PC Will stealth finally be worth it in A21? Also all the anti-immersion/Skill system.

[meganoth]

One question I just discussed with a friend is that light now makes such a big difference, seemingly much more than noise. That is fine concerning lights in the room, but if Uncle Al is right that helmet lights **automatically** make you fail those checks there is a problem for stealthers in practice:

What do you do if your monitor is showing pitch black in many rooms? I play with shadows completely off because on my PC shadows produce huge FPS spikes. So rooms have usually more ambient light than default and I still need helmet lights in many rooms. I played with shadows on and there the light level is even worse.

Whether you see anything depends not only on the game though, but also on your monitor, the light level in the room you are playing in shining on that monitor, your eyesight.  External factors so to speak.

The only in-game remedy to this is are the night-vision-googles, a late-game boost. What can I do before that though? Maybe there needs to be some tier 1 NVG that don't work well or a dimmed down head lamp that does not illuminate much but also does give you a chance to stealth.

In practice I seem to remember I used headlamps and have still had sleeping zombies in rooms. Uncle Al, maybe you are wrong about the auto-fail of headlamps?

 

[theFlu]

In practice I seem to remember I used headlamps and have still had sleeping zombies in rooms. Uncle Al, maybe you are wrong about the auto-fail of headlamps?

I spun up my test world to check; I wasn't able to sneak an attack volume with 5/5 perk at midnight with a headlight on. It might not be auto-fail, but the effect of the headlight to the AI stealth values is massive. A torch has a lesser effect, but I wasn't able to sneak my test spot with one of those either. The distance to the furthest zed at trigger is pretty long, about 13-14 blocks.

It might not be a hard rule, but it seems pretty flawless for a rule-of-thumb.

For the overall darkness issues; for attack volumes, as only walking across a specific pixel line is triggering, looking around with the light on is fine. As long as you don't walk with it on. And as you clear a room, moving "backwards" is always safe of course.

Of course, gamma settings are pretty powerful, if one doesn't consider it cheating..

 

[meganoth]

I spun up my test world to check; I wasn't able to sneak an attack volume with 5/5 perk at midnight with a headlight on. It might not be auto-fail, but the effect of the headlight to the AI stealth values is massive. A torch has a lesser effect, but I wasn't able to sneak my test spot with one of those either. The distance to the furthest zed at trigger is pretty long, about 13-14 blocks.

It might not be a hard rule, but it seems pretty flawless for a rule-of-thumb.

For the overall darkness issues; for attack volumes, as only walking across a specific pixel line is triggering, looking around with the light on is fine. As long as you don't walk with it on. And as you clear a room, moving "backwards" is always safe of course.

Of course, gamma settings are pretty powerful, if one doesn't consider it cheating..

A problem with shadows-off and gamma settings is that not surprisingly bright surfaces in daylight are too bright. I might turn down contrast, but I'm playing on a TV screen and for everything else contrast is fine.

Oh, I have an idea for early game light source: There could be glow-sticks you can throw into rooms, cheap enough to work in early game, expensive enough you don't throw them everywhere

 

[theFlu]

A problem with shadows-off and gamma settings is that not surprisingly bright surfaces in daylight are too bright.

Yeh, I might be lucky in that I don't care that much if some bright spot is a little burnt; usually I tend to set gamma so that pitch black is mostly dark, so I can see something - and just not care about the max brightness that much. I do play with shadows on, the minimum range shadows don't seem to tank my FPS too much, even if the dark circle looks silly while driving around.

 

[Uncle Al]

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to convey here. If I read it as you've written it, it implies that volume-2 zeds would lose agro if you increase your distance to them after triggering? That doesn't seem to be the case in my testing, not now nor back during that Jan thread testing session.

I don't think that's your intent; I could try to guess your intent, but I'd rather ask for clarification.

Sorry, you're right, that's not my intention. As far as I'm aware the stealth distance calculation only matters the instant you trigger the spawn. You can't 'increase the distance' after they've spawned.  A zombie either spawns with sight of you or it doesn't

You can restealth, obviously, but that's a totally different thing.

I spun up my test world to check; I wasn't able to sneak an attack volume with 5/5 perk at midnight with a headlight on. It might not be auto-fail, but the effect of the headlight to the AI stealth values is massive. A torch has a lesser effect, but I wasn't able to sneak my test spot with one of those either. The distance to the furthest zed at trigger is pretty long, about 13-14 blocks.

It might not be a hard rule, but it seems pretty flawless for a rule-of-thumb.

Thanks for testing.  I never actually tested the auto fail for carrying a light as it was a flat out developer statement that this was the case. I habitually don't stealth with a light source active in game so it never really comes up.  Always better to have tested though.