S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: The Zone will stop the Russians - Games

Loner, dunno what happened but I guess you didn't get my message on Steam? [editline]16th December 2014[/editline] Oh and WolfKOTTO, I see you lurking, please give me a PM with your contact details, I would really love to propose something to you!

[QUOTE=Beacon;46724802]Thanks a lot for the feedback guys[/QUOTE] I'm kind of late for this feedback issue but in my personal opinion it doesn't really matter if it's "realistic" or not, the main thing you should be looking at is [B]gameplay balance and gear progression mechanics[/B] and center your justification around the intended gameplay balance(i.e, wrap the fluff around the crunch, and not the other way around), otherwise you'll just be falling down an endless rabbit hole of adjusting things for "realism" when the gameplay balance is falling out of the seams. Like, there are certain mechanics in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that just don't chide well at all with ~reelizm~ , one of the main things being NPC ammo count. Yes, it might be "unfair" for the player that the NPCs will have infinite ammo but you'll only get so much from a single stalker but it would require a herculean amount of effort to program an A.I pattern that could actually manage ammunition in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. without fucking up the A-Life and gameplay balance-wise it would mean that any kind of scarcity would be gone when you'd get a couple of loot drops from early NPCs that are killed by the mutants. [QUOTE=Cutthecrap;46722106]I always had this idea in mind, that STALKERs should roam around ONLY with soviet-low tier weapons.[/QUOTE] AA2 did that to an extent, and imo it made the weapon variety boring as fuck. I like the idea of factions and stalker rankings being set apart by the weaponry they use, but [B]SLAVSHIT ONLY!!![/B] makes the gun battles boring as shit especially in a game that is less made for linear progression and is more freeroam-y. [QUOTE=Mezzokoko;46724112]You also could just make some special kinds of ammo very rare, like sniper ammo and RPGs/Grenade Launchers..[/QUOTE] Yeah, but it literally [I]doesn't matter[/I] when you can make do with assault rifles more than fine. All it does, is make the most "Vanilla" weapon type the only one you'd ever want to use. [editline]herp[/editline] [QUOTE=Araknid;46722777]What about making ammo that you find on low-mid tier enemies shit on your weapons condition and make your gun jam more to simulate shitty corrosive surplus ammo or something[/QUOTE] This is probably the best middle ground. To an extent, you could do this with guns as well, making some variants of the regular weapons carried by stalkers low-quality chinese knockoffs and making the 'real thing' more rare to find.

At the moment maintaining sufficient ammo count is not particulary hard, if you keep carrying all your expendable stuff to the personal boxes and keep rearming from there all the time. It is a step which is neither particulary challenging nor is needed for balance, it might just aswell be removed. You only have to keep an eye on your ammo when you are travelling around, which is totally fine as it is right now. Being able to frequently rearm yourself by looting a few mags keeps you longer on the run, rather than walking back and forth to get new ammo.

[QUOTE=Mezzokoko;46727254]At the moment maintaining sufficient ammo counts is not particulary hard, if you keep carrying all your expendable stuff to the personal boxes and keep rearming from there.[/QUOTE] Yeah, but if you're on a mission or a raid, it can make a world of difference if you can get a guaranteed easy resupply from the corpses you're making. I'm not saying the ammo scarcity needs to be [no ammunition found on the body], but if Redux is making the gunplay balance more deadly than Vanilla, then the Redux 1.0 balance works out pretty great. You won't generally have too much ammunition to expend on trips, but each shot also counts for much more. [QUOTE=Mezzokoko;46727254]Being able to frequently rearm yourself by looting a few mags keeps you longer on the run, rather than walking back and forth to get new ammo.[/QUOTE] Yeah, but generally speaking if we're talking about Redux 1.0 balances(or even Vanilla!), you can easily down 3-4 guys with one magazine, hence having each of them give you an entire magazine's worth(or even half of it) would make finding stashes loaded with more ammo than usual irrelevant. Making the drop system accommodate the usage of currently really unpopular weapons (such as pistols / shotguns / SMGs) by giving the low quality calibers larger ranges to which they can drop in might be a better solution, but for the assault rifles the gun food needs to be scarcer. But that's just my personal opinion.

[QUOTE=spekter;46710727]Redux 2 + Gunslinger would be mod merge of the decade, easily.[/QUOTE] I'd love Gunslinger and some sort of fleshed out freeplay for CoP. Although yeah Redux is prolly my fav mod so there's that <3 [editline]16th December 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Beacon;46721876][url=http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-pripyat-redux/images/community-feedback-ammo-scarcity][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15/14909/xrEngine_2014-12-15_23-42-43-23.png[/t][/url] [B]Community Feedback - Ammo Scarcity[/B] [I]The classic way to increase difficulty in STALKER mods is to withhold ammunition from the player. This artificially alters the economy and doesn't hold up well to scrutiny - in the Zone, ammunition would be extremely plentiful due to its high use - it makes no sense that a Stalker would have only three rounds in his backpack and two in his weapon. We feel like we have enough new systems within Redux that create non-artificial, grounded-in-the-world difficulty and scarcity to potentially remove this artificial ammunition restriction, but we want your thoughts before we commit to it. Obviously with our magazine system you will be finding loaded and empty magazines on bodies, as well as the original ammo boxes. We will likely play with ammunition and magazine weight, as well as price, to ensure you can't just cart thousands of rounds around the Zone and become Nicolas Cage in Lord of War. So, what do you think about Ammo Scarcity? We want to hear your thoughts, and ideas, on what you think is the best option here![/I][/QUOTE] I love this, this sort of ridiculous stuff for the sake of artificial difficulty is exactly what drove me off Misery. Honestly at this point Redux seems like it's Stalker Call of Pripyat 1.5

What about making store-bought ammunition more expensive than the fielded ones? I kind of liked it back in the SoC days where you mostly relied on looting ammo, as the prices for most calibers at a traders' place was inflated(as was everything else but come on now). With most things in CoP and CS being some three times as cheap on average as it usually is in SoC while the mission payment and the loot rates remained at the same rate led to the player being able to acquire fresh gear very early on in both games. Limiting the players' capability of making the fresh ammo price tag reasonable, as well as replacing the fielded ammo with surplus bullets or partially filled magazines would lead to good and plentiful ammunition becoming as vital as buying better armor and equipment.

Ammo scarcity isn't even really a long term restriction in mods anyway. It annoys you for maybe two or three hours then you have enough weapons and enough ammo to fuel you for a while, and you end up with enough money to just buy the stuff. I like the idea of shitty surplus ammo fucking your weapon faster, perhaps having weaker penetrative qualities.

[QUOTE=DeeCeeTeeBee;46727661]I like the idea of shitty surplus ammo fucking your weapon faster, perhaps having weaker penetrative qualities.[/QUOTE] That's a bit of a double-edged sword, too; Remember dinging grunts' miscellaneous possessions in Metro 2033 with your knife or regular bullets? It can be an okay addition, frustrating, or not good at all. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing tough mutants or stalkers that wear high-tier armor be far less impregnable with the irregular ammo concept, but a wild dog or a bandit wearing a leather jacket and no flak west is bound to get his shit fucked no matter how bad a bullet is. Actually, why isn't there additional armor that the NPCs could wear? I can see one or two guys in a stalker squad wearing bulkier vests over their suits to stop the shitty bullets from causing as much damage as the regular ones. It'd give you another reason to stock up on clean rounds.

[QUOTE=croguy;46727632]With most things in CoP and CS being some three times as cheap on average as it usually is in SoC [/QUOTE] What is this CS you're talking about ? Everything is super expensive in Clear Sky, and it's the only Vanilla game where the economy [I]isn't[/I] a total joke? In Shadow of Chernobyl, economy might as well not exist because Pidorovich doesn't sell anything worth buying and by the time you get to the Bar, you can buy anything worthwhile that's on sale there. Not to mention you'll have to expend a lot more bullets to kill people than in SoC. In CoP you'll be able to short-change the economy easier due to the fact that the stashes on the map are pre-existing but the upgrades to make any equipment worthwhile will still be a moneysink to a degree. [QUOTE=croguy;46727632]led to the player being able to acquire fresh gear very early on in both games.[/QUOTE] You get so much less free handouts in Clear Sky than you do in SoC.

[QUOTE=Muukkis;46727720]What is this CS you're talking about ? Everything is super expensive in Clear Sky, and it's the only Vanilla game where the economy [I]isn't[/I] a total joke? In Shadow of Chernobyl, economy might as well not exist because Pidorovich doesn't sell anything worth buying and by the time you get to the Bar, you can buy anything worthwhile that's on sale there. Not to mention you'll have to expend a lot more bullets to kill people than in SoC. You get so much less free handouts in Clear Sky than you do in SoC.[/QUOTE] Well, the only reason why the CS economy falters so much is because they scrapped the majority of the high value sidequests and artifact hunting in exchange for the player looting corpses and completing objectives in the faction wars. They'd also still gift you rare equipment at random, like how you'd get a Vintorez for free in Red Forest. And, yeah, while there are a lot more free handouts in SoC(I can count several, and that's just from character gifting), the good stuff such as high-tier combat suits and rifles are very expensive, and the fact that you couldn't repair it in a practical way only made things worse for your wallet. You could stock up on additional cash in a short timespan, but you really had to invest some time into grinding if you wanted to get through places like Red Forest without exchanging a suit and some rifles on the way through.

[QUOTE=DeeCeeTeeBee;46727661]Ammo scarcity isn't even really a long term restriction in mods anyway. It annoys you for maybe two or three hours then you have enough weapons and enough ammo to fuel you for a while, and you end up with enough money to just buy the stuff. I like the idea of shitty surplus ammo fucking your weapon faster, perhaps having weaker penetrative qualities.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I think that's the most important thing to keep in mind. You can try and extend the hobo phase all you want, but that's all you can do, lengthen it. Even in Misery you end up decent stuff after a little while, especially if you really know how to play STALKER games.

[QUOTE=Muukkis;46727293]Yeah, but generally speaking if we're talking about Redux 1.0 balances(or even Vanilla!), you can easily down 3-4 guys with one magazine, hence having each of them give you an entire magazine's worth(or even half of it) would make finding stashes loaded with more ammo than usual irrelevant.[/QUOTE] Ammo stashes are not necessary at all already (except expensive ammo), they are nothing more than a small gift so I can save a few RU for something else. It is still nice to have them, but you don't need them at all to survive.

[url=http://englishrussia.com/2014/12/16/residential-areas-of-pripyat-forests-in-place-of-streets]Excellent pictures of how nature is reclaiming the Zone, and how beautiful Pripyat is when it's bright and colourful! (Exactly what we're aiming for with Redux)[/url]

Please add that much vegetation

It is something I would love to do.

[QUOTE=croguy;46727766] the good stuff such as high-tier combat suits and rifles are very expensive, and the fact that you couldn't repair it in a practical way only made things worse for your wallet. .[/QUOTE] You never, [I]ever[/I] need to repair weapons / armour in SoC, because by the time you'd have your current meta weapon/armor degrade to the point it starts to be bad, you've already accumulated several new, free of charge. Gear degrades really slowly in SoC so the fact that buying suits is expensive doesn't matter. The only thing that's expensive and worth buying in SoC is probably the SKAT-9M or the Exoskeleton. [QUOTE=Mezzokoko;46727888]Ammo stashes are not necessary at all already[/QUOTE] They have psychological significance as a reward for the player, but they amount to nothing if ammunition is vanilla-tier plentiful. This is why Swartz mod feels so unrewarding despite the fact that there's multiple calibers and the uber-high-end Elefant Killing calibers are slightly scarce ; you're accustomed to every NPC loot drop shitting out "realistic" amount of ammunition, so it doesn't feel like anything. [editline]derp[/editline] [QUOTE=Ghost101;46727808]You can try and extend the hobo phase all you want, but that's all you can do, lengthen it.[/QUOTE] That's why it's about controlling gear [B]progression[/B], not pursuing the pipedream of creating a perpetual hobo-mode.

I thought the way to repair things in SoC was to get your fire resistance over 100% and jump in a fire barrel? :v:

[QUOTE=Ghost101;46728676]I thought the way to repair things in SoC was to get your fire resistance over 100% and jump in a fire barrel? :v:[/QUOTE] Actually, it was the Electro anomaly plus Electric Battery,artifact. Easier to do with Pellicles+chem anomaly because you can farm Pellicles though.

Hud is fucked/misaligned in AO. Is that one of the reasons the author of the mod pulled it down? Or have I fucked up when installing it?

[QUOTE=Beacon;46728403]It is something I would love to do.[/QUOTE] How performance-intensive will that be though?

[QUOTE=Daemon White;46728879]How performance-intensive will that be though?[/QUOTE] That's the limiting factor. Foliage is pretty hard on the system. [editline]16th December 2014[/editline] and getting realistic Pripyat-level foliage would be very taxing indeed, I imagine. It's something I need to try some time.

[QUOTE=Muukkis;46728653]You never, [I]ever[/I] need to repair weapons / armour in SoC, because by the time you'd have your current meta weapon/armor degrade to the point it starts to be bad, you've already accumulated several new, free of charge. Gear degrades really slowly in SoC so the fact that buying suits is expensive doesn't matter. The only thing that's expensive and worth buying in SoC is probably the SKAT-9M or the Exoskeleton. [/QUOTE] yeah, if all you use are the shitty guns that people drop. i'm the kind of guy that takes everything from everyone i kill and then sell it, even if it means i have to walk halfway across the map to get to a trader, and i think i had enough money to buy an exoskeleton maybe once. you never find shit like that other than a handful of times, and once the unique or extremely rare weapon or suit you have gets to around 50% quality it's basically useless and you have to get another, which costs a shitload of money that you really just can't fucking get when you only get 10% of what something's worth from selling. i didn't have any problems in my single playthrough of soc but i can definitely see how you would if you didn't want to settle for tier 2 when you could have tier 1, and didn't reload your save every time something didn't go smoothly.

[QUOTE=Beacon;46729046]That's the limiting factor. Foliage is pretty hard on the system. [editline]16th December 2014[/editline] and getting realistic Pripyat-level foliage would be very taxing indeed, I imagine. It's something I need to try some time.[/QUOTE] CE / UDK can do this. Xray will not. Not without a recode

I kind of wish more stalkers used shitty weapons in the first place. I usually can get to the top-tier guns in Stalker within 30 minutes to an hour of game time, and I most likely got it from someone's corpse. As is, I've gone through all the games a couple times not once stopping at the traders.

[url=http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-pripyat-redux/images/panorama-ranger-station][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15/14909/rangerstationpanorama.jpg[/t][/url] [B]Panorama: Ranger Station[/B] [I]We're very excited about the Ranger Station as a location in Redux v2.0 - it's had extensive work carried out upon it, and as you can see, is now fully enterable. Dare you find out what lurks within?[/I]

[QUOTE=Beacon;46729960][i]Dare you find out what lurks within?[/I][/QUOTE] It's the corpse of [Green] and his archives of barbed flesh cock fanfics.

If there won't be a blackout dug out basement serving as a Dead Bandit Storage in Redux 2 I will be severely disappointed.

[QUOTE=Tureis;46729527]I kind of wish more stalkers used shitty weapons in the first place. I usually can get to the top-tier guns in Stalker within 30 minutes to an hour of game time, and I most likely got it from someone's corpse. As is, I've gone through all the games a couple times not once stopping at the traders.[/QUOTE] Yeah I always get the pistol from Wolf, kill the bandits, grab a shotgun, sell the rest, head over to the military under the bridge in Cordon and kill them to get the AK74u, make my way to The Bar and then to Yantar to get the NATO guns.

[QUOTE=Beacon;46729960][url=http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-pripyat-redux/images/panorama-ranger-station][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15/14909/rangerstationpanorama.jpg[/t][/url] [B]Panorama: Ranger Station[/B] [I]We're very excited about the Ranger Station as a location in Redux v2.0 - it's had extensive work carried out upon it, and as you can see, is now fully enterable. Dare you find out what lurks within?[/I][/QUOTE] God damn stop hyping me up Any chance other areas will get this, like more buildings in pripyat (for more ambushes/sniper positions) and perhaps other places like the iron forest anomaly? Also will there be manual level changers in the levels, maybe with NPC checkpoints you have to push through? (ideally there'd be new travel/transition maps too to go between each place but that's me being hopeful)

[QUOTE=Beacon;46729960][url=http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-pripyat-redux/images/panorama-ranger-station][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15/14909/rangerstationpanorama.jpg[/t][/url] [B]Panorama: Ranger Station[/B] [I]We're very excited about the Ranger Station as a location in Redux v2.0 - it's had extensive work carried out upon it, and as you can see, is now fully enterable. Dare you find out what lurks within?[/I][/QUOTE] I get the feeling those brick bars top of the windows should be pushed out more. It looks rather flat against the bricks that have parallax mapping.