skills entirely as they are mostly useless inside the main place you'd wanna use them which is when exploring a poi.

 
Scyris said:
why are they almost always perfectly hidden behind things?
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Or hidden in ceilings, or hidden in close closet that they themselves cannot open the door to get into.

Scyris said:
Which btw, Stealth playstyle already cleared poi's far slower than just running in shooting, the tradeoff was it was safer.
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Yes, and required greater care and possibly greater investment in skills as you had 2 additional skills to spec into.

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I just guess they like the jump scares and linear gameplay in one or two specific ways too much for stealth to be viable option...

 
hiemfire said:
If the check results in them failing to detect you when they are spawned in they seek out the trigger point, the point where you crossed into the volume, and muddle around there. If they gain LOS to you while enroute to the trigger point then they detect you regardless.
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After some quite extensive testing in A20 and earlier, this seems wrong to me.

Minor: The zeds are spawned in at some point; but it's not tied to any check in and of itself. If there's few zombies loaded in the world, they're loaded while you approach the volume. If the world is sort of full with spawns already, they're loaded in only when you (nearly) enter the volume. The latter is often the case, making it look like they're loaded exactly upon entering.

Major: The detection check when you cross the volume boundary has exactly two possible outcomes:

- the zeds continue sleeping OR

- the zeds target (Attack-Target) the PLAYER who crossed the threshold

Even if some unnamed mod kept repeating that the zeds will just walk to a spot nearby, I have Never managed to repeat that. Trust me, I've tried.

There's couple ways to get something akin that;

You succeed the volume-check, and the zeds keep sleeping. Afterwards, you wake them with a sound and then leg it.

You fail the volume-check and the zeds zoom in on you. You show yourself to the zeds (which reverts them back to normal agro mechanics) and then you leg it behind a corner / hide in the darkness at night.

I can reliably do either of the above, never have I ever managed to get volume-triggered zeds to just "walk to a spot".

 
theFlu said:
Major: The detection check when you cross the volume boundary has exactly two possible outcomes:

- the zeds continue sleeping OR

- the zeds target (Attack-Target) the PLAYER who crossed the threshold

Even if some unnamed mod kept repeating that the zeds will just walk to a spot nearby, I have Never managed to repeat that. Trust me, I've tried.
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I could have sworn Boidster tested it as well and them going to the trigger point was how the zombies' check failure panned out. @%$#... That would make what @david01228's vid shows an even more bull@%$# reversion to straight up attack volumes with multiple spawn volumes per trigger volume woven in.

 
hiemfire said:
shows an even more bull@%$# reversion to straight up attack volumes with multiple spawn volumes per trigger volume woven in.
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Yeah, that's what it looks to me. One large volume, triggered all at once - or maybe separate ones bound to same trigger, doesn't really matter which. Set up so that one side runs to cut off your exit while the other "distracts"..

I've seen a small version of the same myself, narrow corridor, splits into two, you take either of the paths, zeds in the other wake up and walk behind you... luckily I smelled a rat when I saw the split and intentionally agroed and legged it straight after; still had to knock down the first of the other pack to avoid it.

Sadly it seems like a design decision for the new POIs..

 
So i have tested out my stealth build a little more thoroughly.  Stealth boots, padded armor everywhere else.  and 3 points into the stealth improvement perk.

I went through the  apartment complex with basically 0 issues.  There are 2 places that had zambees attack without them 'noticing me'  1 when you go down those stairs on the outside, i had a bunch of zambees, but not all of them become aware of me.  and the other time in the construction level a bunch activated.  Again not all of them.  i was careful, looked in everyplace i zambee could be hiding, and knew where the trick ceilings were, so i broke those out ahead of time.

The roof was boring honestly.  i did it during the day time and killed all of the zambees without waking them up.  I was bit cavalier with the ones by the radio tower section of the roof.  i killed them out of stealth, but i have no doubt i could have done it in stealth.

My personal head cannon is that sometimes you turn a corner and a zambee is staring you in the face, like any good horror movie.  you have a jump scare, you a frantic skirmish and then you move on.

 
Javabean867 said:
So i have tested out my stealth build a little more thoroughly.  Stealth boots, padded armor everywhere else.  and 3 points into the stealth improvement perk.

I went through the  apartment complex with basically 0 issues.  There are 2 places that had zambees attack without them 'noticing me'  1 when you go down those stairs on the outside, i had a bunch of zambees, but not all of them become aware of me.  and the other time in the construction level a bunch activated.  Again not all of them.  i was careful, looked in everyplace i zambee could be hiding, and knew where the trick ceilings were, so i broke those out ahead of time.

The roof was boring honestly.  i did it during the day time and killed all of the zambees without waking them up.  I was bit cavalier with the ones by the radio tower section of the roof.  i killed them out of stealth, but i have no doubt i could have done it in stealth.

My personal head cannon is that sometimes you turn a corner and a zambee is staring you in the face, like any good horror movie.  you have a jump scare, you a frantic skirmish and then you move on.
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So, if it was a POI from A20, they really didnt add any extra triggers in the normal clears and you will only hit the "insta-wake" triggers when doing infested clears on those ones. but if you go into new T4 and T5 POIS, you will see it

 
Did my first Tier 4 last night. Don't remember which POI it was, but I entered a room, looked around my entry point, walked in a little further and got smacked in the back from a zombie that had just spawned in the corner behind me I was just looking at. Looked up around where he came from to see if he broke out of something or fell off a vent or something. Nothing there at all. He just popped in to try to block me from going back the way I came. That stuff is annoying! Made me feel like I should just sprint through everything. Not the first time this has happened so far in A21 (Having a Z spawn in an area I just checked that wasn't hidden by terrain).

 
Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but investing in stealth does allow you to hide and make the zombies lose track of you, allowing you to get that stealth hit in. It takes a little practice -sometimes with a bit of nerves of steel -  but most cases you can do this pretty quickly. It's honestly borderline OP once you've perked quite a bit into it/have some books read.

 
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