You guys ever play Stalcraft?

[Lucius Caesar]

I have, I really enjoy it :) Its a Stalker style MMOFPS where you can join Stalkers or Bandits, quest in the open world to do PvE missions while constantly on the lookout for players of the other faction, with open world PvP

The reason I ask, is that I'm researching the Free Play mode and all blog posts, articles and any media that describes how it would have played. Obviously the first comparison is any extraction shooter like Escape from Tarkov, especially with the way you would enter the map, do what you had to do and extract. But a lot of the differences that would have made it stand out from Tarkov, are present in Stalcraft and I find that very interesting.
One example being this
"On the one hand, we don't want to make players “terminators” that can withstand a shot in the head from a sniper rifle, but on the other hand; players dying from an invisible enemy is also not a good thing. We decided to display the "counter contacts" which indicates the number of other players in the range of approximately 150 meters."
Obviously this is inspired by the Stalker counter in the original Stalker game, but Stalcraft has done this exact feature as described in the blog. Well, maybe that's not entirely true, Stalcraft doesn't let you see the names of all nearby players and contact them direcly, only the number. With the faction system you don't know if they are on your side or the enemy so it adds a nice bit of tension.

Also, from what I've read in practically all coverage, it sounds like you'd only drop the items you found while in Free play on death, not your actual guns and armor. So its kind of the opposite side of Tarkov, where gear is very quick to get... its just even quicker to lose. Whereas (from what I understand) Free Play would use your PvP loadout, so gear is long and grindy to get, but once you have it... its yours. Stalcraft is very similar in that You have to barter up your gear, starting with a weak AK for example, and trading it in for a better gun, along with a bunch of materials you find in the open world and get as quest rewards. Its a long and grindy road, but every gear you unlock, you never lose. When you die, you drop all your consumables (heals, ammo, buffs) and barter items (those stuff you use to barter up a new gun or armor) and unbound artifacts (they are bound once you bring them back to a safe zone) but none of your equipment.

Questing is also similar. Where in Free play you would have a storyline, as well as side quests and open world events that anyone could get involved in. Stalcraft has a (surprisingly good) storyline with a mix of open world missions and single player instances. There are side quests you can pick up form NPCs and outposts, lairs and other open world events that anyone can get involved in... friendly or not friendly. Sadly the most interesting open world quest type described in free play would have been the ones where one player might have to defend something while another player would get a quest to destroy it, forcing PvP, there isn't really an equivalent in Stalcraft. The closest thing is one of the endgame locations where there are capturable Outposts that two factions will have to fight over.

Free play was going to have emissions that would wipe anyone out if they didn't get to shelter, but have much better loot for the time after the emission. Stalcraft has the same thing, with artifact spawns being much higher after an emission.

so yeah, anyone who still checks these forums and reminisces about what Free Play could have been, I highly recommend checking out Stalcraft. Its not exactly the same, but in many ways its the closest thing that exists right now, and possibly that we'll ever get! So much so, I wonder if it really is just a case of using Stalker as the same source of inspiration and happening to come to a lot of the same conclusions, or actually being inspired by Survarium in particular.

[hone]

I've played for an hour, than uninstalled. Just a parasite of "Stalker"

[Lucius Caesar]

there are many "Stalker but MMO" games out there, and I've played most of them. Honestly Stalcraft was the only good one. I recommend giving it a fair chance.