half game, half walking simulator

[Angelo]

Why are there so few guides? In call of pripyat you could even use some patrols as guides - and those maps were so much smaller than the one in Stalker 2. I spend more time walking between objectives than I do actually playing the game. You have placed guides/traders/technicians a good 15 to 20 minute walk from some main mission points.

I have to spend a good 2 HOURS if I wish to visit every possible artifact location.

[All Day I Dream About🪓]

I dunno, I use one of the A-LIFE mods and for me zone is packed with action. I guess in vanilla it is a bit like a walking simulator, for me it's a constant warfare - if I am not chased by some pseudogiant or chimera, I am trying to find some cover and not get caught in a crossfire between two opposing factions.

[Skalgrim]

That is kind of the point.

Stalker is a game where you manage resources. Traditional ones, such as health and ammo are obvious. Less traditional ones might well be less obvious. Weight, energy, durability of your gear, risk and reward and perhaps the one you are running into.

Time.

Stalker, especially before the A-life update/tuning/whatever really liked to ram home that you were not important. You're totally irrelevant to the zone at large. You're on your own in a vast space, and whatever choices you make you also have to deal with. Its personal responsibility.

You don't matter. The zone doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥. Lose yourself for two hours and make your own choices or go back to Skyrim.

[Angelo]

Originally posted by All Day I Dream About Sax🎷:

I dunno, I use one of the A-LIFE mods and for me zone is packed with action. I guess in vanilla it is a bit like a walking simulator, for me it's a constant warfare - if I am not chased by some pseudogiant or chimera, I am trying to find some cover and not get caught in a crossfire between two opposing factions.

I should not have to download and install a mod for any game with unofficial content to make a game fully enjoyable while still being challenging. I am just thanking God that they didn't pad out the game as bad as Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Although, in my personal opinion, I don't think constant fighting between locations would be very entertaining for very long a time. Especially with how fast items degrade and the cost of repairing fully upgraded items. As it is for me, I am required to visit every farming location between every main mission at least once if I want to both repair and upgrade.

[Angelo]

Originally posted by Skalgrim:

That is kind of the point.

Stalker is a game where you manage resources. Traditional ones, such as health and ammo are obvious. Less traditional ones might well be less obvious. Weight, energy, durability of your gear, risk and reward and perhaps the one you are running into.

Time.

Stalker, especially before the A-life update/tuning/whatever really liked to ram home that you were not important. You're totally irrelevant to the zone at large. You're on your own in a vast space, and whatever choices you make you also have to deal with. Its personal responsibility.

You don't matter. The zone doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥. Lose yourself for two hours and make your own choices or go back to Skyrim.

Call of Pripyat proves you wrong, it was capable to doing both what I want and your opinion. Personally, I preferred Fallout 4 over Skyrim.

It would have been extremely easy for the devs to provide players both options of more guides as well as what you think is good game design to players. This "you don't matter" thing is an awfully convenient excuse for padding out the game.

[vamirez]

Oh no, I have to play the game to play the game, oh no!! :(

But seriously, if you need to go farm after each main mission, you are doing something wrong. I come back from every main and side mission I undertake at least somewhat weighed down with valuable loot. Maybe think about how to approach the game differently.

[Sparhawk122]

I blame the very punishing encumbrance system.

[All Day I Dream About🪓]

Originally posted by Angelo:

Originally posted by All Day I Dream About Sax🎷:

I dunno, I use one of the A-LIFE mods and for me zone is packed with action. I guess in vanilla it is a bit like a walking simulator, for me it's a constant warfare - if I am not chased by some pseudogiant or chimera, I am trying to find some cover and not get caught in a crossfire between two opposing factions.

I should not have to download and install a mod for any game with unofficial content to make a game fully enjoyable while still being challenging. I am just thanking God that they didn't pad out the game as bad as Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Although, in my personal opinion, I don't think constant fighting between locations would be very entertaining for very long a time. Especially with how fast items degrade and the cost of repairing fully upgraded items. As it is for me, I am required to visit every farming location between every main mission at least once if I want to both repair and upgrade.

Oh, I am not forcing anyone to download anything, just sharing my experience. Also I am not using mods that add “unofficial content”, I use mods that adjust existing values within the game such as spawn rate of enemies, increased variety of the enemies (really hate that after certain mission all enemies start wearing only seva or only exoskeletons later), rate at which items heal player (making it slower forcing me to approach combat more tactically), ballistics and degradation rate of gear so I don’t have to stop every 10 minutes to repair my stuff. Game still remains challenging but now in more fun and dynamic way. Instead of “oh s**t I need to spend 10k coupons on repairs” now it’s “oh s**t I need to avoid crossfire between squad of mercenaries and monolith while I simultaneously have dozen of snorks on my tail”. And it’s not constant fighting necessarily, but it does escalate the more you progress through the story or move to a late game area. But when it gets crazy it is entertaining as hell and I’ve been playing like that for some time, every battle is memorable and there are a ton of interaction between NPCs and mutants. Controllers turn NPCs into zombies, chimera can wreck total chaos even when fighting full squad of dudes wearing exos, pseudogiant just sends stuff flying. People can wait for vanilla to get better with patches and whatnot, but game’s already has good foundation and mods can expand that potential now. At least they did for me.

[Angelo]

Originally posted by All Day I Dream About Sax🎷:

Originally posted by Angelo:

I should not have to download and install a mod for any game with unofficial content to make a game fully enjoyable while still being challenging. I am just thanking God that they didn't pad out the game as bad as Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Although, in my personal opinion, I don't think constant fighting between locations would be very entertaining for very long a time. Especially with how fast items degrade and the cost of repairing fully upgraded items. As it is for me, I am required to visit every farming location between every main mission at least once if I want to both repair and upgrade.

Oh, I am not forcing anyone to download anything, just sharing my experience. Also I am not using mods that add “unofficial content”, I use mods that adjust existing values within the game such as spawn rate of enemies, increased variety of the enemies (really hate that after certain mission all enemies start wearing only seva or only exoskeletons later), rate at which items heal player (making it slower forcing me to approach combat more tactically), ballistics and degradation rate of gear so I don’t have to stop every 10 minutes to repair my stuff. Game still remains challenging but now in more fun and dynamic way. Instead of “oh s**t I need to spend 10k coupons on repairs” now it’s “oh s**t I need to avoid crossfire between squad of mercenaries and monolith while I simultaneously have dozen of snorks on my tail”. And it’s not constant fighting necessarily, but it does escalate the more you progress through the story or move to a late game area. But when it gets crazy it is entertaining as hell and I’ve been playing like that for some time, every battle is memorable and there are a ton of interaction between NPCs and mutants. Controllers turn NPCs into zombies, chimera can wreck total chaos even when fighting full squad of dudes wearing exos, pseudogiant just sends stuff flying. People can wait for vanilla to get better with patches and whatnot, but game’s already has good foundation and mods can expand that potential now. At least they did for me.

I never said you were forcing anyone, it was just my opinion.

[All Day I Dream About🪓]

Originally posted by Angelo:

Originally posted by All Day I Dream About Sax🎷:

Oh, I am not forcing anyone to download anything, just sharing my experience. Also I am not using mods that add “unofficial content”, I use mods that adjust existing values within the game such as spawn rate of enemies, increased variety of the enemies (really hate that after certain mission all enemies start wearing only seva or only exoskeletons later), rate at which items heal player (making it slower forcing me to approach combat more tactically), ballistics and degradation rate of gear so I don’t have to stop every 10 minutes to repair my stuff. Game still remains challenging but now in more fun and dynamic way. Instead of “oh s**t I need to spend 10k coupons on repairs” now it’s “oh s**t I need to avoid crossfire between squad of mercenaries and monolith while I simultaneously have dozen of snorks on my tail”. And it’s not constant fighting necessarily, but it does escalate the more you progress through the story or move to a late game area. But when it gets crazy it is entertaining as hell and I’ve been playing like that for some time, every battle is memorable and there are a ton of interaction between NPCs and mutants. Controllers turn NPCs into zombies, chimera can wreck total chaos even when fighting full squad of dudes wearing exos, pseudogiant just sends stuff flying. People can wait for vanilla to get better with patches and whatnot, but game’s already has good foundation and mods can expand that potential now. At least they did for me.

I never said you were forcing anyone, it was just my opinion.

👍

[Nite69]

The walking between missions is to get you to explore a bit between them, alot of players don't like it but thats why its like that. not meant to be a rush storyline type game, if you want to avoid walking around too much then work on locations around the storyline mission area first before moving on to the next zone

[Genosse Kommissar]

Originally posted by Skalgrim:

You don't matter. The zone doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥. Lose yourself for two hours and make your own choices or go back to Skyrim.

What choices would that be? Factions to join are limited. Crafting like in some mods does not exist. Weapons can not be repaired by the player, only by npc mechanics.

The map looks the same in most places. Buildings too. There is little variety.
The number of side quest drops extremely after you are done with the lesser zone/garbage.
Binoculars and night vision do not exist.

And the most important part the A-Life system does not exist either. There is also no war between factions for territory. All conflicts just happen randomly between spawned npcs.
What choices are there to be made?

I am glad I jumped the ship in the last moment. Paying for this has some serious "My wifes boyfriend" energy.

[Nite69]

Originally posted by Skalgrim:

The map looks the same in most places. Buildings too. There is little variety. Binoculars and night vision do not exist.

But its a complete open world with those locations and not seperate maps liike the original game, also you aren't looking hard enough, those same buildings are further decayed because the events of stalker 2 take place after strelok in Originals

[Genosse Kommissar]

Originally posted by All Day I Dream About Sax🎷:

People can wait for vanilla to get better with patches and whatnot, but game’s already has good foundation and mods can expand that potential now. At least they did for me.

I wanted Stalker 2 and not a Far Cry game in the Stalker universe. I am not even sure if A-Life 2.0 will ever exist or if the devs even worked on this system in the first place.

[Genosse Kommissar]

Originally posted by Nite69:

But its a complete open world with those locations and not seperate maps liike the original game, also you aren't looking hard enough, those same buildings are further decayed because the events of stalker 2 take place after strelok in Originals

I am talking about variety in Stalker 2. 60% of the map look identical. I get it, its one region from one country and we wont get different biomes and stuff but I did not expect that either anyway. I just dont like how bland and uninspired the whole map design is.

Most points of interest are surrounded by what seems to be just randomly placed vegetation. I can do this stuff in the Unreal Engine myself that is how bad it is here. I am not a fan of this.

And for a map of this size there is nothing going on. Random spawns of NPCs are not A-Life.
I dont play Far Cry games for this exact reason. Its boring and pointless.

[Luppie]

I think some more side missions here and there would be welcome. Like more missions to kill mutants or get people to a safe place. It would also be nice if you could ask another Stalker to come along as a buddy. a new game plus would be cool too.