Stalker 2's Best Feature Also Became It's Biggest Problem

[@Eridium2]

Personally I'm enjoying the game but the news specifcally about A-life 2.0 and the reasons as to why it's been disabled now make total sense. Let me know what you think below. (JUST TO CLARIFY : I meant to say your game's view distance when I was talking about how they limit the events and spawning.)

[@slavplaysgames]

I love the game and now w patches much more decent but i completely disagree with this new corporate technique of releasing unfinished broken games then updating them ... im 33 so for me this is very very annoying , disrespectful and much more towards people who put bread on these people's tables also the fact we don't even own our games and if steam or xbox or gog servers go down ... f you and your thousands of dollars you spent on games or whatever amount ...

[@Hitperson]

to me it sounds like it's a UE5 issue with how many resources are used by the CPU to manage NPC's i wonder if it needs an engine update from Epic?

[@Anglo-Brit]

I wont be playing until they finish the game

[@Hadgerz]

@@Anglo-Brit i'll be playing the sht out of it on gamepass while it's available there. But yes i won't buy it until it's finished for sure.

[@cyrexarcfire]

AI calculations can be incredibly taxing on the CPU - games like Dwarf Fortress barely have graphics at all and still begin chugging when it simulates too many NPCs. The more frustrating aspect to me is that the AI currently calls out every move - grenade, taking cover, etc. and mutants (dogs/boars/psidogs/etc) take cover just like humans.. Fun fact - the AI in the original games would recognize if you hadn't noticed them yet and actively sneak up on you. No voice lines, just the sound of a double barrel unloading near point-blank into your back or immediately open fire the moment you turn around. I'm really looking forward to 2.0.

[@andrew2272kag]

For such an immersive game, the spawning really ruins it. The amount of times I have completely cleared out an area, been wondering round, turn round and no-one is behind me, turn back round and walk a couple meters, suddenly an entire bandit squad has spawned in the compound behind me, immediately detects me and starts beaming me with laser accuracy. It's not that the fights are hard, it just pulls you so hard out the experience.

[@Eridium2]

It's a little wonky for sure. The lasers that the enemies have does feel like classic stalker though as annoying as that might be for my experience lol. Thankfully mods do make the experience much better but not everyone is gonna be able to properly tailor their experience with it.

[@StodgyAyatollah]

That sucks because it's the complete opposite of how the old games were. I feel bad that this is the first impression people get of Stalker.

[@slavplaysgames]

@@andrew2272kag true and rendering in distance and things popping on my screen breaks immersion too

[@garushkahn5857]

its much better since the last big patch but holy boy.. the need to fix the fkn AIM from the npcs... no way i get sprayd away with shotguns in sniper distanz... at night within a heavy rainy storm

[@THEJimmiChanga]

ALIFE = NPC's loot bodies (if you're too late to a body, to bad, someone else looted it), hunt mutants, artifact hunt, capture/defend POI's, factions fight in the open with each other warring for territory, and ultimately have tasks. You might meet an NPC in the rookie village in the older games, and then run into them them artifact hunting much later in the game in yanov . There's so many times you'll accept a quest to kill a group of bandits or mutants, just to have it complete before you even get to the area due to a group of stalkers organically happening upon them and doing the job for you. None of this happens in Stalker 2

[@Radwalls]

I think the bottom line is the game is really fun. Extremely immersive. There are some spawning bugs and performances problems, but they are patching it really fast and I really believe the devs can do this. They've been through hell and also created a huge game, so obviously problems are gonna arise. I can't stop playing this game... it's beautiful.

[@alpsalish]

I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

[@RacingHermit]

I wouldn't call enemies spawning directly behind me, where I just was.Or enemies that I just killed two minutes prior respawing in front of me. As being extremely immersive but ok. Great atmosphere, yes, definitely. Extremely immersive.... That's pushing it.

[@skeletor8782]

It’s not just atmosphere though. The sound design is really good too and so are the graphics. That’s what makes it so immersive. The combination of all three atmosphere,sound design, and graphics. The rain hitting the roof of a building you’re inside of. The echos from people talking indoors or in caves. The sound of your clip hitting the ground when you reload. The echos of gunfire. Anomaly nosies. The way people talk when they have gas mask on and more. It’s a super immersive game. But 100% the spawning enemies weaken the immersion. Ukrainian voice acting is also the way to go. The English dub ruins a lot of the vibe and feeling because they usually say things in the wrong tone

[@Elgallo1107]

Did you play the old games? Because I’ve found people who say this usually didn’t. Don’t get me wrong the game has amazing bones. The atmosphere is amazing, the sound design, the gunplay, the cutscenes, and they’ve stayed faithful to the originals. However at the moment this plays like a typical Bethesda game because of the lack of features that made stalker extremely unique so if you are a veteran player it’s hard to enjoy knowing how much better it could be

[@Vynne96-jg7er]

There's no bugs. Only anomalies. Keep that in mind Stalker.

[@skeletor8782]

I honestly wish they would just nurf the Aiming for npc’s a little. Especially the zombies. There’s no reason zombies should be aiming that good. Regular enemies too. Their aim is just impeccable and they can see through everything

[@Desalater2]

lean out from behind a doorway and bam im taking damage, whats the point of lean if i still get shot in the face as soon as i stick my head out

[@Mr.Warbot]

Maybe the zombies aim actually is better BECAUSE of zombieness

[@esmolol4091]

All enemies use wallhack and aimbot, I would even assume, RAGEHACK. If they look in a different direction and you are behind a wall, they don't do much, but the very moment, YOU can see them, they do a 360 no scope. It's ridiculous.

[@chromaticturtle8657]

Zombies were/are controlled by C-conciousness like monolith so makes sense zombies can hit their targets better than storm troopers .......tell me you haven't played the OG's without telling me tourist

[@esmolol4091]

@@chromaticturtle8657 If thats the case they should pre aim, but they don't.

[@Jetiko27]

The performance issues are due to Unreal 5. Lumen is always on and is very taxing. It's basically raytracing on at all times, even if it's "faster" it's still technically ray tracing, so inevitably heavy on performance AND jittery. See if you notice light on surfaces being noisy and splothcy, moving. That's Lumen.

[@Eridium2]

Yeah I figured. Most of that tech is really cool and graphically beautiful but it's also just a pain when the cuts down on performance

[@themurderofcoke]

God is that why Metro Exodus looks like bugs on the wall when you turn RT on?

[@StodgyAyatollah]

In the originals a-life was divided in two systems they called online and offline. The first is for the radius around the player where models need to be rendered and such. Offline was for the rest of the world where less was needed. From what I understand the "offline" system was either taken out or simply doesn't exist. They apparently threw in a seperate combat director system that conflicts with a-life. Stuff didn't spawn in randomly in the old ones.

[@artiomsepeli1200]

Agreed, you could see NPCs on the PDA in the regions, you could see NPCs from far away, or hearing stuff happening around you, felt more immersive and alive. Here it's just the game deciding to spawn enemies in some points of interest and sometimes in your close proximity when you roam. But most of the time you'd be walking in an empty world. I understand probably if this feature was fully developed and enabled it would be an even more of a monster devouring the PC resources than it is now.

[@Eridium2]

Interesting

[@StodgyAyatollah]

@@artiomsepeli1200 Yes. There is no way Unreal Engine could handle a true A-life system. Even with it's problems the X-Ray engine is still a huge step above UE in that regard. Dynamic spawns is best this game will ever get and that means it is not a true Stalker. Just fan service sadly.

[@oles3496]

​@@StodgyAyatollah > it is not a true Stalker don't be ridiculous

[@GPanglah]

@@oles3496i mean tell me where hes wrong. The whole point of stalker is to never understand whats going on around you unless you pick up on npcs interactions with you. I get you but, its not the same

[@jamesdi7261]

How I understand that piece of information from the devs, the A-Life 2 is actually enabled, but the area around the player is very shrunk to make it consume less CPU... Until they optimize the algorithms.

[@JG-jz3wh]

Ye

[@nahfuck7080]

it ain't a life 2 it's a life 0.1

[@SeamusCameron]

Several chunks of it are actually disabled as well. If my understanding of the code is correct there should be actual traveling and movement done by npcs but those are non- functional currently. It's not supposed to be just scripted spawns.

[@pretol1]

The idea of A-life is that all creatures continue existing REGARDLESS of whether they're in your view or not... They shouldn't despawn/spawn locally. All entities are supposed to run in detailed simulation in proximity to the player, and switch to simplified simulation when far. All living things are supposed to spawn/despawn on a much larger scale (not just in your view).

[@jamesdi7261]

@pretol1 and it's how it works now, just a little bit buggy

[@maikbaumann1250]

i will never understand why people even use exploides to get the best gear. for me i love getting better upgrades over time. why should i be happy finding a armor if i already have one of the best in the game? it only takes fun away

[@skeletor8782]

Same with money glitches. I don’t understand it at all. Just ruining your experience completely but some people want to play like that

[@frenekel]

@@skeletor8782 Before the update the game economy was more than broken and it would´ve taken you forever to get your gear upgraded, if you managed at all cause the maintenance and repair cost where also high, 10k just to repair the starter suit when you only got 500-800 roubles per quest? That took quite some time so i can understand why some players did it. And as a side note: i assume they made the economy intentionally bad to slow players down and keep them in the starting areas for longer so they had more time to fix the later half of the game and iron out the issues there, same as they disabled the a-life for performance reasons, but thats just my two cents

[@Elmithian]

And shooting the chimera 35 times point blank in the head with armor piercing shotgun setup isn't stupid either? Seriously, the health economy in the game sucks right now. Well, that and the insanely awful spawning issue. I was in a base that just kept re-spawning the same dudes again and again within minutes of me taking care of them. I am not one for exploits. I don't do unintended glitches or money glitches in STALKER 2. But what I don't mind to do, is speaking with some friends about stashes they have found when playing. But I have done the other stuff in other games and... it didn't rob me of my fun in the least. In fact, it made me start to go for challenge runs later on in those games.

[@mr.pumpkin8891]

its a single player game, u play the way u want to

[@frenekel]

@@Elmithian Well the mutants sure took way too much damage, but to maybe help you for the next encounter: the ap rounds are the ones more effective on enemy stalkers, using them against the mutants gives you a damage disadvantage in this case. Use the normal or the expanding ones for mutants, and the rest for stalkers, especially the flat ones when you´re at range^^

[@jonahh4027]

You’re in a supposed-to-be main quest locked bunker/area lmao. It opens up after a specific main quest and i just nabbed this armor, pretty sick

[@FatalFist]

I was out that way when an Emission Storm arrived and I was told to get into that Bunker I wasn’t even at SIRCCA 😭

[@Eridium2]

Welp damn that makes sense LOL

[@mr.puddles5246]

They need to add weapon jams to enemies and randomized npc accuracy skill levels.

[@JackDerr]

I have stalker 2 on game pass. I also purchased the disc to support the devs. Because it's a amazing game even without alife

[@RacingHermit]

It a game that could be amazing. They couldn't even give a decent stand in for A life. Enemy spawns and aggro is currently broken.

[@sneddyp0117]

@@RacingHermitbad take

[@Hadgerz]

@@RacingHermit it's stupid easy to mod, just drag and drop the A Life Extended mod and the issue is fixed smh

[@nahfuck7080]

it ain't stalker without a life

[@nahfuck7080]

​@@Hadgerzit's not there are no offline a life literally what makes it a life

[@Adam_James-90]

UE5 was a mistake its not optimized for mid-lower spec PC's

[@Eridium2]

I think it's just the newer tech that's just badly optimized for the mid and lower end PCs. Too much is going on for the cost of some major graphical touches just seems more like diminishing returns as I mentioned in the video.

[@SamuTheFrog]

The issue isnt the engine, i can get triple the performance out of UE5 if I simply use screen space lighting instead of lumen, and classic LOD's instead of nanite. Etc. Turn off the volumetric clouds. Etc. Ue5 is comfortable with pushing super experimental tech THAT'S the problem, and devs are too happy to use them.

[@garnmornelilith6591]

A life is rather hyper active at the moment. The number of times I have gotten into a fight with bandits only to have more bandits spawn before I finished the previous ones and then more do the same.

[@streetcrawler]

I've seen mutants and bandits spawn right in front of me. The system is totally broken.

[@sparhawk1228]

The updated A Life/spawn system is worse now. Enemies respawn so quickly, often I do not have time to finish looting the last enemies I killed when a new group of enemies spawns. Also can't clear a lot of locations of enemies. Because they keep spawning in. Have to repair my gear three times more often compared to the launch version of the game. That update 1.1 really messed up the spawn system.

[@MrMastrmonstr]

A life is there its just neutered

[@bluecalx40]

@@MrMastrmonstr this is correct.

[@randymcneely4983]

In other words, GSC made a promise they have yet, and may never, deliver on.

[@PhilipCockram]

There's one inside the of the Cooling tower complex , big building on the left , or you can just buy it in Pripyat .

[@sajmon2771]

Lack of keycard is due to bunker being a story locked location, you werent supposed to climb up there, main door would unlock. (I hope they wont block it tho, its neat.)

[@Gr1mPenguin]

I doubt they will, but then you can also get early into pripjat, there's another diamond and on route you can also grab a 100% Kharod

[@Eridium2]

I just think it's insane I was able to get in from the top hatch. Most other bunkers prevent you from doing that off rip

[@sajmon2771]

bunker on the wild island is climbable, but only because of the stair railings, and it is useless to do so. And the hatch was actually closed, at least for me.

[@lelilimon]

One thing I learned from gaming - never put boxes in corners.

[@Eridium2]

LMAO biggest mistake I've had to learn.

[@Rockport1911]

One one side its nice that the game has good mod support. On the other side I believe the devs could have implemented the mods for better spawning ( no real A-Life but bandaids like exist now) and balancing themselfs if they had just a few more days and a playtests with real players. But they wanted to rush it out the door. Also its hard to belief that they can put A-Life in while older Stalker titles had it and many OpenWorld games can spawn alot of NPC´s around you that seemingly have a routine... I enjoy my free copy with about 20 mods as it is. When all the patches/ fixes and DLC released we can talk about spending money...

[@Eridium2]

Yeah that makes sense. Best part of stalker 2 is that it's on the game pass too. So a 12 dollar trial run also doesn't seem bad unless you don't want to spend the 12 dollars either.

[@spazzticzeal6238]

A couple of things here. A life in the original SOC release was not working correctly either. As the sequels came out it progressed and got better. Mods brought it to a whole nother level...

[@bohdanbodnar3621]

With a mod that allows to mantle a bit higher than the player's knee you won't need that box.

[@taylorp3685]

4090s aren’t struggling. The game doesn’t require a lot of gpu power, the cpu holds it back 99% of the time. Frame generation in this game is arguably the best implementation that’s ever been done with frame generation. It works so well and is absolutely necessary to aid the CPU and allow the GPU to stretch its legs. One caveat is that as of right now, frame generation has a VRAM leak and eventually crawls up till the legs or becomes unplayable. This can be easily replicated on epic settings in a hub such as Rostok. Just go into one of the vendors open up your PDA a couple times then open up there menu and scroll through. Buy some stuff close that menu and open up your PDA. You will quickly see the system run out of VRAM and become unstable. It only happens with frame generation on. And yes, you can play for hours in the game without this issue occurring but if you have missions and you have to keep returning to hubs, it will quickly happen. But I seriously believe frame generation and upscaling in this game is necessary and it does a very good job to allow the GPU to carry some weight of the CPU. I played about 60 hours of this game on epic settings with a 4080 laptop at 1600 P, the game ran phenomenally even in hubs and looked exceptional. I only recently reduced it to high settings with a few setting still on epic just to reduce the amount of VRAM The system is using because even with 12 gigs of ram some of the later game locations really smack the vram as you enter an exit them and talk to npcs. The frame rate barely changed at all if at all when dropping too high settings because most of the graphic settings require the GPU, but the GPU was hardly being utilized in the first place. I really don’t know how they will get A- life working in this considering how much CPU performance we already need.

[@009013M3]

Exactly. I have it running at 55-60fps on a GTX 1080 right now at 1440P with most settings at or near maximum because the audio processing rig I do my gaming on has a water cooled i7-13700K processor and 64gb of ultra low latency DDR5 RAM. I usually run it at 1080P because there are some spots where it chugs inexplicably for a minute, and I don't like having that happen right as a pack of bandits are spawning up my ass because I had teh audacity to turn my back on a warehouse after exploring it thoroughly.

[@spazzticzeal6238]

Havent noticed it at all in many extended play sessions. 8 gb vram cards are struggling for sure though, luckily i have 16

[@spazzticzeal6238]

EDIT I have a 7800xt 16gb vram so that might help a bit.

[@GPanglah]

So everybody who doesnt own a 40 series should get the shaft??? I mean come one

[@taylorp3685]

@@GPanglah how did you come to that conclusion? Fsr frame Gen is compatible with every card.

[@davesmith1588]

Wonder if you can open that door with the decoder you get later in the main quest?

[@paull4079]

Been around since first game. They should use ai 1.0 until they can get 2.0 fixed

[@walmartian422]

??? These aren't fixed systems calling things A Life 1.0 and 2.0 are marketing tactics. Right now in unreal engine 5 there is no A life system that either actually exists or is functioning on any competent level. A life 1.0 was created for X Ray engine which is what the old games are based on. This is the first stalker in Unreal and they can't get it working right now in Unreal.

[@GPanglah]

@@walmartian422i see zero point in this comment. Yes the dev team did the best they could with UE. But, they didnt have to use UE.... great dev team. But, interesting choice of an engine with such a hardcore playerbase

[@Hexenkind1]

Just hope they are able to fix it. Also Unreal Engine on Stalker 2 isn't the latest version and the newest one seems to be better performance in general. So maybe they could update the engine at some point to make it run better. I also hope AMD gets us better cards soon that are also not that taxing in terms of money. We expect new hardware on that in january. So you can approach this issue from different angles.

[@K4IICHI]

I remember playing the OG Shadow of Chernobyl 1.0 when it came out, before any patches for it, and I swear to god, it wasn't nearly as buggy as S2 is even with the latest patches. This game is severely undercooked. My only hope is that it takes the Cyberpunk route and has a long redemption arc, at least technically, given that the story is not something they are likely to fix at this point.

[@Eridium2]

Yeah seems like we're getting more of that these days which is a shame. Thankfully I decided to try it out on the game pass before making a decision of keeping it or just skipping the game.

[@idlenavigator4980]

I love the game but for some reason during my playthrough i've not encountered much random AI, i've literally spent hours not interacting with anyone/anything except for the main quest characters and traders.

[@YaToGamiKuro]

Modern games have this unwritten rule: BEAUTIFUL GRAPHIC with Poor Performance and limited feature or Normal 2016 graphic with High performance and various feature

[@Turin_Inquisitor]

spawning bubble. carried by the player. just like in any Bethesda game. A-Life 2.0 will take another 2 years.

[@itt2055]

There has always been a problem with games coming out that are beyond the capabilities of the best PCs. As someone who started gaming with space invaders, I have experienced this for decades. Personally, I always run games at the lowest graphics settings possible because performance is greater than having the grass look good. The whole point of gaming is to have fun because if you are not having fun, you are playing the game wrong. Graphics, storyline and difficulty don't truly matter because having fun is the only thing in life and gaming that actually matters.

[@chomskysfavefive]

Way I see it, it gives me something to look forward to when I inevitably upgrade lol playing games again at insane frame rates when you used to struggle getting a stable 60 is one of the best long-term perks of PC gaming for me.

[@itt2055]

​@chomskysfavefive One of the most enjoyable things is getting a better computer, I will spend hours setting it up to get better performance. I only really care about getting a solid 60fps. Sometimes, I have to set the frame rate cap to more just so it stays above 60 but setting up a new computer is a game in itself.

[@kalenics123]

This is a full price early access game at this point, too many features, balancing and optimization are missing.

[@bamboonium1822]

I'm still enjoying the game, but I do agree with others that releasing a game with this many bugs is unacceptable. It’s frustrating to see so many games launch with major issues (whether game-breaking or just annoying) and then get patched weeks after release. It feels like a 'week one' or 'major patch' is becoming standard, just to make the game playable. I really wish publishers would give developers an extra month or two beyond the target release date to properly polish the game, so it feels like a finished product, not a rushed one.

[@kazikazi2285]

I can pick up a dead body but not a wooden box? Bit weird isn‘t it?

[@Mish_Age]

Anyone who did the arena quest, where you need to kill chimera? Don’t you think that HP pull is just ridiculous? I literally shot 150 bullets in it’s head to kill this thing. First try couldn’t kill it even with all the 210 bullets provided for the stock Khador. Not every shot was in the head, some of them missed due to chimera’s speed and evasiveness. And this is with the Grok’s mod, which I set up to reduce it’s hp -20%. Was able to land only headshots, cause chimera bugged behind the wall with it’s head being exposed.

[@walmartian422]

When I played Tekken 8 I thought Unreal 5 was amazing. It was only after all of these newer more demanding games started coming out where I see how limited Unreal 5 is. This game is just missing everything that made the older games good right now. Gotta give it a break until the game is fixed.

[@soulsynthesiscreations]

Patiently waiting for anomaly and expeditions 2.0

[@Thor_Asgard_]

The Game is NOT CPU limited, everything these days is just badly optimized for multicore, thats why its CPU limited. My 7800x3d is at 25% when playing Stalker 2... But its not like we didnt know that every new game is badly optimized.

[@grimey5.565]

I'm tired of being spawned upon everywhere I go in groups of over a dozen. I'm starting to hate the game. The patches just seem to make it worse.

[@theknightjester]

This game … is a 7/10 with an extra point for a solid 8 given the circumstances the devs had to balance with. Im not saying its a bad game, but the fans pushing GOTY are delusional

[@BonzerMrT]

Until every quest is bug free, this game has hit a hard 6/10. I love this game a ton and it’s super immersive and I’m having a lot of fun with almost everything. But I’ve been bugged out of two quest and being that I’m on Xbox I can use any mods or commands to get past some things being that I’m 48 hours in, I’m really reluctant to start an entire new playthrough. Yes I’m having fun but that doesn’t mean I wanna start from scratch

[@GPanglah]

Im feeling the same. Very very immersive in some aspects the gunfights can be fun. But, the spawning is rough af. A lot of events do not feel like stalker. Rather, call of duty campaign.

[@FatalFist]

It the engine’s fault, I hate the UE5 engine 😞

[@jonesdan85]

I'm a huge Stalker fan but I was burned by tge 8 year wait for Cy around for it to be released terribly. I giving this game time to be polished and once it's reduced in price, will be purchasing.

[@tiberius8390]

Hmh, with optimizations I believe people expect it to run soo much better in 1 year, than now. But optimization often means dumping down and compromising on graphics or code and make it more light on the GPU/CPU. Best case you don't notice, worst case it breaks everything or makes graphics ugly. I get their issue with ALife2.0. The game eats a lot of CPU power on all cores. If you now have to dynamically simulate faction wars in the background on a sophisticated level it might get ugly performance-wise. Or it needs to be dumped down to just be a RNG numbers game in the background and clean up the spawns when you get close.

[@BensSistersUndies]

The rng is the problem the games deciding your fate the ai is absolutely terrible to boot example i went in to a small house for shelter from the storm 1 npc sat in there he was talking to himself repeating the same line " haha funny guys let me tell you one" also i died to the emission storm and he was okay still talking to himself. The ai rarely interacts with you half the time its like youre not there unless theyre agro. The old stalker ai is vastly superior vs this pile of poo 💩 if they could bring that to the game it would be a great game without it its just a good story to play through.

[@lillysdad412]

Bugs and all have not stopped me from putting 90hr in already.

[@furiousfelicia5751]

People busting their asses haling boxes from Yaniv to the bunker trying to get up and in. The main story will get you there legit.

[@spazzticzeal6238]

lol😂

[@oBseSsIoNPC]

Well, that is the disadvantage of using a premade engine like UNREAL ENGINE 5. You are very limited with other features that your own tailored engine CAN DO. That is why the 64bit X-ray engine will still be superior in Anomaly and gamma, because it supports great graphics and the features the game is supposed to have. Game engines are just so crucial!

[@cbixby8335]

Domt really see the point of a suppressor theres no stealth , NPCs got eagles eyes with xray vision and john wick accuracy

[@SlashKyubi]

I'm fed up how bad the fast travel is in this game.

[@skitkjell85]

I'll just go ahead and assume that the reason you found no keycard is because the bunker is related to some quest later on, so... yeah.

[@Eridium2]

Most likely.

[@saithvenomdrone]

I am tired of games looking slightly better at a massive cost to performance and stability.

[@Dr.Do0m]

my biggest issue still that got worse in 1.0.3 is that if u just trade or go near a trader my fps goes below 1 and if um alt tabbed when it happens my pc crashes 100% of the time. and this is after beating the game on veteran that took me like 70 hours

[@Eridium2]

Yeah like I mentioned in the video. The video I saw referenced that the NPCs are all limited by your CPU so if you wonder why it drops down it's cause it has to work and enable all the logic and whatever else it needs.

[@CrniWuk]

Stalker 2s A-Life 2.0 is more like 0.5. It has even LESS featurs than previous Stalker games.

[@epicmickey2351]

Should I turn off Frame Gen to prevent crashes?

[@Eridium2]

If you're mostly getting crashes from frame gen specifically then I'd say so. Only down side is framerate performance.

[@spazzticzeal6238]

how much vram you have? I havent had any problems with it on. 7800xt 16gb vram.

[@ALiberalVeteran]

Wait till he finds out he can't sprint in the suit

[@Eridium2]

11:11 Uhhhh what? I definitely can. That upgrade definitely says "Sprint" LOL

[@williamrice71]

If they could cut down the amount of NPCs dramatically alot of us would take the the proper A-life even if the zone is more empty...

[@GPanglah]

How would that make anything better?? Thats not stalker gameplay. Creating a more empty space creates a worse immersion

[@williamrice71]

@@GPanglah well there aren't supposed to be thousands of people in the zone...its supposed to be far less populated then most places...its just the most extreme mercenaries and oppertunist that even dare to live and exist there etc... There would still be enough npc's and you would run into them here and there would be times when its lonely also...Lots of npcs can help immersion they can also distract from it. One example is there is to many stalkers in the rookie camps at start of the game, It drains resources and slows down fps but the stalkers don't do anything, they are just static set-pieces draining resources... If they could cut the npcs by even half that would free up alot of resources. Yes iv'e played through the OG games.

[@Cerberus0076]

Where on the map is that Diamond suit to be found pls 🤔

[@Eridium2]

To the left of yaniv station on the map. If you're facing forward right outside the station take a left and you'll see the bunker in the field.

[@Cerberus0076]

@Eridium2 Thank you so much Mate 🙏 Im actually at Wild island Main quest Line. Is it possible to go there "just like that"? Or are enemys significant harder to fight, that Area you mentioned? Is that east from Garbage 🤔 Or up North towards fire tornado? Thx for the advice,and greetings from Austria 🙃

[@Punisher8300]

that exo suit isnt even worth it because you cant sprint in it, or even upgrade it to make it sprint. theres a better exo towards one of the ending story mission that you can get and you can upgrade it to be able to sprint

[@Eridium2]

I upgraded the exo suit in the video to make it so I can run. Probably the best early game one I found. It cost an arm and a leg but any exosuit you come across CAN be upgrade to sprint you just need to go to the right vendor. The vendor I went to was in Yaniv station.

[@serhii3194]

I think U5 is a cancer of modern games. Despite juicy photogrammetry it is really pushing NVIDIA stocks up and just eating out all PC resources. A-Live was ok when in-house X-Ray engine, and now all gameplay sensitive things being limited in resources just U5 to produce hyped “graphonium”

[@spazzticzeal6238]

A life was NOT working when SOC released.... i

[@roki977]

Imagine that huge map with all that AI doing its thing all the time. Zone in old Stalker games was segmented and there was loading between areas in the Zone.. Maybe they needed to do the same with this game to get much better AI but than loading would become new/old problem. I have this suite in my stash and after 50 hours i still havnt use it :)

[@Roman-tu3vh]

Game don't let you do free roam after you finish main story, i didn't knew that and i left couple of side quests hanging till later and now i little bit bummed about that.

[@Eridium2]

Oh that's kinda dissapointing. Thankfully I'm just taking my time with the game.

[@Pryvyd9]

I tried to get the suit yesterday but it wasn't there

[@aaronsmith4940]

How do you get the suit naturally ?

[@Eridium2]

I don't think you can. (at least that I know of) Since there's no way to properly get into the bunker unless you do that glitch. But again I'm not sure tbh.

[@downestfoo5613]

This “game” CAN be fun but is not. Ive noticed only neckbeards say its great and perfect. The whole npc and mutant designs is a actual joke a high schooler could do better for a project come on. If their gonna make a shitty game atleast make it 10$ or free. Theres countless amount of issues. COUNTLESS everything with this game is wrong. Enemies and mutants keep spawning around me out of nowhere. And you can be 150-200 meters away and theyll magically see you then teleport to you. Another thing i cant stand is how the entire map just consists of 2 ft puddles you cant walk through. This game is not ready its still in testing mode. I would be anything that even gta 6 right now would work way better would atleast be fun even with bugs. This game is just sad putting hours and hours to run into a bug that ruins all the missions or stops you from progression. They need to just make it free or take it down till it’s actually ready

[@Xweapon9099]

Basically they cant make the game different from console version A-life 2.0 is very possible on PC only. They will NEVER get anything near even A-life 1.0 on a console. My bet is they are just stalling for time to be able to release the mod kit for PC and for console players to move on. Its silly to think they will get it to work especially keeping the game open world just not possible even if it is "optimized" game didnt have enough time + they needed to release something functional for xbox

[@williamrice71]

Let's hope...and let's hope the modders can take what's there and fix it or recreate something similar to the original a-life system from stalker

[@lagfx9]

Stalker 2 made me hate modern gaming even more! don't get me wrong! I preordered the game for more than 6 months and it's exactly what I wanted to be in a Stalker game! but man that Temporal AA, super resolution, frame gen, shimmering, edge ghosting, even lumen and nanite is just so bad. nothing is better than the old gaming where the image is very crisp and clear with no bullshit upscaling, just straight up MSAA and really good rendering! the dynamic lighting in old games were beautiful and not this flickery lighting and what not. I understand it's easier for devs to use lumen and nanite just to no waste time in making baked lights, and optimizing LODs and stuff. it's straightforward to just depent on on those techs to get real time rendering. the issue is you have use aboslutely maximum setting if you want a stable image. it's not just a Stalker game, but really modern gaming since 2015 or something. the devs should really put consedirable time in optimizing everything. other than that Stalker 2 is amazing! already spent 80 hours, all it needs is A-life at 100% capacity and performance and we will be eating real good in the Zone.

[@Eridium2]

Yeah it's rough. I'm loving the game but jesus the way that UE5 has it's issues it's a turn off to play most games using that specific engine.

[@bumbaclotannihilator8814]

Bruh , I have no clue why the craze is push graphics to the max. Like I'd love to play with a performance mode that dulls the graphics down but still allows for a life cause right now. The npcs are just braindead zombies with guns.

[@Herne0011]

Ahhh you found the diamond suit eh? Nice work. As much as I would like A Life - I would rather a game that runs much more. Sooner or later it will be done. Still not sorry about paying full retail and I would do it again even knowing what I now know. Other developers I would hang out to dry - these guys are the exception to the rule for me.

[@MrMastrmonstr]

Same

[@n3rdworldproblemz877]

As a game dev I love this. We don't have to worry you'll still pay. Ty ty. Maybe qa should worry I don't think we need them to get your money. 🙏🏾

[@Gr1mPenguin]

@@n3rdworldproblemz877 He just said it's an exception, lol

[@Eridium2]

Understandable! It always comes down to choice of support or not with devs at the end of the day.

[@allanriley1883]

Only down side of the Diamond is you cant run

[@pretol1]

you can upgrade it to run capability.... The other negative is that it costs A LOT of money to repair it (vs other suits)...

[@simonb1846]

I just feel like they should have cooked it for another year, they essentially just snuck an early access on us. Now im gonna play the story in jank and then again without jank but less of an experience. But on the otherhand i really want them to succeed and if this is what they had to to do then so be it.

[@53ns3i]

My first 20 mins into the game i could tell Alife was fked. Especially the spawn in replacement, being a dead giveaway and also, that it is massively shit. But yeah overall, it runs 100% on my rig, its top of the line, but only runs well, for like 40mins. The i gotta restart. So its most def the game. Even with just 16g of ram it should be hundreds. Alife is what makes Stalker, it shouldve been at the top of list for conpany.

[@009013M3]

Oof. I dunnow, man. We're getting to the point where 16gb is baseline starting point for a business class laptop. And not even for CAD/CAM or audio/video production, I'm talking like Outlook and Teams running in the background, an idling VOIP client running on a Chromium based cloud install, a few browser tabs for cloud based CRM and finance software, and some light to moderate Excel spreadsheets with lightweight data analytics plugins running.

[@lozerisdead999]

I would love for the game to have utilized its old engine or say, cry-engine over UE5 for similar visual fidelity but an actual functioning A-Life system. I’d rather it look like Stalker Gamma Than what it does now if i could get a functional stable game.

[@TheDwarfishjoe]

Even if A-Life 2.0 comes to "life," it's still a pale comparison to whats expected, I dunno whats worse with modern gaming today... the overuse of ridiculously unoptomised graphic styles that are supposed to be next-gen but end up looking and running like dogshit or the releasing of full priced broken games.

[@Alex-sl9dc]

Since when is GsC a triple A company?

[@graved1gger]

it's a main story bunker and a story armor...

[@aaronmince]

I mean its enabled and disable. The npc a life enables when you get in range a life is in offline when you arent in range then turns on when youre near.... IT EXPLAINS THE DEFEND THE LESSER ZONE TOWN GLITCHES OUT AND MONOLILTH TRAVELS TO THE SAFE HOUSE..... WHYYYYYYYY Anyways i still lovethis game f me up stalker

[@Raylik]

I am not the tech guy, but it's always interesting to me, Stalker 2 runs perfectly on consoles, which is weaker than some PC, but even the strongest computers have problems with running the game. Just how?

[@spazzticzeal6238]

It's not though plenty of people like me aren't having issues. I have had one crash in 65 hours. One. I think a few things are critical though, more than 8 gb vram (preferably 16), 32 gb ram are really a must from what I have noticed.

[@AlexZaglushaka]

A-life is sophisticated, understandable. But why is CPU intensive if RDR2 has similar complex AI system and works perfectly on past gen? Can someone explain this to me? What is the notable difference between A-life and Rdr2 NPC’s AI ?

[@williamrice71]

Red Dead 2 doesn't simulate NPC movement and combat in the background ....

[@AlexZaglushaka]

@ hard to understand what exactly stalker simulates, I played only first game in 2007 at release and can’t remember what was it like. And now playing Stalker 2. But in Rdr 2 I saw every npc has it own daily schedule, random encounters etc, and in big city like Saint Denis there’s ALOT of them and no problems with CPU.

[@williamrice71]

@AlexZaglushaka the random encounters were spawned...but the NPCs did indeed have their own schedules in rd2 and such but with the original stalker games the NPCs would around the whole game map and transition to other levels and go into *offline mode* and would enter Into a simplified simulation state then when NPCs were in close radius to the player they would go into online mode which would have a more sophisticated set of simulations.

[@AlexZaglushaka]

@ wow, didn’t know about whole map simulations. I thought that in the previous parts, the system was simpler, like NPCs spawned randomly and went about their business, such as patrolling within 300-500 meters from the player, no more. So, I hope GSC will implement such cool system in nearest future as it was is previous games

[@Eriktheinventor]

My PC was good 5 years ago. I cant run this game on low and get any better than 7fps. I returned the game.

[@GPanglah]

I appreciate your love for the game, franchise, and devs. But, certainly their fixes should be focused around the "a-life" emulation. I have nothing but respect for the dev team. But, its very very rough when i am 1v3ing bloodsuckers. Just for a random squad spawns behind me and ruins me. I understand the limitations. I see the potential. But, my first playthrough has been running me dry. Im not even past trying to clear monoliths out of the underground hatch....

[@rpgmafia8363]

in this game you need the 32 gb ram to support the cpu, doesnt matter how good the cpu is.

[@Eridium2]

Wait what? So that's probably why my PC has ran this game decently with stalker 2.

[@spazzticzeal6238]

yup one crash in 65 hrs. 32 gb ram and 16 gb vram. decent processor 7700x.

[@danbrowning4000]

Found a few times groups of enemies don't react until i'm right in their midst then they all open up on me at once :D but having played the original back in 2007/8 and then the subsequent sequels I'm always wary of anyone in game, plus so far on Xbox X series it's only crashed on me once, a thousand times less than any Bethesda game

[@Eridium2]

As long as it's better than a Bethesda game that's what matters haha

[@GHOSToperator25]

Personally I love this game. And I typically hate story/ campaign driven games. I think it looks great, they keep a lot to realism and actually have good firearms knowledge. (Obviously aside from anomalies) I’m on the XSX so I’m playing it free thanks to gamepass. And personally I think imma buy it soon just because I love it enough that I feel they deserve a reward for this.

[@cpeaze3079]

I think the pzi falcon is the bestarmiur in the game. It has higher physical than the exoskeleton and I think maybe psi cheaper to repair

[@PetrPolach]

A-life is no enabled. A life is not existing, there is just director which spawns enemies 50 meters around. Thats all.

[@MAXJULOU]

Yeah i'm so tired, man I was just walking looting a backpack on a tractor, no life around no sound then suddenly 4 bandits and cats spawned just right behind me, so frustating

[@fjuraa]

its great but getting it by "cheating" doesnt seem earned

[@xlbaggyCOD]

I really really enjoy your vids man but pleaaase for the love of pixels record with a higher bitrate and upscale to 1440p before you upload

[@Eridium2]

I messed with the video settings and it changed the render to 1080p which looked like a smeary messs. It'll be fixed lmao. I'm a huge quality snob but this obviously was a render mistake

[@xlbaggyCOD]

@@Eridium2 Hell yeah glad to hear. Feel free to hmu though if you need help with finding the right encoder settings without having way too huge files etc. I'd say I'm pretty fit when it comes to that kinda stuff. Also saw your original comment and wanna add I'd recommend to record with at least 50k bitrate for 1440p60fps especially with all the greenery and fauna in the game.

[@Pidalin]

It was not problem in 2007, it is problem in 2024, I don't understand gaming industry anymore, just make outdated games in 20 years old engines and give us proper functionality and high FPS, that's all I want. 😀

[@gregwhetsell2340]

I loved the game. I’m on Xbox. It plays pretty good. Has a little bit of rendering problem.

[@Shooter_Mcgavin93]

Sheys living zone mod it’s a great a life fix for now

[@Eridium2]

I have been looking at other mods like a-life extended too definitely have to check that one out!

[@canineh2o227]

Man… buncha misinformation in this… A-Life is in the game, it is enabled, it is not tied to render distance, it has its own distance parameter which the devs had to crank down due to it being very demanding on memory (RAM). The problem continues as Microsoft demands that the game perform identical across Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X & PC. Though there are some PC gamers out there with systems that COULD run the game with the intended A-Life radius, Microsoft won’t allow it.

[@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148]

Modders with fix that when it comes online.

[@Avarus-Lux]

as usual it's console porting crap causing issues... especially the series S with less capable hardware is the bottleneck culprit here. the X could handle more and most PC's definitely can. it's just that as you said, microsoft demands it runs on the lowest denominator which forces downgrades for the other two better options. modding will solve that if the devs do not give the players an option to tweak things themselves via ingame settings. ps, it's also poorly optimized still, which isn't helping one bit either...

[@Eridium2]

This article must be misinfo then. www.ign.com/articles/stalker-2-dev-gsc-game-world-explains-for-the-first-time-what-went-wrong-with-a-life-20-and-why-it-was-removed-from-the-games-description-on-steam

[@walmartian422]

Lol no it isn't... You don't know what A life is. It's not just enemy spawning it's related to groups of enemies and factions occupying space in the zone, stalkers going artifact hunting, bandits seizing points of interest, factions like duty fighting off the bandits, mutants taking over lairs and expanding their zones of control, etc. etc. None of this stuff is in the game right now everything is basically scripted. A life in the older games was the CPU factions playing the game like you are.

[@spazzticzeal6238]

@@walmartian422 to be fair a life didn't exactly work when SOC launched either.

[@Cam77891]

I bought the game put about 20 hours in and then I discovered Stalker Gamma lol just uninstalled the sequel

[@zarinkai2927]

Got swarmed by 4 of the invisible mutants , and 3 hogs in my first exploration super close to base . Spawned right behind me.. Falllout is way more stable than this crap

[@Vikingr91]

You don't blame the devs at all for selling us a half-baked literally EA game? Alife 2.0 was a promise for release and they just straight up lied. This game should never have been released at the state it is for full price. Stop supporting bad and unhonest business practices.

[@williamrice71]

You shouldn't go around speaking the truth like that...somebody who doesn't even work at GSC might take offense....

[@Eridium2]

Every game nowadays has a risk with this specifically. We all know. Spending only 12 dollars to get it on the gamepass was the smartest decision I made BECAUSE I knew something like this would happen. (plus it's a 12 dollar trial run. you can barely even do that with most games nowadays) Regardless other people will not care and not understand that cause they didn't research or just wait. Talking about it brings it to light but also doesn't change the fact that people already bought the game. Videos can speak if the viewer wants to get it or not. If you buy a game and get pissed it didn't work. That's on them for not researching what they just bought. Yes we can blame the devs all day for the half baked game. But does it really help if part of the audience knows this might be an issue. And another parts still buys it anyways because they just don't care?

[@fredgreen2431]

I would sooner have less graphical fidelity and more Alife 2.0.

[@tudomnem5245]

A-life is very broken? The game itself is :)

[@bryanlowry1427]

school of snorks wins the internet...

[@simonb1846]

Unreal engine is hardware abuse