Boot this up

>boot this up
>stalker difficulty
>first quest is me with a pistol vs 3 guys with heavy weapons
>raped repeatedly

What am I doing wrong?

>>stalker difficulty

That.
Play on Master.

>stalker difficulty
Also install ZRP

Your starter guns suck

go slow and low around corners and try to headshot niggas at full CTRL + SHIFT crouch and iron sights

playing on a harder difficulty actually makes your guns do MORE damage but the enemies do the same to you.

The game has a inverse kind of curve, once you get a good semi auto rifle caliber gun with a optic you will be a god.

tone down the difficulty at the beginning till you feel comfortable enough to crank it up again.

fuck you faggot. first playthroughs are exclusive to vanilla.

Much appreciated guys. Knocked it down to novice, but feeling a little more confident now I have a shotgun.

Have fun getting spotted behind a bush a million miles away. In total darkness.

Many mods exist to fix the retarded AI. I'd look into that if I were you.

The game is easiest on the hardest difficulty.

ure a fucking dummy

Don't fucking turn down the difficulty, turn it all the way up. It makes the aiming far easier.

>knocked it down
Knock it up you retard

Master makes it so that your bullets (as well as the enemies) are more likely to hit etc, it doesn't just make the enemies HP sponges

In STALKER higher difficulties make both your weapons and the enemies' do more damage.

Play on Master, and only shoot while crouching.

just save scum til you beat it
then download CoC and start playing Iron man mode

>boot up stalker
>master difficulty
>sneak into military base and shoot some nigga in the face around the corner
>pick up his rifle
>kill rest of the guys
>now decently equipped off start of the game

better crank that shit up and turn off crosshairs, you scrub fuck

OP again. Just killed these three gimps outside the starting town and the PDA is telling me I need to get a flash drive off one of them, but I'm not seeing it anywhere.

Walkthrough is telling me I was supposed to be friends with these guys or something. WTF is going on

>What am I doing wrong?
-playing on Stalker difficulty.
-attacking military guys?
-not taking cover, aiming with sights, and clearly ramboing.

Lemme just post the good ol' STALKER starting guide. Consult this Starting Guide,
then see the /vg/'s huge Stalker General for more tips and links: Play in the release order. Start with no mods - only latest patch, OR get the full "Starter Pack" first; these contain bug-fixers and light visual mods that can help performance as well.
Leave big overhauls for later playthrougs. Avoid the "Complete" -mods. Always play on MASTER difficulty for best realism and atmosphere, and disable crosshair.

Don't give up in the beginning! The starting gear sucks ass and first area can be a bit boring.

Whoa... so this... is... the power... of Xbot generation....

Talk to the captured dude in the bandit village after killing them, its your task to free that dude.
Read the quests dude

Alright you can go ahead and tell me I'm retarded but these guys started shooting at me first even though Wolf said I was supposed to go and meet them.

>heavy weapons
Sawn off shotguns and shitty SMGs are not heavy weapons.

you arnt, such is life innazone.

Did you attack any other NPCs for no reason at all?

>using a walkthrough and playing on the easiest difficulty on your first playthrough
i thought people were joking when they said the first mission was a retard filter but holy shit.

I beat that mission on my first try
But I got raped because some soldiers walking around found the starting town and killed everybody and I can't do anything, and if I run away and let them die then I can't turn the other quests I have active (aka the starting quests) in

fuck you

Game difficulty isn't a difficulty slider. It's a damage slider. Given how scarce ammo can be, you're just making the game harder on yourself by forcing yourself to waste more ammo in each enemy since weapons will do less damage

>fuck you faggot. first playthroughs are exclusive to vanilla.

ZRP is effectively vanilla. It's mostly bugfixes.

Play on highest difficulty for non-bullet sponge enemies unless you want to run out of ammo all the time. It's a shooter, not much philosophy to it, just shoot people and don't die. Use cover but be careful not to be spammed with grenades. You will struggle with accuracy for a long time before you get a decent scoped weapon at which point the game becomes a cakewalk.

To be fair, I do think the first mission is the hardest in the game, or at least among the hardest. I had a lot of trouble the first time I played the game, and again when I installed ZoA.

What the living fuck are you doing? Did you skip and ignore all the tiny tutorial tips and pieces on your screen? The fact that yellow dots and brackets in binos mean "Neutral"?

Friendly and neutral NPCs do not just attack you out of nowhere.

And no, your TARGET is none of those guys. They were your backup.

You get the quest from sidorovich, no? As long as i remember the story relevant ones cant be failed.

The soldiers from the outpost swoop in on the rookie village and murder everyone if you pull them.

This user is on the right track, but he's misinformed.

Guns on all difficulties do the same damage. Harder difficulties just tweak the AI so they have better aim and tracking.

>they were your backup

lmao OP confirmed retard

All of you reminded me that I need to play Shadow of Chernobyl again. Thank you.

This game aged horribly. Tried to play it but it was just so annoying and oppressive. And I usually like games where you start out weak.

Why does everyone insist on playing on Master difficulty

I killed some guy who was begging for a medkit. I guess that's where I went wrong.

git gud

I played it last year and I had a fucking blast. The lab spooked me to no ends. I still have to play the sequels but I'm looking forward to them.

You heartless bastard

Enemies do more damage but so do you.

Pic related. This also seems to describe the OP well too.

Enemies on any other difficulty are bullet sponges. They die easier on master but you do to.

>it was just so annoying and oppressive
no you're father's wife's son, you just became a horrible casual by playing too much casual trash. I know literal women who beat pure vanilla with no problems on their own.

>killing a wounded loner-bro & source of free positive karma
you're a dickhead. Enjoy your life as a Bandit.

Have you tried reading the thread?

The game sucked at giving me an incentive to git gud

>ending isn't installing complete

>Why does everyone insist on playing on Master difficulty
Because the higher the diff, the MORE damage EVERYTHING and everyone inflicts, both ways. Also slightly improves the AI.

Next time don't make everyone your enemy or you won't live long. You don't have to be friends, just don't fucking attack random people. Lone bandits don't have it easy in the zone.

>Harder difficulties just tweak the AI so they have better aim and tracking.

Difficulty has no effect on AI.

Because they believe in a retarded myth that doing so increases the damage you deal, when in reality it does the exact opposite and nerfs all damage done by the player actor. Even against wooden boxes.
Yes, you can go test that last part in the starting village.

nothing the first mission is the hardest it's a steel bath you will come out of it hardened

I think it took me 11 tries. it took another couple of hours before I fell for the game but when I did I fell very deeply in love with it. know that you basically can't hit anything at longer than 10 m range and try to go for headshots,
use the shotguns and hope your buddies don't sperg too hard

>get the sawn off, every other gun is absolute shit until you get a few hours into the game
>get a ton of slugs
>slaughter everyone that opposes you

Don't use the viper, don't use the crappy akms, and especially don't use the god awful pistols.

LOL @ all the git gud/casual BS.

What's the point of difficulty if climbing that hill isn't fun?

Having patience for poor design isn't a sign of skill.

Well, tweaking the difficulty makes them more accurate. I assumed it just made the AI better in that regard.

Maybe I too, am misinformed.

Complete barely make the game easier though.
You only can repair your shit and sleep wherever you want, wow.

Most people in this thread don't think it's poor design.

git gud

>Well, tweaking the difficulty makes them more accurate.

Kind of, but not really. Basically every time you or an AI land a shot on target, whether that shot actually deals damage or not is based on a percentage chance. On higher difficulty more shots "count," and on lower difficulties less shots "count" (for both you and for AI).

you're the only one not having fun

I only played vanilla and that sounds like a pretty big deal for the first half of the game. The second half is easy as fuck anyway no matter what you do.

>LOL @

what does iron man mode do?

>Complete barely make the game easier though.
Yeah, that really is NOT all that obsolete piece of shit overhaul does. Pic very related, and that's just the peak of the iceberg

>enemy view distance crippled
>damage and accuracy increased for every weapon
>starting weapons blow away high tier enemies from far away
>default carry limit almost what an exo gives you in vanilla
>massively reduced distance that sound pulls enemies
>auto-bandages
>auto rad removal and 90% rad resistance with certain armor
>night vision lets you see perfectly and has no downsides
>barely easier

Deletes your saves if you die.

Is there an updated guide? this is from 2014

the worst part about the starter guns is not the low damage, but the shit accuracy

>fuck you faggot. first playthroughs are exclusive to vanilla.
>mfw people that think this

I never attacked them

What's your guys opinion on running Arsenal with AMK?

are there any mods that actually fix the Clear Sky faction wars?

No. All shots that would hit, hit. If they don't, then you MISSED, likely due to the huge spread on all guns even when aiming down sights and firing from a stable stance.

The part about night vision angers me the most I think. The first time I got NV I was happy because I could see at all. The first time I got the upgraded NV I felt like I made some actual fucking progress and don't have to worry about shit quality anymore. They're taking away any progress from the game, same with guns' accuracy. Why even bother playing this.

>In reality they change the gameplay shittons

The things he mentioned barely qualifies as ''shittons'', it just makes the game less frustrating. Maybe the game becomes more ''casual'', but playing STALKER for the difficulty is retarded when it's only difficult the first 20 minutes of the game.

STALKER should be played for the atmosphere, not the ''''''''''''''''''''''difficulty'''''''''''''''''''''''.

The games don't change, and haven't gotten patches since 2010, so why change guide either? Same thing with the rookie mods: latest patch is the only must-have thing, ZRP / SRP are handy extras, and rest are just graphics.
The first version of the pic itself came out like 2011.

that's sorta the point, and the only thing keeping you from running from Cordon to NPP within the first hour. It's clever balancing design, that removes invisible walls.

that being said, besides the really short REACH of handguns and shotguns, their accuracy at their effective range is a-OK.

I'm a huge sucker for AMK1.4, but I don't quite dig the Arsenal. Like so many gun pack mods, most of the new additions do not sit well in the Zone, and the damage values tend to be OP as fuck too.

Evacuation is kicking my ass.
Everyone keeps fucking dying to a Chimera near the school.

The game gets very easy only after you get to army warehouses where you can finally get really good weapons.

CTANKEP

today i will get high and play CoC iron man azazel, the best post-storyline ctankep

>No. All shots that would hit, hit. If they don't, then you MISSED

That is false. On vanilla SoC there is a percentage chance that bullets essentially "disappear."

>he didn't have a gauss rifle within the first 20 mins of the game

>tfw I never played on master and just played on stalker
it was fun, next ptime I'll play it on master and wuh mod

You should go read the huge-ass PDF file that is the Complete 2009 mod's changes list. It's pretty damn shocking, and NOT "minor" by any stretch of imagination. I was quite shocked when I read it, as I used to recommend the mod to people!

that is ONLY true for NPCs, NOT the player.


...and what's with these weird false positives on spam detections nowadays?

>your
Fixed

>that is ONLY true for NPCs, NOT the player.

Nope. You can test it yourself.

the difficulty is part of the atmosphere

I always wanted to play Stalker but I was only 14 when it came out and chickened out every time I booted it up. Makes me want to buy a PC and finally play it. I feel it's like the best game I never played.

X-18 still spooks my asshole inside out despite playing through the game a fuck ton of times.

>CSGO kiddie thinks hes the shit at FPS and can headshot fools without using sights at breakneck speeds
>loads up STALKER and gets BTFO by slav AI pros that simulate slav tier FPS skills using sights like ivan would

Jokes aside the AI in the stalker games have inhuman aiming skills

Son, I've played these games since 2007, and modded them myself for quite some many hours. The hit-probability % is NPC-only feature, and the percentage is smaller the higher your difficulty mode.

Only things that affect player's accuracy are cone of fire effect AND the bullet physics. Both which you can easily compensate for with good aiming practices and better guns / ammo types.

as an old-fag Sup Forums-tard and a guy who got into Stalker very early on, I must say that they're easily some of the most engaging, atmospheric and overall memorable games of these "modern times", which I count to have started after 2005.

>what makes them so good then?

They're scarier than many "true" horror games released in past few years.
They look prettier than some much later released multiplat titles.
They make games like Far Cry 3-4 feel like horribly dumbed down, handholding kiddie games.
They are fairly realistic, but not simulator-level. There's real bullet physics and stuff like bleeding and hunger, and one shot to the head can kill anyone.
They are VERY long lasting games. One playthrough in vanilla can last well over 25 hours at calm pace, but I've spent a good two WEEKS in all three of them on my first playthroughs. And later a lot more with numerous mods.

They're not perfect games and have their few issues, but in the end they are like "rough diamonds": totally worth investing time and effort in. They are just not afraid to kick you in the groin and call you a bitch - which is quite rare in modern games.

>Son, I've played these games since 2007, and modded them myself for quite some many hours.
Me too, and you're wrong.

I just started playing this game and I just saw a dog in the distance floating in the air and rotating. Is this normal?

it's >you're you fucking spic

i thought the same thing until i actually played it
its okay, i can see why some people drop an autistic amount of hours on it but vidya isnt fun anymore so rip

Yes be careful around bushes