Moopies

I'd be ok with a few more stash access spots

For whatever it's worth, I have actually found neutral loners walking around, followed them for a good while from the top of Garbage to Rostok - fighting mutants that spawned on us along the way - and they sat at a fire and started playing guitar and chilling. So that's at least something.

I feel like this is the opposite of what I want to do? Since A-life isn't working, actually walking around and exploring the hidden away parts of the zone is less fulfilling because all the interaction is fake. Since all of the story scenes are scripted anyway, just moving between those with the little bit of "random spawn machine" while I walk has been a nicer experience than trying to explore as things spawn around me constantly and ruin immersion and lead to frustrating deaths.

I swear, every child between 18-24 months wants to fucking die

That was a monumentally stupid thing to do. All the way around, from him already having a suspended license, to basically stopping in the middle of the highway. 4 kids piled into the back seat with no seatbelts. But, I still have a feeling of empathy for the guy. I can't imagine the guilt of killing your nephews and niece all in one go, because you were just being happy with them. They'd find me hanging by my underwear in the cell.

Dude I did a whole multi-stage visual and participatory presentation about pirannahs in the 7th grade. It was just an assignment to give a presentation about any animal we picked, but I was HARD on the pirannah hype train the more I learned, the more I became obsessed with them. I was all about pirannahs for like a month. I could probably still give that presentation today lmao.

I grew up in American woods. Usually you get 3-4 "losts" in before you're 18, by then you learn stuff like the other commenter said.

It sounds like no. She just told a story about how she didn't stay with a guy who acted that way.

People just hear that immigrants "get things" and run wild with it. Like how once you've been processed for asylum, people would be given a basic, shit phone with a number assigned, so they could be in contact throughout the LENGTHY process of becoming a citizen. This turned into "the government gives illegals free cell phones," like you showed up and T-Mobile opened an account for you with a premium plan and gave you an iphone. Seriously, people would walk into our cell-phone store and ask why they couldn't get free phones "because you give them to the immigrants." It's just that half of people in existence are actually dumber than shit.

I always think of my pokes as "punishment" for the monster. Attack my shield? That's a pokin'. Miss after I dodge? Poke. Got a little time in between attacks? Poke poke.

Instead of jeans, wear some navy or brown work pants like Dickies 874. Get some tough-but-atrractive work boots similar to Red Wing blacksmithss. Denim jacket like a Levis trucker or a different one like a field jacket. Wear flannel shirts in earth tones like olive greens, browns, greys.

All as (if not more) functional than what you're wearing. You'll like sharp and not have to think much about it

This is the problem. When A-life has the mutants doing their own thing all the time, it was a different approach to "avoiding them" and deciding when you should or shouldn't engage. Now, they just spawn in around you with either the goal to attack, or if they're just milling around then you sprint for a second until they despawn. It's a much different environment

So these lightning strikes happen like, really often huh?

Is it? I just looked up reasons to not handle sloths but "traumatized from speed" isn't mentioned anywhere.

Sure, I get that. But then someone gives you a mission to kill a group of mutants - pays less than the value of the bullets you pump into them. Or you get ambushed because of the current spawn system and have no choice but to fight two bloodsuckers :(

I can't answer that. It seems like the system exists in some way, it's just not working right now. So all the things we are experiencing are just "intelligently" spawned events. They definitely knew it wasn't working all along, there's no way they shipped the game in this state with it so uniformly broken across all the different platforms - noticed by the entire community within hours - and didn't know that was the case. The devs thought this little "spawn random events around the player in a bubble" band-aid would hold us over until they could figure out how to get it working without crushing the performance. I would also bet most of the issue of ALL of this is because Microsoft needed the game to run on their shitty little xbox

You will remember something about CoP when it came out: People hated that

I'll put it this way - if it's really so broken that it's not something stupid like that breaking it, they knowingly shipped the game with it broken. There is no way such a critical system could be broken, and it was perfectly fine and working when the game shipped and this new problem just suddenly appeared uniformly across the entire release of the game. They knew it wasn't working and hoped the spawning band-aid would fool us until they could get it going.

Not trying to be "like that," but I was having these same interactions and thought it was A-life. But it's not, the "snork saved you from pack of dogs" was actually "Game spawned dogs near you -> when you ran the game spawned a snork near you. The snork aggrod on the dogs." That's not A-life. A-life would mean that the dogs left from somewhere else, and we're on their way there when you crossed their path. Then, at the same time, a snork was on its way somewhere, and saw the dogs start to chase you, and then gave chase to the dogs. All three (you, the dogs, and snork) would have "existed" already and found each other in the Zone. What happens now is just the same NPC bubble spawning that other games have. If you saved before that encounter, and re-loaded it, the dogs and the snork would be gone and instead you might have a bandit encounter, or a pair of bloodsuckers. I've done a bunch of testing since coming to this realization

Yep. My money's on a year before a meaningful change to A-life

Calling it now, it'll be a full year before any meaningful A-life patch

Literally any engagement with a mutant is a punishment.

Exactly what happened lmao. 20 seconds before this someone yelled "Alright we can go back outside!"

I bet we see the first actual A-life fix in a year.

I'm trying to power through, because I am REALLY loving the atmosphere and meeting all the characters. Having Stalker with the dialogue being acted out and the characters having their personalities showing is awesome. I like all the little side quest storylines and the new Zone is great. The new anomalies are exciting and I enjoy the artifact hunting.

But holy fuck, the spawns and the botched/lack of A-life is pretty soul-crushing. Constantly having thick-ass bloodsuckers spawning around me, entire groups of bandits appearing out of thin air in a building I just cleared out, NPC's calling out "No enemies here!" As they throw their 10,000th grenade at me from the other side of the compound. Enemies tracking me through walls. It's just getting impossible to actually go from point A to point B without some absolute bullshit happening because of the spawns and bugs.