i love stalker 2's story and continuation of the lore, and the atmosphere, but i am disappointed by the gameplay loop.

entering any area
>time to collect 600 medkits in this abstract geometry

finding any stash
>i hope there's a gun/armor i can sell to repair my gun/armor
>fuck it's just 600 medkits

mutants spawn
>fuck. where's a rock
>welp there goes 1500 bucks for repair

bloodsuckers spawn
>ffffffffffuckkkkkkk. where's a rock/doorway
>yeah yeah hit me
>oops only hit him with 7 shotgun spam. quickload
>ok got him that time
>welp there goes 2000 bucks

human enemies spawn
>ughhhhh haven't quickloaded in a minute
>whatever i'll blow the ammo/repair cost
>2+ headshots each (while tanking shots and not caring)
>loot bodies for 600 medkits and 1 broken g37 to sell (to offset repair costs)

psy dogs spawn
>fuckkkkkkkkk. where's a rock
>shoot, quickload
>shoot, ok real one
>run up, shotgun spam
>welp there goes 1000 bucks for repair

controller
>fuckkkkk
>run up
>magdump in his head
>pull out secondary, magdump in his head
>welp there goes 500 bucks for repair

poltergeist
>fuck
>run up
>magdump

>i love stalker 2's story and continuation of the lore
I don't.

>>714471894 (OP)
Yeah, you aren't wrong on most of those, and the game has a lot of issues. Thankfully, most of them can be fixed by already existing mods. 3x slower time, better loot distribution, better locational damage and better loot distribution and healing item balance are pretty much mandatory as far as I am concerned. I don't agree with the economy complaints, I didn't use a mod that actively gave you more money, and I still ended up floating a lot of cash for most of the game.
But the game itself is weirdly balanced on most levels and tends to fall into a very tedious routine by the mid-point.

I think there is a fundamental problem with the game going full-on open world. I genuinely think that Stalker isn't a good fit for an open world game. Never was. I think the game would be genuinely better if it was far more linear in nature, sticking to similar structure as SoC had.

>>714472664
it took a while for it to really pick up for me but it reminds me of new vegas, in actually being a serious continuation of the setting's story

i just don't understand why devs of games like this don't hire a bunch of modders for peanuts and say "populate the world with interesting quirky shit." i was talking to a friend who had read all the stalker books and he said they're filled with creative, one-off stuff that makes the zone feel alive. instead in this game, everything's a bloodsucker or a medkit.

>>714474081
can you explain what you mean by open world vs. linear? it feels pretty similar to SoC to me, how was SoC more linear? genuinely curious what you mean

>>714474143
>can you explain what you mean by open world vs. linear?
I think its pretty self-evident, isn't it? The main difference is in the amount of negative space and in the form of content-gating. If you look at SoC map, you will find that the maps aren't all that expansive, they are mostly just fairly wide stretches of road. You can go off the main road to explore for a bit, but the landscape does funnel you into a lot of chokepoints and with that, cuts down on the sheer amount of commute. And what is more important, new zones, new areas within those zones, are unlocked in a fairly linear order, giving the whole experience a sense of structure (well, at least until the game runs out of money, which is by the time you cross the rainbow bride).

The game offers some neat little optional side locations, allows for backtracking and freedom of approach, but all of those are bonuses, and ultimately, you spend majority of your time being fairly quickly shuffled from main story objective to main story objective.

Stalker 2 is way too open. Even though they do employ chokepoints for some of the area transitions, there is just WAY too much open land to cover, way too many functionally pointless distractions, way too much time spend just hauling shit from one location to another. It's pretty easy to break the progression too, by just being curious an accessing high-level loot way before you were supposed to.

It's all way too stretched out. Where in SoC you would cross from bar to rookie village maybe 2-3 times across your playthrough, Stalker2 pushes you to make the treck between Garbage and Lesser zone maybe 10, 15 times. It's needless and repetetive, and with repetition, the atmosphere and charm vanes.

You could cut out 2/3rds of the map and lose very little of actual worthwhile content in Stalker 2. And you would save 10 hours of pure downtime walking.

I don't think Stalker 2 is bad, but I do not thing the decision to go full open world benefited it.

>>714474143
Not him, but you could argue the progression system suffered because of it. Since you can go pretty much anywhere quickly, you can loot endgame stashes easily. As a result, the devs decided to gate power increase behind the amount of money you earn. I don't think this is a bad solution at all, but some people are going to disagree. It forces you to go on Zonewide artifact hunts at some point, which I enjoy, but not everyone does.

>>714471894 (OP)
I would agree about mutants being nothing but bullet cushions, but mutant loot alleviated that.

Bump
Good game

>>714474782
>I don't think this is a bad solution at all, but some people are going to disagree.
I actually do agree with you, I think the idea of regulating player power-level by maintenance costs is a good idea, in theory. I don't think they did the best of jobs implementing it, but I still think it shows a solid degree of awareness of what they are doing. And one thing I will give the developers: they generally went for "we'll rather make it too restrictive than to make it too permisive". Which again, feels like a fitting approach to a Stalker game.

Again, I have a lot of issues with specific implementation, but the general ideas are solid.

My main problem with the open world really is in tedium of commute and deflation of impact of reveals and discoveries.
By the mid-game, exploration stops being thrilling and starts becoming a tedious or routine process, and the most pressing concern you have to keep in head is "is this detour worth the time spend just WALKING back."
It's a pacing issue more than anything else.