I am asking because I have level 1 in the sneaking perk, full padded armor with 3 pieces with -8% sound in them, and zombies still seem to be able to hear me when I am sneaking from half a 20 block room away. Also, the a-hole move by the poi designers with putting glass or paper in front of every door in the path you have to take was not needed in the dungeon style poi's for one it breaks immersion as it makes NO damn sense why its ALWAYS in those spots. Stealth is useless enough as it is due to it just not seeming to work. Not to mention all the zombies in stupid places that seem to be put there specifically to screw stealth builds, as you cannot get a clear shot without aggroing them.. ever, nevermind the paper and glass in front of every single door on the maze's path.
I mean the zombies have some of the best hearing i've ever seen in a game that has stealth. Its just too good, if using full padded you should be able to get within 2-3 blocks at least without them waking up. In another game, again full padded armor so 0 extra sound from armor, and 3-4 pieces with -8% sound reducing mods+level 3 in the stealth perk, its still super easy for zombies to spot me. The aggro rooms should go to, everything in a room shouldn't just aggro because you walk past the door way, it completly breaks stealth builds and makes them useless. The last time stealth was good honestly was A16, its been pretty much garbage since.
Honestly, I may just drop the game for now till a20, its just not fun anymore what with stealth being compeltly broken from what I can tell, and the loot system being super boring as its the same every single game with 0 variance, its just not fun to play now. I really liked the loot randomness A17/18 had, no gaurnteed 5-6 quality items in every single box/chest, completly random whatt you got and mostly quality 1-3, with 4-6 being very rare even at high gamestage. A17 was pretty linear as you were shoehorned into stats since schematics weren't a thing then, this was fixed with a18, but kinda broken again with a19, as the randomness is gone, and all loot is completly linear. I much prefer a18's loot system as does most people, if you got lucky you could have steel tools on day 1, thats just the thing though its luck, however there is a problem with the loot system as a whole i'll go into detail below.
The main problem with loot also is the fact that every single dungeon style poi has a loot chest at the end, this makes it far to easy to find things. Its much worse in a19 with how super linear all the loot is, you know your never going to find anything of value for sure depending on what gamestage your at. IMO the loot chest should only have a 10% chance to spawn, maybe 20% max in each poi, do that then put back a18-style loot.
The dungeon style poi's, Ok some poi's should be like this, maybe a very few of them, but seriously? almost every one? what the hell kind of world does this game take place in where every little house is setup like a maze? Barricaded doors make sense, but the way every poi just about is a preset maze is kinda silly. In A17 when this was new, I loved the idea, but in A19 with the garbage loot system, stealth being seemingly busted, and poi's being designed to screw stealth builds anyway possible due to spawns that never have a clear shot and you cannot get one with waking up the room, or the whole room waking up second you walk in system no matter how high stealth is. Its just a bad combo. I mostly loot poi's thru trader quests so I can double dip, 1 on the loot chest 1 for the turn in at trader. I usually never purposfully loot a poi twice using the quest to reset it, personal choice, some do it, I don't just like I don't junk turret cheese, I never use them period except on horde nights as static defense.
I do like the new graphics though, but seriously, less work needs to be done on graphics now and more on improving things that are broken, like the poor loot system in a19, stealth and the stuff specifically set there to screw stealth builds over, the dungeon style poi's honestly need to go or be made super rare and only specific poi's.
Don't get em wrong usually I have little issues with most alphas but this one just seems like ugh, so many things done/gone wrong.
P.s. props to you if you read this far, I know reading is hard for some people who have the attention span of a gnat people tend to have these days.