Faction bias

[Fireserpent7]

the more i play the game the more i just start to question why the devs are so openly biased towards the bandits, Easier spawns, better weapons and armor, more control over the map and resource farming location, literally the bandits have the game on easy mode and the devs seemingly do it on purpose.

For the people claiming there is no bias, look at the dump, the fool's path,and army warehouse, the dump is bandit territory just by looking at the spawns. The stalkers have no equivalent to the dump. The Fool's path and army warehouse drop the same materials, however bandits have direct safe access to both army warehouse and fool's path, stalkers only have borderline safe access to army warehouse, so bandits have half of army warehouse and fool's path to farm relatively safely, while stalkers only have half of army warehouse to farm relatively safely, the bandits have roughly 2-4x the safe farming areas in this specific example.

[Steve]

Stalkers have more players. Bandits have less.

[Fireserpent7]

Originally posted by Stove Seagull:

Stalkers have more players. Bandits have less.

Thats only temporarily true, the bias towards the bandits is to the point it makes playing the stalkers entirely pointless

[Bomjus]

Originally posted by Stove Seagull:

Stalkers have more players. Bandits have less.

yeah i gotta say, if my homies hadn't started before me, and chose stalker, i woulda picked bandit lol.

also stalkers having more players isn't exactly a boon as a stalker. because once you're in the north around half of those stalkers become hostile.

[XxEyeDragonxX]

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

the more i play the game the more i just start to question why the devs are so openly biased towards the bandits, Easier spawns, better weapons and armor, more control over the map and resource farming location, literally the bandits have the game on easy mode and the devs seemingly do it on purpose.

easy mode? with the 24/7 stalker camper corps? hahaha nope

[Lil Bunny]

Both sides experience the "we're getting invaded by a guy with +5 AS VAL and legionnaire armor with 2 of his friends" so I won't comment on that. But yes if you do reach the endgame and look at the map intently you will notice that bandits have an easier time reaching their farming spots compared to stalker we really just have to deal with it xd. Biggest thing my friend and I noticed is how close the covenant/mercenary base is to the Red Forest while both duty and freedom have to trek up for a good 3-5 minutes to get to Yanov. Although currently, at least in SEA, there's a lot more stalkers than there are bandits but I noticed that the number of new bandit players is steadily increasing since last week.

Also, it's not a matter of "Stalker has more players" that makes the stalker side more tedious. It really is just game design. You don't create a game and assume 70% of the population goes to one side and then make the other side much easier because you apparently have foresight. Bandits have easier time going to The Dump from Cordon. Even if there are stalker AI in that entrance, you can just clear that in less than 15 seconds lol. The graveyard/forest counterpart of Bandits are also more secure and easier to access than the stalker side. The ENDGAME which is where the BULK OF ALL PLAYERS will go eventually is much easier in the bandit side too. Assuming you really do have foresight and predicted that 70% of the population will be stalkers. What will you do then if it becomes 50 50? You just made the game much harder for the other side. Doesn't make sense.

Also there are 2 bubbles in Red Forest and none in Yanov. I assume at least that that has a specific purpose (I will try that later) but then why are there no such bubbles in Yanov? So much weird things just by looking at the map design.

Edit: Forgot to expound on the ENDGAME thing. If you visit Yanov you will notice that there's a ton of areas with level 2 Psy, Level 3 Bio etc. scattered in the map which hampers GREATLY when doing signal trackers and the camps/dens. If you farm in Red Forest (which I do), you can pretty much farm 80% of the map without worrying about if there's a magical Rad 4/Bio3/Psy2 area. The area that has those levels are pretty much noticeable in the map and you just have to take note of that mentally. I do a signal there and never worry about the terrain. In Yanov, doing signals requires you to have Scientist armor unless you are willing to farm 1-3 signals at a time and then wait for an eternity for the spawn.

[Fireserpent7]

Originally posted by XxEyeDragonxX:

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

the more i play the game the more i just start to question why the devs are so openly biased towards the bandits, Easier spawns, better weapons and armor, more control over the map and resource farming location, literally the bandits have the game on easy mode and the devs seemingly do it on purpose.

easy mode? with the 24/7 stalker camper corps? hahaha nope

That is such a laughable reply, the bandits have control of the majority of the map and resource spawns, they have easier and better spawns, their run back to the starter town from the bar literally takes about 1/10 of the time for the stalker run back, the game is so unbalanced it takes an idiot to make excuses for it.

[lx]

reminds me of eve online

[XxEyeDragonxX]

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

Originally posted by XxEyeDragonxX:

easy mode? with the 24/7 stalker camper corps? hahaha nope

That is such a laughable reply, the bandits have control of the majority of the map and resource spawns, they have easier and better spawns, their run back to the starter town from the bar literally takes about 1/10 of the time for the stalker run back, the game is so unbalanced it takes an idiot to make excuses for it.

So if it takes me 10 minutes to get to swamps from the bar, you take 1h40 minutes? congratulations, you deserve an award for exaggeration, here are the stalkers playing the victims, as if only they had problems

unbalanced for everyone from the point of view of each person, not only for the stalkers and the "idiot" you keep it, nobody here has disrespected yet... well yes, you

[Fireserpent7]

Originally posted by XxEyeDragonxX:

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

That is such a laughable reply, the bandits have control of the majority of the map and resource spawns, they have easier and better spawns, their run back to the starter town from the bar literally takes about 1/10 of the time for the stalker run back, the game is so unbalanced it takes an idiot to make excuses for it.

So if it takes me 10 minutes to get to swamps from the bar, you take 1h40 minutes? congratulations, you deserve an award for exaggeration, here are the stalkers playing the victims, as if only they had problems

unbalanced for everyone from the point of view of each person, not only for the stalkers and the "idiot" you keep it, nobody here has disrespected yet... well yes, you

lol cope and seethe, you dont like people pointing out the ♥♥♥♥ balance of the devs and get mad when its correctly pointed out its biased towards the bandits, easier spawns, quicker run backs, more zones, easier farms, you are trying to make excuses for playing the game on easy mode and have gotten defensive before you are bad at the game and want to make yourself feel better despite the fact you play the game on easy mode and still lose.

[lx]

guy, do give an example, of your bandit struggles.
and conform your text to
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6862-8119-C23E-EA7B

[XxEyeDragonxX]

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

Originally posted by XxEyeDragonxX:

So if it takes me 10 minutes to get to swamps from the bar, you take 1h40 minutes? congratulations, you deserve an award for exaggeration, here are the stalkers playing the victims, as if only they had problems

unbalanced for everyone from the point of view of each person, not only for the stalkers and the "idiot" you keep it, nobody here has disrespected yet... well yes, you

lol cope and seethe, you dont like people pointing out the ♥♥♥♥ balance of the devs and get mad when its correctly pointed out its biased towards the bandits, easier spawns, quicker run backs, more zones, easier farms, you are trying to make excuses for playing the game on easy mode and have gotten defensive before you are bad at the game and want to make yourself feel better despite the fact you play the game on easy mode and still lose.

for now we are going to start easy, agroprom vs dark valley, all the spawns counted from the only interactive map there is

agroprom:
animal den: 19
military position: 14
orderlies: 3
bandit camps: 2
distress call: 0
caches: 5 small 5 big
dark valley:
animal den: 23
military position: 11
order lies: 7
stalker camps: 8
distress call: 8
caches: 5 small 5 big

As I have already said, this is counting only the spawns, except military posts. Dark Valley has more of everything and I could say that the cache areas are larger. (although I don't know if there are no distress calls in agroprom on the map because there aren't or because they forgot to put them :D )

I can't say if there's a big difference between traveling from swamps to bar as a bandit and a stalker, but if the spawns spawning on the map are any indication... bandits have fewer and smaller zones, I can't comment on whether they're easier or more difficult but I suppose that the animal dens are always the same in the number of animals that appear, so in my opinion it does not look like an "easy mode" as you like to say and if you have more complaints, please look at the map and do exactly the same to see what comes out or look for a video that compares the time it takes to go between bases with both factions to see how much this "enormous" time difference is

edit: and yes the game needs a lot of rebalancing of everything but don't try to say that I'm in favor of something I'm not doing, I'm not in favor of some kind of terrible injustice where bandits have it "super easy" and stalkers "super hard" just I speak from my experience both in the game and in these discussions where it seems that all the stalkers repeat the same thing as parrots "the bandits have it easier and better for everything and we have it super difficult" and that any bandit who speaks from his point of view by sight he is treated as if he were the bad guy in the movie or something like that

[BossBolognese]

Skill Issue

[lx]

guy, your text is conform now,
but it only tries to disprove the op,
by providing some discrete data
and not providing any contra arguments.

your data is disproved by the argument,
that the bandit numbers are fewer,
so they having more spawns,
proves the op, as easy.

[XxEyeDragonxX]

Originally posted by lx:

guy, your text is conform now,
but it only tries to disprove the op,
by providing some discrete data
and not providing any contra arguments.

your data is disproved by the argument,
that the bandit numbers are fewer,
so they having more spawns,
proves the op, as easy.

So according to you, the author of this discussion has a good argument just by saying that bandits have everything easier, but if you prove the opposite with the available tools (in this case the map) it doesn't serve as a counterargument? This proves that it doesn't matter what the bandits try to say, the stalkers will ignore the comments or try to find out how to be right, whatever is said, because nothing is useless trying to prove anything, the map is there and the people You can see for yourself that "more spawns" and "more farming areas" nothing.

Anyway, with this clear, I don't need to say anything else, it is obvious that half of the original post is false and the other without real comparisons and not "your route is safer and shorter" without tests you cannot know what is true or false en (the lava of agroprom-the pit is sooo easy to cross...much easier than the stalker side of course)

[Lil Bunny]

This discussion is getting heated for some reason. Everything I've stated previously and on this one is purely based from experience and my opinion as to give a good deal of information for everyone:
1. My friend and I spent a good time farming swamps (takes less than 30 mins tbh), cordon, dark valley, forest, graveyard, and army warehouses. We have every weapon and armor, and the good attachments, in the Bar aside from the HK rifle, a couple not worth it shotguns, and the L86 machine gun thing. You could say we crafted and tried everything from the swamps to the bar and decided which weapons is worth keeping and nice to use. North is a different thing so let's just ignore that for now.
2. Cordon - Don't really have anything to say on this one. Pretty balance IMO IF you ignore the next maps. Bandits are above, stalkers below, there are 2 anomaly areas in the northernish part of the map (south east of bandit base) and a bio underground thing near the stalker side (left side). Nothing special, anyone can just go there and be relatively safe. Or not. It depends.
3. Dark Valley - now the problem starts here. There's no point in comparing the number of camps/dens per map as you only really farm around 15-25% of the map at any given time then you go back to store your stuff. You take note where mutant spawns are and where the soldier thingy camps are. You clear them and make a cycle as they don't take very long to spawn. Rinse and repeat, go back to your base, you're done with the area.
- the thing is. comparing dark valley with agroprom... Dark valley looks pretty messy. We kind of wandered around in agro doing quest and comparing dark valley. We had comments like "this is their anomaly area? looks pretty neat and easy to traverse". We did traverse that area and could easily run straight with anomalies left and right. Dark Valley anomaly spots don't feel and look like that lol. You go in the anomaly area with a goal, a purpose, and a dream. I had a few good backpacks lost in the blackholes there >:(

4. The Dump - oh boy oh boy this one sucks hard for the stalkers. Remember that good ol bandit base in cordon? Yeah it's very much closer to the The Dump than Garage. Stalkers need to walk all the way up to get to the Dump from the BOTTOM of Cordon. Bandits can die in the entrance to the dump and get back there in a minute or two. Bandits also camp that entrance frequently so it was only an option for my friend and I to use that route if we have nothing to lose. Most of the time we use the route in dark valley to get back to Garage, takes much longer but is a lot safer.

Next problem: COPPER CACHE spawns. The most spawns I've gotten in the right side of The Dump is around 8. In the left side (bandit) I've gotten about 15 in just a portion of their big ole cache area and when I found one, the beeps won't stop and they're beside each other xD then I die bc there are bandits obviously. After that, it's like 0-3 per cache area in the right. Going back to bandit side of the map is only viable if it's only early in the run and we don't have much items.. We usually go back to base with only 30-80 copper wire at a time just to be safe from friendly banditos. Some runs we literally have 10 pieces of copper wires because there are no spawns even after getting 80+ crappite and 150+ molds lmao. And ofc there's that random bandit constantly camping but as we've stated earlier, that's pretty much the same case for the bandits. I hope. Now add the time stalkers need to spend from the bottom of Cordon to get to The Dump SAFELY and the time they spend farming in their side of the Dump, and then the time to go back to Garage. That's a whole lot of hours over there. Alternatively, people could use the Bar instead of Garage since (it seems like) the distance is shorter to get there but there are also risks so it's up to the person. You could turn this whole scenario around and look at the bandit's perspective. However, the time spent is much much lower because the spawn in Cordon is just right there. It's also easy to invade both sides of the Dump as the bottom entrance is near the bandit and stalker side. Only downside I could think of would be the anomalies in the bandit side BIG copper area. But anomalies really ain't that hard if we use 101% of our brain so there's that. Biggest argument here is about the TIME investment required to get there, farm, and back safely.

Lastly. Most bandits IIRC are the experienced dudes who played in the Beta Testing. Funny thing is people played Bandit Faction in the Beta Testing because it is indeed much convenient lol.

- Not sure if this discussion is worth making a report so im cutting it here for now and observe everyone :D