No more Stalkers?

[MetalCraze]

CoP and SoC are practically the same game. The only real difference is that CoP was built around a somewhat more open-world structure, with MQ objectives encouraging exploration of each zone.

Superficial. CoP has much less restricted maps, much better balance, more interesting and mysterious anomalies, friendly stalkers, all taken together it has the experience I expected from the first Stalker. SoC in comparison was monotonous as hell.

True that. CoP is a much better game and is closer to how Oblivion Lost should've been than SoC and CS put together. Instead of shitty "go there bring me a coat" quests CoP had "dungeons" dedicated to separate quests.

Although the lack of proper factions fighting each other with separate, mutually exclusive quest lines is still a big problem that makes replaying CoP meaningless. Unless you forget everything you ever saw in it.

By the way, CoP had an embarrassingly low kill count.

The fuck? Low kill counts in a game that is all about survival are sweet. You don't rambo the zone.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I will think of Stalker every time I see abandoned buildings, that's the games legacy.

Oh yes, STALKER made abandoned industrial sites look fascinating.

 

[DraQ]

We're just talking about intelligence and complexity, and Desu Ex wins in both categories.

Desu Ex heavily scripted and linear? Really? As I recall it had hubs in which you were free to go anywhere, the only difference is that in COP you could go between the hubs at will (which wouldn't have made sense in HR anyway). On the other hand in HR there were always several paths to an objective and it permitted different approaches - talking, sneaking, non-lethal, lethal. Stalker didn't have this variety, there was usually just one path and your problem solving always involved shooting until nothing was moving any more.

I like both original DX and HR, and they are intelligent games, but this is hardly true. For starters, multiple paths in DX and, especially HR are usually formulaic and require no second thought if you have established your playstyle and setup. There are exceptions, for example moving from lamp to lamp just beneath the ceiling, but most of the time it's vent/cover/patrol/takedown/camera/computer.

STALKER may have no skills nor augs, but even in SoC the environment is often built to allow multiple, non-obvious routes to the objective. Ok, crawls may be mostly linear, but the factory complex in Jantar allows several different routes, including bypassing most of the area by walking on the pipes. doing both suitcase missions in SoC the stealthy way also requires great amount of skill and I don't mean twitch-shooting here.

In CoP you also have branching quest design with important choices, have to chose your loadout depending on the task with no guarantee there will always be a route corresponding to your prefered loadout, have to chose your position and generally think, especially if you want the best outcome in missions where you have allies.

And yeah, all STALKERs were flawed and did different things well, SoC was buggy and had bad quests, but it was also the most atmospheric and had dungeons, plus best artifacts. CS was even buggier, broke in many places when player explored too early, had shitty weapon mechanics, and horrid ending, but at least it got difficulty and economy right, plus it had much less linear layout of the gameworld.
CoP was the least buggy, and had awesome areas and quest design, but it failed at difficulty, economy and was rather small.

 

[RRRrrr]

I liked CoP more than SoC mainly because of the less (human) enemies. There are basically no human enemies except mercenaries (who are rare) and (obviously) Monolith.Hell, even the military wasn't hostile as you play as a member of it, not to mention the bandits who had a much more realistic role. The desolate landscapes and the few humans gave the game a feel I didn't experience in SoC.
I thought SoC was better before trying it after playing CoP and...I just couldn't stand it. The lack of merchants selling anything worthwhile and upgrades to spend my hard-earned rublas just put me off. Paradoxically SoC felt more lonely (in a bad way, not a melancholic way) despite having as many enemies in the first two main-quest tasks than the whole CoP.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Good, there appears to have been two completely different types of people who were interested in Stalker. There is of course the FPS type, which eventually got catered for because he is so much in the majority.

I belong to the explorer type, when I saw the first screenshots of Stalker (LOL that must have been 2003 or so) I hoped that the gameplay would consist of nothing but scouting, fighting animals and spending hours to extract anomalies from increasingly inaccessible places. And not killing human beings at all. A bit like The Hunter in a SF setting.

Not that I was expecting it eventually not to succumb to lots of action, but the first Stalker was still a big letdown, perhaps the most athmospheric gameworld evar, and then the gameplay consists of nothing but dumb, endless killing waves after waves of human enemies. Not my conception of the Zone, and not the one of the Strugatskie brothers, either.

 

[markec]

Good, there appears to have been two completely different types of people who were interested in Stalker. There is of course the FPS type, which eventually got catered for because he is so much in the majority.

I belong to the explorer type, when I saw the first screenshots of Stalker (LOL that must have been 2003 or so) I hoped that the gameplay would consist of nothing but scouting, fighting animals and spending hours to extract anomalies from increasingly inaccessible places. And not killing human beings at all. A bit like The Hunter in a SF setting.

Not that I was expecting it eventually not to succumb to lots of action, but the first Stalker was still a big letdown, perhaps the most athmospheric gameworld evar, and then the gameplay consists of nothing but dumb, endless killing waves after waves of human enemies. Not my conception of the Zone, and not the one of the Strugatskie brothers, either.

Pretty much this. I expected a game about surviving in the Zone, scavenging for ammo and supplies, avoiding combat and using stealth to accomplish my tasks. What I got was hordes of respawning bandits, small maps filled with either npc-s or enemies and worst of all broken loot system that killed any notion of exploration. CoP was a huge step toward the game I envisioned long time ago but it main problem was still too small maps where safe places are few minutes away and supplies are abundant.

 

[glasnost]

Did they program their own accounting software?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cornerstone of Pripyat

 

[DraQ]

In Call of Pripyat, you can engage in deadly artifact hunting side missions to build up your wealth and get an Exoskeleton and Lynx sniper rifle from get go.

It's a world of difference.

Yes, but not exactly positive difference.

If you can effectively get top of the line gear from get go, item progression goes down the drain and you won't be using stalker suit and AK-74u, if you have exo and fully upgraded Storm.

Good, there appears to have been two completely different types of people who were interested in Stalker. There is of course the FPS type, which eventually got catered for because he is so much in the majority.

I belong to the explorer type, when I saw the first screenshots of Stalker (LOL that must have been 2003 or so) I hoped that the gameplay would consist of nothing but scouting, fighting animals and spending hours to extract anomalies from increasingly inaccessible places. And not killing human beings at all. A bit like The Hunter in a SF setting.

Not that I was expecting it eventually not to succumb to lots of action, but the first Stalker was still a big letdown, perhaps the most athmospheric gameworld evar, and then the gameplay consists of nothing but dumb, endless killing waves after waves of human enemies. Not my conception of the Zone, and not the one of the Strugatskie brothers, either.

Pretty much this. I expected a game about surviving in the Zone, scavenging for ammo and supplies, avoiding combat and using stealth to accomplish my tasks. What I got was hordes of respawning bandits, small maps filled with either npc-s or enemies and worst of all broken loot system that killed any notion of exploration. CoP was a huge step toward the game I envisioned long time ago but it main problem was still too small maps where safe places are few minutes away and supplies are abundant.

Well, exploration was already there in SoC, you could find unique artifacts or gear if you explored (though the fact that only marked stashes contained items did hurt the exploration quite a lot).

The respawn rate was toned down in patches, although it took CoP to make STALKER less combat centric.
The main problem of SoC was IMO that it didn't really force you to be stealthy, even though it supported such gameplay style.
The main problems of CoP was lack of truly dangerous crawls (underground labs in SoC could make you shit your pants, Red Forest in CS was similarly freaky), and zone being way too safe. In SoC at least you had single anomalies everywhere so you had to put at least nominal amount of attention into watching your step. Ideally zone should be a kind of place where not watching where you go would not only deprive you of your life but also of any hope of proper burial.

Also ammo worked the best in SoC, where it was heavy. Lack of repair provided decent motivation to avoid unnecessary combat and trying to handle necessary combat in as few shots as possible too.

I really dig collecting your team and going with them to Pripyat in CoP, BTW. Very atmospheric part.

 

[Wyrmlord]

In Call of Pripyat, you can engage in deadly artifact hunting side missions to build up your wealth and get an Exoskeleton and Lynx sniper rifle from get go.

It's a world of difference.

Yes, but not exactly positive difference.

If you can effectively get top of the line gear from get go, item progression goes down the drain and you won't be using stalker suit and AK-74u, if you have exo and fully upgraded Storm.

Item progression and all is for linear games.

The whole point of an open world game is for jumping ahead of the curve with extra effort early in the game.

If you can't do that, what is left? A game where you wander around freely, but still have to wait for the main quest to unlock higher items? Then why do anything else but the main quest? Forget the open world!

My now archived and probably forgotten LP of Betrayal at Krondor was based on getting the best items from Chapter 1, thus spending 90% of the time in Chapter 1. Finishing the other eight chapters was 10% of the time taken because of it. In the end, what you lose from early min-maxing is what you gain in a quicker late period game. And I think that doing so makes a game a lot more fun.

 

[M_I_C_K_E_Y_M_O_U_S_E]

http://i.imgur.com/YPayw.jpg

 

[xemous]

nobody would want to spend hours exploring and extracting a single artifact or piece of gear... that is a grind, a big stupid grind.
sounds good as a fatansy project but try getting ppl to play it and have fun for hours doing excruciatingly boring artifact hunting.

CoP had just the right amount of exploring, artifact hunting, combat, progression and story elements to keep it constantly fresh and interesting right up until the end.

CoP is one of the greatest computer games ever released.

I still cant believe they went belly up, they sold MILLIONS of copies, they could've just updated the engine reused the assets and sold another STALKER to tide them over, I would've bought a new 40 hour episode every 18months, what the hell did they do ?!

 

[Metro]

Good, there appears to have been two completely different types of people who were interested in Stalker. There is of course the FPS type, which eventually got catered for because he is so much in the majority.

I belong to the explorer type, when I saw the first screenshots of Stalker (LOL that must have been 2003 or so) I hoped that the gameplay would consist of nothing but scouting, fighting animals and spending hours to extract anomalies from increasingly inaccessible places. And not killing human beings at all. A bit like The Hunter in a SF setting.

Not that I was expecting it eventually not to succumb to lots of action, but the first Stalker was still a big letdown, perhaps the most athmospheric gameworld evar, and then the gameplay consists of nothing but dumb, endless killing waves after waves of human enemies. Not my conception of the Zone, and not the one of the Strugatskie brothers, either.

Pretty much this. I expected a game about surviving in the Zone, scavenging for ammo and supplies, avoiding combat and using stealth to accomplish my tasks. What I got was hordes of respawning bandits, small maps filled with either npc-s or enemies and worst of all broken loot system that killed any notion of exploration.

Agreed. Also most of the side quests in SoC were utterly pointless (not to mention generic). There was no experience to earn and you really didn't need any more money or ammo you didn't get from doing the main quest.

 

[Burning Bridges]

nobody would want to spend hours exploring and extracting a single artifact or piece of gear... that is a grind, a big stupid grind.
sounds good as a fatansy project but try getting ppl to play it and have fun for hours doing excruciatingly boring artifact hunting.

Well wait. I agree that it sounds like an idea that would turn into an extremely lame affair in 90% of games.

But practically anything can be fun in a computer game. Even a game about collecting mushrooms could be extremely addictive. This depends not only on implementation and ideas, but often on the right engine. For example, a lot of very simple indies are extremely fun just because they use physics engines.

Exploration never works in FPS games, because FPS developers by default resort to using tiny maps, for which they are using other FPS games, and not the real world, as blueprint. But if Stalker had a really huge map, like 10x10 km or so, with a realistic distribution of animals and a few monsters, then just getting from A to B and searching for anomalies would have been fun. And in fact, this must have been the original concept, when they were still planning to put cars and even helicopters into the game.

Then apart from mechanics, there have to be rewards. Right now there is no extreme motivation to go artifact hunting. Anomalies should be hard to find, dangerous to remove and then very profitable to sell. If there were more traders, more things on sale, and if weapons, equipment and anomalies in the zone were really scarce, it would be extremely rewarding to return from the zone with just a handful of anomalies.

 

[markec]

Now also imagine a world where ammo is scarce so fighting everything on your path is not a viable tactic. Where there are few and far between safe places and to reach most valuable stuff you need to go far away, but when the darkness falls all manner of creatures leaves their underground lairs. I can already see a situations like being stranded in a isolated factory at dark hearing sounds of mutants scavenging nearby, you having only bare minimum of ammo and safest place is few kilometers over a open field.

 

[Burning Bridges]

And with a good physics engine you could use wood to block doors, windows, etc and sit the night out like the guy in 'I Am Legend'.

Well, this could have actually worked.

Without the need to fight humans there would have been be no reason why you find ammo everywhere in the zone. So you need to buy it from traders, for which you need money, which means you need to bring in anomalies.

Like in real life, you enter the zone with an old rusty gun and a few rounds, and slowly improve your equipment like in JA2. Or even like VtMB where new guns became available only once in a while..

 

[DraQ]

In Call of Pripyat, you can engage in deadly artifact hunting side missions to build up your wealth and get an Exoskeleton and Lynx sniper rifle from get go.

It's a world of difference.

Yes, but not exactly positive difference.

If you can effectively get top of the line gear from get go, item progression goes down the drain and you won't be using stalker suit and AK-74u, if you have exo and fully upgraded Storm.

Item progression and all is for linear games.

The whole point of an open world game is for jumping ahead of the curve with extra effort early in the game.

No, the point of an open world game is that your progression may happen differently and in different circumstances.

The problem with CoP is that it's like playing Morrowind, with exact locations of the best stuff written down and making beeline for phat lewt right off the boat as opposed to playing Morrowind normally, except you don't need any sort of meta-knowledge for that in CoP, you just pick several arttifacts and go pay Nimble who brings you a top-grade super unique weapon, allowing you to bypass all those AKs, Enfields and M4s.

And with a good physics engine you could use wood to block doors, windows, etc and sit the night out like the guy in 'I Am Legend'.

Well, this could have actually worked. Physics engine already in would be perfectly adequate if they just added grab function for objects.

Without the need to fight humans there would have been be no reason why you find ammo everywhere in the zone. So you need to buy it from traders, for which you need money, which means you need to bring in anomalies.

Like in real life, you enter the zone with an old rusty gun and a few rounds, and slowly improve your equipment like in JA2. Or even like VtMB where new guns became available only once in a while..

It would be pretty nice. I actually had something like this happen to me when I hid from an emission in this building with electros near Jupiter in CoP and then a chimera walked in to hide from the emission as well and fuckers can be nasty even in the open. I tried not to make much noise.

Or smell.


Occasional hostile encounters with bandits, dishonest stalkers (or military, apart from CoP) should still happen, not as a rule but as an exception that still happens often enough to kill you if you're not prepared, but there shouldn't be much incentive to shoot everyone or everything.

 

[Nope]

 

[Sul]

Good to know, best luck to GSC. Stalker 2 is the only FPS I'm looking forward nowadays.