Longtime Stalker Fan - First Impressions

[Blyatiful Cyka]

I've been a huge stalker fan since childhood and have been waiting for this title for so long, as have we all. Here are a few of my own observations while playing.

The good:
- The atmosphere from earlier stalkers has been preserved, as has the lore. A big achievement, considering change of engine.
- NPCs look decent, some repetitiveness is seen, however. Especially seen when 2 same faces are sitting together.
- Animations are neat, good details on weapons, plus food eating. I like that they adopted this from mods. I wish they adopted mutant part harvesting. Right now mutants are just a huge waste of ammo, better to run away. No incentive whatsoever for killing mutants, haven't seen a fame or rating system like on stalker shoc.
- Love the map and the locations. Zone feels huge.
- Love the decals on enemies. Just wish bullet holes and bodies would stay longer, as with other decals. Right now they vanish right in front of you. Bonus if we can have bullet shells remaining also.

The bad:
- Story is a bit weak so far, but that's down to personal interpretation. Some choices presented are an illusion leading to same outcome.
- Voiced protagonist sounds better in Ukrainian, English voice overs sound a bit off. Also, because of voiced protagonist, options for conversations are very bare bones and limited. Not many topics to pursue. Talking to some NPCs feels barren.
- Flashlight no longer a dynamic light source, no shadows cast on objects. NPC flashlights do cast dynamic lights, but are very tame and weak light sources.
- Radio chatter distortion will sometimes end mid convo, so half of a radio message sounds like it's over the radio, and half sounds like someone is standing right next to you and talking.
- Many small, quirky bugs like NPC path-finding and campfire behaviour. NPCs get stuck, shadows of player deformed, levitating bodies, bodies spawning right in player's field of vision, etc. Should be patched out easily.
- Cannot use pda or eat/drink while sitting at campfire.
- Game looks good, but the engine is really struggling. I have a top tier rig and play on everything maxed out, my gpu runs at 35*C playing it ((baseline 30*C when not doing anything)), hardly feels demanding, yet it is very stuttery, especially in cities. Needs better optimisation. Downloaded a mod that fixed it, now it's mostly smooth.
- Time passage was too fast so I modded that to more closely resemble stalker shoc, now I can visit a few locations in day time, instead of having a full 24 hour cycle pass as you are exploring one single bandit outpost.
- Enemies are bullet sponges on hard, there is no way can a bandit in a leather jacket tank 2 full mp5 mags to the chest. This isn't fallout. Even with armor, enemies in stalker shoc would go down with just a few chest shots, even from a 9x18.

The ugly:
- Spawn system will spawn enemies right on top of you, and sometimes respawn them just as you've finished them off and are looting them. This needs to be patched out. At the moment this made me stop playing.
- Enemy bases like the Sphere are engulfed in complete darkness at night while enemy NPCs just stand there like robots. Seems like no attempt was made to give lighting to inhabited interiors or exteriors, and enemies have no simulated behaviour like a patrol. Enemies have been found sitting around in a pitch dark room, doing nothing, no talking, just staring. Really breaks immersion.

Game feels like it was released too early, doesn't feel like it was even seriously play tested. Feels like they got a few guys to run through the beginning tutorial and call it a day. I don't believe any serious play tester would've handed over and said it's good to go. They have a lot of patching to do. I believe modders will fix it and it'll become great, but they shouldn't have to. Game devs need to start finishing games before releasing them. The only bugs on release should be to do with optimisation, not something like alife spazzing out respawning bases while you are still in them. At the very least do a cool down system.

[hairyjim_uk]

I'm currently just about to leave the lesser zone, and after exploring the sphere before i needed to for the mission, I had guys spawn back on the entrance as I was heading to leave. Other than that not had much in regards to over excessive npc spawn, though I do agree it is a little too quick.

Enemies I've noticed dont react to hearing gunshots unless its withing 20m of them which is annoying. I wish the game had more emphasis on needing stealth. Especially if they changed the damage/health aspect of us and npcs. I've headshotted npcs that are just wearing coats, heard the specific headshot noise, and then they turn around and shoot at me... I hope they lower npc health soon, as well as mutant.

Would be great if there was more of an emphasis too on not being caught out at night. As a player new to stalker games I gather I dont want to be out at night because of previous games and pure common sense, but not had much issues when I have been out at night. And in regards to that I wish the game let you make your own camps in buildings or make a makeshift bed in some abandoned house so you can pass the time and sleep. Could also come with scripted interactions like bandits finding you or waking up to a boar at the door.

I've also heard so much talk about factions and not upsetting them, but while running around the lesser zone I've pretty much been shot at by everyone and in turn shot at everyone. Other than the odd npc who is very clearly friendly or in zalissya, I've had no actual interactions with factions. It would be good if everyone wasnt ready to shoot you straight away and would tell you to leave if you were close to trespassing or told you to holster your weapon or noticed if you pulled it out.

And on the note of npcs, I'm sat at a campfire while typing this and have heard a guy say its his birthday today or maybe yesterday at least hes alive, a million times. Takes me out of the realism when the npcs actually act like npcs. There needs to be more coherent conversation between npcs, and maybe that you can join in on at campfires, rather than being the quite brooding type.

and on that note, I want to drink at a campfire and have a rdr2 lenny bar scene sometimes, wake up on the floor with a headache, being cuddled by some other random stalker who says he''ll kill me if I tell anyone he was cuddling me.

Games been mostly great, and other than some major issues like artifacts not spawning, not had much to complain about that wont be fixed in the coming patch fixes and updates.

[Blyatiful Cyka]

Spawn system is broken, faction allegiance system not really significant at the moment because of lack of A-Life. I've found the allegiance system to be mostly scripted for missions and of no consequence. Telling the Ward to go F itself means nothing.
Also, stealth is indeed broken too.

[Cheyenesku]

Originally posted by Blyatiful Cyka:

I've been a huge stalker fan since childhood and have been waiting for this title for so long, as have we all. Here are a few of my own observations while playing.

The good:
- The atmosphere from earlier stalkers has been preserved, as has the lore. A big achievement, considering change of engine.
- NPCs look decent, some repetitiveness is seen, however. Especially seen when 2 same faces are sitting together.
- Animations are neat, good details on weapons, plus food eating. I like that they adopted this from mods. I wish they adopted mutant part harvesting. Right now mutants are just a huge waste of ammo, better to run away. No incentive whatsoever for killing mutants, haven't seen a fame or rating system like on stalker shoc.
- Love the map and the locations. Zone feels huge.
- Love the decals on enemies. Just wish bullet holes and bodies would stay longer, as with other decals. Right now they vanish right in front of you. Bonus if we can have bullet shells remaining also.

The bad:
- Story is a bit weak so far, but that's down to personal interpretation. Some choices presented are an illusion leading to same outcome.
- Voiced protagonist sounds better in Ukrainian, English voice overs sound a bit off. Also, because of voiced protagonist, options for conversations are very bare bones and limited. Not many topics to pursue. Talking to some NPCs feels barren.
- Flashlight no longer a dynamic light source, no shadows cast on objects. NPC flashlights do cast dynamic lights, but are very tame and weak light sources.
- Radio chatter distortion will sometimes end mid convo, so half of a radio message sounds like it's over the radio, and half sounds like someone is standing right next to you and talking.
- Many small, quirky bugs like NPC path-finding and campfire behaviour. NPCs get stuck, shadows of player deformed, levitating bodies, bodies spawning right in player's field of vision, etc. Should be patched out easily.
- Cannot use pda or eat/drink while sitting at campfire.
- Game looks good, but the engine is really struggling. I have a top tier rig and play on everything maxed out, my gpu runs at 35*C playing it ((baseline 30*C when not doing anything)), hardly feels demanding, yet it is very stuttery, especially in cities. Needs better optimisation. Downloaded a mod that fixed it, now it's mostly smooth.
- Time passage was too fast so I modded that to more closely resemble stalker shoc, now I can visit a few locations in day time, instead of having a full 24 hour cycle pass as you are exploring one single bandit outpost.
- Enemies are bullet sponges on hard, there is no way can a bandit in a leather jacket tank 2 full mp5 mags to the chest. This isn't fallout. Even with armor, enemies in stalker shoc would go down with just a few chest shots, even from a 9x18.

The ugly:
- Spawn system will spawn enemies right on top of you, and sometimes respawn them just as you've finished them off and are looting them. This needs to be patched out. At the moment this made me stop playing.
- Enemy bases like the Sphere are engulfed in complete darkness at night while enemy NPCs just stand there like robots. Seems like no attempt was made to give lighting to inhabited interiors or exteriors, and enemies have no simulated behaviour like a patrol. Enemies have been found sitting around in a pitch dark room, doing nothing, no talking, just staring. Really breaks immersion.

Game feels like it was released too early, doesn't feel like it was even seriously play tested. Feels like they got a few guys to run through the beginning tutorial and call it a day. I don't believe any serious play tester would've handed over and said it's good to go. They have a lot of patching to do. I believe modders will fix it and it'll become great, but they shouldn't have to. Game devs need to start finishing games before releasing them. The only bugs on release should be to do with optimisation, not something like alife spazzing out respawning bases while you are still in them. At the very least do a cool down system.

Engine needs to be updated to 5.4, its on 5.1 now (all games on 5.1 have same problems we have now with performance). With 5.4 there will come performance gains, dynamic shadows from light sources, Nanite grass and foliage (so no popin) etc.

[Blyatiful Cyka]

Originally posted by Cheyenesku:

Engine needs to be updated to 5.4, its on 5.1 now (all games on 5.1 have same problems we have now with performance). With 5.4 there will come performance gains, dynamic shadows from light sources, Nanite grass and foliage (so no popin) etc.

Ohh god, so we gotta wait THAT LONG to get dynamic flashlight shadows??? :(

[sunflower]

Originally posted by Blyatiful Cyka:

Game feels like it was released too early, doesn't feel like it was even seriously play tested. Feels like they got a few guys to run through the beginning tutorial and call it a day. I don't believe any serious play tester would've handed over and said it's good to go.

This is not how things work. Testers don't decide when the game is ready to be released. They have release date. And they fix most important bugs. They have internal bug tracking system, and it was probably full of low priority bugs at the release time.
You can't imagine how buggy such big and complex game like stalker can be during active development.