[2024] Are horde nights still cheese fests where zombies have True Sight of you & everyone logs off?

Heat system and random wandering hordes still exist. Heat system has even been revised so you can't cheat it by spreading some of your stations out.

Yeah, the new hordes are a bit different because of changes to the AI. That will likely change more again with 1.0. If you want the older non-smart hordes you want to look at pre-alpha 19, though the AI has been in development since Alpha 17.

In your OP you stated that previously they "didn't circumvent stealth completely", which is untrue. They have always GPS'ed to your player location. I recall designing a reinforced basement in Alpha 10 following a base design I started with in Alpha 9. Got completely overrun. Stealth doesn't matter. They will go through everything to get to you, and it has always been this way.

And they still do that, but now are a bit super-intelligent about the "easiest" path instead of just bashing through whatever blocks are in front of them. IIRC the plan is to make the zed AI a bit less intelligent and add more randomness, leaving the smarter AI mechanics for the bandits and survivors.

Originally posted by Cleave:

Originally posted by SylenThunder: AFAIK the 7th day horde has always had GPS to the player's position. I started with Alpha 8.8.

Back in the day they had a general idea of where you were and would seek you out instead of wallhacking straight to you, they would bust everything trying to find you which was nerve wracking and really played on the horror aspect when you were new to the game.

Also the heat system & random wandering hordes would happen all the time to keep you on your toes and test your defenses. Sometimes those hordes would join in on the 7th day hordes which made for brutal yet epic encounters.

I haven't played in forever but before I stopped I really missed this aspect & even played some of the older alphas before I stopped because of it to remind myself of how good this aspect was(even if the rest of the game was so damn rough).

No. They've always known Exactly where you are. They were less intelligent about pursuing you; There basically used to be 0 intelligence to them- They navigated in a roughly straight line in your direction and anything they ran into was attacked. But their knowledge of the player has always been pinpoint since the implementation of the blood moon.

They busted everything 'trying to find you' because they could barely navigate a simple straight corridor without occasionally deciding the wall next to it needed to die in order to reach you. And if you were diagonal from their position, that meant everything between you and it must die, because they were fundamentally incapable of navigating in 90% of situations. Walking 'around' something rarely, if ever, happened.

Originally posted by Cleave:

Originally posted by Shurenai: No. They've always known Exactly where you are. They were less intelligent about pursuing you; There basically used to be 0 intelligence to them- They navigated in a roughly straight line in your direction and anything they ran into was attacked. But their knowledge of the player has always been pinpoint since the implementation of the blood moon.

They busted everything 'trying to find you' because they could barely navigate a simple straight corridor without occasionally deciding the wall next to it needed to die in order to reach you. And if you were diagonal from their position, that meant everything between you and it must die, because they were fundamentally incapable of navigating in 90% of situations. Walking 'around' something rarely, if ever, happened.

Pre Blood Moon the hordes would go to your location but if you were behind cover they didn't pinpoint your exact location. Or at least it was an optional setting to give them pinpoint knowledge through walls.

Pre blood moon it was just the wandering hordes, and they also were targeted on your exact position at the moment the wandering horde spawned; Now in present day wandering hordes still exist (and have all along; they're a separate thing entirely from the blood moon) are targeted in a range of a +/- 15~ degree arc of your current position, so it's more likely to 'miss' your current location as they wander past.

Wandering hordes never even knew you existed; They get spawned in at Point A, And then told to go in a straight line towards Point B. Point B in the older days was a line drawn to and past your exact location at the time they spawned, and Point B now is a line drawn with a +/- 15 degree arc. If they heard you, they'd come investigate; but otherwise, had no clue you were even there, and they just destroyed anything between where they spawned and where they were going.

If all you want is wandering hordes, Just turn off blood moons; As I said, the wandering hordes still exist, and they can still get pretty big. But, they're more likely to just wander by without bothering you unless your base is massive.