CUSTOM OPTION ONLY - START WITH EITHER A RIFLE OR REVOLVER OR BOW IN INVENTORY

[UpUpAway95]

Pretty much what the title says... now that that rifles have been made extremely rare to find in the base game (no DLC), add an option in the custom menu so that the player can choose to start with one weapon in in their starting gear alllocaiton (regardless of baseline resources selecting).  For the selection to be made, rifles or revolvers must be enabled first (so this won't affect anyone wishing to play without that option so enabled).  It would also not affect any of the standard difficulty settings.  The weapon would spawn in empty (no ammo or arrows/arrowheads).  These would still have to be found in the world or crafted.  Gun users would, of course, still have to collect the appropriate casings before being able to craft ammo.

That this would make the game "easier" should not be an issue since it would be completely the option of the player to enable this selection in the custom menu.  Since I enjoy playing custom "one-region" runs, this would mean I could play fewer "weaponless" runs (which have become the vast majority of them since I cannot usually forge anything and increasingly over the past few years, guns have failed to spawn in my starting regions)... to the point now where, the RNG is such that after several test starts, they almost never have spawned.

Please HL consider this.

ETA:  It would also be nice for "baseline resources low" one-region ones to have an option to start with a knife or a hatchet without having to increase the BRA to medium... again, in custom only.

Edited April 8, 2023 by UpUpAway95

[Kranium]

I like it. Custom should really enable a whole world of possibilities, IMO.

 

I'd quite like it if you could do an Interloper run with your option on top of it: spawn with an empty rifle. It would be the only gun available in the entire run. BRA would still be Low; only a smattering of casings and gunpowder ingredients to be found. Maybe gun books, too.

 

Anyway, yeah, the scope of Custom should be broadened. (and include Feats, dammit!)

[UpUpAway95]

17 hours ago, Kranium said:

I like it. Custom should really enable a whole world of possibilities, IMO.

 

I'd quite like it if you could do an Interloper run with your option on top of it: spawn with an empty rifle. It would be the only gun available in the entire run. BRA would still be Low; only a smattering of casings and gunpowder ingredients to be found. Maybe gun books, too.

 

Anyway, yeah, the scope of Custom should be broadened. (and include Feats, dammit!)

My idea would have to be reframed a bit, but it's doable.  There would have to be a separate option to allow for ammo to spawn separate from allowing the random gun spawns to be active in order to ensure that the empty gun that spawns in the player's inventory would be the only gun in the game, but that the player could still find ammo and cleaning kits for it.  As I set up the suggestion originally, the "gun in inventory" selection would only be available after enabling the guns in general.

Potentially, there would also be a way to enable/disable the DLC guns separately (just in case the player wants to play with just the one regular gun and no random ones; but still be able to find the special ones related to the DLC)... but that's probably a little too many toggles related just to the guns.

However, I would also like a separate toggle to enable/disable the DLC entirely (short of having to uninstall it)... just in case someone who has bought it and installed it wants to occasionally play without it.

Edited April 9, 2023 by UpUpAway95

[Lexilogo]

Yeah sure, Custom Game could easily get a "Starting Inventory" customisation option that lets you add random loot pools or guarenteed items to your start.

I also think it might be worth considering a Feat that guarentees a starting gun/some other starting equipment, but I suppose that's a different discussion.

[UpUpAway95]

15 minutes ago, Lexilogo said:

Yeah sure, Custom Game could easily get a "Starting Inventory" customisation option that lets you add random loot pools or guarenteed items to your start.

I also think it might be worth considering a Feat that guarentees a starting gun/some other starting equipment, but I suppose that's a different discussion.

It would be a feat that standard Lopers could never use because there would be no ammo or cleaning kits spawning in their world without a means of activating the guns (which is custom option).

[xanna]

Start with it loaded? Then even on runs with no ammo loot, you get a useful boost at the beginning. Six rounds would feed you short while if you're skilled enough. Or start also with a little box of ammo. I sometimes play a custom mode with the revolver discoverable, but it's not long before I stop using it in favour of the bow anyway. It's useful early game, but not so much later.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a great Feat for Loper, but they aren't all, and Loper only has 2 Feat slots anyway, so you'd be pressed to come up with something that people would choose over Cold Fusion and Blizzard Walker/Efficient Machine.

(I'm not really advocating for adding a new Feat, I'm just spitballing.)

[UpUpAway95]

3 hours ago, xanna said:

Start with it loaded? Then even on runs with no ammo loot, you get a useful boost at the beginning. Six rounds would feed you short while if you're skilled enough. Or start also with a little box of ammo. I sometimes play a custom mode with the revolver discoverable, but it's not long before I stop using it in favour of the bow anyway. It's useful early game, but not so much later.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a great Feat for Loper, but they aren't all, and Loper only has 2 Feat slots anyway, so you'd be pressed to come up with something that people would choose over Cold Fusion and Blizzard Walker/Efficient Machine.

(I'm not really advocating for adding a new Feat, I'm just spitballing.)

I don't think a feat to start with a loaded gun and no addition ammo spawning would make much difference... As you say, it might be a starting aid, but one reason a lot of Lopers argue against taking Firemaster is because it ceases to be useful as the player eventually levels higher than it anyways.  I doubt getting six shots is a feat they would choose over one of the others.  I doubt standard stalker players would sacrifice one of their other 3 feats for it either.

I find making a custom "gunloper" run more appealing (which we've been able to do for some time).  This suggestion was more about getting around the fact that over the last several updates, riffle spawns (specifically) have been intentionally reduced by HL.  In the most recent update, I've noticed that many old rifle spawns are are spawning distress pistols (so in a way, standard Lopers have better access to a "pre-forge" weapon than they've had in the past, although now the distress pistols are not necessarily found in their old "guaranteed" locations).  Overall, even on stalker level runs (various test runs spawning in different regions with different standard and custom parameters), I've found more distress pistols in the main game than I have rifles (current count is distress pistols 5, rifles 1).

Edited April 9, 2023 by UpUpAway95

[xanna]

1 minute ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I don't think a feat to start with a loaded gun and no addition ammo spawning would make much difference... As you say, it might be a starting aid, but one reason a lot of Lopers argue against taking Firemaster is because it ceases to be useful as the player eventually levels higher than it anyways.  I doubt getting six shots is a feat they would choose over one of the others.  I doubt standard stalker players would sacrifice one of their other 3 feats for it either.

Exactly.

[UpUpAway95]

17 hours ago, xanna said:

Exactly.

In light of the discussion on the "expanded custom settings" thread, I've been thinking... There is another way around the diminishing rifle spawns that are being done by HL that was done to accommodate more frequent random spawns of the distress pistol this time round and was previously done to accommodate revolver spawns.  That would be to give custom players three sliders:

Rifle availability (none, low, high)

Revolver availability (none, low, high)

Distress Pistol availability (none, low, high)

Setting all three to high wouldn't make guns abundant or common, but would ensure that an equal amount of guns of each type would spawn.  Setting them all to low would also keep them equal, but cause a few of the sites to not spawn a gun.  Setting one to high would ensure that more of that type of gun would spawn relative to the others, so that a player with a preference for a particular type of gun could choose to forfeit spawns of the other two in order to increase their chances of finding their preferred weapons.  Ammo would also be tied to this slider, so the player would also be assured of finding ammo related directly to their preferences (e.g. a player who sets the distress pistol to "none" would not find flare shells in their game and a player who sets the rifle setting to high and the revolver and distress pistol to low would find more rifle ammo than they would find either revolver or distress pistol ammo).

[xanna]

52 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

[...] give custom players three sliders:

Rifle availability (none, low, high)

Revolver availability (none, low, high)

Distress Pistol availability (none, low, high)

Yep, I would definitely use that.