Lore behind currency change?

[Hauker~]

Is there a lore reason why stalkers in the zone changed their currency from rubles to coupons? Just seems really weird especially that its all digital? no physical money anymore. weird.

[GatorBait]

In game an NPC says that Freedom initiated it and the rest eventually picked it up.

[alka]

Obvious real world reasons exist. Quite easy to make up in-game reasons.

[Hauker~]

Originally posted by GatorBait:

In game an NPC says that Freedom initiated it and the rest eventually picked it up.

Okay. I still find it extremely weird that the zone would switch to a digital only currency. Doenst seem very Stalker-esque tbh

[Hauker~]

Originally posted by Virake:

Originally posted by Hauker~:

Okay. I still find it extremely weird that the zone would switch to a digital only currency. Doenst seem very Stalker-esque tbh

they switched because Freedom controls the largest trade outpost.

its still weird

[grune]

Yeah nobody cares

[A Helpless Baby]

Originally posted by Hauker~:

Originally posted by Virake:

they switched because Freedom controls the largest trade outpost.

its still weird

by switching to freedom-fun-bucks, your options for actually cashing out of the zone are incredibly limited which gives traders with outside connections (like sid and freedom) a ton of power. There are also benefits to it over cash, mainly that it doesn't degrade and seems to have some serious anti-theft mechanisms since even bandits have to demand you transfer the coupons rather than doing it with your PDA after you're dead (also note that you can take people's logs, conversation transcripts, and stash locations from their PDAs but never gain coupons from them).

[A Helpless Baby]

also the story would, frankly, not work if it actual currency was still used in the zone. Skiff wants to sell his artifact to get a new house, if actual cash was used he could do this in like under two weeks of game-time.
As funny as it would be to have him running around saying he wants just a new house with millions of ukrainian hryvnia in his back pocket (or better yet an ending where you just leave and buy your house in the middle of the story), I'm glad that they addressed this.