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Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago by BurntWits@sh.itjust.works to c/patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

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[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

More S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly this week. I feel comfortable enough with the gameplay experience I'm starting to think about making some additional number tweaking and starting from scratch with higher difficulty. My current playthrough works well as a tutorial but I feel like things (especially in terms of equipment) progressed a little too smoothly.
I was thinking about making this new playthrough a themed one, with some basic reasons for entering the Zone, in-character journal entries about my adventures and just general focus on role playing. I'm still thinking about some of the details but even in its current form, playthrough like this would be the most involved project I attempted so far and that makes it kind of exciting.

Modding also continues, with the number of addons more than doubling since last week. New additions are mostly gameplay improvements as these are honestly the things that stand out the most for me. I'm used to old graphics and play on an outdated hardware so visuals aren't a priority for me, despite that I did find a few additions which allowed me to improve the graphical presentation with very little effect on performance. Enough to leave me satisfied at least. Here's my current mod list, just like last week:

Updated mod list

(New) AlifePlus - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on general NPC behaviour.
(New) AlifeTactics - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC combat tactics.
(New) AlifeGuard - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC cleanup.
(New) AlifeBalance - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC respawn management.
(New) Anomaly Notebook - adds an in-game journal you can use to write your own notes. It's kind of janky to use but it works.
(New) Anomaly: Real Distant Mutants Sounds - fixes broken mutant noises that suppose to play at certain distance ranges.
Arti and RavenAscendants Mags Redux - detailed magazine and ammo management.
(New) Beloved Photo - a simple immersion addon which allows you to use an otherwise junk item to look at it, that's it.
Blindsides Weapon Reanimation and Rebalance - dependency for other stuff.
Boomsticks and Sharpsticks - dependency for other mods, improved weapon animations are a nice bonus.
Dark signal weapon soundscape - dependency for other mods.
(New) Decreased Bush Hearing Distance - NPCs can't hear you walking through bushes from the other side of the map.
(New) Dialogue Expanded Expanded - more NPC dialogue (direct, PDA messages etc). Had to do some manual merging with this one due to the conflict with LASS and fix some incorrect characters caused by different encoding, I think? I also left a ton more cause I was too lazy to go through all of the issues.
Food, drug and drinks animations - should be self explanatory.
FDDA Enhanced Animations - Food and Drinks - animation improvements for the above.
He's with me - prevents friendly factions from attacking your companions, even if they are from opposing force. Not sure if I'll stick with this one but it's on for now.
HTS Bars - hunger and thirst status bars. For whatever reason base Anomaly doesn't show them even though both are tracked and affect gameplay experience (I don't mind the latter but I like to have information about such things).
(New) HUD icons time - displays remaining time for status effect icons on the HUD.
(New) Instant Tooltip+ - pretty self explanatory.
Inventory Anrifreeze - lazy loading for in-game containers, helps with the hitching when opening things with lots of items.
LASS (check full mod name) - female player character.
LASS Population Addon - adds female stalkers to the NPC pool.
(New) Ledge Grabbing / Mantling - adds a simple climbing/mantling system to the game.
(New) Michikos Weather Revamp Revised - more natural look for all weather conditions (bright and colourful for clear skies, dark and moody for rain etc) and restores moving clouds to some of them. Also comes with an option for dynamic wind behaviour (changes based on the weather and location).
(New) Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Bottled Water Adjusted** - change number of uses for mineral water from 3 to 5, restores the same amount of thirst (just divided by 5).
(New) Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Talk to Everyone** - as the name suggests, it allows you to talk to every NPC instead of just team leaders.
MSBS Grot - cool gun that doesn't really appear in games often (ARMA 3 and Girls' Fronline are the only titles I can think of right now).
(New) New Zone Mutants can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
(New) New Zone NPC's can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
(New) NPC Weapon Jamming - pretty self explanatory.
(New) Sickhowl's Grass Tweaks - more lush version of vanilla grass grass and trees with little to no performance impact.
(New) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 HoC - Soundscape Overhaul for Anomaly - improved ambiance sounds. I'm a bit mixed on this one - on one hand a lot of the new sounds add quite a bit to the atmosphere, on the other some changes (especially in regards to fake mutant noises) act pretty much as sound pollution, making it harder to react to real threats (in a bad way).
(New) Sascha's S-40 Sirens - period and region appropriate siren sounds for emissions.
(New) Simple FPS Monitor - pretty self explanatory, useful for tweaking my graphics settings.
(New) Stealth - bunch of tweaks to the stealth and detection system.
Tactical Movement Speed - change movement speed depending on weapon status (holstered, lowered, drawn, aimed).
(New) Weighted Probability Weather Manager - improvements to the weather selection system.
(New) xlibs - dependency for other mods.

I keep going back and forth on whether I want to use KVMA (mod adding higher quality character models) in my game. On one hand NPCs do look much better with the mod, on the other it only supports handful of female character types and since I play with LASS + female NPCs, that leads to an ugly mix of old and new models. That also includes my character. @Coelacanth@feddit.nu graciously shared a customised mod with additional female models which does help. Unfortunately, even this setup lacks HD alternatives for some of the outfits - including those I tend to lean into, at least in the early game.

I dunno, I'm sure I'll make a decision before starting the new playthrough. I'll just keep toying with both ways until then.

I don't have much to write about The Elder Scrolls Online honestly. Between modding and playing Anomaly as well as real life activities I didn't really have much time to spend with it. After playing some more I can confirm that bumping up difficulty does make the game feel better but that's about it. It's too early to write more about how much this single fact will improve my overall experience with the game.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Love seeing the evolution of your mod list, it's actually a very interesting journey to follow every week. As always, hit me up any time if there is anything.

I see now that you see what I mean by the female model clashes. I love the KVMA models, so I just can't stand the clashes with the DUX based ones. But I use a male protagonist and not LASS, and I totally get that with LASS it becomes a much bigger problem.

Also, if you wanna publish journals or anything from your RP playthrough project and want to share I'd love to read them.

[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've got you noted down so I'll be sure to do just that if needed. And yeah, my mod list is still growing in preparations for this new playthrough - I did not expect to jump right into it this early but hey, I'll take it!

I'm not sure about the journals though. Not because I dislike the idea but rather because I'm not sure if they'll be interesting to read. I'm not a writer and they will be kept in character of a fledgling arrival to the Zone. A lot, probably most, of their content will be focused on mundane and low level stuff (travelling from place to place, scavenging, avoiding combat), especially in the early game - it might be pretty boring from a perspective of an observer.
That said, I could use them as an excuse to post Anomaly screenshots on my Pixey profile. It's about time I started uploading pictures again now that I'm playing something worth capturing. Besides, it's not like I have to post all of them.

I'll have to think about it.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No pressure at all. I'd be interested to read them, but only if it's a fun thing for you to do.

[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

To be clear, I'll be writing them regardless of whether I decide to post anything online or not. I'm simply not sure whether they'll be worth anyone's time outside of the game. As I said though, I'll most likely pair them with screenshot posting so there should be something worthwhile there.

I'll let you know if I decide to go through with it.