☢┃stalker-general

[plain fiber]

Oh yeah, and give us the GP-5 gas mask, SSP-99M Ecologist and Spark Exoskeleton too please GSC.

[worldly thicket]

Well I’m cooked then

[sweet root]

Its been my goto caliber in all games stalker before, but here it fell in usefulness around midpoint of the game which is kinda shameful

[tepid osprey]

They are very cool! There is a very rare friendly vagrant too. They disappear very quickly when startled, like the crystal lizards but faster

[maiden grotto]

I was hoping the Ruby Armour was kind of dark rich, vibrant red... as base colour.... but nope...

[drifting forge]

Well, the AS-VAL is still very good. Headshots take out exos very fast and it's better than the VSS because of optic variety

[sweet root]

Would be cool to have it be a Duty suit with appropriate colors

[plain fiber]

Yeah, the one I found was hostile and it almost killed me.

Lol

[upbeat cargo]

the guns are sadly balanced not by caliber and actual projectile performance but by arbitrary weapon tier

[sweet root]

Yup, pretty arcadey, they were also in earlier games but maybe not this bad? dunno been very long since i played the OGs without modding, i prefer to have 100% realistic ballistics or close you can get in a game, also game should have a mechanic for partial reloads, so having it interrupted when the mag is already in, doesnt make you start the process over

[wintry pumice]

Financial situation ofcourse

[maiden grotto]

I would like the option of if you are friendly with a faction, you can get teh tech guy to sort out the colour scheme, to make it one of theirs, to show your loyalty... then execute them all, not you have what you want mwahahahahaha!

[plain fiber]

Guns in the original trilogy were sort of balanced towards their caliber, just not to the "full-realism" degree that mods liked to do.

You could comfortably use an AK (5.45) all the way until at least the Red Forest. (5.45 becomes almost non-existent at that point outside of a couple of Monolithians with AN-94s in Pripyat.)

In CS and CoP it was even better because of the weapon upgrade system.

[sweet root]

Ooo yea this would be sweet, like a tailor NPC dude who can switch the camo on an armor and such

I wouldnt like the stats to change only the look

[plain fiber]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. transmog.

[maiden grotto]

Of course, it's looks only.

[upbeat cargo]

I hate the sprint cancels reload mechanic over everyhing...

originals had some gamey elements regarding the weapons but the damage was somewhat believeable between guns and calibers, higher tier weapons mainly handled better instead of being just outright better in everyway. take the akm-74 in stalker 2, it's objectively worse than the buket machine pistol

[sweet root]

In anomaly you most likely got a worse version in a trade for a faction theme suit
@plain fiber Transmog artifact you can find to alter appearances on items?

[wintry pumice]

Look at the armour from your inventory?

[terse ravine]

are there stalker books? (not roadside picnic)

[maiden grotto]

Balistic mods

[sweet root]

That was a reference to the system that already does this in Gamma/Anomaly, where you get a totally different suit with different stats

You can get an improvement but for me theyve mostly been a downgrade

Because i only wear the best stuff heheh

I like how i was again able to go stomping in an exo without needing a power supply and batteries

[plain fiber]

Or just do the Misery/Anomaly/GAMMA thing where there are faction-specific variants of each suit type. We kind of already have that in the game now, we're just missing corresponding rad-suits (outside of the Corundum Suit) for each exo variant.

[sweet root]

Yea but the faction variants all had differing stats so it was a bit of a gamble always

[plain fiber]

Actually, not even kinda, we do have that in-game already barring the exceptions I mentioned.

I'm going to eat dinner, see you all tomorrow most likely.

[sweet root]

Take care out there stalker and better enjoy your meal

[rocky lava]

Good night and good luck

[plain fiber]

[maiden grotto]

look forward to it.

[wintry pumice]

Why does it sound like the last message you send before something happens

[sweet root]

It has some finality to it

[tepid osprey]

Have you read the Metro books? Not exactly stalker but theyre in the same vein

[rocky lava]

Beware the slime slugs!

[ornate sable]

Yes, but not sure if they're any good.

[sweet root]

I read the first two, should read the third, amazing books but the first one was way better from the second

[sweet root]

I hear theyre mostly fanfic level of writing, its where Anomaly got Hip from

[tepid osprey]

100%, 2034 was ok but not what I was expecting. 2035 is better but not as good as the first

[sweet root]

The ||spooky pipes scenes with the guide dude in ||the beginning of the first book, holy crap

[worldly thicket]

how do I fix the colonel getting sticker after x17

[sweet root]

It was super immersive to read i could picture every scene so vividly in my mind like i was really there

[tepid osprey]

Yeah Khan. He has become the inspiration to a few of my DnD npcs lol. Dont forget Bourbon either! And what he had planned for Artyom

[maiden grotto]

Who out the venders and stuff survive Zalyssia defend mission, in my first game, the guide has died... Coz stupid defenders don't know hot to use doors

[sweet root]

Damn forgot about Bourbon, and what he was about, i had the book but i borrowed it to an ex friend who never returned it

I never borrow books anymore, i give them as gifts instead, because i buy them always i never borrow, canst stand the idea of having to rush to return it. and only little space to keep many around

[rocky lava]

Mines dead too

[maiden grotto]

Easy to get too, a pain to get away from XD

[tepid osprey]

||Bourbons death is super spooky in the book|| and damn sorry to hear about your book! I hope your friend has read it a few times at least lol

[rocky lava]

Yup pretty much a monolith surprise attack after there last assault on zalissyia

[sweet root]

Yea i bought the book on my first trip to london it has some nostalgia to it but whatever im not that sentimental heheh, ill just buy a set of hardcovers maybe

[maiden grotto]

and a hitman.

[sweet root]

Whats your favorite book out of curiosity? im a fantasy nerd and its either the First Law series in its entirety or Name of the Wind

I love Roadside Picnic to death too and soviet scifi in general, so theyre high up there too

[tepid osprey]

Hmm I dunno actually 🤔 I used to read a lot but not so much anymore. I’ve been listening to Roadside Picnic audiobook, its good!

I really like Brave New World, I’ve misplaced my copy of that somewhere

[sweet root]

Ive had series of long breaks when i havent been reading, but now i dove back into it and am in the middle of the second book of Ender´s Game series, its seriously a very, very good book series, movie does it a ton of justice but its not a children´s story at all

It goes very deep into philosophy and religion and what kind of craziness could be out there in the deep void and what mysteries

Very compelling writing and characters, i should read more ....

[tepid osprey]

Ooh nice! I haven’t heard of that before. Sounds like something I’d be interested in

[sweet root]

Its one of those that leave you thinking for hours about your existentiality

But very heavy on religions yeah, if you dont like it as a subject then it might not be your thing, but it covers a lot of religions not focusing on any single one

[ornate sable]

Let my friend borrow my Eisenhorn trilogy. Got them back, with some complimentary pizza sauce or something on some of the pages. He's still got my Gaunt's Ghosts: The Founding omnibus (hardback!) too, and apparently can't find it. Next time he asks to borrow a book, I'm just gonna give him an amazon link or something

[sweet root]

Anything from space jesuits to Taoist monks

[tepid osprey]

Me and my friend talk about the weirdness of existence and all sorts of things so we would probably be into it lol

[sweet root]

Yeah, i think it was a movie quote or something, but you should never borrow a book, only give as gifts, because this happens :D and its nice to give a gift of something youve already read and dont need for long

[tepid osprey]

I don’t get how people can do that sort of thing and just think its ok

[sweet root]

It has some weirdest concepts for alien life too, like totally out the box stuff

Imagine if an alien instead was some energy or virus making even wierder things to happen, how do you communicate with it

[velvet mulch]

has anyone here used shaun's config for stalker 2?

[warped stream]

thats actually wild, better start charging him for it

[sweet root]

I should read the Eisenhorn or even any wh40k stuff to begin with, been collecting and painting them for years

[tepid osprey]

Oooh now that’s what I’m talking about! Its a very interesting topic

[sweet root]

Also the first book, is not really relevant to the actual main story of the character, its only the backstory how he got there

[ornate sable]

Eisenhorn is a good place to start, doesn't require a vast knowledge of everything that happened in the Horus heresy or something to understand what's going on. Very accessible. (well, relative to most 40k novel series)

[sweet root]

Important context but not entirely necessary to understand the entirety of the story as it picks up stuff a lot

[sweet root]

I played Rogue Trader from Owlcat Games and it was like playing a book! loved it, has some flaws but as a game is great

Mostly the D100 system being a headache for forcing you to do multiple calculations and algebras to see what an ability does

[tepid osprey]

I’m the kind of person that has to know the full story from start to finish 😅 even if the first books/games/series aren’t good

[sweet root]

The first book is amazing, it has one of the best twists also, i wouldnt skip it

I want my mom to read it but she can read only in finnish and for some reason the first book is not translated while the rest are, and she doesnt want to skip it either..

[tepid osprey]

Wharr thats pretty crazy. Maybe a Finnish audiobook exists?

[sweet root]

She can speak it well enough and understand it but reading is hard, i had to learn reading it by having a dictionary with the book i read, most i understood from context and went from there

[sweet root]

We tried it too, theres no audio version at all in that language :(

[sweet root]

As a kid before we knew proper english i mean

[tepid osprey]

Damn, Finland missing out. She might have to learn another language just for that lol

[sweet root]

It is a niche language and many dont see the reason to do translations, i prefer original language but can only speak english and finnish, would like to know some russian to read soviet scifi in original translation

[tepid osprey]

I speak some Russian and can read it but not enough to understand whats happening lol. Its fairly difficult

[sweet root]

Feel like a lot of prose is lost in translation

[sweet root]

I can do small talk a bit, learned thru osmosis my dad had employed both russians and ukranians in his farm thru the years i grew up there and was buddies with most of them

Aint no better drinking buddies like a slav

Although little or no difference between them and finns when all things alcohol is concidered

[tepid osprey]

Thats cool 🙂 and yeah mainly small talk for me too. Oh and lyrics lol

[sweet root]

Miss those years am now an adult

[tepid osprey]

Adulting is rubbish! I want to go back

[sweet root]

I think the Stalker series and soviet scifi in general also hit me that much harder for being in clsoe proximity to their culture for long

[tepid osprey]

I don’t know what draws me to slavic culture but something is just so cool about it. It has a Je ne sais quoi

[sweet root]

I think a lot of the carefree attitude about things in general, you have to grow a big spine and insensitivity anything bad when your culture went thru the soviet bloc

So its all pretty cheerful while world is burning, cheeki breeki yo

[tepid osprey]

Only the cheekiest breekiest make it 😆

[sweet root]

I still havent heard the voiceline in S2... i dont want to watch a clip of it want to hear it in nature

Even when they took out all the russian translation from original games for S2, i like they are still mostly the same, like i think the "Idi ko mne" is slightly different in ukranian but sounds just as imposing and terrifying

[tepid osprey]

It is in there lol. I heard it in a clip. I play in English as RU dub isnt available

[sweet root]

Ofc anyone knowing more than me about Ukr and Rus differences in their language id be happy to hear

[tepid osprey]

Иди ко мне

[sweet root]

The Strider in the experiment chamber scene has to be my all time favorite cutscene in a game, it was soooo huuuge

Dont know why they would drag his ass in there on a ward playthru though thats the only plot hole i can think of, apart from Dalin just being petty to gloat to him or something? got spoiled from a video by accident

[tepid osprey]

I was sad about Strider. I was going through the game wondering when I’d see him next and how I was gonna save him

[sweet root]

He is one of my favorite characters ever now after S2, so deep and incredibly sad character, everything taken from him, then again, and nothing he did made any difference, i had to lie to him, there was 0 reasons to make him suffer an eternity with the guilt of losing his brothers but what the scene implied in its tone, i think he kinda knew you were lying.. or thats my take on it

[tepid osprey]

Yeah its like he doesn’t fully believe you but chooses to believe because thats ultimately what he wanted the most

[sweet root]

And even against all those odds and all that happening he was really the only one truly trying to just escape all the bad and have it all for his bretheren

[drifting forge]

100% literally me

[dry siren]

they should add bicycles to stalker 2

[sweet root]

yea i was thinking of modeling a bike for the game, i made some bikes for a redbull game before so it should be no sweat, someone else has to do the animations and interactions though

[dry siren]

i wanna ride a bike around and blast people with the MAC-10 like Hickok45

[drifting forge]

I just don't really give a shit about most things and I'm not good with people partly because of it lmao

[sweet root]

And by bike i mean a 90s old army style single speed with rust on top

[drifting forge]

Harley that runs on Non Stops

[sweet root]

no fancy stuff, but you should be able to pick it up and carry it htough it would add a bit of weight, just to get by nasty anomalies and such, also can be used to store some loot in

[tepid osprey]

What about anomaly powered hoverboard

Put one of those cushion anomalies on a plank of wood

[sweet root]

Arma 2 did bikes pretty well for a game that old i see no reason why it wouldnt work here with good enough animations and implementation, but yeah if anyone wants a bike for modding i can make one, hit me up

[drifting forge]

I wonder if you angle yourself right and go down carefully you could lie down on one and maybe even sleep...

Instead of on some hard floor

[tepid osprey]

That would probably be an amazing sleep!

[sweet root]

A bike already exists as normal static mesh assets but theyre pretty low quality for a first person perspective

Also, i want a food item that is a jar of pickles, makes only sense

[drifting forge]

Yes that and kvass are sadly missing

[sweet root]

But would require inventory system changes to allow partial use of items, maybe 3 uses from one but wieghs a bit and has different stat boosts from other food items

[tepid osprey]

I want балтика 9 in S2

[drifting forge]

It would definitely have a stamina boost

[sweet root]

The sausage eating animations would work already for it just need a cucumber asset to take bites out of an maybe ananimation where you also hold the jar there

Skif the type of dude to eat pickles by holding it like a p'nis

[drifting forge]

English VA Skif maybe

Honestly I can't stand the english VA of the game but damn the UA is done so well that it doesn't matter. Scar especially is Awesome

[tepid osprey]

I think they should have guides wandering around when Alife gets better. Itll just be luck if you bump into them when you need to get somewhere. The running around did get a bit boring

[sweet root]

Skif doesnt sound like Skif in english imo, he has more personality in ukranian for sure, he has this warm timber tone to his voice that is very approachable but he still takes no BS from anyone

[drifting forge]

My Ukrainian isnt that bad but isn't great by any means but holy shit some characters were done soooo well

[sweet root]

It has some of the best character writing out there for sure, writing in general

I wasnt expecting anything close to this level and i wouldve been satisfied still, kinda blew my socks off on many occasions

Ofc that raises a tall bar for future stuff

[tepid osprey]

I hope we get a different protagonist in the dlc and hopefully he is voiced by a Ukrainian

[sweet root]

The game made me even like Dalin as a character once he turned around in one of the endings

[drifting forge]

Yeah I like Dalin

[sweet root]

He was already a great character just not the type of character i usually like, but yeah he sold on me quick, after he got a reality check for his ego

[drifting forge]

He was just kinda young and dumb. Just excited to do science stuff lol

[wintry pumice]

Which one?

[sweet root]

And most likely a passion to overcome his dad´s research and only that matters

In a way hes not much different from Scar, just different motives and goals, both idealistic and utterly devoted

You can always repsect that in a character even when they dont suit you

[wintry pumice]

UA voice is voiced by UA actors right?

[sweet root]

Yea too bad the prerendered cutscenes are done in englis VOs but thats understandable as its the larger market, and they had to use prerendered ones, couldnt have more than one version of each because video files are incredibly huge even when compressed

[drifting forge]

Really, all the faction leaders are very good characters even if you don't like the faction

[tepid osprey]

Yeah but Id prefer English speaking Ukrainians to voice the characters

[sweet root]

They outsourced a studio from Prague or something for the english VAs and told them to sound mostly foreign, something i read

[wintry pumice]

I was wondering too when I started playing this game as to why skif was sounding american

[sweet root]

The english VAs are definitely where they cut some budget as its not in my opinion at the same level but its also understandable as its not cheap to do VA/VO work

[drifting forge]

Yeah ever since those trailers came out it just confirmed it to me that I'm never playing EN VA

[tepid osprey]

I’m guessing Warhorse studios as they did Kingdom Come and there are quite a few Kingdom Come VAs in the game and they are based in Czechia (most likely Prague)

[wintry pumice]

But the English version turned out fine if you ask me

[sweet root]

Could be, btw im so hyped about the sequel, its gonna be my favorite game of all time most likely if its going to just improve the first game in all aspects and new locations and story, and it seems to be the case from early reviews from people i trust, also should run smooth without many bugs because they advanced their releace date for the game, that never happens, either 100% confidence in the product or utter stupidity and possibly reputation ruining

But the way Vavra has been gloating in social media i think they have it in the bag 😄

Its my dream studio to work in someday, ill have to step up my portfolio game

[tepid osprey]

I think it’s going to be great too! I can’t wait to play it 🙂 I wonder how they will explain Henry going from a trained swordsman to a noob lol

[sweet root]

I hear he doesnt lose much of his fighting skill, just some, maybe he got drunkard or something and just went blunt? it would explain his more swollen up facial features and general redness there

But most he does lose is social station so youre gonna have to crawl thru mud again

Love it, cant wait to try a proper Burgher vagabond build with a crossbow, brigandine armor and a long mean rondel dagger, and rob everyone blind

The stealth was already fun in first game i can only wait how theyve improved on it

[tepid osprey]

Like Robin Hood right… right? 😮

[sweet root]

Right.... :)

And this time we have equipment sets too so we can have sick drip on henry on a button click, to fit a situation

[tepid osprey]

Lol. I loved the potion making and would always carry books around to read at nice locations

[sweet root]

Alchemy i hear is even better now, i loved it too, so almost needlessly convoluted but it added a lot of charm and real risk of failing there

Archery seems better too, you now hold the bow up to your cheeck properly to see where the arrow lands better

[tepid osprey]

It comes out in Feb doesn’t it? Not long now, its gone quick since the trailer released

[sweet root]

Yeah, about 3 or so weeks from now, so ill take break of gaming till then and all things stalker and drown there for a couple months

Theres apparently a proper smithing minigame now too, you can literally follow your dad´s footsteps if you want, i love watching smithing videos especially those making swords and such

If only you could also set up a shop and actually get fame as the best blacksmith around or something

[tepid osprey]

Ooh that’s cool! From stalker to KCD, we might be wandering around paranoid about anomalies, bandits and ward lol

[sweet root]

Hahhah, its going to be such a great breath of fresh air after all the spookiness and existential horrors

[tepid osprey]

Ye olde bandits

[wintry pumice]

Kill the Ward I say

[sweet root]

Yea seems like they improved the combat a ton too, now theres one less direction depending on weapon so its more easy to grasp but it gets more complex from there, stuff like Master Strokes now have to be executed by doing a counter on the opposite side of the enemy swing not just button press

[tepid osprey]

First time I played, I ragequitted because of the combat 😅 what a noob I was

[sweet root]

Yeah i loved it a lot, youre literally a peasant with a stick

[maiden grotto]

Just like the original

[sweet root]

But most im waiting for in KCD 2 are the early medieval firearms lol, they look so funny, glorfied roman candles

[wintry pumice]

I wasn't sure about playing this game at all, but decided to give it a try anyway since it was on game pass but glad I did

[sweet root]

S2? yeah im glad you did :)

Its one of the best fanbases to a game in my opinion, everyone mostly chill, stalkers around a campfire chatting

And a lot of it is sharing common traumas too

Not endlessly bickering about meta

[maiden grotto]

I wish I hadn't... The problem being the game was released to early and by the time they get everything sorted, it wont feel that everything is new experience...

That all got wasted on bugs and spawn simulator.

Not saying the game isn;t going to end up epic, just that we will never get to play the game frsh as should have been released, not what was released.

[sweet root]

I still think it might be the wrong game for you my man, if the atmosphere and narrative doesnt sell it for you, and everything else is as buggy for you as is, what is there for you?

[wintry pumice]

The many bugs to get around or waiting to be fixed was very annoying too, it certainly was released too early

[sweet root]

Youve so often said its a terrible game for the problems you listed, but youre still around

Far from perfect thats for sure but it has everything in place ready for improvements

You cant patch in a soul to a game, but you can fix any technical issue when the core systems work well, and all the systems in UE5 work and people use it for a reason, its just some are badly implemented

[wintry pumice]

Yeah they need to make Duty & freedom part of the main story and that fresh bread quest made no sense

[sweet root]

You no like fresh bread?

[tepid osprey]

You were around for the bread armour, that makes it all worthwhile lol

[wintry pumice]

You get it once, what exactly is the point of that quest anyway?

[sweet root]

The bread scene only reinforced the fact its an actual place with casual things happening that arent related to mutants or anomalies, artifacts or the monolith

Id wait in a line for fresh bread thats for sure

[maiden grotto]

It's the bugs and broken BS... Remember I have completed Soc more times than any other game.

The atmosphere, graphics, sound, even listening to the game in Ukrainian isn't the problem, it all the other stuff and for me, epic games shouldn't be buggy as feck, crashing, broken economy, etc etc etc

Oh, and Duga is great place to explore be Duga SIRCAA goes t*ts up, once you get past the silly BS.

[sweet root]

Fluff content, extra stuff to add immersion maybe, and also tell the player that htese guys are zone communists, because of breadlines being a big thing in Soviet bloc, So i think its also a reference to the famed breadlines

[rocky lava]

The path has ended human…idikamne

[sweet root]

I also love to bake bread usually once a week, once you get used to the taste of oven fresh bread theres pretty much nothing better, if you know your thing, so this breadline scene was a lovely touch for me

[rocky lava]

I gotta find it

[hazy gyro]

i hit the jackpot: i got liquid rock

[sweet root]

Its a cool looking artifact too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DyOwSCNkOY also as a bread baker this video hits me hard hahahahha

[wintry pumice]

Just get weird water

[rocky lava]

What happens when you drink it 🤔

[maiden grotto]

My parents lived in teh south of france for a while. No super market garbage, just fresh bread straight out the oven...

As they lived in the south of France, you could walk along an abandoned railway to a local bakers and get fresh cider bread.

Nothing finer.

This was in the mountains.... too, so the views.

[wintry pumice]

You can't. But it does make you drunk if you're carrying more than 50kg

[teal shadow]

Is it normal to get a gauss rifle from a monolith corpse?

[clever anchor]

Can I get more carry weight

[rocky lava]

Ya I know just making a joke just wondering

[sweet root]

Damn yeah i visited france twice now to skii in the alps with my dad, the bakeries there are amazing if you go early enough you can get such fresh bread for so cheap its crazy

[wintry pumice]

You can go up to a max of 140 kg

[maiden grotto]

Sometimes the traditional ways are best.

[sweet root]

They also used local produce a lot so all the veggies tasted way better than any imported stuff you can get in most places

[maiden grotto]

Wine as well. My brother and I went one year, we got teh red wine produced by a local vinyard... Only 100 bottles a years. Less than $2/$3 a bottle. Was the best red wine I have ever had. It was fruity and clean... Man...

No wonder the french fight like hell to keep their way of life. It's amazing

[sweet root]

Oh yeah, wine here costs like 6-10 euros for a cheap one thats not too good, but in france a 2 euro bottle was way better than most cheap ones here

[maiden grotto]

The only way to describe this day and age is the "Great Fleecing" and it is a shame.

[sweet root]

Yea french are proud of their culture for a reason

[clever anchor]

How do I accomplish that

[maiden grotto]

So should we all... We have traditions and ways of life... But it's being sold down teh river for a minority of billionaires with more money than they will ever spend...

but enough of that... Fresh bread for the win.

[sweet root]

Yeah, no paying up for the misdeeds of your ancestors or something, luckily me being a Finn we were mostly just slaves or subjucated to either the Swedes or the Rus thru all our history, nothing to be ashamed for

[drifting forge]

Armour and artefacts can boost it up

So one of the exos fully upgraded and some other artefacts

[maiden grotto]

Same as the Brits, yes we was involved in slavery... But that was only a part of it... We went to war with the rest of the world to end it though, even slapped the new nation of USA, and Brazil around until they changed their ways...

Is that not something to be proud of?

Lies, lies and damn lies is all we are ever told.

Never be ashamed of of who you are, as every nation has a complex history.

So lets all play stalker and poop our pants

[sweet root]

This is what everyone keeps forgetting that the Brits both did slavery but they also ended it almost globally, didnt they even war with american slavers too? sure there are the colony stuff too but its not black and white either, the Brits ended many atrocities in places like India where ||sacrificial widow murder was common practice|| and many others

Sure they did their own share of atrocities but this is true to almost all cultures

Also built a lot of schools and hospitals too

[maiden grotto]

used to intercept American, Spanish, Portugues ships, slapped the arab slave trade around Zanzibar, India and elsewhere... Even today, the British get seriously p*ssed if slavery is discovered and products made for British shops...

We utterly hate and slavery has been illegal in the UK since 1102, after William the B'stard put a levy on slaves being sold to overseas and the practice eventually dying out. Although it it became serfdum, which wasn;t great, it was still better than abject slavery.

And that is your history lesson for today 😄

No more on it.

[sweet root]

Its such a shame its going on still around in some places, but yeah enough politics (i love history)

[maiden grotto]

Me too.

If you are interested, look up the hirsoty of HMS Black Joke, a former Spanish slavers ship, that was repurpused for the Royal Navies anti slavery fleet.

[sweet root]

I will, naval history especially warfare and pirates, is close to heart, there really arent enough media about it, Master and Commander is in my top 5

And the first season of The Terror

[drifting forge]

slavery-general lmfao

[maiden grotto]

Good man 🙂

I just hope they never make a STALKER TV series, it will be ruined by "The Message"

[sweet root]

Dont give them ideas dear god

Im sure its coming ... Netflix is probably desperate but i dont think GSC is.. so who really knows

[drifting forge]

A Stalker series in the style of the book Ołowiany Świt by Michał Gołkowski would be peak as hell

[sweet root]

I wouldnt mind a true to book (roadside picnic) miniseries though

[drifting forge]

It's already a good layout. Nothing needs to be taken out or put in

[maiden grotto]

https://www.youtube.com/@EpichistoryTv - Watch this channel and this one - https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations , which has just done a 6 hour history of the Mongol empire...

Seriously hair tingling excellence of actual history.

[sweet root]

The games already does Stalker series enough narrative justice im not sure if a tv show would add much more value

[drifting forge]

It doesn't have to be from the games

Stalker is a sub genre really

[maiden grotto]

Well, look at the Witcher, Netflix had and open goal, but somehow ended up with 10 injuries, scored an own goal, and went bankrupt at half time. They did such a poor job.

I can't trust anyone to do a good job.

[sweet root]

Mongols, love em! I listened to the Hardcore history podcast series of them couple times now, its like 5 hours long too, amazing stuff, thanks for the recommendations will check them out.
Ill recommend you one in turn, this is such an amazing channel they do mostly Point of View style telling from old stories which are really immersive, and the art in the videos are done by the brother of the narrator

Some really sick art there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgaR9-reyHI Almost forgot the link lol

[maiden grotto]

Booked and will be watched later 🙂

[sweet root]

Stories like this really makes you appreciate modern times, but id also sell a kidney for a chance to time travel a bit

[maiden grotto]

Need a shop mod... I want to buy Herc pills, the Shop in Zyllssia has about 800 on the shelves

[drifting forge]

We need anabiotics in the Zone. Hermann literally invented them and now their gone

[sweet root]

Antibiotics or Anabiotics?

[drifting forge]

Idk it's late I don't remember things

[sweet root]

If its the drug in anomaly that makes you pass out and survive an emission? antibiotics makes little sense theyre to fight bacteria

[drifting forge]

Yeah. Hey at least I'm not as brainrotted as when I was like 41°c lmao

[sweet root]

Oof, i had a 41 fever in the military service once, a week of bedrest from an adenovirus

[drifting forge]

Yeah I'd say at night I was probably a little past 41. 42 is chance of death. 43 brain damage or death. 44 100% chance of death

[sweet root]

42 something is the coagulation point of proteins so yeah, deadly

[worldly thicket]

Guys how do I fix the follow the col at malachite he sits in a corner and says what’s new in the zone blah blah the same

[maiden grotto]

I like it when developers make proper use of assets, like making Doc's more useful, so injuries need a Doc and you struggle back... Sell more items... When is the point in the Doc selling stuff in you are walking around with a 100 medkits in ya backpack

[maiden grotto]

Injuries in swamp area's can become infected, and slows you down a lil bit.

Or something like that

[inland sage]

Clear out the mutants in the area it says. But...I can't seem to find them.

[maiden grotto]

underground perhaps?

[sweet root]

Zone born illnesses as a concept i like a lot, that sounds fun, like plague from rats or maybe something more anomlaous

[inland sage]

I am underground...I've gone through this place twice. Everything I saw the first time round I killed. But past a certain point it felt like rooms were supposed to have enemies but didn't.

Like a room with a bunch of scattered guns but no burers. I guess I'll just check topside again after this emission ends.

[sweet root]

If thats Orbita station i had a bug where the poltergeist above on the first floor is clipped thru in the floor or ceiling but somewhere i cant kill it or even find it regardless how many times searching the place thru, this might be the case for you too, i fixed it by reloading a save before i entered the area and got doctor´s message

[inland sage]

I love when I can see the lock on the other side of a door to shoot it, then when I go through I forget to check for strings running at ankle height along the floor and get grenaded.

[inland sage]

I definitely killed a poltergeist up there, though.

[sweet root]

Hmm, can you hear any stomping or burer sounds coming off from anywhere down there?

[inland sage]

At a certain point near the exit I get the red tinged compass

[sweet root]

Could be still just a missing spawn and reloading a save before the place could fix it its best ive got

I made it a habit to hard save before i enter any story location because had issues in the sawmill but was luckily able to fix it with console commands

[inland sage]

OR IT COULD BE THIS ROOM I HAVEN'T CHECKED YET

[sweet root]

Yea i recall the last one took a bit of finding

[inland sage]

Oh there's just an operator exoskeleton inside

[sweet root]

Booo

[inland sage]

Maybe they're topside

[sweet root]

All the burers should be in the lab side of things

[inland sage]

How many should there be?

[sweet root]

Hmmm, i want to say 4 but i cant be sure if it was only 3

[inland sage]

Back through the labs I go

found the last one

[maiden grotto]

6 fecking blood sucker in 100 metter in the lesser zone... This is exactly what ruins this game.... You get immersed into it, and all it does spawn blood sucker after blod sucker...

[inland sage]

I fed him some eggs and he took a nap.

[dense bloom]

No technicians, sellers, guide to Duga is totally STUPID.. STUPID.

[inland sage]

SURELY NOTHING BAD CAN COME OF THIS

[sweet root]

There is little reason for anyone to make base there once the radar is destroyed, entirely pointless territorry, so far from center of the zone, and you can scour the whole place in like 1-2 trips anyways

[inland sage]

If something bad happens from this it's just the will of the zone

[sweet root]

Id recommend the Shay´s A-life mod that fixes a lot of the spawns until the devs fix it

[maiden grotto]

another Blood sucker spawned after a squad of soldiers HAHAHAHAHA!!

[fluid mortar]

@oak junco basically when you go to duty base which is route to CNPP you can meet some duty guys who need help clearing warehouse that bandits have taken over

After you kill said bandits duty guys remain there and are persistent so in a way there is faction wars in game

[inland sage]

OF COURSE THE MISSION CALLED ||SUBTLE MATTER|| TRIES TO PRETEND I'M CAPABLE OF SNEAKING AROUND

[maiden grotto]

Don't like it, that spawns stuff on you to screw you over when you log in...

[sweet root]

Thats not what Subtle Matter means :D

[inland sage]

I know but it's telling me to be subtle when I have a rocket launcher

[sweet root]

Some would say a rocket up the butt is subtle

Compared to artillery

[fluid mortar]

Bro be talking here about silver bullet are you by chance a navy corpsman?

[oak junco]

i hope this gets expanded on in the future

[fluid mortar]

I mean there's also a side quest where sultansk gets back to being skadovsk and Beard returns to it

If you don't kill Beard and Sultan you also get one of best dmr rifles called clusterfuck lol

You get it regardless if you kill or don't kill tho

[inland sage]

Okay I did the parkour game over the thin brick walls past the wind anomalies. What's my prize?

A loaded bucket, a bottle of vodka, and a stash. One bread, one water, 2 vodka, 4 bandages, 2 medkits, and 4 rounds of 9x18mm PST

[neon folio]

What can I do if I'm just stuck in an emission?

[inland sage]

Uhhhh, sprint for the cover objective and spam medkits is my only guess

[maiden grotto]

Spawn yet another blood sucker... 😦

So calling it a night. that is 8 blood suckers off the trot, maybe the director needs a p45 of some sleep 😄

[maiden grotto]

Run for cover :D.

If not, burn through a hundren health kits

[neon folio]

No medkits 🙃

[maiden grotto]

your PDA will highlight the nearest cover and run like feck... get your shotty out and be prepared

[maiden grotto]

And expanding new ideas 😄

[sweet root]

Naw regular infantry rifleman, 3rd jaeger company of finnish defence forces

[neon folio]

Ah, cheers. Barely made it 😂

[maiden grotto]

We are all stalkers and here to help... Or stab you in the back and steal all your goodies... Well some of us anyway...

[shrewd needle]

I thought the RPK would be using 7.62 * 54 like earlier games...kind of weird to see a 200-round AK-47 from 1947...

[shrewd needle]

We call them 'Bandits'.

[hazy gyro]

i need to ask, but has any had problems getting an artifact in the pol station in the lesser zone.

[serene barn]

you mean the RPM-74 or the PKP as i thinkkkk it is irl?

[ebon blade]

Wait for it.

[sweet root]

PKM

[serene barn]

i feel like i remember seeing something about how it's not but eh. i do feel like they did the gun dirty by making it have the stats it does while firing a round that for no reason kicks like a sniper round, weighs as much as a sniper round and does damage like 556.-.

the 7.62x39 is rare, not sold by any trader, only gotten late game from enemies that makes no sense to have it on them or found in stashes that will literally switch what is in them if you load a save lol.

it was supposed to be for the RPD machine Gun but they seem to not have been able to make it usable in time so they nerfed the RPM-74 to take it instead, nerfing it's damage but not lowering the recoil to match the much weaker round.

[shrewd needle]

It was the RPK-74 in the older games, I think? IDK about the current one, might be the PKP? Or maybe I got it reverse...let me check IMFDB.

[sweet root]

Is this confirmed by them, i thought i was because of the PKM being an iconic stalker series gun_

[serene barn]

pretty sure an RPK is an AK but with longer barrel and Bipod no?

[sweet root]

Yea its your middle point between an assault rifle and LMG

[shrewd needle]

https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Call_of_Pripyat#PK

This says it's a PK, so PK in CS and CoP.

https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R._2:_Heart_of_Chornobyl#PKM

This says PKM with the RPK-74's name.

Always thought that the name meant RPK, but I guess I kind of mixed them up.

[serene barn]

i don't think it's confirmed but like, it's obvious this is what happened because they damn well know what the gun shoots, they modelled the gun to fire 7.62x54 ammo because you can see they're big and rimmed rounds and the RPD machine gun is found in the game as props in places like the Sultansk and the RPD was chambered in 7.62x39 and is found in the game files as well.

[inland sage]

lol this dude is literally called The End?

[shrewd needle]

Rather bizarrely, despite the extreme commonality of 7.62x39mm weapons like the AKM in the former Soviet Union, the PKM is the only firearm in the game chambered for 7.62x39mm by default (a cartridge the real weapon cannot even use).

Game/movie developers always mix-matching the wrong shit. Why can't they just be accurate with guns for once? 😔

[serene barn]

it really bothers me because it just feels like a bad way to shoehorn in an ammo type that otherwise is only used in the Conversion mod for the Dnipro.

[sweet root]

The way they designed the guns clearly states they wanted a more arcade approach for it, maybe for balance, if the PKM would fire the same ammo as the SVD and SVU it would be way too strong, but the RPD wouldve made a whole lot more sense yeah

[serene barn]

i would have loved to have an RPD in there

[sweet root]

Yah it was my go to in MW1

[shrewd needle]

Not even a genuine AKM available, TBH...that's the worst part.

[serene barn]

i feel like when the gun is as heavy as it is without upgrades and with how heavy the x54 ammo is to carry in large numbers it balances it out since the game is a looter shooter.

[sweet root]

To be fair there havent been a 7.62 AK in a Stalker game before right? Theyve always been the 5.45 modern ones

[shrewd needle]

It's an LMG...it's supposed to be strong, else the entire point is lost. And this is a game where guns are supposed to be accurate.

[shrewd needle]

I mean considering the ammunition they coded into the game...it'd only make sense to have a few vintage AKMs in the Zone...rare, powerful and most likely found heavily degraded from 70 years of use.

Also, the slow-mode can die.

[inland sage]

Whenever I see a sign that probably reads something like 'DANGER' or 'DEATH NEARBY' I just think, that won't stop me I can't read

[serene barn]

there is an in game model of an AKM found in at least Rostok, ragman the trader who buys red condition guns, has one standing up against the wall on a table.

[sweet root]

Balancing these out isnt as simple for gameplay mechanics purpose as "just do it yo", there are multitude of things to take account in all things combat mechanics, they test these things from top to bottom over and over once they feel like the balance has been reached, i dont think they have, because its been clearly rushed some

If the guns would be more accurate to real life then they would have to revamp the player health system and relevant items too, then they would have to change other aspects of the gameplay to suit that as well

[serene barn]

i feel like in the trilogy more of the guns was viable but now it's literally just tiers of each type of gun.

[sweet root]

Then its suddenly another game entirely

[shrewd needle]

Right, but my point is STALKER is about being realistic, even at the expense of gameplay...remember the Cordon MG? Granted, people used to nerf it using modifications (because it was TOO OP), but the effects in vanilla were exactly what would happen in reality.

And even with other guns, you could be one-shot without a problem and you could do the same to others without a problem either. Maybe the ballistics were bad, but otherwise, discounting the fantastical elements of the Zone, the 'survival/life' part was pretty much highly realistic instead of Half-Life-like arcade gaming.

[sweet root]

Not true though, the OG games were anything but realistic, theyre most likely as far you can take a survival game while still keeping it grounded, but still

[shrewd needle]

I mean, I did say 'realistic' and not a 'simulator', but you get my point.

[serene barn]

and it's not like they don't think to do a thing to a gun to make it stronger while making it unable to do something else like look at the HK416, it's hella weak but the Clusterfuck unique does so much more damage and has much more penetration to the point it's literally if not better than a VSS all while still using 556.

[sweet root]

Clusterfuck though balances out how fast it degrades so its not really viable for any long form mission

[shrewd needle]

In the LMG's case, though...my main problem is the wrong model/ammunition used for the wrong gun. If you're going to use 7.62 * 39, model the right gun for it. And if you're going to model an LMG made for 7.62 * 54, then make it use that.

That's my major problem...it's not even gameplay, but the choices made that seem non-functional or bizarre...

[serene barn]

you say that but when you can like 1 shot basically any human with it iirc, it doesn't matter how fast it degrades if all you need is 1 round per kill

[sweet root]

Oh yeah im not excusing the wrong caliber decision at all, they should be correct and they shouldve ditched the PKM for RPD

[shrewd needle]

Imagine using an MG as a sniper... 😏

[sweet root]

Or have both but PKM being a more end game thing with enough weight and kick to it to balance it, or maybe ever requiring exo servos to reliably aim with since you have to be a beefcake of a human to do it without any assistance

[inland sage]

I hope there's at least decent loot at the end of this funny jumping game

[serene barn]

the RPM-74 should just have been taking the x54 ammo, the ammo is heavy and rare so there is really no need to not having it use the proper ammo type like the ammo already has it's downsides lol. they would just need to lower the damage to where the round is stronger when used in rifles but the round is still beefy in the machine gun.

[shrewd needle]

Also, about this...balance is automatically attained even if both weapons do the same damage.

SVD/SVU are sniper rifles, so they offer accuracy. The LMG offers suppression. Different purposes, so damage would be an irrelevant statistic to balance.

OTOH, considering Skif's Makarov does more damage than the USP .45, I guess there's bigger problems than wrong ammunition/gun.

[serene barn]

like they already made the round notably weaker when used in the SVD compared to the SVU even though the SVD should be stronger as it has a longer barrel iirc

[shrewd needle]

Again, damage would be relatively the same, whether SVU or the PKM, but the SVU would offer the accuracy needed to actually hit the target, while the PKM would be like: If I hit, good. If I don't, the enemy stays in cover.

But...that'd probably require a proper war zone in the game, since you barely face more than 3 opponents at once. Can suppress them with a knife, of all things. 😔

[inland sage]

Oh. It's the Falcon suit people keep talking about, lol.

[serene barn]

suit gud

[velvet mulch]

How do I uninstall config mods for stalker 2?

[lament needle]

hey guys, anyone has a fix for the inventory crash fix? It's a recent bug, never happened before. Whenever I open the inventory the game crashes to desktop 80% of the time. Not sure what causes it. Does anyone have a fix? Thank you!

I am going to try verifying the integrity of game files, maybe something god messed up there.

[serene barn]

it just makes no sense to me to nerf a gun really hard in usability like they did with the RPM-74. they could have made it be really good as it should have been, due to the downsides of having a high recoil and using rare and very heavy ammo.

[lament needle]

the Glutton is still my favorite gun tho, but yeah there are objectively better ones out there and the balance doesnt make sense given how powerful that weapon should be

[shrewd needle]

I was wondering; does the LMG have a suppressor?

[serene barn]

ah man don't remind me about the Glutton. unique gun that really isn't even unique

[lament needle]

no, just a Muzzle Flash upgrade

[shrewd needle]

That sucks...I love the VSS Vintorez and was hoping to use the Glutton, but man...no suppressor = no good. 😔

Of course, the AS Val is just crap this time, thanks to bad programming. 😡

[inland sage]

Let's see how much weight I can drop by storing things in my stash. Starting at 109.2.

[lament needle]

it's unique in a sense that you can only get 250 ammo/magazine with extended mag for the regular PKM no?

[serene barn]

talks about having more range and stuff and then all it does is unreasonable amount of ammo cap and nothing else besides maaaybe weighting 0,2kg less or something

[shrewd needle]

I mean...250 extra rounds can be the difference between hiding in a bush to reload or end those final 34 enemies. 😏

[inland sage]

Down to 85.6 just dumping extraneous ammo lol

[serene barn]

the whole idea about it holding 500 rounds of "54" is just stupid too like you would literally need an exo lift it like the gun becomes like literally 23kgs when loaded it just doesn't make any sense.

[shrewd needle]

I mean...regular soldiers lift 20+ KGs in reality without an exo-skeleton...an exo-skeleton-equipped person could easily lift 200 KGs.

[serene barn]

you just would not be holding the gun so casually

[serene barn]

ain't no damn guns irl that weighs 20kg that you gotta hold out in front of you

[lament needle]

I only just made it to Rostok by the main quest, I am just running around with pay2win SIRCAA deluxe edition armor & the Glutton. Got around 4000 rounds of ammo saved up for it, but it's chewing through my stock quickly

[shrewd needle]

I meant 20 KGs of total weight, not a 20 KG gun...that's just ridiculous.

And that an exo-skeleton user would be able to carry around 200 KGs of weight, including a 20 KG gun, due to the machinery.

[velvet mulch]

Can somebody help? I tried deleting the config file but it did nothing

[shrewd needle]

No head-shots?

[serene barn]

the Glutton RPM-74 when fully loaded, with ALL the weight reductions, are 23kg or so. it would be more without them.

[inland sage]

20.7 Kilograms on my glutton with no modifications

[shrewd needle]

OK, that makes sense only for an exo-skeleton user, not for a regular one.

[serene barn]

it's funny that they made the RPM-74 weigh 7,5kg unloaded because that seems to be what it does irl

[shrewd needle]

It is. It's the 500-round belt-box...

Am I missing something, or is there no place to rest/stash in Chemical Plant?

[serene barn]

idk how because mine was more.

[serene barn]

there isn't if you're not with the Ward.

[lament needle]

i was just running around killing mutants, just got it recently. I am struggling with an inventory crash bug. I think I might have had too many items in my Stash at one point and now the grame crashes 80% of the time I look at my Stash

[serene barn]

you can't even get to the trader in Chemical Plant because they decided he should be so close to the Ward Base that you instantly get detected without them even seeing you.

[shrewd needle]

I mean about the 'running out of ammunition'...you don't do head-shots to save?

[shrewd needle]

Actually, I can. I even roamed the Ward Base as long as I didn't get near the main building. No hostility.

Also, didn't know about the Ward-locked access to the main part of the base...

[serene barn]

I didn’t even enter Chemical until pretty late in my run and anytime I got close they would aggro on me instantly and the trader would have his door locked.

I could only get even near and inside the walls of the base after a point in the story where I joined Ward again after having been enemies with them.

[shrewd needle]

Well, probably later in the story, after the Ward might be completely enemy due to killing so many of them?

[shrewd needle]

Yea, that story mission would've changed it.

Also, I hate Bandits so much...not because they're enemies, but they show up ANY and EVERYwhere...like...how many of them ARE there?

[dusk grove]

I can lift 23kgs lol and run around with it

[serene barn]

probably not as efficiently as Skif does

i don't even think any of the NPCs in the game look like they're built

23kg in a gun that you hold out in front of you just seems excessive and impractical

[waxen prism]

howdy, new member here. just wanted to ask if I should kill mongoose or let him live?

[wintry pumice]

Weird water + diamond exoskeleton with all the carry weight capacity increase upgrades

[wintry pumice]

Who's that?

[waxen prism]

My game glitched at the sawmill on two different playthroughs so im just doing side gigs till a patch, and he seems like a character that is involved with the main quest later on

[waxen prism]

npc at the central elevator in chemical plant

[wintry pumice]

Shouldn't matter too much. You can probably let him live

[shrewd needle]

Imagine needing to be built. Just use a Thunderberry + Night Star!

[maiden grotto]

And then dies of radiation sickness, coz you for got use a rad artifiact 😄

[shrewd needle]

1 Liquid Rock, 1 Thunderberry and 1 Night Star. Problem solved.

[serene barn]

i think the strongest weight artifact i found was Torch, a strong one with thermal too

[shrewd needle]

I haven't found that yet...most of my artifacts have been Weak/Medium. Only found Thunderberry, Hypercube and Liquid Rock as maximum.

[pallid thorn]

ngl in the other main game i play, insurgency sandstorm, the as-val is also ass due to low damage and it being a 2-4 tap in the chest depending on armor. which makes sense because it is chambered in 9x39 which is sub sonic, doesnt have alot of velocity, and not alot of penetrating power.

[pallid thorn]

those are really good to run together, just need a protection artifact with a weight and your golden lol

[shrewd needle]

Bandits be like:

• Sees a heavily-armed, exo-skeleton-clad stalker.
• Decides to go to war while having low-condition weaponry and no armour.
• Loses terribly.
• New ones come in to take their place.
• Stalker makes a fortune off their corpses.
• Rinse and repeat.

[shrewd needle]

That's the thing...Val is just a Vintorez with a larger magazine. The fact that it's programmed to be so different (and ineffective) is just ridiculous. Like...what even?

[shrewd needle]

I know...fortunately found the Liquid Rock and it can sustain 3 Medium radiation artifacts. Can't get better than that...and it has Chemical protection too.

Now carry around 2 PKPs, one in each hand. Akimbo MGs. Or attach 2 to the exo-skeleton as well, for a quad-MG setup. 😏

[maiden grotto]

The AI is more like ZI, it's that bad.

[shrewd needle]

ZI?

[sweet root]

Zone intelligence

[shrewd needle]

Heh, true dat. Even in older games...guess they just lose it once they're in. OTOH, so have Freedom and Duty, so not surprised.

[ornate sable]

Now if it was chambered in the amazingly powerful 9x18 SP (Skif's Pistol), it would be something else.

[sweet root]

This is not entirely accurate, the 9x39 is a much heavier round so it packs a ton more kinetic energy than a 5.45 for example, even if it is a slower moving round

Think of a car, its not as fast as a bullet, but if it hits you at full force youre mince meat

[wintry pumice]

why not just get weird water?

[shrewd needle]

Don't want 'shaky legs', as it says in the description. Imagine aiming at a target and your legs shake...the other guy puts a bullet between your eyes.

[shrewd needle]

Yea, till you put that same round in the AS Val and it suddenly does a fraction of the damage. It's like a car, but going at 5 MPH with pedestrian bumpers. 😏

[sweet root]

Yeah hard to say which has more penetration really, mass or speed, isnt a 5.7 basically a turbo charged .22? and that has some penetration power

Even when the bullet is tiny

[shrewd needle]

It's all about velocity...the right velocity can turn an entire galaxy into an armor-piercing bullet.

I'm just salty about the Val doing less damage than the Vintorez. 😔

[sweet root]

Yah you correct there

[shrewd needle]

Also, I'd rather multi-purpose rounds due to this. AP penetrator followed by fragmenting rear. Make a hole, the front passes through, but the rear breaks up like a sabot, except high-speed metal fragments.

[sweet root]

Agree the Val is in my top3 of stalker guns

[shrewd needle]

Just a Vintorez with larger magazine, after all...unbeatable. But S2... 😡

[sweet root]

sweeped thru brain scorcher with it many times

Yea the Val mostly tickles exos, you have to magdump them unless getting reliable headshots

[wintry pumice]

you will barely notice it and its only if your carry weight crosses 50 kg

[sweet root]

I like using Weird Water for the fact it forces me to be more picky about loot

[shrewd needle]

But me a hoarder...so...I like hauling around 2000 KGs of stuff.

[wintry pumice]

again you won't notice the wobbling much its more of a very gentle sway

[shrewd needle]

TBH, with just 3 enemies in this game at a time...head-shots are easy to make. Or maybe I'm just fortunate, but...that's one good thing about the game.

[sweet root]

The wobble doesnt affect aim much either you just gotta learn to time the shots a little

[shrewd needle]

That's gameplay...from lore perspective, you want no 'sway' when you've got a 23 KG LMG that you aiming at a Bandit's head. 'Cause your own is on the line.

[wintry pumice]

It can be fun too to aim while being drunk

[shrewd needle]

Sidorovich: Someone call the Zone Anonymous on this guy, he just threw up in my bunker!

[nocturne hatch]

where is the patch

[wintry pumice]

I never throw up when drunk

[shrewd needle]

That might be a skill issue. 😏

Sidorovich: Call Duty, some guy just drank a whole bottle after drinking a 100 previously and DIDN'T throw up, he's turning into a zombie!

[iron belfry]

yeah but you're corpse can carry like 40kg more than before

[shrewd needle]

But if you're a corpse, what's the point? Some stalker/Bandit will just come along and loot you.

[iron belfry]

not if they don't have weird water

[shrewd needle]

Man, it's so funny...turning on God Mode for a bit and letting loose the Controller on a few Bandits...they don't know who to shoot at.

[shrewd needle]

They can just loot the Water. 😏

[iron belfry]

you got me there

well I would booby trap it

[mossy helm]

he can drink the water just before dying and poof no water anymore. could spill it too but no fun in that tho

[shrewd needle]

You can't booby trap yourself once you're a corpse.

[iron belfry]

yes. it's on a Deadman switch through a feeding tube that once it finishes pumping it disconnects

[shrewd needle]

It can't be drunk, says in the description and maybe unspillable too, but either ways...you'd be a corpse, so doing anything would be impossible.

[iron belfry]

yeah you can't drink it, you have to pump it in your stomach

[iron belfry]

I would obviously booby trap the weird water while I'm still alive, like the second I get it

or I could hide it inside myself with a minor surgical procedure

[wide plank]

@young magnet when there will be any news/announcements regarding the upcoming patch? I know, that mentioning you can be per rules only in non-typical cases, but its been 23 days since last patch and no any single note/roadmap, etc about when its about to come so its pretty non-typical situation. While the game still requires patching - making 23 days without any announcement when to wait for the next patch is a "bit" (very "a bit") unfair 😦

[shrewd needle]

Yea, meanwhile someone waits for you right outside those weird lights while you run around finding the Weird Water...so they can see but you can not. Then they snipe you the moment you get the Water and loot it from you, 'cause they know exactly where to look for you.

[iron belfry]

such is life in the zone

[shrewd needle]

It's just been 23 days...like, I'd probably wait a year.

[shrewd needle]

Exactly...there's no escape. Either from the Zone...or the inevitable death while inside it. 😏

[iron belfry]

an update will come out. just be patient. I'm sure they are working very diligently. what's the big deal?

[shrewd needle]

Modern crowd too busy with skibidi toilet for any patience.

[iron belfry]

exactly. I knew we would come to an agreement

[shrewd needle]

TBH, you're 'over 9000'...so a disagreement would be...hazardous for the health.

[iron belfry]

what's your solution Saleem? I see you typing

[mossy helm]

the longer they take the better in this case - will fix more issues more properly, and not fk up even more or fail to fix the old ones

[mossy helm]

just throw away as far as possible lol dont have more options than that at this point. and the more nasty (anomalous and radioactive place it will land at the better)

[iron belfry]

yeah fr. the fact they took a long time and patched over 1800 things is insane. I don't even want to answer 100 questions let alone fix 100 problems

[sweet root]

This, all the problems are allready wide knowledge so theres nothing we can do but wait in patience while they fix it

[iron belfry]

that would make too much noise and draw the attention of bloodsuckers, which kill you

[cobalt fiber]

You're acting like it's abnormal to wait a month or multiple months for patches and fixes. There were major patches immediately after release. This is not not of the norm. We're on week 2 of January following the holiday period. Chill

[shrewd needle]

Like I said...too much skibidi toilet to have patience. GMod ruined so much... 😔

[mossy helm]

but im already dying at that point anyways? 😄

[iron belfry]

yep. game over

I need to go back to the swamp area for a journalist stash but I hated the swamp

the swamp had it out for me

[shrewd needle]

Here's a thing...as you're dying, you pull an F-1 out. As the BS reaches you, pull the pin. By the time the tentacles latch...you, the BS and the Weird Water are all mush.

[shrewd needle]

You just weren't cut out for the Swamp Superiority, more like. 😏

(I went there in free-roam and did hate it, mostly due to story locks and general navigational disasters)

[mossy helm]

i would just throw it into an gravitational anomaly or some anomaly closest to me, and in the zone there are always anomalies close by. always.

[iron belfry]

I know. I actually had to retreat and rethink my gear and weapons before I finished the main quest down there. which I did successfully. but I think there is some evil down there or something

[shrewd needle]

Problem is...not the ones you might want. So...you might just be stuck with a Lift anomaly and suffer the indignity of bouncing around, in life and in death.

[shrewd needle]

Yea, that's kind of the implication, especially with ||Lebedev|| putting up those beacons...think they ruined the place more than Yantar was ruined by X-16...and that's saying something.

[mossy helm]

but the thing is that there are million times more deadly anomalies than the safe ones like lift. gravitational ones are the most popular so the chance for that one to be closeby is a pretty high one i would say

[iron belfry]

have you guys seen the stalker movie? based on that roadside picnic book

[slender swan]

Do the soldiers in the Sphere spawn infinitely?

[silk vapor]

I somehow disliked navigating the Swamps less than I did southern zaton. At least in the swamps I know every body of water wants me dead, meanwhile in zaton you never know 😭 I did come back from the swamps out of ammo and over encumbered as we all do though lol

[iron belfry]

apparently the anomalies are moving all the time in the zone according to it. it came out in 1979
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/?ref_=ext_shr

[hoary crest]

Only once though. Swamps is the real wake up call where the game tells you "yo, you need to travel lighter"

[shrewd needle]

But in a life-or-death, even more so for a life-and-death situation, you can't leave anything to chance...an anomaly is 50-50, an F-1 grenade is 500%!

[iron belfry]

right. love how the game teaches you lessons the hard way

[hoary crest]

Yep, actually good game design

[silk vapor]

Such a classic. I recommend it along with all Tarkovsky movies honestly

[shrewd needle]

Swamps are like...'Welcome to Hell, stalker. This is where even Doom becomes a children's playground.'

I went there in free-roam and man, that atmosphere is something else. Also, parts of Zaton...the south-south-east.

[iron belfry]

I haven't seen any other movies but I'll have to check them out

[hoary crest]

Best thing about the Swamps though is that its a basically free artifact farm. One loop can net you like 7/8 artifacts

[shrewd needle]

You think it's good till your standing completely alone, with nothing around you...and then 2 Bloodsuckers RANDOMLY SPAWN (not even organically created and arrived there by travelling but spawned) who then proceed to hack you to death.

[silk vapor]

Tarkovsky's films were revolutionary at the time also for the soviet union – went against the usual custom of montage where scenes were transitioning very quickly from one to another. His films are heavy w symbolism and slow paced and honestly the cinematography is just gorgeous. I rlly recommend everything

[mossy helm]

spawning of mutants and npc enemies should be fixed and both zaton and swamps will be nice

[hoary crest]

Ngl, usually I just end up with either Fleshes or Doggos, and they usually die to anomalies 😄

[mossy helm]

oh that will be painful for me in swamps then thats for sure. im always overburdened with stuff

[iron belfry]

yeah I'll see if I can't look up his other films. I really enjoyed the stalker film

[silk vapor]

Most are available to watch for free on YouTube (like, officially!)

[shrewd needle]

Well...for me, no matter where I am in the game...the moment I stop to look at the map or something, it's like a timer counts down and within 2-5 minutes, 2 BS WILL spawn out of nowhere. It's so predictable that I just put my Vintorez out for them loaded with hollow-points.

[proud shadow]

TIL that bloodsuckers can open doors, hoo boy I thought I was smart in hiding in a shack and letting the other npcs handle it

[hoary crest]

Just go in with the absolute bare minimum. Few meds, a single primary and Skif's pistol as secondary. You'll leave with so much loot that going in with anything else means you'll be walking back at a snails pace

[iron belfry]

nice. there are so many

[shrewd needle]

Store things in personal stash, only take essentials.

[shrewd needle]

Imagine talking about a primary weapon in the same sentence as Skif's Pistol...

[sweet root]

He most likely died due to the illnesses he and many other crew and cast members got from filming in literal bio and chemical hazard areas

[mossy helm]

well the thing is that we are not sure if grenades would destroy it, and one wouldnt want to test it because could lose it permanently if succesfully destroyed lol. so thats a chance if it would work or not, you dont 500 perc know if it would work. now dropping it into an anomaly if it wouldnt destroy it at least it wouldnt allow for others to approach and take it

[shrewd needle]

F-1 is an offensive grenade with a 10-metre lethality radius. A BS latched to you IS dying, along with everything and everyone in that radius.

[silk vapor]

I remember that meme going "andrei NOOOOO dont film there NOOOO he can't hear us"
Literally though :( but I'm glad he left so many good movies.

[iron belfry]

what I ended up doing with weird water is carrying it in my inventory for emergencies, otherwise I don't use it. travel lighter. you don't need all that crap

[hoary crest]

I mean.. It's good in vanilla, but equally, it also has no f*ckin range in vanilla. Boy I love 15m bullet drop/s

[mossy helm]

spawning system is fkd there tho. at least in south south east part of zaton

[sweet root]

Btw whats with people claiming that grenades are far too weak and little of an explosion in this? theyre really not that big of an explosive, its enough to more than wound the enemy which is more often better resource drain on the enemy anyways to leave wounded to take care of than just blow them to bits, real life aint a movie where the guys go flying from a big gas explosion

[iron belfry]

irl are you going to bring 20 sausages and 20 rolls of bread. probably not

[shrewd needle]

Are you shooting at people from 2 miles away? 'Cause apart from the sight picture (thanks, GSC), I've handled enemies in normal combat ranges with the pistol pretty fine...

[iron belfry]

talk about commitment

[hoary crest]

They are too weak lol. IRL grenades can shear off limbs with the shrapnel and thats not even factoring in the pressure wave being able to do a number on a person aswell. "Better Explosives" is a great mod. Can actually clear rooms by chucking one in there

[shrewd needle]

Right, but I'm talking the atmosphere...everything in south/south-east Zaton and the Swamps just REEKS of 'something's terribly wrong with this place, even by Zone standards, we shouldn't be here.'...

[sweet root]

Sure they pack a punch but there isnt any dismemberment mechanic in the game, and they still kill the enemy in most cases with just one grenade so i dont understand

[hoary crest]

Often, yes lol, because optimal

[shrewd needle]

Well...my combat almost always happens within 50 metres (which is a lot, considering the spawn distance is 100 metres flat)...so I haven't had an issue so far.

[sweet root]

I was so anxious in the swamps omg

[hoary crest]

No, that there is not, but under vanilla balancing on Veteran enemies are spongy as f*ck man

[mossy helm]

im playing like that in all areas. walked 1km+ distances on slow pace mode for like 10 times at this point if not more. so i guess swamps gonna be even worse lol

[sweet root]

Yea i play on stalker i cant stand sponges in any form, unless theyre to clean a kitchen counter

[shrewd needle]

Same...I mean, I was more 'I need to get to X/Y/Z to pick up this shit that MapGenie shows'...but staying in the Swamps was a nightmare.

[hoary crest]

"Better Ballistics" mate, Nexus. Makes firearms feel like firearms for both parties. You get shot? You f*ckin know about it 😂

[silk vapor]

I felt so uneasy in the story mission there with the amount of zombies. I love how much I hated being there genuinely, it's good atmosphere

[mossy helm]

i do that, but because im a hoarder i loot everything and im full pretty fast. especially when enemy squads respawn every 5-15min (well at least in zaton that is) i loot their dead bodies so i really become fat pretty soon. they really need to fix npc spawn system

[sweet root]

Thats the one i use yea, it makes me melt so quick from enemy fire even on stalker difficulty its unreal, but i melt them too

[shrewd needle]

Bandits shooting with 100% accuracy through foliage in vanilla.

You bet your anti-radiation drugs I know about it!

[shrewd needle]

This is why, for inventory purposes, I just use a trainer. Hoard infinitely, play game normally otherwise. No need to play by the rules there.

Limited inventories are just a bane for OCD, so I'd rather have a sane mind than 'git gud'.

[mossy helm]

source?

[hoary crest]

Nah, there are also mods that tone down the aimbot a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. Ofc in many cases you're still fighting experienced gunmen, so it does make sense that they can shoot as well as you. The mod just gives you a little bit of courtesy instead of them instantly painting the wall with your brains

[mossy helm]

but weird water is a special artifact, im talking not about BS but about destroying the artifact which is altered and special. it was born from an anomaly.

[shrewd needle]

Duty = experienced gunmen. Freedom = experienced. Ward = elite. Exo-skeletons = elite. Random bandits? Yea, they're not supposed to be experienced...I mean, I get your point, but that behaviour is so garbage, it's not even funny.

[mossy helm]

never heard about this meme can you send a link pls

[hoary crest]

At that point you might as well just slap it on Vet' mate honestly. It just means damage is at least an attempt at "sim" damage, its not really totally like that, but it keeps the game tense

[shrewd needle]

Grenade will destroy it. 😏

[mossy helm]

again, im doing exactly the same. if fixing the armor wouldnt be so fking expensive i wouldnt take any weapons from dead bodies anymore. well not the casual usual ones. i guess ill have to start hunting artifacts more, they are light and expensive. but only after they fix npc spawn system tho, its impossible for me to lose armor quality and not to take anything from the fights which happens every 5min god damn it

[hoary crest]

Well you say that, but if they've been in the Zone for any length of time, you would expect them to be able to shoot straight else the place would have chewed them up

[shrewd needle]

Technically...you can melt them in vanilla. Cover + head-shots = Boom, headshot! (TVTropes readers will know).

[shrewd needle]

Uh...aren't Bandits supposed to be on the lowest end of the scale short of a few (like gang leaders or some rare, elite 'geniuses' on the wrong side)?

[hoary crest]

If you use the most meta weapons, sure, but late game vanilla balancing f*cks over most of the armoury really badly. Thats just the result of throwing arbitrary damage values at weapons to justify progression. It never feels right with firearms working like that outside of wildly extreme sci-fi settings

[shrewd needle]

I'm in the Agroprom Military Warehouses (thanks for the painful map mash, GSC) and I'm finding that out the difficult way...

[hoary crest]

Sure they are, but they've still managed to survive in a place where even the air wants to kill you at points. Though I wouldn't rank them any lower than Freedumb when it comes to competance

[mossy helm]

i was shocked to find ||dead scientific team which was led by scar in 2011|| there.

[hoary crest]

Yeap, it gets exponentially worse than that in the late game. If you try to kill some of the big-bad who're in exos with an AK, it will take like 5 headshots with AP ammo. Which is ludicrous. Even more so when some SMG's can do it in a couple of shots and the Rhino blows their heads off instantly.

[boreal coyote]

it used to be under the ocean i think

[shrewd needle]

WTF?

Also, for Freedom...at least they are organized...Bandits are more like infighters at times.

[hoary crest]

#☢┃stalker-general message As I said lol. Arbitrary damage values. In no situation does a damn pistol caliber out-perform a rifle IRL, ever

And more organised yes, but that does'nt say much about an individuals ability to survive. You could argue that Bandits are better at it even, on account of said infighting and having less backup

[shrewd needle]

Wait, that's them? From 2011? Or a new team lead by the Spark-Scar? 'Cause the PDA said that Scar pointed them there, rather than led, but I might be wrong.

[shrewd needle]

GSC's genius weapon coding...and it shows. I guess I'm dragging the Integral-A to the final fight. 😏

[mossy helm]

i used to use trainers back in the days with old stalker games, just for weight limit. now im not gonna, i like the challenge.

[boreal coyote]

i think you're right, i didnt think they were from 2011

[shrewd needle]

River, but yes...but that's not the point...point is that in Clear Sky, the swamps were 'normal'...like any other. Same with Zaton in CoP...both places were twisted by the Zone, but they were as any other in-Zone places.

In S2, both places feel much more...twisted. Not in landscape, but in atmosphere.

[sweet root]

Naw its on a good balance for now but i already finished the game, next playthru will be added difficulty maybe with iron sights only

[shrewd needle]

Yea. 'Cause 2011 bodies were not even there when you got back in CS, and even if...they'd have decayed and been buried naturally by S2.

[sweet root]

I kinda prefer a challenge twist for difficulty than just flat stats

[shrewd needle]

Which is fine, but if you hoarding...weight limit needs to go. And no shame in that.

[hoary crest]

All things considered its a relatively minor problem that can be addressed with mods. The lions share of the game is pretty stellar, so I can live with goofy balancing.

An lets be honest. It probably would'nt have sold as well as it did if they put in sim-like damage from the off. Most people want to come home from work and chill, not have their balls repeatedly stepped on

[shrewd needle]

Tell that to the Cordon MG from Clear Sky. Beating new and old players alike, in their faces. 😏

[wide plank]

I totally ok with waiting but at least some update on progress, announcement, roadmap of dev plans on game, anything which signalyzes that progress well ... in progress. For now what we have is "some time in 2025 you will get roadmap", no info about upcoming patch at all, 23 days (almost a month) ago was the last patch, and no any signs of work on steamdb (previously at least you can see per branches updates that something is happenning, now its only "public" branch seen which was updated 23 days ago). I love the game, I want devs to be successful on Stalker 2 game and franchise overall, BUT I do remember what was happening with original trilogy (i know that fixing it was quite a challenge because of X-Ray Engine) but still for now this game really buggy - lack of optimisation, there are bunch of quests with softlocks, mutant fights still non-balanced (explain someone to me why you have to shoot 10!!! shotgun shots into Controller head and it is still not enough to kill him, i.e.). And no updates/news related to the "work in progress".

[hoary crest]

Alright yeah I'll give you that one, but still 😂

[boreal coyote]

agreed, better tools to build atmosphere i guess. being there always has me on edge. has to be something to do with the height of the vegetation, always making wonder whats deeper in grass ahead of me

[sweet root]

I actually enjoyed the swamps in Gamma with the NVG mod at night because of how cool the effect was and how spooky

[shrewd needle]

It WAS realistic, 'cause that's exactly what'd happen to any trespasser. And it's that realism we all live for...when a hardened mercenary like yourself can just...end.

'Cause what's the fun leaving the Zone in one-piece at the end of a mission, eh? Death Truck or nothing! Viva La DUGA! 😏

[boreal coyote]

are NVGs something that the devs have said they're adding?

[mossy helm]

yeah the note or pda i found near their dead bodies said 2011. not sure about pointing or being led tho.

[shrewd needle]

That too, but you look at the geography and the skies...it feels almost unnatural. Even for the Zone...and the fact that there's NOTHING there. Not even a soul (except for random mutant spawns, but that's just game logic engine, not lore).

[sweet root]

No idea but i imagine its a tall order to implement them for a ray calculation system like Lumen

[hoary crest]

I agree personally, but like, there is a reason that games like Arma and DayZ are considered fairly niche; They're extremely punishing.

That being said, Arma reforger is very popular at the moment, so maybe we're about to see super-hardcore shooters enter the wider public zeitgeist.

Heres to hoping anyway

[shrewd needle]

Plot twist: DayZ is just Zone zombies broken out en masse. 😏

[sweet root]

And if they do add NVGs they better not work at all in pitch black darkness, unless they emit IR light or something but that defeats the point of sneaking if youre a literal light emitter walking around for those with night vision

[boreal coyote]

why is that? seems to have blown up over night

[hoary crest]

You can already get a similar effect via Reshade presets, thank me later

[hoary crest]

I guess mainly because true mil-sims are all but absent from the console sphere, and now they have a good one, people are enjoying it. Also, Arma has always been incredibly proficient with delivering memorable experiences and memery

[sweet root]

Naw i aint reshading a game that doesnt need reshades at all, would totally ruin the beautiful job they did color correcting and balancing all the lighting

[mossy helm]

#📸┃screens_and_videos message 2011 september 😉

[boreal coyote]

buts its been out for a while right? probably got a big update recently or something

[hoary crest]

Nah, trust me man. https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/430 It doesnt change the lighting or environmental factors at all, they're literally just immersive overlays

[sweet root]

The game already looks very vibrant and colorful with lots of contrast theres nothing a reshade would add than ruin the image by forcing the effect

[shrewd needle]

Just saw, but it makes no sense...their bodies wouldn't even exist...they'd have turned to dust, which the plenty of skeletons prove throughout the Zone.

Also Scar is not a random stalker, he's a proper mercenary...

[hoary crest]

A while now yeah, though it had a slow-burn to start. Sometimes these things take time to pick up. Not sure about the updates though I've been considering jumping into it myself

[boreal coyote]

thats not was i was talking about @mossy helm

[sweet root]

Hm! Ok, now you got me interested, it does look kinda good but only the NVG thing i would need

[shrewd needle]

Personally, I got addicted to 'Vibrance' and can't play a game without that any more...vanilla looks 'faded' to me.

[hoary crest]

Ya know its funny, I downloaded the thing for the NVG overlay, but i very rarely use it, the goggles are just too good 😅 They have animated condensation an everything

[shrewd needle]

Goggles? What goggles?

[boreal coyote]

that note is from 2011 the bodies are not

[hoary crest]

#☢┃stalker-general message

[shrewd needle]

That's an interesting explanation. Or maybe they just got caught in a Space Anomaly back in 2011 and didn't show up till 2021.

[sweet root]

Huh, for me it would be a bit tiring for eyes to walk for hours in too much color and contrast, i think they nailed the balance there where nothing is overly aggressive but very pretty still

[mossy helm]

maybe they dont want to promise a deadline and be forced to make it in time? i guess now they are just taking the freedome of all the time they will need, and that would be a good approach. i actually hate that deadlines exist, they usually fks the quality of things everywhere. would be cool to see what exact things they are working with now tho, like a pre release update/patch list.

[sweet root]

And they clearly have some color coding between the regions going on to contrast in color values, like the red forest is way more vibrant than the rest of the woods

[hoary crest]

To be fair, the Burnt Forest is also pretty vibrant in places, but not invasively so

[sweet root]

Making it mostly the same with forced effects would remove some of that imo

[shrewd needle]

Yea, but like I said...I got too addicted to the RS vibrance...now, I just use it in every game I can (depends, of course; not universal).

[sweet root]

I use it for Cyberpunk there it fits thematically

[boreal coyote]

yes it would be nice if the "gsc answers" chat was used to keep us informed on updates with the game... instead they are using it to tell people you can buy shadow of Chernobyl on steam....

[shrewd needle]

Haven't played 2077 in so long...soon, hopefully.

[frigid hill]

voracity_t has been warned

Reason: Bad word usage

[mossy helm]

yeah im curious how he failed to lead them too. and there are 4-5 bodies with ecologist suits in the train, so i guess they are skeletons inside those suits at this point. but only suits are visible from outside obviously. so i guess all makes sense that its from 2011

[hoary crest]

My guy the dude who asked the question is literally asking the devs where else they can pirate it from.

The poster is either a f*cking moron or a bad troll. Duh they were gonna get told to go to steam lmfao

#📜┃gsc-answers message

[shrewd needle]

Right, but the suits would've degraded too, no? Like, all the skeletons in the game were once people with clothes...

[boreal coyote]

my point is though if we only get a couple answers a week why waste an answer even adressing that? you get me? especially if he's a troll like you suggested, my money is on him being a moron lol

[hoary crest]

Yeah I can see that point of veiw. But 🤷‍♂️ It probably only took Mol1t 2 seconds to type an answer and many people clearly got a laugh out of the poster's idiocy 😄

[shrewd needle]

Imagine if Steam used BitTorrent technology to distribute games. Now that'd be funny. 😏

[mossy helm]

with that one i totally agree - i asked about some issues like what priority they have to be fixed, and i still didnt got any answer about it meanwhile people with really stupid questions gets answered xDDD

[boreal coyote]

yeah i guess, i would enjoy it more if they would give us something of value too

[weary hedge]

He's a proper agent you mean :p

[hoary crest]

Eh, we've had more support since release than most large games get in 6 or more months, I can't rag on them for that in regards to not spilling the beans on future patches or updates too much

[mossy helm]

i have a feeling they choose to answer the most funniest stupidiest ones just for memes, i swear

[boreal coyote]

thats exactly my point yeah, im asking about roadmaps and whats on the current update but they are too busy answering where to buy they're ancient game lol

[shrewd needle]

GOG perfect place, though...no Steam baggage, no DRM...

[mossy helm]

clothes especially special made suits dont degrade so fast for YEARS. 10 years is nothing for clothes degradation especially when they are inside the train having the roof above them pretty save from bad weather conditions. my logical thinking guess would be that the skeletons which had good suits were looted and clothes removed or smth. wild animals could destroy it too. but the scientists died in a really bad place where mutants are spawning every minute LITERALLY (which pi**ed me off good) so no one looted their suits.

[boreal coyote]

lets be fair bro we have had good support because the game launched in a state that was gonna ruin they're reputation if it wasnt addressed quick enough. thats not something we have to be grateful for. we paid them after all

[hoary crest]

Sure, I don't disagree, but its still a trend I'd rather see continue in regards to pushing out fixes than it be like every other big release where its still fubar years down the line (2077 for example)

[weary hedge]

stalker is a good way of earning them money too, with the DLC, could be worth a bit if the games ironed out and its well done

They already profited on game sales, over the game budget

[shrewd needle]

That's true too, but also, as I said...south/south-east Zaton (connected to the Swamps) and the Swamps themselves have NO LIVING BEINGS...which means that anyone who came there either turned into a zombie (plenty of those) or worse...like, Zaton is already weird due to lack of even random population (except for the inhabited places), but the Swamps are just full-on Generator-level of weirdness.

[hoary crest]

I can certainly give GSC more of a benifit of the doubt because its evidently a passion project as much as a business. It certainly needed more time in the oven, thats absolutely true, but if they couldnt find that time, they could'nt find it, at least they're making an attempt to sort that lack of time out post release

[shrewd needle]

I'd rather see a trend to releasing complete, fixed games than half-broken games that get fixed post-release like beta releases or something...

[mossy helm]

they have family share options which before was able to be used to with anyone you want. so i guess they had piracy thing too till they fixed the family share option.

[shrewd needle]

Wouldn't call it piracy, since you couldn't play the same game as the owner...if they played the game they shared with you, you'd be thrown out.

But my point was about BT technology, not piracy...P2P servers and serving files, but official channels. Much lower load on the central infrastructure and higher resilience and speeds as well.

[weary hedge]

technically it still works like that - they just have to log into steam with your account on their physical pc, and be in the same region as you

then you can share with their actual account

[hoary crest]

We all would, but unfortunately thats not yet the reality we live in.

That being said, I get the impression these days that the UE5 engine isnt helping make that a reality given it requires so much in the way of work to actually function correctly

[mossy helm]

how long cd took to fix cyberpunk, 1 year or smth?

[shrewd needle]

And the lack of optimization, whether by developers or by inherent engine problems (watched a video a couple of days ago about Nanite being garbage for performance, but I don't understand enough to judge) and the fact that everyone just keeps using it without doing so properly...

Too many games pivoting to UE without knowing how and why to use it.

[weary hedge]

phantom liberty was sick tho

[frigid hill]

theoriginalamnesia has been warned

Reason: Bad word usage

[mossy helm]

so that answers why the suits wouldnt be looted even more and why such professional as scar failed to defend the scientists in such extremely dangerous place. they were interested into doing tests in that place because of how fkd up it is.

[cobalt fiber]

Cyberpunk launched worse and yet CDPR redeemed themselves. This is really screaming self entitlement tbh. "They don't answer my questions but answer everyone else's!"

They already answered re. roadmaps

[hoary crest]

Three. Though they did eventually fix it with PL as Andromeda has said regarding the DLC actually being very good, but still. It was a sh*tshow during those years

[boreal coyote]

nice try buddy

[shrewd needle]

Exactly. But here's the thing...back in CS times, the Swamps and Zaton were perfectly normal (as you can see in CS and CoP)...but in S2, when you hear every beacon's log by ||Lebedev||...then you realize just HOW BAD things have become and it's due to Clear Sky trying to protect their base from outsiders (valid, but the effects are horrendous).

That might also explain the death of the new expedition, TBH, since Skif is the only one who's crazy enough to go there. Also, a few metaphysical, noosphere-related things that I hate explaining in this slow-mode.

[shrewd needle]

CP2077 is so unfixed...there's 'fixes' but not enough to actually fix things...unless the '2.2' or whatever they announced is a final, actual fix.

[hoary crest]

"Industry standard" innit

[mossy helm]

if other questions were normal and smart, no one would worry about this then. the thing that the other questions are sutpid as f.

[cobalt fiber]

But they did redeem their reputation

[weary hedge]

didnt they go full DEI lately too though, seen a few big streamers on youtube putting out videos about cdpr

[hoary crest]

Phantom Liberty really did address the majority of issues. Having played through it on the DLC release I was pleasently surprised at how much they pulled thier fingers out with it. Really good overhaul of game mechanics and improvments across the board

[shrewd needle]

Depends...'industry standard' would be everyone creating crap engines, but in this case...everyone's abandoning their own custom engines (that might've done better) and heading to UE5, while not using it properly or being stuck by the engine's own limitations.

So...more like the industry standard of outsourcing the 'hard' parts and everyone paying for it.

[mossy helm]

oh sht they released on 2020 december and i played in sometime around 2023 , 3 years indeed 😮 crazy.. when i played it , it was okay at that point

[weary hedge]

something to do with the witcher

[shrewd needle]

Personally, I preferred v1.3 (not having armour in clothes kind of ruined my current play-through, since I'm trying to go with a non-cyberware run)...but otherwise, yet to find out...I only played a bit of it.

Also, didn't PL only make good DLC while the rest of the game remains relatively untouched?

[hoary crest]

I mean you could argue that they did that with 2077's initial release if you were so inclined, but it wasnt in the way thats percieved as problematic. It was really quite tasteful despite being super-fckin out there

[cobalt fiber]

PL brought around 2.0 which introduced additional side content and a plethora of fixes and QoL to base game

[mossy helm]

i wish there was more information about this from the game itself. maybe ill find something more about it, but after our talk about it here i started to think that i wont find any more info about it sadly. but ill stay with believing its the same team.

[lethal crest]

UE5 is actually a pretty good engine
Their high-quality shadows are much less intensive than previous

The problem is it’s designed with modern hardware as a baseline, and early versions (like the one Stalker’s built on) are unoptimised compared to the current build

[shrewd needle]

Just like Hello Games with No Man's Sky, but that doesn't solve the problem of releasing broken shit and then fixing it post-launch...I miss those days when games were released whole and were only patched for either extra content (which was usually stand-alone) or for critical fixes that were missed by accident.

[hoary crest]

Oh no man, they overhauled a huge amount of the base game stuff along with fixing the lions share of bugs and quest blockers. Its not perfect, but its a huge improvement enough to make the game very playable

[hoary crest]

Hello Games got absolutely f*cked over by Sony. Thats something that always seems to get missed out of the discussion in regards to NMS. Sony were the ones who forced an early release, not HG

[cobalt fiber]

I'd blame investors and shareholders over devs 9/10 though. Games take considerably longer to craft these days vs back then for a multitude of reasons. The cogs in the wheel still move and are demanding

[shrewd needle]

Right, but I'm not saying that the engine itself is the problem (even though it has problems, like any piece of software)...it's the people who rely on it to the point of their own bad programming, lack of optimization, sheer ignorance and laziness leading to their games, no matter how world-class, performing like crap.

It's not the tool, but the user and many of those users just seem to throw things together and call it a day.

[weary hedge]

yeah, cyberpunk had a good implementation of it - though there was an, I 'BELIEVE' CDPR developer on twitter whos involved with the witcher, seen a few videos mentioning the person ranting about gamers and their own ideals regarding DEI - even showed the account now being banned on twitter but they still work at whatever company as a lore designer

[shrewd needle]

I understand, I'm just talking about the trend. I'm not blaming HG or CDPR or anyone in particular, just the trend of releasing half-baked stuff for 'sales' and then spending 5X the money and time to 'fix' it and call it an achievement worth $70-$200.

About Cyberpunk...again, I'll have to try, since I played very little due to the destroyed armour system.

[boreal coyote]

doesnt matter who to blame, the result is the same. stop excusing broken games because the publisher or whoever rushed the dev team. a broken release is a broken release regardless of the cause

[cobalt fiber]

There's a fine line between a broken game and a game having issues

[lethal crest]

People were bitching because they made Ciri a Witcher IIRC
Even though she was raised by the greatest Witcher of all time, probably receiving the best preparation you could hope for to become one

[shrewd needle]

Classic capitalism at work, but I won't comment on that...but yea, this is the problem with going public or having funding from sources that care more about returns than for the quality of the company's products. Short-term, small-minded thinking leading to down-the-drain performance and suffering.

[boreal coyote]

theres a fine line between being happy with a bad situation and being a door matt

[weary hedge]

i dont think it was just that - the actual creator of the witcher never said she was, so they are taking liberty with the source lore, sort of like star wars with disney, or the new lord of the rings series

all of which are quite commonly disliked

[cobalt fiber]

Do you live a happy life with being so negative?

[shrewd needle]

Probably the same people who romanced her to death in the originals. 😏

And I haven't even played it and I still know.

[hoary crest]

Its a weird thing to discuss, because on the whole, your average joe isnt a bigot and is quite happy to let people live the lives they choose to live, but having politics (of any form) forced down your neck is going to ruffle feathers and isnt good for business or reputation, no matter if its left or right wing, people just don't like being told how they should think.

Thats not to say that people don't sh*t the bed and blow it out of proportion a lot of the time, because they absolutely do and nor does it mean politics is a taboo subject in media, its all about how its presented

[mossy helm]

as asmongold once said, i prefer for the game to have fixable issues but have a good base (story, characters and atmosphere wise) than the games that are just 💩 in general which wouldnt be fixable at all

[shrewd needle]

A game having issues is fine. Problem is when those issues are known, but left unsolved and the game just released.

[boreal coyote]

who, me?

[weary hedge]

i think the issue comes in when certain team members are presented with a story and then they like

burrow their own personal ideals and desires into the game and try to fit things in because 'why not' - and thats when it becomes an issue, because it makes no sense and gamers arent stupid enough to overlook it

I dont think the issue is inherently anything else - it just gets twisted really, most people probably wouldnt care, look at resident evil or alien for example

[cobalt fiber]

Yes

[mossy helm]

oh sh things getting personal here xD

[shrewd needle]

Asmongold is also the guy who needed a public humiliation to clean his house, so, uh...

[boreal coyote]

i smile a lot 🙂

[cobalt fiber]

It amazes me that people join Discord servers just to be negative. It begs the question

[mossy helm]

but i agree with him on it anyways, dont care about his cleaning habits which are totally unrelated to the gaming topic

[boreal coyote]

talking about an issue and being negative are very different. i love stalker 2 thats why i'm here, if i didnt like the geame i would move on and say nothing

[shrewd needle]

I know, I just wanted to take a shot at him. 😏

But yea, I agree with that point as well.

[mossy helm]

lol you should visit counter strike community servers, you would be surprised 😄 this is a heaven compared to that toxic sad trash place

[hoary crest]

I doubt you'll find a single peice of media anywhere that doesn't have some of the creators veiws contained within it somewhere, it just boils down to how its applied and presented.

If they're implemented in a way that seems bullish, its going to p*ss people off, if its there on a more impartial level, people will have much less of an issue with it

[shrewd needle]

Or NFS servers...those are literal garbage...almost everyone is toxic as hell.

[cobalt fiber]

You're screaming from the rooftops about your questions not being answered despite the same questions having been answered already, and claiming the game is completely broken. It doesn't seem to me that you're enjoying this love

[weary hedge]

yeah - but we arent discussing that type of scenario, for example the witcher is established as world, it has a direct source lore to reference

[mossy helm]

im pretty sure many gamers likes him because of his different character like i dont give a f what other thinks i live how i want gamer style and being a homeless but millionaire at the same time lol. its just too funny 😄 oh and he cleaned his whole house recently

[boreal coyote]

when did i say its broken? it released broken, its not currently

[weary hedge]

you dont join a company, as a say, lore designer

take the source lore and say f*ck it i want x represented because i believe in x

youre designing a game world based around a story, how the hell does your own 21st century earth problems relate to the witcher lol

[shrewd needle]

Yea, I know...I saw one of those meme videos by him after he cleaned the house. I'll have to see the other video again. 👍

[shrewd needle]

Because Witcher might be set in the 4th century BC, but any money from sales will be made in the 21st century.

Check-mate, anti-woke crowd. 😏

||Yes, the last part is a joke.||

[boreal coyote]

i dont even get it 🤣

[hoary crest]

Sure it does, as does Stalker, but if you look closely enough, you'll see influence of modern events in the latter too. People write and create stuff applying thier own experiences to what they create, thats called artistic licence and has always been present.

If you stray too far from the source material it becomes problematic, sure, because you ruin whats there, but if noone took any artistic licence with established IP's, they wouldn't survive in the long term because they'd get stale and become harder and harder for people to relate to as audiences change and so does public perception.

Its a far more complicated a subject that its made out to be. That being said, I don't find it hugely surprising because a lot of people are obnoxiously insular these days as a result of social media

[shrewd needle]

I put it as a joke, but it's simple. For example, Witcher is set in medieval times.

But, it's a game. A computer game, made in and for the 21st century. So, for example, people want more women to be represented (not debating on that point, just giving an example)...and to make the game more acceptable to those people, you include more women in diverse roles in the game, even if in reality, it might've been a patriarchal society with women mostly in the kitchen.

So now, you get Ciri, a hardened female warrior that makes those specific people feel better or more validated when historically, it would've been just Geralt with Ciri as a silent, obedient concubine or something.

(Again, just an example; please don't take it seriously, whoever reads)

[weary hedge]

I can't really say I see anything in relation to real world events within STALKER, but I haven't played all of the games to their endings.

As far as I see it, the timeline diverged in the stalker universe long long before any of the issues we are talking about were even being discussed let alone forcefully put into games

[boreal coyote]

building on that its the middle ages yes but its clearly not the same universe as ours so whos to say how the women were 🤣

[weary hedge]

It just seems unprofessional to me to say, take a job at for example, no mans sky studio, then the next dlc i drop introduces a race of homosexual aliens

thats the same sort of 'artistic freedom'
but we would be lying to ourselves if we said it wasnt unprofessional to work on an already established world and then insert your own beliefs/ideals just because

I really dont know how else to explain it lol

[hoary crest]

I can. Korshunov being as well written as he is, though subtle, is probably a result of the amount of military presence in Ukraine at the moment.

And sure it was, but thats why its comparably well written compared to most sequels and continued IP's, because its not throwing stuff in your face, its incredibly subtle

[boreal coyote]

is this true??🤣

[shrewd needle]

But that's the thing...you and I get it. But for many people, it's so serious, it might just be a 'life-or-death' matter for them...you see how bad the conversations on the internet are. Both the 'woke' and 'anti-woke' crowd are worse than anything that's come so far.

Imagine making a 100 different genders (the woke) and then attacking all of them a few million times (anti-woke) in a vicious cycle that never ends...all in the name of either ego validation...or more sales.

[shrewd needle]

Who's to say that everyone isn't a homo-sexual in NMS? 😏

[hoary crest]

Thats taking a sledgehammer to a tent peg, but I understand where you're coming from, though as I've said, thats not applied experience, that would be forcing your beleifs down player's necks, they are very different things

[weary hedge]

hm?

[boreal coyote]

both ends of that argument disgust me tbh im more in the camp of its a good game i dont care whos in it

[still edge]

thats why i love videogames writers like chris avellone, he makes stories that are really creative but most importantly, he applies world views to the story and characters that he himself doesnt really agree with ,so you can see from him , stories about comunism, capitalism, religious characters, non religious characters, fanatics, independent minded characters, etc ,etc.

[boreal coyote]

they introduced a race of homosexual aliens in a DLC?

[weary hedge]

oh, no, was just an exaggerated example to make a point

[boreal coyote]

oh right i was dying mate 🤣 🤣

[shrewd needle]

That's exactly where everyone's supposed to be, but both people and the media (games, books, movies) tend to lean to one side, because they care about reaching the widest audience and making the most money.

So you get 'woke' media that panders to all those 'empowerment' folk. Then someone comes along and makes something the opposite, highly controversial and the Streisand effect causes it to get even more popularity. And it's a never-ending war where the only one who suffers is the end-customer.

[weary hedge]

like the other guy said, we dont know their sexual preferences anyway lol

a more realistic example would be to suddenly make NMS start discussing sexual preferences and genders within the story

when the games never been about that or had it included

[shrewd needle]

Actually...NMS is a universe where the 'stork brings babies' is a valid logic, since there's no sexual activity happening anywhere...everyone just 'spawns' into the proverbial void. 😏

Hello Games is so banning me for this!

[weary hedge]

multiple times lol

[hoary crest]

A fellow centrist I see lmfao.

Funny innit, both sides sometimes make good points, but 95% of the time its just a bunch of terminally online morons flinging sh*t at one another through the bars of thier respective echo chambers

[still edge]

when a writer of a videogame start to lecture in a very pedant way, like trying to choke the player with his "correct view" thats where the game gets annoying, instead the writer should present different points of view through different characters and show those points of view in different lights so the player can like or dislike any ideology within the game lore without thinking that the game tries to teach him something about real life events.

[sweet root]

This, all that matters is where merit stands and where fun is at

[shrewd needle]

There's only one problem.

The left are lop-sided to the left. The right are lop-sided to the right.

The centrists just take both sides and compound the craziness. 😏

[hoary crest]

There is a difference between "taking both sides" and seeing the value in listening to what both parties have to say whilst applying just the tiniest bit of logic as to weed out the bullsh*t though wouldn't you agree?

[shrewd needle]

Merit is a long-lost art, unfortunately...now, 'merit' is simply a buzz-word to get more money. No one actually cares for it, honestly.

[sweet root]

There are degrees of political compass btw, its not so black and white, there are both leftists and right wingers that arent on any of the extremes and are reasonable peoople

[shrewd needle]

I do, I was just taking a dig at how everything is political these days. Not serious.

Because end of the day, whether left or right or centred or extreme...everyone and everything has far more nuance than we think.

[hoary crest]

Ye, p'much. It be like that indeed

[still edge]

well that depends, when a ideology gets so annoying that tries to infect every medium ,tries to ruin every franchise, its hard not to push back

[boreal coyote]

i'm telling daddy admin if you keep talking politics... 😉

[shrewd needle]

Yep. Whenever I use those smirks, I'm just joking...I'd never seriously judge people like that. That's just stupid (and I've been on the receiving end, so I know how bad that'd be).

[hoary crest]

F*ckin authoritarian b@stard 😉

[sweet root]

Freaking anarchist

[shrewd needle]

Problem is the people who push-back forget their limits and do EXACTLY the same thing that they hate...if the woke crowd are 'infecting' every medium, the anti-woke crowd ends up infecting everyone with a hatred of 'woke' that causes genuine discrimination and harassment.

When neither side knows their limits...problems happen.

[shrewd needle]

Y'all should beat each other up in Stellaris.

[hoary crest]

Only when I'm at a party looking to pull 😄

[still edge]

i dont see antiwoke crowd going over the limit, i see antiwoke people speaking against an ideology, going over the line would be to fire someone from their job for no agreeing with an ideology, or making a franchise worse because a minority feels left over and want to be "represented". I cant literally think of a single case of antiwoke going to extreme, being violent. So i dont know what you are talking about in that case.

[shrewd needle]

Scar got pulled into the wrong party. 😏

[shrewd needle]

But this doesn't make sense...let me give an example.

Say if Isaac Clarke from Dead Space or Skif from S2 was replaced by a female character (with the rest of either game remaining the EXACT same)...HOW would it be worse? That's the part where everyone fails to have a consistent logic.

[still edge]

why it needs to be female? why the game has to be sexist? if you are trying to replace a character with another gender, you are literally hyper focusing on a gender. That person who demands to replace a character´s gender is acting sexist

[shrewd needle]

Exactly...that's the problem.

You said, "Why does it need to be female?" rather than "It would make no difference, because it's a game. Whether it was a male character or a female character, it would be the same game, so I do not have feelings either ways."

It's that difference in thought process where the friction lies...you automatically jump to the change in gender rather than focusing on the fact that the game hasn't changed one bit.

[still edge]

nobody wants that, normal people wants a game to be fun and interesting, if the devs wants to make a character female, it has to make sense in the settings, i dont think many people would accept an male amazonian warrior, in a lore where amazonian culture is 100% female. Nobody would want black panther to be white where the character comes from black african culture.

[still edge]

you are not seeing the problem, you are hyper focusing on the gender, you are asking for things related to real life events, and basically breaking the escapism of the game, if the game story can have both female and male, then there is no problem. Now if the game has already established that the character in that story are 99.9% male, why would you want a female character for representation, it literally makes no sense, its like asking wonder woman to be male.(why does it matter if its male? you might say)

[shrewd needle]

Replying to both messages at once.

Skif is not an Amazonian warrior. Isaac Clarke is not an Amazonian warrior. One is a regular combatant, one is an engineer.

And again, it's not even the point. The point is that just because the model and voice is female while the rest of the game remains unchanged, it suddenly becomes worse?

Again, I'm not denying the obvious plot holes like an African character being portrayed by a white guy or an insulated Amazonian culture having a random mook that doesn't belong, but the anti-woke crowd attacks EVERYTHING that's even remotely not traditional and the latest was AC: Shadows (or whatever the latest Japanese release is).

And to the second message, no, I'm not hyper-focusing on the gender, I'm making a point. Here's the thing...in DS trilogy, Isaac Clarke is the protagonist. In the DS remake, if it had been changed to Isabelle Clarke, I wouldn't care, because it doesn't matter what the gender is. Whether it's Isaac or Isabelle or anything it between, it's irrelevant and that's my point.

It's not about representation, it's about remaining unaffected by irrelevant things.

[weary hedge]

Because women rarely travel into the zone - statistically unlikely our character ends up to be the 1 out of 3000 visitors that happens to be a woman

and then it becomes forced

[shrewd needle]

Rare doesn't mean none, though? And all protagonists are rare...they're protagonists because they do things no one else can/does.

And if the protagonist is a woman, how does that change the game? The voice changes, the model changes, game's still the same as it is currently.

[weary hedge]

that's just a 'why not' question though, its not really an argument

just because you can doesnt mean doing so would actually fit the theme

you also then cant show skif fighting people in hand to hand anymore either, so it would force a story change

[still edge]

"Again, I'm not denying the obvious plot holes like an African character being portrayed by a white guy or an insulated Amazonian culture having a random mook that doesn't belong, but the anti-woke crowd attacks EVERYTHING that's even remotely not traditional and the latest was AC: Shadows (or whatever the latest Japanese release is)."
So you are basically agreeing with me , but you still want to be right about the gender part when is related to male culture -> having a random girl as protagonist. I think its more of a hyper focus on gender, you want woman in videogames stories even if sometime it doesnt make sense to be.

[shrewd needle]

That doesn't even make sense...plenty of women fight hand-to-hand. And the theme is because GSC made it so...that does not mean women are incapable (which shows, since we've got at least 3 women in S2).

It's the players who think that women shouldn't be in the Zone...that's not how it works...anyone's free to break in if they like. Less likelihood doesn't mean women don't go or don't be.

[still edge]

exactly, the main protagonist should be part of the story and as such , he should in some way represent the people in the story, its exactly the case of black panther being a white dude blonde hair. it would stick as a sore thumb in that story and also in stalker , so dont ruin what works.

[weary hedge]

also - who was it earlier referencing modern events and current ukrainian climate being a factor in the colonels attitude

even in ukraine woman arent in front line combat roles

yet for some reason people see them fitting in to an even worse environment, like the zone

i'd argue how we see it portrayed in game is nothing like an actual realistic version of it would be

[shrewd needle]

Well, you still haven't explained why it doesn't make sense...or if you have, then I didn't find your logic very convincing, because again...I'm not saying X or Y or Z gender should be in a game. I'm asking how that gender even makes a difference for any reason.

[still edge]

Stalker has a established lore of having 99.9% male, if you want female character, best way to do it, create a new franchise where is similar to stalker where male and female are 50-50 and do what you want, dont ruin stalker.

[weary hedge]

how you gon have a gender out here talking about choosing a bear over dudes and then simultaneously argue the zone could have a protaganist thats a woman

actual bs when you think about it lol

[shrewd needle]

Israel's military would like a word with you about women in front-line combat.

[weary hedge]

I'd like a word with them about genocide and apartheid too

[still edge]

i did explained, 5 times already but you dont want to understand it, you have cognitive dissonance

[shrewd needle]

It's not established lore...like, there's literally nowhere in the original trilogy where it says that women universally don't come into the Zone or the Zone doesn't allow them or whatever. Don't confound GSC's decisions with lore.

[shrewd needle]

You actually didn't...or, as I said, I didn't find your logic convincing.

[dull apex]

Question Stalkers. Is the Guide in Yaniv bugged for you guys as well? He doesn't appear after I use him once.

[weary hedge]

some people have had this issue, i didnt see any resolutions while i was watching their convos

[shrewd needle]

That's a tangent...point is women are fully capable of front-line combat. No reason they wouldn't break into the Zone to explore just like men...but either ways, I suppose the conversation has reached its conclusion.

[still edge]

israel doesnt have a 50-50 female to male soldiers, no army has same amount of female as male , because soldiers needs to be strong, have stamina and that would be horrible decision to bring women to a front line, unless if its a dire situation like in ukraine when every single human being needs to defend their country ,hence the reason why women are fighting but still in majority male soldiers.

[dull apex]

Why are you debating this in the STALKER server? Just take the discussion to dms.

[still edge]

is this guy who tries to inject politics into the game @shrewd needle

[weary hedge]

lmao yeah the convo has been wild today for some reason, earlier we were discussing cyberpunk

[shrewd needle]

I didn't. Don't put words in my mouth.

DO NOT accuse me of shit I didn't do.

[hoary crest]

Jesus, I go make a cup of tea and it spiralled out of control quickly didnt it

[frigid hill]

noodlesjules has been warned

Reason: Bad word usage

[neon frigate]

Yummers

[hoary crest]

Well have fun ya'll, hope I don't return to a bunch of yous being banned or muted, be nice to each other, even if you have a difference of opinion

[dull apex]

Clears throat. Imma say this again. "In the most American way possible. Nobody cares."

[still edge]

but you are only talking about gender, gender this gender that, why wont you talk about "make game about flying mutants" or "make the main character be a telepathic/controller" instead of "make the character a women" which is clearly very clearly seeing that you got that idea from real life politics

[inner hinge]

The thing is the zone would be an incredibly unappealing place for women to be as a good portion of stalkers are criminals and that would probably include a sizable amount of rapists so unless they can get into a strong group or lead a group of soldiers the chances of being violated is very high

[dull apex]

See, now this is the right direction. There ain't no good reason to be at eachothers throats. Especially over something so simple.

[shrewd needle]

Again, you confused a genuine question with 'injecting politics', which is exactly what the problem is with the anti-woke crowd...you people just refuse to see what someone else is saying and accuse them of doing things they didn't.

If you didn't understand the question, ASK TO CLARIFY. Don't make up your own conclusions and accuse others of nonsense.

[still edge]

you are playing fool as to not accept you are clearly asking for real life politics to be in game.

[weary hedge]

to be fair, the majority talking right now care lmao you interrupted a whole convo to say the most illogical thing that doesnt even make sense 😂

[shrewd needle]

Running S2 on HDD is easier than difference of opinion. I'll just get back to shooting Bandits.

[dull apex]

Cuz I don't want people arguing in here man. Too much going on in the world rn.

[shrewd needle]

Believe what you want. I quit.

[weary hedge]

I'm sorry, none of us realised this personally affected you, person who owns and runs said server lmao

the entitlement to have others stop arguing in a chat he literally just showed up to

do you want a red carpet for your arrival too?

[still edge]

i dont have to believe, i can read your comments

[weary hedge]

plus we werent even arguing before, no idea why those two got heated, prior to that it was fine lol

[dull apex]

Then all is well.

[weary hedge]

its also my fault lmao i brought it up, i cant even remember why now 😂 something to do with cyberpunk

[shrewd needle]

Eh, I was pretty chill till I got accused of 'injecting politics', but...Bandits...

Also, anyone know where in Ahroprom do Bandits spawn from? They just show up everywhere.

[dull apex]

[mossy helm]

i knew this will spiral out into drama, felt the tension building up in the chat lol

[dull apex]

Cyberpunk...? Ur lyin'.

[weary hedge]

i bought a 4070 ti super from adelaide on sunday, it got to perth on monday with delivery date of thursday originally for south of perth
yesterday that updated to friday
now its monday next week lol

no high settings stalker for meeee - and thats express post too, dodgy

[shrewd needle]

Flash-powered Gorilla Arms. 😏

[dull apex]

I'm more confused than I was when I got here. I came to ask a question, got it answered and now...Im going back to the Zone. Glory to the Monolith.

[still edge]

we kept it respectful, i dont think discussing point of view with some level of passion is spiraling out of control.

[shrewd needle]

Aw, man...someone didn't get Cyberpunk reference...

Gorilla Arms = CP2077 cybernetics, powered by Flash fragments from STALKER...but anyways, have fun with Monolith.

[weary hedge]

one of the most powerful people we see in the game is a woman - Agatha.

just a little tidbit to end on lol

[dull apex]

No I did. I just wanna go back to the Zone.

[shrewd needle]

High-five an anomaly for me on the way in.

[mossy helm]

i blocked him couple days ago. he is a pain in the a** 😄 ignore that troll 😉

[inner hinge]

Here is a fun fact if the next game is set outside of Chernobyl it is more than likely going to depict a much larger group of women as the new zones would probably have a decent population of people who refused to leave

[wintry pumice]

you blocked Scar?

[mossy helm]

imagine stalker outside the zone 🤯

[inner hinge]

If skifs ending is canon there are new zones all over

[wintry pumice]

Faust and Scar are canon . Skif can't even survive an emission

[shrewd needle]

Yea...good point. And I should probably stick to bad jokes too... 😆 👍

[mossy helm]

i didnt finish the game yet, far from it, so lets just end it there for now, please 😄

[hoary crest]

Goddamn make me delete a 50 word post why don't you 😂

[inner hinge]

But this is the potential spoiler chat

[shrewd needle]

What happens to Degtyarev?

[shrewd needle]

Spoilers don't exist at all. Everything must be pre-known!

[mossy helm]

i missed it so no worries xD its my own fault that im sitting in spoiler chat without finishing the game yet lol

[mossy helm]

i obviously know that sir. but usually no one speaks about the end here. they talk about politics instead 💀

[hoary crest]

The endings are discussed like 10 times a day in here, 'chu talking about willis?

[mossy helm]

i mean people could use spoiler warnings for both texts and images even in this chat tho 😦

[dull apex]

Knowledge is one of the blessings of The Monolith.

[warped stream]

you'll get a lot of spoilers here, especially since people have had time to beat the game

[mossy helm]

well i didnt see any actually. but im not living in this specific chat as some does i guess

[inner hinge]

I just brought it up to throw fuel on the fire because people were ignoring facts and just wanted to argue

[hoary crest]

Well then in which case, get out of my house 😄

[shrewd needle]

Is that why the brain turned to noodles? 😏

[mossy helm]

yeah i know im always at risk here with that, but again i managed to somehow miss the main spoilers about the ending 😄 i have a growing feeling that this got into attention here, it will not be for long now xD

[shrewd needle]

'Idi kom ne, cheeki breeki iv damke!'

[sharp turret]

In real life radiation is more dangerous for women than men. Men produce new gametes so theirs can get irradiated and mutated but will cycle through into new ones. Women have a permanent set of gametes so any damage to those can cause birth defects in children indefinately.

In stalker we dont know. In roadside picnic male stalkers father heavily mutated kids. I guess a good rule regardless of gender would be if you went into the zone dont have kids.

[slender swan]

Why are there no women in this game... (I'm 7 hours in)

[shrewd needle]

You should be more worried about why you don't get a Veles Detector at the start like in Clear Sky.

[boreal coyote]

stalkers daughter in the film is a mutant too

[warped stream]

theres a couple of em

[dull apex]

Emphasis on a "couple" not gonna tell you where tho. You want to see em. Find em Stalker. Such is the gift of the Zone.

[boreal coyote]

4 total i think

[inner hinge]

There are actually 5 in total

[dull apex]

Oooh, question guys. Is Sidorovich the Morshu of Stalker yes or no?

[boreal coyote]

5? i can only think of 4

[dull apex]

||Agatha is the 5th. SIRCAA/Ward lady.||

[boreal coyote]

she was included in the 4 im thinking of, tell me all 5

[dull apex]

Oh, I don't know. I've only seen her and Boat lady and the Yaniv Technician...and the Malachite leader...

[shrewd needle]

Last one in Rostok.

[boreal coyote]

included her

[dull apex]

Yeah! Thanks Amnesia.

[shrewd needle]

I meant for Noodles, not you. I myself haven't met 2 of them yet.

[boreal coyote]

i know agatha the lady on the ship, rostok and malachite, whos the 5th?

[hoary crest]

Harpy in Yaniv

[shrewd needle]

This is the fifth for you, Pete.

[inner hinge]

Rostock, malachite, yaniv, zaton and sircaa

[dull apex]

Sultansk

[shrewd needle]

TBH, she's more manly than the Sultan himself. 😏

[boreal coyote]

ok i never seen the one in yaniv somehow

[inner hinge]

Thanks forgot the boats name so just used the region

[dull apex]

I'm actually talking to her now because I went to Yaniv looking for the Guide and he's BUGGED.

[hoary crest]

Best Pre-Pripyat tecchy on the map, also she's got an attitude, which is nice

[shrewd needle]

So crude, using guides...real stalkers walk the miles themselves. 😏

[inner hinge]

She is the best tech in the game up until the final areas are unlocked

[boreal coyote]

👌

[dull apex]

Or until you break into Pripyat against GSC's will ahead of time obviously. DO NOT go into the Zone illegally btw. Just a disclaimer.

[hoary crest]

It doesnt seem to break anything and there are so many ways in I'm still struggling to work out if its intentional or not.

The point you just made about entering the Zone illegally would align with real world occurences, so it would be kind of fitting

[dull apex]

I know..I just want to make it clear I'm not endorsing doing so IRL. Only in game.

[hoary crest]

Mutters grumpily and wanders off with boltcutters

[dull apex]

"Hey, I never said WE couldn't go. Get back here, thats the last pair of Boltcutters!"

[shrewd needle]

I thought they gave tours IRL?

[dull apex]

Oh, they do. I'm saying STALKERS IRL get their title because they break into The Exclusion Zone illegally. Some even live there...somehow. Just built different I suppose.

[shrewd needle]

Damn...that was not expected. Imagine breaking into a non-anomalous but highly-radioactive area.

[hoary crest]

The lure of the Zone is a real thing

[dull apex]

Like I said. They're just built alternatively. Anomalous in nature I say.

[shrewd needle]

True, true.

[hoary crest]

Speaking of the Zone.. has anyone found the Claw in game?

[dull apex]

Yeah, I got too close.

[shrewd needle]

Yes. Also, slow-mode...please die.

[hoary crest]

Oh sh*t where is it?

[shrewd needle]

||Jupiter.||

[hoary crest]

Huh, ok nice, I will need to keep my eyes out next im there

[dull apex]

Well, there's multiple if you're talking about the Death Claw from the crane. But if you mean like...and Anomalous area in particular? Yeah I djnno.

[shrewd needle]

That's in Zaton, same as in CoP, but he means the industrial one, not the anomalous one.

[hoary crest]

The one that was used to pull material off the reactor and then dumped in the woods surrounded by warning signs irl. Iirc its one of the most radioactive things in the Zone, still to this day

[inner hinge]

Most radioactive material has settled and isn't harmful unless you go do something to disturb it also fun fact before current events Chernobyl was used as nature reserve for a couple endangered species of animals

[dull apex]

That explains Agroprom. Agro as in Agricultural right?

[shrewd needle]

It has a stash inside it. Instant death as well.

[pale fossil]

do you guys actually use guides to fast travel?

[dull apex]

I do if it's an hour walk across the zone.

[shrewd needle]

No.

[mossy helm]

one dude from our faction posted 2 dudes playing stalker on a laptop while sitting inside the balcony of one of pripyat apartments, power plant in the background... that was crazy 😄 i like that tho

[dull apex]

What? The real Legends of The Zone. I need this image immediately.

[inner hinge]

Yes as I do far too much backtracking

[mossy helm]

i cant find the footage tho 😦

[dull apex]

NOOOOO!

[shrewd needle]

Peer-review failed. Wasted, GTA-style!

[pale fossil]

I'd love to have a Daggerfall-style fast travel.
Automatic moving with sped-up time that can be interrupted by something actually happening around

Although something happens almost every time I travel pretty much any further distance in S2

[shrewd needle]

It's called an 'anomaly'. 😏

[pale fossil]

Anomalies are a bit meh
there should be alot more of them plus more radiation

[dull apex]

There's a map of Chernarus in the game? Like the map from DayZ?

[shrewd needle]

Unrelated question...is the ACOG and the other one that fits to Warsaw Pact weapons the only sniping scopes available? Not counting dedicated sniper rifles...

[shrewd needle]

Well, in a game, you need a playable map area...you know.

But, I agree...too little density in S2 thanks to the large map size...

[pale fossil]

Yes, there are also postcards from Arma universe and bunch of different easter eggs

[shrewd needle]

Harry Potter one in the Swamps, which was unnerving rather than funny.

[pale fossil]

what was that? i didn't notice

[shrewd needle]

Whomping Willow...complete with a Ford Anglia Soviet alternative stuck in it, like from HP2.

[dull apex]

Beautiful. Next we'll find a mining tool with three lasers attached next to a dead engineer. With a hand floating in a Grav anomaly.

[shrewd needle]

Nah. You'll get the machine from DS2 that extracts memories from the eye...directly.

MapGenie lists all the Easter Eggs (not sure if they're all, since plenty of undiscovered shit so far that I found in terms of loot that's missing there).

[dull apex]

I'm fairly sure it was described as "The machine activates the part of your brain in which the marker codes are stored." I've played Dead Space 2 for a long time. A LONG time.

[shrewd needle]

Right, but the way it works...enough to give nightmares to any stalker. Especially when the Zone can make the Necromorphs look like cheap jump-scares.

[mossy helm]

well no worries mate, here you go - #🤨┃stalker_memes message 😉
this one should have got way much more reactions in the even than it did. the most epic thing ive ever seen in my entire life.

[pale fossil]

oh the moving tree? I think i saw that but didn't associate it with HP

[shrewd needle]

I've only seen a play-through (don't ask why, just have)...but that's a vivid scene. One I wouldn't wish to play through for real, NGL.

[dull apex]

THATS SO COOL!

[warped stream]

there was the one with the car crashed into it from that one scene

[dull apex]

Dude, I'd genuinely enjoy doing what their doing right now. High risk high reward job. I'd even get to see things I've probably never seen before.

[shrewd needle]

Not moving, but the one with the car stuck in it.

#📸┃screens_and_videos message

[mossy helm]

and as much as i understand they were speaking about like: the camera guy: yo why you aint going outside; and the player responded :why should i am i going to find stalker stuff outside; and then the first one the camera guy just shows the "outside" xD

[dull apex]

Ladna. At the end makes more sense now.

He just says...Okay...

[mossy helm]

well i just presumed that you will not understand the language yourself, i dont know why i did that xD

[dull apex]

I didn't so thank you subtitles man. XD

I only ever watch Sub anyway, feels more authentic.

[oak basalt]

stalktua and spit on that zone

[pale fossil]

yesterday I was going by a bunch of overturned lorries and cars on a bridge and started hearing tire screeching and crash sounds and stuff... i thought i was tripping balls. I recall maybe one other place in Stalker 2 where such a "memory sound" can be heard but I don't think it has any effect on anything besides to serve as worldbuilding.

[warped stream]

ban 100h

[vapid galleon]

Heelo chat

[oak basalt]

no please have mercy

[dull apex]

Monolith, remove his nuts.

[mossy helm]

yeah im playing with ukrainian voice acting, but i dont understand much of what they speak i need english subtitles too. its strange how some sentences i understand fully but some not at all, i have a strange relationship with this language i guess 😄

[dull apex]

Russian speaker I assume?

[mossy helm]

not this sh here ... pls not on stalker discord oh god no......... its everywhere spreading like a fking corona...........

[dull apex]

[mossy helm]

nope, lithuanian actually 🇱🇹 im in the same situation with russian language too 😄

[mossy helm]

im wondering that you came here pretty recently how are you already a helper if its not the secret? 😄 alt account?

[pale fossil]

same here, slovak language is similar to ukrainian too, but I'm not fluent enough to parse through complex sentences. I think I actually picked up a lot while playing in ukrainian with subtitles.

[mossy helm]

well its little bit more challenging in my case cause lithuanian language is far away from being similar to both russian or ukrainian.

[warped stream]

active and the right connections pretty much, they needed american mods

[oak basalt]

I have this sever by the balls, give me all your CANNED MILK

[pale fossil]

I love that Ukrainian voice acting contains a lot of cultural things which sadly are not translated properly into english.
In the scene where Skiff finds a guy and a radio is playing very loudly, he asks
Shcho tse za dyskoteka?
English subtitles just say Why is the radio so loud?

[dull apex]

Oi @mossy helm check out #📸┃screens_and_videos

[dull apex]

What did he actually say tho?

[mossy helm]

thats racist, lol just kidding

[pale fossil]

Whats up with the disco dance here? or something like that, diskoteka just means a loud party in most of slavic languages

[mossy helm]

i really wish that english had ukrainian accent. i would be playing on english then i think. but ukrainian is really good, million times better than english one.

[warped stream]

yeah I wish they hired at least like eastern european VAs for the english dub, not brits

[hoary crest]

Noone likes us Brits 😢

[pale fossil]

the english dub is pretty atrocious, i gotta say

[mossy helm]

we lithuanians use diskoteka for the same meaning as well. again, ukrainian voice is million times better in this game than english thats for sure.

[dull apex]

You know how long I've practiced mimicking the Voice Acting in Metro for a moment like this?

[oak basalt]

they i wish they were all kiwi

[mossy helm]

its just because it doesnt fit this genre, atmosphere, thats it 😄

[hoary crest]

I know lmfao, Im just makin a joke. I only play with Ukrainian VO myself

[oak basalt]

nah salem actually hates brits

[dull apex]

Despises em.

[pale fossil]

conspiracist in me thinks they made english dub bad on purpose, so that people play in ukrainian.
which is tons better

scar is going wild tho

[oak basalt]

they should have made everyone just southern

[dull apex]

I like Richter much more in Ukrainian than English although his English one was pretty good.

[mossy helm]

good job spreading stalker everywhere, very good! 😄

[pale fossil]

and i hate nicknames being translated into english, makes it pretty confusing
in subtitles i mean

[mossy helm]

even if i did, i would keep it to myself for ethical reasons. dont feel the same way about russians tho 🙂

i wish sidorovich was voiced by og voice actor.

[dull apex]

The Russian Government to be exact. The people really didn't want this as far as I'm concerned.

[oak basalt]

ubisoft reminds me of the russian government

[mossy helm]

lets say government + supporting the government. there are more supporters than i would like to admit, sadly.

[pale fossil]

at least they included the og bandit voice actor

[weary hedge]

lmao fancy telling us off for a DEI convo and now i come back and its veering into the ukraine v russian war 😂

[dull apex]

True.

[hoary crest]

Can't have sh*t in the Zone

[weary hedge]

The Ward will bring order to the zone if you let them, stalker

[dull apex]

No, The Ward intends to be Big Brother but planetwide.

[mossy helm]

well people discuss a lot about stalker here, but sometimes its healthy to change topics to let in some fresh air. but politics aint a good topic for fesh air thats for sure 😄 lets move on

[dull apex]

I don't need Ward watching me do the do from inside their C-Con Pod. That's worse than a chair in the corner of the room.

[hoary crest]

Instead you're quite content to let the feds watch you sh*t through your camera phone whilst you look at memes on the toilet? 😄

[mossy helm]

quickly, go tape a laptop webcam!

[dull apex]

Obviously not. But atleast they aren't in my head. I guarantee I'd be arrested for treason or thought crime.

[hoary crest]

Way ahead of you homie 😄

[hoary crest]

If someone wants to spend a few hours in my head I'm quite happy to let them, I know they won't stay long 😄

[mossy helm]

well if taking shit is the worst thing that the feds could see from you, good job mate cudos to you!

[weary hedge]

Still Skif's legit ending tho, siding with scar is siding with a c-con agent, siding with strelok is siding with an ex c-con agent who we have no reason to believe is actually free, stepping in as skif expands the zone cause hes been manipulated

siding with ward is the only ending where you get your house issue sorted lol

[dull apex]

Yeaaah, imma do my own thing. Proceeds to enter pod.

[weary hedge]

and the colonel is probably the only dude in the game that aint speaking in riddles half the time, dude just wants the job done, cant argue with that lol

[hoary crest]

Correct, gotta get yours when you can