PC The weird implementation of stealth and its counter measures.

[Roland]

It feels VERY much arbitrary.

I think you mean not arbitrary.

At any rate, no need to argue. I just summarized the expected behavior based on the changes of A20. If you can show a video of it happening so consistently that it can't be believed to be a failed skill check and must be scripted event then post that in the bug forum because the intended result is that every sleeper volume should involve a stealth skill check vs each zombie individually in the room. There are not supposed to be any scripted auto aggro volumes any longer.  Could be the auto-aggro flags were not removed by mistake so we are getting those AND failing some checks as well so it seems like a much greater occurrence over A19. But the QA guys are going to need to know what to try and reproduce so a ticket can be made for the programmers.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

Ya, stealth perks don't do @%$# when you aren't crouched. If you're climbing a ladder they will hear you. Better to find another way of getting up or down if you can. If you get lucky and find the Urban combat book that removes fall noise while crouched then just dropping down should be an option.

i know. I was describing where this trigger was approximately.
No it is "go down a ladder"
*nothing*
"go foreward a few steps (while sneaking)"
*suddenly all zombies have aggro*

 

[Roland]

There was a team meeting where Joel brought up the auto aggro rooms and said that he didn't think it was fair for zombies to just wake up without any chance at all for them to possibly stay asleep. After discussion it was decided that instead of auto aggro the game would do a skill check vs the player's stealth and only if that failed would the zombies wake up. A ticket for that was made and I assume since it was talked about on the forum that the change had gone in. 

Perhaps it didn't since Boidster is showing attack volumes existing in current POI's. It is definitely planned though and I think supposed to be in.

Like I said, I've noticed in my gameplay that zombies that wake up when I enter don't always auto target me. They just wake up and start walking towards the noise or whatever. Sometimes they just go to a wall and start beating on it. Only when they can clearly see me have they actually moved to attack immediately. So it isn't always a case of losing stealth when sleepers aggro. Sometimes you still maintain stealth in that they woke up but are still unaware of you.

At any rate, if a room is waking up and attacking like clockwork every time and simply by crossing the border and no matter how many levels in stealth perks you have seems to make any difference then I call that a bug. It is not behaving as intended. 

As an aside, I am perfectly happy with auto attack rooms as I've stated many times. I was okay with the proposed change because I knew that attack experiences would still happen at times but they would be more random rather than always on at the same locations and be rarer for those who perked into stealth as they should be. I don't want sleepers to always stay asleep and have that be the only dimension of stealth gameplay so even if fully perked there should still be a rare chance that a sleeper could awaken as I draw near even if I made no mistakes. 

 

[hiemfire]

Sometimes they just go to a wall and start beating on it.

From what I've seen on YouTube this isn't just isolated to stealth triggers. In A19 it was just the fat tourist that would "ignore" the player and beat on random blocks around it when it noticed the player. Now in A20 the fat tourist seems to have been fixed but the rest of the zombies are doing it at random when they've noticed the player.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

1. thank you for the update. That at least gives me hope.
Although I can say that my experience with 2/5 sneak perks were very one sided.
Thing is that many (or most) of these "triggers" are within viewing distance of the Z's. And they instantly see me as if I wasn't sneaking.
So I suppose it isn't implemented yet.

I don't want sleepers to always stay asleep and have that be the only dimension of stealth gameplay so even if fully perked there should still be a rare chance that a sleeper could awaken as I draw near even if I made no mistakes. 

I don't like sleepers at all.
I think basicially all the now called sleepers should be set to wander. Makes the world feel more alive.

There should be sleepers and "fake sleepers", so that you can never be sure if they are dead or not and always have to check (maybe even causing a sound to alert other z's?).

But I generally don't mind walking sleepers. What I dislike is them being automatons that just wake up for seemingly no reason. It feels weird.
I know they only spawn once the player is in range, but that should change.
Once you enter a POI, every Z should be in place and be set to be either idle or wandering. (then you would need to buff stealth again)

But thank you for reporting this. Means a lot.

 

[meganoth]

Ya, stealth perks don't do @%$# when you aren't crouched. If you're climbing a ladder they will hear you. Better to find another way of getting up or down if you can. If you get lucky and find the Urban combat book that removes fall noise while crouched then just dropping down should be an option.

Not entirely. From the section you linked.

To be expected with such a philosophical topic where probably nobody even knows how it could be decided either way. But if we take that section at face value I would say "bull$&&" is definitely too strong a word for countering my opinion

 

[Roland]

I asked Shawn about it and he said that if you report any bugs regarding stealth you need to be sure to pay attention to and include your stealth level. If you have any light on you then you will be seen. If your stealth level is 2, then a zombie won't be able to detect you unless it is within 2 blocks of you. If you have light on you and your number increases then you will fail  your stealth check. Many POI's have light sources to be aware of.

If there is a POI that you suspect is auto aggro no matter what and there is no actual stealth check going on then share the seed, location, and POI name and describe where it was in the POI to make sure it can be reproduced.

It is a new feature and so we are in that ambiguous time where devs are suspicious of players making mistakes and players are suspicious of devs of not having coded it right and the only way to prove are examples that can be reproduced. Devs are also getting reports of people who are experiencing super stealthiness and zombies can't seem to see them from a few meters away so there are mixed signals coming in.

Shawn assured me that the stealth check is in and that it does scale with perks. The level design guys also chimed in and said that attack volumes are simply a reality. They use them for effect and especially for loot rooms to ensure that loot is well guarded and they don't plan to stop...lol. 

So we have all these stake holders who have a different view on attack volumes.

 

[Boidster]

Info about stealth perk level for your test is missing

I was playtesting in the editor. Naked level 1 character, zero perks. Not in God mode.

In A20 every POI has them. And they feel very much not like a chance, but like a certainty.

Categorically untrue. I even provided concrete numbers and POI examples. Hyperbole only undercuts your argument.

 

[Boidster]

After discussion it was decided that instead of auto aggro the game would do a skill check vs the player's stealth and only if that failed would the zombies wake up. A ticket for that was made and I assume since it was talked about on the forum that the change had gone in. 

Perhaps it didn't since Boidster is showing attack volumes existing in current POI's. It is definitely planned though and I think supposed to be in.

I should reiterate that I don't have any knowledge of the changes for A20. It's entirely possible that all of the XML structure is still there for "Attack" volumes, but that the actual mechanism of sneaking & sleepers just ignores that now. My playtesting seemed to show it behaved mostly like it did in A19, but it was only against a couple of POIs and a couple of volumes. In short, "Active" volume = naked level 1 me could sneak around a bit. "Attack" = as soon as I cross the threshold the zombies attack.

Absolutely could still be a failed check, and that the check is simply much harder for "Attack" volumes. Someone would need to test with max sneak perk to get evidence. It's ridiculously easy to load a POI and playtest it; I encourage others to try it out and report back.

I should note that individual sleepers within a volume have their own sight angle, sight distance, and hearing, but in the few I checked they were all set to -1, -1, and 100% respectively.

 

[Roland]

Absolutely could still be a failed check, and that the check is simply much harder for "Attack" volumes. Someone would need to test with max sneak perk to get evidence. It's ridiculously easy to load a POI and playtest it; I encourage others to try it out and report back.

@faatal seemed to be saying that if you have light shining on you at all it is an auto fail for your stealth check. It would be interesting to test some of those attack volumes at night provided there are no interior lights on and see if it makes a difference. If you can get your stealth level down to a 2 or 3 and move across that line and they wake up and come straight at you and kill you then that might be sus.

 

[Boidster]

@faatal seemed to be saying that if you have light shining on you at all it is an auto fail for your stealth check. It would be interesting to test some of those attack volumes at night provided there are no interior lights on and see if it makes a difference. If you can get your stealth level down to a 2 or 3 and move across that line and they wake up and come straight at you and kill you then that might be sus.

Okay I'll give it a try. I just did another test on store_book_02's rooftop "Attack" volume, with max stealth perks + military stealth boots and the zombie woke up as soon as I crossed the line. But it was daylight. I'll go mess with sidereal motion and try again.

 

[Boidster]

Okay I'll give it a try.

Aaand done. Roland is right, as USUAL. 

Here's the rooftop "Attack" volume at night. My sneak value is 1. Kinda dark so I helpfully indicated the sleeping zombie.



And here I am right up in his grill, about to give him a taste of the Dev Auto-kill Gun:

(Prior to this, in the day time even with max stealth, He'd wake up as soon as I dropped off the ledge onto the roof.)



The supply plane helpfully dropped a crate...onto my nearly empty void...

 

[Roland]

Well....faatal is right as usual. I just enjoyed splash damage correctness.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Stealth in general hasn't been that great ever since A17 when this perk system came out and show3ed its face.

Instead of having something that wakes up all zombies no matter what, they could still amp up the pressure by having it where a zombie can wake up other zombies. This way you feel this absolute need to take one out quietly before it makes enough noise to wake up others. This is what I feel the core of stealth should be all about in this game.
 
Maybe the restore power quests will lead into more stealth mechanics. It would be nice if I could perk into stealth to shut off lights at electrical boxes for POIs. Higher perk allows dismantling cars without car alarms going off (should be a thing), even higher perk level allows disabling POI alarm systems at higher tier POIs (should also be a thing). Perhaps higher tier POIs are zoned and require shutting things off at multiple locations within the POI. Perhaps even more perks to be able to locate said boxes.

There are things they could do to make stealth an enjoyable and reasonable build.

 

[Roland]

Instead of having something that wakes up all zombies no matter what, they could still amp up the pressure by having it where a zombie can wake up other zombies. This way you feel this absolute need to take one out quietly before it makes enough noise to wake up others. This is what I feel the core of stealth should be all about in this game.

You haven't caught up in the thread yet but that is exactly the change in A20. If you hit one zombie there is a chance for others in the volume to wake up. Also the game runs a stealth check when you cross into a volume against each individual zombie to see if they wake. The difference seems to be that in A20 light matters a lot more than it did previously. 

I do like your ideas about being able to cut power to a POI and make it dark to enhance the stealth perks.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

You haven't caught up in the thread yet but that is a change in A20. If you hit one zombie there is a chance for others in the volume to wake up. Also the game runs a stealth check when you cross into a volume against each individual zombie to see if they wake. The difference seems to be that in A20 light matters a lot more than it did previously. 

I do like your ideas about being able to cut power to a POI and make it dark to enhance the stealth perks.

What I mean is more like a screamer mechanic, where they yell out alerting others... not so much a random chance trigger from hitting them. It would just be more natural and what you might expect to happen in a real-world scenario if this fantasy were to happen in the real world. But yeah, if you can somehow disable those lights with stealth perks in some way, it would make it better. I was watching a stream today where someone was trying to stealth and there was a torch on the wall. I was thinking that it would be pretty cool to be able to shoot that right off the wall with an arrow to put it out so he could then sneak by easier... which then led to thoughts about power boxes.

 

[Boidster]

What I mean is more like a screamer mechanic

What if some of the sleepers were, in fact, Screamers? Better scan the room and kill that one first, or she's going to invite extra guests to the party.

 

[hiemfire]

Edit: Looks like it may have been answered. Really wanting my power supply to show up already and stable to drop. This has been at the top of my list to test out for awhile. Not surprised that the changes to the lighting mentioned in the update notes had an effect, fingers crossed the new clothing system that is/was planned for A21 doesn't flat out kill sneaking around.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

What if some of the sleepers were, in fact, Screamers? Better scan the room and kill that one first, or she's going to invite extra guests to the party.

I wouldn't mind that.... sounds pretty cool. If they were seen in a couple of special POIs it could add something to their story. I don't know what those POIs would be though.

 

[meganoth]

Mmh, stealth only working in total darkness in aggressive rooms? That sounds much less dynamic and useful than I thought.

I would understand that light makes the check more difficult, but an automatic fail that makes agressive rooms in almost all situations, and especially before having night vision goggles, practically identical to A19 auto aggro rooms. And for that mechanic aggressive rooms seem too common to me now.

Still needs confirmation (as I understand it Roland isn't 100% sure about his interpretation of Fataals words) and I still haven't time to play-test it.