Stealth Rework Proposal (Performance-Conscious Approach)

Stealth, is the slowest and either most rewarding or Inconvenient gameplay mode.
Yes there are different types of trigger modes, but over time you begin to develop
a spidey sense. If it starts to tingle, then rethink your options.

Dos and Don'ts by example.

1 Don't enter with a head light turned on.
2 Do check the corner and hallway to the right and blind spot.
3 Do remove all trash from the farthest reach, not just 1 and trample
the rest, repeatedly.
4 Don't run up and down the steps, crouch walk, especially if the door is open.
Sound is sound.
5 Do when reentering enter in crouch walk.
6 Do manipulate environment so the meter is lower.
7 Don't pickup or open anything until the area, connected is cleared
Why it may not be loud to you but, it is sound in a local area that
can be a trigger.
8 Don't open a door and run through it into a zombie.
9 Do open a door from max reach distance, and stay to the side to use the
wall for cover.
10 Do look check the corners and blind spots.
11 Don't leave the door open especially during the day.
12 Don't shine a flashlight in the sleeper's eyes. especially while standing at
point blank range.
13 Do always be aware of yourself and your environment.
14 Don't lose your concentration.
15 Do always listen, sound queues give an idea of how to progress.

 
stallionsden said:
Make all the vids you want it will only prove maybe stealth just isnt for you tbh it isnt for everyone.
its a art and myself zz and i know many more have no issues with attack volumes stealth them easily and if we make a stuff up we can easily correct it by moving away from where the spot was we made the noise and as zztong mentioned re enter stealth.
Click to expand...

I don't think Lisa_Lina was that video creator.

Stealth isn't useless and it does work. But I won't say I don't have issues related to attack volumes and the use of triggers. There are times when I think they are a bad choice and I sometimes do think the triggers are overused. There's a limit to how many times I want withdraw and restealth and Tier 5 POIs can push me over that number.
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4sheetzngeegles said:
Dos and Don'ts by example.
Click to expand...

Put headphones on and listen. You can hear your own footsteps. Notice that those footsteps increase your stealth meter by a couple of points. Notice that if you stop they'll recover, but if you don't stop they will accumulate. There are times when you want to take a step then pause to let your stealth meter recover.
 
zztong said:
I don't think Lisa_Lina was that video creator.
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That's right, that wasn't my video, but one I found online. I ran several tests and can confirm that sneaking into such areas is only possible with a full, max-level Assassin set and additional noise suppression enhancements, or max-level of stealth. Otherwise, absolutely all zombies are drawn to tiny noises that the player can't even hear. This applies even if the player isn't visible at all or is behind a wall. Zombies know where the player is, even if there's "no noise". Because the zone itself creates the noise. But apparently this value directly depends on the player's visibility value. (For example,) if the player has 20, then the increase from the zone will be up to 28. If the player initially had 8, then the increase limit will be 12.
Here are the videos I shot:
Version with a full set and a leveled-up character.

Version without leveling and set.
 
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Lisa_Lina said:
I was specifically talking about stealth in POIs. Stealth works correctly outdoors.
Click to expand...
Can't agree with that take entirly.
When I stealth kill an animal from a long distance all zeds go for the carcas but they do know I'm around, not getting a sneak bonus when hitting them. I can stealth kill an entire wandering horde walking straight in to me so why it doesn't work with animals just doesn't make sense.
 
Dead Smarty said:
Can't agree with that take entirly.
When I stealth kill an animal from a long distance all zeds go for the carcas but they do know I'm around, not getting a sneak bonus when hitting them. I can stealth kill an entire wandering horde walking straight in to me so why it doesn't work with animals just doesn't make sense.
Click to expand...
Stealth is weird in this game
 
Lisa_Lina said:
Here are the videos I shot:
Click to expand...

Okay, watching the first...

First video, stealth is 8 which is pretty good, but not the best. At the 1:00 mark you can see your Assassin armor doesn't have any mods on it, except for the boots and I don't know what mod that is. The Assassin armor is good (that's what I use) but the Rogue armor is supposed to be slightly better with stealth. (I've not tried it as I want the Assassin set bonus.) I can get a stealth of around 4.

Around the 1:30 mark you are detected but not located. The wandering crawler was right beside you, though you were in a structure. We can tell because it didn't start to attack the wall to get to you.

As you move around you can see effects of your footsteps. You can actually hear them, usually with a headset on. You creep along move, pause, move pause, which lets the footstep effect reset and that's good technique when you need to be really, really quiet.

I'm not sure why you keep going to godmode and flying around. I'm not sure of the effects of that beyond what we could see on the screen.

Watching the second...

Looks to be a new character, no equipment, no skills. Stealth 23, 30 when you move faster. That's not a terrible stealth number, but it isn't a great number either. I'd want to stay at a distance. Detected and located by a vulture at stealth 28. I rewound to see where the vulture was. You were about 5 blocks from it in range, so a middle to close range. Oh, you were detected and located by more, rewinding again, you were perhaps 3-4 blocks from a prone sleeper, so close.

I'm not sure what this is testing. You're in close proximity to what I assume is an Active volume and the game decided to make one of the zombies wander. I mean at level 1 with nothing, I'm not going to close and use a bone knife. I'm going to stay at long range and use a primitive bow. A knife approach rarely works unless you really outclass the zombie or conditions are really good, like you get to approach from the back, which isn't easy if they're moving.

The more interesting case is how do you get to that roof without having to leave stealth. At that level you can't have enough parkour to be jumping up a block while staying in stealth and you (for some unknown reason) cannot go up a ladder in stealth. You'd have to build a stairway (or ramp) from the blocks in your inventory.

There's another way in the game to monitor stealth, and I'd like to remember how that is done and tell you about it. I just don't know that I'll get to it today. Work has me busy atm.
 
zztong said:
There's another way in the game to monitor stealth, and I'd like to remember how that is done and tell you about it. I just don't know that I'll get to it today. Work has me busy atm.
Click to expand...

I made some time...

To get what shows in the pictures:

Hit F1 to get the console.
Enter "dm" in the console
Close the console.
Hit F3
Then turn on and off things to get what you want to see.
The "St" option is stealth.

You can see the noise events immediately as they happen. You can see the effects of lighting.

Screenshot 2026-02-28 090728.png
 
zztong said:
I'm not sure why you keep going to godmode and flying around. I'm not sure of the effects of that beyond what we could see on the screen.
Click to expand...
I didn't use god mode to fly out and look, but free camera. It's activated by pressing P+{
This locks the character at that point and activates free camera.
 
I made time to make some videos of trying to use stealth with a level 1, level 3, and level 4 character in v2.6.

Stealth - Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com

I made comments while I played so you can hear me talking about stealth and what I was doing. The level 1 character has no stealth investment. The level 3 and 4 character had 1 point in each stealth skill. The level 4 character had a point in archery. My initial 4 points go to clubs so that I don't run out of stamina.

I don't know if these videos add to the conversation, but somebody might pick up some technique -- or lack of it -- as I do make some stealth mistakes along the way.

One criticism is that all of the POIs shown are mine, as that's what the Trader was serving up. I don't make heavy use of triggers, though the first video does have one.
 
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zztong said:
I made time to make some videos of trying to use stealth with a level 1, level 3, and level 4 character in v2.6.

Stealth - Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com

I made comments while I played so you can hear me talking about stealth and what I was doing. The level 1 character has no stealth investment. The level 3 and 4 character had 1 point in each stealth skill. The level 4 character had a point in archery. My initial 4 points go to clubs so that I don't run out of stamina.

I don't know if these videos add to the conversation, but somebody might pick up some technique -- or lack of it -- as I do make some stealth mistakes along the way.

One criticism is that all of the POIs shown are mine, as that's what the Trader was serving up. I don't make heavy use of triggers, though the first video does have one.
Click to expand...
I watched the first video. As I understand it, the yellow indicator shows the moment when zombies have already spotted you. Zombies really do rely on the sounds around them and objects that make sound. I'll say something about the sounds themselves right now:
I think the volume of the sounds in the indicator and what we actually hear are very different things. The first bow kill in the tent was extremely loud to the player, but the indicator only changed by 2 units. That's odd. I think this indicator is missing an additional dimension for ambient noise. After all, not all noise can come from a single player/object. And why the noise from entering Attack Volume counted as the noise emitted by the player...?

And the crookedness of the hitboxes, of course, is a separate story.
 
zztong said:
I made time to make some videos of trying to use stealth with a level 1, level 3, and level 4 character in v2.6.

Stealth - Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com

I made comments while I played so you can hear me talking about stealth and what I was doing. The level 1 character has no stealth investment. The level 3 and 4 character had 1 point in each stealth skill. The level 4 character had a point in archery. My initial 4 points go to clubs so that I don't run out of stamina.

I don't know if these videos add to the conversation, but somebody might pick up some technique -- or lack of it -- as I do make some stealth mistakes along the way.

One criticism is that all of the POIs shown are mine, as that's what the Trader was serving up. I don't make heavy use of triggers, though the first video does have one.
Click to expand...
Also, some zombies, as I see in the second video, completely ignore the sounds of other zombies' deaths (or maybe it's always been that way...). Although the sound of their deaths is very loud and should clearly impact the player's stealth.
 
Lisa_Lina said:
The first bow kill in the tent was extremely loud to the player, but the indicator only changed by 2 units. That's odd. I think this indicator is missing an additional dimension for ambient noise.
Click to expand...
You are correct it is two different measurements. In the xml is a level for sound exerted on the meter.
What you hear, is the decibel level that it was recorded at. It is the same with zombie sounds when
they are awake. The recorded decibel is at dubstep distortion level. And when multiple voices are
allowed, it would over ride any doppler setting.

Here is what it looks like
this is for the bow
<Noise ID="0" noise="3" time="2"/>

This is for a pipe shotgun
<Noise ID="0" noise="62" time="2" muffled_when_crouched="0.8" heat_map_strength="0.75" heat_map_time="180"/>

This is the basic pool of sound levels
<!-- For stealth purposes I am putting sounds into 5 buckets so I can search&massReplace.
1 minor sounds, earth/cloth hit
6 brief mechanical noises like gun sighting
2 loud steps, trash, hitting stone/wood, silenced MP5
3 hit glass / Metal, heavy impacts, iron doors, pistol
4 Auger loop, death screams, Gunshot small?
5 Gunshot loud, EXPLOSIONS

<Noise ID="1" noise="7" time="3" muffled_when_crouched="0.5"/>
<Noise ID="6" noise="7" time="2" muffled_when_crouched="0.5"/>
<Noise ID="2" noise="11" time="4" muffled_when_crouched="0.5"/>
<Noise ID="3" noise="30" time="3" muffled_when_crouched="0.65" heat_map_strength="0.05" heat_map_time="60"/>
<Noise ID="4" noise="60" time="2" heat_map_strength="0.2" heat_map_time="90"/>
<Noise ID="5" noise="120" time="4" heat_map_strength="5" heat_map_time="300"/>
-->
 
Lisa_Lina said:
I watched the first video. As I understand it, the yellow indicator shows the moment when zombies have already spotted you. Zombies really do rely on the sounds around them and objects that make sound.
Click to expand...

Yes, sound and light. Yes, the volume to you and the volume to the sound system are different things.

There are sound quirks that I assume have been done for "play-ability" reasons. And yes, zombie death noises don't seem to influence stealth.

One sound quirk is that real sound falls off via the inverse square law, which is really fast. But the game designers want sounds to be heard farther away. If you did that realistically, and you happened to be beside the sound, it would be REALLY loud. So games tend to use a linear decay.

Another sound quirk is that hitting things with an axe, or taking things apart with a tool, don't make hardly any noise when you're crouched.

Lisa_Lina said:
And why the noise from entering Attack Volume counted as the noise emitted by the player...?
Click to expand...

I'm not aware of a noise from entering any volume. If you enter a trigger volume, or interact with an object that has a trigger, the trigger itself can wake things. Footsteps have noise, so entering a volume likely involves footsteps.

In my first video, the door to the loot has a trigger on it. While opening the door does make noise that could wake a zombie, the door's trigger led to three zombies being placed. Those zombies would have needed to have been placed before the noise could have woken them. In that case, the trigger did everything, and since I was standing right in front of the zombies in daylight, they saw me.
 
I spent some time migrating my v2.0 > v2.5 playtest character to v2.6. so I could do some stealth with a higher level and better equipped character.

There's now a video of level 51 character with Assassin/6 armor, though not fully modded going into the TFP Tier 4 High School. I admit that is a particularly stealth-friendly POI. This is almost a 100% stealth kill video.

Same location...

Stealth - Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com
 
And I did a stealth play-through of TFP's Favales Academy with my playtest character at Level 52. Same location as the others.
 
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