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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl ⚠️|☢︎T|⚠️ Don't Be a Menace to Bloodsucker While Trying to Catch an Olive in The Zone

simpatico

simpatico

Member
SimTourist said:
Yeah, after 25 hours I'm done with the game, I was interested in the story but I'll watch the rest on youtube. The game just devolves into a tedious walking simulator with occasional annoying shootouts. Every objective being 1-2 kms away got old real quick. The map is nice and detailed, maybe modders will be able to populate it with interesting stuff to do.
Click to expand...
Isn’t this every open world shooting game? I mean what else could there even be? A platforming section? Kart racing? What is a good example?
 
Yerd

Yerd

Member
I noticed they have save slots or tabs. I started the game doing the stalker friendly stuff and got to the garbage local. Stopped and started a new game to try the other side. I have been playing the Ward friendly side since. Even though I still don't have friendly status at any of their shops.

I haven't seen any spoilers, so I'm not sure how far into the story I am. I have a feeling I'm 3/4 done. Just a guess. I will go back to my Stalker friendly save when the game is in better shape.
 
Gonzito

Gonzito

Gold Member
BigLee74

BigLee74

Member
Now that’s a patch!

My decision to put this on hold (despite still enjoyyng it) is paying off. Another month or two!
 
Last edited:
Nitty_Grimes

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
118 gig update for the Game Pass version.

pYB1IEi.png
 
Last edited:
F

Flabagast

Member
A-life fixes seem huge


  • Fixed the issue with spawning NPCs behind the player's back.
  • Players can now encounter roaming NPCs across the Zone more often.
  • Greatly extended the distance at which A-Life NPCs are visible to the player.
  • Fixed the aggressive optimization issue that prevented A-Life NPCs to exist in Offline (out of player's visualization range).
    • In Offline mode, A-Life will continue to advance towards their goals over time.
    • Players may now have opportunities to encounter A-Life NPCs they've previously met by following in the same direction as the NPCs.
  • Improved A-Life NPCs navigation in Offline using GameGraph (global AI navigation map):
    • Fixed multiple issues where NPCs would fail to follow or find a path to their designated goals.
    • Fixed several issues with NPC being stuck in Online-Offline transition state,
  • Enhanced A-Life NPCs' motivation to expand territory and actively attack enemies and mutants.
  • Fixed issues that could result in fewer A-life NPCs encountered than intended.
  • Further contextual actions improvement to ensure seamless transitions between Offline and Online states for NPCs engaged in these actions.
  • The groups exploring the Zone are now more diverse regarding possible factions and group sizes.
  • Fixed issue that while roaming over the Zone, Human NPCs didn't satisfy their communication needs and talks.
Click to expand...
 
SJRB

SJRB

Gold Member
Installing the patch keeps crashing the process, anyone else experiencing this? I’ve had to restart Steam three times and every time the installation stops at a random percentage.

Never had this happen on Steam before.
 
Dr.Morris79

Dr.Morris79

Gold Member
SJRB said:
Installing the patch keeps crashing the process, anyone else experiencing this? I’ve had to restart Steam three times and every time the installation stops at a random percentage.

Never had this happen on Steam before.
Click to expand...
Installed first time, played Snowrunner while it did it, no problems (y)
 
Oppoi

Oppoi

Member
SJRB said:
Installing the patch keeps crashing the process, anyone else experiencing this? I’ve had to restart Steam three times and every time the installation stops at a random percentage.

Never had this happen on Steam before.
Click to expand...
You could try to delete the game and download from scratch.
 
SJRB

SJRB

Gold Member
Oppoi said:
You could try to delete the game and download from scratch.
Click to expand...

Did exactly this, there was something very wrong with the game files. Anyway, ultimately downloaded > 1/4 terabyte just to play a game.

Booting now, shader compilation still takes forever.

Really hope it’s all worth it.

Edit: lol the compiling shader sequence crashed. The effort-result scale is not looking too good for this game at the moment
 
Last edited:
Yerd

Yerd

Member
After the patch I can't load 2 of my most recent saves. Game crashes during loading.

Going to reboot and see if anything changes. I'm not going to download 110gb and then reinstall another 110gb or whatever the total game is at now. I'll probably shelve this game if I can't load my latest saves.

My shader loading was very quick compared to pre-patch. Both times I launched. Reboot time.
 
Nonehxc

Nonehxc

Member
VNUnO8b.jpeg


Please, go on twitter and preach to the four corners of the world STALKER devs are LGTBQphobic and everyone must boycott them so they can sell millions more.

There's only one gender in The Zone: Irradiated. 😎☢️
 
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SJRB

SJRB

Gold Member
Anyone playing this with a controller on pc? Is it doable? Have a small wrist injury so can't really play kb+m at the moment.
 
M1chl

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion



SJRB said:
Anyone playing this with a controller on pc? Is it doable? Have a small wrist injury so can't really play kb+m at the moment.
Click to expand...
I am playing that with controller, only annoyance which I have is slow inventory management, but otherwise no issues
 
Ocean Dweller

Ocean Dweller

Member
Has anyone tried this? fixes A LOT

Ultra Plus - Control Performance - 30 FPS Cut-scene Unlock - Highest Visuals - Ray Reconstruction - Reflex​

www.nexusmods.com

Ultra Plus - Control Performance - 30 FPS Cut-scene Unlock - Highest Visuals - Ray Reconstruction - Reflex

The Ultra+ mod series aims to fix bugs, and squeeze the most out of every game, for all users.
www.nexusmods.com www.nexusmods.com


The goal of the Ultra+ series of mods is simple: To fix all engine problems (including performance and quality), so that everyone can play the game the way it was intended by the authors (from potato to insane).

  • Removes 30 FPS cap on cut-scenes. Note there is a hitch when the game disables frame gen starting a cut scene, we are trying to find a workaround
  • Forces frame generation on cut-scenes (controllable via UltraPlusConfig.ini)
  • Greatly reduces FPS drops in towns due to too-high voxel resolution on NPCs and non-Nanite mesh streaming issues
  • Reduces latency by reconfiguring the RHI
  • Reconfigured engine streaming to fix stalls and flatten frame time
  • Significantly improves lighting for Epic and High close to cut-scene but still performant (Epic will lose ~10 fps but will look significantly better)
  • Enabled Nvidia Reflex with Boost+ (toggle with CTRL + F6)
  • Increases bloom quality
  • Significantly improves cut-scene lighting (without affecting performance)
  • v1.6.0 Enables contact shadows in Lumen lighting v1.7.0 Greatly increased accuracy of Lumen contact shadows
  • v1.7.1 Fixes vanilla lighting bug that caused light sources to not align with light cast on surfaces in some indoors scenes
  • v1.7.1 Increases atmospheric haze and smoke effects to where we believe artists intended
  • Forces compilation of missing shaders at game startup (and will save remaining missed shaders as you play)
  • Enabled Ray Reconstruction without hassle (switchable via F2)
  • Enabled game garbage collection to address out of memory issues, since it was effectively disabled
  • Significantly improved reflections quality (use F10 to adjust)
  • Reduce fog disocclusion noise (ghosting)
  • Prevents Chroma64 DLL from loading
  • Fixes boiling noise on rough reflections
  • Improves skin lighting (subsurface scattering)
  • Changes motion blur so it smooths between frames (like film) instead of being a visual effect. (You should not notice it's enabled except the game looks smoother)
  • Increased vegetation draw distance (Epic) to reduce (and mostly eliminate) pop-in with as low performance impact as possible
  • Changes HDR to ACEScg for slightly better colour—Disabled to ensure compatibility with upcoming RenoDX HDR mod
  • Disabled several debug options which shouldn't be enabled in shipping builds
  • Enables several function key shortcuts (defaults in bold):
    (These can be changed by editing main.lua, see inside the file)
    CTRL + F2: Disable Ultra+ granular control (i.e. use Ultra+ Quality Presets — True/False)
    F2: Denoiser Mode (None, Temporal, RayReconstruction)
    F3: Vignette (True/False)
    v1.7.1 F4: Motion Blur (Off/Low/High)
    F6: DLSSPreset (A=1, C=3, E=5, F=6, G=7 — yes there is a real preset G, yes it looks great)
    F9: Reflection Bias (0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6)
    F10: Reflection Quality (Vanilla, High, Ultra)
    F12: Lumen Scaling (disabled in this game as it just scales DLSS)
    CTRL + F5: Enable frame generation in cut scenes (True/False)
    CTRL + F6: Force Nvidia Reflex with Boost+ (True/False)
    CTRL + F8: Force HDR without requiring exclusive fullscreen (True/False)
    CTRL + F10: Graphics menu quality for settings that can't be changed by the graphics menu (Low/Medium/High/Epic)
    CTRL + F12: Ultra+ Quality Preset (Low/Medium/High/Ultra)
  • Increases Epic sky quality closer to cut-scene
  • Increases Epic bloom to cut-scene quality, and High bloom to Epic (Low/Med are untouched)
  • Increases Epic lighting (Lumen) beyond to cut-scene quality, in a performant way (in vanilla, Epic and High were essentially the same
  • Increased vegetation draw distance for Epic and High
  • Increased Epic particle quality to cut-scene, and High to Epic
  • Changed streaming for cut-scenes for Low/Med/High settings, which should prevent cut-scene hitching on lower VRAM cards
  • Actually scaled texture quality for High and Epic — Virtual textures were using the same resolutions for all graphics qualities. Epic is now = cut-scene, High is between Med/Epic, and Med/Low are untouched
  • Adjusted several cut-scene settings that were too high and will cause hitches/stalls (especially shadows)
  • Increased shadow quality closer to (the new) cut-scene settings. Scaled shadow graphics menu Low-Epic more sensibly. Low should now also look much better without significant change to performance
  • Increased Epic post-process settings closer to cut-scene, and slightly improved High
Click to expand...
 
ChoosableOne

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
Everything was great until Sircaa, but after that, the game started to go downhill for me. I think they may have stretched it a bit too much, or I wasted a lot of time in the early parts of the game. I've almost hit 40-50 hours, and it seems like there's still a lot left to finish. It's been really exhausting.
 
Nitty_Grimes

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
ChoosableOne said:
Everything was great until Sircaa, but after that, the game started to go downhill for me. I think they may have stretched it a bit too much, or I wasted a lot of time in the early parts of the game. I've almost hit 40-50 hours, and it seems like there's still a lot left to finish. It's been really exhausting.
Click to expand...
I’ve just got there.
 
Drake

Drake

Member
SimTourist said:
Yeah, after 25 hours I'm done with the game, I was interested in the story but I'll watch the rest on youtube. The game just devolves into a tedious walking simulator with occasional annoying shootouts. Every objective being 1-2 kms away got old real quick. The map is nice and detailed, maybe modders will be able to populate it with interesting stuff to do.
Click to expand...

I love the game, but there is definitely some truth to this.
 
ChoosableOne

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
1.1.3 ruined the game for me. It's now stuck in compilation. I deserved it—don't fix it if it ain't broken, right? Gamepass pc version.
 
The Cockatrice

The Cockatrice

I'm retarded?
What a buggy pos. My main quest is perma bugged and it seems a lot of ppl are having this issue. Some colonel is invisible and a few moments later in the quest a cutscene wont trigger which perma-breaks your main quest. Those on console are fucked no solution. On PC I have to use a console command to spawn the npc lmao. What a load of horse shit besides the questionable idiotic decisions regarding weight management, costs of upgrading/repair and so much more. And the voice acting, the writting is absolutely abysmal. Im now convinced everyone who played this day one and said it was fine were full of shit. Even after a ton of fixes the game is in a pos state.

If I get one more main quest perma-bugged that I have to fix with console im deleting this trash forever. So far it's a 5 out of 10 for me.
 
Mister Wolf

Mister Wolf

Member
Finally swapped out my semi-auto shotgun. It put in a lot of work but now my setup is a Forza with scope and suppressor. A semi-auto .308 with red dot, and a Rhino for up close power.
 
DanielG165

DanielG165

Member
Damn, I tried to save The Ninth (monolithian dude) during his quest, but he wound up getting blown up from a grenade lol. Sucks too, I was starting to like him!
 
ChoosableOne

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
Finally I finished it. The first 24 hours of the game were fantastic, but I can't say the same for the second 24 hours. I finished it just for the sake of finishing it. I didn't understand anything from the story, so now I'll watch some YouTube videos. Probably picked the shittiest ending lol.

I wish it had been a 24-hour adventure. The second half could’ve been a separate game(sequel? dlc?). This way, they could have made the first game in less time and done a better job with the AI. I don't know if they did this to please the new generation who want games to go on forever. According to how long to beat, the first three games could be finished in 15 hours each, while this one is said to take 35 hours. Considering that big part of the gameplay involves just running from one place to another, it's not a good runtime at all.

Still, for the sake of the first 24 hours and the quality of the gameplay, I’m giving it an 8/10. I still consider the first game the best Stalker game.
 
The Cockatrice

The Cockatrice

I'm retarded?
Finally finished it after 60 hours. I'd say the first 10-20 hours were enjoyable as I was experiencing the game until I realized the game is a massive tedious boring stash looting walking simulator. The english voice acting was trash, the gameplay mechanics are trash, most unique-stuff are given to you in side-quests, the economy is trash on purpose because they realized you have no reason to explore any of the locations in the game so the prices are super inflated forcing you to loot and sell everything. Main story is weak as hell until the last 2 hours of no return point which were decent, but until then? Fucking lmao. Atmosphere was good, visually ofc, because the level design is ofc, tedious as well, masses of land blocked by impassable terrain for no reason just to pad the game. Sound effects are nice, soundtrack was ok. Technically a massive turd, main quests are still perma-bugged, which were fixed twice in patch notes, i checked reddit for workarounds, people on consoles are fucked for weeks until a new patch fixes stuff, luckily on PC i could fix stuff with the console and respawn npc's.

Anyway, 6.2/10 for Ukranian Far Cry which is exactly what I did not want to have in a STALKER game.
 
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