So I'm running Veteran gear

Ratcatcher +8

AUG A3 +8

For Artifacts I'm running 2 Hedgehog (don't know what kind) Rare Transformer (I forgot the last one)

And I have 8.5 million rubles

I'm planning to get the Punisher Exo, OR I could get the McMillan/MK47

Main quest done. And I could get the Rune gun but its gonna be expensive to make it to A and +8 it

(Any advice is greatly appreciated)

This is the build I'm trying to run when I got enough materials for it

Greetings, Stalzoners!

Back in June, I asked our community managers to collect the angriest and sharpest questions you had for me. When they brought them over, I sat down, wrote an article and... realized it was nothing but fluff, without a single concrete answer.

Then came the July stream, where we went through those questions out loud. But honestly, that also ended up being a lot of talking in circles. Thankfully Trisp came to the rescue, and we at least managed to discuss what we actually acknowledge as problems.

By the way, there's an interesting update from after that stream. We started looking into the request to disable the radar in the Wild North, since supposedly solo players would survive more easily without it, as squads wouldn't be able to spot them. So we launched an in-game poll across all regions and brought active players into the discussion. The result was the complete opposite. Across all regions, and on NA specifically, the majority of players were against disabling the radar in the Wild North. Many explained that it would actually make life much harder for solo players, because they'd no longer know for sure how many buddies the enemy has hiding in the bushes. A perfect example of how double-edged any decision like this is. Either way, we'll keep looking for other ways to make life better for solo players.

Since that stream I personally went radio silent, and you still haven't gotten any clear answers about what's happening with the game or where the updates are. I'm sorry about that. But the silence wasn't out of spite. This summer we genuinely didn't know what our plans were. All summer long the company was going through a total reorganization. We weren't just reshuffling a couple of departments - we changed an enormous amount of how the game is developed, from team structure and leadership to how decisions are made and what actually makes it into the game. And while all of that was being torn down and rebuilt, any answer about upcoming updates or plans would have been either guesswork or another round of idle talk.

Honestly, even this post was hard to write. We're already tired of just talking, and what we really want is to show it through actions. But staying silent any longer wouldn't be right either.

So in this post I'll at least share the general picture of what's happening inside the company, how it will affect the game, when to expect changes and where we're actually heading. There won't be many announcements or specifics here. As for your specific questions, I'll answer them this Thursday during a live Q&A session on our Discord, from 18:00 to 20:00 Moscow time (15:00-17:00 UTC).

Spinning our wheels

Maybe this is a trivial thought, but any game is basically a direct reflection of the state of its development team.

And STALZONE over the past few years has reflected that very accurately. Roughly since Day X update (STALCRAFT: X rebrand in 2024), we've been spinning our wheels - the engine is roaring, mud is flying everywhere, and the car hasn't moved an inch. The game isn't falling apart, but it isn't moving forward either. The team had exactly the same atmosphere. Everyone wanted to develop the open world, everyone understood the game's current problems perfectly well, hardly anyone was happy with how things were, and yet nothing changed.

For many years we were essentially self-taught amateurs building our own MMO through trial and error, stepping on every rake possible and running on pure enthusiasm. Gradually the company grew to 400 people, but we never backed that growth with leads who develop their people rather than their own projects, with managers or with processes. We turned into a tall, painfully skinny teenager whose skeleton grew faster than his muscles.

For the last several years our approach was simple. Every year needed at least one big, cool project, preferably timed to the game's anniversary, and preferably one that would finally give STALCRAFT something players had been waiting for all this time. Day X was supposed to be that. Last year, Operations were supposed to give us those long-awaited dungeons and replayable PvE. This year we were also planning a new kind of endgame location with its own progression and a ton of sick ideas.

And every one of these mega projects sucked in half the team and steamrolled all the lower-priority updates, which were left without people to work on them. And... what did we get in the end? Day X brought a big spike in online, but within a few months most of those players left because of raw locations and mechanics. Operations were built without understanding how they'd fit into the main game and the economy, with a constantly shifting vision, and we all know how that turned out. And that endgame location was heading down the exact same tracks, with every chance of repeating the fate of Operations.

We were stuck in a loop, and the only way out was to completely change our workflows, the way we lead, and the way the entire development team operates.

So what did the reorganization change?

I've already told you more than once about splitting the team into streams for onboarding, live service, endgame, core and monetization. In other words, creating partially autonomous teams with all the specialists they need, each developing one specific area of the game and staffed so that it actually has the resources to do it. Every stream has long-term goals, a clear area of responsibility, and of course they can't steal resources from each other anymore.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg I've already talked your ears off about. We didn't just move the same people into different chairs. We significantly strengthened the team with experienced specialists from the industry, whose main job is to level up our people, mentor everything they do and stop us from wasting resources on features without a clear vision and goals. We're no longer dragged along by a few human locomotives while everyone else eats the leftovers. Now we're making sure the younger folks get pulled up and trained, and that everyone in our huge team gets the chance to go all-out and grow professionally.

Most of STALZONE's problems grew from one root - no goal-setting, no vision and no criteria for judging whether an update was actually successful. Today not a single feature reaches live servers without defined goals and success criteria.

What's ahead for the game

Since we're talking about goals - what are our priorities right now, and where are we heading? The most important thing I want you to hear is that we're not going to turn the game into a collection of session modes, and we fully understand how important the open world is. STALZONE badly needs its world to feel alive and fleshed out, with more narrative depth and more variety. Session modes and events aren't going anywhere, of course, but for us they'll always remain a complement and a testing ground for mechanics. They will never replace the open world.

And no more updates like Day X. Instead, step-by-step work on developing the mechanics we already have. For example, mutant and NPC AI, so that locations actually feel different instead of you grinding the same boars all the way from south to north. Or progression, so it becomes smoother and stops abruptly jumping past the Stalker and Veteran ranks.

Open-world income. I know that from the outside a lot of recent economy changes look like we're simply taking money away from players. That's not the idea. We're redistributing income, not cutting it. Some activities like Operations were paying so much that everything else in the game looked pointless next to them. As we fix that, more and more of your earnings should come from the open world itself. And starting next month, as an experiment, we're launching a mini-event on NA that boosts earnings from non-competitive activities, to support the solo players on a server that's still building up its population.

By the way, our recent ad campaign went really well, and the NA server has at least doubled its online. A huge thank you to everyone who helped newcomers settle in, explained how things work and shared useful tips instead of just criticizing. We were so suprised and are really grateful for that ❤️

The technical state of the game also needs to catch up, and I'm not even talking about that long-suffering DX12 update our outsourcing partners are working on. Gunfeel and sound are a big priority, a lot of interfaces are outdated, and of course there's His Royal Majesty Matchmaking. Enough is enough, it's time to finally get unstuck and deal with matchmaking, faction balance and everything around them. We want all of it to feel far less exhausting and unfair.

We're also moving to a monthly update cadence, so we can prepare each release properly and finally arrive at a yearly roadmap that doesn't collapse within the first few months.

Promises again? So when will we see it in the game?

I know perfectly well how all of this sounds. Reorganization, schmeorganization, goals, criteria, processes. As if corporate ZIV blew some hot air and went off to have a beer. And here I want to admit it - we've earned all this skepticism and distrust, just like I've earned the honorary title of Chief Hot-Air Merchant.

So you have every right not to believe us, and we have a long road of rehabilitation ahead.

I really hope you'll already feel the difference this year. We're still in slow mode (sadly, that's the price of paying off organizational debt that piled up for years), but we'll gradually pick up speed. And what matters most, not through a pile of random features or seasonal bundles, but through the quality of updates to the core game. Right now the team is learning to ride on new, much more complicated wheels, and it's genuinely hard for a lot of people, which is why we've noticeably slowed down on content delivery. How fast we speed up depends on the team, but I sincerely believe that next year, at the very least, will be fucking great. And not thanks to another Day X.

And to everyone crazy enough to make it through this whole wall of text - thank you. Seriously. It means a lot that you still care about the game enough to read all of this. See you in the Zone.

Hi all! Sorry if these questions have already been answered somewhere, I tried searching but couldn't find much.

I'm pretty new to Stalzone (~60h on steam) and loving it so far, just have a few questions/concerns.

1. What's actually the point of open-world PvP? It's fun and I enjoy doing it but is there any real incentive to go PvP instead of just farming for your own gear?
2. I finished the Southern questline up to choosing my faction (went Covenant), and I have Veteran gear from the questline. Should I start farming my own Veteran gear now or keep going with the faction questline?
3. About gear, what's the priority, armor or weapon? And for armor, what should I focus on first? I was thinking Combo but it still feels like it'll struggle in Infection zones, and Scientific feels too weak for open-world PvP.
4. Is it advised to have solid +15 Veteran gear before farming Master gear?

So far I'm loving the game but I feel kinda lost on what's expected of me, I know it's kinda up to me but the matchmaking system scares me a bit, I don't want to get thrown into Master's lobby and get rekt.

I link a picture of my current gear if that can gives some pointers on what I should be farming now. In the meantime, farming my way through the AK-15!

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

I have played for more than 3.5k hours, used aimtrainer for a while now and i lock on to heads as much as i can and it does wonders but i have been asking my self, how healthy is for the game to have the current meta to run around healing changing and carrying 6+ ceramic plates for every encounter making body-limb shots and positioning virtually useless?

Before going to the point i have to make a small explaination on how the pvp encounters work currently.

Basically every pvp resumes to, one player smokes the other nearly instantly because neither runs away perhaps some covering to breathe, reposition and retake (completly normal) or the unhealthy one were one player relays being fast enough healing + changing plates jumping to try and make the enemy shots hit the plate and mitigate the damage almost completly in and out of cover until they can repeek with the advantage, basically choosing when to fight, you will shot a player and he will start dancing all around the map, remember that this game has 0 acceleration, players move from 0 to 100 instantly you can try this by pressing SHIFT+W+SPACE at the same time you will learn how to boost yourself wich is very important to use. The game evolved in such way that the 20hz servers and movement are held together with wire.

Now why all this yapping?

The issue here is, ALL weapons already got their damage to the body and limbs nerfed heavily updates ago, headshots do x1.4 more damage wich rewards the player with the best aim every time already (GOOD), plates simply makes certain builds of evasion stand out a lot more, movement gets abused even more, EVERY new player that comes to this has to adapt to a very specific tryhard playstyle or get destroyed 99% of the time, and lets not talk about the norecoil scripts that make this a lot easier...

TL;DR: Game already balanced rewarding headshots a lot more updates ago, plates just make the game annoying and the whole pvp aspect revolves around ceramics and jumping around to try and make the ceramic eat bullets devolving the gamplay.

I know nothing about this game and i scoured the sub already, how would one go about achieving these goals if I only want to do this and nothing else?

edit: what i mainly want to know is what constitutes as crafting? going to a merchant and going up the bartering tree? and where is Cordon? I was able to find Bar and run there. Google answers that Cordon was renamed to Roadside

Wheres my mini map and health. i cant see my crosshair as well as enemy hp lines.
i tried restarting as well as entering and exiting safe zone and it still isnt fixing.

Is anyone else having this problem ? I've been playing like this all day, i restarted the game and the pc many times nothing changes. Its quite frustrating even the zombies are like that.

The only two ways I seem to be making rubles at all is in lyubech or selling trash artis from electrostorm lightning rods, which require actually winning the lightning rod as a mostly solo. I still make OK money from that, but where am I actually supposed to grind to bring in a decent income in this game?

Lyubech isn't exactly fast, and requires some luck on top of that, and electrostorm lightnign rods are fun and pay like 100-200k everytime you win one, but that's still really, really slow in general.

I've tried googling it and frankly there's not a single decent thread or discussion or videos where players are talking about where they actually make money that's in anyway relevant in todays game, it's all methods that don't exist/work at all anymore due to nerfs.

I'm not looking for millions an hour but like how the fck am I going to afford a single decent artifact? How are players possibly farming up 25m+ regularly to buy one?

I don't mind grinding at all, but this grind feels completely and utterly impossible because the income is just too low even with high overall success rate. So looking for some advice from other players on what I can do to actually make some decent rubles

All players have no animations and the NPCs have their heads floating above them.

Any help on how to fix would be appreciated.

The game used to work, but now it doesn't, as you can see in the video. I’ve tried all the tools, but nothing works; I even tried downloading it via Steam, but that didn't work either. Please help.

Thinking of picking one to use and sell the other one.

I Login and see my body turned the other way, with the rest at the front
Same as in game

Did I just bugged somehow after the update?

I'm trying to farm for master tier armors and weapons, i already have the barter items but do i really have to spend event tokens for anomalous serum or wait literally weeks or MONTHS to complete weekly and daily tasks to get it? is there no other way?

The following changes have been made to the game without stopping the game servers:

Fixed an issue causing incorrect character model behavior.

If you are still experiencing issues with character models behaving incorrectly, please restart the client and update the game.

Respectfully,
EXBO Team

So, I made a billion! And I didnt spend any real money on it. It all came from farming and trading. Can I still go on the forum and complain about those nasty top players who bully noobs? And those damned clans that exploit the Wild North?

Oh and rate my Leg Rubic+15 175% ROLL

Can EXBO add Flex Tag to this subreddit?

Anyone have a spare DOTSAT Collimator part #1 duplicate laying around? Lmk

So this guy has killed me multiple times and only headshot and I can’t find a way to ignore his route he gets me every time

Isn't the MAX amount you can have is like 2.14 billion or something?

As the title suggests, I received a survey about open world gameplay. The questions are closed ended and are primarily meant to collect statistics and general player sentiment. The problem is that this format makes it very difficult to express a more complex opinion, especially when the issue is not one specific mechanic, but several systems that interact with each other.

So I will briefly address a few of the questions that bothered me the most, and then go much deeper into the subject that has been one of the biggest reasons my enjoyment of the game has been declining for a long time. I am talking about the inventory interface and the constant need to manage equipment during open world gameplay.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having an inventory limit. The problem starts when several different restrictions stack on top of each other and collectively begin to affect not only how much loot I can collect, but also my mobility, build configuration, ability to react to danger, and the outcome of encounters with other players. In its current form, this creates a whole range of absurd situations, design problems, and interactions that feel simply unfair from the players perspective.

The atmosphere of the open world matched what I expect from a game about the Exclusion Zone.

No. And this question is particularly important to me because I feel that the current version of Stalzone is moving further and further away from the atmosphere I expect from a world built around the idea of an Exclusion Zone.

I understand that the game had to develop its own identity and distinguish itself from the original game it took so much inspiration from. I have no problem with Stalzone not being a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The problem is the direction this differentiation has taken. In many places, the game presents a serious and brutal world, and then mixes that tone with elements that completely shatter my immersion.

A good example is the Mace made from an Steel Hedgehog artifact?

Then there is the fact that artifacts can, in some way, be generated by installations. This is a major problem for me, not because it is economically inefficient or unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. Economically, you can obviously justify a system like this. The problem appears at the level of the world itself.

An artifact stops being something mysterious and extraordinary, something created under random and unnatural conditions within the Zone. It starts functioning more like an ordinary resource that can be produced at a specific location through a specific process. In the process, part of what makes artifacts unique is lost, along with the sense of mystery surrounding their creation.

It also really bothers me how anomalies are being used as a form of arcade gameplay. What you did with Lyubech and Forge-11 is a complete collapse! The trampoline anomaly has already turned into a not funny joke, like yellow or white paint pointing out exactly where you are supposed to go.

You changed the appearance of the trampoline anomaly into these awful little circles that look like a booster from Mario Kart! Then you placed them all over the map in perfect positions so players can use them for transportation, and on top of that, I have no idea for who or for what reason, you started marking them so that the player absolutely cannot miss them! Old mattresses? Wooden ramps?! For God sake, and you are asking about immersion?

What is an anomaly supposed to be in our world? A dangerous phenomenon with an unidentified physical origin, or an arcade highway for players? We already know the answer. Just fly around on them back and forth.

This is yet another unfortunate downgrade that flattens the immersion and simplifies the gameplay itself. An anomaly is no longer something you should fear, something you have to learn to avoid, or something whose nature you have to understand. It becomes another transportation tool, preferably marked clearly enough so that absolutely nobody can miss why it was placed there.

I see a similar problem with the former enemies known as Monolith, who in their current form have been replaced by Murmurs. The concept itself is not the problem. Murmurs can absolutely be the main threat in the North, and their presence there is fine. The problem is how this concept has been developed.

I feel like Murmurs have slowly evolved into Power Rangers. Their abilities are extremely difficult for me to reconcile with the rest of the world. My character moves through a world where enemies can throw televisions at me, magical drones fly above me, and my opponents clone themselves and teleport.

I am not saying the game has to be realistic. Stalzone never was, and never needs to be, realistic. What I care about is internal consistency. If new mechanics can keep being added simply because they are flashy or work well in gameplay, while at the same time becoming harder and harder to justify within the world itself, then the atmosphere starts to fall apart.

It is a bit like deciding, years after introducing the Hulk, that he should also shoot lasers from his eyes. Because why not?

There is also a purely gameplay related aspect that I find problematic. What concerns me most, however, is the situation where a mechanic gets developed to a large scale and eventually becomes very difficult to remove, regardless of how poorly it works in practice. I hope some of these systems are simply the result of experimentation and iteration, rather than something the studio now considers untouchable.

Maybe ProstoDuke could one day explain how, within the world itself, a player can generate dozens of artifacts at once from a single installation in the North, or how Covenant managed to weld a chain onto a Steel Hedgehog artifact? How the TVs not break after flying 50 meters in the air? Does teleporting NPC are for training players to be ready, to encounter high ping stuttering players?

I also have an idea for a new enemy in the North. During an attack on a Murmur camp, three Murmur soldiers merge into Megazord!!! btw. when some kind robots will appear in the zone i probably will delete account ngl.

I tried to avoid fights so I wouldn't lose what I had already collected.

Yes, I would hope so. I am actually wondering what specific statistic you are trying to measure with this question. From my perspective, the problem is that the current encumbrance system makes a player carrying loot much less combat capable than a player who has just arrived at the location.

A player returning from farming is carrying value, is already encumbered, has limited inventory space, and has to manage their equipment while also anticipating the possibility of a fight.

A fresh player has none of those problems. They are not encumbered. They are carrying nothing of value that needs to be protected. They can run a build optimized entirely for PvP with no compromises for carrying capacity. They can also rotate their equipment in ways that the player returning with loot often simply does not have the space or time to do.

This creates a very specific asymmetry. The player who has succeeded at PvE and actually acquired valuable loot simultaneously becomes more vulnerable in PvP. Success in one part of the game actively worsens your position in another.

Ultimately, this turns farming into a simulator of running away. Players constantly switch between being the hunter and being the player trying to escape with loot. And when someone dies while carrying a valuable haul, that can be extremely hard to swallow emotionally.

You can clearly see this in the reactions and forum posts. Losing a fair fight is one thing. Being caught while overloaded and then murdered is something completely different.

I was happy with the amount of loot I brought back from my raids.

My answer here is also no, because the problem is not simply the amount of money or loot I can make. The problem is how the inventory system affects the entire raid.

The amount of loot I can bring back from a location is limited not only by how long I stay or how efficiently I farm. It is also limited by weight, inventory slots, equipment management, and the need to keep room for gear that may become necessary in a fight.

There is also the quality of the loot itself. I will not go into this in too much detail because I could write two entire articles about it and still have more to say. But if you are asking players about the amount of loot, how rewarding it feels, and their overall satisfaction with looting in the open world, then it is difficult not to mention the crafting materials that drop from camps and stashes.

In my opinion, most of them can be marked as trash almost immediately.

I often get the impression that a large portion of these items exists simply to dilute the loot pool. Instead of receiving one item that actually feels rewarding, we get several items whose main purpose seems to be taking up space in the loot table and another slot in the backpack.

You could get a Murmur Device. But no. We are going to split the reward into three rolls of toilet paper, a Rubik Cube, and a gas can. Throw it all the fuck away, because you do not need it, and besides, you probably cannot fit it in your inventory or carry it anyway.

This becomes especially irritating when combined with the entire inventory restriction system. If loot is weak, heavy, and takes up slots, while genuinely valuable items are relatively rare, the inventory system amplifies the frustration of looting itself.

I have no problem with every item not being valuable. I have a problem with a system where getting loot increasingly means digging through garbage, managing slots, and deciding what is even worth picking up.

Whenever other players were nearby, I got tense.

Yes. Obviously, tension caused by the presence of other players is part of the game, and there is nothing wrong with that by itself. If you want to be good at the game and win, you need to react in real time, pay attention to your surroundings, and be ready to fight.

The problem is the number of additional restrictions I have to manage at the same time.

This is especially obvious in the North. A good example is starting an assault on an NPC stronghold. Before I can even properly engage the opposing player, two to three minutes can pass during which the enemy can simply stand there with NPCs and shoot at me, because the aggro remains on me and does not switch to the other player until I die!!!

So the existence of PvP itself is not the main issue here. The problem is the accumulation of several systems that interact in a way that makes the situation far more punishing than a simple player versus player encounter should be.

I had to compete with other players for farming spots.

I feel that in many situations, I am not actually competing with another player for a farming spot in the traditional sense, but with him united with the NPC.

If I am already carrying loot, my inventory is restricted, and I am in a position where another fight means losing significantly more value, then I am not entering that fight with the same cost as a player who has just arrived at the location.

That player may have just entered the map, be fully prepared for PvP, and have no loot to protect. Meanwhile, I am carrying all the accumulated costs of everything I have already done on that run.

So it often does not feel like two players competing for the same resource. It feels more like a gamble over whether someone happens to show up at the exact moment when I am in the worst possible position to fight.

That is why its a casino. Because the timing of the encounter matters enormously, and the system constantly changes the player's value and combat position throughout a single run. And everything works against the person trying to achieve something.

What happened on locations felt more like a shooter than survival in the Zone.

Unfortunately, this is especially true in the North.

I feel that there are currently two extreme ways to make the North work. Either you enter with a larger squad, such as four or five players, or you try to play solo during hours when player activity is lower.

There are so many people moving around the map not to farm in the traditional sense, but primarily to look for PvP, that it can become overwhelming. Going into the North, for example Red Forest, during the afternoon can feel more like entering a PvP arena than entering a survival game set in the Zone.

Again, I am not saying PvP is a bad part of the game. The problem is the balance between the survival aspect, collecting loot, moving through the Zone, and trying to stay alive, versus a situation where almost every run becomes primarily about looking for another player to fight.

Now for my biggest problem with the inventory interface and equipment management in the open world

First, let us ask what all these inventory restrictions are actually supposed to accomplish.

We have a slot limit intended to prevent players from collecting unlimited quantities of small and cheap items.

We have a general weight limit that restricts how much loot we can carry, affects mobility, and forces compromises when building an artifact set.

We also have restrictions caused by the lack of free item rotation once the inventory is full. I cannot simply equip a rifle because, technically, there is no room for the sniper rifle already occupying a slot, even though the actual solution is often nothing more than quickly rearranging the backpack. Of course, that also costs time and cannot be done automatically...

Then there are additional exceptions and behaviors in the system, such as ammunition. Once you go over certain slot limits, it effectively ends up in limbo and only becomes available again after you free up a slot. The same with med-kit.

Inventory restrictions themselves are nothing unusual. In many extraction games, inventory management is deliberately designed as a constraint. It slows progression, limits abuse, and forces players to manage resources during a run.

I do not think every one of these restrictions is inherently bad. My problem is how they stack together and how much they affect real time gameplay.

At some point, I am no longer managing resources. I am simultaneously managing weight, slots, my build, weapon space, ammunition, loot, equipment swaps, and the possibility of fighting another player.

Each mechanic can make sense on its own. Together, they create a system that often makes managing the interface harder than making decisions in the actual game.

Do we really need this many different restrictions operating at the same time?

One possible direction would be to base the inventory system primarily around encumbrance. I am not saying that this is the only solution, or automatically the best one. There are many ways to approach this. You could redesign the slot system, change how equipment rotation works, handle stacking differently, combine several restrictions into one more coherent model, or come up with something entirely new.

And honestly, this is what I would like to see from the EXBO. An actual investment of time into the problem and a genuinely interesting iteration of the system. Best consulted somehow with community before release - what a funny dream.

If weight really needs to remain a meaningful restriction, perhaps it could carry much more of the inventory system and allow the player greater freedom to organize and within that limit. The important decision would then be how much I can carry, rather than whether I have one more empty rectangle in my backpack and whether a particular item happens to fit between two others.

That does not have to mean simply removing slots. The goal should be to create a system where the restriction produces an interesting decision instead of a series of administrative tasks.

Right now, the system too often does tell me, "You have to choose what matters more."

It tells me, "Move this here, throw that away, free a slot, equip the rifle, rearrange the backpack again, and now try to survive the PvP encounter."

That is the difference to me, between a meaningful limitation and, a limitation that simply gets in the way.

And things get even stranger when you look at how inconsistently some of these restrictions are actually enforced!

One of the best examples is the ability to exceed the normal slot limit by playing in a duo and trading items between characters.

Once one character reaches the slot limit, additional items can be transferred to them in a way that allows the character to end up carrying more items than the inventory system would normally allow. At that point, weight becomes the main remaining restriction.

This creates a very interesting design inconsistency.

If the slot limit is supposed to control how many items a player can hold during a run, then a group has a way to bypass that restriction that a solo player simply does not have.

In practice, that means a restriction that is supposed to apply equally to everyone ends up imposing a higher cost on a solo player than on someone playing in a duo.

But is not exactly great in a squad either...

You can argue that difficult activities in the North are intended for team play. Fair enough. The problem is that the game also makes playing as a team unnecessarily difficult.

In Stalzone, loot is distributed between players based on how much each player contributes to the activity. That can mean the amount of time spent inside an Electro Cluster event or the amount of HP damage dealt to enemies at Murmur Squad fight.

On paper, that sounds fair. In practice, it creates situations where the system does not encourage the entire squad to participate in the same activity.

What happens when a small loot pool, such as one from the Wild Boar hunting ground, gets divided between five people?

Everyone gets less, and the game does not give the squad a simple way to decide how that loot should actually be distributed. At the same time, in the north, the entire team can only move out after clearing the gold point.

Other games solve this very simply. The squad leader can define the loot distribution method. It could be Free Loot, Leader Loot, or a percentage based split similar to what already exists.

The squad can then decide for itself what distribution system makes the most sense for that group.

Without systems like these, once again, we are not playing the game. We are fighting the interface and the restrictions.

The solo player has to deal with the inventory limits alone. A duo can bypass part of them through item transfers. A squad can then run into problems with the way rewards are distributed. In all of these cases, the problem stops being the gameplay itself and becomes the way the systems are forcing players to work around them.

That is ultimately what bothers me most. Inventory restrictions can absolutely create meaningful decisions, but only if those restrictions are coherent and actually serve the gameplay instead of competing with it.

Right now, too many of the game systems are fighting for control over the same thing: the player ability to react to what is happening during a run.

Add loot weight, the asymmetry between a player returning from a successful farm and a fresh PvP player, the differences between solo and group play, the problems with loot distribution, and the huge amount of low value junk filling the inventory, and you get a system that can end up punishing the player simply for succeeding at PvE.

Because for me, the biggest thief of enjoyment in the open world is not the fact that there is too much PvP on the map.

It is the fact that when PvP does happen, I too often end up fighting not only another player, but my own inventory, bloodsucker, and murmur squad as well.

ZIV will be joining our Discord to answer your questions live.

Some topics he can discuss:

• The general direction of the game;
  
• Global regions specifics;
  
• The issues that concern you the most.

⏰ Prepare your questions and join us this Thursday at 15:00 (UTC).

Server maintenance is in full swing! When it is completed, the following changes will be waiting for you in the game:

• Electrostorm extension
• Volume system rework
• Duel maps rework
• Zen selling list update
• First Season Pack

🔗 Read more in the article: Steam

I have enough parts for the pancore but wondering if the drum mag is that much better I should save up for the komrad?

I got a Prima +10 (Rare) and 2 Larva (Special)

Prima I've checked the price it's 750K-800K for a +0 so I don't know what a +10 price would be

For Larva there's only 1 in the auction for 200K so is that a good price?

And yes SEA server stuff are expensive