PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

meganoth said:
I doubt that. Because NOW in A19 you can stealthily clean a house nice and clear and have a minimal chance to be detected. If sound is muffled obviously this minimal chance will be much smaller. And you might not even need to use stealth to do this then.


I noticed this is probably ambiguous. I should have said this: "... and have a minimal chance to be detected from the outside". I was NOT talking about zombies inside.

And therefore I don't care if you see zombies inside not detecting you as a fault. Outside zombies already have a very low chance of detecting you in a building when you are stealthed and with the dampening would have no chance at all. More fun? If predictability of a game is fun for you then yes.

 
I noticed this is probably ambiguous. I should have said this: "... and have a minimal chance to be detected from the outside". I was NOT talking about zombies inside.

And therefore I don't care if you see zombies inside not detecting you as a fault. Outside zombies already have a very low chance of detecting you in a building when you are stealthed and with the dampening would have no chance at all. More fun? If predictability of a game is fun for you then yes.
well predictability is sometimes very positive thing 1 time i was everywhere and i couldn't find any beaker - but i had chanisaw , auger good guns etc. So some thing better be predictability like - beaker in hospital or secret lab, guns in military base, beer in bar or ties in car ( if car model have it) .

I will give example about enemies ;

let's say - in alternative  timline there are mannequins not zombie in 7dtd and have  few rules - they are indestrucible in day and they can't move. at night they behave like ultra agressive zombies- if they SAW you they gona hunt you until you die or sun rise but you can destroy them at night. 

Easy and simple rules ofc players could find exploit like make bases without doors and put something easy to destroy in door place. yeah but you put big mannequins auger and he is going to destroy everything on his patch. so if you run to the base better to find out how to destroy them before he destroy your base or change place of your base. rules are predictable but general enough to make a lof of random sitations

 
Outside zombies already have a very low chance of detecting you in a building when you are stealthed and with the dampening would have no chance at all. More fun? If predictability of a game is fun for you then yes.
Are you surprised when people already want to be able to always kill every zombie as it sleeps and if one should occasionally wake up and offer a different experience then the whole exploration game is ruined?

 
Are you surprised when people already want to be able to always kill every zombie as it sleeps and if one should occasionally wake up and offer a different experience then the whole exploration game is ruined?
No. Isn't that the goal of the game?  I mean, sure, stealth is a specific tactic but zombies that always wake up no matter what you do is as disagreeable as finding out zombies that are invulnerable to knuckles on every other POI for someone who decided to play as a brawler.

And no one said it needs to be easy to kill zombies stealthily, we, the sneaky, only want it to be possible.

Guppycur said:
Imagine if crawlers could... Crawl.

Up walls, ceilings, etc. 
I like that. Use the gore leaking from them as adhesive. But they'd have to leave a bloody trail.

 
Some sleepers will always wake up as soon as you enter their volume. Well, it's the volume that's the guilty party, not the sleeper, but that's a technical detail.
Bunker 01 (got a tier 2 clear quest for it today) is one that is designed specifically to punish stealth players. Draws them in with an easily stealthed scrap yard on the surface, once you get underground though there are exactly 2 spots you can successfully sneak attack. In at least 2 of the underground volumes they only spawn when you enter the room (the small, 3 blocks x 3 blocks of floor space, storage room which has 2 spawn right next to you facing you as you get off the ladder and the sleeping area with its drop downs). The one underground room accessed via the maintenance tunnels that doesn't wait for you to enter the room by climbing the ladder to spawn them in has them spawning so that the ladder grabs the player and breaks their stealth when you try to line up a head shot, and they're also facing the ladder opening. There is also the ambush drop in the ramp up to the front area that seems to ignore at least FTS with 3 points invested (I think it is an attack volume). Trying to stealth the designated path once you enter the bunker itself under the scrap yard is a no go and busting down the iron doors to the areas that the path has you using the maintenance tunnels to get to calls anything roaming close by and wakes up the occupants of the room. And no, there isn't room to run and re-stealth down there. Especially when the spawns are all ready right in your face or landing on your head...

For run and gun, solo and co-op, Bunker 01 is neat. For stealthing it is a "go @%$# yourself" to the player... 😑

 
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Bunker 01 (got a tier 2 clear quest for it today) is one that is designed specifically to punish stealth players. Draws them in with an easily stealthed scrap yard on the surface, once you get underground though there are exactly 2 spots you can successfully sneak attack. In at least 2 of the underground volumes they only spawn when you enter the room (the small, 3 blocks x 3 blocks of floor space) storage room which has 2 spawn right next to you facing you as you get off the ladder and the sleeping area with its drop downs). The one underground room accessed via the maintenance tunnels that doesn't wait for you to enter the room by climbing the ladder to spawn them in has them spawning so that the ladder grabs the player and breaks their stealth when you try to line up a head shot, and they're also facing the ladder opening. There is also the ambush drop in the ramp up to the front area that seems to ignore at least FTS with 3 points invested (I think it is an attack volume). Trying to stealth the designated path once you enter the bunker itself under the scrap yard is a no go and busting down the iron doors to the areas that the path has you using the maintenance tunnels to get to calls anything roaming close by and wakes up the occupants of the room. And no, there isn't room to run and re-stealth down there. Especially when the spawns are all ready right in your face or landing on your head...

For run and gun, solo and co-op, Bunker 01 is neat. For stealthing it is a "go @%$# yourself" to the player... 😑


I assume you're talking about Bart's Salvage. Yes, I can understand your woes on a deep level. -__-

 
Bunker 01 (got a tier 2 clear quest for it today) is one that is designed specifically to punish stealth players. Draws them in with an easily stealthed scrap yard on the surface, once you get underground though there are exactly 2 spots you can successfully sneak attack. In at least 2 of the underground volumes they only spawn when you enter the room (the small, 3 blocks x 3 blocks of floor space) storage room which has 2 spawn right next to you facing you as you get off the ladder and the sleeping area with its drop downs). The one underground room accessed via the maintenance tunnels that doesn't wait for you to enter the room by climbing the ladder to spawn them in has them spawning so that the ladder grabs the player and breaks their stealth when you try to line up a head shot, and they're also facing the ladder opening. There is also the ambush drop in the ramp up to the front area that seems to ignore at least FTS with 3 points invested (I think it is an attack volume). Trying to stealth the designated path once you enter the bunker itself under the scrap yard is a no go and busting down the iron doors to the areas that the path has you using the maintenance tunnels to get to calls anything roaming close by and wakes up the occupants of the room. And no, there isn't room to run and re-stealth down there. Especially when the spawns are all ready right in your face or landing on your head...

For run and gun, solo and co-op, Bunker 01 is neat. For stealthing it is a "go @%$# yourself" to the player... 😑
IMHO, that's more a matter of bad design than stealth targeting. It has these places you go up a ladder to reach and the zombie only spawn 1m away from you when you get at the top. Zombie shouldn't magically appear in front of you, period.

 
IMHO, that's more a matter of bad design than stealth targeting. It has these places you go up a ladder to reach and the zombie only spawn 1m away from you when you get at the top. Zombie shouldn't magically appear in front of you, period.


And they should especially not spawn in front of you mid-swing.

 
And lets be honest, have any of you stopped and asked what the zombie's attentions are?  Maybe they are just lonely and happen to be aggressive huggers  😉

And magic already exists in the game.  How do you explain the sheer amount of small rocks you can carry around and not be encumbered?  😁


220px-Warm_Bodies_Theatrical_Poster.jpg

Re: stealth and attack volumes

I have brought up the question about attack volumes and stealth and it sounds like maybe in the future there could be some way to stealth them but that will mostly likely not be addressed in A20 though.

 
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Some sleepers will always wake up as soon as you enter their volume. Well, it's the volume that's the guilty party, not the sleeper, but that's a technical detail.
 
Exactly. Some. As in a small percentage of the overall sleeper population. “Fixing” that would make 100% of the sleepers remain asleep 100% of the time. The POI that Heimfire complains of is one out of hundreds. One POI that requires a different approach to stealth because of the overwhelming instances of automatic awakening that occurs in that particular POI. (Other POIs have volumes that automatically trigger but again it is usually only one or two rooms out of the entire POI where you get 95% of that super awesome shoot-a-comatose-body gameplay and 5% kill something that moves and attacks you super boring gameplay)

As I stated, some people are very interested in extremely consistent, samey, predictable, and non-challenging gameplay vs unconscious enemies.

<shrug>

To each their own, but I hope the current variety of POI zombie encounters only grow rather than shrink. As @meganoth stated, allowing nearby outdoor zombies to sense us through walls rather than implementing a more realistic muffling effect of sound is one way to keep that variety. 
 

IMHO, that's more a matter of bad design than stealth targeting. It has these places you go up a ladder to reach and the zombie only spawn 1m away from you when you get at the top. Zombie shouldn't magically appear in front of you, period.
Situations like this should definitely be fixed. Ideally, you should never see zombies spawn in. This might not be always possible outdoors but indoors it should be designed so that they spawn in well before a player can see the area in which they spawn. 

 
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Re: stealth and attack volumes

I have brought up the question about attack volumes and stealth and it sounds like maybe in the future there could be some way to stealth them
That will be a sad day for gameplay variety if you succeed. People who like to only kill the unconscious will rejoice I suppose…

hmmmm…maybe we should bring up horde nights and see if we can get stealth working for them by having all the zombies spawn in asleep so they can be one shot killed. Moving targets really need to be fixed. Zombie statues ftw!

 
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Are you surprised when people already want to be able to always kill every zombie as it sleeps and if one should occasionally wake up and offer a different experience then the whole exploration game is ruined?
Are you playing the same game we do? The problem is quite the opposite... stealth is so broken in specific situations that you can almost always go up to a sleeper with a full helmet light on, break stuff around it, and it never wakes up. Too easy, but most of all, unfairly OP for us.

The problem is not that we want stealth to be OP, the problem is that we want stealth to be believable and consistent.

 
Are you playing the same game we do? The problem is quite the opposite... stealth is so broken in specific situations that you can almost always go up to a sleeper with a full helmet light on, break stuff around it, and it never wakes up. Too easy, but most of all, unfairly OP for us.

The problem is not that we want stealth to be OP, the problem is that we want stealth to be believable and consistent.
lol…I’m all for THAT being fixed. But have you been reading the same forums the rest of us are reading? The main complaint over the past year that comes up again and again is that in a small percentage of rooms, zombies wake up and aggro regardless of what the player does.

What you are talking about is a separate issue and one that those who like to kill stationary targets….probably prefer. 

 
lol…I’m all for THAT being fixed. But have you been reading the same forums the rest of us are reading? The main complaint over the past year that comes up again and again is that in a small percentage of rooms, zombies wake up and aggro regardless of what the player does.

What you are talking about is a separate issue and one that those who like to kill stationary targets….probably prefer. 
So we're on the same page on that, great.

The auto-aggro zones IMO are also a problem and, as you know, have been discussed to death, so I won't raise the dead horse here....

However, IMO, the auto-aggro zones could also be corrected with much less effort than the other stuff. My "uneducated guess" is that they should just change the check they do in the auto-aggro zones from 100% fail to <put_whatever_percent_you_think_is_balanced_here>% vs. the Player Stealth Skill: problem solved. They won't even need to rework every single POI to do this.

 
So we're on the same page on that, great.

The auto-aggro zones IMO are also a problem and, as you know, have been discussed to death, so I won't raise the dead horse here....

However, IMO, the auto-aggro zones could also be corrected with much less effort than the other stuff. My "uneducated guess" is that they should just change the check they do in the auto-aggro zones from 100% fail to <put_whatever_percent_you_think_is_balanced_here>% vs. the Player Stealth Skill: problem solved. They won't even need to rework every single POI to do this.
I could live with that solution.

 
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