I love STALKER. It's my favorite single player FPS franchise. I make these videos out of love. The reason I'm critical is because we were marketed an Alife 2.0 system and instead got a generic spawn system. What we have in the game isn't even on par with the original A-life 1.0 system that was refined for Call of Pripyat. I don't think it's wrong to expect a system that as a least on par with CoP's system. Thought the kicker is, again, it was marketed as A-life 2.0, an even more refined version of CoP's system, which is not what we have here.
Highly agreed and the enemies awareness and accuracy need huge reevaluation, like it’s hard to explain but they’re too aware and not aware enough at the same time, given the scenario 😂😂😂
I´m liking the new changes to A-Life 2.0. A little janky, yes but I play with mods that eliminates aimboting from NPCs and gives me better stealth opportunities. Maklanes Better Gunfights, Maklanes Better Weapons Feeling (changes stats and ballistics for weapons to be more "realistic") and Maklanes Better NPC Range together with long range aggression fix. More fair encounters. The aimboting and long range shots from several hundred meters away is a high priority fix for sure that needs implementing.
@quake9405 alife is in its absolute infancy fight now. At least their making steps forward with draw distance, while simultaneously getting the game to run better.
That's not the issue. The issue is they can see you and laser you. I had an NPC spawn in a rust bucket like this and he kept shooting me, but I couldn't shoot him.
I totally share your sentiment. I'm slowly making my way through the game and loving it, despite the numerous bugs. I overlooked it and kept going because I am having a good time. But I am currently now heading towards End Game and OMG it gets so much worse. The constant crashes, almost endless spawning enemies in full gear with laser accuracy that demolish your gear durability so quickly and bugged quests. I just want to finish the game and then Ill wait till more patches come out then jump back in. A-life has still got a long way to go and there are still so many things missing from the game like night vision
starting to get tired of all this slamming on stalker for a stupid A-life system. That’s the only complaint I’ve heard out of people and they’re acting like it’s ruined their life. Shut up and enjoy the game it’s better than 90% of shit we’ve gotten in the past 4 years
So you're not a fan of the old games. That's cool but people have different expectations. It's hard to get upset about losing something you haven't experienced after all. Personally I don't want another open world fps with a spawn system which is why I haven't bought it. If they get a-life working right it's an instant purchase because it's a fundamental part of what makes the old games so great to me.
I complained a lot about missing A -Life. The patches were enough to make it at least playable, or so I thought. I just cannot get over how awfully bad the combat is. You get very quickly dropped to low health, then you get immunity for few seconds to pop healing meds. It's game'y as hell and making fights with mutants so stupidly boring. They just run to you, drop all your HP, realize you are immune now, run away, you have to heal or you die when the enemy comes back, repeat infinitum. Most boring gameplay loop next to popping energy drinks every 5 seconds while running. What were they thinking??? This is like elementary bad game design.
Exactly. When I played GAMMA I wasn't even interested in or following the main story. I was just enjoying the struggle for survival and it all felt as though my actions had real effects on the world. If I cam across friendlies under attack, I would assist them and move on. In Stalker 2, I can achieve the same thing by simply dumping some of my ammo on the ground, running a little ways off until they all despawn... SAME result. Nothing I did one way or the other affects anything in any way and is just a waste of ammo if you do engage the spawn. This is why I have zero fear of traveling from one side of the zone to the other. All I have to do if I encounter anything is simply sprint a relatively short distance and they disappear. Most of us know there are ways to get into pripyat without advancing the story to that point. With the current system there is absolutely no reason to be scared of going there even if you're in rookie gear. There is simply nothing in the game that is all that threatening with a little running unless you absolutely must "go through" some baddies for some reason. Your demonstration of the exact same scripted baddies respawning at POI's is was good example of why it destroys the immersion. What should happen is that once the original scripted baddies are cleared out, random chance rolls should happen every so often to determine if something has reoccupied the POI and what exactly that something is. Factors like what kind of area it is, a swamp vs an outpost for example, would affect the % chances of various mutants or humans would appear, with something like an outpost being heavily weighted in favor of humans. Being an outpost or a base would affect the number of humans. Anyway, Stalker2 is an early access at best and a complete betrayal of the fanbase at worst.
They have the map, the POIs, the weapons, the NPCs, the mutants, the story, the atmosphere/environment, and some of the scripted stuff is really good, they just need to implement the actual A-life system. At first I figured they were rushed and needed to get it out and that they would follow it up with an update a few months from now, this seems to be the way modern games work. If they're spending dev resources implementing band-aids it makes me concerned that they aren't planning on actually putting A-life in... I like some of the scripted stuff: the poppy anomaly is interesting, the shah's notes about charging people to hide from emissions is interesting, the one setup, the guy who tells you to check a stash and you find a note and when you go to confront him you find another note. That's cool from a story perspective to experience once or twice. But the things that keep us coming back are the exploration and A-life. Also: I'm tired of not being able to see anything. It's constantly storming or foggy or night with particles and leaves cluttering the air, tons of underbrush that only obscures the players view but all NPCs can laser beam through. Some areas look really great, most of the time I'm trudging through thick brush while its storming at night and it's so incredibly annoying. I get the anomalies on the road but they don't seem to move and the fact that there is so much foot traffic from everyone in the zone but no new paths to follow across the land is also cringe. There's no point in following roads because there tends to be tons of anomalies on them, it'd only take a few people bypassing an anomaly to make a path that others would follow.
Thanks for this vid. Too many out there just saying the patch "made things better" when a lot of us want to know the actual state of everything. It bums me out that a lot of people won't get to experience what a-life should be since they'll play the game in it's current state then move on.
Its gonna get there, if not for game devs, the mod-ing community will get it there eventually. Stalker 2 has single handedly saved 2024 from being such an embarrassing year for newly launched AAA games that have mostly gone WOKE. And legend has it,,,, GO WOKE GO BROKE!!!
How interesting you play and showcase the problems at the exact same locations i have tried playing this pos after doing the whole reinstall thing, cause its still faster than the patching process. After that i had to figure out why the shader compiling was getting stuck. Then finally came across this place, cleared it out twice, got the collar off of the soldiers then went on. Honestly i enjoyed the game more before the patch, i cant run 10 steps without encountering enemies now.
I had the same thought of this issue yesterday - too bad they respawn after being wiped out. Ill keep playing Gamma for a while before i jump back in. Sad because i LOVE Stalker 2
@anthonychase6906 I think the big take away here is they've managed to increase encounters, as well as increase draw distance, all without impacting performance. If anything the game runs BETTER. So it's a small victory, but alife is in its absolute infancy right now.
thinking of other open world games i have played, for example, witcher 3 had hand placed spawns everywhere, so you would meet the same enemy each time you returned to that same location. but for one reason or another, it didn't feel as stale as it is in stalker 2. probably because most of it did make sense, you would see bandits at bandit camps, drowners near water etc. but most importantly, probably because witcher is not stalker, where a-life is such an important game defining feature. i think with stalker 2, they could at least have made it so that POIs have multiple possible randomized spawns, after the player had visited the POI for the first time. it's the best compromise i can think of if they can't get 'real' a-life working.
I will never be like the first STALKER, imagine covering 64km² of npc. Xbox serie S has not the ressource, and even hight end cpu would have a hard time. UE5 is not good with AI.
I think it may be able to create the illusion of a-life but I agree that it will never match what the old games did, especially scaled up for the game world they made.
When I see that is my question do they really have a life 2.0 and just put it out because performance to bring it later again in the game or was it a whole lie and they didn’t even developed a life 2.0 because this game was released way to earlier?
@@trashman8080But why they first mean it don’t works because of glitches and now they say it don’t work because they did disable it? Is that not suspicious to say 2 different things?
@@selina0 It's the two things actually, they not only encountered too many glitches but also saw how extremelly performance's sucker is A-Life in a 60+ km² world in a game already baddly optimized, so they disabled it just before the launching. My Theory is that they worked the past month only on optimizing so they could implement the first fraction of the system without making our rigs melting to the ground. Unfortunatelly this game still have a long road ahead.
Very good points, it's ok even important to be critical when you love a game. The devs are listening and already mentioned this was only first a-life 2.0 fix, so hopefully things will improve with time and more patches.
if you spend your time nit picking what YOU think should be happening, just like movie critics that will never enjoy a movie for it being a movie, you are NEVER going to enjoy games. so pick a different hobby/pastime. you complain that bullets pass through a rusty old rotten truck ???? you complain about anomaly beats spawning in an anomaly area, while not know what or why they even exist. give up, because unless a dev explains every single thing to you, you will just see everything as a nit pick.
This guy is one of the few people on youtube taking the time to explain what is and isn't working about a-life in this game with an actual understanding of it. This is a pro-consumer move so quit with the toxic positivity. Just because you don't understand how fundamentally different it is from a generic spawn system doesn't mean those of us who do have to pretend everything is oh so great just so people like you don't get butthurt over valid critique.
yeah man the game has like some real issues i agree but given the circumstances and the constant patches i rly am sure this game is gonna be the best stalker it was the same with cyberpunk everyone was bitching abt a random glitch they saw on a stream and now everyone loves it
I love STALKER. It's my favorite single player FPS franchise. I make these videos out of love. The reason I'm critical is because we were marketed an Alife 2.0 system and instead got a generic spawn system. What we have in the game isn't even on par with the original A-life 1.0 system that was refined for Call of Pripyat. I don't think it's wrong to expect a system that as a least on par with CoP's system. Thought the kicker is, again, it was marketed as A-life 2.0, an even more refined version of CoP's system, which is not what we have here.
I agree it was a promised feature really no excuse
Highly agreed and the enemies awareness and accuracy need huge reevaluation, like it’s hard to explain but they’re too aware and not aware enough at the same time, given the scenario 😂😂😂
I´m liking the new changes to A-Life 2.0. A little janky, yes but I play with mods that eliminates aimboting from NPCs and gives me better stealth opportunities. Maklanes Better Gunfights, Maklanes Better Weapons Feeling (changes stats and ballistics for weapons to be more "realistic") and Maklanes Better NPC Range together with long range aggression fix. More fair encounters. The aimboting and long range shots from several hundred meters away is a high priority fix for sure that needs implementing.
Thought I was going crazy, thanks for explaining. I love this game but god, it would be a better idea to start playing it one year from now.
@quake9405 alife is in its absolute infancy fight now. At least their making steps forward with draw distance, while simultaneously getting the game to run better.
yeah since the patch every battle feels like pain ^^
''how are they shooting through this rig'' it's a 30 yo rusted out truck......a 22 would have passed through it.
That's not the issue. The issue is they can see you and laser you. I had an NPC spawn in a rust bucket like this and he kept shooting me, but I couldn't shoot him.
All 1.1 did was soft lock me out of main quests on 2 different playthroughs
I totally share your sentiment. I'm slowly making my way through the game and loving it, despite the numerous bugs. I overlooked it and kept going because I am having a good time. But I am currently now heading towards End Game and OMG it gets so much worse. The constant crashes, almost endless spawning enemies in full gear with laser accuracy that demolish your gear durability so quickly and bugged quests. I just want to finish the game and then Ill wait till more patches come out then jump back in. A-life has still got a long way to go and there are still so many things missing from the game like night vision
starting to get tired of all this slamming on stalker for a stupid A-life system. That’s the only complaint I’ve heard out of people and they’re acting like it’s ruined their life. Shut up and enjoy the game it’s better than 90% of shit we’ve gotten in the past 4 years
So you're not a fan of the old games. That's cool but people have different expectations. It's hard to get upset about losing something you haven't experienced after all. Personally I don't want another open world fps with a spawn system which is why I haven't bought it. If they get a-life working right it's an instant purchase because it's a fundamental part of what makes the old games so great to me.
Loving your coverage of stalker 2 and the previous games A-Life, not too many people going as in depth as you do, keep em coming and ill keep watchin!
I complained a lot about missing A -Life. The patches were enough to make it at least playable, or so I thought. I just cannot get over how awfully bad the combat is. You get very quickly dropped to low health, then you get immunity for few seconds to pop healing meds. It's game'y as hell and making fights with mutants so stupidly boring. They just run to you, drop all your HP, realize you are immune now, run away, you have to heal or you die when the enemy comes back, repeat infinitum. Most boring gameplay loop next to popping energy drinks every 5 seconds while running. What were they thinking??? This is like elementary bad game design.
Looting is hella boring, too. Game just has no depth at all. 10 hours in and you've seen everything gameplay wise.
Exactly. When I played GAMMA I wasn't even interested in or following the main story. I was just enjoying the struggle for survival and it all felt as though my actions had real effects on the world. If I cam across friendlies under attack, I would assist them and move on. In Stalker 2, I can achieve the same thing by simply dumping some of my ammo on the ground, running a little ways off until they all despawn... SAME result. Nothing I did one way or the other affects anything in any way and is just a waste of ammo if you do engage the spawn.
This is why I have zero fear of traveling from one side of the zone to the other. All I have to do if I encounter anything is simply sprint a relatively short distance and they disappear. Most of us know there are ways to get into pripyat without advancing the story to that point. With the current system there is absolutely no reason to be scared of going there even if you're in rookie gear. There is simply nothing in the game that is all that threatening with a little running unless you absolutely must "go through" some baddies for some reason.
Your demonstration of the exact same scripted baddies respawning at POI's is was good example of why it destroys the immersion. What should happen is that once the original scripted baddies are cleared out, random chance rolls should happen every so often to determine if something has reoccupied the POI and what exactly that something is. Factors like what kind of area it is, a swamp vs an outpost for example, would affect the % chances of various mutants or humans would appear, with something like an outpost being heavily weighted in favor of humans. Being an outpost or a base would affect the number of humans.
Anyway, Stalker2 is an early access at best and a complete betrayal of the fanbase at worst.
They have the map, the POIs, the weapons, the NPCs, the mutants, the story, the atmosphere/environment, and some of the scripted stuff is really good, they just need to implement the actual A-life system. At first I figured they were rushed and needed to get it out and that they would follow it up with an update a few months from now, this seems to be the way modern games work. If they're spending dev resources implementing band-aids it makes me concerned that they aren't planning on actually putting A-life in...
I like some of the scripted stuff: the poppy anomaly is interesting, the shah's notes about charging people to hide from emissions is interesting, the one setup, the guy who tells you to check a stash and you find a note and when you go to confront him you find another note. That's cool from a story perspective to experience once or twice. But the things that keep us coming back are the exploration and A-life.
Also: I'm tired of not being able to see anything. It's constantly storming or foggy or night with particles and leaves cluttering the air, tons of underbrush that only obscures the players view but all NPCs can laser beam through. Some areas look really great, most of the time I'm trudging through thick brush while its storming at night and it's so incredibly annoying. I get the anomalies on the road but they don't seem to move and the fact that there is so much foot traffic from everyone in the zone but no new paths to follow across the land is also cringe. There's no point in following roads because there tends to be tons of anomalies on them, it'd only take a few people bypassing an anomaly to make a path that others would follow.
its a band-aid on a gaping wound
Thanks for this vid. Too many out there just saying the patch "made things better" when a lot of us want to know the actual state of everything. It bums me out that a lot of people won't get to experience what a-life should be since they'll play the game in it's current state then move on.
Its gonna get there, if not for game devs, the mod-ing community will get it there eventually. Stalker 2 has single handedly saved 2024 from being such an embarrassing year for newly launched AAA games that have mostly gone WOKE. And legend has it,,,, GO WOKE GO BROKE!!!
How interesting you play and showcase the problems at the exact same locations i have tried playing this pos after doing the whole reinstall thing, cause its still faster than the patching process. After that i had to figure out why the shader compiling was getting stuck. Then finally came across this place, cleared it out twice, got the collar off of the soldiers then went on. Honestly i enjoyed the game more before the patch, i cant run 10 steps without encountering enemies now.
I had the same thought of this issue yesterday - too bad they respawn after being wiped out.
Ill keep playing Gamma for a while before i jump back in. Sad because i LOVE Stalker 2
Sigma opeth and stalker enjoyers unite, still life supremacy
@ heck yeah! 🇸🇪
Military dudes with RPKs kept shooting me in the head from as far away as I could barely even see them with SVU scope....
Appreciate the video but can we make sure that this gets reported to GSC via support pages to ensure they get this sorted put in futute patches?
did the texture ghosting get worse or am i trippin
They applied first aid but have yet to fully treat the damage
@anthonychase6906 I think the big take away here is they've managed to increase encounters, as well as increase draw distance, all without impacting performance. If anything the game runs BETTER. So it's a small victory, but alife is in its absolute infancy right now.
thinking of other open world games i have played, for example, witcher 3 had hand placed spawns everywhere, so you would meet the same enemy each time you returned to that same location. but for one reason or another, it didn't feel as stale as it is in stalker 2. probably because most of it did make sense, you would see bandits at bandit camps, drowners near water etc. but most importantly, probably because witcher is not stalker, where a-life is such an important game defining feature.
i think with stalker 2, they could at least have made it so that POIs have multiple possible randomized spawns, after the player had visited the POI for the first time. it's the best compromise i can think of if they can't get 'real' a-life working.
I will never be like the first STALKER, imagine covering 64km² of npc. Xbox serie S has not the ressource, and even hight end cpu would have a hard time. UE5 is not good with AI.
Yeah I keep saying it can never have a life & the existing ai is far more crude than in the og games. It won't get fixed, ever.
I think it may be able to create the illusion of a-life but I agree that it will never match what the old games did, especially scaled up for the game world they made.
The respawn of those poltergeist is annoying, there's no sense of permanence that way.
GSC should never have made Stalker 2 an open world in my opinion.
Or used UE5, which I think is honestly the worse decision.
They gave ai ESP, which is why they're so accurate with their grenades.
When I see that is my question do they really have a life 2.0 and just put it out because performance to bring it later again in the game or was it a whole lie and they didn’t even developed a life 2.0 because this game was released way to earlier?
they do have it, but what they got working now is a fraction of what it should have been. The rest is either disabled for performance or broken.
@@trashman8080But why they first mean it don’t works because of glitches and now they say it don’t work because they did disable it? Is that not suspicious to say 2 different things?
@@selina0 It's the two things actually, they not only encountered too many glitches but also saw how extremelly performance's sucker is A-Life in a 60+ km² world in a game already baddly optimized, so they disabled it just before the launching. My Theory is that they worked the past month only on optimizing so they could implement the first fraction of the system without making our rigs melting to the ground. Unfortunatelly this game still have a long road ahead.
0:15 FMJ ?
Very good points, it's ok even important to be critical when you love a game.
The devs are listening and already mentioned this was only first a-life 2.0 fix, so hopefully things will improve with time and more patches.
if you spend your time nit picking what YOU think should be happening, just like movie critics that will never enjoy a movie for it being a movie, you are NEVER going to enjoy games.
so pick a different hobby/pastime.
you complain that bullets pass through a rusty old rotten truck ????
you complain about anomaly beats spawning in an anomaly area, while not know what or why they even exist.
give up, because unless a dev explains every single thing to you, you will just see everything as a nit pick.
True that..we are not game analysts here,we are Gamers
This guy is one of the few people on youtube taking the time to explain what is and isn't working about a-life in this game with an actual understanding of it. This is a pro-consumer move so quit with the toxic positivity. Just because you don't understand how fundamentally different it is from a generic spawn system doesn't mean those of us who do have to pretend everything is oh so great just so people like you don't get butthurt over valid critique.
yeah man the game has like some real issues i agree but given the circumstances and the constant patches i rly am sure this game is gonna be the best stalker it was the same with cyberpunk everyone was bitching abt a random glitch they saw on a stream and now everyone loves it
plus cyberpunk took ALOT longer to fix up, there were no "useful" patches for what felt like a year or more with that game
Would it be so hard to say the game is early access? This game offers less in terms of gameplay than Call of Pripyat let alone mods like GAMMA 😂
looks like normal stalker to me