PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

Is there anyway we can extra time to loot meat off of animals, before they despawn?

I saw a mountain lion, and I could use some extra meat, so I decided to kill it at my melee base.  Start fighting it, np... then a wondering horde shows up.  This happened the last time I was trying to kill a mountain lion by my base as well. 

Does a single mountain lion summon a wondering horde?  heh

Anyway I kill it, then finish off the horde... and notice the mountain lion had despawned... super annoying.  Especially because I am playing on insane/nightmare/64/horde every night.

It did not even take that long for me to kill the zombies.  Not even going to bother with mountain lions again until I have gear to kill them instantly.  Huge waste of time, heh.

 
No, that's perfect as it is IMO. You have to make a choice there... do you exclusively focus on the horde, or will you try to harvest the dead mountain lion while fighting them?

Choices, consequences. I often found myself in the same situation, and while fighting I "circle back" ( :biggrin1: ) often to harvest a bit each time.

 
meganoth said:
Wrong. It just doesn't work reliably. So if you ran and hid and some zombie still sees you you have to do it again. You can increase your chances greatly if you throw a small stone back into the general direction of the zombies after hiding.
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That is correct (both of your statements). They do disengage in a wonky way if you happen to be both skilled and lucky. Yet as you noted,  that behaviour needs to be well done, solid, balanced and reliable even in crazy situations. Right now is wonky (more so if they run, in that case I should call it useless ) and it just makes you feel like stealth is doing absolutely nothing VS your ability to run for your life without it. 

 
Blake_ said:
That is correct (both of your statements). They do disengage in a wonky way if you happen to be both skilled and lucky. Yet as you noted,  that behaviour needs to be well done, solid, balanced and reliable even in crazy situations. Right now is wonky (more so if they run, in that case I should call it useless ) and it just makes you feel like stealth is doing absolutely nothing VS your ability to run for your life without it. 
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I can't say anthing about the situation when they don't run as I did test it only with a high level character WITH running zombies.

In the weapon factory though, so lots of space to get a decent lead before you try to restealth. I can imagine it getting dicy if you are doing this in a labyrinth of small corridors and rooms.

 
Jost Amman said:
No, that's perfect as it is IMO. You have to make a choice there... do you exclusively focus on the horde, or will you try to harvest the dead mountain lion while fighting them?

Choices, consequences. I often found myself in the same situation, and while fighting I "circle back" ( :biggrin1: ) often to harvest a bit each time.
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I mean, not really much of an option... there were like 10 or more of them and it is set to insane/always nightmare run speed. 

They were dead within a few real life minutes, and I guess the corpse just despawned right before I got to it. 

I mean, if they are going to spawn a horde every time and despawn almost instantly, I will just ignore them for now.  Not worth the stamina drain. 

 
roughgalaxy said:
1: Is Stealth going to get an update at some point?

  • I know having poi triggers for ambushes are important for a good scare, but I also see people with really good stealth loadouts get totally boned by established abmush lines. I've also noticed these same people with a suppressed pistol wake up an entire POI taking one sneak shot. Is that a bug with suppressed pistols? I would think that good stealth skills/gear that you could roll through a POI with a suppressed pistol and wipe out everything Sam Fisher style.
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Or how about the the fact that no matter what your stealth ability, if you make more than the tiniest bit of noise (i.e, clearing the floor trash that seems to be in front of EVERY door and at the top of EVERY stair landing) every zombie in 5 block radius zeroes in on the building you are in?

 
pregnable said:
I mean, not really much of an option... there were like 10 or more of them and it is set to insane/always nightmare run speed. 
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I'll be blunt: the game is not balanced on that difficulty level... so that's still your choice and if you can't find a way to skin the animal before it despawns at that level, well, too bad, not the game's problem.  :noidea:

 
Reckis said:
Or how about the the fact that no matter what your stealth ability, if you make more than the tiniest bit of noise (i.e, clearing the floor trash that seems to be in front of EVERY door and at the top of EVERY stair landing) every zombie in 5 block radius zeroes in on the building you are in?
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Are you "clearing" the trash by walking through it or something? What you describe has not been my experience. When I am crouched and I destroy a trash pile it does not attract anything. If I walk through it then I get what you are describing.

 
Roland said:
Are you "clearing" the trash by walking through it or something? What you describe has not been my experience. When I am crouched and I destroy a trash pile it does not attract anything. If I walk through it then I get what you are describing.
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It isn't something that consistently happens, but I have breaking trash while sneaking wake up an entire room (breaking them from an adjacent room helps reduce this for now till/if they alter the sound origination mechanic to have it come from what it broken/hit instead of the player). I've also had it wake up someone 3 rooms away while the ones in the room I'm in didn't flinch. Then there is the occasional wanderer on the other side of the building next door that has super hearing... Not a big deal during the day, but at night it is a little more than annoying.

 
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hiemfire said:
hen there is the occasional wanderer on the other side of the building next door that has super hearing... Not a big deal during the day, but at night it is a little more than annoying.
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This I definitely experience. It's like the ones outside know you are inside, are offended by that, and come exactly to where you are. lol

 
meganoth said:
Wrong. zombies can be de-aggroed. I did test this when auto-aggro rooms were a huge discussion topic.
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They can de-aggro, kind of. But it's WAY more based on distance than it is your stealth skills. If you just put 900 blocks between you and the zombie, yeah they will finally stop chasing you, but it's not reliable or even usable really. It's easier to just get them stuck on a janky piece of furniture than to escape via stealth (without just sprinting away)

Roland said:
This I definitely experience. It's like the ones outside know you are inside, are offended by that, and come exactly to where you are. lol
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It's ALWAYS the lumberjack zombie that hears me and will tear through 400 concrete walls to find me in the middle of the shotgun messiah

 
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Khalagar said:
They can de-aggro, kind of. But it's WAY more based on distance than it is your stealth skills. If you just put 900 blocks between you and the zombie, yeah they will finally stop chasing you, but it's not reliable or even usable really. It's easier to just get them stuck on a janky piece of furniture than to escape via stealth (without just sprinting away)
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I tested this a lot during the huge Stealth Gate thread and it is completely about stealth-- but you do have to have the perks. One of the stealth perks causes them to forget about you faster. Even when not fully perked out I was able to move 2-3 rooms away and wait 2-3 minutes and then could return in stealth. Even if some of the zombies were still aggroed and pounding on walls, I could throw a rock and they would go to it. THAT is the litmus test because if they remember you and are focused on you then they won't go for the thrown rock.  I never had to run even 19 blocks away let alone 900...

On Day 1 you will likely not lose the zombies by running to another room and hiding. Their memory is too long and you are probably doing T1 and T2 POIs so there isn't anywhere to go. But you COULD perch up high and surround yourself with blocks so you could remain out of their sight long enough for the default forget timer to run down. Then throw a rock. Crouch and shoot arrows and you will get the stealth bonus because you will be back in stealth again.

 
I am actually hoping they just fix the trees in stealth. in a party with my wife, I am in the attic, she is 2 km away, she chops down a baby pine tree, and my stealth meter goes to 100? that is just wrong

 
wolfbain5 said:
I am actually hoping they just fix the trees in stealth. in a party with my wife, I am in the attic, she is 2 km away, she chops down a baby pine tree, and my stealth meter goes to 100? that is just wrong
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Knee jerk first suspicion is the game is having any player generated noise emit from all players in the group or maybe from the game host (I've run into similar, not just with trees either, and I usually host our games).

Has she experienced the reverse, a noise generated by you causing a observability spike for her?

 
Jost Amman said:
I'll be blunt: the game is not balanced on that difficulty level... so that's still your choice and if you can't find a way to skin the animal before it despawns at that level, well, too bad, not the game's problem.  :noidea:
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I do not disagree.  The game should not be balanced around the mode I am playing, heh. 

The despawn time on the mountain lions corpse seemed very short though, and both times a horde was summoned while I was fighting it. 

In this same version of the game, I am pretty sure I have seen a wolf corpse laying around for over half a day without despawning. 

In this case, I was fighting a mountain lion, then a horde was summoned.  I actually did not even kill the mountain lion until half of the horde was killed, and somehow it despawned before I could get to its body.  I doubt it was any more than an in game default hour. 

Something just does not seem right about how fast it despawned, and it died far away enough that none of the zombies should have destroyed the body.  Pretty sure it was still there when I was killing the last zombie. 

I am just not going to bother with mountain lions until I can 1 shot them or have better gear to kill them.  They are a massive waste of time and stamina atm for me.  Plus they only give like 25 meat.  Garbage. 

 
Roland said:
(A) I tested this a lot during the huge Stealth Gate thread and it is completely about stealth-- but you do have to have the perks.) (B) One of the stealth perks causes them to forget about you faster. (C) Even when not fully perked out I was able to move 2-3 rooms away and wait 2-3 minutes and then could return in stealth. Even if some of the zombies were still aggroed and pounding on walls, I could throw a rock and they would go to it. THAT is the litmus test because if they remember you and are focused on you then they won't go for the thrown rock.  I never had to run even 19 blocks away let alone 900...
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A. They still need to find a better way to handle attack volumes than they have. It makes any investment in stealth really pointless (oh hey I get a base 350% bonus to my bow and crossbow sneak damage, even more if I've invested multiple levels into it, that does absolutely @%$#ing nothing with no @%$#ing warning😠 ). No I've not changed my mind on this, I am not going to, and the "bring an "x" for back up" crowd needs to realize that this game's rng is worse than a super grind MMO (and it doesn't have a non-rng dependent crafting option currently for most of it unlike most of those MMOs, the Traders are also rng dependent so no they aren't a workaround) that seems to get even worse per item as you spend points into perk that boost what you want to play. 

B. From the Shadows.

C. At night, when observability is at its lowest baseline, in a smaller Tier 3 or 4 poi? Meganoth's and Jugginator's tests were in the Shamway Factory and the Shotgun Messiah Factory which have a huge amount of space available to fall back into away from the larger spawn clusters (no attack volumes that I've found though other than possibly the final room in the Shamway where the courier keeps stashing the damn satchel by the vault door to the loot tower for some reason. How the @%$# are they able to get up there, stash it, and get out without clearing the place or dying?). Not as much space available in the smaller pois unless you want to risk quest failing by bailing out of the building...

 
hiemfire said:
A. They still need to find a better way to handle attack volumes than they have. It makes any investment in stealth really pointless
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2020 is over. I’m not going to rehash this.  I respect your passion even if I don’t fully agree with your stance. But no more arguments from me. 😀

 
pregnable said:
The despawn time on the mountain lions corpse seemed very short though, and both times a horde was summoned while I was fighting it
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Then I suggest, if you can make this happen again, to open the console and check there.

I think there should be a log of why/how the spawns happen (but that's @Blake_ expertise TBH).

 
Khalagar said:
They can de-aggro, kind of. But it's WAY more based on distance than it is your stealth skills. If you just put 900 blocks between you and the zombie, yeah they will finally stop chasing you, but it's not reliable or even usable really. It's easier to just get them stuck on a janky piece of furniture than to escape via stealth (without just sprinting away)

It's ALWAYS the lumberjack zombie that hears me and will tear through 400 concrete walls to find me in the middle of the shotgun messiah
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If you run for 900 blocks, then yes, it is because of distance, and yes, that is practically unusable. But then you are obviously not using stealth at all.

That does not invalidate that others simply run a much smaller distance and disengage with stealth. (Sorry, yes, this is a get gud comment, from someone who shouldn't because he died 4 times on day 1 in a newly started game because he couldn't adjust to reliably fight with a lvl1 club. Don't ask).

wolfbain5 said:
I am actually hoping they just fix the trees in stealth. in a party with my wife, I am in the attic, she is 2 km away, she chops down a baby pine tree, and my stealth meter goes to 100? that is just wrong
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The game seems to have a lot of strange failure modes. I never have observed this in my MP games. Do you use mods? If not you might create a bug report

 
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