Multishot Breaks Stealth Multiplier ( Present since U19.6.3 )

[unrealityCatalyst]

I had seen a few threads long ago on the subject, but NONE had received any form of acknowledgement, and all are archived / unable to be found ( even the ones I've posted in ).

This bug has been present ever since the update that changed how enemies perceive and react to noises/damage from a player in stealth ( U19.6.3, almost 2 years ago ). Any ranged weapon kill that includes damage from extra projectiles via multishot will NOT count as a stealth kill. It will only count if it only takes one of the shots to deal enough damage to kill the enemy. Yes, this has been thoroughly tested by multiple players. Yes, the enemies had been spawned for FAR longer than the allotted 5 seconds. Yes, the enemies were not alerted. It is far too easily reproducible, and I know a lot of you have most likely noticed some sudden drops on your stealth kills for no clear reason at least a few times.

I do hope that this particular issue is finally addressed, it's important to at least some people that enjoy doing stealth, I'd think.

[unrealityCatalyst]

Next day bump

[Hobie-wan]

That behavior makes sense to me. If I stab or shoot someone unaware and they die in one hit, that makes sense they'd be a stealth kill. If they aren't dispatched, they'd kinda go "Ow, something hit me and it hurt" and be alerted. If not having multishot on a weapon means they don't get alerted when they don't die in the initial shot, honestly that sounds like it would be the bug to me.

[unrealityCatalyst]

Well, it doesn't make sense to me. There's a big difference between two bullets going into an enemy at the exact same instance and a guy getting hit by one bullet and then getting hit by another shortly after. Plus I don't think a guy would have enough time to really register the fact that he was hit with one bullet out of a wall of bullets from a single silenced shotgun blast. I'm calling it a bug.

Edited November 9, 2018 by unrealityCatalyst
Forgot a word

[unrealityCatalyst]

Two week bump

[GaerthGL]

I agree how multishot interacts with stealth kills makes no sense currently. Multishot projectiles should in practical sense impact all at the same time, there's no way anyone would have time to react to it.

I'm assuming it works this way because any multishot projectiles are actually separate damage instances, which each have their own hit/crit/status/etc. calculations, and as far as the programming goes, are likely done one projectile at a time. And the first damage instance will change the enemy to alerted state (if it didn't die).

One way to fix this could be adding a slight delay for enemies changing to alerted state, so all multishot projectiles would have chance to hit before that. I don't know how practical something like that would be to implement though.

 

While we're on the topic of stealth there are also odd inconsistencies in how enemy alert state, Sleep powers and some melee finishers work. For example if an enemy sees a body, it is possible to sleep them and keep your stealth counter going if you kill them with a finisher from behind them (counts as unalerted kill). If you were to finish them from the front they would break your stealth counter instead (counts as alerted kill).

[unrealityCatalyst]

49 minutes ago, GaerthGL said:

I agree how multishot interacts with stealth kills makes no sense currently. Multishot projectiles should in practical sense impact all at the same time, there's no way anyone would have time to react to it.

I'm assuming it works this way because any multishot projectiles are actually separate damage instances, which each have their own hit/crit/status/etc. calculations, and as far as the programming goes, are likely done one projectile at a time. And the first damage instance will change the enemy to alerted state (if it didn't die).

One way to fix this could be adding a slight delay for enemies changing to alerted state, so all multishot projectiles would have chance to hit before that. I don't know how practical something like that would be to implement though.

 

While we're on the topic of stealth there are also odd inconsistencies in how enemy alert state, Sleep powers and some melee finishers work. For example if an enemy sees a body, it is possible to sleep them and keep your stealth counter going if you kill them with a finisher from behind them (counts as unalerted kill). If you were to finish them from the front they would break your stealth counter instead (counts as alerted kill).

This is exactly what I was thinking for a fix, just a small delay in how fast they get alerted from getting shot. As well, I've noticed that sort of behavior in the sleep ability kills and finishers, very weird.

[Tyanya]

Hi there

As someone who levels most weapons via spy missions with silenced mods and Ivara, (yes I'm aware of more efficient ways of doing things, I just enjoy tip toeing my way through with Ivara). I've been formaing my Miter after receiving a riven for it running spy missions as per usual, even though the multishot mods pretty much double my damage and I get a "one hit kill" it's 50/50 as to whether it will end my stealth multiplier, without the multishot mods I was having a great time maintaining my 5x multiplier and taking out 2 mobs at a time due to punch through.

As already mentioned adding a 1 second delay between the first projectile hitting and any alerted state would fix this, to me if a mob gets hit with a projectile, the following projectile hits 0.2 seconds after and the mob goes down, I regard that as a oneshot kill. ☺️

[Squick]

There's a lot of weirdness with stealth multipliers, but yeah, I hate that deaths requiring the multishot damage count as separate instances of damage.

 

I'm also tired of the Grineer animal spawners, since they will spawn animals that are immediately aggressive even if they haven't seen you. That's a fairly recent change, too.

[Demaneth]

As far as I understanded always multishot, never equiped multishot mods for stealth weapons. My friend explain to me this way, if multishot adds projectiles and every projectile have their calculations, we can asume... if a shot, for example the bow, you shoot one time, but it shoots two arrows, one of the arrows one shoot the enemy the second arrow will not have any hitbox so it will continue traveling hitting walls or other objects and then alerting other enemies. Yes, even when the arrows hit at the same time looks always to me that it works this way. One arrow kill and the other just pass through the enemy and hit objects.

if this really works this way DE only have to add hitbox to the corpse... that make sense, is still an object till it dissapear. so if the 2 arrows hit, one kill the enemy the second one just sticks to the body with no damage, and no walls or objects hit

[unrealityCatalyst]

11 hours ago, Demaneth said:

As far as I understanded always multishot, never equiped multishot mods for stealth weapons. My friend explain to me this way, if multishot adds projectiles and every projectile have their calculations, we can asume... if a shot, for example the bow, you shoot one time, but it shoots two arrows, one of the arrows one shoot the enemy the second arrow will not have any hitbox so it will continue traveling hitting walls or other objects and then alerting other enemies. Yes, even when the arrows hit at the same time looks always to me that it works this way. One arrow kill and the other just pass through the enemy and hit objects.

if this really works this way DE only have to add hitbox to the corpse... that make sense, is still an object till it dissapear. so if the 2 arrows hit, one kill the enemy the second one just sticks to the body with no damage, and no walls or objects hit

The problem isn't alerting other enemies, the issue is when a kill takes more than a single projectile from a weapon with multishot not counting as a stealth kill on a currently unalerted enemy in and of itself. This problem did not exist until the alteration to enemy perception and alertness in 19.6.3.

[auxy]

Adding this to my list of long-standing bugs!

The modifications to projectiles and aiming in the Chimera update also had far-reaching ramifications that have not been accounted for yet. I hope DE fixes these problems sooner than later.

Edited December 10, 2018 by auxy

[Athgaar]

This is not a bug. Replace your multishot mod(s) with enough damage to oneshot the target.

[auxy]

13 minutes ago, Athgaar said:

This is not a bug. Replace your multishot mod(s) with enough damage to oneshot the target.

It's not a bug that stealth enemies become aware of you in the microsecond between when pellet 1 and pellet 2 hit them? (one trigger pull, mind you)

[Athgaar]

17 minutes ago, auxy said:

It's not a bug that stealth enemies become aware of you in the microsecond between when pellet 1 and pellet 2 hit them? (one trigger pull, mind you)

It's not a bug that enemies are alerted by taking damage. This is a rule of the game. This behaviour is consistent with that rule. The time between hits does not matter.

[auxy]

41 minutes ago, Athgaar said:

It's not a bug that enemies are alerted by taking damage. This is a rule of the game. This behaviour is consistent with that rule. The time between hits does not matter.

So you think it's fine for your stealth multiplier to break when you kill an enemy stealthily?

What we're talking about here is attacking an enemy who is unaware of your presence, from stealth, with a silent weapon, and killing it in one shot. However, you lose your stealth modifier because it's a shotgun and it took more than one pellet to kill the enemy. The first pellet "alerts" them, and then the second pellet kills them -- even though, in reality, they should have impacted simultaneously (and even if they didn't, there's absolutely no way the enemy could have become aware of your presence in the infinitesimal time between pellet impacts.) One shot. Not multiple shots.

Edited December 11, 2018 by auxy

[Trentiel]

I just wanted to pop in and support this bug report thread. This is an annoying problem for stealth with any frame that can't CC-lockdown enemies into a permanent unalert state. Like Ivara, Equinox, Vauban, or Khora. All great Stealth frames by the way. Especially Khora.

I HAVE adapted to the problem by removing multishot mods from my stealth weapons in the mean time. In a way, this stealth combo bug makes the multishot mods less mandatory, since there are some situations you wouldn't want them. But! It is still a bug. It would still be better fixed up. There could be better ways to make multishot less mandatory. Especially since this stealth combo bug makes all suppressed and hushed shotguns useless for stealth combos.

The solution suggested already, giving a short .5 second delay before enemy becomes alerted would help immensely. Not just for gameplay, but for realism as well. If you've ever seen slow-motion footage of someone getting hit with a ball or balloon or something, the impact happens well before the person even blinks.

[Ikusias]

I fear part of the problem is connected to DE apparent hate towards stealth exp farming.

Due to "exploits" in the past they changed how enemy alertness works, with all npc spawning "non stealthable" for their first 5 seconds in the tile.

Have you ever had your stealth kill chain breaking because an "unaware" enemy actually was alert?

All that "fix" generated a bunch of bugs with stealth in general, with enemies aiming or following you even when invisible or out of sight.

Currently "stealth" in Warframe is completely broken unless depending on invisibility because enemies are always aware of player's positions

[XenHat]

Chiming in to say that I've noticed this bug as well.

It gets more ridiculous than this even: Hitting them at point blank, with Hush or equivalent mod to make the weapon silent, and with 100% of the pellets hitting them, dealing way more damage than needed for them to die, still breaks stealth multiplier. This is pretty much unusable, as my favorite pistol for this requires multishot to kill enemies in my favorite farming spot.

I've even ran into situations where using cernos prime / Artemis bow to one-shot multiple enemies with the multi-arrow caused them to not die despite making no mathematical sense, and completely ruining my stealth run.

[unrealityCatalyst]

7 hours ago, Ikusias said:

I fear part of the problem is connected to DE apparent hate towards stealth exp farming.

Due to "exploits" in the past they changed how enemy alertness works, with all npc spawning "non stealthable" for their first 5 seconds in the tile.

Have you ever had your stealth kill chain breaking because an "unaware" enemy actually was alert?

All that "fix" generated a bunch of bugs with stealth in general, with enemies aiming or following you even when invisible or out of sight.

Currently "stealth" in Warframe is completely broken unless depending on invisibility because enemies are always aware of player's positions

Yes, I was around when those particular exploits were around. They were squashed with fairly good reason though, I could snipe enemies from across a massive tile, wait for more to spawn in my line of sight, and kill them over and over. Of course, I never actually used this method as it was slow as all heck, was just something I saw way back when. The 5 second rule was implemented in direct response to that. And then endless enemies spawning in non-endless missions was axed a little while after.

In regards to this particular issue, however, it seems like an unintentional side effect to make enemy reactions a little more realistic, which was changing their awareness to moreso make them look around for what damaged them when the source is unseen. Somehow, it ended up leaving them able to become alerted in the exact tick that multiple projectiles impacted them from a multishot weapon.

Heck, the issue could probably be easily fixed by making it so that the alertness algorithm isn't activated until after all the damage ticks have been calculated and take effect. I don't really understand the programming all that much, or at all for that matter, to know whether or not if that's what's happening though, hah.

[Athgaar]

On 2018-12-10 at 10:14 PM, auxy said:

So you think it's fine for your stealth multiplier to break when you kill an enemy stealthily?

What we're talking about here is attacking an enemy who is unaware of your presence, from stealth, with a silent weapon, and killing it in one shot. However, you lose your stealth modifier because it's a shotgun and it took more than one pellet to kill the enemy. The first pellet "alerts" them, and then the second pellet kills them -- even though, in reality, they should have impacted simultaneously (and even if they didn't, there's absolutely no way the enemy could have become aware of your presence in the infinitesimal time between pellet impacts.) One shot. Not multiple shots.

What you're describing is not killing an enemy stealthily. Remember, these are not simulations of living people meant to have realistic reaction times and other responses to intruders. They are AI opponents in a game with simple, well-defined rules for alertness, from which simple, well-defined rules for stealth kills follow. One of those rules is "an enemy becomes alerted if it takes a hit that does not kill it".

When a weapon with multishot is fired, several projectiles are released, and if they all hit, several hits are dealt. If the first such hit doesn't kill the enemy, then the rule "an enemy becomes alerted if it takes a hit that does not kill it" is meant to apply, alerting the enemy. Currently, when this situation is arranged, that rule does in fact apply, alerting the enemy. The behaviour of the game is consistent with the intended rules of the game. A bug is an inconsistency between the behaviour of a game and the intended rules of the game. Therefore, this is not a bug.

Any previous instances of multishot weapons hitting enemies once, failing to kill them, failing to alert them, hitting them again, and stealth killing them were bugged. The current behaviour, the behaviour you describe, is a demonstration of the absence of that bug.

[auxy]

4 minutes ago, Athgaar said:

What you're describing is not killing an enemy stealthily. Remember, these are not simulations of living people meant to have realistic reaction times and other responses to intruders. They are AI opponents in a game with simple, well-defined rules for alertness, from which simple, well-defined rules for stealth kills follow. One of those rules is "an enemy becomes alerted if it takes a hit that does not kill it".

When a weapon with multishot is fired, several projectiles are released, and if they all hit, several hits are dealt. If the first such hit doesn't kill the enemy, then the rule "an enemy becomes alerted if it takes a hit that does not kill it" is meant to apply, alerting the enemy. Currently, when this situation is arranged, that rule does in fact apply, alerting the enemy. The behaviour of the game is consistent with the intended rules of the game. A bug is an inconsistency between the behaviour of a game and the intended rules of the game. Therefore, this is not a bug.

Any previous instances of multishot weapons hitting enemies once, failing to kill them, failing to alert them, hitting them again, and stealth killing them were bugged. The current behaviour, the behaviour you describe, is a demonstration of the absence of that bug.

So you think that you shouldn't be able to use shotguns (or any weapon equipped with a multishot mod, such as a bow or throwing knives) as stealth weapons. Is what you have just told me. I just want you to understand that this is what you have said.

Let's be clear, this is a bug.
bug n, plural bugs
  5. A problem that needs fixing.

With that said, even by your own definition, this behavior is not following the "intended rules of the game." There is no way DE intends for kills using multishot weapons to break your stealth multiplier. If you kill an enemy in one shot and they were never alerted to your presence, that's a stealth kill.

[Athgaar]

On 2018-12-12 at 7:37 PM, auxy said:

So you think that you shouldn't be able to use shotguns (or any weapon equipped with a multishot mod, such as a bow or throwing knives) as stealth weapons. Is what you have just told me. I just want you to understand that this is what you have said.

Let's be clear, this is a bug.
bug n, plural bugs
  5. A problem that needs fixing.

With that said, even by your own definition, this behavior is not following the "intended rules of the game." There is no way DE intends for kills using multishot weapons to break your stealth multiplier. If you kill an enemy in one shot and they were never alerted to your presence, that's a stealth kill.

Unless the multishot weapon has enough damage per pellet (not trigger pull, to avoid the ambiguous word "shot") to kill the target in one pellet (not trigger pull, to avoid the ambiguous word "shot"), then yes, multishot weapons should not be usable as stealth weapons. I understand and maintain this claim.

I have described how this behaviour could plausibly be interpreted as intentional; it corresponds to a simple, documented rule that holds true in all other cases (as far as we know) and explains enemy behaviour adequately in many of them (e.g. killing an unalerted, non-sleeping enemy by hitting it with a sword twice will not result in a stealth kill, yet doing the same thing to the same enemy in one hit will).

Of course, DE's true intentions are inscrutable and could be anything; their knowledge of their own game is scant, so we can't be absolutely sure that they don't intend, say, for fist weapon hits to the back of the head to return enemies to the unalerted state because that's how you knock people out in movies (to take an example that we can both dismiss as implausible yet neither of us can prove impossible).

However, between our two hypotheses as to DE's intent, mine is more plausible, with its coherence with established game rules that apply elsewhere and explain behaviour observed elsewhere, than yours, which creates an exception to the rules of the game, conflicts with other observed behaviour accepted to be working as intended (e.g. the sword example), and does not come with any articulate justification of this exception.

You can still deem this a "problem that needs fixing" of a kind, but the problem is then not a mismatch between DE's intent and the game code (a bug) but a mismatch between DE's intent and your wishes (not a bug). In other words, this is not a bug report, this is a feature request mistakenly posted as a bug report.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Athgaar

[auxy]

4 hours ago, Athgaar said:

Unless the multishot weapon has enough damage per pellet (not trigger pull, to avoid the ambiguous word "shot") to kill the target in one pellet (not trigger pull, to avoid the ambiguous word "shot"), then yes, multishot weapons should not be usable as stealth weapons. I understand and maintain this claim.

I have described how this behaviour could plausibly be interpreted as intentional; it corresponds to a simple, documented rule that holds true in all other cases (as far as we know) and explains enemy behaviour adequately in many of them (e.g. killing an unalerted, non-sleeping enemy by hitting it with a sword twice will not result in a stealth kill, yet doing the same thing to the same enemy in one hit will).

Of course, DE's true intentions are inscrutable and could be anything; their knowledge of their own game is scant, so we can't be absolutely sure that they don't intend, say, for fist weapon hits to the back of the head to return enemies to the unalerted state because that's how you knock people out in movies (to take an example that we can both dismiss as implausible yet neither of us can prove impossible).

However, between our two hypotheses as to DE's intent, mine is more plausible, with its coherence with established game rules that apply elsewhere and explain behaviour observed elsewhere, than yours, which creates an exception to the rules of the game, conflicts with other observed behaviour accepted to be working as intended (e.g. the sword example), and does not come with any articulate justification of this exception.

You can still deem this a "problem that needs fixing" of a kind, but the problem is then not a mismatch between DE's intent and the game code (a bug) but a mismatch between DE's intent and your wishes (not a bug). In other words, this is not a bug report, this is a feature request mistakenly posted as a bug report.

I'm sorry, but your claim is patently ridiculous, absurd, bordering on foolish. There is no universe in which this is working as intended. Working as coded, sure, but if that's what you intend then you're implying that code as written is always functioning as intended. I don't think I need to spell out how nonsensical that idea is.

There is absolutely no reasonable argument that if I throw two throwing knives instead of one, both hitting the same target, it is somehow less of a "stealth kill" than if I throw one.

[Athgaar]

11 hours ago, auxy said:

I'm sorry, but your claim is patently ridiculous, absurd, bordering on foolish. There is no universe in which this is working as intended. Working as coded, sure, but if that's what you intend then you're implying that code as written is always functioning as intended. I don't think I need to spell out how nonsensical that idea is.

There is absolutely no reasonable argument that if I throw two throwing knives instead of one, both hitting the same target, it is somehow less of a "stealth kill" than if I throw one.

I gave you the reasonable argument for that behaviour. Because you're now insisting that there is no such argument, I'm assuming you scrolled past it. To fix that, I'll put it in fewer words:

A stealth kill is when you kill an unalerted enemy, and hitting an enemy without killing it alerts it.

If you scroll past that, failing to offer any counterargument, then that will be evidence that you don't care about reasonable argument.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Athgaar