PSA on stealth kills and "random" enemy alerts at range (with video)

[Shrinkshooter]

https://youtu.be/Y6YI2VW5d0I

I'm placing this in Discussions and not in Feedback because I'm not submitting this as a bug report or feedback for the developers, I've already done that in a couple places and I believe they got the message already (hopefully). Instead, this is meant as a PSA for any and all who are constantly bamboozled by the seemingly random and unreliable nature of when enemies just aggro out of nowhere, and I will explain how. The above video documents this and I'll get to that.

Normally, enemies get alerted/enraged when a light is shone on them for too long, someone moves for too long a time while they're glowing/pulsating, or someone kills another sleeper in close proximity to them (a few feet). These are pretty intuitive and most people pick up these mechanics quickly. However there's a problem: every now and again an enemy nowhere close to a stealth-killed target will awake, and a few moments later, scream and aggro the whole room. Why does this happen? Because ANY enemy in the room that has 1) line of sight to your target and 2) is glowing has a high chance of getting alerted when you kill said target, regardless of distance, and regardless of whether you stealth-killed your target in one hit. Often times this enraged enemy is simply way too far away to kill before it screams and alerts the room, so in order to maintain stealth one must understand how to best avoid triggering an enemy at distance. This ranged aggro behavior is ESPECIALLY dangerous in rooms that contain scouts.

In the video seen here, I have cut together two dozen short clips documenting this behavior (the worst, most egregious examples of this behavior are shown first). None of these events should have happened, unless this behavior is actually intended (at the moment this is unclear, I've been calling it a bug all this time, but if it IS intended, this is terrible in a half dozen ways). How does one avoid this behavior, then? Only kill your target when anything else in the room that can see it is NOT glowing. Whether your target is glowing or pulsating doesn't matter; as long as all enemies with unobstructed line of sight to your target aren't glowing, it should be safe to stealth kill it. If there are lots of enemies in the room, you can increase your chances of success by doing a flashlight sweep to get all enemies glowing at once, and then kill your target a few moments later when they all stop glowing.

I have over 100 hours of playtime, so I can say with confidence that this happens quite often. Pretty much several times a game.

-------------------------------------------

A few notes on the video:

3:42 the sleeper next to me is awoken from Red's stealth kill, something like 40 feet away, but can be hard to tell because Green was moving.

4:04 I am able to get to the ranged aggro enemy quickly enough to kill it before it screamed. Most of the time you won't be able to do this, mainly because you'd need to sprint to get there in time, and sprinting has a huge aggro radius.

4:30 this enemy didn't enrage from any kill, but there also were no flashlights on and no one was moving (you can see the color dots on the compass, everyone remains still). It still aggros for zero reason. This doesn't quite fit with the subject but I figured I'd document it anyway.

4:58 I begin charging to kill a sleeper next to me, but decide not to do so when I see a few others glowing. I turn to release my charge almost directly away from the sleeper, yet the hammer hits anyway. This is because melee is implemented in a clunky fashion: (this is speculation based on experiments and observations) your melee hits are hitscan raycasts projected out from behind your head directly at the center of your aim circle. You can see this yourself by crouching, back up against a wall as much as possible, then swing a full charge. It will hit the wall behind you. In this case the sleeper wasn't even directly behind me, but off to the side by at least a couple feet, and yet this still happened, AND triggered a ranged aggro.

5:13 When Purple kills his target sleeper, he panics for a second because there is a second sleeper close by (outside of proximity range, though) that is glowing, and obviously has direct line of sight; Purple is expecting it to wake up. Yet it isn't bothered at all. I included this to show that the ranged aggro behavior happens often but it's not guaranteed, and that whether an enemy is triggered at range by this behavior is semi-random.

[EyeZero]

Great compilations and explanations of said events, but I honestly like the fact that everything is random. Much more immersive for me, not knowing what exactly is going to happen lol.

[AlienDjinn]

Great summary of strange behavior Shooter.

[DrunkBunny94]

I thought it was pretty obvious, when sleepers are glowing/breathing/beating and you kill one in a eh close-ish proximity it gets alerted.
When SHTF you just go and boop the one that got alerted before he screams (which you can do indefinitely as long as you only alert 1 at a time) and theres no room alarm.

Its definitely annoying when something gets triggered because of a catwalk or something blocking your LoS to the sleeper that has clear LoS to the one you kill
it is inconsistent at times especially when there's verticality involved but this isnt something i see often let alone every game.

At 3:42 its woken because green is literally moving forward while its breathing/beating you even look at him and back at the breathing sleeper before he agros lmao.

Its hard to tell at 4:04 because you don't see the one the right so we cant see if its breathing or not nor can we see whats happening under the bridge you just crossed

4:30 we cant see your 4th player Sorreh but you see his flashlight turn off at 4:35 so i'd imagine hes running over sees the spike boi and turns that off and then when he crouches thats what triggers him as crouching counts as moving (so does standing up)

4:58 Yes i hate the hammer swing too, the Hammer hits in the path of the swing which starts a tiny bit behind you, this is why when a sleeper has his head low to the ground and is on all 4's you'll often hit the ass/back because the hammer is coming from the top of your screen which contacts those parts before the head - hey you see this happen at 5:05 too
I also dislike the hammer game play for this and the awkward charge mechanic.

5:13 is some good luck tho lol

idk I've definitely seen weirder on D1 like with sleepers and larges spawning inbetween our group during alarms theres scouts/feelers invincibility theres everything to do with ladders etc...

[Kent]

I'll add my personnal takes on the matter: shooters detects further when glowing. Did a few tests with a clear LoS both with Strikers and Shooters. By my own experience and tests (killing a sleeper while they glow), this is wanted. Striker is literally blind past 5meters even when glowing, while the shooter is clearly not and so far I am concerned, can detect past the 20meter range IF glowing at the moment of kill and has LoS. I don't have yet checked your video, but will see if everytime the "random" aggro starts with a shooter. Will edit this message when done to confirm that behavior.

P.S: Verticality is a bit weird at time though.

Edit1: First of all, through your PoV (and only yours), it's hard at times to really get what's in the room and what happens on your teammates side, but unless I have audio clues, I will only base my judgment on your view and what I said earlier about shooters (which, can be wrong, but once again, I tested it a few times on A1 by curiosity after stumbling into situations like yours).

After giving a look at your clips:

- 00:05: Sleeper had LoS. Not sure if Striker or Shooter (I'd say Striker), so I'll put it on verticality. Less than 10 in BioTracker distance.

- 00:23: You killed the scout, the shooter behind the scout glowed, you killed him, but the one on your right glowed as well at the time of the shooter kill, but nobody watched him even yourself checked the back of the room so, I can't confirm, (I suppose that's the second shooter who gave the alarm, not the one on the back of the room, he's not even glowing or red when it happened, but turned red after the alarm is given. Could be because of the video quality though.).

- 00:40: Hurray stood on one of those bridges with an octogonal pattern? Sleepers have line of sight through them. But even, I admit this one was really weird, verticality striked again I suppose?

- 00:53: The striker rushing you after killing the shooter is at fault given the screech and how fast he came at you. Weird case here (crouched Striker)

- 01:05: Shooter had LoS and was glowing at the moment of kill.

- 01:18: Shooter once again. Unclear about the LoS, but given from where he shot, it looked like he had it.

- 01:26: Glowing Shooter right behind your kill.

- 01:40: Crouched Striker got alerted, weird one here. I can't explain it (maybe because he was in the stairs, actual position got fu**** up, maybe?).

- 01:53: Clearly, it wasn't supposed to happen here. I'd call it a bug

- 02:10: I suppose FifthHorseman triggered the pulse. Nothing wrong here.

- 02:22: Shooter had clear LoS and was glowing. He had the time to warn the Striker behind afterwards (from what I see, he was already glowing red by the time your hammer hit the shooter's head, but I barely had the time to properly see him because you move forward then backward giving me a short window to see him.).

- 02:40: Wasn't supposed to happen, clearly.

- 02:52: So: you killed, but the striker in front of you turns toward someone else. I'm not sure what to think, but given the distance he wasn't supposed to see something.

- 03:05: Shooter on your left had LoS and started to glow when your hammer hit, bad timing. Split second even.

- 03:18: Shooter, but this time, pretty sure he wasn't glowing. I know there are times the glowing animation is completely unsync'd but didn't look like it here.

- 03:24: Farthest Striker alerted, but not the closest. Hello?

- 03.42: Nuff' said, green literally walked while he was glowing.

- 03:57: I haven't been able to test the Punchers behavior, but I'll say it's not supposed to happen?

- 04:04: Striker alerted. For no obvious reasons as he didn't seem to glow.

- 04:23: Crouched Striker alerted. Too far from the initial kill.

- 04:30: A flashlight clearly goes off here. It's faint but that's here.

- 04:45: I don't know. You move for the hit when he glows and crouches. I suppose he barely had the time to pulse but registered your crouch when he was supposed to pulse. This one looks "normal" to me.

- 05:00: Ow. Didn't even know this could happen.


Edit2: I simply base my judgment on multiple tests like, killing when a striker/shooter glow, past a certain distance (based on the BioTracker 10 and 20). And in controlled environement, it seemed like it. By no means my words are true as, just like you I try to help and understand how it works/what happened.

For personnal safety, I simply happen to flash those we won't kill and seems too close for comfort (I'd say 10 or less in BioTracker) and kill the others while they are dormant.

Thing is certain though, everytime it happened, they were glowing (outside of those you couldn't see because of a wall or your PoV, but sound is a helper here.)

Also, so far a shooter glowed, aggro happened. But maybe it can be expanded to the strikers under certain circumstances with the examples you gave in those clips.

[Shrinkshooter]

Originally posted by Kent:

I don't have yet checked your video, but will see if everytime the "random" aggro starts with a shooter.

Your hypothesis is incorrect, the first two clips of the video are aggros by melee sleepers, and they're the farthest aggros I have on record.

[Vissanna]

if u have a bio tracker sometimes u will see small red dots on the tracker- this points out that these enemies are sensitives(doesnt matter if glowing or not, you kill something within 10-20 yards of it itll go off) not sure if that happened there

[Shrinkshooter]

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Its hard to tell at 4:04 because you don't see the one the right so we cant see if its breathing or not

That wouldn't matter. Either that sleeper got triggered by movement or it got triggered by my kill; if it were to be triggered by movement, it would pulse first, so that didn't happen unless someone sprinted, which wasn't the case. I also happen to know that the other three players were across the room toward the door for Zone 99, which is why I went across the bridge I did, to clear the room faster.

so i'd imagine hes running over sees the spike boi and turns that off and then when he crouches thats what triggers him as crouching counts as moving (so does standing up)

No. The enemy went from sleeping instantly to aggro. That only occurs when someone sprints. It would not do this from a flashlight, crouching, or even both at the same time; it would glow first, then pulse, then aggro. This was far, far too instant for no conceivable reason. No one is doing anything and it goes immediately from sleeping to angry, this is not intended behavior in any way. It isn't the first time I've seen it either, it's just the only clip I've shown; I have seen enemies aggro instantly when someone opened a door, usually from ten feet away.

[Shrinkshooter]

Originally posted by EyeZero:

but I honestly like the fact that everything is random. Much more immersive for me, not knowing what exactly is going to happen lol.

I agree with what you're saying in principle, as a general thing, but not in this specific instance. You're basically saying that you like randomization because it's unpredictable, and if you have unpredictability, your game puts more pressure on the players requiring skill and being able to adapt, rather than how things currently are: succeeding mainly because you have foreknowledge of how the mission will play out. That's why I want layout randomization; the missions always having the same static layout with the same things in roughly the same places every time just heavily favors memorization over skill and adaptability.

The problem with this specific instance is that it removes control from the player, and does so in a way that is unfair. If an enemy in a room can simply randomly aggro from any stealth kill, and you have little to no way of reliably controlling that, then you cannot rely on stealth, because that control is taken out of your hands. That should never happen. If you have the skill to pull something off, you should be able to. If I am in a room and I stealth kill an enemy that sets off another sleeper 100 feet away I had no way of seeing because of fog and no way of keeping track of because 12 other sleepers had line of sight to my target, that simply is not fair.

So I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I disagree that the way it's happening now is okay.

[cG.vahnn]

Originally posted by Vissanna:

if u have a bio tracker sometimes u will see small red dots on the tracker- this points out that these enemies are sensitives(doesnt matter if glowing or not, you kill something within 10-20 yards of it itll go off) not sure if that happened there

This seems like an important claim and something worth investigating!

Anyone else have experience with the tracker? Most experienced groups deem the tracker as worthless, but if "sensitive" sleepers are an actual thing, and the tracker can detect them, then that increases the value of the tracker a great deal. Although I still don't know if it's better than two shotgun sentries, c-foam, and a minelayer.

[Çaptain Ålpha]

The one with the spiky enemy could be a bug or your friend their sprint at them.

Sprinting = Instant aggro

[Blue]

I've seen some of the enemies walking around behind doors that haven't been opened before (not scouts), and instantly aggro the room as soon as the door opens. The same happens if you shoot an enemy through the door (or from behind it) with the turret without killing it.

[Shrinkshooter]

Originally posted by cG.vahnn:

Anyone else have experience with the tracker?

I pretty much never ever take the tracker because I consider it a waste of a slot; however, I've played with quite a number of people who reported this very same thing, asking "what the hell are these little red dots supposed to mean?" I've assumed it's a graphical/UI bug. I haven't done any testing yet to verify, but offhand my hypothesis is that it doesn't work this way. It would mean that some sleepers are predetermined to aggro from stealth kills, and logically by extension other sleepers wouldn't be; yet in my experience any sleeper has the potential to trigger from stealth kills while glowing.

Originally posted by Çaptain Ålpha:

or your friend their sprint at them.

They didn't. I already explained in the OP how you can see yourself that they didn't.

[cG.vahnn]

Originally posted by Shrinkshooter:

It would mean that some sleepers are predetermined to aggro from stealth kills, and logically by extension other sleepers wouldn't be; yet in my experience any sleeper has the potential to trigger from stealth kills while glowing.

Yes, the latter definitely appears to be the case. That's why if the former is the case, and they can be detected only by the tracker, that would be a case for bringing a tracker along. While it is possible to recover from a failed stealth clear without guns or even without taking damage, doing so on a large, highly populated room could be severely costly in terms of ammo and health. Might be worth it. Next time I play with friends, I'll do some testing on it.

[Li77lehorn]

I just saw a similar.. glitch? to the one you have at 4:30. Playing solo on C2 I was sneaking around a room full of the spiky ones. One spiky monster though was in his almost attack looking stance but he wasn't actually triggered or moving or anything(so not breathing). He was about 5 meters away and I was just crouched watching him trying to work out why he looked different.

Then as I sneaked a little closer(so he was maybe 3 meters away)he just instantly goes red. I wish I had a video of it. I'm not sure if it was because I had killed a scout earlier with a mine and maybe that half triggered him from splash damage?

Lesson learned though.

[cG.vahnn]

Oh, I forgot post after using the tracker a whole bunch. I never saw any red enemies on the tracker unless someone had aggro'd them. The people I was with knew I was testing and looking for red blips, and not once in several matches did I see a single red enemy until someone aggro'd it.