XBX S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 - 21 November 2024 stalker

[dwwaino]

It's on my to play list but was going to wait a few weeks for some updates but question is how difficult is this game? I'm not seeing it as being something I can chill on.

You can chill as much as you would chill playing Fallout 4. The gameplay isn't "hard" but things can go wrong very quickly and the game also loves to troll you by putting stashes in precarious locations or a cleverly hidden anomaly. Combat is pretty fair on standard difficulty - headshots will still one shot most enemies not wearing helmets, mutants can be tanky though and unless you know there is something worthwhile or they're blocking your immediate path with no other option then it's best to save your resources and run away. NPC quest givers can also troll you because the zone is full of dicks and it's best to trust no one.

Most of the difficulty comes from the survival element. Weapons and armour degrade (a little too fast but it's a game I guess) and finding the money to repair them can be a challenge. You don't have to repair your weapons but there is nothing worse than a gun jamming mid fight, especially if it's a shotgun.

 

[T2B_]

Over 650 fixes!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Patch 1.0.1 is live! Here is the patchnote! - Steam News

Over 650 fixes, including quest blockers, memory leaks, crashes, and minor bugs.

store.steampowered.com

 

[dwwaino]

Increased durability and reduced repair costs are huge. Same with increased quest payments because it got to the point where it was impossible to make enough bank to repair good gear and simply wasn't worth using. I get it's meant to be always a battle and that's a part of the game but it did seem broken. It seems like now it will be worthwhile memorising artefact spawns and farming them to sell.

I don't mind reduced HP to fleshes because those things are absolute tanks. Didn't realise they had limb damage though??? I'll have to test! I'm glad they didn't bow to the crying and nerf bloodsuckers too much. Yes they're tough but if you play them aggressively with a shotgun you can get them.

I didn't get to play much the last two nights due to work and not enough hours in the day but look forward to getting back into it today when I get home (yep, work again) with the update.

 

[T2B_]

I dont mind Bloodsuckers being tough, more that they seem to spawn a bit too regularly in too many places rather than being a more rare scary sort of encounter. But thats probably part of the still in progress AI and spawning system.

 

[dwwaino]

Yeah I think that has been the main problem with bloodsuckers, with the current spawn system sometimes they're bugged and also double spawning. I've found them very predictable to fight though. They will run away and turn invisible then will run back to you. When they appear and attack they will attack where you were the moment they appear so I started running at them then strafing at the last moment. Then I can easily get them twice in the back/head with my shotgun. It's a pump action with 6 rounds that I've modded to reduce spread. On Stalker (normal) difficulty it usually only takes those 6 shots to drop them. Fleshes though feels like a battle of attrition especially when there are a pack of them.

 

[dwwaino]

Amazing details. It's like watching Forgotten Weapons! (Great YouTube channel)




Also what language is everyone playing on? I keep switching. Playing in Ukrainian is so much better but sometimes I miss dialogue of recordings and stuff when opening the PDA and the subtitles also don't show. Some general audio queues in combat aren't subtitled either (but it will still say (dies) in subtitles when you kill them lol)

 

[T2B_]

Amazing details. It's like watching Forgotten Weapons! (Great YouTube channel)




Also what language is everyone playing on? I keep switching. Playing in Ukrainian is so much better but sometimes I miss dialogue of recordings and stuff when opening the PDA and the subtitles also don't show. Some general audio queues in combat aren't subtitled either (but it will still say (dies) in subtitles when you kill them lol)

Playing in English for pretty much the reasons you state.

I dont find it too bad actually. Finding a guy with an Australian accent was funny though.

 

[dwwaino]

Playing in English for pretty much the reasons you state.

I dont find it too bad actually. Finding a guy with an Australian accent was funny though.

Came across an Aussie accent too and had a chuckle. I find the cockney english accents a little jarring so I'm back on the Ukrainian audio. At least it's really easy to toggle without having to reload the game.

 

[UnitedWarrior93]

I've got it on english purely just for the fact i can't be bothered with reading the subtitles lol, but did have it on Ukrainian for a bit yesterday and it does feel more immersive.

 

[T2B_]

Sweet jeebus, what a play session that was. Just escaped out of a certain scientific base (if you know, you know) after a bunch of shit went down, absolutely spent. Was running low on pretty much all useful things, but was carrying a bit of loot and weighed down quite a bit, so trudged on best I could to the nearest friendly base to try and have a breather and sell stuff, repair etc, which was a bit under a kilometer away.

Then a freaking CHIMERA randomly leaps out of the tall grass and assaults me, and I couldn't believe my bad luck. I hear some gunshots behind me and thankfully it's some friendly dudes coming to help out but then there's also a couple wild boars running in to the join the chaos as well. I'm getting smacked by the chimera and sinking what little ammo I have on me into it and using medkits like crazy, which I was also running low on. Anyway that beast just would not go down and was going between tearing into me and also the poor chaps who had joined the fight. Eventually I was down to just my knife, absolutely not a single bullet left, and the chimera wasn't looking like slowing down.

Anyway, needless to say, while I felt sorry for the couple of friendly guys left still trying to fight the beast, I completely booked it out of there and ran like absolute buggery LOL. I chugged probably 5 or 6 energy drinks just running like a madman through the trees and down over a small cliff before I lost the chimera. I'd never been so glad to see the rag-tag mob in the friendly base when I finally got there, not a single bullet or energy drink left on me.

 

[pantskyle]

I read that this is meant to have a MP mode soon, any chance it'll be co-op main game? Seems to be a game that would be great going through with other people.

 

[dwwaino]

I strongly doubt it will be a co-op mode. Probably some escape from tarkov style thing or something IMO.

 

[pantskyle]

I strongly doubt it will be a co-op mode. Probably some escape from tarkov style thing or something IMO.

That would also be cool.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

How much better will the AI changes (A Life?) make this?

 

[dwwaino]

ALife, better described by the developers as just one piece of a greater AI Director, changes the AI and world from existing only within the vicinity of the player to existing in the entire world with their own tasks demoting the player to just another actor in the world. In terms of impact on gameplay that will add things like the ability to scout ahead and assess your way forward. Maybe there will be an enemy faction patrol that you don't/can't take on but they won't be there the next time.

 

[dwwaino]

So I haven't played the original games since around when they came out (I remember updating my system with SLI graphics cards just to play Clear Sky) and haven't gone back to any of them except for starting replays of SoC half a dozen times but never getting more than about halfway in. I thought I remembered enough but clearly I haven't. In this game I'm around 25 hours played and story wise have just left the Island for the first time(trying to be vague here) and I just read I've met two previous protagonists of the series and it didn't even register with me.

I wonder what else I'm missing? That's it, as soon as I'm done with this playthrough I'm planning to tolerate the jank and replay of the original games. By the time I do that and get through the absolutely solid month of releases in February we'll be pushing mid next year and this game will be all nicely patched up, I'll also have my new machine, and I'll be set to go through it all again.

 

[T2B_]

So I haven't played the original games since around when they came out (I remember updating my system with SLI graphics cards just to play Clear Sky) and haven't gone back to any of them except for starting replays of SoC half a dozen times but never getting more than about halfway in. I thought I remembered enough but clearly I haven't. In this game I'm around 25 hours played and story wise have just left the Island for the first time(trying to be vague here) and I just read I've met two previous protagonists of the series and it didn't even register with me.

I wonder what else I'm missing? That's it, as soon as I'm done with this playthrough I'm planning to tolerate the jank and replay of the original games. By the time I do that and get through the absolutely solid month of releases in February we'll be pushing mid next year and this game will be all nicely patched up, I'll also have my new machine, and I'll be set to go through it all again.

Yep I'm in the same boat. Didn't actually play the other games myself, just Shadow of Chernobyl.

Good thing is after so many years, there should be some great enhancement mods for the older games.

 

[dwwaino]

Patch 1.0.3 is out and heaps more stuff fixed.

Really interesting and frank interview/article about what happened with ALife. It's still coming, no ETA but they're honest about the issues at the moment.

Stalker 2 Dev GSC Game World Explains for the First Time What Went Wrong With A-Life 2.0, and Why It Was Removed From the Game’s Description on Steam - IGN

Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World explains for the first time what went wrong with A-Life 2.0, and why it was removed from the game’s description on Steam.

www.ign.com

 

[T2B_]

Patch 1.0.3 is out and heaps more stuff fixed.

Really interesting and frank interview/article about what happened with ALife. It's still coming, no ETA but they're honest about the issues at the moment.

Stalker 2 Dev GSC Game World Explains for the First Time What Went Wrong With A-Life 2.0, and Why It Was Removed From the Game’s Description on Steam - IGN

Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World explains for the first time what went wrong with A-Life 2.0, and why it was removed from the game’s description on Steam.

www.ign.com

It makes a lot of sense, certainly more than those that were like "it was never in the game !1!1!".

It's promising how much it could be improved, the only concern I have is given there's optimization issues in the game as it is, it possibly will require a Herculean effort to optimise ALife enough to work on current systems.

I'm not sure how much UE5 allows deep sort of optimizations, but I'd think they would probably need to start doing some really clever programming tricks like the old days to keep CPU and memory at sane levels while getting the system to do what they want.

 

[UnitedWarrior93]

This game is visually stunning.

 

[dwwaino]

It makes a lot of sense, certainly more than those that were like "it was never in the game !1!1!".

It's promising how much it could be improved, the only concern I have is given there's optimization issues in the game as it is, it possibly will require a Herculean effort to optimise ALife enough to work on current systems.

I'm not sure how much UE5 allows deep sort of optimizations, but I'd think they would probably need to start doing some really clever programming tricks like the old days to keep CPU and memory at sane levels while getting the system to do what they want.

There are two big issues they have to deal with. UE provides a way to optimise open worlds to split up your map into smaller maps, then you overlay it with a grid and tell the engine how many cells beyond the player you want to load. This is world partitioning and there is also another feature called level streaming that can be used for anything from loading in those cells to simply loading levels. The problem is if a map isn't loaded then you can't do anything on it. So AI and any fancy ALife can only exist in the maps/cells that have been loaded. A work around might be running a background simulation then using an Asynchronous load to spawn in the NPCs when they become in range (this might be what was referred to in the interview by online and offline).

The other issue is simply the size of everything in memory. In UE there is a great tool that you learn to use extensively called Size Map. Is creates a visual representation of memory blocks for any object and any reference it has. There are ways around hard references that clog memory that only need to exist when called but for things that already exist in the world it's a lot harder. In a lot of games generic NPCs are often created in crowds using a particle system and this is very light on resources. However in Stalker every NPC is unique and exists with their own inventories, details and tasks. Look at the models alone. They are all high res textures. UE has a pretty good inbuilt automatic LOD system but that's for visuals, the full texture still has to be loaded in memory. If you've got 25 NPCs 3 maps away from the player they all have be to loaded into memory along with all their textures and models even if they aren't being rendered. I'd wager the current system is what is leading the memory leaks because the background NPCs aren't being properly flushed (UE has a built in garbage collector but I bet they're using something called the Game State that persists for as long as the game is open to hold things, and as long as there's live references in the Game State then UE won't flush them and that's why the game needs an occasional restart).


The original games weren't open world like this. They had loading screens to transition to different parts of the zone or to go inside some areas. This game has no loading at all including any interior. I can see them continuing to work on bugs, performance and stability and rolling them out in 1.0.x patches. But in the background they'll be working on a major 2.0 update similar to what happened to Cyberpunk, that includes the full ALife update and anything else and we might not see it for 6-12 months.

 

[dwwaino]

Hell yeah, finally being sent to Cordon for a mission. Time to check in on my homies.

I tried going there earlier as soon as the checkpoints were lifted. I don't think you're meant to go there so early as I was getting messed up so I had to load and earlier save.

 

[dwwaino]

 

[dwwaino]

Has anyone been to Pripyat yet? I'm still trying to devour as much content as I can before heading there. Side by side comparisons are pretty cool.



YouTube algorithm decided I might want to watch this too. It's a couple hours but was a fun watch.

 

[T2B_]

Not yet but don't think I'm too far away. I'm trying not to go too quickly. I kind of dont want the game to end lol