NPCs just suicide into anomalies?

[Mörkö]

And i don't mean mutants or zombies. Humans don't seem to care about anomalies at all. For example there was this moving ball lighting anomaly, and a random group just came by and suicided into it one by one, not giving a single F.

I randomly came across the mod Radiophobio for the ancient Shadow of Chernobyl which has in its changelog "Added NPC anomaly evasion". Would've expected some improvement in this regard in S2 in 2025. The AI is so A-Lifeless so far.

[Sparhawk122]

Their pathing is not the best.

There's also numerous issues with quest/essential NPCs dying.

My question is. If NPC AI is hardly better compared to older Stalker games. Why is it creating a CPU bottleneck on CPUs with 12-15 years of technological improvements? The IPC improvements for CPUs in that time alone is insane. Plus 3 times more cores.

What are the real culprits of the CPU bottlenecking issues?

[Mörkö]

Originally posted by Sparhawk122:

Their pathing is not the best.

There's also numerous issues with quest/essential NPCs dying.

My question is. If NPC AI is hardly better compared to older Stalker games. Why is it creating a CPU bottleneck on CPUs with 12-15 years of technological improvements?

What are the real culprits of the CPU bottlenecking issues?

The engine and insufficient optimization?

[Antiga]

The "A-life" in this is almost laughable. There is no simulation going on. There's 2 NPC's that have some kind of schedule, and that's it. Gaffer going from his home to the bar and back is one of them.
Absolutely astonishing unimmersive the game is, especially compared to previous Stalker games. Even with 2 more years in the oven, this game wouldn't have been ready. But at least it could've had 90%+. It'll never reach that now, and even the score it currently has is a stretch, with a lot of people being extremely generous and forgiving.

[Sparhawk122]

Originally posted by Mörkö:

Originally posted by Sparhawk122:

Their pathing is not the best.

There's also numerous issues with quest/essential NPCs dying.

My question is. If NPC AI is hardly better compared to older Stalker games. Why is it creating a CPU bottleneck on CPUs with 12-15 years of technological improvements?

What are the real culprits of the CPU bottlenecking issues?

The engine and insufficient optimization?

That's what I am thinking. Because little things like flashlight shadows or shadows for grass don't even exist. Yet CPU bottleneck. Like how lol...

[Mörkö]

Originally posted by Antiga:

The "A-life" in this is almost laughable. There is no simulation going on. There's 2 NPC's that have some kind of schedule, and that's it. Gaffer going from his home to the bar and back is one of them.
Absolutely astonishing unimmersive the game is, especially compared to previous Stalker games. Even with 2 more years in the oven, this game wouldn't have been ready. But at least it could've had 90%+. It'll never reach that now, and even the score it currently has is a stretch, with a lot of people being extremely generous and forgiving.

I don't disagree. Hoping for patches and mods. More so the latter after the former. And then some more of the latter.

Originally posted by Sparhawk122:

Originally posted by Mörkö:

The engine and insufficient optimization?

That's what I am thinking. Because little things like flashlight shadows or shadows for grass don't even exist. Yet CPU bottleneck. Like how lol...

Memory leak too. I saw it was using 20 gigs of ram in task manager before crashing.

[𝕊𝕋𝕌ℝ𝕄-𝕂𝔸𝕋]

The AI, as of last patch 1.3, has Faction-based NPC's being able to detect and path around anomaly markers.

Mutant NPCs do not and are free to run into them.

Human NPCs avoid them. Try either verifying integrity of your game files in your Library/Stalker2/Manage... just to make sure you have latest patch installed over previous files.

or take the afternoon out with a coffee and refresh all your software updates, drivers etc. (basically the first Troubleshooting basic stuff, just to freshen up your Hamster wheels).

NPC pathing to avoid anomalies IS DEFINITELY a thing and is working as intended. One thing I have noticed is if they are navigating around uneven terrain around an anomaly, they MAY get stuck whereby they are just walking on the spot, directly facing the anomaly. This is because they are aware of the anomaly, the script is actively trying to path the NPC around the anopmaly but is failing to find a path around whatever obstacles/static objects etc that might be blocking the NPC AI to resolve a path.

In this case, reload save and it should refresh. You could also just walk away and leave the dumb ba***rd to his fate...

Another option to resolve and refresh is load an earlier save, before they spawn, and that will fix it. - well, it will refresh the cache. Another group might spawn and it's a dice roll whether they will get stuck, but they WILL.. repeat WILL path around the anomaly and avoid it.

FUN FACT: You can use NPC's to learn where the edge of safety is around an anomaly, because they can walk right up to this point before stopping at the limit.

[Jouchebag]

Originally posted by Antiga:

It'll never reach that now, and even the score it currently has is a stretch, with a lot of people being extremely generous and forgiving.

It's dipping. Last 30 days are down to 76%.

And with it's issues, I'm willing to agree Stalker 2 is a 7/10 right now. Bugs fixed 8/10. Modded 9/10.

[Das_P0m]

Even mutants can avoid them.
I shot a flesh the other day and his two buddies joined him.
I lured the first flesh into a whirlwind the other two could not be 'motivated'.
Even although I tested two other anomalies they ran around them.

Or they needed the death of their buddy to 'learn' on the fly to avoid anomalies which I highly doubt...

[Sparhawk122]

Originally posted by Das_P0m:

Even mutants can avoid them.
I shot a flesh the other day and his two buddies joined him.
I lured the first flesh into a whirlwind the other two could not be 'motivated'.
Even although I tested two other anomalies they ran around them.

Or they needed the death of their buddy to 'learn' on the fly to avoid anomalies which I highly doubt...

Bloodsuckers avoid them.

[Nhisso]

To be fair, so do I lol. No matter how long i play i forget about them or dont see them

[𝕊𝕋𝕌ℝ𝕄-𝕂𝔸𝕋]

Originally posted by Jouchebag:

Originally posted by Antiga:

It'll never reach that now, and even the score it currently has is a stretch, with a lot of people being extremely generous and forgiving.

It's dipping. Last 30 days are down to 76%.

And with it's issues, I'm willing to agree Stalker 2 is a 7/10 right now. Bugs fixed 8/10. Modded 9/10.

The STALKER playerbase doesn't care about scores or Steam ratings, or whatever is going on in the AAA garbage industry. We have our game and can mod it, and will benefit from future updates and DLC.

No one, (that matters), cares.

[Mörkö]

Originally posted by Das_P0m:

Even mutants can avoid them.
I shot a flesh the other day and his two buddies joined him.
I lured the first flesh into a whirlwind the other two could not be 'motivated'.
Even although I tested two other anomalies they ran around them.

Or they needed the death of their buddy to 'learn' on the fly to avoid anomalies which I highly doubt...

I've also seen pigs doing that, chasing me around an anomaly without stepping in it. Though not always. But apparently mutants are smarter than humans lol

[2ugly]

The lead NPC in the groups I've watched will try to avoid the anomalies, but his followers will try to keep their formation... often walking right into an anomaly.

Originally posted by Antiga:

The "A-life" in this is almost laughable. There is no simulation going on. There's 2 NPC's that have some kind of schedule, and that's it. Gaffer going from his home to the bar and back is one of them.
Absolutely astonishing unimmersive the game is, especially compared to previous Stalker games. Even with 2 more years in the oven, this game wouldn't have been ready. But at least it could've had 90%+. It'll never reach that now, and even the score it currently has is a stretch, with a lot of people being extremely generous and forgiving.

The lack of A-Life... I can't even call this a Stalker game. It's a Stalker clone. Much like the original Elite game, even Elite Dangerous is just a very pretty clone. Without persistence their worlds are dead, and arcade. Every time I jump back into Gamma..... the radio chatter with messages from the local store keeps, and others in the Zone coming from a working A-Life.... makes the Zone alive.

[Madjar]

Even scripted NPCs are terrible
I ran into a guy stuck in a lightning field, he asked me to get him out, so I walked back the way I came and disabled the fields for him to run through, he pathed around what I had done and walked into a completely different patch and killed himself

[𝕊𝕋𝕌ℝ𝕄-𝕂𝔸𝕋]

Originally posted by Madjar:

Even scripted NPCs are terrible
I ran into a guy stuck in a lightning field, he asked me to get him out, so I walked back the way I came and disabled the fields for him to run through, he pathed around what I had done and walked into a completely different patch and killed himself

Worked ok for me. Just make sure you don't get too far ahead of him.