PC Please make stealth build CHEAPER

[The_Mosiah]

Even a strength build will not wake up every zombie in a room when he uses the sledgehammer (I'm almost sure of that). But that is beside the point, I would say that auto-trigger rooms were implenemented for the stealth player. Exclusively.

Why? To make stealth not auto-sleep walking through pois shooting at sleeping puppets. Not that it didn't keep lots of stealth players amused, but a rule TFP designs with is that no gain should come without effort or danger. And maybe stealth was slow to play but it was almost devoid of risk.

I understand the reasoning - I think the implementation is problematic on many fronts, but I recognize the problem they saw, and them implementing this change to counter it.

I am not actively pushing for a change in this matter, but I think this big weakness is a fair argument for why the stealth build needs a little tunning.

I would assume that for TFP the "resource" aspect was fullfilled because you save lots of ammo (the equivalent of getting more resources is saving resources).

Again, I can understand that this was the design intent, but as you stated, I would argue that this isn't nearly enough. In fact, this doesn't really make a dent, in my opinion.

As STR miner, I have all the powder and lead I could ever need, and brass is (fortunately) no longer the scarce resource it once was (Thanks, GJ Fun Pimps!).

Even when I play different attribute, or just plainly don't mine, I use melee a LOT. It's actually very well done, and can be pretty powerful. I save bullets for when I am in real trouble, or for the blood moon, and those are exactly the moments stealth is not an option either.

Making stealth cheaper has (IMHO) unwanted consequences, for example the AGI player will be fully perked faster after which the game looses incentive to continue or at least his further perk points loose in value as he can't boost his strengths any further. And it definitely will help everyone else to get stealth abilities cheaper on the side.

You have to branch out of stealth/agi anyway. For the mentioned utilities, but for the combat as well. Sneaking won't help you much on bloodmoon, or when you just get jumped. 

Now if you can convince TFP that AGI still needs a resource gathering perk they maybe would have to move perk points over from say stealth so the attributes have (somewhat or exactly?) the same points. Then you would get your wish through the back door

Incidentally a resource just became scarce and could benefit from a resource gathering perk: I'm speaking of water

That would be dope, a great suggestion I can picture it now - could be named "Be water, my friend" (~Bruce Lee,  so it fits the ninja theme  )

 

[Roland]

The issue as I see it is one of expectation. If you spent all the points to max the stealth perks and have quiet armor with dampening mods and are using silent weaponry then there are some that expect stealth to work every single time in every room for every zombie unless the player makes a mistake and steps into a pool of light or on a crunchy piece of garbage. Because of that expectation, the fact that there are rooms that are designed to have the zombies possibly wake up (if checks are failed) and already targeting either the player or the location where the trigger happened feels wrong to them and they want the game fixed to match their expectations.

However, plan B would dictate that rather than the game being changed, players may need to change their expectations to align better with the developer's own design goals that this game will offer players a variety of interactions with zombies and that there has never been nor never likely to be a plan to allow players to 100% stealth every single room every single time. Even having spent so much time and dukes kitting out in stealth there still will be a small percentage of rooms where gameplay is going to change up and instead of killing an immobile, unconscious figure, you may have to kill a moving and alert figure. That can be accomplished by either abandoning stealth and going full throttle on the machine gun or it can be accomplished by retreating and restealthing and then killing the conscious zombies wandering around and hitting random walls.

So there is choice and variety and that is all by design.

Now, if there is a weird little unnatural action where you have to let the zombies reach the trigger point so that their special trigger point aggro completes and then you must let them see you so they start a normal player targeted aggro before you then retreat and re-stealth, then that sounds like some kind of a bug that faatal could probably fix.

 

[meganoth]

I understand the reasoning - I think the implementation is problematic on many fronts, but I recognize the problem they saw, and them implementing this change to counter it.

I am not actively pushing for a change in this matter, but I think this big weakness is a fair argument for why the stealth build needs a little tunning.

Again, I can understand that this was the design intent, but as you stated, I would argue that this isn't nearly enough. In fact, this doesn't really make a dent, in my opinion.

As STR miner, I have all the powder and lead I could ever need, and brass is (fortunately) no longer the scarce resource it once was (Thanks, GJ Fun Pimps!).

Even when I play different attribute, or just plainly don't mine, I use melee a LOT. It's actually very well done, and can be pretty powerful. I save bullets for when I am in real trouble, or for the blood moon, and those are exactly the moments stealth is not an option either.

Not sure. When you increase difficulty melee becomes harder in later stages with lots of running zombies and only shooting gives you the dps to not get hit. Heavy armor is a solution as long as the zombies are not too numerous. But only the stealth player has the almost 100% safe combination of 1) being able to deal with most zombie groups one by one, 2) keeping a distance and still have almost no ammo cost and 3) being always faster than the zombies and flight is always the ultimate option.

You have to branch out of stealth/agi anyway. For the mentioned utilities, but for the combat as well. Sneaking won't help you much on bloodmoon, or when you just get jumped.

I never had problems on bloodmoon with an AGI character. Maybe because I often (have to) play at a lower level than I could. But also because Desert Vulture and MPG are excellent weapons. You can't stand in an open doorway with them and just mow down zombies like madmole did in one or two videos. But you can kill any zombie with them that tries to destroy any of the important blocks in your horde base. And if you are not out for a record kill count then the only important fact about a horde night is whether you survived it. And that you can do with any of the weapons in the game.

And when I get jumped in POIs, then (as I said earlier) I will run, run and jump (if necessary, I love parkour).

That would be dope, a great suggestion I can picture it now - could be named "Be water, my friend" (~Bruce Lee,  so it fits the ninja theme  )

 

[meganoth]

Heh, I was thinking if I should ask you about that during our exchange. I chose not to, but it seems I should've.

"What is the reason for Attack volumes?". I'd say they're there for jump scares. One might want to say "combat events" due to the ridiculed nature of "jump scare", but that's not nearly as descriptive. They're traps, for Everyone. "Oh @%$#, five zeds coming at me at once!" Usable scripting tool for the POIs.

The way it was an FU to stealthers seems mostly a side effect; the detection routines weren't there and it majorly F'd stealthing for a patch. I highly doubt the Pimps saw it as a functioning mechanic FOR counter-stealth to be pushed in; and not pushing it in would've at worst been a matter of seek-and-replace in the sleeper volume xml:s.

They pushed it in to enable the trap designs they want to test, zeds coming out of ceilings and walls and what have you. Not as a stealth counter.

IMO, of course

Seems I missed that possibility. Yes, very possible that that was a part or even the only reason for the early aggro rooms.

 

[theFlu]

Now, if there is a weird little unnatural action where you have to let the zombies reach the trigger point so that their special trigger point aggro completes and then you must let them see you so they start a normal player targeted aggro before you then retreat and re-stealth, then that sounds like some kind of a bug that faatal could probably fix.

Potential confusions:

"Special trigger point aggro": that trigger point is inside your character's nose. The attack volumes have two options: either the zeds get triggered at the border and GPS-aggro to the player, or the non-triggered zeds revert to normal sleepers. Under no circumstance will an attack volume zed enter a search-for-a-spot-mode when triggered by the volume border check. (You'll have to provide some detailed repro-steps to convince me otherwise. I've never seen it.)

Something that faatal could fix? Maybe; I don't see how though:

- The Attack volumes are intentionally "more perceptive" than normal stealth mechanics. They have to be, otherwise they're no different.

- As they're more perceptive, they can't see the player within the normal rules. So they can't rely on the normal rules, the moment they start following the normal rules, they'd lose the player.

- So they need a special state to be a threat. That state must remain until the normal rules can be applied.

=> The first moment the game can "easily" decide that normal rules can apply is the moment where the normal rules give normal aggro.

So, given any design where the "heightened rules" only apply momentarily, something must fill the gap. I can't really imagine a way around it, trust me, I'd propose one.

If the zeds were to just "go to trigger location", that would make the Attack volumes trivial. Notice you agroed something - take a step back - place a land mine and stealth away. Boom. And not just bbooms of course, having the zeds just gather at where you triggered them would be insanely easy to exploit in all sorts of ways.

 

[katarynna]

If the zeds were to just "go to trigger location", that would make the Attack volumes trivial. Notice you agroed something - take a step back - place a land mine and stealth away. Boom. And not just bbooms of course, having the zeds just gather at where you triggered them would be insanely easy to exploit in all sorts of ways.

That is exactly what seems to happen though.

I watched kage848's stealth play through. I especially remember one of the t5 pois he did at night. It was either higashi or dishong.

He would be crouched with no light. He would step over the trigger and the zombies would wake and head right for where he stepped over the trigger. He would remain crouched and back up 5 or 6 steps. The zombies would get to the spot je triggered them and just stand there. He would step forward a step or 2 and kill them from stealth with a machete. There would usually be 2-3 zombies at least, and they wouldn't even detect him when he killed the friend standing right beside them.\

It happened over and over and over. When they auto-awakened, they were just triggered to the spot, not the player. As long as you moved a few steps away, like literally 5-6 steps, they absolutely had no idea you were there.

I think stealth players see the zombies wake up and head towards them, and just assume they have been spotted and have aggro. Their reaction in pulling out a gun and starting to shoot is what actually gives them aggro a lot of the time.

If i get time, i'll try to find one of the videos from that series and link it, although it would be easy enough to find it yourself.

 

[theFlu]

If i get time, i'll try to find one of the videos from that series and link it, although it would be easy enough to find it yourself.

Please do, I have watched kage quite a bit, including couple of his stealth build series, but I haven't seen anything too weird. He also posts way too much for me to find a video that might be the one you're thinking of, I'm not going to land on the one you're thinking about in any case...

I'm always happy to be proven wrong, it's just more knowledge for me ...

 

[The_Mosiah]

watched kage848's stealth play through. I especially remember one of the t5 pois he did at night. It was either higashi or dishong.

He would be crouched with no light. He would step over the trigger and the zombies would wake and head right for where he stepped over the trigger. He would remain crouched and back up 5 or 6 steps. The zombies would get to the spot je triggered them and just stand there. He would step forward a step or 2 and kill them from stealth with a machete. There would usually be 2-3 zombies at least, and they wouldn't even detect him when he killed the friend standing right beside them.\

It happened over and over and over. When they auto-awakened, they were just triggered to the spot, not the player. As long as you moved a few steps away, like literally 5-6 steps, they absolutely had no idea you were there.

That sounds awesome, thanks!! I have to try it next time

 

[ElDudorino]

It happened over and over and over. When they auto-awakened, they were just triggered to the spot, not the player. As long as you moved a few steps away, like literally 5-6 steps, they absolutely had no idea you were there.

Yep, I learned about this in another thread complaining about stealth. This is exactly how it works. I still find it annoying, but to be fair I find the sleeper system super annoying in general.

Similarly, if you go zombie hunting at night, when a zombie hears you you can go into stealth and walk a few steps away then see them stop at the place where you stealthed. That I actually find kind of fun.

 

[8_Hussars]

I watched kage848's stealth play through. I especially remember one of the t5 pois he did at night. It was either higashi or dishong.

OT.  How did kage848 stay focused long enough to finish a POI?

 

[theFlu]

OT.  How did kage848 stay focused long enough to finish a POI?

No.