Opinion: The current weapon damage stats ruin a lot of enjoyment in the game.
After seeing the post on someone data mining all the weapon stats from the files, it kind of confirms that I wasn't completely crazy.
A large part of the Stalker Series has always been the excitement of finding new weapons and gear to better help keep you alive and explore. Whether that be finding it out in the world or the awe factor of scavenging something better/rare off an enemy you just killed. It adds a sense of potential and weight to your finds, there's virtually none of that here.
After finding a bucket S-2 (not named), there's virtually no reason to pick up anything else. It's come to the point where it's not even "aw cool he dropped and AS-Val I l can't wait to try it out" , it's a "yeah I guess I'll stick it in my stash and collect it like pokemon...
Is that an M4 Sopmod? "who cares..."
Wow a VSS "whatever..."
Huh, they have a Tavor in the game "who gives a fuck..."
You can absolutely still use, but the current damage stats make it clear you're just hamstringing yourself for the sake of trying them out. New weapons should have "weight" to them matched to the potential trade off of "It hits harder, but do I have enough ammo to use this as a main, or do I bring it out when things get bad?".
Finding a AS Val was a prime example. Was a gun I was actually excited to use even before the game released, finally found one off a guy, looked at it and basically went "why would I use this thing?" and just threw it in storage because it was trash with harder to find specialized ammo...same with the 416 and the Tavor, etc..