Community Feedback - Ammo Scarcity image - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Wormwood mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
Return to the Zone in S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Wormwood, a high-difficulty survival-oriented realism modification for GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. Wormwood builds upon the core Stalker experience, enriching the latest in the cult game series with brand new survival mechanics, intense and realistic gunplay, new missions, levels, fleshed-out building interiors and much, much more.
Hey folks!
The classic way to increase difficulty in STALKER mods is to withhold ammunition from the player. This artificially alters the economy and doesn't hold up well to scrutiny - in the Zone, ammunition would be extremely plentiful due to its high use - it makes no sense that a Stalker would have only three rounds in his backpack and two in his weapon.
We feel like we have enough new systems within Redux that create non-artificial, grounded-in-the-world difficulty and scarcity to potentially remove this artificial ammunition restriction, but we want your thoughts before we commit to it.
Obviously with our magazine system you will be finding loaded and empty magazines on bodies, as well as the original ammo boxes. We will likely play with ammunition and magazine weight, as well as price, to ensure you can't just cart thousands of rounds around the Zone and become Nicolas Cage in Lord of War.
So, what do you think about Ammo Scarcity? We want to hear your thoughts, and ideas, on what you think is the best option here.
Please do give us some of your thoughts on this, we really value your feedback!
(buried)
Since this is a relatively fresh post, let me ask this here:
Please make this mod compatible with Misery!
Also, I'm loving the changes and animations you guys made so far, especially the contoller suicide effect. That kicks ***.
VasAkos, I realise having your post downvoted to -5 with little explanation of what you did wrong might be a little irritating, so I'll do my best to clear things up.
Compatibility with Misery is out of the window. Firstly, both Redux 2 and Misery change the games massively, and in radically different ways - making them compatible would take an age.
Redux is a distinct mod from Misery, with a different creative vision. We've put a lot of work into Redux, and to be honest, it can be dispiriting when the first thing people have to say about that hard work is "Can I use this with Misery?".
As for the animations, much as we'd love to take credit for those, they're the work of the talented WolfKOTTO for the Gunslinger mod.
I hope this has made things a little easier to understand; I appreciate how it can be confusing.
"Buried". Kinda funny.
Thanks for clearing that up though. You know, I was blown away by Misery and have never played Redux 1.0 before cause I found it after the devs had already announced 2.0 so I decided to wait for the next release.
Hey, I really appreciate the work, as I said on Reddit, we are building ourselves a STALKER 2.
I like the graphics overhaul in Misery and didn't/don't know if there's gonna be one in this mod.
No worries :)
We're doing a full graphical overhaul, at least equal to Misery's level. Our theme however is to stick with the real-life Zone aethetic - lush, green and alive. Hopefully some of the recent screenshots can show the level of graphical fidelity we're at now. More info soon!
Good to know. If it will be as detailed work as the things you have already showed us its going to be great.
How many onetime gamers do you think are out here who have been sidetracked for decades from gaming by responsibilities of early adulthood, mid life, now near retirement life, how many could appreciate a reintroduction to modern affordable gaming given the demands on their time and funds? How many more are somewhere along that trajectory?
What is the argument against allowing players the option to find good stashes with good weapons, ammo and supplies, maybe sniper rifles with scopes that can be zeroed? How about armor salvage, the armor has weight and cost to repair but still less than buying new. You might have to salvage two or three sets to get all the repairable parts needed to get one really good set unless you are salvaging a head shot.
Does it really hurt anyone else or their game if those of us with time consuming responsibilities that really limit our gaming time, (from career to small business ownership, to parents and/or other aging relatives, to children, and our children with our grand children) to compete for our time can get have a level where, cautiously exploring this new Improved world, you’ve created can be higher priority than another competition for the most extreme monsters in gaming, jumping out of the shadows?
You are making outstanding environments that invite exploration! Does making stashes that once encouraged exploration, cheap and chintzy, really help? How does exploring new places and finding quality arms and ammo as loot, not appeal to a true shooter and gun lover?
Even an out dated game can provide unimagined entertainment to some on who hasn't played in decades, especially compared too much of what is on TV, and games do so for a fraction of the cost of a monthly cable bill.
Remember we may have spent a generation or two alerting to things that didn't add up, because loved ones depended on us making as many right calls as possible, as soon as possible. Running out on cables and vines, or branches that couldn't hold your weight, making life or death jumps for a probably bogus stash no one would bother to put there. Please, less immersion busting kid stuff, could we have a realistic mature rookie level for returning gamers?
For a start, I think all commodities would be charged at a premium, that being said, ammunition could get smugglers a lot of money or at least be worth their weight in artifacts.
It certainly wouldn't make sense for there to be an ammo shortage in a relative warzone that has a high value to black markets around the world, no. But I don't think it'd be too cheap. Afterall, each bullet could mean one less customer in a semi-closed ecosystem like the zone.
I think you've got the right idea.
Whatever you do, don't go full potato like the MISERY team did with ammo in their mod. "Scarce" is a polite way of phrasing things in that one. Perhaps having basic/surplus ammo be cheap and abundant, while stuff like AP/Tracer/etc be a bit harder to come by and cost that much more.
You have hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Maybe bandits only have cheap surplus ammo and basic ammo while occasionally have ammo like FMJ rounds but to a certain degree that wouldn't make the player be rolling in them very early on and as for Freedom and Duty maybe have them carry AP rounds and what not but in terms of how scarce to make them I think ammo like AP rounds and the like should be much more rare than the basic ammo types maybe finding some in stash locations but only a small amount. That's my opinion on how it should be done.
I actually found ammo way too easy to get in MISERY 2.1 and higher. You could always net profit by hunting, letting you build ammo without issue.
Along with what InternetIan said, I'd say go with partially-loaded magazines on corpses. In ZoA, I never had to bother with the magazine loading system because I could always just pull fresh mags off of corpses. I also always ended up with more ammo than I could carry. I think that 8 fully-loaded magazines per corpse is a little excessive. Cut it down to 2 or 3 at most, and very rarely more than halfway filled would be good.
But why would there ever be partially empty mags? Wouldn't there be one partial one in the gun and either completely full or completely empty backups in the bag? It would seem odd to carry a bunch of half empty mags, since then in practice you'd be having to reload twice as often.
There would be half empty-mags because (most of the time) soldiers reload between battles and likely wouldn't discard their mags, given how valuable they could be in the Zone. No one has time to load/unload mags in battle.
That's not 8 full magazines, it's a magazine with 8 rounds in it.
Ooh lawds, that is a bit confusing.
Unfortunately, due to engine limitations, that's the best we can do. it'll become clearer.
Ammo itself shouldn't be that scarce and I'm glad that you aren't taking that silly direction. I think most of the difficulty surrounding ammo management and making sure you have a full load of it, should come from the magazine system by how pricey or common they are on top of the ammo costs, also how expensive and rare the different ammo types are.
While every Stalker or bandit who has a NATO rifle should have a couple (probably not all full) mags of 5.56 on him and a handful of bullets for topping off, I don't think the AP rounds should be as common or cheap. It would make sense if military grade steel core AP rounds were scarce compared to standard rounds even in the Zone. This would also give pistol caliber weapons and shotguns a advantage, as their special ammo types would be a bit more common and cheaper since slugs and the special pistol rounds would be available readily outside of the Zone/black market and be smuggled in a higher quantity.
It's nice in theory. Of course the system should be mindful of the variety between NPC types. For example, rookie stalkers shouldn't carry that much ammunition, their loadout being geared towards self-defence and perhaps hunting. A monolith raiding party, on the other hand, should carry a truckload. Perhaps you guys should make ammo and spare magazines not very valuable and implement a good variety of different calibers, so you can't be sure to find exactly the right kind you use on every other dead body.
I like Jeffman12 and Nomad_GSF's ideas a lot, personally. Make ammo rather expensive given that it's going to be a valuable commodity, and have a decent amount of mags. Maybe look up what a combat load for former Warsaw Pact armies would be (approximately 6 mags + 4 clips I think) and use that as a base, give or take a few.
I find it interesting, but PLEASE don't be "MISERABLE" with it, find normal rounds normally is enough but of course for AP and special rounds perhaps you can make them somewhat scarce, that would be reasonable. :)
It makes 0 sense to have ammo be scarce in the zone as that place is a gold mine for surplus ammo traders / company's and black markets and corrupted army officers who sell old weapons and surplus ammo the only ammo types that should be rare or expensive are NATO 5.56, 308 / 7.62x51 and the 45 ACP to some extent other exotics such as magnum revolver and rifles should be rare yes. but 9x18, 5.45x39, 7.62x39 and 7.62x54 should be flooding the place Maybe shotgun ammo too.
Besides some groups outside the zone are interested in artifacts and research data so they will make sure ammo is delivered to a place crawling with mutants and bandits, ammo is a top priority in a stalker to buy list so traders will race to provide it.
Just my opinion.
Basically everyone already said it, but I might also consider jketiynu option and make that casual ammo is only for wendors and everyone else in the zone uses some type of surplus type munition. Maybe make so that you have less ammo in stashes, if any.
Ammo shouldn't be scares. Like you said - everyone is carrying guns and its illogical if they only carry a few rounds - ammo is plentiful.. best solution would be like in METRO where you have two qualities of ammo - one good one bad everyone carries a few good rounds, but a lot of bad?
Looks good I see, not too scarce, but well understandable amount, will NPCs change their behavior when they're out of bullets ? running away for example ? surrendering ? in Misery they do, but pistols are infinite for them :P
The idea is awesome by the way :)
Maybe it will/won't make sense to make it scarce, but I always, always had more than I could use in stalker games. I wouldn't mind to make ammo scarce, but there's something else I'd like, and that is a very limited trader stock, because traders have so much stuff they can fill an armory/vault and that doesn't make sense to me. If it were possible I'd make traders only offer the cheap/normal ammo, also make the traders have only some of the basic guns but not expensive ammo or guns; you would get the expensive stuff through maybe duty/freedom/order at nimble or some quest rewards, like you had repeatable quests for armor piercing rounds in ShoC. I never liked early or easy access to endgame stuff.
I completely agree on the notion of ammo scarcity. Imho (and the best way I've found in practice) to balance this is to have lots of cheap low-quality ammo (think highly corrosive milsurp) freely available, and much more severely limit access to quality ammo. That way, the player should always have *something* to shoot, even if they'd rather load their gun with almost anything else.
Mainly curious as to difficulty levels ....being a bit of a devotee of Misery's, black road & dark mode
"in the Zone, ammunition would be extremely plentiful due to its high use - it makes no sense that a Stalker would have only three rounds in his backpack and two in his weapon"
YESSSS!
I believe that there should be believable amounts of ammo found on the corpses. Bandits and rookies, who are low on Zone skills and who would thus be earning less funds should be found with the least amount of ammo, perhaps 2-3 magazines' worth at most. Everyone else, who has proven himself, or is part of a well organized faction? They SHOULD have PLENTY of ammo, 6-10 magazines' worth, minus whatever was shot off in battle.
As I stated earlier, economic "tightness" can be added towards heightening gameplay by making "miracle devices" very expensive because of their unique production challenges, high cost to manufacture, and, of course, how badly they're needed to survive in the Zone.
There's no such thing in the real world as anti-radiation medication, so the fact that it exists in the Zone is a REALLY big deal. For that matter, the rapid healing capabilities of medical kits is something that also doesn't exist in the real world, so it would make sense that such a miracle device would be quite costly. Bandages, of course, not so much... lol
Perhaps a series of missions could be created whereby the player helps to secure/discover "Zone only" ingredients that make such devices possible? Once all of the pieces are acquired, then said item will start to appear in the Zone, at hefty price, but perhaps the player could get a permanent rebate due to his contributions towards its creation? Perhaps only from the scientist/organization that actually made all of the pieces work well together? Such a rebate doesn't mean that the device would be "cheap," but rather cheaper for the player. It would still "hurt" to buy the thing.
Anyway, I'm pumped to read what I did. Solid!