PC Please make stealth build CHEAPER

[The_Mosiah]

I won't try to reiterate on the point of trigger rooms, as it has been mentioned 300 times already, and nobody's gonna rework all those POI - especially not for stealth builds, since ppl don't really play them that much anyway.

But please, as you're currently working on the perk system anyway, consider making changes to the stealth build, so that it is less expensive.
It feels bad having to invest bilion points into AGI attribute, 4 points into "From the shadows", few points into "Hidden strike", a little mandatory "Archery", buying night vision, military stealth boots, equiping noise reduction mod into all your armor, then moving slow as heck, only to have to go for your shotgun in the second room....

 

[Roland]

I think these are some false assumptions:

1) The POIs haven’t been reworked for stealth

2) People don’t play stealth very much

3) The game has a “stealth build”

4) You have to go for your shotgun if zombies wake up in a room. 
 

I would add “trigger rooms” to this list but I’m not exactly sure what you are defining as a trigger room. All of the POIs were reworked for A20 so that the rules for how and why sleepers in volumes wake up and detect the player were changed. People tend to call any room a “trigger room” in which zombies woke up and detected them because they assume they didn’t make any mistakes so the room MUST have been coded with an automatic wake-up and ambush trigger.  
 

As to your request, there is a change to perks for A21 that will reduce costs for one or two aspects of weapon and tool use— so maybe these changes will free up points to use for stealth that you may not have had in the past— but there are no plans to reduce the exact costs you mentioned or make specific gear like night vision goggles or armor attachments cheaper or easier to find.  
 

If it is determined that some balance changes to POIs needs to be done for stealth gameplay, I know the level design team will do it. If faatal isn’t happy with the sleeper code of waking up, detecting players, pathing to them, etc. he will absolutely look over it again before final release.
 

 

[theFlu]

3) The game has a “stealth build”

That being false requires one to take a pretty strict definition for "build". For my experience, a named build usually refers to an optimal way to achieve either a playstyle OR a specific goal. For MMOs, some examples would include a farm/grind build, PvP build, tank build, healing build, and plenty of silly niche builds like a rogue-evasion-tank for certain WoW bosses.. usually only some of these are "supported" by the devs, but things like a grind build is just whatever happens to achieve the grind most effectively, with no regards to how your character is designed to be played.

Stealth build; may not be a design goal for TFP, but it's at least a thing in the game community. How many types of stealth builds the community comes up with may vary over time, mostly because they ARE expensive to build when compared to the more direct combat oriented builds. I'd say a proper stealth build comes "online" some 10-15 levels later than a clubs-build. The "extra" points required for bows and stealths etc etc.

Note, I'm not complaining about the cost myself, it's a sacrifice one may choose not to make; but just claiming "that's not a thing" isn't really a counterargument, especially when it's actually a thing people want to play and the AGI tree seems to support (unlike that Wow-rogue-tank, that's just stupid.. been there, done that, but still stupid... )

 

[Roland]

I didn't mean that a player can't focus their gear, abilities, and playstyle on stealth. Obviously you can do that so in that sense there is a stealth build. What I meant to convey is that this is not a stealth game nor a game that is designed to be conquered by stealth alone. Spending points and dukes in order to acquire the maximum advantages for stealth is never going to guarantee 100% success in stealth in this game because the developers are not designing the game to be a stealth game. There will always be times when a shotgun is going to be handy to have at hand (not that you must pull it out, mind you). 

Someone who plays this game with a traditional "stealth build" in their mind is going to suffer disappointment as they play and may even think the points and money they spent on stealth was wasted because they wanted to be able to approach every situation from stealth and they don't care that they can re-stealth and then continue. A "stealth build" carries with it an expectation that stealth is going to work every time because that's what I paid for. I know this attitude to be real because we've seen it come up time after time after time.

Someone who plays this game with the understanding that stealth is one part of the agility build (or one part of a hybrid build between 2 or more attributes) is going to avoid disappointment because they aren't trying to play the whole game as a stealth character. They use the appropriate tool for the appropriate situation. They are willing to use stealth when it works (and it often works even without a single point spent on perks or a single duke spent on gear) and to either re-stealth or switch to a different tactic when it doesn't. They'll spend points on stealth related perks because it enhances the stealth abilities they already possess from Day 1 and make their character more effective during those times that stealth works. I know this attitude to be real because...its me.

I agree with you that many are coming here with preconceived notions about how a game should work with a stealth component to it and there is nothing to be done about preconceived notions. That all happened before they ever showed up. Obviously there has been some friction at the point where the development team's vision for stealth has intersected the expectations of many people for how they think stealth should work from all the threads on this subject. They are aware of the friction and will either adjust or remain firm in their own vision.

I just want to make it clear that this is not a stealth game with a traditional "stealth build" that will allow a fully kitted out player to approach every situation with stealth and be 100% successful. Maybe that is a bad choice by the designers. Regardless, as players we can adopt an understanding of how stealth works in this game and adjust our expectations to find relief from disappointment until/if the devs adjust their vision to match what we want.

I do think there are some improvements that can be made still and I wanted to make it clear to the OP that our AI programmer and our level designers are not above going through and making adjustments-- especially since the code as of A20 is less about flagging attack volumes that have to be changed per POI and are more about AI and pathing that can be changed for all zombies globally. If there are sleeper placement issues or volume spawning activation issues, those do need to be tackled on a per POI basis but the level design team has yet to tell anyone that they are unwilling to look at a POI and make necessary adjustments.

 

[theFlu]

I just want to make it clear that this is not a stealth game with a traditional "stealth build" that will allow a fully kitted out player to approach every situation with stealth and be 100% successful.

That is a whole lot better argument, and a sufficiently verbose way to deliver it...

And while I like to argue in stealth threads about semantics and mechanics, I do agree that stealth shouldn't be a 100% deal in all, or even most situations. I kinda expect a chance of failure for stealth games, it gets boring really fast otherwise... I just strongly dislike the current attack volume/auto-agro mechanic that is attempting to deliver it.

 

[Roland]

Sufficiently verbose is not something  I often achieve—usually overshooting the mark by…a lot. You were probably being sarcastic about the “sufficiently”…haha

 

[theFlu]

I may have abused the word a little, but I don't think "sufficient" actually sets an upper bound, just the lower one, right?

 

[warmer]

when they bring "smell" back, I hope they also include "febreeze" dryer sheets we can equip into mod slots to counter act it.

 

[Pernicious]

Do people expect every sledgehammer hit to result in a knock down? Or every knife stab to result in a bleed out? If not, why do they expect every stealth attempt to result in a non-comat kill?

90% of the time I wake up a zombie, I can finish off those I wake up with a knife, without waking up the rest of the POI. It is extremely rare that I ever need to go from full stealth to full assault from a single failure. 

If your first response to zombie waking up is to pull out a shotgun, I'm not surprised you think Stealth is "broken".

 

[meganoth]

Do people expect every sledgehammer hit to result in a knock down? Or every knife stab to result in a bleed out? If not, why do they expect every stealth attempt to result in a non-comat kill?

90% of the time I wake up a zombie, I can finish off those I wake up with a knife, without waking up the rest of the POI. It is extremely rare that I ever need to go from full stealth to full assault from a single failure. 

If your first response to zombie waking up is to pull out a shotgun, I'm not surprised you think Stealth is "broken".

Exactly. I tend to use a silenced pistol in these situations, which isn't as silent but silent enough for many rooms. What I just realized I could do better is moving back some way to have more distance to the other zombies before I start shooting.

 

[theFlu]

Exactly. I tend to use a silenced pistol in these situations, which isn't as silent but silent enough for many rooms. What I just realized I could do better is moving back some way to have more distance to the other zombies before I start shooting.

Heh, aaactually, now that you mention it. Moving back is absolutely fine for a single zed waking up, and in those cases the silenced pistol works fine.

If however, you're not sure how many you woke up, or when even that single one can become a threat (depending on settings etc) you're better off taking the first one out with an M60 and then stealthing - you may make enough noise to have the other zeds "properly" detect you (making them lose the auto-agro-state) and then be able to instantly drop their attention by stealthing.

I'm not entirely sure if this works with sound though, I think it should, but I might have to test it.

EDIT: tested a bit, does not work with sound alone. Proper post in the near future..

 

[Uncle Al]

I find sort of the opposite approach to 'let rip with a loud, single target weapon' works well when you've tried to sneak into an area and triggered several zombies.

Usually you'll have a mix of one or two (the ones that were closest to you because of the updated way stealth checks work) that are actually aggroed on you. You don't get stealth damage bonuses on those. You'll also have the rest of the pack who are heading towards your location but haven't actually spotted you. You do get stealth damage bonuses on them.

At that point you can swap to your spare crossbow, loaded with explosive bolts, and slam one of those into the incoming group. The 'haven't spotted you yet' crowd will just die. Explosive bolts get full stealth damage bonus (including the massive bonus for archery weapons) and are insanely lethal when used from stealth. The zombies that had spotted you may survive, but they'll usually be on the floor from the blast.  You can then clean up using quiet weapons.

Sound, as far as I'm aware and what I've seen definitely supports this, has an addition element to it. Firing a loud weapon repeatedly in a short space of time will alert more enemies, or at least enemies further away, than a single loud noise. The one and done approach of a single explosion seems to generate less attention that doing something pretty quiet repeatedly, like emptying a full clip from a silenced SMG.

 

[meganoth]

Heh, aaactually, now that you mention it. Moving back is absolutely fine for a single zed waking up, and in those cases the silenced pistol works fine.

If however, you're not sure how many you woke up, or when even that single one can become a threat (depending on settings etc) you're better off taking the first one out with an M60 and then stealthing - you may make enough noise to have the other zeds "properly" detect you (making them lose the auto-agro-state) and then be able to instantly drop their attention by stealthing.

I'm not entirely sure if this works with sound though, I think it should, but I might have to test it.

"instantly" is somewhat exaggerated when even shadows perk at 5 lets the zombies search for you for up to 20 seconds before they loose interest in you. Though I haven't tested this lately, I may be out of date with recent stealth changes, maybe it works instanteous.

Consider that a pistol is the tier1 stealth weapon and has enough ammo capacity to kill 2 or more zombies (depending on settings) at that stage of the game. At a stage where you see glowies you should also have a (silenced) smg5.

You are right though that especially at higher difficulties running (and restealthing) is always the safest though most time consuming route.

I find sort of the opposite approach to 'let rip with a loud, single target weapon' works well when you've tried to sneak into an area and triggered several zombies.

Usually you'll have a mix of one or two (the ones that were closest to you because of the updated way stealth checks work) that are actually aggroed on you. You don't get stealth damage bonuses on those. You'll also have the rest of the pack who are heading towards your location but haven't actually spotted you. You do get stealth damage bonuses on them.

At that point you can swap to your spare crossbow, loaded with explosive bolts, and slam one of those into the incoming group. The 'haven't spotted you yet' crowd will just die. Explosive bolts get full stealth damage bonus (including the massive bonus for archery weapons) and are insanely lethal when used from stealth. The zombies that had spotted you may survive, but they'll usually be on the floor from the blast.  You can then clean up using quiet weapons.

Sound, as far as I'm aware and what I've seen definitely supports this, has an addition element to it. Firing a loud weapon repeatedly in a short space of time will alert more enemies, or at least enemies further away, than a single loud noise. The one and done approach of a single explosion seems to generate less attention that doing something pretty quiet repeatedly, like emptying a full clip from a silenced SMG.

That is a nice strategy, never thought of it. I'm already itching to try that

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Crack a Book Tower. 

Every time I set foot into the center area, I get  swarmed.

EVERY office on the floor wakes up.  (don't have to shoot anything, just go there)

'course I'm a heavy armor, machine gunner/brawler type.

 

[theFlu]

(A20.6 b9)

After a little bit of testing with exactly one test that I'm pretty satisfied with, the sound of guns isn't enough to drop the auto-agro from an attack volume.

0) Seal attack volume zeds behind a vision blocking wall

1) Trigger the zeds with headlight on for the auto-trigger

2) Fire loud rounds from a sniper right next to them

3) They still won't drop the auto-agro state afterwards

Conclusion, the noise doesn't matter. This far, only the actual vision based agro is sufficient to break the auto-agro before the 20s timer.

Another random note, attack volume zeds, while spawned but player hasn't activated the volume yet, do NOT seem to care about sounds. They seem impossible to wake other than shooting them (lines up nicely with clearing out the hospital roof in previous patches, that may have changed thou). And even then they take just an ApproachSpot - sound seeking stance.

"instantly" is somewhat exaggerated when even shadows perk at 5 lets the zombies search for you for up to 20 seconds before they loose interest in you. Though I haven't tested this lately, I may be out of date with recent stealth changes, maybe it works instanteous.

It is not an exaggeration; the only time limiting factor is how fast you can get a zed to SEE you. Stealthing after that they may investigate a sound or whatnot, but half the time my test zeds just stop in their tracks and stand there the moment I tap crouch (1 Look, wait <time&gt. Or take a couple steps and stop.

I did test this right now, while I have my world loaded. I'm using walkers for testing, with runners it's of course a lot more iffy to pull off...

 

[Uncle Al]

(A20.6 b9)

After a little bit of testing with exactly one test that I'm pretty satisfied with, the sound of guns isn't enough to drop the auto-agro from an attack volume.

0) Seal attack volume zeds behind a vision blocking wall

1) Trigger the zeds with headlight on for the auto-trigger

2) Fire loud rounds from a sniper right next to them

3) They still won't drop the auto-agro state afterwards

Conclusion, the noise doesn't matter. This far, only the actual vision based agro is sufficient to break the auto-agro before the 20s timer.

I don't think I'm following this, or just seeing exactly what I'd expect.

Am I interpreting correctly that your test is:

• Triggering a volume with an active light source, so you'll fail your stealth check on all enemies
  
• Firing a loud weapon - I'm not clear what this is meant to achieve
  
• Finding the triggered enemies remain 'locked' on you for 20s - which is precisely what I'd expect with rank 5 'From the shadows'
  

What's the weird or surprising behaviour you're seeing?

I can understand if you were testing whether noise can change a 'active but not locked on to you' enemy to 'locked on' - I don't think it does, but I haven't properly tested. Anecdotally I think noise just changes their 'moving to investigate' target location and/or drops your stealth value so you can be seen from further away. If you're triggering the volume with your lamp on, though, all the enemies are going to be aware of you, pretty much. (From other test comments it appears that the orginal dev statement 'active light source means auto fail stealth check' isn't quite true, but it bumps up the failure distance to the point it's almost true.)

Apologies if I'm being dense.

 

[theFlu]

I can understand if you were testing whether noise can change a 'active but not locked on to you' enemy to 'locked on' - I don't think it does, but I haven't properly tested.

You're not being dense, that's exactly what I was testing; during my earlier post I expected the noise from a gun at close proximity to trigger a normal agro state on an auto-agro zed. I don't know why, it made sense at the time... after testing, well, I proved myself wrong.

Why was I suggesting it? You can drop an attack volume zed faster if you reveal yourself to them via the "normal" stealth mechanic, ie, get proper agro. It's a bit finnicky in a normal game, and I figured that a loud gun would actually be an easier solution. It would be, if it worked, but it doesn't..

 

[meganoth]

You're not being dense, that's exactly what I was testing; during my earlier post I expected the noise from a gun at close proximity to trigger a normal agro state on an auto-agro zed. I don't know why, it made sense at the time... after testing, well, I proved myself wrong.

Why was I suggesting it? You can drop an attack volume zed faster if you reveal yourself to them via the "normal" stealth mechanic, ie, get proper agro. It's a bit finnicky in a normal game, and I figured that a loud gun would actually be an easier solution. It would be, if it worked, but it doesn't..

I think one part of the confusion may be your use of "auto-aggro", which is at minimum loaded with wrong expectations from A18s way of having auto-aggro volumes.

Also I suspect dropping aggro immediately may be a bug or at least not intentional. Consider that part of the stealth perk is reducing the time before you can restealth. Getting back to stealth immediately whatever your stealth level makes the perks advantage partly irrelevant, is overpowered and confusing as well.

 

[The_Mosiah]

Holy hell, thank you guys for so many inputs and responses...

I think these are some false assumptions:

1) The POIs haven’t been reworked for stealth

2) People don’t play stealth very much

3) The game has a “stealth build”

4) You have to go for your shotgun if zombies wake up in a room. 

Roland, thank you for your reponse, you're absolutely right in stating I just assume how the POI's are implemented based on my own observation, and I don't know squat about how the implementation actually looks like, also I do not really know if ppl play stealth very much - again, I only assume by watching some streams and stuff, which is a very small sample size to make assuption about the rest of playerbase.

On the other hand, I think there is a stealth build in the game, as I understand the term as a bunch of weapons, tools, mods, and perks specificaly tailored towards stealth gameplay, and those just are factually present.

For the last point, you are technicaly correct, but the shotgun was there just to demonstrate a point, it's not to be taken literally, it can be replaced by a machine gun, sledgehammer, or whatever. On this point, I would also like to add, that bow is usually bad choice for this situation, because I have noticed, that sometimes arrows fly THROUGH the zeds, if they get close enough....

I just want to make it clear that this is not a stealth game with a traditional "stealth build" that will allow a fully kitted out player to approach every situation with stealth and be 100% successful. Maybe that is a bad choice by the designers. Regardless, as players we can adopt an understanding of how stealth works in this game and adjust our expectations to find relief from disappointment until/if the devs adjust their vision to match what we want.

I realize this is not a stealth game really, and not every single challenge in the game can/should be overcome by stealth, I AGREE actually! My point was, literally: stealth is, at best, a decent help in some situations (it's not even that, really, i just like to play it for a bit of roleplay) but it costs you waaayyyyy too many points to be even worth it. Honestly, if you take all those points, put it into other combat perks, you are gonna be immortal death god, that has no need for stealth anyway. I feel like we talk about the same thing, really, I only argue for a little knob tunning. This is not a stealth game, stealth is a side mechanics that can help you sometimes if you know what you're doing, BUT to even go that route, you have to sacrifice wayyy too much.

 

[ElDudorino]

You can drop an attack volume zed faster if you reveal yourself to them via the "normal" stealth mechanic, ie, get proper agro. It's a bit finnicky in a normal game, and I figured that a loud gun would actually be an easier solution. It would be, if it worked, but it doesn't..

Things like this are probably part of the reason so many players think stealth is broken in this game. They think that because... it kinda is. There shouldn't be a fake aggro that lasts longer than a true aggro but only triggers in some scenarios and not others.

Of course, the biggest thing that confuses people is the way zombies will jump out of their ambush spots without knowing where you are. And I don't actually mind it that much now that I know how it works, but it's definitely not an easily understood system. And the fact that almost all zombies in PoIs are 'ambush' zombies doesn't help.