I dont understand the fuss the economy.

[Simplistic Views]

Stalker is intentionally a unforgiving game. We'll start with that. This is given.

I am playing stalker difficulty, the "recommended" experience. So, i'm judging it based off of this. Loot abundance, your health, and enemy health are affected by this. Rookie is baby mode, and veteran is probably where I feel a lot of the issues are coming from for those saying its "too difficult / hard" Go figure for those of which fit that, but maybe i'm missing something.

For the economy...

I personally found no issues, somewhat makes sense. I left the lesser zone with no less than 30k in my pockets before venturing to slag heap. You trade for less and buy for more as the trader has to make a profit just as much as you do. People also forget that there is a functional world outside of the zone, which means supplies can make their way to the zone. Food, water, meds, ammo, guns. You name it. Its either smuggled (think the beginning of the game) purchased from factions that have mainland contact, looted off corpses (such as off) aforementioned factions or even found from past. Theres tons of military-ish locations around the zone, no doubt something was left behind. So... things are cheap. Thats about where the sensibleness ends though here as the prices make the gameplay a bit boring and loopish for some. But for a looter/shooter fanatic like me this scratches the itch perfectly.

Some complain about how traders have infinite coupons; which I also thought was weird until I realized how quickly that might become annoying when you have to repeatedly sleep in your bed until the trader's cash reset just to sell the rest of your loot. Tit for tat.

Something people forget though is that artifacts sell for a ton of money, and they respawn. You can farm them ENDLESSLY. They take about a day or so to respawn and you can go back. The moment you get a better detector other than the echo and it gets vastly easier to locate them without running in circles. (The bear literally has a radar that points you in the direction.) Artifacts is what gives the zone popularity from the outside world. People want to buy them / research them / use them (if they can figure out how to get them out) but ultimately there is outside influences that seek them. So, there is cash to be made for them. And... thats excactly right.

Selling broken / destroyed weapons when they're in extreme abundance just makes sense that they dont sell for anything. Everyone (EVERYONE) has a gun. Why would they want yours? Nobody is using melee weapons like apocalypse games normally have a trope of. But you have to remember that profit has to be made, everyone is in squalor. Good equipment costs money! So they charge you abundantly for fresh unused gear.

Suits costing a lot of money? See aforementioned. I've never purchased one, never needed to. I've looted them around the map, found them with ease (by just exploring) and gathered my equipment over time. You HAVE to find those stashes as they contain so much useful stuff, and by just looking around locations you're already at you can find even more. (Like suits!) You can actually often find better suits around the map than what the traders are even selling.

I also never struggled with ammunition. Matter of fact, I have too much of it. Waaay too much of it. By being economical and intentionally aiming for the head of bandits and mutants you can save a TON of ammo. Not to mention using the correct ammo the first time. Using your best weapon at all times (like the AKs in the lesser zone) when ammunition for it is not always abundant depending where you're at... you will run out. I have also noted that depending on where you are you will find a lot of specific calibers, and that seems to be the caliber that fits best for that zone. For lesser zone, its primarily your PTM and the Viper. (9mx18 and 19) For slag, its the AKMs and still the PTM. Etc etc.

Repairs are a nightmare. But I noticed that they only truly get expensive when you dont repair at all. I dont actually know, but the price for repairs feels almost quadratic with a curve. Heavily damaged items feel waay more expensive per % than it does when its hardly damaged at all. Perhaps i'll do math on this one and track it. But I suppose it does make SOME sense, replacing an entire upper receiver is expensive. Replacing gas rings is cheap. But always repair. And repair often. Cheaper that way. Better gear is also more expensive to repair.

Reputation is a life saver, and helps so much. If you kill everyone you meet (You practically can, and actually can. The majority of characters in the game can be killed even some story ones.) then of course nobody is going to like you. Of course they're going to charge you more. On the other hand... if they do like you... they charge you less and pay you more for gear. Techs, guides, and doctors work the same way.

Again, I left the lesser zone with 30k coupons. purely by selling excess consumables and guns. and side questing. I never sell ammo, I never buy suits, I never buy weapons. I only buy attachments from traders and put all my excess money into upgrades

[Fox Tail]

Myyrä a écrit :

Myztkl©-Kev a écrit :

repairing a red gun for 15000 coupons just to turn around and sell it for 3000 is broken, I don't care what anyone says lol. Inventory says my armor is worth over 50k and the vendor gives me less than 10, that's broken lol. My armor costs like 15k to repair 15%, I made less than 5k in the time it took to take that 15% of damage.

It's not broken, it's just basic economics, vendors buy low and sell high even in real life for a good reason, they need to make profits for certain things like food, bills etc.
The inventory price just shows the general worth of the item, it doesn't say how much they're going for.
Also, never repair and sell weapons/armor, you're only getting a loss at that rate, just sell the yellow or better items.
Even better, do not repair and upgrade "low level gear", just use it until it breaks or you can squeeze some money out by selling it when it's still sellable (there's also a vendor at rostok that buys "red gear", so if you want to you can just dump broken gear into your personal stash and sell to him eventually).

Still shouldn't cost 15-200k to repair gear in this game. No logical reason to this. Did devs want the player to run though the whole game naked using a pistol and knife the whole time? The repair cost in this game is a simulation to how bad the real world economy is. Do a job just to pay your bills and be dead ass broke and go out and do another job to be dead ass broke again, hoping one day you'll beable to afford that upgrade. This game pointlessly punishes the player for fighting enemies while it also spawns enemies right on top of the players head like WTF. There times I see groups of enemies and I just decide to ignore them cause I'll know get maybe 2 coupons if I kill them and lose 200k in repairs if I kill them and if I do kill them while I'm looting them the game will endlessly spawn wave after wave of enemies on my head like I'm playing COD zombie mode, it stupid.

[Kankaku]

A lot of people are getting stuck in the lesser zone due to running out of ammo and not having any money outside of money glitches on veteran because of bloodsuckers. I feel like if bloodsuckers were nerfed by like half their health pool or maybe 3/4 it would help a lot. Getting set back in the early game because of it makes a big difference later because you'll always be playing catch up.

[Simplistic Views]

Baron01 a écrit :

Simplistic Views a écrit :

Sorry what? I have nearly 60 hours and nearly half the acheivements. I even have more playtime than you. What are you on about? Check my profile before you make these weird claims stating I havent played enough. I'm literally playing it right now.

I've already agreed several times quest rewards should be improved. Read please. Not skim.

I never need (or even used) the trader exploit, and I make money just fine even mid-to late game wearing exosuits and the best weapons I have. If you struggle, take the time to artifact farm. Those hypercubes sell for so much money and even more if you have green reputation with people. I dont even sell my artifacts, I keep them.

I have indicated I only respond to the opening post as I do not have time reading everything.

You have given background that clearly pointed out you are basing your opinion on an early areas of the game and basic weapons and armors. You are just adding more arguments, obviously made up just to support position. You must be the special snowflake that found magical way to make it in the game while everyone else must be a sucker that does not know how to play the game.

I just give you latest example how broken the game economy is: I got a quest to bring some psi-parts to a technicians. In order to acquire those parts, I had to kill burer. I have used my Fora-221 to kill him using AP ammo. I have lost 6% durability in killing the single burer, not shot 1 bullet on anything else. It cost me 1276 coupons to repair the gun. That is not including cost of ammo. This is one encounter. if you count cost of ammo into the final amount, it would run you so deep into red numbers it is crazy. The reward was entry level suite you can find for free in Lesser Zone and I was supposed to pay 40k coupons for it to the technician. /facepalm

Hunt artifacts? Duh...I'm sure Hypercubes or Compasses spawn in every anomaly. What am I supposed to do with those 7.5k common artifacts that sell for 2.5k? It is very likely that my repairs from just walking around anomalies and potentially fending of random spawns will be more than the proceeds from selling it. If you are save scumming to get those rare anomalies, you are not different to people using exploit to sell for full price.

And to be clear, I can absolutely live with the current state of the game and have usually over 250k coupons. However, the hoops I have to jump through to be able to just play the game are not fun. Slowly walking to nearest trader with inventory full of weapons and armor just to get penny for it. Running back and forth between PoI and trade to sell everything I can pick up. Find and grab any artifact I run into. Sure, I do all that but it is not all that fun especially if the world around me is so stale and boring.

If you cant take the time to read the whole discussion, dont bother posting. Everything you've spoken about has been covered in one portion or another somewhere in this discussion once if not multiple times. I've already agreed with some of these portions you've outlined such as repair prices several times. No, I never save scummed to farm artifacts. Thats literally the same concept as the trader exploit. If i get a common... i just go to the next area. Once you clear an area the only thing you have to worry about is random spawns at least for now.

I base my opinions on the beginning of the game as thats where most people are stuggling and primarily commenting on. once you leave the lesser zone money making gets easier. Additionally, per the OP this discussion does not cover veteran mode. You chose hard mode, you got hard mode. Loot abundance and health (yours and enemies) are all altered in veteran mode. Go figure you have to jump through hoops in such a state. Thats kinda the whole point. Hard is supposed to be... hard. This isnt fallout or skyrim where difficulty matters not at all as long as you have heavily modified / enchanted weapons and armor.

Take a bit of time next time "special snowflake." Sorry other's time wasn't worth yours.

[Simplistic Views]

Swaggaccino a écrit :

Simplistic Views a écrit :

Sorry what? I have nearly 60 hours and nearly half the acheivements. I even have more playtime than you. What are you on about? Check my profile before you make these weird claims stating I havent played enough. I'm literally playing it right now.

I've already agreed several times quest rewards should be improved. Read please. Not skim.

I never need (or even used) the trader exploit, and I make money just fine even mid-to late game wearing exosuits and the best weapons I have. If you struggle, take the time to artifact farm. Those hypercubes sell for so much money and even more if you have green reputation with people. I dont even sell my artifacts, I keep them.

"I rushed the main quest missions and suddenly the game is giving me far more valuable items than at the beginning"

You aren't proving his argument wrong. There's ZERO incentive to do the side quests at the beginning (other than exploring for fun). Hell there's ZERO incentive to explore because you risk damaging and losing all of your gear due to wear and tear so you absolutely NEED to rush the main campaign ASAP if you want an easier adventure. Hell not even easy, FAIR. I can't imagine doing some of these later missions with early game armor and weapons that jam every 5-10 rounds.

That's called a broken game economy that needs to be addressed.

Where did I once mention rushing the main quest? Like no, seriously. Quote me. I did every side quest and loot stash I could before I moved out of the lesser zone. Rushing the main quests is a dumb idea.

Repair costs need to be addressed, yes. But i think they just need to degrade less, not be cheaper. The rate they degrade is abysmal. Fire 100 bullets and its already heavily worn? Thats ridiculous! If you have to repair an entire suit you're basically paying for a whole new suit... might as well cost somewhere on the same level.

Seriously where are you guys getting these profound claims?

[Simplistic Views]

Prussian Wolf a écrit :

Ok. I'm not going to quote your insanely long reply, but it's quite telling you immediately jump to attacking me personally and then make up points that I didn't make - for example saying I want to make money selling broken equipment, that's not a claim I made.

And I'll just throw this out - "This stalker game supposedly has had the best initial release of the previous games"... No. I cannot even sit and play the game because it gives me a memory leak fairly quickly.

I mistook you for the other guy as we had a consistent back and forth for a moment, honestly. Thats my fault for not checking the name, thats where the "claims you didnt make" come from. But thats also not my problem if you consider it a personal attack and not just a heavily broken down in-depth response. Only thing "personal" in that message was telling you that you have a god complex. And now you wanna play the victim here too without cross examination. Thats fine, but I guess expected.

And I'll just throw this out - "This stalker game supposedly has had the best initial release of the previous games"... No. I cannot even sit and play the game because it gives me a memory leak fairly quickly.

I mentioned the previous games for a reason. They run fine now as they've had years to bugfix. The first stalker is 13 years old and ran even worse than this with way more bugs and issues on release.

[Giggles]

LMFAO you left with 30 and no big deal....to bad armor costs as much as 30K to repair after one mission plus 15k on each weapon and ammo being 10k for 100 or less

[JackSlader]

Anyone who has completed Gamma Invictus will be sleepwalking in this game, if you find this game unforgiving, i recommend staying far away from Gamma, it's not for you.

This game is not in any way unforgiving, you get so many damn meds that you can practically use them like candy, the game holds your hand and wipe your ass for you most of the time, it's a glorified console FPS shooter, definitely not survival sandbox game i was expecting.

Even CoP as a base game is far more unforgiving. The only mechanic that even remotely provided a challenge is the repair cost versus loot/quest rewards, but then again it being completely broken i guess that makes sense.

Turning off all the hud elements does help slightly, because being able to see the enemy on a compass like you were using a cheat in an online game has no place in games period.

[Ghost]

(Veteran difficulty)

Just went to get a journalist stash, the content was an armor worth 100k un-upgraded, low physical resistance. Imagine wearing that thing...every % durability lost is probably worth thousands.

I've been as resourceful as possible, wearing the lowest value armor with highest physical resistance to min/max repair cost. I use skif's pistol (costs nothing to repair, cheap ammo, common), loot everything, farm anomalies. I am using legend-grade artifacts (MAX physical, etc). Yet, I don't see myself being able to maintain that 100k armor.

I do love a brutal economy. But that seems a bit excessive. Maybe I haven't figured it out just yet.

[Baron01]

Simplistic Views a écrit :

Where did I once mention rushing the main quest? Like no, seriously. Quote me. I did every side quest and loot stash I could before I moved out of the lesser zone. Rushing the main quests is a dumb idea.

Repair costs need to be addressed, yes. But i think they just need to degrade less, not be cheaper. The rate they degrade is abysmal. Fire 100 bullets and its already heavily worn? Thats ridiculous! If you have to repair an entire suit you're basically paying for a whole new suit... might as well cost somewhere on the same level.

Seriously where are you guys getting these profound claims?

You are confused dude. I can decide to respond to whatever part of the argument you posted on these forums. I'm not obliged nor mandated to read the whole discussion, get your argument straight.

The fact is your post was full of inaccuracies, shortcuts and based on irrelevant slice of the game. You are the special snowflake who got the breakthrough while everyone else is doing it wrong.

The quest rewards, cost of repairs, weapon and gear degradation and buy & sell systems are massively undercooked or outright broken. The only saving grace is that the game showers you with a loot in form of ammo, medkits and food. However, this is a band-aid that highlight more undercooked systems such as encumberance and stamina management.

I have to sell everything I find to get enough coupons to repair my gear and buy ammo for some of the rare guns. Because I have to sell everything, I'm constantly weighted down by the crap loot that ultimately sells for pennies. While I'm weighted down by the loot I need to sell, I'm slowed down and my stamina drops like a stone. This is never-ending cycle of misery that is just not fun.

Even trying to use your "magical" solution, which I'm using anyway, to hunt for artifacts is impacted by these system flaws. Just 10 seconds of passing through glass anomaly to get to artifact, cost me 12% durability of my suite. That is nearly 10k coupons in repair and I can get artifact that sells for 2.5k as a reward. Sure, I can also get one of the legendary ones that might sell for whopping 12k + or -. This would mean I would make 2.5k profit IF I hit the jackpot.

More broken interactions, sure, here it goes. We have different ammo types in the game and are encouraged them to fight different targets. Armor piercing ammo is the pinnacle but guess what it does as a side effect? It significantly increase wear and tear of the weapon used at a rate that is absolutely ridiculous. I incurred 30% durability loss by fighting 2 bloodsuckers and a burer. I got some useless loot from a common stash, nothing from the mutants obviously and a repair tab of more than 12k coupons. This does not account for the ammo I used as I found most of it but otherwise would cost me another 6k coupons at minimum.

I now have over 400k coupons as I sweap clean every stash and PoI for loot and lug most of it to a trade. I have spent significant amount of my time with the game slowly walking from one location to another in vain attempt to win the economy struggle. What a fun!

[【🐲】Kobayashi Tohru ★]

Finally sane post

[Don Montega]

My observations so far:
Ammo is not an issue, if you run a weapon for the area you are in, that is used frequently by AI there.
Use the right ammo for the task, and if you swim in AP and Expanding ammo sell regular fmj.

Use the firing modes! Single shot for tragets at range and single shot headshots, burst/auto for close range and rooms, or spam LMB XD
Weapons have dmg dropoff, worst on Pistols and Shotguns, play them as they work in the game (sadly gamey and unrealistic to have shotties take 4x the shots on 20 meters vs. bloodsuckers).

Always unload all weapons dropped by AI for ammo.
Mutants are ammo dumps, playing smart is key, or avoiding them.
Avoiding taking damage reduces the amount of repair costs, which are the biggest money sink next to upgrades.

Pick up yellow condition guns only, if they are worth it for the weight you gotta carry. My go-to are western or modern firearms, trash AKs and hunting shotties are dead weight.

Try to stash guns prior to selling, as traders with neutral reputation pay less, get quests done to get traders friendly and give you more per sale.

Don't hog consumables, sell excess, they are the hidden and main reason for having so much weight on your character.

Stash ammo of calibers that you don't need or sell it outright (like 9mm ammo, if you don't go Viper or Vector).

The last thing:
If you don't enjoy it right now, maybe wait on optimization and Mods.
Mods will make this be a totally different story.

[Crochwhisle purple]

The economy sucks mostly up to mid game because you will never have any money after doing repairs (lots of times after the story missions). You are basically entirely reliant on stashes and the meager mission payout to somehow get by without a chance to get any cool new gat or upgrade the old stuff. And when you get some money all of it goes to upgrading weapons so that they break less (which makes them more costly to repair). It`s like a vicious cycle of rarely getting new, cool stuff and all the old but upgraded stuff slowing you down because of just how much repairs can cost (and how fast all your ♥♥♥♥ breaks). Anomaly as a bandit would be a good comparison in terns of how at the start of the game you will never have any money left over after getting 90 bullets for your main gun, and how when you finally get enough to get something good, it will most of the time be JUST enough to get something, without any financial cushions (like upgrading from an AK74-S to an SKS)

[Swaggaccino]

Simplistic Views a écrit :

Where did I once mention rushing the main quest? Like no, seriously. Quote me. I did every side quest and loot stash I could before I moved out of the lesser zone. Rushing the main quests is a dumb idea.

Repair costs need to be addressed, yes. But i think they just need to degrade less, not be cheaper. The rate they degrade is abysmal. Fire 100 bullets and its already heavily worn? Thats ridiculous! If you have to repair an entire suit you're basically paying for a whole new suit... might as well cost somewhere on the same level.

Seriously where are you guys getting these profound claims?

You literally agreed with him. Other guy said push main missions and you supported his argument by saying you made all your money from mid-late game implementing you skipped over early game or it's unremarkable.

I'm further into the game and the starting weapons are hilariously game logic nerfed. Going from the Toz-34 to M860 barely felt any different. Bloodsuckers on average took between ~10+ shots to put down (normal diff) but when you finally get to the RAM2 you can absolutely shred bloodsuckers in 1 hit. That's another reason why you absolutely need to push main missions if you are struggling. Most RPGs reward you by doing side quests and and preparing for later main missions by farming/looting but STALKER 2 outright punishes you for that.

And yeah I agree with making the degrade system less frequent. Needs to be at minimum quadrupled if not more. It just screams game logic. I guess they tried to be like Breath of the Wild but at least BoTW gave you fresh weapons to loot once your old weapons broke. STALKER 2 loot is like 80-90% broken weapons.

I love the game but there's so many broken things with it even moreover than Cyberpunk at launch.

[Simplistic Views]

Baron01 a écrit :

Simplistic Views a écrit :

Where did I once mention rushing the main quest? Like no, seriously. Quote me. I did every side quest and loot stash I could before I moved out of the lesser zone. Rushing the main quests is a dumb idea.

Repair costs need to be addressed, yes. But i think they just need to degrade less, not be cheaper. The rate they degrade is abysmal. Fire 100 bullets and its already heavily worn? Thats ridiculous! If you have to repair an entire suit you're basically paying for a whole new suit... might as well cost somewhere on the same level.

Seriously where are you guys getting these profound claims?

You are confused dude. I can decide to respond to whatever part of the argument you posted on these forums. I'm not obliged nor mandated to read the whole discussion, get your argument straight.

The fact is your post was full of inaccuracies, shortcuts and based on irrelevant slice of the game. You are the special snowflake who got the breakthrough while everyone else is doing it wrong.

The quest rewards, cost of repairs, weapon and gear degradation and buy & sell systems are massively undercooked or outright broken. The only saving grace is that the game showers you with a loot in form of ammo, medkits and food. However, this is a band-aid that highlight more undercooked systems such as encumberance and stamina management.

I have to sell everything I find to get enough coupons to repair my gear and buy ammo for some of the rare guns. Because I have to sell everything, I'm constantly weighted down by the crap loot that ultimately sells for pennies. While I'm weighted down by the loot I need to sell, I'm slowed down and my stamina drops like a stone. This is never-ending cycle of misery that is just not fun.

Even trying to use your "magical" solution, which I'm using anyway, to hunt for artifacts is impacted by these system flaws. Just 10 seconds of passing through glass anomaly to get to artifact, cost me 12% durability of my suite. That is nearly 10k coupons in repair and I can get artifact that sells for 2.5k as a reward. Sure, I can also get one of the legendary ones that might sell for whopping 12k + or -. This would mean I would make 2.5k profit IF I hit the jackpot.

More broken interactions, sure, here it goes. We have different ammo types in the game and are encouraged them to fight different targets. Armor piercing ammo is the pinnacle but guess what it does as a side effect? It significantly increase wear and tear of the weapon used at a rate that is absolutely ridiculous. I incurred 30% durability loss by fighting 2 bloodsuckers and a burer. I got some useless loot from a common stash, nothing from the mutants obviously and a repair tab of more than 12k coupons. This does not account for the ammo I used as I found most of it but otherwise would cost me another 6k coupons at minimum.

I now have over 400k coupons as I sweap clean every stash and PoI for loot and lug most of it to a trade. I have spent significant amount of my time with the game slowly walking from one location to another in vain attempt to win the economy struggle. What a fun!

You do you then, dude. Comment on whatever part you want, never said you cant. Just meerly glossing over the fact that you're just repeating the portions that have already been touched several times. Make some claims with weight. The fact you're complaining its such a hoop and hassle game yet managed to get over 400k on veteran difficulty just further proves how I dont understand how people are struggling for money. I dont even have that much (roughly 80k atm) and I play normal (stalker) difficulty. I dont hunt for money, my stash is entirely loaded. I hardly sell anything that isnt directly loot pickup weapons / excess consumables.

It costs so much to repair, yet you're doing just fine.

If its such an issue... why complain if clearly you're drowning in coupons? You're clearly doing something right in that regard.

[lockwoodx]

The economy forces players to scum scave. The ones who don't are the people complaining.