GRRRR on 12/9/2008 at 13:02
Patch fixed the capture issues (now the Stalkers captured the Garbage entry points before i even got there) but i think the whole thing needs another on the balancing side coz ,surprise, the Garbage has bandit zerg problems. I killed off everything at the depot (their main base) and a minute later while im heading back to do some returning theres a message from the Stalker boss "Bandits are back, no clue why" and plop the whole damn 23+ people outfit including surrounding posts is back at full strength (same thing happens with the Cordon military base. You go away for just a sec and theyre all back. One time after i killed em all i went for some stash nearby and the turbo-reinforcements manned the bloody MG and nailed me. Wish that thing could be destroyed) and craps out two attack squads in a row obliterating the flea market and another two for each of the entries. Didnt look very "defeated" to me.
Other stuff :
-some of the freedom guys in the garbage seem to have bandit dialogs. Lots of em threathening me with the camp, boasting about exploiting stalkers and some wanted to "take a bite out of these Freedom chaps". Uh :p
-couldnt turn in some weapon upgrades
-broad range of artifacts are pretty useless. Stone Flower is now anti-chem or something, Crystals and Fireball anti-burning and Mamas Beads reduce bleeding and all of em are radioactive. Most useful ones are Jellyfish with two points of radiation reduction, someone at GSC wanted to be funny probably.
-GET OUT OF HERE STALKER is back at large. If you stand still near anyone they start pestering you to hurry whatever up. "WHAT ARE YOU HERE LETS HAVE A LITTLE CHAT DONT JUST STAND THERE" was pretty aggravating but now EVERYONE is an annoying fucker (Sidorovich is pretty good too. HELLLOOO ANYONE THERE before you even manage bringing your mouse pointer over anything.)
Undead Gamer on 14/9/2008 at 07:10
Quote Posted by GRRRR
Patch fixed the capture issues (now the Stalkers captured the Garbage entry points before i even got there) but i think the whole thing needs another on the balancing side coz ,surprise, the Garbage has bandit zerg problems. I killed off everything at the depot (their main base) and a minute later while im heading back to do some returning theres a message from the Stalker boss "Bandits are back, no clue why" and plop the whole damn 23+ people outfit including surrounding posts is back at full strength (same thing happens with the Cordon military base. You go away for just a sec and theyre all back. One time after i killed em all i went for some stash nearby and the turbo-reinforcements manned the bloody MG and nailed me. Wish that thing could be destroyed) and craps out two attack squads in a row obliterating the flea market and another two for each of the entries. Didnt look very "defeated" to me.
Other stuff :
-some of the freedom guys in the garbage seem to have bandit dialogs. Lots of em threathening me with the camp, boasting about exploiting stalkers and some wanted to "take a bite out of these Freedom chaps". Uh :p
-couldnt turn in some weapon upgrades
-broad range of artifacts are pretty useless. Stone Flower is now anti-chem or something, Crystals and Fireball anti-burning and Mamas Beads reduce bleeding and all of em are radioactive. Most useful ones are Jellyfish with two points of radiation reduction, someone at GSC wanted to be funny probably.
-GET OUT OF HERE STALKER is back at large. If you stand still near anyone they start pestering you to hurry whatever up. "WHAT ARE YOU HERE LETS HAVE A LITTLE CHAT DONT JUST STAND THERE" was pretty aggravating but now EVERYONE is an annoying fucker (Sidorovich is pretty good too. HELLLOOO ANYONE THERE before you even manage bringing your mouse pointer over anything.)
The guns are still weak as come on leather clad bandits taking 5 buckshot rounds to the chest :nono: or same with the pistols 2 clips the same thing unless you do headshots then its easy
GRRRR on 14/9/2008 at 09:12
Aaah oh yeah, headshot or else empty a whole AK clip into them. Read somewhere that the weapons are actually much more stronger but every enemy has gotten their hitpoints set higher, so its apparently not weak weapons but ridiculously high hp.
Lessened range of guns is strange too. Every weapon handles like the old Vintorez sniper now, bullets drop like after 100 meters and you gotta shoot like you'd handle artillery or something. Enemies dont seem to have that, seem to be able to shoot "straight" on any distance.
242 on 14/9/2008 at 09:48
Quote Posted by GRRRR
Aaah oh yeah, headshot or else empty a whole AK clip into them. Read somewhere that the weapons are actually much more stronger but every enemy has gotten their hitpoints set higher, so its apparently not weak weapons but ridiculously high hp.
Lessened range of guns is strange too. Every weapon handles like the old Vintorez sniper now, bullets drop like after 100 meters and you gotta shoot like you'd handle artillery or something. Enemies dont seem to have that, seem to be able to shoot "straight" on any distance.
I think weapons are weaker by default because now you can quite easily upgrade them.
Shadowjak on 17/9/2008 at 14:21
Quote Posted by 242
I think weapons are weaker by default because now you can quite easily upgrade them.
Oh, they are.
I've edited the weapon files to make them more powerful (better damage / range), and NPC's still take 10 or more 5.45mm rounds to the head / chest before going down.
I agree, it has to be that the NPC's have had their hit points / armor factors increased. Why, I have no idea. Maybe people complained about how easy it was to off NPCs in SOC?
When I first entered the Cordon, I had a scoped AK74, and I plinked away at the soldiers at the outpost: I could see their heads snapping back with every shot, and they still kept on marching toward me --- like hordes of commie Terminator robots, impervious to bullets. Very annoying. (This is with the latest 5.04 patch, BTW).
I dunno --- while I'm excited to be back in the Zone, I'm finding the atmosphere somewhat less than immersive. I'm more of a lone stalker than a faction joiner, and there's not much more to do then kill whoever's not on yr side. While the areas are gorgeous, they all just remind me of big multi-player frag zones --- which I'm getting the impression is what this iteration of STALKER was designed to promote.
While I do like how the anomaly detection / artifact recovery system works, in the end, it's really not worth the effort. Artifacts are next to useless, other than for resale value.
I can only hope some worth-while mods come along, or I'm thinking I'll be leaving CS in the Garbage --- literally, and figuratively.
Phatose on 17/9/2008 at 17:33
I've found precisely one artifact worth keeping, a radiation remover.
The thing does feel an awful lot like UT3 though - a singleplayer game built on top of a clearly multiplayer intended paradigm with really, really stupid bots.
driver on 17/9/2008 at 22:47
I've found a number of exceedingly useful artifacts. Reduced radiation and bleeding, increased stamina and healing. The bleeding, healing and stamina ones are all radiated, but a couple of rad reduction ones means I can have them permenantly on my belt. I'm only as far as Yantar on my third run, but I'm pretty much invincible already.
242 on 18/9/2008 at 14:33
Almost finished Swaps and I'm kind of in a maze concerning game mechanics, don't get how it's functioning. It seems Clear Sky gained control over Swamps without my help at all. From certain point I started to get a lot of quests about protecting or capturing various areas, almost every of them got canceled before I even could reach the areas by sprinting. After like 2 days, Clear Sky successfully got control over Swamps.
Now I fully upgraded my leather suit, MP5, found 5 artefacts (BTW, on the ground floor of the house you start the game in, you'll find a map on the wall where all artefact fields are marked, every of them holds an artefact), emptied lots of stashes bought out from Barkeep and Shustryi (or whatever he's called in English version), brought all flash cards to Mechanic, accumulated about 10000RU, and I still have no sense of accomplishment at all because it was not challenging, and I practically didn't participate in fighting with Renegades because my help seemed totally unnecessary, and moreover - I just couldn't help even if I wanted because of highly chaotic and speedy capture/protect quests. Is it just me?
I don't like new weapon damage system. Why they changed it? It was quite fine in SoC, at least there was such concept as headshot, which now seems totally gone. Also, it's totally impossible to injure anyone or anything from more than 100-150 meters now, they suddenly become totally immune to bullets if distance is more than allowed it seems. At least using MP5. Why devs did so? And I don't like the whole upgrade system too - it just killed any desire to search for unique barrels.
All in all, I have some very mixed and mussy feelings about the game, I just don't get the game mechanics for now.
PS: Found out that artifacts are useful despite numeric values in their descriptions may seem miserable if compared with SoC. F.e. if description of a CS artifact says the artifact gives +3 to some protection, actually it's more like +30% if it was the SoC artifact. Jellyfish reduces atomic irradiation quite well despite its anti-radiation effect is only "-2".
PPS: Now in Cordon. It's considerably more interesting than Swamps, and gameplay seems closer to RPG here more than ever before in Stalker.
mothra on 19/9/2008 at 09:40
i had the same in the swamps. i sprinted through, constantly energy drinking and never got any missions completed because ClearSky just took over everything after i did....2 quests i think. there's nothing to do in the swamps. I didn't even care about the xtra-quests and just moved up to cordon.
btw, how did YOU get past the machine gun turret ?
I cheated and took the other levelchanger to cordon in the north of the swamps ;)
