Clear Sky Difficulty Levels

[Preciousgollum]

OK, so everybody goes on about how 'this game was supposed to be played on Master'.

In fact, it took me a long time to get into SoC precisely because I didn't know what difficulty level to play at. I got so far in 'normal' mode (Stalker) and then decided to ramp it up to Master to make everything as difficult and grueling a scavenge as possible. In fact, I beat the whole game on Master, and somewhat enjoyed it (even if the ending part was very difficult).

What I noticed in SoC difficulty was that damage scaling existed, on both the player and the enemies. It could take up to 11 hits to kill a basic bandit with a pistol on Master. Obviously took less than that to kill the player.

In coming over to Clear Sky, I notice that the damage scaling on enemies is fixed so that, no matter what the difficulty, it always takes 7 pistol shots to kill a basic enemy. The only damage scaling applied is in how much the player can take.

Therefore, in the interest of fairness, it should take 7 shots to kill you, right?

Well, that scaling seems to demonstrate that it would take roughly 6-8 pistol shots to kill you on normal mode, 4-5 on Veteran, and 3-4 on Master.

Now, it could be suggested that the enemies get super-accurate with a pistol and headshot you after 3 shots on master, but I don't think that is happening. If it were the case, I'd presumably see more insta-kills made by the AI, but this never seems to happen. It seems quite consistent that the damage is being scaled rather than any critical hit taking place. I know damage gets scaled because basic creature attacks do much more damage on higher difficulties (and do more damage than they ever did in SoC).

Therefore, it seems that Normal (Stalker) mode in this case IS the default of how Stalker games should probably be played. Otherwise, you have enemies that are disproportionately tough.

It is like the Total War series issue where peasants are tougher than elite soldiers on higher difficulties because of the outright stat boosts the AI gains. No matter how much more 'fun' it is to beat a harder challenge, the setup is still wrong and the game fundamentally changes.

You're welcome to say that Stalker should be played on Master if you want (I like hard games), but do you have proof that this is the case?

[Heresy]

Interesting theory but you are missing some key points of variance.

Your armour and attachments first of all. Are you doing these tests naked or with a certain type of armor? Are you wearing a helmet?

Calibre and ammunition type make a huge difference in stalker. You normally have 3 types of rounds for every calibre. Switching to Hollow points or AP ammo should give you radically different results than FMJ. 9x19 will be much stronger than 9x18 and .45 is the strongest.

I have never played any game of stalker on anything but master so i cannot comment on my experience anything other than that. However i do hear endless people explaining how damage scaling works for both you and AI.

The AI is extremely accurate and they have a short timer where their cone of fire will get smaller and smaller until they are sending every single bullet they shoot into your head. This is why moving is so effective in stalker. THis is why silencers and stealth dont really work. Once you fire that first shot, or are spotted the AI is gonna eventually headshot you no matter what if you stay still.

This is also why you dont see AI dropping other AI with headshots because they are always strafing and resetting the other AIs cone of fire.

This is all theory and i have no proof either but is what i can tell you from my experience.


This is why A Nu CHeekie Breekie Ive Damke has a rough translation of " Put two bullets in his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ head"

[Preciousgollum]

These tests are done doing the basic armour, which is the same that bandits have, using standard bullets.

The frustrating element is that on lower difficulty levels, the AI cannot hit the broad side of a barn at times - because there is that issue of % chance to hit for the AI. Also, on SoC Normal difficulty, your character can walk away from explosions that would otherwise kill AI players decked out in armour. But, on any harder difficulty the amount of bullets it takes to kill an enemy is extremely high - and definitely more for the AI than the player - except for Clear Sky where it doesn't change across the board.

Unfortunately, while I would very much like to believe it to be the case, i don't think that Master difficulty is fair. I also don't think that in Clear Sky the AI is hitting the head or doing critical damage, because it would have resulted in more instant kills on any difficulty level.

Unless somebody can prove that there is a 'fair' intended difficulty, I can only arrive at the conclusion that none of them are actually fair or balanced, which is irritating for me because I like games that generate at least the illusion of fairness, and have difficulty level rules that are understandable and beatable. Of course, some developers cap the hardest difficulty at one where the game feels the best to play for the more patient gamer (such as Arma, Operation Flashpoint, Far Cry 3 or a lot of the Tom Clancy games), whereas others add in challenges that are supposed to be inherently unfair and nearly insurmountable.

Call of Duty's Veteran mode is one where it (seemingly) takes about the same amount of DPS (damage per second) to kill the player as it does the enemy (or the difference is so minimal it doesn't matter). Usually, the rules of Veteran mode in relation to the Call of Duty game model make it feel about right. There is usually no 'insurmountable' mode for Call of Duty because it isn't a mid-to- late 90s shooter. Whereas S.T.A.L.K.E.R's damage model seems to be wildly RPG-like and I cannot seem to find an equilibrium in its difficulty models. Especially in Shadow of Chernobyl.

So, to phrase it a different way, what if S.T.A.L.K.E.R games are difficult on Master because they're just unfairly tough? Yes, I've beaten one of them on Master, and plan to play the other two, but I still cannot say which difficulty is 'about right'.

Like, we know that Halo is supposed to be played on Heroic (and I do like the extra challenge of Legendary - it is how I play Halo games), and we know that Legendary is supposed to be an extra challenge mode on top. Far Cry 3's Master difficulty felt about right.

I remember playing Painkiller on the hardest difficulty and realising that entire levels and gameplay mechanics were missing from that difficulty level because you were never supposed to play it on the first playthrough.

Half-Life 2 on Hard was not as difficult as Half-Life 1 on Hard, mostly because HL1 enemy health scaled to the point where an instant kill scenario was tough to achieve and the shooting felt very clunky as a result. Nearly double the amount of ammo needed to kill the same target. STALKER seems to suffer from that same HL1 problem of enemies with glass heads that are absolute Tanks from the chest down (even on normal).

[Preciousgollum]

TL;DR - Let me put it this way:

If there were no damage scaling to the player, then each pistol bullet would remove 1/7th of the player health (for it to be in line with the AI). Otherwise, a headshot is instant death.

On Master, the damage taken is not 1/7th of the player health bar and/or instant death, but roughly 1/3rd HP drained per bullet. This seems to suggest that the player is taking double the amount of damage that an AI actor takes in Clear Sky, on Master.

It would work out OK if BOTH the player and the AI took 1/3rd damage per bullet, but this isn't the case.

On normal mode, the damage taken with each bullet is about 1/7th of the player HP bar, suggesting that the player HP is now on par with the AI, whose HP scaling never changes in Clear Sky (but it does in SoC)

[Heresy]

Honestly it is the way AI is programmed in almost every single game. They cheat, they have to or how can they compete with a human brain?

I think the AI is very advanced in Stalker even to this day. They do strange unorthodox things such as flanking and going completely silent. I think they are 100% based off of sound and sight. Meaning if you are running around they are literally tracing you through the wall. Which is how Counter-Strike bots where also designed. Basically low key aimbots and wallhacks. Which every bot in every single fps game has. So Stalker is not different in that case.

I do believe that stalker is unfairly challenging and the odds are stacked high against the player and i think thats what made it so fresh and exciting. It also grew on me as my favourite game. It is end level fps single player game for verterans who have played everything since Half-Life.

You must realise that although Stalker has no skill tree or stats, it is very RPG like as you mentioned. The reason why your guns and armour are so weak at the start is to have a sense of progression from beginning to end. Where you will eventually get an exo or seva suit that can take much more damage as well as a very powerfull weapon that will 1 shot all NPCs.

Stalker needs that progression because it has so many different tools. Different weapons for different situations, realistic bullet physics. Realistic stamina and inventory management. It makes you go from being very weak to slightly more confident near the end when you get good gear. This gear and also artifact attachments make a huge difference.

Pistols have always been very weak in vanilla versions of stalker and also very inaccurate. Idk how bad they are in clearsky but even the player could not hit the broad side of a barn with them in SOC.

There is no denial from me that Clearsky seems to have a different scaling for its difficulty. I will say that Clear Sky is however the Lesser of the Three main games and i dont really care for it. There are no compilation mods or complete conversions for Clearsky like there is for SOC and COP. YOu have to pick and choose from random addon mods and pray they work together.

Stalker is an Anomaly in the FPS genre. There are traps everywhere, yet no puzzles. The world and zone around you is prob the most hostile environment seen in any video game. This is why stalker is magical. This is why you see your body in 3rd person once you die. Because you dont ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ matter to the zone, you are just another victim passing through and life goes on after you are dead.

I dont think any hard games are "Fair" to the player and that is why they are so hard lol. So i still reccommend you always play on Master because the skills stalker and other hard fps teach you, will crossover to all other shooting games.


Stalker forces you to aim for the head, to pick and choose your battles, to know your mortality, to manage weight/stamina and to be cautious of the zones inhabitants. It is a very unique game and you are correct its not fair at all lol.

[金锣王中王]

fine

[Mrauksia]

I finished today SoC on Master and even the difficulty balance is bs I enjoyed myself completing SoC on Master.
Assuming from this post the difficulty bs has been fixed and is the modern/known difficulty style.

[Citronvand]

Originally posted by Preciousgollum:

TL;DR - Let me put it this way:

If there were no damage scaling to the player, then each pistol bullet would remove 1/7th of the player health (for it to be in line with the AI). Otherwise, a headshot is instant death.

On Master, the damage taken is not 1/7th of the player health bar and/or instant death, but roughly 1/3rd HP drained per bullet. This seems to suggest that the player is taking double the amount of damage that an AI actor takes in Clear Sky, on Master.

It would work out OK if BOTH the player and the AI took 1/3rd damage per bullet, but this isn't the case.

On normal mode, the damage taken with each bullet is about 1/7th of the player HP bar, suggesting that the player HP is now on par with the AI, whose HP scaling never changes in Clear Sky (but it does in SoC)

I found this which may be useful: https://i.imgur.com/FIEVjZe.png
One important thing to note is that lower difficulties does NOT make enemies into damage sponges, that's a myth.

[Preciousgollum]

I found this which may be useful: https://i.imgur.com/FIEVjZe.png
One important thing to note is that lower difficulties does NOT make enemies into damage sponges, that's a myth.

Thanks to everybody for your replies. I've seen that spreadsheet info, and while it does seem to convey differences that aren't complete myths, I'm not sure if it accurately conveys the intent of the difficulty. In other words, yes the damage might be an extra %, but it might be more accurate to say that the 100%, suggested as a baseline, is on the middle difficulty, and then the higher or lower percentages would be relative to the middle difficulty, rather than the highest.

[Unbeliever]

Why would they change the difficulty levels after the popularity of SoC? Why would they change all the things that people liked, including hidden caches, artifacts, UI, armor etc.?

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by NOOBMASTER:

Why would they change the difficulty levels after the popularity of SoC? Why would they change all the things that people liked, including hidden caches, artifacts, UI, armor etc.?

Why would you necro a five year old dead thread?

[[FOAD]Iron]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Originally posted by NOOBMASTER:

Why would they change the difficulty levels after the popularity of SoC? Why would they change all the things that people liked, including hidden caches, artifacts, UI, armor etc.?

Why would you necro a five year old dead thread?

Why would you reply to him?

[Mrauksia]

Originally posted by FOADIron:

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Why would you necro a five year old dead thread?

Why would you reply to him?

wtf is wrong with you, how do you find these decades old posts

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by FOADIron:

Why would you reply to him?

Why would YOU reply to me? Stop necroing these threads.

[OldHunter69X]

Omg necro nags tempt me to necro soooooo bad

[Preciousgollum]

Originally posted by OldHunter69X:

Omg necro nags tempt me to necro soooooo bad

There is only ONE Lord of Necro... the original poster.

I've done a 'Soul Reaver 2', Vampired this thread, met my former self from the past and come full circle, for anybody who gets that reference.