• S.T.A.L.K.E.R Series Megathread: Maybe someday games releasing edition
    999 replies, posted
Yes, that does exist in CoC. Mutants can drag bodies and feed. That doesn't, at least for now.
Oh, sweet. Does it happen in 1.4 or 1.5 beta only?
Hi. So I've recently got into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. To be precise, into Lost Alpha because I can't stand Shadow of Chernobyl but Lost Alpha has always seemed great to me. But now I'm stuck because I need to talk to Sidorovich to complete a bunch of quests and his door won't open. I was having a great time until then, no bugs or crashes, but now there isn't much I can do anymore. Anyone got an idea what to do? I tried throwing grenades, running into it, and demo_record 1, none worked.
Problem is, very early in development it was supposed to be non linear, but more like what CoC with the basic story mode is. They wanted to have features that made the game work like that, but as we all know, it didn't work at that time, so they made a story instead. I feel like you can make the game work much better in freeplay, then adapt when you get a real story in. Pretty much why I even work on 1.5 and trying to turn it into an actually playable game that doesn't end in ~2-3 hours, but isn't constant struggle either.
Comparatively to the vanilla games there is a ridiculous amount of new features and elements that can motivate a player's imagination. The reactive nature and randomness of the AI has always been the cornerstone of why people have played the same vanilla story over and over again because Stalker series is definitely not known for how good the story is, with the exception of Shadow of Chernobyl; but once you know the twist the story has zero replayability. Open world games don't need character progression systems and cinematic storylines, unless you are barren of all imagination.
It's not a lack of imagination, at least not for me. I just like having actually crafted missions to do. I loved running around with Prof. Kruglov in SHOC or gunning down mercs with Freedom (Duty>Freedom tho) in CS or assembling your own team of bros in COP. Plus all the cool ass side quests, especially in COP. Like dealing with the bloodsuckers in Zaton or sniping those mercs and scientists in Pripyat. I always liked the story in the main games too. It keeps you interested in finding out what is going on in this crazy place. Clear Sky's story was a little meh, but SHOC and COP were pretty fun and interesting. Anomaly Repack has DoctorX questlines which I've heard has actual crafted missions to do. I do have an objective to go to a dude named Librarian at the marshes, haven't done it yet though. Not sure if that is part of the DoctorX mod or if it is part of something else, I haven't really followed COC addons ​ Also, something I wish Call of Chernobyl had is the Renegades from CS's The Faction War mod. I liked how they were a bunch of faction deserters and shit that were always hostile. A more advanced bandit gang basically. After I do a loner playthrough in Anomaly Repack I should try doing some faction stuff ironman, being afraid of dying would make it much more tense.
You can run around with Kruglov in CoC. You can assemble a team of your own and go with them wherever you want, not some silly (nearly impossible) linear scene. You can take a bunch of Freedomers and storm a base, why do you need a scripted scene to play out?
You dont get that most of players played this "free world with running around" for good few years. Even eating your favorite food for too long can get boring. Every game need to evolve in some point or at least change some of its aspect to give player reason to play. Throwing random small features to it is not a solution, because it dont change gameplay at all. Yes its nice to have eg, mutants dragging bodies, stalkers doing anything beside walking and sitting, but it dont give player reason to play the same maps, the same missions again. Problem with running around with your "team" in coc and doing copy/paste mission is that its repetitive, AI are retarded when it comes to "team work", and because of that yes, some scripted scenes in missions are welcome and needed, and in the same time why not give game some random stories made of 3-4 connected missions with those scripted events. They can be not even related to each other. Few guys in game giving you those story missions give you more immersion and fun than 100 random items, few fancy features and some mutant behavior. I think that problem is what I have when I help with other game projects. None of developer actually play game, its mostly starting game to test specific feature, look for bugs, check AI. Not actual game play, and in that case you dont see overall shape of game and how its gameplay actually look, you just see separate parts that when are separated look good, but during proper gameplay... its not that visible/good. I can be wrong, maybe you still actually spend 2-4h everyday to play coc, but if you actually spend time playing coc, Last day, CoM and any other mod based on CoC you do pretty the same thing and all those fancy features that they put in game dont really stand up, and even with 100000 items and crafting from misery game dont give real reason to really play it. As @Janus Vesta said: ""Freedom of choice is almost always a misnomer. A mask used to hide the fact that there's nothing to actually do. "You can do anything" and "There's nothing to do" go hand in hand more often than not."" Open world game have sense when you can interact with it or modify it(sandbox), CoC doesnt have that, it have maps we all know and played many times and have just simple fetch/kill missions and some basic survival features. I think only mod like Warfare give CoC real reason to play because it give you some reason to actually play again as simple RTS game... That type of modification can be some sort of substitute of story mode because its dynamic and give player reason to travel between maps.
I like scripted missions because they help me pretend that the NPCs are real people. The characterisation of NPCs in CoP isn't great, but in general I felt the scripted missions went some way to establish their personality and role in the world.
So other than this Dead Air and Last Day, is there any major mod based on CoC, prefferably without artificial difficulty up the ass?
Anomaly is pretty good, in my opinion better than Dead Air that just try to hard. It have more features, but in actual game you dont see them as that good or useful. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
So, I had kind of a crazy idea. In terms of story, I have created lots of "schemes" of quest that I've scripted ("trailing mission" is a wip, defend against waves of enemies, escort, and a few others), but as for the actual storyline, we don't have too much to actually work with yet. I don't want to spoil to much, as I definitely want the story to be a bit of a surprise at certain parts, but since this is such a WIP stuff is most likely going to change so drastically it doesn't matter at this point. One idea, which I want criticism on, is essentially a different take on STALKER. It'd take place in the zone, obviously, but the events of STALKER SHOC, COP, and CS never happened. I'd be sure to make this obvious to the player. While it is still the zone, I'd probably introduce potentially different factions, different characters, and possibly even variations of mutants. Hell, I could even re-arrange the map. The idea popped into my head because STALKER's lore is a bit limiting to expand upon due to the lack of information really given to us about certain factions and characters, and a fresh start and a new take on the zone might be refreshing. Tell me what you think of this idea, theres no gurantee this is what the story will be, just an interesting idea I had.
yes please
Anyone interested in 1.5 R7 stream when I get to testing? I've been thinking about it for a while.
Just because you seen these features in other mods (I have work in Complete, Misery and a couple other mods so there is overlap with features in CoC) doesn't give you the right to say that CoC doesn't have anything to do.
Sounds like a good idea to me! One improvement I feel CoP has on SoC and CS is that it's on a smaller scale - you're not trying to uncover the fundamental mysteries of the Zone,; you're just trying to extract a few soldiers. I love uncovering the plot behind the wish granter, the Monolith, the origins of the Group and the nature of the Zone as a sapient, sentient entity - but you can only ever uncover these secrets once. You can't machine-gun the C-Con twice. I think most of our favourite parts of the game is the hobophase at the start. You have relatively limited means and tools, and you're just trying to build yourself up by doing stalker stuff - small missions, artifact hunting if the mod permits it, scavenging. That's the real joy - being a stalker. Not one of the big players - who can fight through hordes of mercenaries and monolith in some of the most dangerous places on earth but is for some reason still running around doing some arsehole's dirty work, but having to survive and profit from a dangerous environment using only limited resources and your own ingenuity. And I think a new storyline, one that's less a power fantasy and more about having a small but noticeable impact on the zone would be a great way to do it.
Honestly at the end of the day there's clearly good reasons to play CoC, while i agree with the story complaints i think it more boils down to what you personally like in the games will effect what you can get out of it. I mean shit, there's a reason CoC is always top 10 on moddb. For me the burnout is mostly due to the maps and easy loot progression. I would love more interesting quests but if we had new environments with interesting loot that would be a huge driving force for me since i love exploring new areas. New quests are a good way to reinvigorate the old areas That's why I'm looking forward to the upcoming map edits, that's why my most enjoyed mods are those russian ones like OLR or a few others i forget the name of, because it gives me that feeling of uncertainty and interest that i had my first few times playing SoC
Hey guys! Thanks for putting TFW on modDB for me. I somehow never sat down on proper promotion for the mod, which is something I feel ashamed of. Anyway, I pulled out the drive with the last unpublished version of TFW yesterday and sat on it for a while. Fixed a couple of things related to combat AI just for fun. Now I'm wondering if there is any reason to work on it further. How many people do you guys think still actually play it? The version I was last working on has many huge features that never saw the light of day... Dynamic economy, refined combat AI, new mission types (escort artifact hunters, escort scientists). Still have to finish the new weapon/suit upgrade system, but I left it in a state almost done smoq's comment on The Faction Wars moddb page. Apparently this mod is getting an update soon. smoq has created a dev group on moddb, guy called Jack who maintains TFW moddb page is in that group, so that pretty much confirms that these two are definitely doing something. Just spreading the word here, I like faction warfare related stuff and I'm quite excited.
TFW was great fun back in the day, although a significant proportion of its features are available in one form or another in CoC and its mods
Oh man I just played Dead Air who the fuck thought anything in that was a good idea
I have all right in the world to write my opinion about it. You are not only one who spend time working on such projects and mods, not to mention that Im writing it as a player, and because CoC is game for player I think I have right to write what I think. I didnt mix it with mud and say its crap, I said that it need something more to lure players to play it, does it really bother you that much that someone say that after few times playing coc start to be boring? Beside you totally didnt get the point that is when you play something many times IT WILL GET BORING, dont argue with that because you will lie to us and yourself. After some time every game and mod need to throw something new to project to give players reason to play, and even if those cool random smaller features are awesome to have, in overall gameplay they dont give such reason to play. Yes, people will be asking for story mod or at least some more complex scripted mission because this give game immersive feel. Right now CoC is polished and its good platform for other mods, why not to focus on throwing something new to it, bigger and more related to gameplay? You say that most people cant agree what they want in mod? For past years I see the same thing that people want.... Even on this forum its all the same. Its just a matter of reading it. So you know, maybe" change a seat" and look at it from different perspective? Take a break, spend some times playing it, like really playing, and maybe you will find some good ideas about what players would want.
CoC is getting pretty major additions and changes. I'm trying to rework gameplay and features or add new ones that you can play around with. For now the current version doesn't have that much more variety, but it is something I want to work on. Only a few people know that a full story mode is slowly being made.
bless you, you're doing god's work ❤
Ever heard of MLR?
Its not also like CoC need some major Hollywood story with complex characters. As I said you could just make few smaller stories that contain few missions and those stories dont need to be related to each other. Think about it as Fallout 3/4 have. Some missions that give you just small story of few specific NPC. Missions that when you start give you something to do, maybe unlock some items/places/other repetitive missions. Like eg. story where you find in some weird abandoned place military guy who run away and want to get out of the zone, and player can help him find fake documents(two missions, like find fabricator and camera to take picture) and new outfit, then you help him get to the cordon, where some random soldier recognize him and try to kill him/alarm officer about that and you have to kill him(and his buddies) and run toward cordon entrance before officer get there, and player use military outfit so he can enter cordon with him and get reward that that NPC hide in stash inside one of building(one of reason why player decide to help him). That would be maybe 4 smaller missions that will give player maybe hour of additional fun... Its not much work, no need to 2 page dialogs, no one talk like that in real life. Make it simple, that the trick. Anyone could write such smaller stories with dialogs in a matter of few hours, I dont believe that implementing that to game would be that hard, you really just need to spawn few npc/items in specific place and put dialogs to them. Or Im wrong? This need some huge 10 days modification to game? :] @Tronex yeah I heard, what about it? Its not like we talk about it specifically but others maybe be interested.
CoC I could only really see has having a structure like Oblivion. Maybe there's a main thread to follow but overall the quests are either tied to mucking around with factions and doing the odd job here and there.
Does the CoC ironman mode delete all of your saves or does it know to only delete the ironman character's saves? I was thinking of taking a break on my loner run to do some faction ironman stuff, but I don't want to lose that loner run.
only character's saves, it's that advanced!
@Paranoia you keep talking about small questlines for CoC, MLR does exactly what you want. It's CoC with questlines and new characters. And no, making new quests is not as simple as you might think. At least not if you want staged, location-related questlines. It can goes from simple staged tasks that require few edits for task/dialog/squads files to end up creating space restrictors through SDK, logic, a-life and good amount of scripts. But nothing is hard for TeamEpic I think. @wepl your mod seems promising, is it meant to be a huge overhaul for CoC? or aimed for specific features? is there a full list of all features around?
I've been craving some STALKER action lately. What exactly is MLR?
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