STALKER: Call of Pripyat

[deject]

Thread revive! I think I may have played this a bit too much.

cfb

[mrbobbins]

I keep forgetting I have this, must play it for more than 10 minutes... maybe after I finish Dragon Age.

[Mr. Johnson]

I think I'll give this a proper go after I finish the witcher.

[buzzmong]

I did eventually complete this and I have to say I don't think I enjoyed it as much as Stalker SoC.

Certainly didn't enjoy it as much as SoC with that uber mod that Berk found.

I think it's due to being more structured, with tighter maps and missions. It kind of lost that feeling of being a person in the Zone doing your own thing that SoC has and became a lot closer to a more linear FPS. There was also a bit of "this is a set enemy spawn point"-itus in some places.

I did like all the improvements to the engine though, especially the GUI.

[deject]

I did eventually complete this and I have to say I don't think I enjoyed it as much as Stalker SoC.

Certainly didn't enjoy it as much as SoC with that uber mod that Berk found.

I think it's due to being more structured, with tighter maps and missions. It kind of lost that feeling of being a person in the Zone doing your own thing that SoC has and became a lot closer to a more linear FPS. There was also a bit of "this is a set enemy spawn point"-itus in some places.

I did like all the improvements to the engine though, especially the GUI.

Yeah with my new shiny GTX 460 I turned on the Tessellation and it looked pretty awesome.

As far as which game is the best, I still have some nostalgia for the original because it was just so different from the direction that FPS games had been (and still are to some extent) heading. Call of Pripyat's game world definitely isn't as big as Shadow of Chernobyl's or Clear Sky's but I think they condensed most of the content down so that it doesn't feel like you're missing a whole lot of stuff. Also, I really like the upgrading mechanic as it gives the game a more custom tailored feel, like you would if you were a veteran S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in a very harsh environment.

[Dog Pants]

I think I got BACONS or something about a week after I got this, so I've hardly played it. However, with money a lot tighter I'll be going back and revisiting a lot of games I didn't finish and I'm quite looking forward to this one.

[deject]

I think I got BACONS or something about a week after I got this, so I've hardly played it. However, with money a lot tighter I'll be going back and revisiting a lot of games I didn't finish and I'm quite looking forward to this one.

It is much more forgiving early on than the previous games, but at the same time the more powerful mutants are more plentiful and on the surface. Going out at night is a great way to get attcked by Chimeras, Pseudogiants, and Controllers. It's also the most stable iteration and really quite good looking.

[spoodie]

Going out at night is a great way to get attcked by Chimeras, Pseudogiants, and Controllers.

I think I played the whole game without being out at night, it was just too risky and hard to find your way around.

[buzzmong]

I didn't think the night was a problem in CoP. Maybe right at the start, but by the time you clear out the first map properly and progress to the second you're normally wearing pretty decent kit.

Controllers are pretty much scripted, I only found one location where they spawn day or night (2nd map, left hand side where there's a train tunnel by the river), so it's a non issue there. Pseudogiants are all scripted. The only ones you see in the night and not the day are Chimeras, and they only spawn in one or two locations, the obvious place being by the Oasis.

If anything though, it perhaps made bloodsuckers easier to spot because their white eyes contrast harshly with the darkness.

Granted, I was playing on normal, I'd expect it to be more dangerous as the difficulty goes up.

[buzzmong]

Thread necro!

Relevent though as the Misery Mod 2.0 has just been released for CoP.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-misery

I've heard it turns the game into a full on proper hardcore stalker-fest. It does lots of things and I'm definitely going to try it out.

[friznit]

Just played this all the way through with the Complete mod, was thoroughly enjoyable but on Normal mode I think it was a tad easy, so I'm going to have to give it a go on a harder difficulty setting, but with a fresh mod to make it different enough to be worth a second play through.

From what I understand the popular mod choices are below - they seem to have a lot of common features with the main difference being level of difficulty though:

Complete - Basically Vanilla+, with some bug/texture fixes and sound updates.
Oblivion Lost - all the fucking toys!
AMK - the Russians seem to swear by this but from what I can tell it does all the same as OL, but also makes you require sleep occasionally.
Misery - another overhaul mod aimed at making it much, much more challenging.

[buzzmong]

So, I've recently been playing with Misery 2.1 Beta.

There's a lot of new stuff in there, and the mod certainly lives up to it's title. The food system tweaks are quite nice, but it does make the game much harder than it should be at the start when you're really scrambling for resources.

In some regards, I lucked out as I ran into a bandit patrol in the first 10 minutes while making my way over to the big ship in Zaton, and after a while of playing chicken with some iso containers and a number of quickloads, plus a handy blowout when I was next to Noah's barge, it saw me come out with a bit of spare food, a resonable quality assault rifle and enough broken/spare stuff to get a few thousand RU in the bank. Still bloody hard though.

The mod has introduced a class system: Assault, Recon or Sniper. Your choice affects not only your starting equipment, but also things like how much you need to eat, carry weight, ability with weapon classes (I think it affects how reliable they are and jamming chance), and a host of other stats.

Repairing weapons and kit is now very important, but also very expensive at the technicians. It's mitigated somewhat by all the extra repair tools, but they can be expensive.

Anomalies are now very deadly. The only ones which can sort of be safely got near without much gear is the gravitmetric ones, now with an added radiation bonus. Forget about thermal or toxic ones until you get a SPP-99 science suit or some high end stalker gear.

I'm enjoying it, but it's Stalker on hard mode with DayZ style survival slapped on it. I suspect that means out of the 5punkers, it's probably only Berk and Friz who'd get the most from it.

I'd recommend downloading and having a go though, just for the challenge.

[tandino]

So, I've recently been playing with Misery 2.1 Beta.

There's a lot of new stuff in there, and the mod certainly lives up to it's title. The food system tweaks are quite nice, but it does make the game much harder than it should be at the start when you're really scrambling for resources.

In some regards, I lucked out as I ran into a bandit patrol in the first 10 minutes while making my way over to the big ship in Zaton, and after a while of playing chicken with some iso containers and a number of quickloads, plus a handy blowout when I was next to Noah's barge, it saw me come out with a bit of spare food, a resonable quality assault rifle and enough broken/spare stuff to get a few thousand RU in the bank. Still bloody hard though.

The mod has introduced a class system: Assault, Recon or Sniper. Your choice affects not only your starting equipment, but also things like how much you need to eat, carry weight, ability with weapon classes (I think it affects how reliable they are and jamming chance), and a host of other stats.

Repairing weapons and kit is now very important, but also very expensive at the technicians. It's mitigated somewhat by all the extra repair tools, but they can be expensive.

Anomalies are now very deadly. The only ones which can sort of be safely got near without much gear is the gravitmetric ones, now with an added radiation bonus. Forget about thermal or toxic ones until you get a SPP-99 science suit or some high end stalker gear.

I'm enjoying it, but it's Stalker on hard mode with DayZ style survival slapped on it. I suspect that means out of the 5punkers, it's probably only Berk and Friz who'd get the most from it.

I'd recommend downloading and having a go though, just for the challenge.

Sounds interesting Buzz. I've recently been playing the dAIzy mod for DayZ - it basically allows single player DayZ and replaces human assholes with AI assholes. All the other features are included and there are also versions of popular DayZ mods. I'm enjoying an Epoch esque version with the great addition of walking zombies (made to hit harder and somewhat more numerous). One day I will finish STALKER.

[buzzmong]

That's just reminded me, Misery 2.1 proper landed last week (beta came out 3/4 months ago), with another load of tweaks and changes.

Personally, I didn't enjoy Misery 2.1 Beta as a whole when I was playing it. While I enjoy bits of it, they've tried to make it "realistic" but at the same time go to far with silly things like increased weapon degredation. Assault rifles shouldn't be dropping 10-15% condition (along with exponential repair costs) after just a couple of hundred shots, nor should all the bad guys be running around with weapons that are properly knackered, but seemingly not experiencing jams of their own.

I also think the class system is a bit flawed. Stats wise it's great, but there's no reason why a military recon should get penalised (increased degreadation, recoil etc) for using a proper full size assault rifle over a carbine, or be penalised (increased wear) for wearing heavier armour simply because it's not right for their class.

I'll install the patch to make it proper 2.1 though due to the number of changes to see whether the balance has been revised a bit.

I'm certainly erring towards saying it's an interesting mod which you should probably have a go with, but it's certainly not the definitive mod for the game (like Oblivion Lost was for SoC).

[buzzmong]

I uninstalled Misery in the end. Couldn't bring myself to play the 2.1 full patch as I'd had enough.

A lot of the stuff added is pretty decent, but the dev team have confused realism with making things hard, too hard in some cases, turning from being fun to just tedious and not enjoyable.
Some of the big things, especially weapon degredation and the cost increases pushed it too far into the painful range to be enjoyable.

So, now I'm on the lookout for new mods.

I'm going to install Complete because it's worth it for a lot of the tweaks (although COP hasn't had too much done to it, drivable vehicles are back though), but I do want a bigger change.

Pripyat Reborn looks to be a contender as it's in active development, but a quick look at the comments show the latest release from only a couple of days ago has some bugs in it, so I'm waiting for a patch. As of 21st April 2014, mod officially stopped. Seems the dev tried to incorporate another patch "Unofficial 0.3" and had been fighting it for months, and hasn't got the heart to throw away a lot of stuff and restart. The pre-unoffical patch version, which has been patched to a working state, can be found here: http://forum.epicstalker.com/viewtopic. ... 2159#p2159

Anyone have any joy with other CoP mods?

[buzzmong]

Well now, there's a thing. Digging around on the Misery forums while waiting for a download and a number of people have the same gripes I do, which has resulted in people modding it even further to help solve a number of the issues.

Not often you get mods of mods.