PC "Dear Fun Pimps" 400hrs on A18 to now - Yikes!

X

x.Sharky.x

Refugee
Good day all & Fun Pimps,

My brother and I have played over 400hrs ea. most of it together in A17-A18 Navesgane. It was awesome, but...

Please fix or allow changing:

1) Zed & player "reach". This is immersion breaking. Zeds hit you from unrealistically far, too much reach. Compared to any first person game and previous versions of 7D2D. We can't wrap our heads around the visualization of things versus expected, realistic reach.

2) Headshots - Arrows flying through heads and not hitting was never a problem. Now the hitbox is either broken or way too small. It's not our pings or our PCs, no.

3) Sneaking; WHY?! We used to have a great time sneaking into areas, get right next to well hidden zeds and smack them to get a one-shot or severely damage them. Now, there appears to be a trigger when you enter a room where zeds just wake up like a gun went off. Leaving the only realistic traits to focus on being heavy armor and noise making but hard hitting weapons.

Remember the core of this game - Zombie survival. In all the books and movies and games - noise is king (or the lack there of). This isn't Warhammer 40k. Surviving via getting by with scraps and avoid upsetting the messed up savagery surrounding you.

You can't realistically do that in the 2 hours we just tried playing again for the 1st time in 2.5 years.

4) Starting point; Considering Navezgane is a pre-set map, we should start in an area with level 1 (and maybe level 2) difficulty areas. We started near the trader, real close to the winter biome and the only direction left that had looting were level 3 and a feral that demolished us.

So we simply shelved the game again, our interested vanished and filled with disappointment. This isn't the survival we played from A15 then A17-A18 until now.

I'm not looking for feedback about how to play this game, I've spent enough time since its inception playing from how it began and how it grew. These recent differences simply changes the dynamics of the game too much in our opinion and we wanted to share in the hopes these can either be addressed or allow for changes.

Cheers
A old survivor
 
1: Reach in SP is mostly fine for me, but once you get onto a server, whether P2P or a dedi, there is definite desync issues or something and it gets a bit ridiculous.

2: There are some occasional misses I've seen that feel like they should've hit, but meh.

3: Sneaking still works just fine, just isn't as OP as it was. The game has limits to how may zombies can exist so there have to be some compromises. And to be honest, all zombies should be awake and wandering around in POIs anyway. Surviving is still totally possible. Adapting is part of survival, no?

4: The starting point bit is just silly. You start is the easiest biome but there are still places you shouldn't go day 1. The game literally tells you how difficult the POI is once you step foot in its bounds. If you proceed to go in anyway that's on you. You can say you're not looking for feedback on how to play but come on, the game has enough hand-holding built in as it is. You're asking for there to be nothing too tough to handle within reach on spawn. That's stupid.
 
@x.Sharky.x you mentioned about the head hitbox, I land every headshot kill with an arrow, no problems at all. Now used to (don't know about now), but there was a space (neck) between the head and the body, that your arrows and bullets would go through without them taking any damage. But as far as that goes, I do not know if that ever got fixed or not.
 
bdubyah said:
1: Reach in SP is mostly fine for me, but once you get onto a server, whether P2P or a dedi, there is definite desync issues or something and it gets a bit ridiculous.

2: There are some occasional misses I've seen that feel like they should've hit, but meh.

3: Sneaking still works just fine, just isn't as OP as it was. The game has limits to how may zombies can exist so there have to be some compromises. And to be honest, all zombies should be awake and wandering around in POIs anyway. Surviving is still totally possible. Adapting is part of survival, no?

4: The starting point bit is just silly. You start is the easiest biome but there are still places you shouldn't go day 1. The game literally tells you how difficult the POI is once you step foot in its bounds. If you proceed to go in anyway that's on you. You can say you're not looking for feedback on how to play but come on, the game has enough hand-holding built in as it is. You're asking for there to be nothing too tough to handle within reach on spawn. That's stupid.
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Hey Bdubyah. Just wanted to say how nice it is to be told my opinion is stupid. Thank you for that. Have blessed day.
 
x.Sharky.x said:
Hey Bdubyah. Just wanted to say how nice it is to be told my opinion is stupid. Thank you for that. Have blessed day.
Click to expand...

The Fun Pimps have given you an indicator of difficulty when you get close to a POI. It's just a bit surprising you wouldn't expect a single feral in a tier 3 POI, especially after you leveled up a bit in the tier 1/2. The game has always been like this, higher tier POIs are more dangerous but have better loot. Personally, looting a POI you are barely equipped/leveled to do is exciting as you have to parkour inside to deal with ferals and stuff. Sometimes you mess up and die, but that's part of the game.

Also, unless you refuse to do quests for the trader, there is no such thing as running out of tier 1 and 2 to loot. Just take and quest and reset the POIs. Another option is to go out and locate another bunch of POIs in the forest biome.
 
@x.Sharky.x

Try these, early game until you become more accustom to the environment, avoidance
and safety should be first.

Mainly because armor rating is low. If you are going into an advanced level poi early on. First create a
clear path to retreat. Make wood spike traps, they are not meant to stop the zombies but to
slow them down enough to get away or regroup. Lay some out side in a 3 by 3 square. If you get
chased keep them between you and the feral. It will take damage slw them a bit and you can get in some
hits also.

If you are going in the front door, and break it, make another cheap one, if you have to run out
shut it behind you, it slows them enough so when they make a hole you can use the spear.

Craft ladders at least 10, before entering, place them starting at 3 high and build it least 3 or 4 upward,
this allows you to temporarily climb out of reach to catch your breath or regain health and stamina.

Place the spike traps in passages that you have not gone to yet. hack'em up when ready to go
to that room. In the exit doorway place a default wood block that can be picked up quickly if
necessary, it will let you know if something is sneaking up behind you.

Use thrust weapons like the spear and the pipe baton. They have a longer reach until your character
is strong enough to take a hit. also the baton has a knock back or stutter result. Don't just swing wildly
hit, back 2 steps, hit, hitting as fast as possible without a barrier between you, prompts a hit back.

Listen for the chicken sound, that means game in that direction, hopefully chickens, gather feathers
make a bow and arrow. This also keeps a distance between you and the zombie until you are ready
for full melee.
 
x.Sharky.x said:
Hey Bdubyah. Just wanted to say how nice it is to be told my opinion is stupid. Thank you for that. Have blessed day.
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Am I not allowed to share my opinion of your post? If you didn't want people commenting their thoughts then why'd you post in General Discussion? I answered my thoughts on each point of your post, not like I posted just to attack you. I just think that section of your post is about backwards to how I feel the game should be. People are allowed to think your opinions are stupid. If that's too upsetting then I'd suggest maybe stay off the internet.
 
x.Sharky.x said:
3) Sneaking; WHY?! We used to have a great time sneaking into areas, get right next to well hidden zeds and smack them to get a one-shot or severely damage them. Now, there appears to be a trigger when you enter a room where zeds just wake up like a gun went off. Leaving the only realistic traits to focus on being heavy armor and noise making but hard hitting weapons.
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Just to get some clarification of your expectations...are you saying you expect to 100% be able to stealth kill every single zombie in every single room simply by crouch walking around? The trigger areas are not in every single room of every single POI so you do get to crouch sneak into quite a few and get that satisfying sucker punch in a lot of the time. For many of the trigger areas you can retreat and hide until your stealth resets and then get more sneak kills. For some of the trigger areas it is true that you won't be able to stealth those spots and have to battle it out or use parkour creatively but imo that creates a lot of variety of encounters.

If you are wanting to be able to stealth everything all the time by crouching around and never needing to retreat and return you might need to choose to revert to A18 if that is what you remember being ideal.
 
Sneaking:

The majority of my game play is using stealth, strat and tactics.
Because I use low rating armor and weak weapons, as long as possible
in all poi levels and all biomes. It makes me have to think about every
move or playing dead is dead, i'd have to restart a lot, but I don't.

Stealth in this game is enemie's sight, enemie's hearing, How brightly lit
you are at the time, and how much errant noise you are making. That's what
makes it engaging for me doing it.

Enemy view is 180 degrees, that means side to side, you need to be to their
back. do not approach them from the side. Find the shadows and stay in them.
Use decoy rocks if out doors, but only if they don't have line of sight on you.
Block out windows on your way to lower light.

If you are moving and you hear them making waking sounds, you need to stop
so they become less aware and go back to sleep.

Stay out of the light, If you can break a light do it and listen. Light will
give you away quickly.

Sneaking does not mean, just crouch running anymore, which is a good thing.
It means you need to not just trounce around on all the garbage on the floor.
That makes a lot of repeated sound, sound makes them more aware.

Higher difficulty level entities are more easily aware, so for stealth to work
you would have to move slower, stop periodically and listen. Some are going to
wake no matter what, then it's time to move.

If you don't trust a room either find another way in or just break a hole in the
door, and look around.

And last check those corners, and since it is a 3d environment always look up and
down.

The way I gauge my stealth success is if I can dispatch the majority if not all
of the enemies without waking the others. Day 1 in Nav, my favorite POIs to clear
are a t2 and t3 one for my base, the other for my crafting to spread the heat
generation around.
 
Roland said:
Just to get some clarification of your expectations...are you saying you expect to 100% be able to stealth kill every single zombie in every single room simply by crouch walking around? The trigger areas are not in every single room of every single POI so you do get to crouch sneak into quite a few and get that satisfying sucker punch in a lot of the time. For many of the trigger areas you can retreat and hide until your stealth resets and then get more sneak kills. For some of the trigger areas it is true that you won't be able to stealth those spots and have to battle it out or use parkour creatively but imo that creates a lot of variety of encounters.

If you are wanting to be able to stealth everything all the time by crouching around and never needing to retreat and return you might need to choose to revert to A18 if that is what you remember being ideal.
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Hey Roland,

Thank you for you reply. To answer your question(s); No, I didn't expect to be able to ninja stealth everything 100%. A quick example is I remember we had to be careful about stepping on "mini junk piles" where some 'could' make noise. They were effectively noise traps sneaking players had to avoid. Heavy armor would make noise, looting, etc. Kept us on our toes while trying to survive, avoid fighting, etc. right?

So my bother and I would just try and slowly crouch sneak into houses/rooms/POIs and try to assess the best approach. Most often what would trigger local sleepers was that we'd hit a zed that would soak up the headshot damage as he was tough, he'd get triggered hissing and local zed(s) would react to the zed we hit and failed to one-shot and it was a "oh crap!" moment. THAT was fun - that was player triggered and our risk vs. reward had failed. Also we'd sometimes step onto frail structures/tiles we failed to notice, or simply miss the head of a Zed and not one-shot kill.

What truly annoyed us was that as we would simply sneak enter (the very 1st steps into a room of a random house) - BAM! Zeds just lock onto us like we just yelled "Hello?!"

It felt immersion breaking compared. You see, the trigger was effectively invisible and unavoidable. Not saying it's bad or wrong - just our observation from what we were expecting / used too. Our thoughts were that we didn't make a mistake, nor was it a failed RNG from an action which we decided to take a chance with. So effectively for us, sneak is out the window. Get your heavy gear and tank your way into everything as you know unavoidable triggers will wake up a full rooms no matter - our thoughts are we might as well just treat them all the same and ignore sneak/stealth.

Cheers survivors!
 
400 hours isn't a lot of man-hours :-) , although it doesn't matter how many hours you might have, there will always be someone who isn't satisfied
 
x.Sharky.x said:
Hey Roland,

Thank you for you reply. To answer your question(s); No, I didn't expect to be able to ninja stealth everything 100%. A quick example is I remember we had to be careful about stepping on "mini junk piles" where some 'could' make noise. They were effectively noise traps sneaking players had to avoid. Heavy armor would make noise, looting, etc. Kept us on our toes while trying to survive, avoid fighting, etc. right?

So my bother and I would just try and slowly crouch sneak into houses/rooms/POIs and try to assess the best approach. Most often what would trigger local sleepers was that we'd hit a zed that would soak up the headshot damage as he was tough, he'd get triggered hissing and local zed(s) would react to the zed we hit and failed to one-shot and it was a "oh crap!" moment. THAT was fun - that was player triggered and our risk vs. reward had failed. Also we'd sometimes step onto frail structures/tiles we failed to notice, or simply miss the head of a Zed and not one-shot kill.

What truly annoyed us was that as we would simply sneak enter (the very 1st steps into a room of a random house) - BAM! Zeds just lock onto us like we just yelled "Hello?!"

It felt immersion breaking compared. You see, the trigger was effectively invisible and unavoidable. Not saying it's bad or wrong - just our observation from what we were expecting / used too. Our thoughts were that we didn't make a mistake, nor was it a failed RNG from an action which we decided to take a chance with. So effectively for us, sneak is out the window. Get your heavy gear and tank your way into everything as you know unavoidable triggers will wake up a full rooms no matter - our thoughts are we might as well just treat them all the same and ignore sneak/stealth.

Cheers survivors!
Click to expand...
Gotcha. If your expectation isn’t to stealth kill everyone then why get your heavy gear on and tank your way through everything just because some but not all encounters involve triggers you can’t avoid? In most POIs you can still stealth just like you described enjoying in at least 70% of the rooms.

I really enjoy doing stealth builds, myself, and have just come to expect that I’ll be able to stealth most of the time—just not all of the time and almost never in the end loot room. You’re missing out on a lot of stealthy fun if you decide a small percentage of automatic triggers spoils the entire thing.
 
Roland said:
In most POIs you can still stealth just like you described enjoying in at least 70% of the rooms.
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Hmm, I'm not being asked, but I'm in the same boat. That 30% is so janky when Trying to stealth; the game just says "no". Check the ceiling tiles in Zeigler residence (stairs) and still have zeds fall behind you, agroed on you after you pass them. I don't mind unstealthable stuff, but this way of causing that doesn't feel good.

And while it may be only 10% of the spawn volumes, it's roughly 100% of the important/difficult fights. In those, especially if I'm not geared for tanking, I'd rather have that 20% movement speed on my boots over whatever combined effects the assassin set gives me. And those 5 points in stealth are useless as well, put 4 in Fort for some wound licking and you're better off in every fight.

Roland said:
I really enjoy doing stealth builds
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I do too, my addiction for those bloomed with shredding apart all those delicious frost mages in WoW warzones on my kitty cat. Fall-apart tender, Yum :)
I'd love to play them here as well, but it just doesn't play right. When it works it's too easy, and when it doesn't it's bloody annoying the way it doesn't. For a small "quick fix", instead of having to flee for a minute, give us "flash bangs". Something that when used on a zed, makes it drop the "auto agro"; maybe even gives it a 1-2 seconds of blindness (sight/hearing stats reduced to 0 and restoring quickly). That would make for more enjoyable / interesting gameplay, you pop the bangers and take a headshot in follow-up, getting stealth bonuses with a decent skill cap.

Or whatever else - I get that the trigger rooms aren't going away, so give stealth some (any!) gameplay against them.
 
theFlu said:
Hmm, I'm not being asked, but I'm in the same boat. That 30% is so janky when Trying to stealth; the game just says "no". Check the ceiling tiles in Zeigler residence (stairs) and still have zeds fall behind you, agroed on you after you pass them. I don't mind unstealthable stuff, but this way of causing that doesn't feel good.

And while it may be only 10% of the spawn volumes, it's roughly 100% of the important/difficult fights. In those, especially if I'm not geared for tanking, I'd rather have that 20% movement speed on my boots over whatever combined effects the assassin set gives me. And those 5 points in stealth are useless as well, put 4 in Fort for some wound licking and you're better off in every fight.


I do too, my addiction for those bloomed with shredding apart all those delicious frost mages in WoW warzones on my kitty cat. Fall-apart tender, Yum :)
I'd love to play them here as well, but it just doesn't play right. When it works it's too easy, and when it doesn't it's asbloody annoying the way it doesn't. For a small "quick fix", instead of having to flee for a minute, give us "flash bangs". Something that when used on a zed, makes it drop the "auto agro"; maybe even gives it a 1-2 seconds of blindness (sight/hearing stats reduced to 0 and restoring quickly). That would make for more enjoyable / interesting gameplay, you pop the bangers and take a headshot in follow-up, getting stealth bonuses with a decent skill cap.

Or whatever else - I get that the trigger rooms aren't going away, so give stealth some (any!) gameplay against them.
Click to expand...

I agree that the 30% is janky and could be improved but I still enjoy the stealth build enough to roll with it. I don’t do agility every time but I always enjoy it when I do and expecting the 30% helps in coping with it and honestly Indo want ambushes and arena clashes and swarms and waves from time to time. Maybe if it was 5%…
 
Roland said:
I agree that the 30% is janky and could be improved but I still enjoy the stealth build enough to roll with it. I don’t do agility every time but I always enjoy it when I do and expecting the 30% helps in coping with it and honestly Indo want ambushes and arena clashes and swarms and waves from time to time. Maybe if it was 5%…
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Hey Roland, theFlu,

Here's my heartfelt thought on the matter - Yes, we should be able to stealth - Almost everywhere, all the time. I'll tell you why - because on the 7th day - YOU CAN NO LONGER HIDE! :)

Seriously though, it should be up to the player on how he wants to approach the style 90%+ of the time imo. The game is a Zombie survival with a guaranteed night of hell every 7 days - no hiding, no escaping. You prepare for what's coming; good luck!

Again, I'm not saying those invisible/unstoppable triggers are wrong in anyway, just that I disagree with them as it throw's a player's mechanic playstyle under the bus. It's immersion breaking.

I'd agree to POIs having far more of those brittle tiles that crack, traps, trash that 'pops' if stepped on etc. That would all be for the player to avoid and skillfully stealth through.

Some Zeds could have heightened sensitivity, where under the stealth/agility perks you can put points in lowering the chances of triggering them, etc.

Anyway, we'll play the game one last time next big release, it was nostalgic and pleasant otherwise.

Cheers guys
 
I play Agility builds 98% of the time and stealth is a huge part of why I do it.

I have actually found TFP's approach to Stealth a lot more interesting / exciting than other versions I have played (Skyrim for example). While it doesn't hold up to a game built totally around stealth (Hitman series for example), I don't want a game where stealth is 100% reliable or overpowered (looking at you Skyrim). I stopped using Assassin armor when I realized how powerful it was for Stealth builds (not sure if it was nerfed in V2.0).

Why specifically do I like it?
  • I like From the Shadows perk where I can, through using my brain and the environment around me, get the zombies to lose interest trying to find me after I break line of sight and go into quiet mode.
  • I like the fact that I can sneak up to a zombie and do a stealth knife attack, but that it isn't a guarantee.
  • I like the fact that not all encounters start out with the zombies clueless while I just pick them off from a distance
  • I like the fact that all situations cannot be solved via stealth and that I always need a backup plan
 
BFT2020 said:
I stopped using Assassin armor when I realized how powerful it was for Stealth builds (not sure if it was nerfed in V2.0).
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Ye, I tried it for one game and stopped using it as well. I think the gamebreaking bit, the "instant drop of agro", was fixed - but I haven't actually played it since.
 
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