"Entered Combat" - Issues

Support and Bug Reports
1

I am a big dummy and originally posted this in “Feedback/Feature Requests” without thinking :drooling_face:
Now it is where it’s supposed to be!

I have been playing GZ heavily lately and I have noticed something about the awareness/entered combat system. I’m wondering if anyone has noticed this, if it’s always been there for you or if it is something new since the last hotfix. For me, it seems like this started happening very recently!

Sometimes I am discovered by an enemy despite,

  1. Ever having any increasing awareness meter or an awareness meter at all, just immediately “entered combat” without ever engaging

  2. While prone, very far away from any enemy (sometimes max distance where enemies appear) - while sneaking up and while enemies are busy battling each other - instant discovered, no awareness meter, immediately fired upon even disengaging the battle they were having

  3. Through walls, even with above aspects included and without ever engaging in any way.

I am a stealthy player by heart, I love sneaking, sniping and ambushing until it’s all out war. I play almost every FPS like this, so I am very in tune with where I am and enemy awareness levels. I’ve always played GZ stealthy and I do not remember these issues happening before. My girlfriend plays co op with me often and we both noticed we were constantly being discovered when we feel we definitely should not have been (and didn’t before). We both agreed it seemed new… although I don’t remember the hot fix notes mentioning anything related to this so it probably isn’t related. It definitely lowers immersion and strategic planning of an attack, which GZ does well IMO

I should add we have both visibility reduction skills and one movement noise skill added. I have two pieces of clothing with visibility reduction (I forget which ones or what percentage only that I do have some). I also use the “noise reduction” augment on every gun I use as a secondary augment, which should help with being discovered. This on top of almost always approaching enemies prone, crouched, slowly and from a great distance.

I should also add this doesn’t happen ALL the time but VERY often and enough to annoy us!

Anyone else experience enemy discovery issues? Does it feel new or has it always been there? Are the visibility and noise systems just broken? Am I just not stealthy enough? Lol. I have played hundreds of hours in 2023 and I don’t remember this happening before, although I took an 8 to 10 month break sometime back so I may just have forgot this was normal.

By the way I did see there was a similar locked thread about “Visibility and Movement noise” skills making you more visible and louder. I’m just not convinced this issue is specifically related to those skills as the cause (happened before I took any visibility reduction skills as well). However if this thread should go somewhere else, sorry about that and by all means move it there.

Thanks everyone! :saluting_face:

Platform: PS5

Players: 2

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2

Another guy I play with regularly and I, we’re both on plain old XB1 consoles and we do experience the same things from time to time. We’ve been playing off and on for more than a year, year and a quarter maybe. In all that time, we’ve had these issues you’ve described.

In the case of Soviet and Swedish machines fighting one another, leading to the player being auto-detected and engaged, I read elsewhere that it is supposedly an unfortunate limitation of the game. When the game was first released, there were only two factions—player characters, and the rogue Swedish machines. The Soviets hadn’t entered the picture, yet. So, the game wasn’t initially designed in such a way that it supported more factions, which lead to it not handling these three-way engagements very well… At least, I think that was more or less how I saw it explained before.

As for engagements with only one other faction (player vs. Swedes, or player vs. Soviets), there seem to be two things going on… In some cases, certain machines “guarding” certain locations do appear to be especially alert, very aware. That could be considered realistic, or may otherwise be acceptable. In other cases, it seems like some terrain features or scenery/structures don’t block visibility or prevent detection like they should.

That second case happens for me mostly during Base Assaults, but also sometimes seems to happen when inside of buildings or other structures. In Base Assault, it seems like turrets and the machines can sometimes detect me through walls, like certain wall sections aren’t there from their perspective. I’ve even been shot through walls before. The wall will be there from my point of view, however, so I’ll be unable to return fire directly. In bunkers or structures, I’ll sometimes be overflown by a Firebird, or there may be Runners and Seekers on the hill/mountain over a bunker, and I’ll often get a detection meter reading from them, as if they can see through the ground or the roof of the building, which they shouldn’t be able to do.

While some of these things aren’t necessarily problems (high alert enemies in some areas, etc), it definitely seems like there is some room for improvement in some areas…even if maybe not in all areas, unfortunately.

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It’s good to know this isn’t something I was imagining. I’m not sure why it seemed as though it was a new issue to me though, as I’ve played for a long time. Also, that is an interesting take on the third faction point you made. That explains that particular issue.

This is how I like to handle the situation, by assuming that there was some hidden technology allowing some of the machines to detect us regardless. Although part of me was hoping this is a bug that can be fixed, which is why I made the post.

4

It is a REAL pain when you are trying to sneak by an enemy to have another faction show up and the enemy fight now has me in the middle of it and spotted while laying on the ground in a big ole bush.

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5

It’s just guessing, but I believe that it depends on how the combat system once was designed.
There was only us and FNIX in the beginning.

To get into combat, it wasn’t the trigger that we started combat, but that FNIX started combat. If you shoot at a machine or a machine detects and shoots at you, combat started. For FNIX. And therefore for the player.

This was an original core system and I believe they never changed it after introducing the soviets.

So it’s still the trigger that if FNIX gets into combat (and that also counts for the soviet machines… You know, copy’n’paste), you are in combat… But they forgot that FNIX or the soviets could also get into combat with each other so if you’re next to a location where FNIX and/or soviets get into combat, then you are in combat, too, although you maybe never was detected.

7

Much agreed. This happens to me all the time. I usually end up going full Rambo and eat all of my adrenaline shots :upside_down_face:.

8

Makes sense and seems to be the explanation for the targeting issues. As I recall it was mentioned somewhere (PC crashing on startup issues after the recent hotfix?) that GZ content add-ons and bug fixes being applied eventually started to affect some of the core functions originally set in place. This seems likely to be the case for the Soviets machines like you mentioned. Thanks for the info on this.

9

Right. Worst part of it to me is the sudden rain of artillery that usually comes from those situations.

Sneaking along, come across FNIX and Soviet forces, you’re in what should be perfect concealment…

They start fighting, you get the combat notification…but no gunfire in your direction, yet.

Then, suddenly, here comes a salvo of grenade rounds from a GL Lynx, or a rocket barrage from a Harvester, Wolf, or Tank, or a mortar shell from a Tank, or a howitzer shell from a top tier Firebird. Or a grenade round or concussion rifle shot from a Hunter, or linear accelerator round from a Tank.

Just “BOOM, DEAD.”

10

I was just in a house, safe I thought, and reading up on the forum for a quick minute, when when I heard the windows shatter from Lynx attacks, but I was not in combat. I went back to the game, went outside, and there where five or six lynxes targeting a runner. I just got caught in their crossfire.

However, these things happening do not bother me at all, what’s more, I loved it. :coffee:

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11

What bothers some folks is just how it happens, sometimes—that “magically detected and engaged at max range, despite what should be perfect concealment” bit.

Stray gun fire or whatever is one thing, perfectly fine or even to be expected…but “magically detected” is another, less cool thing.

12

Simply that.
And yes, it’s sometimes annoying, frustrating and breaking the immersion. Like you said, stray gun fire is something different. That’s cool indeed.

I just think… This is so old code, quite a part of the core elements of the original GZ, that I don’t believe that they will ever touch it.

On the other hand Carni said several times that they currently (for improving the performance and stability in general) look at many lines of this old code to improve the game overall.
Of course, that’s no easy project, but let’s hope that they also take a look at these outdated mechanics.

@SR_Carni Can you say anything about that? Or can you take this question to talk about with the team?
Thx

13

Oh boy… yeah the machine AI is a WHOLE different beast, one that we also plan to improve in the future, we just haven’t set in stone when and how exactly it’s going to happen :sweat_smile: I will let you know if I find out more

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