Today is the Day that Video Games Died

[PhatoseAlpha]

Those are stashes. Sometimes when you search a corpse, you'll find notes on a nearby stash - I seem to recall they get marked on your map with the radiation symbol. You'll see a notification in the text notes of the main screen when it happens to.

They're basically containers in the world that are empty until you get one of those notifications, at which time they'll be filled. Once you empty the stash - remove everything - it will be demarked. After it's been emptied, you can find a stash clue to it again, and it gets refilled. What's in any particular stash never changes - if it had 200 ammo in it the first time, it will every time.

Stashes are almost always located in the map you find the notification for. Some of them - especially later in the game - are extremely valuable. Others, not so much.

 

[Markbnj]

Those are stashes. Sometimes when you search a corpse, you'll find notes on a nearby stash - I seem to recall they get marked on your map with the radiation symbol. You'll see a notification in the text notes of the main screen when it happens to.

They're basically containers in the world that are empty until you get one of those notifications, at which time they'll be filled. Once you empty the stash - remove everything - it will be demarked. After it's been emptied, you can find a stash clue to it again, and it gets refilled. What's in any particular stash never changes - if it had 200 ammo in it the first time, it will every time.

Stashes are almost always located in the map you find the notification for. Some of them - especially later in the game - are extremely valuable. Others, not so much.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks a lot. I was getting distracted by the fact that the diary was always resetting to unread, didn't connect it with the markers appearing on the map.

 

[dust]

http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalkersoup

One of the biggest most incredible mods for STALKER: SoC. It's ridiculously huge with nearly all of the cut out content of the game and tons of user-made modifications, items, weapons, etc. STALKERSOUP will keep you playing STALKER: SoC for a LONG TIME.

It's a crashfest after Agropom, crash when attempting to talk to the chopper trader, crash if I interact with just about any NPC, crash if I'm telling Sidorovich that I've done the job. I doubt it will keep me playing past today.

For the record, this is on 1.0.9.7.6., I guess I'll have to wait for them to polish it further. Too bad, it's probably the best mod ever made.

 

[Rifter]

I could never get into this series and i own them all.

Way way to unrealistic gun damage and aiming for me to bother with. I mean seriously the guy couldnt hit a elephant with a pistol at 10 yards its thats bad, and even if he did hit it you would need a pickup truck full of ammo to kill it.

I mean im not a good shot with a pistol in real life, probably fired less than 500 rounds from one in my lifetime. But i can still hit a human sized target at 25 yards, What the hell is buddies issue in the game?

 

[Dkcode]

Cool, thanks for the pointers. I'll get SoC and play through that.

Yep good call.

SoC has more underground bunkers and labs which makes up the best parts of the STALKER series.

I gave up on Clear Sky as it felt like I was replying SoC maps with the best bits taken out.

CoP is decent, not as many underground bunkers but still contains lots of memorable locations. 26 hours well spent.

You can bump up SoC with CoP features through mods but if you want my opinion play it through vanilla then try the Oblivion Lost mod.

 

[PingSpike]

Companies are moving towards MMOs because no one complains about the nasty, always-online DRM in MMOs.

Wouldn't some one have to reverse engineer the server software and probably run a data center to "pirate" a MMO? Its been done but I don't think anyone worries over much about it. The DRM is kind of inherent in the game design.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Exactly. Thus the creators get the kind of Draconian DRM that causes in uproar in any other kind of game with no backlash. No piracy to speak of and the used market, if anything, helps you. Plus you either get a steady cash flow from subscriptions or microtransactions.

Can't pull that kind of stuff off in any other genre.

 

[thespyder]

Exactly. Thus the creators get the kind of Draconian DRM that causes in uproar in any other kind of game with no backlash. No piracy to speak of and the used market, if anything, helps you. Plus you either get a steady cash flow from subscriptions or microtransactions.

Can't pull that kind of stuff off in any other genre.

Yet they seem to be trying to do exactly that. More and more games, even exclusively single player games, are always online. Because the publishers have figured out that they have a gold mine with that model.

Personally, I am leaning more and more to just playing my backlog of games for the foreseeable future and hope that the fad blows over.

"Bye, bye, Ms. American Pie....
Drove my Chevy to the Levy, but the Levy was dry..."

 

[Tim]

IMO, Stalker wasn't even fun. One hour into the game, and I uninstalled it. Was a snooze fest. I know, I know... "But after one hour is when it gets good!"

Whatever.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

IMO, Stalker wasn't even fun. One hour into the game, and I uninstalled it. Was a snooze fest. I know, I know... "But after one hour is when it gets good!"

Whatever.

No. The first hour was amazing, and then it turns into the best PC game on the market.

 

[thespyder]

No. The first hour was amazing, and then it turns into the best PC game on the market.

I kind of have to go with the other guy on this. I installed it and fired it up. Played for a little longer than an hour, got killed a BUNCH of times and then simply didn't go back to it. Now, I am prepared to admit I might not have given it enough of a chance, but it quite simply didn't grab me.

 

[Tim]

[snip]....... but it quite simply didn't grab me.

That part sums it up for me.

 

[Markbnj]

I kind of have to go with the other guy on this. I installed it and fired it up. Played for a little longer than an hour, got killed a BUNCH of times and then simply didn't go back to it. Now, I am prepared to admit I might not have given it enough of a chance, but it quite simply didn't grab me.

It's a hard game, no question. For some people that's not fun. The AI enemies use cover very well, move from place to place, flank you, fire accurately, and on top of that weapons do much more realistic damage than in most PC shooters. Add to all that the mutants, animals, anomalies, long nights, realistic levels of interior darkness, long spells of bad weather, etc. It's a challenge. I'm finding it to be a lot of fun in relatively small doses, but I can see where it would turn off a lot of people.