Since stealth is dead...

[Subasu]

So I play stealth builds, I like the feel of it, silently creeping through a base, learning the mechanics of the place, and figuring out how to circumvent the auto-triggers and sniping/one shotting everything. I feel clever validated in build.

Then Alpha 21 came along, and I got reamed in the prison my first go. So, next respawn I got up on the roof intent to clear it out.

Nothing. Absolutely nada.

Then I went to go nab the loot.

Suddenly the roof is full of zombies, everything from above and below and in the loot room proceeds to inform me off my error.

Let me tell you, I spent MINUTES on the roof, but the mobs did not load in until 'triggered'.

This artificially inflates the difficulty and no in a good way. You are basically telling the stealthers to eff off and play another game.

I understand you want it to be difficult, and placing a lot of mobs into a game is fine. I even learned that sometimes they don't spawn in until you are on the same floor, and I was fine with that.

But this...is just unacceptable. If you do not wish players to stealth in your game, simply take the tree out and give us something better.

[Shady Knights]

Agreed. I also use unorthodox entry methods to POI's and have found that the mobs are spawning in on places I've already searched/checked.

I realise it's likely about performance, however, if the spawns actually occurred when the player enters the boundary of the POI, rather than specific levels/rooms/doorways, and that new spawns are blocked while that player is within the boundary of the POI then this issue of zombies appearing out of thin air would be fixed.

Hopefully it's something they'll improve on in a future release.

[Xam Huad]

This is not entirely new and has been happening in A20 also,
just in smaller amounts. Alot of POI were redesigned with the new shapes
in mind and some POI were created new, the triggers for some of these may
have been .. unfortunately placed? Let's see if patches will remedy some of these.

Haven't played A21 yet, however would say stealth should be considered
bonus strategy, don't rely on it to work, be glad that it sometimes works.

While do agree that it's nice that zombies drop in with performance in mind,
sometimes they actually spawn right in front of you and that breaks immersion.
Fourth wall gone. It's not a stressing matter, just a little poor in execution. Alas.

[Subasu]

Originally posted by Xam Huad:

This is not entirely new and has been happening in A20 also,
just in smaller amounts. Alot of POI were redesigned with the new shapes
in mind and some POI were created new, the triggers for some of these may
have been .. unfortunately placed? Let's see if patches will remedy some of these.

In A20, there were trigger zones, but if you knew where they were you could avoid them, or prepare for them. But the zombies would already be spawned into the game, so you could work the map in reverse and avoid the triggers and kill the zombies.

I've tested it out many time, most noteably was a house where there is a dining room in front of you and a kitchen to the right. If you went in the doorway, it would 'trigger' two zombies who'd come charging at you. YOu could prepare for it, or break through the wall and avoid the trigger. Both of these were acceptable.

What I am referring to is that the zombies did NOT exist in the game, whether on the roof asleep or waiting, nothing. You actually have to 'activate' the trigger for the mobs to actually spawn in. And when they are triggered, they ALL wake up, they ALL run and home in on your location, invalidating your stealth build.

The only way to play this game is spray and pray and it's not really my cup of tea.

[Xam Huad]

Originally posted by Subasu:

In A20, [...] the zombies would already be spawned into the game, so you could work the map in reverse and avoid the triggers and kill the zombies. [...]

What I am referring to is that the zombies did NOT exist in the game, whether on the roof asleep or waiting, nothing. [...]

Zombies spawn in when am already in the room (it might be because of ping).
You can still headshot where they stand, it's not spray n pray.
Semi-auto suppressed MP5 with AP ammo? Works a charm.
Even without AP ammo, only takes 3 shots max (1 head, rest body shots?).

[Subasu]

Originally posted by Xam Huad:

Originally posted by Subasu:

In A20, [...] the zombies would already be spawned into the game, so you could work the map in reverse and avoid the triggers and kill the zombies. [...]

What I am referring to is that the zombies did NOT exist in the game, whether on the roof asleep or waiting, nothing. [...]

Zombies spawn in when am already in the room (it might be because of ping).
You can still headshot where they stand, it's not spray n pray.
Semi-auto suppressed MP5 with AP ammo? Works a charm.
Even without AP ammo, only takes 3 shots max (1 head, rest body shots?).

It is spray and pray if the zombies DO NOT EXIST in game until you 'trigger' them.

In my example, I was on the roof of the prison. There were literally NO ZOMBIES PRESENT, sleep or otherwise. Then I walked into the loot area and then EVERY ZOMBIE IN THE WORLD spawned on that roof (and helipad) and proceeded to make mincemeat out of me.

This is the issue. It's not that a certain trigger will make them all wake up and you can snipe them from afar, it's an issue of the zombies don't exist until you cross a threshhold, and instead of just spawning into the game, they are all alerted to you and come at you.

This is the issue that makes stealth builds obsolete

[carl.wear]

Kicking a door in and then shooting up anything that moves gets boring after a while. If you want to spend the time it takes to do a stealth run (and they can take awhile) then that patience should be rewarded not ignored. Alot of the point of a stealth run is to avoid detection and reduce damage by silently taking them out. If all that sneaking about to aviod detection no longer works then whats the point of stealth?

[Subasu]

Originally posted by carl.wear:

Kicking a door in and then shooting up anything that moves gets boring after a while. If you want to spend the time it takes to do a stealth run (and they can take awhile) then that patience should be rewarded not ignored. Alot of the point of a stealth run is to avoid detection and reduce damage by silently taking them out. If all that sneaking about to aviod detection no longer works then whats the point of stealth?

exactly

Well said, thank you

[onanonehand8]

Originally posted by carl.wear:

Kicking a door in and then shooting up anything that moves gets boring after a while. If you want to spend the time it takes to do a stealth run (and they can take awhile) then that patience should be rewarded not ignored. Alot of the point of a stealth run is to avoid detection and reduce damage by silently taking them out. If all that sneaking about to aviod detection no longer works then whats the point of stealth?

Although, I prefer the kicking the door down and letting the lord sort it out, I agree stealth seems to be on the short end of the stink stick.

[Demios]

Stealth are intended to clear stuff at night or thin out a herd before you trigger it. Also, you literally tried to skip 50% of the dungeon then complain about the dev not thinking about EVERY ways a player can skip parts of a dungeon, they try to incorporate those skips in the POIS creation but its not perfect often need some refinements passes with trigger areas... Also skippng parts of a POI like that and stealth have nothing in common... XD Stealth is working plenty properly, you combine that with parkour expert to quietly jump on objects in rooms and take out bow and clear out a room from above (worst case scenario you plonk a frame pole) Some rare events , stealth cannot be used to have an advantage but like 1 POI outta 30-40 may have one of 2 of those area in the place..

[Shurenai]

You got all the way to the prison POI with stealth just fine it seems?

IMO, not every single POI needs to be stealthable- and not every POI should force RAMBO play. And not every POI should be wholly one or the other, either.. A mostly rambo POI with some stealthable bits, or a mostly stealthable POI with a rambo finale aren't the worst thing in the world.

So, You found a POI that doesn't reward stealth- Now you know, Don't go to that specific POI again.

One, two, or even a dozen POIs having forced action does not make stealth completely useless or dead.

[bayaholic]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

You got all the way to the prison POI with stealth just fine it seems?

IMO, not every single POI needs to be stealthable- and not every POI should force RAMBO play. So, You found a POI that doesn't reward stealth- Now you know, Don't go to that specific POI again.

One, two, or even a dozen POIs having forced action does not make stealth completely useless or dead.

Shah-wing! Heard that one. Lol.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Subasu:

Originally posted by Xam Huad:

This is not entirely new and has been happening in A20 also,
just in smaller amounts. Alot of POI were redesigned with the new shapes
in mind and some POI were created new, the triggers for some of these may
have been .. unfortunately placed? Let's see if patches will remedy some of these.

In A20, there were trigger zones, but if you knew where they were you could avoid them, or prepare for them. But the zombies would already be spawned into the game, so you could work the map in reverse and avoid the triggers and kill the zombies.

I've tested it out many time, most noteably was a house where there is a dining room in front of you and a kitchen to the right. If you went in the doorway, it would 'trigger' two zombies who'd come charging at you. YOu could prepare for it, or break through the wall and avoid the trigger. Both of these were acceptable.

What I am referring to is that the zombies did NOT exist in the game, whether on the roof asleep or waiting, nothing. You actually have to 'activate' the trigger for the mobs to actually spawn in. And when they are triggered, they ALL wake up, they ALL run and home in on your location, invalidating your stealth build.

The only way to play this game is spray and pray and it's not really my cup of tea.

This was 100% a thing in the game before A21. I routinely would get into a position to see places where I knew zombies would spawn, but didn't spawn until I was basically "inside" whatever invisible bounding area would spawn them.

Typically pre-set zombies don't exist until they're relevant. If you go into a new POI, it's only spawning zombies as you near the rooms, which is why a gunfight on the first floor of a big building isn't bringing the entire POI down on you at once.

An easy way to see this in action is to fly a gyro onto the roof of any POI that has its final battle/loot room on the roof. You'll almost never see the zombies until you are basically on the roof, and then they'll suddenly pop up. It's been like this since well before A21 (and I know this, because I haven't played A21 and I see this all the time).

Now, maybe it's WORSE in A21, maybe the spawning locations are more poorly designed, of they've tweaked it in a bad way or something, but this behavior of only spawning things when you're close is not new.

All that said? Yeah, it's a crappy system in general. Lazy, cheap, predictable. I'd prefer fewer zombies but more roaming around so it's less obvious.

[Oktokolo]

Nah, stealth even got easier now. Even when not spending a single point in that shadows perk and even in bright daylight, i now can consistently walk up much closer to sleepers before they awake - often i can even spear them while they are still asleep. Also, sometimes the extra visibility stealth check triggers seem to not wake them when entering trigger volumes. That almost never happened in A20.

What did already happen in A20 a lot though, was zombies not spawning or spawning delayed when the configured server zombie count was exhausted. Some POIs have insane amounts of zombie spawns now. It is quite possible, that the zombies on the roof spawned in only after you made room for them by killing other zombies which spawned in early on your way up to the roof.

This game seriously needs to become able to support hundreds of spawned but sleeping zombies at the same time. What you experienced is bound to happen a lot more as POIs get bigger and more infested. I definitely want huge, massively infested POIs.

And i actually hope, idle AI thinking CPU load gets reduced enough to eventually allow for thousands of concurrent spawned-in and hundreds of concurrent woke zombies on a single server, so i can actually fire a shot in the middle of a city and zombies pour out of the surrounding POIs towards my position at the time of firing. That would make using firearms and explosives in a city so much more dangerous and would also allow for some nice tactical play at the same time...

[Iridius]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

You got all the way to the prison POI with stealth just fine it seems?

IMO, not every single POI needs to be stealthable- and not every POI should force RAMBO play. And not every POI should be wholly one or the other, either.. A mostly rambo POI with some stealthable bits, or a mostly stealthable POI with a rambo finale aren't the worst thing in the world.

So, You found a POI that doesn't reward stealth- Now you know, Don't go to that specific POI again.

One, two, or even a dozen POIs having forced action does not make stealth completely useless or dead.

I dont mind those holes in the attic POIs that force you to drop down into a room with blind angles. I know what I'm in for, and dropping into the mobs makes sense in the context.

I dont mind POIs where I hit a button to open a door to progress and all hell breaks loose.

I do mind cheezy invisible spawn triggers that simply ignore all game mechanics with no purpose nor context. Beam me down some zombies, Scotty!

There is no such issue for players who choose the many standard Duke Nukem playstyles. They just keep smashing heads with a baseball bat...

So, in fact, this isnt variety. This is simply sabotaging the very little variety implemented in playstyles.

[Subasu]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

You got all the way to the prison POI with stealth just fine it seems?

IMO, not every single POI needs to be stealthable- and not every POI should force RAMBO play. And not every POI should be wholly one or the other, either.. A mostly rambo POI with some stealthable bits, or a mostly stealthable POI with a rambo finale aren't the worst thing in the world.

So, You found a POI that doesn't reward stealth- Now you know, Don't go to that specific POI again.

One, two, or even a dozen POIs having forced action does not make stealth completely useless or dead.

You misread the whole point of the post. I specifically mentioned the prison POI, but this is happening in many, if not all the POI's I am engaging.

The only way to play this game is to rambo it.

And to get to the roof of the prison, I have to fight through the first 1/4 of the dungeon and get into the back lot area and jump onto the trailer and then up to the roof.

There are no mobs on the roof, even if you run around it for hours, but cross that stupid invisible line and poof, there they are, awake and unhappy to see you.

Stealth is both broken in good and bad ways. As said above, I can be right next to a zombie, firing a gun and it's just like...hey, my sound map isn't working, can you fire another shot?? Then I kill it, and the REST of the zombies in THAT room all wake up. Whether I use a bow, or a gun, doesn't make a difference, as long as I engage 1, they will all wake up.

But its the specific trigger areas that spawn in the mobs that I am talking about.