PC Why are the devs screwing over agi/stealth in their POI design?
- Thread starter Tehnomaag
- Start date
Tahaan
New member
This is a good answer and should be pinned and put in a FAQ somewhere because this keeps coming up.
Really cool would be if they had a sniffing annimation ... let the zeds that auto-wake-up start with an animation where they sniff the air and look arround for a second before they locate and rush you!!!!
While on this topic though at the same time I do wish the game would have zeds wake up when I stand outside that door and I just shoot them with any gun. How does none of them hear the gun shots or even see the zeds beside them dropping dead?
My understanding is that the source of sounds is always the player and as far as the game is concerned I'm making a noise outside of their area within which they will wake up.
So it would be better if there was some kind of audio drop-off. Different actions should have different loudness (or range, perhaps). Loud noises from near-by should wake them all up even if the sound is outside of their little box.
The second thing about this that bothers me is that there is no difference between sneaking up on a zed from behind to coming up from the direction they are watching. I'd expect to have more success when sneaking up from behind. This is probably less of an issue but still I think they should see you before they hear you if you are not behind them.
It would still not fix the key problem which is an auto failure.
I never really seen many people who advocate of auto failure systems, those are hated regardless of genre and gaming age.
Your game could have an auto failure where if you dont escape within 1 minute the alarms go off and you now need to fight off the guards, an accuracy check where if you dont reach 90% your are now subjected to the harder mode, enemy design offering an undodgeable, sure-hit attack incase you cant remove a wall torch, etc...
Simply giving the zombies a line of sight system where with proper movement and careful planning you can get throught is always going to be better than "You exist in the room therefore you are target."
Aldranon
New member
I don't know.
Maybe a 100% stealth 7D2D might be interesting as long as one thing is added...
Wandering hordes of no less than a dozen vultures that are all 100% stealthy and have hyper senses.
Then, the first moment you know your being attacked is:
Your stunned, bleeding, infected and with a broken leg.
I'll leave it to your imagination on how your health is doing.
Maybe a 100% stealth 7D2D might be interesting as long as one thing is added...
Wandering hordes of no less than a dozen vultures that are all 100% stealthy and have hyper senses.
Then, the first moment you know your being attacked is:
Your stunned, bleeding, infected and with a broken leg.
I'll leave it to your imagination on how your health is doing.
theFlu
Well-known member
That sounds good..Wandering hordes of no less than a dozen vultures that are all 100% stealthy and have hyper senses.
Then, the first moment you know your being attacked is:
Your stunned, bleeding, infected and with a broken leg.
I'll leave it to your imagination on how your health is doing.
Or we could just wait for bandits with a similar deal; they got stealth, your character can't see them so they're not rendered in the world for you to see. Taking headshots with decent accuracy whenever you're outdoors. Stabbing you with one of those 5x multis indoors whenever you open a door or turn a corner.
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Agreed. Balance. Those bandits have trained being bloodthirsty maniacs as much as you, so for every bandit you kill there must be a bandit who has killed you.That sounds good..
Ramethzer0
Well-known member
Perhaps they should play an ACTUAL stealth game with ACTUAL stealth content?
I cheered when they put snipers in bandit camps in Mist Survival. I got tired of the camps being too easy to take out with a bow and basic arrows.The bandits that "stealth" players hope for....
The bandits that "stealth" players will rage against...
View attachment 16804 View attachment 16805
The bandits had patrols and assault rifles and should NOT have been super exploitable.
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hiemfire
New member
The bandits that "stealth" players hope for....
The bandits that "stealth" players will rage against...
View attachment 16804 View attachment 16805
Looks like sleepers and wanderers to me. Simple enough to observe their movements and adjust accordingly without being seen or heard if you're paying attention. Not sure what there would be to rage about there...Or are you still straw manning about our hate for attack volumes that you're assuming a simple wanderer or two is somehow comparable to stepping over an invisible line and having every zombie it is tied to knowing exactly where you are at that instant and immediately moving to attack?
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I'd say it was a great running gag. And that excuses everything, even misrepresentations, one-sided insinuations and the death of horses.
Roland
Community Moderator
I'd say that the results are what really matters. If you get what you want then the POIs are 100% full of sleeping zombies that you can "stealth kill" while they remain unconscious. If you don't get what you want then the POIs have a variety of zombies that you can stealth kill by using stealth skills to evade, hide, and kill from the shadows.
Those results are stone facts and not strawmen. You may not be presenting your argument as a desire for always sleeping enemies but the results of your argument would lead us there in any case. Even if some triggering device was added that could be disarmed it would only be a challenge once and then forever after it would be as mundane as clearing trash piles and broken glass piles from the ground and avoiding jumping. Disarm the trash piles, the broken glass, that tripwire and---oh GOODIE! Kill more unconscious foes.
As a result of this thread we now know that you are not forced to take out an auto aggro volume openly guns blazing. You can still go the stealth route and that stealth route is decidedly more engaging for the player than lining up an immobile head into the sights of your weapon.
Don't remember all the points of the discussion anymore, but maybe a compromise would be possible: For example that the trigger has a chance to fail at waking up the zombies that is higher the more you perked into stealth. It does not make it a skill test for the player, but a skill test for the player character in best RPG tradition. And naturally the maximum chance you are not noticed has to be maybe 30-50%.
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theFlu
Well-known member
Round and round this goes..
For me the problem with auto-aggros is that it feels broken, compared to the rest of the game. You don't even need to use stealth to notice that some rooms are much more enthusiastic about that delicious player scent than most. Normal sleepers keep sleeping quite often, these guys never. So, the rooms this happens in become known as 'different'. (This is what happened to me, at least)
Slapping on a percentage for these rooms to act like normal would just make it feel more buggy.. "this room is different, but only sometimes. Am I insane or is the game just borked?"
Slap on a mine in the only doorway in and have it have a chance of being a dud, now you have a) an auto aggro that works as the zeds wake up from the boom-boom, b) can't easily be avoided if it's a live one c) can really mess you up by itself, just for giggles (as some are prone to accuse TFP of enjoying), d) can be disarmed with the help of an atypical stealth perk from perception (pick up mines) e) if dud and the player is bold enough, maybe disableable without aggroing the room and, for the ultimate F) you can use a plate mine flat at the floor, painted like the surrounding floor for extra special enjoyment.
Please don't take that too seriously. Seriously
For me the problem with auto-aggros is that it feels broken, compared to the rest of the game. You don't even need to use stealth to notice that some rooms are much more enthusiastic about that delicious player scent than most. Normal sleepers keep sleeping quite often, these guys never. So, the rooms this happens in become known as 'different'. (This is what happened to me, at least)
Slapping on a percentage for these rooms to act like normal would just make it feel more buggy.. "this room is different, but only sometimes. Am I insane or is the game just borked?"
Slap on a mine in the only doorway in and have it have a chance of being a dud, now you have a) an auto aggro that works as the zeds wake up from the boom-boom, b) can't easily be avoided if it's a live one c) can really mess you up by itself, just for giggles (as some are prone to accuse TFP of enjoying), d) can be disarmed with the help of an atypical stealth perk from perception (pick up mines) e) if dud and the player is bold enough, maybe disableable without aggroing the room and, for the ultimate F) you can use a plate mine flat at the floor, painted like the surrounding floor for extra special enjoyment.
Please don't take that too seriously. Seriously
So when I woke up zombies in my last stealth test sometimes and it wasn't in rooms that were autoaggro, why didn't I get confused too? Why did I simply think "bad luck, chance"? Like a basketball player still misses the basket with a chance that is always greater than zero. And it is the norm in random-based gamesRound and round this goes..
For me the problem with auto-aggros is that it feels broken, compared to the rest of the game. You don't even need to use stealth to notice that some rooms are much more enthusiastic about that delicious player scent than most. Normal sleepers keep sleeping quite often, these guys never. So, the rooms this happens in become known as 'different'. (This is what happened to me, at least)
Slapping on a percentage for these rooms to act like normal would just make it feel more buggy.. "this room is different, but only sometimes. Am I insane or is the game just borked?"
But yes, that idea does not solve everything, it just makes the stealth perk somewhat more valueable in a situation where stealth is at a disadvantage. As I said, a compromise.
Sure, solutions that work once as a skill test and then never again. See a mine, go through the wall. Done. It does not solve what the developers want to do with auto-aggro rooms.
Please don't take that too seriously. Seriously
Then you have to suffer through even more running gags
theFlu
Well-known member
Because that's the consistent experience everywhere in the world..? Some zeds wake up easier than others. Sometimes you do mess up. But once you get a number of zeds faceplanting all around you in an entertaining and completely harmless manner, with you knowing you did not mess up this time, things start feeling weird. When that thing is localized to dozen rooms in the entire game, you figure out that game is just ignoring its rules in those locations. The wallpaper comes off, and the drywall looks nasty.
For your solution of making the auto-aggro rooms random, I'd add a small chance (2-5%) for every volume to auto-aggro. I'd Rather remove the "magic" of it by giving it an explanation in the room (whatever noise maker you want to go with, with or without the ability to avoid/disable it); but if we absolutely need magical moments where some zeds just know you're there, make it a feature of the whole game, not just couple specific rooms.But yes, that idea does not solve everything, it just makes the stealth perk somewhat more valueable in a situation where stealth is at a disadvantage. As I said, a compromise.
Sure, solutions that work once as a skill test and then never again. See a mine, go through the wall. Done. It does not solve what the developers want to do with auto-aggro rooms.
Then you have to suffer through even more running gags
The mine idea was a lil snarky, but an attempt at making a mechanism that would work with the current game to recreate an auto-aggro.. you can also tune the room to wake up once you start beating your way through the well-placed-metal-walls into there, or gasp, even make them wake up while you destroy a wooden wall. Or heck, just replace sections of the outside wall with mine plates for maximum fun and challenge ..
Running gags are prolly the best part of this forum, that's probably why I post my dry snark here... caveat emptor, though ..
Kalen
New member
But how would you know that? Its not like there is some indicator in the game that says, "You screwed up!". What you do looks exactly the same whether the zombies wake up and see you or not. I still maintain that a lot of this heated debate is because people are aware of the existence of auto-aggro rooms.... if no one knew they were there most people would attribute them to failing their "stealth roll".
theFlu
Well-known member
Because that's how I figured out a couple of the auto-aggros by myself, before it started turning up in the forums. Because it's a game. If you play enough, you get good at it. You learn the mechanics of it. There's Always an indicator of "you failed"; because if there isn't, there isn't really success either. I've never burnt my Bacon and Eggs because I can't leave them for too long in the campfire. But if I could, and the game wouldn't specifically tell me I failed with a timer, I could still figure it out over repeat efforts. With the feedback from your failures, you learn the ways to fail, you learn when something is random, how it applies. You may be mistaken, of course, which means you have to re-learn something, which is discomforting. That's fine, part of the process normally.
But when something like this is changed, that discomfort is directed at the change. It's annoying. I do actively try to temper it, and I do recognize I'm annoyed by the change here. That in mind, I still don't see a reason to leave it to a "forced fail." Forced fails are just out of place, by definition. Having it done without any explanation is worse, so I'd advocate at least having a noise maker. Some advance warning would also be nice, but even without, you'll learn the dozen spots quickly anyway, a lot faster once you decipher the cryptic mechanic.
End bosses fall under special rules anyway, I suppose, so not exactly wanting a warning for loot rooms or the like. Clearing the hospital roof of sleepers with a hunting rifle feels wrong too, (it's been a while since the last time I did it, prolly possible still).. just stand behind the trigger line and no-one cares of your little firing squad. Sleep tight, big momma, sleep tight. Not good either.
Kalen
New member
But there isnt. You crouch to be in stealth and you try to sneak up on a zombie. It either wakes up or it doesnt. There is no indicator that shows that you did something wrong.... the zombie just detected you.
There is thematically no difference between a zombie that awakens because it detects you and a zombie that awakens because its in an auto-aggro room... it's only your outside knowledge of the game mechanics that tells you there is a difference.