Stealth kills are broken

Bugs
#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

#39

Whole families have been murederd in their sleep so it’s doable if gurkahs in WW2 can kill a Japanese patrol by only cutting their throats then people sleeping defiantly won’t hear you. A lot of people are experiencing it. I enjoy the game but pointing out problems will make it better. Take the lockpicking it was impossible on console but people defended it with get higher or get good. Developers need feedback more people are saying stealth is broken then their are people saying it’s fine.

1 Like
#40

either way, i completed the whole story last night, minus a bunch of quests obviously so I’ll be restarting tonight and doing other stuff and trying stuff again different ways so I’m not too worried

#41

I have trouble with the stealthkills myself, I can enter a cumen/bandit camp and all but one will be sleeping, I stealth kill the one that’s awake sitting at the fire, and all four sleepers will wake right away even if there was no discernible noise. Oddly it’s easier to actually poison the food at the fire (and get away without arousing attention) while standing behind the awake guy who is right at the food than it is to stealth kill him and get away with it. :joy:

I’m sure it’s not meant to be “easy” so you can’t just kill every sleeping enemy in ten seconds (no challenge) but it’s weird that they all wake up so easily at once. Not even just one waking up and yelling for the others to get up, they all simultaneously wake, lol.

Only way I can really find a use for stealtkill is if the enemy wanders far out of the camp. Every camp I’ve encountered, I’ve entirely poisoned to death because stealth killing isn’t really in my favour when they all wake and you end up with four against one, lol (and at least three sleep in their complete set of armour!) :joy:

#42

You were heard by the other guy because your stealth was probably not high. My noise was 0 and I still got heard the first time knocking the guard out. It’s a little more difficult, maybe because it is quest related.

#43

My whole playthrough has been a deep stealth build. There’s a pattern to clearing out cuman/bandit camps, and I’ve done it now on dozens. The outlier guards you can stealth kill with ease. Usually I shoot an arrow into the camp and they wake up. They will start patrolling. You can pick them off one by one with ease. People make it harder than it has to be with stealth killing. No, you’re not going to kill the whole camp by holding F. You have to be creative, as in real life.

#44

that may be it, it wasnt terrible but i wasnt necessarily a stealth character. Got my visibility to about 28 conspic to like 27/28 and noise was 0 so not all that impressive, including that I wasnt probably super high stealth. Doesnt matter to me really, the mission still worked out, kinda lol

1 Like
#45

Obviously spoken by somebody who has never stuck a real knife in a real person.

This game tries to be real. In real life, there is no such thing as a silent kill. There is always a fair amount of noise (and usually no instant death), easily noticeable to anybody in the same room and likely in the next room as well. Or a fair distance away outdoors, especially if there’s little ambient noise.

Stealth is for sneaking up on this one target, so you can deliver a lethal, surprise attack. The purpose for delivering a lethal, surprise attack is that it’s about the only way you can reasonably expect to come out of a knife fight unscathed. If you give the other guy any chance to fight back, you’ll almost certainly end up with a nasty cut or stab even if you win (and you might not win). You can’t block every attack and even those you block will likely cut your arm badly. So you always want to “stealth kill” your opponent even if there’s not another soul for miles around. It’s simple self-preservation.

“Stealth kills” are NOT for moving through a darkened building like the Angel of Death, silently slaughtering roomfuls of sleeping people. That’s pure hollywood and legend. You always make noise doing it, and this noise sounds exactly like what’s causing it: extreme violence. This is immediately recognizable to most folks due to millennia of evolution, and especially to those with any military experience, like guards, who have likely done it themselves often enough.

So, really and truly, if you do a “Stealth kill” in a room with anybody else in it, awake or asleep, you’r busted. There’s a good chance folks rather farther away will hear it, too. Think about how far away you can hear somebody drop a cardboard box across your house, or hear the kick of a soccer ball across a crowd of screaming fans. And once one guard hears the unmistakable sounds of violence, he’ll raise the alarm and the rest will come running.

That is what you should expect from a game that tries hard to be realistic. If you’re expecting something else, you’ve played too many fantasy games. Because it’s pure fantasy to expect anything resembling instant, silent kills.

1 Like
#46

100% agree, But also agree with saying it is OP. I think it should really rely on you killing someone an remaining unnoticed should depend on Stealth Level and Noise. So if you have crap stealth and noisy, You should be noticed, But if you have very high stealth and so on, You should be able to get away with it. Killing someone silently should have a chance timer, Like pickpocketing… Some time it works and sometimes it does not, The lower the skill, the higher chance you get caught, The higher the skill, The less chance you get caught…But nothing is 100% for sure. I hope they change it to this.

1 Like
#47

It. Doesn’t. Work. That. Way.

You have only 2 hands. 1 is used to position the “sweet spot” of the enemy so you can’t miss it in the dark and maybe stab yourself instead (at least if you practice enough), and also provide backup pressure on that area so your strike’s impact all goes into penetration instead of just pushing the enemy away. The other is used to deliver the blow. This means you can’t control other parts of the target’s body. You can often control weapons slung on the enemy’s back or shoulder because you pin them between your chest and his back. But if he’s holding something in his hands, he’s going to drop it (KLANK!). And his legs are free to kick and thrash, which they ALWAYS do even if he’s clinically dead before he hits the ground. Heels drumming on a wooden floor even without kicking over any furniture, make LOTS of noise, as do feet thrashing the underbrush.,

If you go through the skull or ribcage, you have to penetrate bone that evolution specifically designed as armor for the important things beneath. There is no way to do that without hitting hard, and hitting hard enough to do the job unavoidably makes significant impact noise. There’s no way to muffle this. If you stab down through the base of the throat, that more often than not causes some sort of exhalation sound from the enemy (even just the “OOF” of sucker-punching somebody in the guts) , and then he’ll gurgle and blow bloody bubbles for a while (even once unconscious from lack of blood to the brain), and such noises can be QUITE loud as he’s full of adrenaline now and trying his best to scream even though no air can reach his vocal cords (if you did it right) and it’s all coming out the “tracheotomy” you just gave him.

1 Like
© 2015 Warhorse Studios www.warhorsestudios.cz