PC Stealth, monster closets and clear quests

Laz Man said:
Has anyone in here actually tried stealth (perked) with attack volumes (feral sense off)?

Light and shadows is very important now.  The zombie will wake up but they may not see you if you manage your light, shadows and noise accordingly.
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My AGI single player game is with feral sense on. This is why I dance around the subject with "probably" and "maybe".

I also made a test game and I hope I didn't forget to turn off feral sense for that test. Ultimately I should bite the bullet and turn off feral sense in my SP game for a real check.

 
meganoth said:
This is why I dance around the subject with "probably" and "maybe".
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I am sure that my tests were without feral sense. How?
Well I increased the spawns by 4x because I like to feel like I am in a zombie apocalypse... but I forgot to turn off feral sense. Good lord killing 50 zombies with only a club is a chore... and then I went into the city xDDD
Needless to say without feral sense and 4x spawn, the game was much more reasonable xD

 
ElCabong said:
 I will sneak right by them. I got to the end of a mission and only encountered three Z's. It was a fetch/clear and I had the package. There were no red or yellow dots showing up on my radar because they're all hiding in the walls.

I went back to the start, unstealthed, and went full Rambo on them with my SMG. That was fun too.
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F11 screenshot of the POI please.  Maybe there is a bug.

 
ElCabong said:
I would have to get the mission over again, I'm not sure where it's at.  It's a church that has a little cemetery and three levels in a basement.
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That the one where you exit through a cellar door?  Let me know what your perk allocation, any game settings and any other pertinent info. so we can hopefully reproduce.  Thanks.

 
Laz Man said:
That the one where you exit through a cellar door?  Let me know what your perk allocation, any game settings and any other pertinent info. so we can hopefully reproduce.  Thanks.
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Yes that is it. Four points in from the shadows and full set of padded armor.

 
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I think the stealth mechanics are still buggy, even with "feral instincts" turned on.

As an example, the smaller savage outdoor store. Once you're through the front door, the paths go both to the left and right. If you go to the right, you will trip a zombie closet with two zombies (no matter what). If you go left, you'll enter a bathroom with a broken wall into that same zombie closet. 

However, you can sneak in and stealth kill both zombies, without alerting either one. You can  sneak up to them, placing your head up their ass, and they still won't activate. This is regardless to whatever your "feral sense" settings are, or stealth level.

I've also sneaked into houses, usually through a window, only to realize I past two zombies that didn't trigger until I reached the stairs. 

I just don't know which is worse. Zombies closets and other script events that override stealth, or an "improved" zombies AI that breaks every other map that you load into.

 
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Viktoriusiii said:
-I moved at snails pace with 1 visibility, this is just unfair!
-why did EVERY zombie wake up at the same time?
-so I can knock out the wall and it doesn't wake them up, but stepping on this magical block does?
-why do they only hear me on entry and not while I am in the room?
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Been struggling with this in my current "Ninja" playthrough.

One of my least favorite / most reproducible encounters is with the zombie cop sitting on the floor behind his desk in the video store/police station POI.

I can see his big blue butt by looking between the legs of the desk, but the game treats that piece of furniture as solid so I can't shoot him.

If I enter the room, no matter how quietly, he will wake up and aggro on me as soon as I reach the appropriate spot on the floor which, by the way, occurs before I get a clean line-of-sight to pop him while he's still sleeping.

"Best" solution to that jerk? Demolish the desk with my axe, then shoot the cop with my crossbow.

That one encounter, right there ... that's enough to leave me feeling like the game is fighting against itself and losing.

Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.

 
Shelgeyr said:
Been struggling with this in my current "Ninja" playthrough.

One of my least favorite / most reproducible encounters is with the zombie cop sitting on the floor behind his desk in the video store/police station POI.

I can see his big blue butt by looking between the legs of the desk, but the game treats that piece of furniture as solid so I can't shoot him.

If I enter the room, no matter how quietly, he will wake up and aggro on me as soon as I reach the appropriate spot on the floor which, by the way, occurs before I get a clean line-of-sight to pop him while he's still sleeping.

"Best" solution to that jerk? Demolish the desk with my axe, then shoot the cop with my crossbow.

That one encounter, right there ... that's enough to leave me feeling like the game is fighting against itself and losing.

Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.
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Hate that cop!  Last time in the police station POI, I went into the office next to him, knocked a hole in the wall, and shot him in the head with hidden damage modifier!

 
Shelgeyr said:
Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.
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This is my biggest problem with the sleeper triggers that are location-based.  I get the need for pacing, but part of pacing comes from how the individual player chooses to approach a POI.  The auto-wake triggers force a particular type of pacing on every. Single. Player who enters that particular POI, regardless of their build, or their chosen playstyle.  This...isn't great.

I love playing stealth archers.  I rarely use handguns of any stripe until FAR late-game.  I enjoy the challenge of sneaking through a POI, finding the sleepers and taking them out.  When I hit an auto-trigger, it's almost always obvious, and it's hugely frustrating, because it has NOTHING to do with the choices I've made (for good OR bad), but simply because the POI is set to trigger this sleeper volume the moment a player steps on Block X.  It renders my stealth build completely moot, and is completely outside my control.  It's INORDINATELY frustrating.

I'd be fine if each sleeper volume was set to have a random % chance to hear me, and that some would sleep through stealth more easily than others, and you'd just never know.  Then, at least, my Stealth build would have a legitimate chance to allow me to move through a POI without triggering the zeds to wake, and make my Silent Assassin playstyle more effective.

The trade-off for me, is that playing the way I want to play takes copious amounts of time, as I sneak through POIs pretty consistently.  But I'm fine with that.  I can't clear things quickly (at all) in stealth mode, so I have to be a bit more choosy in which POIs I take on...as it should be.  Folks who don't care about stealth can just go full run-and-gun, and wake EVERYTHING UP, blow them all to oblivion with guns galore, and loot probably 3-5 POIs in the time it takes me to loot 1, and I'm okay with that.  It's the choice I make when I perk into Stealth, but that's what I want.

So there's no harm in making stealth ACTUALLY viable.  There's a speed/time factor that has to be considered for Stealth builds.  If a person's going to choose that option, they should be allowed the benefit of being TRULY stealthy.

Just my two cents' worth.

 
Shelgeyr said:
Been struggling with this in my current "Ninja" playthrough.

One of my least favorite / most reproducible encounters is with the zombie cop sitting on the floor behind his desk in the video store/police station POI.

I can see his big blue butt by looking between the legs of the desk, but the game treats that piece of furniture as solid so I can't shoot him.

If I enter the room, no matter how quietly, he will wake up and aggro on me as soon as I reach the appropriate spot on the floor which, by the way, occurs before I get a clean line-of-sight to pop him while he's still sleeping.

"Best" solution to that jerk? Demolish the desk with my axe, then shoot the cop with my crossbow.

That one encounter, right there ... that's enough to leave me feeling like the game is fighting against itself and losing.

Devs want players to feel stealth is a viable option, but also feel the need to have encounter triggers that make stealth practically meaningless.
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Feral sense on or off? What gamestage? how much points in stealth perk? Day or night? If night, do you use night-vision or headlight or is there illumination?

 
Getting to the end of a poi and then having to run back through making noise to get the stragglers is why I abandoned stealth as a viable option. It's more frustrating than the zombies that are almost guaranteed to fall down multiple levels in the shotgun mesiah factory when you engage.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I'd love to see the zombies at the loot room or the area before it if they aren't in it do a shout when the last one is killed that calls all remaining sleepers zombies to the room. They don't have to auto agro, more of a 'go and investigate' mode. Yes, this makes people snatching the loot room and bailing risky but it's pretty easy now to do to poi's that haven't been looted and it could use some amusing discouragement to do unless absolutely prepared to handle the poi's sleepers who might be alerted to funny business going on.

 
I did a recent stealth test (unperked) and was able to stealth attack volumes as long as I was being quiet and hiding in dark places.  Felt pretty good to me compared to A19.

Additionally, the zeds that were hiding did show up on my compass so I was able to figure out where they were relatively.

Although I can appreciate that some players would like to full clear POIs with stealth, they are not designed to be 100% stealthable. 

Its actually better in A20 since now players can stealth some attack encounters more effectively using perks and darkness.

Perhaps a good addition to help stealth play is to introduce an item or effect that allows players to make rooms dark (e.g. all lights in a certain radius area are destroyed or turned off)

 
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I think the most interesting aspect of this thread is that we have people claiming that sleepers always wake up regardless of your stealth and other people claiming that they can’t complete clear quests easily because sleepers don’t wake up because of their stealth. Pretty crazy…lol

Laz Man said:
Although I can appreciate that some players would like to full clear POIs with stealth, they are not designed to be 100% stealthable. 
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In before the first raging demand that stealth should just be entirely removed if this is the official stance. ;)

 
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Roland said:
If you can stealth 90% of it but must openly attack 10% of it, THAT’S masochistic?
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If you're guaranteed at any time to have the core of your build not function resulting in you being attacked with an increased susceptibility to damage and crippling debuffs and you knowingly choose to build for it anyways then that is masochistic since your willfully doing something you know will result in harming you. You can append "by proxy" if you must since this is through a video game, but the same mentality applies. Now if you happen to be keeping yourself separate from the character you control, "Just a sprite in a game" instead of "They are me", then sadistic should replace masochistic since you are manipulating/forcing someone to do something that you know will cause them harm and enjoy doing so.

In both of those cases you are aware of how stealth is implemented. In the case of you being unaware of how stealth is implemented, with a guarantee of being detected and attacked regardless of what you do, then naïve victim and sociopathic fit as replacements for masochistic and sadistic respectively.

Your place holder 10% of encounters force breaking stealth is still a guarantee that stealth will not work.

 
Probably too late for 7 days, but it may help to get feedback from people their ideal stealth gameplay and what other games out there have best implemented it.

There's alot of stealth games out there and I don't believe even the most stealth focused allowed you to silently beat boss room encounters for example.

The Hitman series is probably the one game I have played where stealth was a main focus of the game 100% throughout.

 
Laz Man said:
Probably too late for 7 days, but it may help to get feedback from people their ideal stealth gameplay and what other games out there have best implemented it.

There's alot of stealth games out there and I don't believe even the most stealth focused allowed you to silently beat boss room encounters for example.

The Hitman series is probably the one game I have played where stealth was a main focus of the game 100% throughout.
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Boss rooms are obvious before you enter them and games built around having boss room encounters have pre-encounter prep tools (like ammo and health top offs before the boss encounter), in room tools to defeat the encounter (ledges that you can knock the boss off of, reflectable attacks, toggles that mitigate something the boss is doing, etc.), and/or are built around being dealt with by pre-prepped groups with the game being up front that a group is required.

In 7d2d stealth breaking isn't a "boss room" mechanic though. It is someone wanting to tell an interactive story with the POI they designed and either not considering how their set up will interact with the stealth system TFP has implemented or wanting to force the players to experience their POI exactly the way they wanted with no option to avoid their magical worlds' traps...

 
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hiemfire said:
since you are manipulating/forcing someone to do something that you know will cause them harm and enjoy doing so.
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Should we add a disclaimer that assures players that no sprites were actually harmed during the course of playing the game? 😂

 
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