Comments - SourceDimensions

(buried)

This will be a double post put both here and at the COC mod discussion forums under Solstice name. I will evaluate the COC mod as of Sunday Dec. 13, 2015 - I will submit a few bugs and comment on my gameplay experience so far.

I installed COC mod shortly after its release; I've played it for several days now - maybe 14 days total - there are a few good things and several bad things for me to say about this mod. Please read through as I will note some bugs and my gameplay experience so far.

I initially installed the game "over COP" (into the same directory) along with many of the addons that were available at that time - Traders Buy Everything, Photo Realistic Zone, BOTH Nano HUD and COC 1.2 light HUD (it creates bad HUD textures but it is the only way to remove the radar from screen while also changing the bottom right indicator texture,) all updates to 1.424, Better Torch, Better Shading, Better Nightvision, as well as Map Fix and OWR3 for COC. This all works fine except that sometimes the better torch shaders go bad during mid-game - turning on the flashlight (torch) will sometimes change the shading of the entire screen - restarting the game fixes this until it breaks again.

The game is relatively fun to play. The maps are very nice and the classes offer diversity of gameplay but there are some serious problems with AI as people have mentioned before - there is braindead AI and NPCs doing dumb things all over the place. I started as a Loner faction and haven't played any other class other than to check where those factions start from in the game. My biggest complaint with the gameplay is that the mod uses vanilla items like energy drinks, vodka and Hercules (IMO the Misery items are 1,000% better and contribute to more immersion.) and that weapons aren't very interesting even with OWR weapons mod. I do take issue with the recurring tasks like 'Search and Rescue' - I've rescued the same guy five times from the same place and it breaks immersion knowing that I can't ask people for tasks at Duty Bar because I know many of them will just tell me to go rescue the same guy from Garbage - recurring tasks shouldn't exist.

I started playing as Loner and got a system down to sell items to make money from all the broken guns and ammos from all the dead people I killed. It wasn't long before I bought the Duty Exo from Bar. Enemy factions like Bandits respawn too frequently and in the wrong places - they respawn in the dead center of Garbage warehouse (Bandit HQ) the whole squad has appeared spawned right in front of me more than once. Spawn positions need to be out of the way on the side of a map, not in the middle of the warehouse building. After playing for several days I've got an Exo and so many weapons and so much money that there isn't much reason to be having money and I have so much ammo and there isn't enough enemies to shoot. I'm Loner so my only enemies are Bandits and Military and Monolith; everybody else is neutral. Some maps feel very empty like Zaton and Jupiter. And there aren't enough mutants to shoot either.

So after several days of play I got this guy in my team his name is Oleg. I want to take him to go to Pripyat Plaza to kill Monolith but I take him around through the western route through Limansk and all the way up to CNPP. Oleg picked up a rocket launcher and whenever he shoots it it seems to hit my player, either wounding me badly or killing me. This may be a bug as it has happened several times - he always shoots me with the rocket. We went to the back of CNPP and wandered around because we didn't know where we were going, then finally transitioned to the front side of the CNPP trying to get to Pripyat Plaza. In the front of CNPP there are two transit links - one says 'to Zaton' (in the middle) and one says 'to Pripyat Plaza' (in the SE corner.) I took the one to Pripyat Plaza in the SE corner but it sent me to Zaton instead. After arriving in Zaton I checked my autosaves and the autosave has named itself 'the beginning of the game' - obviously it isn't the beginning of the game and anyone playing would be able to tell that it isn't but the autosave still names itself this which is a little bit confusing.

At this point I have 100,000 RU and the game feels boring; there isn't anything fun to do, nothing to spend money on and no good items to use - basically there isn't enough immersion. I'm babysitting Oleg for no reason and he shoots me with rockets. Enemy AI is bad on Master level.

There needs to be more immersion, better items to use, better weapons - basically much of what MISERY has in MISERY mod.