Stealth games without predictable A.I would be more annoying than fun in like 99/100 cases, certainly in TLoU 1 were you have like 5 bullets split between 5 weapons, your fists and a pack of crisp to deal with 10+ enemies, or they'd have cheats (slo-mo aim usually and instant kill/KO weapon) to counter it. Early MGS stealth works so well because it's built almost entirely around fucking with the super predictable A.I for example.
The way it's designed is that there are specific patrols to take every AI is given a goal at any given time based on the TOD. Hence them doing things like, as you said, peeing, resting, eating, training, sitting down to write some papers, etc. so it feels a lot more dynamic than games where the AI stands and sticks to those patrol routes and nothing else. Now if they were to start doing stuff like, randomly turning around and such, that would be a poor design choice. This extends to the AI responding to specific phenomena. If you sprint, sprinting creates a sound, they hear and turn around as a result. If you shoot an arrow and it misses, they will see that and then take cover, and will alert any allies passing by that someone is shooting, their ally will then also take cover, if you hit a wall with your melee, that too as a sound lure, if they need to sleep they'll put their weapons away, It gets really deep when you examine and compare it to other games. I was for example, flabbergasted that ND managed to get enemies to leap between platforms while searching for you, but never gave you the option to whistle.
On normal?
That's just it, the whole game is magic spawned enemies. If you use the sense enemy (can't remember what it's called) thing where it highlights enemies, and then walk into a stealth section you can literally see enemies spawn in behind walls. A proper stealth game may have enemies on predetermined routines, and they may go back to them after an alert, but the enemies are all in the play field ahead of time so that you can plan, with the exception of enemies added by alarms. This game fails on that simple concept and makes it more of a stealth guessing game. Needs to be better for the next one.
You have like 10 bullets maybe and some healing/bomb supplies. I last played TLoU on Normal at the PS3 release. It was a far better stealth experience on Survivor. I don't think I've ever went from "this weapon is kinda trash", to "holy fuck it's the greatest, most beautiful thing known to mankind" like I did with the Bow in TLoU from changing difficulty, a bullet that doesn't always go forever after being shot?
There's like a few sections like this, all encounters have set spawns and paths for enemies too that will be disrupted if you alert them, hell most encounters you can get through without even being seen, though not all unfortunately. The stealth falls short by cheating, like 1 guy sees you suddenly the entire gang know your exact location. Not by spawning more enemies on you, though a few encounters are wave based, they exist to drain resources.
I mean, whether or not it broke was seemingly random. Was there ever a way to determine whether or not it'd break?
The grounded playthrough really exposed just how often enemies genuinely are scripted to pop out of thin air in that game. Like the part where Ellie HAS to shoot a bullet at an enemy because canonically she did in the cutscene, or the part where the truck shows up, if you stealth through the first building, and get past the truck with stealth, the game will automatically spawn enemies as you walk into the next building, and those enemies are programmed to be aggroed and aware of you by default so once you get past the trigger in the doorway they are already angry and taking cover, because there HAS to be a chase sequence with the truck. Drove me crazy and I sincerely hope TLOU2 is nothing like that. Like, if I had a successful stealth run it should count damn it.
It's more than a few. And yes the spawns are predetermined, but there shouldn't be any spawns after the user enters an area. That is if it's a proper stealth game, which this isn't. The hotel basement for instance is a particularly extreme example, but it's indicative of the game as a whole.
You could get around that easily, if they react to sound you can throw a rock etc infront of them so they turn that way and then you won't risk having them randomly turn around when you're moving from cover to cover. Not knowing what they'll do would make stealth so much more interesting imo. There are already some dynamic elements in AC as you say, and I agree that it's deeper than in many other games, but it still shines through that the core stealth gameplay is essentially 8 bit Metalgear in higher resolution.
Head/neck shots, basically cleans kills, wasn't always guaranteed, but you have like a 70% chance of not losing your arrow from my experiences.
Encounters existing to drain resources are perfectly acceptable in a stealth game like The Last of Us, they are in the minority though and make the stealthable encounter far more tense, due to always preventing you building up a decent supply.
Trust me, there is a reason why every single designer behind stealth including the creator of the genre himself doesn't just include random behaviors in their stealth games. It genuinely would break encounter design and lead to a ton of frustration for the player.
Because being able to predict what the enemy will do is why the stealth genre works so well. You genuinely need that level of predictability and control.
Hopefully.
Agreed, but have the enemies spawn in naturally, not popping up out of nowhere. Using the Hotel basement again, get next to the generator, face the empty room, activate sense mode and then start the generator. You see enemies pop into existence out of thin air behind the structures in the room. Instead they could have the heavy enemy (spacing on all the names here) that shows up in this sequence break through a wall letting the rest of the smaller ones in, or crashing through the narrow windows or better yet, have them all there already and make it seem like a stealth section but have it scripted to have part of the hotel collapse waking them all up. What they have in there now is essentially golden eye n64 level of enemy spawning.
Because it's suppose to be an ambush encounter, there is like what? 2 other encounter like it in the base game, one in the sewer with Joel and Sam and when you meets David (also when Joel gets stuck in a fridge trap, but it's like 1 minute long and you can't move. There's also the one where you car gets ambushed, but it's astealthable after the first kill ), so you can stop acting like it's common. A small group enemies are spawned by you picking up a keycard (well 1 is and directly behind you walking past the door, shooting it alerts a few others who also spawned with it but further away/out of sight ), starting the generator spawns a large wave who rush into the room a loud noise just came from. The Last of Us is also a horror game, it'll have horror elements as well as stealth.
Yeah, she didn't alert anyone. It just really looked silly in such a serious game
I think you're missing my point, it's not the purpose of the encounter it's how they implement it. Spawning enemies in out of thin air is just bad design. But I'm using that as an example of how they handle enemy spawns for the whole game. Again, fine for an action game, not for a stealth game. Place them in the environment so the player can plan their attack. When you have a sonar of sorts that lets you see what enemies are around, it's just bad design to have the enemies spawn in after you have "sonared" an area and it's clear. Especially when they pop up in spots where enemies couldn't be naturally.
Heh yeah stealth in general looks silly in games. 100% hidden in tall grass = crouching so the grass goes just over the waist and the rest of your body is clearly visible = enemies can't spot you even up close.
Disable the sonar vision if it bothers you, it kills the tension in the stealth anyway, makes little sense given the setting and is disabled by default on Hard+ for a reason.
That doesn't solve the design problem that the person is talking about.
He's talking about an ambush encounter, not a stealth encounter.
I mean, even with an ambush encounter, enemies not making a single sound and then suddenly spawning out of thin air is very weird. There's a reason we see very little of that in games this gen.
Sure, but it's not a game from this gen. TLoU cheats, especially in that horror focused or ambush encounters, it is not the norm though, as I've went over in another post. That person is acting like it is. There's more encounters where there's x amount of people and all you need to do is get from X to Y, than there is ones like the hotel basement. Both have a place.
Sonar just let me see the issue, it wasn't itself the issue. I was using the ambush encounter as a quick example of how the game spawns in enemies. But it does this all over the place, including stealth encounters. The there's an area where you pass through what look like security checkpoints that leads to a sequence in some abandoned buildings with multiple floors that ends when you exit a building from the second floor back door into an alley of sorts. That whole thing is a stealth section and yet you can walk it with sonar on and watch as cleared areas ahead of you suddenly spawn in enemies out of thin air behind walls. It's not just ambush encounters. And yes it's not a current gen game, but it's also not an N64 game which is where this type of enemy spawning would be more expected (golden eye). I get the sense the developers themselves don't think of it as a stealth game and as such didn't examine how other games handle this as they could have easily built the game around it if they wanted to.
Wait, you are complaining that it loads in enemies in areas you haven't actually cleared yet? And used an ambush encounter where they very intentionally spawn enemies due to character actions with a predetermine trigger point for horror reasons as an example of how they do it mid stealth encounters? Which they very rarely do, just a couple of scripted times due to story reasons. It was a game which brought the platform it was made for to it's limits, you never thought the don't spawn unnecessary stuff until you will actually interact with it?
Let me use metal gear as an example. In the modern games you had sonar/radar telling where enemies were and in some even the direction they are facing, even though you hadn't gotten to that next room or hallway. Now imagine you stealthily take out those enemies and new ones then pop up on the radar in the same area you just cleared. That's what I am talking about. It's not about the fact that they spawn in ahead of me, it's that they spawn in at all instead of being in the world when I arrive. It's something metal gear handles very well, either by having new enemies drop in from a helicopter or come in on a Jeep, not just popping up out of the ground. At least when they come in from outside you can see where they are coming from and plan accordingly. When the spawn in around the corner or behind you, not so much. Your hotel example of the key card is a good one. Yes it's an ambush event. But if you go up to the key card, you can actually rotate the camera in a way to where you can still grab the card and watch the doorway behind you. When you grab the card you see an enemy literally appear out of thin air in the hall outside the doorway, no sonar needed. They can still have an ambush event and have the enemies enter the area in believable but ambushy ways.
Most Metal Gear Solid games all loads between areas and spawns enemies if you get spotted from no where, justified as you said them coming in from some where else, TLoU doesn't do that, enemies don't get reinforcements if they spot you, they do all immediately know exactly where you are, but they don't spawn in more on you too, you just entered a different encounter and the game seemlessly loads, like all ND games on the PS3.
Oh they definitely spawn more enemies on you in the same area. Take the area where Ellie is covering you with a sniper. The listen mode range is enough to cover that whole space so you can clearly see all enemies and can plan out how to tackle them. If you manage to stealthily take out all of the enemies, a new group spawns into the map out of thin air. Here's a vid. This run I somehow had it to where the final enemy and newly spawned enemies were in the same area. There is no defending this:
In this vid it wasn't the AI partner, it was just that the game spawned new enemies literally on top of me and I was instantly spotted. I don't hate the game, quite the opposite. It's just that when it does so many things right, the things it does wrong are glaring.
That not a stealth encounter, you have to kill all those enemies and more spawn in as you do so, it's not possible to stealth it. Are you going to use the encounter where you meet David as another example next? A clear wave mode encounter.
Except that it is possible, I've done it many times. Just had to get used to the fact that new ones spawn in and take them out too. The game doesn't advertise what type of encounter is up next, and for the most part the whole game is geared towards stealth, so saying it was meant to be a certain encounter type after the fact is pointless. And again, to be clear, it's not about the intent of the encounter it's how they implement it. Have more guys come in, fine, but do it elegantly. I'm not sure how you can defend them just spawning them in like it's a test environment. But it's clear you can't separate the method of adding new enemies from the encounter type so I'll leave it be. My point has been made, I think others get it, and I'll just hope they have improved it for part 2.
Except it isn't after the fact, you are locked into that arena until you kill everyone and a new wave spawns pretty consistently based on how many you kill in the arena. The basement encounter starts with enemies immediately aggro'd on to you, because it was a ambush encounter. The stealth encounters are much more open then both and are fully populated, with A.I on set routes and you can clear them by just getting to the exit, you don't have to kill any one usually, some have scripted enemies, like a really easy one to see is when you are getting pinned down by the sniper with Sam and Henry, the Sniper is invisible until you go into his house and trigger the cutscene where you kill him and use his sniper to cover Ellie, Sam and Henry. I've said from the start the game cheats. You've not said how it's not actually a stealth game, you were saying how it spawns enemies into areas you haven't cleared or only just got to and the only way you know is because listen mode shows it happening.
As I said, I'm not talking about the encounter types, I was giving examples of times where it's easy to see them spawn out of thin air . I already gave an example of a stealth area with the security checkpoint section. You can kill all of the enemies outside, use listen mode which has a range to see well into the abandoned buildings you have to go into to see no more enemies are around, then walk closer to the building and they spawn in right in side the building well within listen mode range, and they spawn close to whatever side of the building you try and enter. So you can't discover they spawn on one side and try from the other because they just spawn in on that side instead. Unless you have a creative name for that type of encounter too?
Except you are, because you keep using them as examples or MGS for some reason, despite it literally loading each individual area you enter, the exception being a open world game that as a long load every time you fly in to the map as examples of them constantly spawning enemies on you.
I agree with a lot of this. Enemy spawning / monster closets / obvious combat arenas have always been the biggest flaw with Naughty Dog games. Hopefully TLOU2 fixes this.
I was using examples of how the game spawns enemies into the play field out of thin air, which has no place in a stealth game in my opinion. You were the one that started dismissing my examples as encounters that aren't stealth encounters, so I guess for those it's ok to spawn them out of thin air? And I used MGS as an example of a game that doesn't spawn them into the play field out of thin air, and that's all I used MGS for. So I think you are confused on what my original point was so I'll make it clear. In my opinion, in any play field in a stealth game, all enemies should be present in the environment unless they are brought in by alarm or are loaded in so far ahead of the player that it doesn't matter. Any new enemies should be added in a believable way, not sprouting out of the ground. I should be able to determine an area is clear of enemies with whatever tools the game provides to do so, and not have enemies subsequently appear out of nowhere in said area. I don't see how this isn't the best way a stealth game should handle this, and many games do it just fine.
If you have a shiv, you always should on easy, because you get so much supplies, they don't 1 hit kill you.
You've gave 1 example of thin air, most spawn out of sight or run into the arena (including the arena where you had a single enemy spawn in sight), you using built in wall hacks to see stuff spawning in out of sight means nothing and doesn't matter either, it almost never actually affects stealth, you entering a new area and it loading stuff in means nothing either, those section likely still look like they are from a PS1 whilst it's happening. Your original example was also essentially an alarm, you changed it after I told you as much, you then said areas you hadn't even cleared as an example, before changing again.
