Hide me please!

Feedback/Feature Requests
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After knowing about Generation Zero a few years ago, I got reminded about it when a friend brought it up and thought I’ll check it out now and started playing it a few days ago. But before that, I played theHunter: Call of the Wild(COTW) for quite a while, and I guess a veteran on it already. When I checked out Gen Zero, I realized that COTW and Gen Zero are basically siblings and thought I’d try to use the playstyle that I’m used to from COTW and apply it to Gen Zero. And it worked! I found that they have similarities and differences at the same time. You both need to hide to get easy kills but how the targets respond to the kill are different. On COTW, everyone runs away. On Gen Zero, everyone runs towards you. And when that happens, I unfortunately need to put down the .243 and change to a assault rifle or smg. And I kinda feel sad about that, I think it can be a really viable option to play the game.

So I’d like to make a proposal, to have some tools or skills that can help/support a stealth playstyle.

I think everyone feels hacking doesn’t really work as well we’d like it to be. I picked that skill route at first because I thought I would be able to make the robots fight each other and make my life easier because I have to deal with less enemies, well I guess if the only enemy in the game are the dogs. It’s pretty much useless on higher tier enemies. The thing that gave me the idea that it was so op was when I joined a guys on multiplayer that seemed to have hacked harvesters multiple times to fight the firebird, or maybe that guy have a different “skill”. Visibility doesn’t seem to work that well as well. Once you shot multiple times, I think the robots can already zero in on your location, which I don’t have to do if only we got a different thing that I’d like to propose as well from COTW.

In COTW, we got a thing called ground blinds, and I think something like that can be nice to have. I personally don’t really use it as I don’t really like to stay on a place for too long, but I think you use it to have cover/concealment anywhere you want. From my short experience using them, it don’t decrease your visibility that much when you’re face to face with the animals. But because Gen Zero, in a way is science fictiony, like a high-tech ground blind thing would be awesome. Something like can take hits and heavily decrease your visibility, or flimsy af but makes you completely undetectable.

Another thing I’d like to see is a quieter sniper rifle. Sure, 50 cal is awesome and that railgun one, but I think they’ll also attract the bots too quickly. I already have the 4 star 50 cal from multiplayer but just got the worn version yesterday on story and haven’t tried it.I don’t know a about guns, but on COTW, the most powerful sniper rifle is a 7mm. Maybe a suppressed 7mm might be nice. Something that maybe have 70% of the 50 cal damage and just a tad loud would be very, very nice. As long as it’s quiet and doesn’t make the fights too long, I’d be happy with that. A bit stronger bullet debuff compared to assault rifle/machine gun/smg could also help.

For the other thing that I said I would like to propose, zeroing. In COTW, if you use rifles, you can have a skill that changes your scopes zeroing. After playing for quite a while now, I kind of able to guess what zeroing I need to use based on how far the animal is just by looking. But because of Gen Zero don’t have zeroing, I most of the time I had to waste some bullets. I’m quite used to shot something 300m out with the help of the zeroing presets, but on Gen Zero, which I don’t know what zeroing number is hardcoded in the game(I think it’s quite low), I can’t really go that far away from the bots because the bot “vitals” would become very small and difficult to hit with the small zeroing.

And also, I think this(stealth playstyle) might help lore-wise. What if this teenagers went to extreme cautious way to fight the bots. Maybe the military thought they could fight fire with fire. Because they got the big guns, they thought they could outgun the machines. But the machines are more versatile than they anticipated, and that’s why they lost. Our characters, who got no military training, knows they need to be careful, try to not fight the bots face-to-face, be sneaky, check your surrounding, just crawl always,(some of those thing I’ve said are things I normally do in COTW, and I think most players who know how to play the game properly) and as that one loading message said, try to not fight always.

I’ve already seen some YouTube videos of Gen Zero gameplay and I think the endgame as well. And unfortunately, I think my stealth playstyle might not be useful on those part of the story. But maybe high level players would like the stress-free(maybe) change of pace offered by this playstyle, because that’s what I really like about COTW. Just walking around and shooting something if I see a target.(Hoo, clutch idea before sending the topic. Now I got the attention of the whales)

I’ve seen tons of Gen Zero DLC that are for offense, I want to see something for stealth. And hopefully it isn’t more expensive than a COTW DLC lol.

I think that’s all I got for now. I might have forgotten something, so I’ll just update this if I remember something or got some more suggestion regarding my proposed stealth playstyle.

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So, I tried to go sniping tanks yesterday, and I was a bit disappointed and annoyed. The bots are too smart. With only 1 shot, and they already zero in on you. And even if you hide behind cover immediately after a shot, they still somehow know where you are. Max visibility I think did help on the resets, but the bots are too aggressive that shooting again will make them chase you really, really hard. I did experience that, at least the prototype, somehow “froze” when it was behind some not so conventional cover, like it below a small slope(and I’m prone) and it partly behind a hill. Oh, btw, I’ve been always using a silencer on everything. I think I was using a 5 star silencer on the .270 when I started my test. When I felt like it’s worthless to even try to go long long range anymore, I switched to that 5.56 AR semi auto and tried to whittle down the 1st tank I tried, and at the end I did use the 50 cal. Because I thought, well, being sneaky isn’t really gonna work, so let’s just go loud.

So, if ever, the bots’ behavior might need to be changed to enable the stealth gameplay. But the bots are actually too smart I think currently, so maybe there’s really some changes that needs to be made, because they got ultra instinct I think.

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Just a heads up, this is almost 2 pages long text.

After playing for quite a while now since my last reply/comment, I’m thinking, maybe stealth was already in the game, albeit “expensive” and quite tedious to get/use. And quite counter-intuitive from my initial thoughts.

One of the things I quite enjoy back on my COTW days is joining multiplayer lobbies, I don’t know why. Just having other people around just makes it a bit more fun to me even if we can’t really team up because it’s against geneva convention to gang up against those a poor little deers. And on GZ, it’s quite rewarding and OP because, if you’re lucky, you get to join people take down a reaper, and you know what a reaper might give. Because being stealthy is tiring in it’s own way, so I did multiplayer more than doing the missions. And now, I think I got all the current experimental(I saw a video that new ones are coming. Man, I hope the bolt-action ones become quite OP), and maybe an unexpected aspect of GZ that would make the stealth gameplay work.

So you might think that the 50 cal is the linchpin of stealth gameplay, which it kinda does. But there’s a more important thing you need, camouflage/visibility stats. So I didn’t thoroughly test not having the camouflage clothes, but I remember that just visibility skill(which does the opposite of it’s name) isn’t enough. After doing a couple of multiplayer(base def/fnix base attack) runs, I realized that I have enough clothes to get to 10 visibility reduction and looking like a cool 80s rock star, and that’s when I felt like the stealth gameplay could work. And I changed my mindset, which is to not just take shot whenever I want, but to take as far as I can, or just more or a bit less than 400m out. And because this game doesn’t have that much bullet drop, computing a long range shot doesn’t really exist that much.

When I begone taking shots 400m out, I realized that the experimental 50 cal may or may not be counter-intuitive. On my first thought, I thought it was so loud it’s gonna disturb the whole town, but it doesn’t, or maybe it’s also because of my stat build. Taking very far shots, and maybe with my 10 visibility reduction, does something unexpected to the bots for me at first. They’ll know that they got shot, but they don’t know from where. They’ll run towards you for a bit, then stop and look around, and would repeat that until around 60m(?) and might be already dead or be able to actually see you now and retaliate. Around that time, I already got the experimental one. And maybe with my world still at a really low level, it takes quite a handful of shots to kill most enemies. And I was quite happy to discover this, mission success. But I found something that Obi Wan wouldn’t like, that the high ground isn’t always an advantage. You might think, “This is bullshit!!!”. But unfortunately it is what it is. I think because the bots can look up a bit, they can spot you and attack back immediately. But it doesn’t always happen, as long as you go 400m out, it seems like they can’t spot you immediately, even after they already ran towards you multiple times.

Another benefit of my stat build is it seems like you could crawl anywhere if you want, I once crawled around a fnix base because I wanted to a side of the map with a building on the map. I’m kind of a completionist, so got the urge to go to everything that looks like there’s something there on the map, and didn’t expect that there’s quite a scary placed fnix base on Hallabacken. There’s tons of dogs, hunter and a rival harvester when I went to check. Because of the nature of the area, there’s no other way to go to the building, which was just a barn, the only options I had was to go around a bit or just crawl on the parts where there’s not much bots, or so I thought. Because it was dark when I went to the location, I didn’t see most of the bots, and there was quite a lot patrolling that base. I was confident that if I don’t stick to close the bots, I’d be safe, so I took the lazy route of just crawling. There was a couple dogs beside me and they didn’t detect me. When I was already in the middle of crawling, I saw that a hunter was walking towards me, and I got a bit scared to be honest. I think even if you are a couple meters away from the bots, and you are on their foot level, they can’t see you. But if you are already underneath their “eyes”, they’ll slowly see you. I was quite lucky that I didn’t get to stay underneath the hunter and was able to still crawl away. Also, with the help of smoke grenade, I can escape combat faster than other people. There was only 1 instance that I get to see it, of course on multiplayer. So I was going to where the host was fighting and the worst bully spotted me, stupid firebird. After 4-5(?) smoke grenades, I have already escaped combat. Then someone was going the same way as me. Because I wanted to help, I threw smoke grenades towards him. And I don’t think the guy escaped combat, but I was able to escape fast. Update on the crawling: I could stalk the bots if I wanted to. Surrounded by 2 military hunters and 2 dogs, they didn’t see me even if I was already on tickle distance, given I was on foot level of them.

And speaking of smoke grenades, it was very useful to being stealthy. The throwing is kinda janky tho, and I’m not yet used to it to be honest, but it provides nice cover, unless the bot you’re against have IR. And speaking of IR, if you want to incorporate smoke grenades to your playstyle, you’ll want IR on your guns as well. Which isn’t that much of a problem because it seems like it’s the best vision module, even in the dark. On the throwing as well, it’s really weird. Given I don’t have the throw accuracy skill yet, but I remember I didn’t feel anything different when I got that before. Also, some stuff that you think should stop the throwables doesn’t, like some small rocks IIRC. Which kinda messes your strategy. And low throw would be nice, because most of the time, I don’t really want to throw smoke grenades far. Because even if you’re already standing facing the ground, it still goes quite far.

A thing that I thought was gonna make my life easier was the explosive 50 cal ammo, which is quite a disappointment. It’s powered by RNGesus it seems. It does explode, but not always. It just leave some explosion sounds for some reason, without the michael bay effects, so sad. And I don’t understand the decision to make it that way. GZ isn’t a competitive game, just make the players as strong as you can. Let’s make Mr. Bay want to make a movie out of the game, come on. Kaboom kaboom baby. It might overshadow the rpg? So what? A cooperative game doesn’t really need to care about weapon balances. Now, I think FMJ is way better. Because when I go 400m out sniping, I don’t really care about accuracy that much. I more of rush the bots down, because again, you can’t really go full stealth in the game. And because of that, I more of want to hit more stuff. And sometimes I just need a few shots against hunters and 1 shot to dogs.

And with all the things I’ve said, it might not be a strategy usable by beginners or people who doesn’t want to join multiplayer. After a while, setting traps isn’t viable anymore because of the amount of bots increases the deeper you get on the map, especially on the cool places like the bunkers. The outside of the bunkers are littered with hunters, dogs and tanks, or maybe that’s just the airbase. And on those places, I don’t think trapping would work because there’s a lot of variables that might not line up as much as you want. Because trapping needs a lot of planning, and if the you didn’t place the radio or boombox right, then most of the time, you might have to go the be ready to go bratatat. And you’ll need tons of explosive tanks to blow up a tank, which could be a big detriment if you don’t have the storage skill yet. On my initial test, you need more than 8 explosive tanks to ko even just the prototype one. And you’ll need a 50 cal, which you’ll get kinda late, so you can’t do the play style right of the bat. Also, for comfort, you’ll want a 8-16x scope, even just the 1 crown. And the play style heavily rely, I think, on clothes schematics, which isn’t that easy to get.

So, want to try the play style? I think I’ve give everything I know. I might do more testing later on and would probably add another reply for it.

I still want a stealth hunting blind. Sometimes, there’s just no good place to hide and having a structure you can plop on the ground to fix that problem would be very nice.

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In my agenda.

You’re writing a book :smile:

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Lmao, I might have. Just wanted to post everything I have in one go

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Omg, experimental .270. That fits this playstyle really well. And you going 300m out would be very spicy.