Stealth kills are broken

Bugs
#19

Hollywood and other games have created a HUGE false impression about “stealth kills”. In real life, the purpose of a “Stealth Kill” is primarily using stealth to get into a position from which to launch a killing attack on the enemy without giving him any chance to hurt you in return. Done right, this IS rather quieter than a stand-up fight, but it still unavoidably makes a fair amount of noise. So you’re only going to remain undetected by other enemies if you make the kill out of earshot.

There are several sources of noise when killing somebody with a knife. These are:

Impact of the Blow: If you attack through bone (either the ribcage or the skull), you have to hit hard enough to get through. At the very least, this sounds like a good punch landing in a fistfight. If you pull the guy’s head back and stab down through the base of his throat, while the knife going in doesn’t make much noise, there’s still the thump of you pulling his back into your chest.

Victim Noise: Other than going into the base of the skull, there’s no instant death here. Even when stabbed down through the aorta and into the heart, it will still take some seconds for the victim to bleed into unconsciousness. During this time, the victim will at least gurgle fairly loudly, grunt, and maybe cry out in pain if you left that an option. Besides this, the victim will likely thrash about some (even when skull-stabbed) and will likely drop whatever he was holding at the time. There’s not much you can do about that because you’re usually using both hands to hold his head just right and stab, so you can’t control the guy’s arms.

Vertical-to-Horizontal Noise: If your victim was standing up, he’s now going down. If you let him fall naturally, he’ll make a lot of noise. If you lower him as best you can (realizing he’ll be thrashing at least some, maybe a lot), you still make noise although this depends somewhat on what the victim was wearing and holding, and what the ground surface is.

Bottom line is, unless there’s something to keep others from hearing all this, you’re going to be heard. Simple as that. What makes others not hear all this is distance, intervening walls, and ambient noise. If you’re in the same room with other enemies, you’re busted. If you’re in the next room, MAYBE you can get away with it depending on what the intervening wall is and how loud other activities are at the time. The quieter it is, like if everybody’s asleep, the more noticeable your noise will be. So if you’re in a busy market, you could well get away with it just out of sight around a corner because the noise will either blend in with the ambient or be covered by it.

2 Likes
#20

That’s why there is usually 1 bandit awake and patrolling. Killing him stealthy without alarming the rest must be normal because that’s the dangers of camping in the forrest. That’s also why there are night patrols in cities. The only problem with them is that they don’t seem to give a shit if you are lurking near a house door for a long time or if you are suspicious. They only care for the Torch, if only they stumble on you.

#21

This is a game not real life. And yeah maybe someone stood directly next to him would hear somethig but the whole garrison come on behave. And people can still be killed quietly from behind stabbing in the neck or heart is ending things quickly and quietly enough especially from a opponent who is unaware of your presence ie sleeping even chocking someone out can be quiet if done right. Having a bandit patrolling a camp at nice actually makes sense as it’s something that would happen. The AI is appaling it’s either thick as fuck and tries fist fighting you when your in full hear with a sword out. Or their all Sherlock Holmes and immadielty find the body in the woods and make a B line for you whose in disguise theres no middle ground that’s it. There will be people who blindly defend it but for now in this state the game is a mess. Get stuck on a random push while sneaking around and quest that are broken are a few examples.

#22

Stealth and reputation system needs addressed imho.
Saying “use another tactic, there’s many ways to complete a quest” is stupid, if stealth is in the game it should work.
I can understand someone beside a sleeping victim waking up, but people in other rooms or even other houses rushing in to investigate is straight up broken.

1 Like
#23

Yeah that was the same for me, I wondered after if maybe I only had to wear what was in the trunk, and take everything off I had, like weapons, rings etc.

I ended up killing the whole camp in batches of 3 or 4 at the gatehouse. I was knee deep in dead bodies at the end.

#24

This particular quest… I managed to stealth kill 6 guys, before getting to hostages. But - SPOILER below.

Spoiler

You are not supposed to succeed in this quest. No matter what you do… I don’t like it from gaming perspective, but I understand it as neccessary for story telling… So just raise alarm and run. Don’t bother trying doing anything else, because you can’t really rescue them this way.

Otherwise, stealth worked really well for me…when I prepared, scouted around bandit camp and stealth killed them one by one (while wearing black clothes, making as little noise as possible) it worked incredibly well, even though it was during day. So I didn’t have this issue - it worked in that night attack mission too…but see spoiler part where was problem with that.

1 Like
#25

Considering adults typically spend 20% of their time in REM sleep this arguement is invalid… has anyone got stealth to level 10+? It maybe more quite the higher the level idk, but if you only have it to 5 i cant see it being succesfully quite everytime.

1 Like
#26

So then by everyone elses logic, since all other bandits are sleeping so they shouldnt be able to hear you, you just take the 1 bandit out and then everyone else is fair game…it would still make it way too easy vs trying to find a balance

#27
Summary

yup…kinda bunk, but as you said it was necessary for the story. Should have just let us rescue other people and have had Radzig and Stephanie being kept in the castle or some such.

#28

The stealth system is not perfect as it stands. I agree that knocking someone out in a tent 20 meters away from everyone else shouldn’t get the whole camp agitated. At the same time, saying that knocking someone out (or stabbing them in the heart) shouldn’t wake up another person sleeping right next to him is outright ridiculous.

There needs to be a balance between stealth and stealth kills being OP and being able to chain them endlessly and NPCs being Dr. Manhattan kind of psychic and detecting you when they shouldn’t.

And no, your opinion that basically noone should hear you when you perform stealth kills pretty much no matter what (and it doesn’t matter that it makes the whole game an absolute walk in the park) wouldn’t make the game (especially a game that tries to be somewhat realistic) any better than its current state, it would break it completely. Stealth isn’t “supposed to work” like the ultimate tactic to everything as it wouldn’t in real life. Stealth-killing 50 armed guys in a military camp with patrols etc. one after another doesn’t make any sense at all and there need to be repercussions to stealth.

I tried to do a lot of things stealthily, most notably the “Nest of Vipers” quest in the Cuman camp. What I don’t like is that sabotaging the arrows is outright impossible without at least someone noticing and therefore bringing the whole camp of bandits screaming after you. I managed to “cheese” the game to be able to poison the food pots stealthily, but ONLY through repeatedly realoding the game - the funny thing is that in 1 out of multiple tries, the guard that detected me every time loaded tilted to the side so that I could poison the pot undetected. This kind of “random” in stealth and stealth missions is bad. On the other hand , I can imagine that properly designing the sabotage and stealth “missions” (so that there is always an opening which you can exploit by watching guards’ patterns etc.) would be an absolute fuckton amount of work as they would be basically making a whole new Thief game inside KC:D. - and I am not even sure whether it would be possible as NPCs in the game are kind of independent and have their cycles with different priorities, so there is a huge amount of scenarios that can occur.

#29

Even killing the patrolling guard alarts the sleepers sometimes. And if you can’t stealth kill a camp then what’s the point of levelling stealth up.

#30

I think stealth kills and knockouts should work better then they do, but not necessarily when your target is sleeping right next to another NPC. If my target is in one tent and another NPC is in another tent across the fire pit/road then perhaps you could get away with that. The best way to stealth kill a camp, and this doesn’t work in Pribaslavitz because it is part of the mission, is to get Bane potion or some other heavy hitting potion and poison the pots/wine bladders and wait.

Realistically if you went around choking people out at night or stabbing people while they sleep someone would hear you eventually, it’s not completely silent. I do think, if you can shoot someone from far enough away and no one sees it the damage should be silent; the only noise should be your bow and the contact of arrow to metal or wood or whatever.

Also these NPCs wake up and go to sleep at different rates…they’re not always in a deep sleep, some have literally just laid down.

#31

Yes, I agree that should be improved as I wrote above - “There needs to be a balance between stealth and stealth kills being OP and being able to chain them endlessly and NPCs being Dr. Manhattan kind of psychic and detecting you when they shouldn’t.” right now, NPCs can detect you even though they are 5 rooms away (I think the reason behind this is that the game doesn’t properly detect or “simulate” the impact walls would have on reducing noise etc.).

Also, it makes sense that in the current version of the game, some NPCs “resist” takedowns to a degree. This is another reason to keep levelling up stealth - the higher level in stealth you have, the lesser chance they have of resisting your takedowns - basically the game is trying to say: “Hang on a minute, you are a shit-stained peasant that just left Skalitz, it doesn’t make any sense that you would stealthily take down this experienced soldier in full armor with your stealth skill of 1!” Personally, I think it is already pretty stupid that you can “knock out” for example the Wayfaring Knight and rob him blind of his sweet end-game armor… like how do you even knock out a guy dressed in full plate?

Right now, what also doesn’t make sense to me is that even if you fail a takedown and a guard says that you should surrender (and waits a few seconds before you do or don’t before starting to hit you), you can just crouch behind him and take him down again if you succeed. That shouldn’t be possible at all.

On the other hand (and I haven’t yet tried this a lot), I would guess that you (Henry) make much less noise when knocking out people or stealth-killing them with stealth skill 20 than with stealth skill 5, therefore improving your chances.

All these are reasons to keep levelling up stealth.

#32

Yeah but what if poisoning and waiting isn’t how you want to play tough shit then is it.

#33

Yes, because that’s not the kind of game this is. It’s meant to come somewhat close to the what things would be like in the real world while still being a game. It’s not like a “do-whatever-kind-of-batshit-crazy-shit-you-want-to-do” sandbox game like GTA V. I’ve had a lot of success with stealth in the game, you just have to keep in mind that you have to be very careful and pick your spots, not overdo it and not get caught, otherwise the consequences are severe.

3 Likes
#34

well you have to find a mix of playability and realism…it’s not realistic, at least not without max level anyway, to just sneak in and kill everyone in there sleep when they all sleep like 1 foot away from each other. I think they need to work on an area of hearing for sleeping vs awake and also account for NPCs who have just fallen asleep vs those who have been for a while. Mix that with a difference in stealth kill and stealth knockout, as a kill would be quicker but be more costly if you are caught so it should make less noise then someone struggling as they suffocate; which would take at least a minute or two in real life at the minimum. Just a little balance

#35

if you walk into a house with one person, and the door is closed you will be fine…if there are multiple people in the house then these balances and your skill would come in to play. Henry is a 20 something naive, un skilled boy…until he works, extensively, on said skills

#36

With this mission, you’re not supposed to kill those two guards. Just knock them unconscious. My stealth/gear is max, and there’s no way to kill them (as someone across the castle will raise alarm). I just knocked them out and kept going. I found out what the mission was wanting, and it wasn’t wanting any killing. It’s a story driven mission, not a “clear the castle and find stephanie and radzig” mission. It’s not like a bandit or cuman camp that you clear out. You’re trying to avoid detection altogether. Not slaughter the castle. Sometimes when people are crying bugs it’s not a bug, but the way the game is intended for that particular quest to pan out.

#37

The quest is a little broken, (Also spoilers so don’t read if you don’t want to know how to clear the quest) you need to knock the two guards out that the soldier tells you to, and then follow Hans (He’ll be shortly behind) and do what he says. Basically towards the end if you follow him he leads you close to the room you originally were given in Talemberg. You just talk to the people inside there and they tell you they don’t know where they’re (stephanie and Radzig) are at. You then go talk to Hans who still is stealthed outside the doorway, and you’ll get noticed by an archer who shoots Hans. You then carry him out back the same way you laddered in, quest complete.

#38

I cant remember for certain if I tried killing or knockout but I was pretty sure I tried knockout…the two guards dont move, except the one who moves closer to the other and then back; but never more than like 4 feet away and I was always heard by the other guy…might have tried killing, I honestly can’t remember

© 2015 Warhorse Studios www.warhorsestudios.cz