Does the world feel empty to you?

[Night FM]

I'm not sure if the patch changed anything, but most of the areas in the Garbage feel empty, especially in regards to mutants. In particular, I was disappointed to find that the plant (which was a bandit base in the original Stalker) was entirely empty, despite having loot and all the hallmarkings of a base.

[Precurse]

Originally posted by Zibigan:

Originally posted by Precurse:

Feels normal to me, I just think that you don't understand what Stalker is

Why do I get the feeling that most people who say this have never played the vanilla trilogy?

Idk but the Zone being empty is what makes it a horror game, it's the natural order trying to kill you most of the time, like, it's a part of the atmosphere, it's just dark and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up

[Precurse]

Originally posted by Night FM:

Originally posted by Precurse:

Feels normal to me, I just think that you don't understand what Stalker is

I'm recalling my experience from the original game. The plant in the Garbage was a bandit base. It's a huge structure with plenty of opportunity for firefights, but in this game, it was completely empty save for some electrical anomalies and a single stalker in the granary. It was also full of loot, which made the complete absence of stalkers seem less believable.

For me it wasn't empty though, is the thing, I've had insane firefights so I don't see how the game is empty? I've been outnumbered 1:40 multiple times so I don't see where the game is empty

[Isundir Edelhert]

Originally posted by lots-of-fia:

ugh dude,anomaly is not stalker...ur describing a looter shooter mmo,not a horror survival game.many people love dayz too but u dont see them talking bout it on arma 2 forums.the moment i see anomaly or gamma,i can nolonger take u seriously!

Except this was a staple of the series at least from Clear Sky onwards and Shadow of Chernobyl at least still had packs of mutants and friendly/hostile stalkers at least wandering around the map. Now bandits and mutants only exists as spawns 5 meters away from you when your at a marked location instead of naturally existing in the zone like in all of the previous games.

[Isundir Edelhert]

Originally posted by LockwoodX:

The problem isn't that the world feels empty.

The problem is that the world goes from immersive and beautiful to... knowing a bloodsucker will spawn out of thin air if you go check that corpse and, feels very artificial.

The previous stalker games only broke immersion because of eurojank. This stalker game does it on purpose to cut corners and its a travesty modders will have to fix.

This, this really puts it in to words very eloquently.

[Zibigan]

Originally posted by Precurse:

Originally posted by Zibigan:

Why do I get the feeling that most people who say this have never played the vanilla trilogy?

Idk but the Zone being empty is what makes it a horror game, it's the natural order trying to kill you most of the time, like, it's a part of the atmosphere, it's just dark and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up

The original stalker games did not feel empty though. There were NPC's around and they felt a part of the world. In stalker 2, there are so few NPC's outside of settlements. The ones that are feel like set pieces or cheap tricks.

[Isundir Edelhert]

Originally posted by Precurse:

Originally posted by Zibigan:

Why do I get the feeling that most people who say this have never played the vanilla trilogy?

Idk but the Zone being empty is what makes it a horror game, it's the natural order trying to kill you most of the time, like, it's a part of the atmosphere, it's just dark and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up

By natural order you mean only anomalies? How does it make sense that mutants, or a group of bandits/mercs etc aren't actually wandering around the map, why is it npcs of any kind only spawn in at marked locations or during quests.

Don't get me wrong I'm still mostly enjoying my time with the game so far but compared to every other stalker game (the original trilogy Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, Call of Pripyat as well as dozens upon dozens of mods and overhauls) Stalker 2 just feels extremely artificial and not like an immersive world that the previous games had..

.. and yeah A-Life (the actually wandering around the map npcs) was jank sometimes especially in Clear Sky, but it still added something, a little bit of magic, to these games that's just not present here.

Edit* Genuienly, everybody who has a "This is fine" opinion I can not believe they have ever played another stalker game in their lives, or they would/should notice this.

[Baron01]

Originally posted by Night FM:

I'm not sure if the patch changed anything, but most of the areas in the Garbage feel empty, especially in regards to mutants. In particular, I was disappointed to find that the plant (which was a bandit base in the original Stalker) was entirely empty, despite having loot and all the hallmarkings of a base.

Unfortunately whole zone in Stalker 2 is mostly empty and static. There are few scripted events here and there and quests but the rest is just empty wasteland with a few points of interest that have spawn triggers around them to create feeling of "living" world. If you avoid points of interests you can run around the map for many minutes without ever running any NPC or mutant.

It is very sad to realize that even the ambient sounds are just another rouse to cover for empty world--all those howls or screams, it is just background noise, there are no mutants or people in need.

The whole spawn situation is terrible as this system forces you to spend as little time as possible at points of interest otherwise you will be inundated by constant spawn. It can be a group of bandits or two bloodsuckers. It seems to me that what spawns is not completely random so some points will spawn hostile soliders, e.g. Sphere, and others might spawn bloodsuckers, e.g. Claw anomalous area.

This is not issue of A-life not working properly. This is issue of not having enough time to actually create world that feels lived in. You can see this everywhere for very few worthy side-quests to extremely poor combat AI. If anyone is still not decided whether Stalker's AI is horrible, I suggest you check Arena quest in Rostock. The final encounter is such a sad illustration how very little the AI can actually do and completely shuts any discussion about AI progress.

[Precurse]

Originally posted by Zibigan:

Originally posted by Precurse:

Idk but the Zone being empty is what makes it a horror game, it's the natural order trying to kill you most of the time, like, it's a part of the atmosphere, it's just dark and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up

The original stalker games did not feel empty though. There were NPC's around and they felt a part of the world. In stalker 2, there are so few NPC's outside of settlements. The ones that are feel like set pieces or cheap tricks.

Those games were very small though, like this game is all of those games and more, it's probably hard to balance the amount of stuff it throws at you, but honestly I genuinely do not see the problems other people are facing. I'm constantly in gun battles and dealing with bloodsuckers and fleshes. I'm all the way in the Duga region now. Maybe it's a bug?

[Enari]

Originally posted by Der Albaner:

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

I agree, I've been loving the game,but what it's been pulling the game back is the missing A-life, sometimes I walk for 3-4km to explore the zone and I get 1 encounter probably, even 0 if you follow specific paths and you know already where enemies spawns...

Pretty disappointing if you ask me, but if people say there is a mod that increases and randomizes the spawns of NPCs and mutants... I may actually try that. I'm just very skeptical about a-life coming back at all at this point because of UE5, but I don't know much about it anyway! I just want the game to succeed.

Well happens to me they instantly spawn behind me and start shooting. That does not make the game feel alive...it rather makes it feel like the game is messing with you.

This is how it is for me as well, i just launched the game after it updated, i wanted to see how much it had actually changed, as i started to walk to one of the noontied side quest , i watched a group of bandits spawn 100 m out from me , so i went to take cover and the second i did, all of a sudden im also being attacked by 3 blood suckers, like how is this or does this feel organic, its kinda frustrating it ruins game immersion for me and its fluidity. there is no strategic way to play this game if the game is just going to dump enemys on you in the middle of no where with little to no protection .. my only choice is to run .. and take high ground

[veriszg]

another game done with amazing world, amazing graphics but mediocre stuff to fill in, the game has amazing potential, we have to wait probably 1 or 2 years for it

[Night FM]

Originally posted by Baron01:

Originally posted by Night FM:

I'm not sure if the patch changed anything, but most of the areas in the Garbage feel empty, especially in regards to mutants. In particular, I was disappointed to find that the plant (which was a bandit base in the original Stalker) was entirely empty, despite having loot and all the hallmarkings of a base.

Unfortunately whole zone in Stalker 2 is mostly empty and static. There are few scripted events here and there and quests but the rest is just empty wasteland with a few points of interest that have spawn triggers around them to create feeling of "living" world. If you avoid points of interests you can run around the map for many minutes without ever running any NPC or mutant.

It is very sad to realize that even the ambient sounds are just another rouse to cover for empty world--all those howls or screams, it is just background noise, there are no mutants or people in need.

The whole spawn situation is terrible as this system forces you to spend as little time as possible at points of interest otherwise you will be inundated by constant spawn. It can be a group of bandits or two bloodsuckers. It seems to me that what spawns is not completely random so some points will spawn hostile soliders, e.g. Sphere, and others might spawn bloodsuckers, e.g. Claw anomalous area.

This is not issue of A-life not working properly. This is issue of not having enough time to actually create world that feels lived in. You can see this everywhere for very few worthy side-quests to extremely poor combat AI. If anyone is still not decided whether Stalker's AI is horrible, I suggest you check Arena quest in Rostock. The final encounter is such a sad illustration how very little the AI can actually do and completely shuts any discussion about AI progress.

I'm disappointed if the A-Life is essentially a downgrade of what was available in SoC. Especially in spite of the high system requirements. What are all of those specs and hardrive space going towards, especially given that the graphics don't look much better than Far Cry 5.

The A-Life in this game sounds more like Far Cry 5 as well. I don't have a technical knowledge of how NPC spawns worked in that game, but I'm assuming it's similar.

[Martian Jesus]

no it IS empty. All these ding dongs giving examples can't tell a scripted vs non scripted event lmao

[Feuver]

Originally posted by Night FM:

I'm not sure if the patch changed anything, but most of the areas in the Garbage feel empty, especially in regards to mutants. In particular, I was disappointed to find that the plant (which was a bandit base in the original Stalker) was entirely empty, despite having loot and all the hallmarkings of a base.

Yes, I finished the entire game and that was the biggest take-away that made me rush the game to finish and wait for the entire thing to be patched/fixed and modded to hell and back.

The entire map is really really big (much bigger than any stalker games before, there's literally almost every zone of previous stalker games + lands in between), and the big problem with that is that there is endless monotonous boring walks in between all the POIs. The only thing that breaks these boring walks is the AI director that sometimes randomly spawns enemy squad to snipe at you, or mutants to rush you. 90% of the buldings and POIs on the map are recycled assets in various configurations, but the worst is that they almost always have nothing interesting inside of them aside from maybe one stash with ammo and the same 2-4 consumables you have by the hundreds. At worst scripted encounters with mutants that gives zero rewards.

The lair system from the A-LIFE was supposed to make the world lived in, with factions expanding/taking over/ defending key points and doing stuff in those locations. As it is, most of them are just dead and empty with nothing to find.

[Zebedee]

It hasn't for me so far, although yes the background simulation is clearly not working as they wanted it. It's very variable, like post-patch I'm seeing much more 'action' between groups than I saw pre-patch, but I don't mind that. Definitely room for a lot of improvements, the spawning in system in particular can be an irritant if you can't just run it off, but I'm still at the stage where I'm enjoying the game world as it is.

[DarK]

It may feel empty at first glance but it's not. There are a lot of hidden places and puzzles to do. You just have to search for them. Many are very well hidden.