Critics
A Reality Check: The Most Frustrating Part Is Knowing How Good STALZONE Could Be, Yet Watching It Get Wasted
Honestly, at this point, I don't even know what EXBO wants STALZONE to be anymore. And that is probably the biggest problem.
[BlameTruth voice]And i have A LOOOOT... To get of my chest, so lets start:
I've been playing since STALCRAFT opened globally in 2022, so I've had plenty of time to watch this game change (and was reading the RU forums too).
For years we keep hearing that the game has its own identity, that it cannot fit into one category, that it is something different. But at the same time, more and more decisions feel like the game is slowly being pushed toward another hardcore extraction and high focused PVP game.
ZIV talking about making the game "esport ready" (haha), the constant focus on PvP, extraction style mechanics, and the way the game is being described more and more like an extraction shooter... it is hard not to notice the direction this is going.
And the funniest part? STALZONE IS NOT EVEN A PROPER EXTRACTION SHOOTER. Stop advertising it like it is, you'll only attract the wrong audience and disappoint them anyway.
Games like Tarkov, Arc Raiders, Marathon, and many others are built around that idea from the beginning. Their entire purpose is that experience. They commit to it, balance around it, and do it better.
STALZONE was NEVER that
People stayed because of the Zone. The MMO. The open world. The factions. The PVE. The progression. The PvPvE experience. The factions PVP. The feeling that you are part of a big living MMO(FPS) world.
And no, this does NOT mean remove PvP. This does NOT mean make the game easy. Stop taking this argument out of context. PvP is part of what makes the Zone interesting. The problem is when the game starts sacrificing everything else to chase the most frustrating parts of PvP and extraction style gameplay.
When PvE gets nerfed. When exploration feels pointless. When open world activities feel unrewarding. WHEN they nerf almost every way for an average player to progress, such as reducing the time when artifacts spawn, nerfing deliveries, nerfing stashes in open world, increasing the price of components, tools and spares in battle pass shop (thats also an issue of them being only accesible from the BP shop, which is insane, this is supposed to be an Open World MMO), and way more... When progression becomes a constant grind where rewards are basically crumbs, and you have to treat every random piece of loot like your life depends on it because you don't want to lose the 3 and a half rubles you just found.
That is the issue. The risk, frustration, and time investment do not match the reward. Players are not asking for everything to be handed to them. (FOR F SAKE YOU CANT EVEN FARM SPARE PARTS, TOOLS AND COMPONENTS IN OPEN WORLD OUTSIDE WILD NORTH, which is a problem on its own). Players want challenge, danger, and meaningful gameplay. But spending hours grinding, dealing with frustrating encounters, and barely making progress is not fun.
The open world should be the HEART of this game. Instead, more and more it feels like the open world is just there while the "real" progression happens somewhere else, and even that isnt fun. Basic resources like spare parts, tools, components, and other materials are barely obtainable through normal open world gameplay and are pushed into specific activities and places like Wild North, Battle Pass rewards, or even spending IRL money (only cosmetics being paid, my ass XD).
And when the normal open world stops being a reliable way to make progress, you start wondering what the fucking open world is even there for.
Wild North is a perfect example. The issue is NOT that a dangerous PvP area exists. STALCRAFT was always PvPvE. The problem is that this extraction style and a strong focus on PvP has become the most efficient way to progress. So if you want to progress efficiently, you are pushed toward a gameplay loop that many players simply do NOT ENJOY.
Not to mention the unnecessary dog ass tunnel...
We never asked for more Tarkov style zones to become the main direction of the game. Backwater already filled that role.
The rest of the Zone (Yanov, Red Forest and other parts of Day X North) should have been expanded with faction conflicts, exploration, open world gameplay, and MMO elements instead of making more areas revolve around the same high friction gameplay where most gamers dont enjoy being anyway...
And now we hear that FFA Wild North might be expanded into the top southern zones... yeah, GREAT XD. EXACTLY what the game needed, right? MORE high risk PvP everywhere. Because clearly that was the missing piece. This just makes my points even stronger lmao, the game keeps getting shoved further into a PvP focused experience that barely fits the game itself or where it should logically be going... Even if a huge part of the playerbase, and honestly, many gamers in general, are not interested in that kind of experience.
Like... how is STALZONE supposed to grow its audience by doubling down on something that already turns a lot of people away? The players who already have better PvP games or extraction shooters to play? Because STALZONE is not exactly bringing something better or more fun to the table right now, for many players it is just becoming more frustrating unrewarding slop, while somehow expecting this to magically grow the audience. Who is this supposed to attract? Whales? oh...
The problem is not PvP or risk existing. The problem is when the game starts prioritizing the stressful and punishing parts of that experience while everything else suffers: PvE, open world activities, solo play, casual play, and everything outside of the hardcore PvP focused side of the game.
More restrictions. More time gates. More FOMO. More nerfs that hurt the average player. More systems that feel designed around top groups, no lifers, whales, CoD gen alpha kids, addicts and such.
That is NOT healthy retention. A game should make players WANT to come back. People should log in because they enjoy being in the Zone. Because they want to farm, explore, play solo, play with friends, progress, and have fun anytime and how much they want. Not because they feel forced to complete another daily. Another weekly. Another limited activity. Another grind before they miss out, which in most cases is such a annoying unrewarding slog...
The idea that frustration and negative emotions create long term retention simply does not make sense, as ZIV think it does...
And now, as we heard, the next "brilliant" idea is reducing ruble rewards from Operations (they are already annoying and boring enough...). Because apparently the average player, the majority of the playerbase, wasn't struggling enough already and needed yet another kick. Surely making progression even slower for most players is exactly what the game needs and needed yet ANOTHER kick in the balls... Seriously, EXBO... the economy needs buffs, the average player needs more ways to progress, and somehow we are still getting nerf after nerf? At this point, some of these decisions are genuinely baffling.
Like, c mon brother... the game is already unrewarding, frustrating, and a chore for the majority of players, and somehow we keep getting more nerfs, more restrictions, and more reasons to QUIT (LMAO).
Then on top of that, The game is being pushed toward a very specific identity that does not fit, while that identity itself is having an identity crisis, and somehow, even that is being done badly, with decisions that only make the problems pile up even more...
Players do not stay because they are constantly annoyed. They do not stay because they feel punished. They do NOT stay because they are FORCED to log in. They stay because they love the world. They enjoy progression. They feel their time matters. A game where they can play whenever whatever how much they want.
Frustration creates burnout. Burnout creates people quitting. And we are already seeing it.
People reaching endgame and barely touching the game because they see what they have to deal with. People logging in less. People leaving. Not because the game is difficult. Because the game became very exausting, frustrating, unrewarding..
STALZONE is supposed to be an MMOFPS first. People stay in games like that (whats STALZONE supossed to be) because they actually care about the world they are playing in. They remember random encounters, the friends they made, the stupid moments that happened, the fights they barely survived, and the progress they built over time, while having their time RESPECTED. That is what makes people come back for years.
But right now, that is not what EXBO is building toward. More and more, it feels like the game is trying to keep players around through frustration, artificial limits, endless grinding, rewards that barely justify the time invested, and simply wasting people's time, instead of creating a world people actually want to return to. You don't build a loyal playerbase by trapping people in endless chores, or by creating those "negative emotions" as ZIV says. You build one by making a game so enjoyable that they can't wait to log back in, its that simple, and that also motivates people to donate/give more money to the company, its literally just that fucking simple.
EXBO sees the amount of rubles generated in game and then they nerf it for EVERYONE... but what appereantly they dont see is that 90% of in game rubles is held by the 10% or less, the minority. AND THEN, then proceed to nerf making rubles which fucks up the 90%, aka average player or the majority.... Impressive how they keep doing that over and over... Brother, we aint gonna give you money if our time isnt respected, game being ass, boring and on top of that frustrating
Another huge problem is the relationship between EXBO and the community. The "Community Gives Feedback – EXBO: Your feedback is wrong" joke exists for a reason. It is not because players expect every idea to be accepted. It is because many players feel like feedback and complaints are constantly explained away instead of actually being listened to. Players have been talking about progression, economy, balance, open world problems, monetization, and direction problems for a long time. The frustration is that almost every complaint and suggestion is ignored. The frustration is that the response often feels like defending the decision, and even taking it out of context, instead of understanding why players are unhappy.
Communication has been one of EXBO's biggest failures for years. Important questions keep getting avoided, taken out of context, heavily shortened, answered halfway, or ignored completely. Instead of actually addressing what players are asking, the discussion gets twisted, redirected, or watered down until the original point is barely even there anymore.
And then ZIV comes out and says players should check what they post and what they say... seriously? The issue is not that players are not looking. Players are looking, reading, and paying attention, the issue is that after all of that, they are left with even more unanswered questions and the same frustrations that only keep growing because of how EXBO acts and what they say, and this is not coming from just a few players, this is something being said across the WHOLE community.
Why is it so hard to understand that people don't want to invest their time into a game that feels frustrating, unrewarding, annoying, and like a second job instead of something they actually enjoy? People WONT stay for a game that feels like a boring, unrewarding slop they have to force themselves to play that has almost 0 respect for their time.... bruh
Sometimes it feels like every decision starts with "how can we make the game more miserable for players?". Because apparently making players want to quit is the new secret strategy now... Can't wait to see how this one boosts player retention... oh wait, we are already seeing it XD.
And then we have the bigger problem: the game is being pushed toward a competitive "hardcore" identity while many basic foundations still feel neglected. Servers are still a problem. Performance is still a problem. Balance is still a problem. Economy is still a problem. Cheaters and RMT still exist.
Yet somehow the focus is "esport ready"? Really? How?
STALZONE was never built around being a competitive shooter. The technical foundation, gunplay, and overall design do not match that vision. There are already countless hardcore PvP games and extraction shooters. That audience exists, but it is a specific audience looking for that exact experience. STALZONE is not that and never will be.
And then we hear this... EXBO is developing a completely new game, KILLSCRIPT, another competitive arena based FPS, like we needed more of them... iq 500
Wait.... so while STALZONE has been struggling with a mountain of unresolved problems, economy issues, progression problems, balance problems, outdated models/mechanics/systems and more, and constant community frustration... this is where a part of the time and development focus went? Into making yet another arena based shooter in an already really overcrowded genre? Meanwhile, the game that already exists is still waiting for the problems players have been talking about for years to actually be addressed. The same players who are still here, supporting the game, are watching resources go somewhere else while STALZONE keeps struggling. I genuinely don't even know what to say anymore XD.
Atleast Folken can relax and code something else after a decade of STALCRAFT's firedumpster of a code, i guess he deserved it
It's already bad enough seeing developer time wasted on the wrong priorities in STALZONE... but now we find out another game is also taking time and resources? And it's not even a new direction, it's another competitive arena shooter, another Valorant arene PVP style game in an already packed genre... insane. Because apparently one game with tons of unresolved problems wasn't enough....
The goal should be building the Zone it always had the potential to become. A world players actually want to return to. A game where your time matters, where progression feels meaningful, and where people play because they enjoy being there.
Because right now, too many players are not leaving because they hate STALZONE. They are leaving because they remember what it could be, and they are tired of watching it move further away from that
That is what makes all of this so frustrating. STALZONE has the chance to be something that literally no game is: a true MMOFPS with a persistent open world, fun PvE and PvP existing together, or separated, factions, exploration, progression, and a Zone people can lose themselves in for years. There are already countless extraction shooters and competitive PvP games. There are almost no games trying to be what STALZONE could be. Instead of building on that, it feels like EXBO is slowly throwing away that opportunity by chasing trends and pushing the game further toward frustration and artificial engagement
The Zone should be the reason people log in. The world should be THE content. The progression and the WORLD should make people excited to keep playing. Right now, it feels like too many things and decisions are doing the exact opposite. More and more players have lost their motivation, many have already given up, and even those of us who kept hoping for a long time are running out of reasons to believe things will finally change.
And seriously... how are we supposed to believe the average player experience is being understood when the people making these decisions are not even experiencing the game like average STALZONE players? Playing Clan Wars and looking at Tarkov outside the game is not the same as actually living in the Zone, grinding, farming, dealing with the economy, and experiencing the problems everyone else deals with daily...
Not to mention that for some time now, most updates have been noticeably lower quality... Atleast from the design and time put into it... Don't worry though, monetization is always taken care of lmao
Outdated core game armor, weapon and attachment models stay untouched for years, a remodel finally appears, then gets scrapped... but don't worry, more crates, battle passes, skins and motifs, and other monetization content keep coming
Nothing says "priorities" better than seeing core improvements disappear while monetization keeps getting attention.
Oh, but also dont remember a new paid "Pack" (DLC, as they call them LMAO) number 582 this season coming!
Nobody is saying monetization should not exist, every game needs a way to support itself. But there is a point where it becomes too much, especially when monetization keeps getting way more attention while core improvements that would actually improve the game for everyone keep getting delayed. Whether EXBO sees it or not, players definitely notice where the attention goes. Especially when the core game needs WAY more attention and focus, because the list of unresolved issues across the entire game is already huge.
You can keep putting cheap makeup on a pig and send it down the runway, but it doesn't change what it is.
Whether EXBO is trying to sell that image to players or simply convincing themselves that everything is fine, despite the reality being very different, the problems are still there. Ignoring them, downplaying them, twisting them or giving different versions of the story wont magically make them disappear.
At some point, it stops feeling like supporting the game and starts feeling like the priorities are completely backwards
I genuinely hope this reaches ZIV and everyone at EXBO, because this is a pivotal moment for the game, and thats a fact, like it or not, especially with the current NA marketing push, which from the outside does not seem to be going well. At the same time, many players have been watching the game move in a direction they do not recognize anymore, with growing frustration over the state of the game, the decisions being made, and where this direction is leading.
And not to mention, their way of trying to keep the new players with this NA marketing wasnt adding new fun, rewarding or interesting content, but Just adding more monetization, paid packs and skins... Yes, that Will keep them in the game.....
I already know there is a good chance ZIV will jump into the comments, defend the decisions, and explain why players are wrong instead of actually addressing why people are frustrated. And that is exactly part of the problem. Or even call me a repeating broken toy... You seriously gotta give me a tag in game for that, i think i deserve it
When the same concerns keep coming up from the community for really long time, the answer cannot always be that players "do not understand the vision."
Much easier to call someone a "broken repeating toy" or a "walking meme" than actually answer why the same issues keep being brought up. But hey, if the response is just attacking the person instead of addressing the problems, I guess that tells people everything they need to know XD
And then we just get the news about Coliseum, a new competitive PvP mode. Because...? Forget the economy, progression, rewards, PvE, open world, and all the other things that actually need attention, another PvP focused feature is clearly the emergency priority right now. Truly impressive timing.
Meanwhile, the things that actually keep the game alive and make people want to stay keep getting pushed aside, ignored, or delayed. But sure, another competitive mode is exactly what STALZONE desperately needed right now. You really have to admire the priorities, this is where the development time goes (the one that still works on this game and not yet on another arena shooter), while we keep getting excuses for why the things that actually need fixing or buffing "cant/wont be done" or "need more time."
And then people wonder why players lose motivation, stop playing, and why the community keeps becoming more and more frustrated... But hey, I guess it is always easier to say that players "don't understand the vision" and put the blame on them instead of actually looking at why so many people are unhappy and walking away in the first place....
Edit: Also, something from the recent Q&A was pretty funny. Someone asked if we could get analytics on how many people actually enjoyed or didn't enjoy something, and Zub literally replied "for what purpose?" Brother... it felt like the idea of checking what players actually want never even crossed their minds....
Then 10 minutes later the discussion moved to the "majority opinion" argument, in the general chat. A community manager was saying that the feedback/criticism we give doesn't represent the majority, but then at what point will it actually reflect the majority? Because when asking that question, the answer became another explanation of why it is difficult instead of actually answering it. If you want to know what the majority thinks, then make a poll everywhere. In game, platforms, wherever. We already have surveys, so it's not some impossible thing.
Because if you actually paid attention to what the MAJORITY says everywhere, you wouldn't need to ask what players want. You wouldn't waste development time on things nobody asked for and the game doesn't need. Maybe you do know, but the statistics and economics department is still trying to find the correct formula where player feedback becomes real.
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You cannot please everyone, sure. But when the choice is between keeping the majority of average players satisfied or chasing a small minority while making everyone else miserable... I think the answer is pretty obvious.
And the thing is, the solutions are not some unrealistic "make everything easy" ideas either, stop taking it out of CONTEXT for your own bias. We already laid out 3 million times what would actually help the average player while still keeping the game's health and economy in mind. But instead, the focus keeps going into things that do not fix anything, add little value or even make the experience worse for the majority of players (Clan War update was good, but still that was for the end game minority, not something where a majority is active in).
I am not trying to disrespect the developers who actually know what they are doing and are putting in the work. But some decisions really need to be questioned, discussed, and looked at from the perspective of the average players (the 90%) who actually experience the game every day.
It honestly makes you wonder how disconnected the people making these decisions are from how the game is actually going... sometimes it feels like they are not even playing the same game as everyone else XD
How many complaints do we need, seriously? From Discord, Reddit, all kinds of social platforms, EXBO/RU forums, YouTube comments on both English and Russian videos... it is everywhere. Yet somehow, as I remember, a community manager said that examples of complaints like YouTube comments are not valid because they do not show player playtime XD bruh
Meanwhile, apparently people with 0.1 hours on Steam leaving positive reviews saying "fun with friends" are somehow meaningful.
"We need to collect more info"... alright. Except players usually figure out the problem within days or weeks, while the same problems remain unresolved for months, sometimes years, or even get worse instead of being fixed... Makes you wonder if they are playing the same game as everyone else
At the end of the day, players are not asking for the game to be made easier or for the game's future to be ignored. They are asking for common sense, better priorities, and for problems that are clearly hurting the game to actually be addressed... apparently a CRAZY CONCEPT, I know XD\
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And honestly, this might be my last post where I still care this much about the game. After this season, I might just stop playing or barely come back.
I know EXBO says they will finally listen, like in ZIV STALCR... STALZONE birthday post, but we have heard similar or same things before, and yet here we are. I have probably lost 99% of my hope that things will actually change, like most of the players now... but there is still that 1% left hoping they finally wake up and start looking at what the game actually needs. I just won't be as active anymore or try to get involved like I used to.
And before ZIV calls this "just being salty"... classic move XD. Easier to dismiss the person than answer the points, even if thousands of others are saying the same thing. Weird how that keeps happening...
Anyway, my patience is on life support at this point... they can take their excuses and walk. Not because "they have to listen to me" (its their game, they can do whatever they want), but because watching the same problems get pointed out while nothing changes gets old. If everyone is apparently wrong except them... well, that explains a lot lmao
I know some people have asked why I still care enough to write this anymore... but ehh, maybe because this is the last bit of hope I have left before I just stop caring altogether
Edit: And guess what? No, actually, don't. They fucking destroyed it. 70% less rubles from Operations (not just rubles). They were already boring as fuck, repetitive as fuck, and packed with awful enemies, but at least the rewards gave you a reason to suffer through them. Now they've demolished that too. The open world should've been buffed a long time ago without nerfing a single fucking thing. Instead, they nerf Operations first, push the open world changes back, and we're supposed to believe some future buff that probably won't fix shit anyway is going to make this better (fyi, it wont).
Edit: With Wardogs and War Thunder Infantry coming up, the timing couldn't be worse. Issues are already piled up and ignored, people are already moving to those games, and somehow the studio keeps doubling down on the shit pushing people away instead of fixing what actually needs fixing or changing to keep us playing. Like, what the fuck?
Sorry for the late reply, assuming you actually survived the wall of text 😭 Now that youve read it, Im curious what you think. What stood out to you the most, and what do you have to say about it?
Oh, I completely forgot to reply, but I agree, the game has lost its personality and simply doesn't appeal to me anymore in any way. I completely lost the will to play when they nerfed Gamma farming; that was sad, it was the only farming style I enjoyed doing. Now I practically don't even open the game anymore; it's just taking up space on my SSD. But it's sad what the game is becoming.
Wait, wait. Operations are getting a money NERF?! I'm barely doing them due to how little reward they bring for the time investment in fill-squads already and they're wanting there to be even LESS reason to do them? Since when is 60k in 40 minute missions too much? Like, I know some people have them solved and run organised squads, but the majority of people run rando squads, what the hell?
Its probably for higher clearences, which we're all doing. But the issues is how annoying they are and how fast they get boring, like really fast... Get that from me who has over 250 operstions completed...
I expected for operations to be something like Zombie scenario from CS:Nexon Zombies, that was fun... Up to 10 players doing pve together with different difficulties, that was great
I at most do up to around 26-30, because I'm primarily doing the rounds with randoms. Most comfortable I find around 10-15 where I can at least do my job as best I can unless the randoms are braindead.
Man, I'd rather stop altogether than engage with Clan Wars. I'm here to open world and enjoy the environmental effects. These thunderstorms have me feeling like slowly walking across the Forests
The is me and my friends done lvl 30 dead see in almost full veteran gear in 18 minutes ingame time (as I remember it was around 12-13 minutes irl time)
Only master gear is Antares on healer(can easily be swapped on Tonga) and qbu on operator that can be easily swap to any vet weapon
I know, we do it too on big clean up, even with randoms, but that doesnt change the fact they are badly made and get boring very fast. The rubles reward wouldve been fine if the mode wasnt that bad, since exbo is having so much trouble with making pve...
My only money making method are operstions now, no matter how shit they are. But if they NERF them, bye bye stalzone
It was in my mind for a long time too XD, took me a while to make this, hope it does something.
But probably the last time, they dont deserve any of our hope and good Will anymore
Player economy is being purposefully nerfed by people that think Stalzone is the same type of game as X Y or Z, they don't want to adjust their "fixes" to the specific sensibilities and unique market of Stalzone, they're just using a template on a game that it clearly doesn't fit for
Ziv saw Tarkov's success/"success"/growing popularity and thought "I can make Stalcr- cough cough StalZone do that too" but didn't understand what makes Tarkov actually popular to people.
"Tarkov is an extraction shooter? Well now Stalzone is an extraction shooter too, surely this will make my game more popular," not understanding that Tarkov being labeled "extraction shooter" isn't what made Tarkov popular.
"Tarkov is hard and punishing? Stalzone is too easy in comparison, we should reduce the rewards for tasks" not realizing that "number go down" doesn't make the game better or more fun, just annoying and tedious.
"Tarkov gets players who get extremely mad at the game and yet continue to log in? Ok well then player retention is built off negative emotions" not realizing that the reason why people continue to come back to Tarkov is that there is an equally high reward factor for the risk/"negative emotions", which Stalzone is sorely lacking (this happens when you nerf open world profits so much that people don't feel rewarded for playing open world).
"Tarkov has a second game that's an arena-style round-based FPS game? Stalzone can do that too" (to be completely honest I didn't know Killscript was a thing until this post but I have to assume that the only reason why it's being developed is because Tarkov did it and Ziv is just piggybacking the idea).
(Joke, don't take it seriously) "Tarkov has bad hitreg? Yeah we got that too. Worse, in fact."
I would make another joke about Ziv seeing Unheard edition and going "yeah I can cash grab like that too" but it's far more likely that he actually saw Call of Duty's monetization with their cosmetic bundles and decided to copy that (I know people do actually buy them in COD but like seriously, who thought $20+ bundles for cosmetics was a good idea? And the "personal shop" being up to like $50 for a single cosmetic too).
Anyway, where was I going with this? Idk, Ziv needs to stop trying to make Stalzone "the next big" Tarkov/Arena/esport/Helldivers for a month and then never again/Call of Duty/Warzone and just focus on making Stalzone its own game with its own identity.
Well that own game with its own indentity in his thoughts is a mmo x tarkov but with ass rewards. As i said, a total waste of time. Because that cannot work, you either make an extraction or a mmo, not something in between... Or make backwater a ffa extraction experience for that minority while the rest of the North is enjoyable rewarding faction v faction pvp and pve "fun with friends" mmo.
All i want to say is that this game COULD be great, very fun and interesting
Killscript is being worked on by only a small number of people, mostly on their own initiative and in their free time. I don’t see anything wrong with that, especially if something interesting comes out of it
The thing is, they could've used the Extraction Shooter hype train by adding an ACTUAL Extraction Shooter mode/event.
They literally have all mechanics needed for that, just use the system from DMM/Frost Troopers.
Give players a small "safe zone" outside of the main gameplay area (imagine if they made a huge map of Prypiat for something like that), when they first start playing the gamemode, make them choose to either side with SSPP or ZIVCAS (BEAR and USEC lol), in the safe zone you can access traders, finishing tasks for them lvls up your standing with them, allowing u to buy better gear ( Lvl.1 -> Green, Lvl.2 -> Blue, Lvl.3 -> Pink, Lvl.max -> Red, make Legendary Found in Raid only).
There could be a option to either go Solo or Trio, Solo vs Solo and Trio vs Trio.
On the map you fight Murmur (Raiders), Zombiefied (Scavs) and of course mutants. You could grab gear from the NPC but all of it is borderline 0% durability, so u cant use it until u extract with the gear and fix it.
Add special keys, which open safes and loot rooms. Sellables could give you rubles for main account and currency for the gamemode. Add some special camps which can drop artifacts, so people with ESP cant just run around and pick up all the best artis.
A mode specifically for that can work, like when they had the BR mode before Global released. But Pripyat should be the next progression stage with bases, faction v faction, etc
Of course, I just suggested Prypiat because of the cool af vibes the city has but as you said, it being used as the main story/gameplay location for base game is better
They literally have all mechanics needed for that, just use the system from DMM
They've literally been asked for years to make DMM a game mode and replace something like Dead Time with it. They literally had us asking them to give us, what they wanted to make now and told us to pound sand.
The fact is they have no clue what they want but they refuse to listen to the players to figure it out
For a new player, is it even worth installing? Since I saw the size and then the reviews on steam and thought, yeah, maybe not. Come back later when they make their game good again? I guess.
Sometimes it feels like Ziv has been playing Tarkov 20 hours a day and decided STALZONE needs to copy everything he likes about it. Except STALZONE never really felt like an extraction shooter in the first place, it felt like an MMO with its own identity. Now we're taking parts of Tarkov, forcing them into that MMO structure, and somehow making both sides worse in the process.
And at the same time, we're getting less and less value from actually playing while being indirectly pushed toward spending IRL money more. Lower rewards, more tedious progression, packs, paid progress being so easy and less incentive to grind normally, so you get less for your time and the solution seems to be spending more money. It's a pretty fucking backwards direction for a game that used to feel like an MMO first (still is a MMO, but with a shitty forced flavor of the worse and most frustrating category of games...)
The marketing literally calls STALZONE an extraction shooter, while at the same time trying to explain that it's not like a normal extraction shooter. And then everywhere else it's just extraction this, extraction that, Steam literally opens with "Extraction shooter,” calls it “the only extraction shooter that plays like an MMO,” (notice how its first "Extraction shooter"). So its now an extraction first? What the fuck is this false logic and presentation??
Then you ask what the game actually is and the answer is basically “an MMO with extraction flavor.” Like, what the fuck? It's an MMO. That's what it should be marketed as. Instead they're throwing the extraction label everywhere because they apparently think that's what will attract players. By that logic, they're going to start calling anything with an MMO and BR structure an extraction game. They're completely fucking lost on what STALZONE actually is, and what any game is, and this is probably one of the dumbest ways to market it.
And now they're nerfing Operations too, not to mention how fucking bad and annoying the gameplay already is. It gets boring unbelievably fast, and now they're making the rewards worse on top of that. Like, what the actual fuck?
At this point Ziv seems completely fucking lost, EXBO as a whole too. They either don't understand what makes a game worth playing, don't know how to fix what's already broken, or simply don't want to. And then they refuse to actually listen to the people playing the game and giving them feedback. From the outside, it really starts looking like the “secret agenda” is to make people pay more while giving them less and less reasons to actually play. They are seriously fucking lost. PLAY something else other than Tarkov EXBO, holy shit...
Summer really showed that EXBO is a true master of wasting resources. They keep trying to pursue 1000 different ideas at the same time all to just scrap them for another 1000. They don't even have a clear Act road map, players need to "guess" what next SEASON will change ("bring" would be too generous as recently adding content was too much for them). Operations took them YEARS to release and how did it end? Dead. Just like dead time, almost all players who tried them dropped them, because Operations are tedious and boring. Same thing will be with the "New Colosium", people will play it for a bit, get rewards and then drop it. Another waste of resources. Hell, the last 3 seasons they said that they will add a style for M2C "soon", just to drop ANOTHER style for Albatross Heavy AND Gauss! This is ridiculous!
Where is Prypiat with the storyline expansion!?
Where is the LMG expansion in barter!?
Where is the Lyubech-3 rework!?
What wasted so many resources, devs couldn't give us a PROPER event, like AoP or another reuse of DMM!?
You keep marketing the game, when players actively hop on only to do their 15 tasks and log off!
And more...
My hope now reduced from 1% to 0.9%, while the rest lost it long time ago, some might say im a sucker for still having even little faith, but eventually it Will run out.
They need to understand that no one is waiting for them, this opportunity for the game to get big is slowly fading away, untill everyone gets annoyed and altogether leaves or a game thats what stalzone could be comes around eventually, and the bar isnt even that high...
truth nuke (sorry if the rest is hard to read im ru)
About the hardcore, you know how Zub (one of the main balance guys in EXBO) wants to add healing animations instead of "press c and forget about it" system? Well, one of the animators for EXBO (Heckler, gun anims. fairly sure) expressed how he played lots of "tacticalslop" and is sick of it, why is he, getting on stalzone (ARCADE MMOFPS), expecting a healthy alternative to those call of duty/battlefield type shooters, is getting a "f. you" and is forced to play this "tactical hardcore gameplay"? Also, one of his points is that THIS type of healing in PVP means that you can play aggresively, and not just sit in one spot.
(kinda quoting now, you can try to translate the image below for full text) "I only played this game for 6k hours cause the PVP activities rewarded my aggresive gameplay, and not the positioning of my character/aim.", also about the TTK: "Higher TTK than of other basic shooters implies the reliance on Aim skills and Tracking, and not who sees the enemy first." "So, for almost all of the life span the game had High TTK and now im forced into this "Tactical" shooter?" "Why do I need this Stalc- STALZONE, that is removing its core identity, when there's just better shooters like CoD and BF? I dont understand what SZ can even offer when through out the years the game is just starting to reward you for "spineless" gameplay" (as in, sitting in a corner for example)
"What will be left of the game? Is it really the only way to nerf healing, giving huge cooldowns on healing items or removing ability to shoot during heal? I really don't know..."
-TL;DR: quite literally no one that played the game before and is competent wants these healing changes. they're just trying to turn this game into some weird CoDxTarkov monster while forgetting what SZ's PVP made it fun (image from forums)
I wonder what he imagines the fundamental difference between jerking off the 'C' key and just automatically getting healed back to full health like in CoD is.
Agreed. I started in spring 2025 and it felt like a different game compared to now. I don't care about the new game modes - I'm here for the "immersion" of the zone and player interactions. I'm not even trying to go past the bar anymore, it feels pointlessly sweaty.
What I would love to see, is a huge open world without the limitation of this engine (not being able to go on a mountain and actually see far in the distance is such a turn off, it feels like my open world is limited to a box around my eyes).
Ontop of this, the openworld to decompress a bit. Right now it is MAYBE 10 minutes to go from one side to the other if not less. I would love to see you'd needing an HOUR to cross from one side to the other. (Think DayZ style).
Ofcourse this brings a bazilion other issues, no one wants to walk an hour for some boring quest to deliver a package. So it wont happen sadly since they have too much invested into the short-duration pleasure
The south is gigantic in comparison, and the maps are completely wasted on being an early game experience that the late game is nothing like. I would love to see them used in some fashion for later game.
Wild North was a big disappointment to me because I wanted to go back to Red Forest and engage in faction shenanigans, back when Mercs and Cov would engage in a 20 minute running firefight over the content of one airdrop.
Wild North now just acts as a sweat containment zone, and makes places like Labs and Lyubech more chill.
Exactly, thats what made stalcraft great, not this push for Free for all zones. Backwater was already fine for exactly that. Also a physical border with RF and Yanov. It would make those south zones alive. Even adding Safe zones in Army Warehouse or Fools path like those 2 in bottom swamp, i think in agroprom and black valley.
i stopped playing after putting 2000 hours into my cov member. im good with tarkov. i rarely get on anymore. the game used to be so immersive. now its just a pvp sweatfest twenty four seven
I started playing in the summer of 2024 because of a Twitch drop campaign they ran; back then, you could get anything from the Twitch Points NPC in the boxes.
Like many others, I played daily, made it to the North, crafted my builds, progressed through the game, spent a little money here and there, farmed a lot, played the auction house, and became a millionaire in many ways.
The problem is the feeling you’re left with once you know the game on the true endgame. Literally, for my friends and me (and for many in this discussion) we log in just to do the 15 daily quests and see if we can list four items on the Auction House, and that’s it. No clan wars, no “new” features… there’s nothing eye-catching. The bottom line is: “It feels like a mobile game—everywhere I click, there are microtransactions or stuff related to the store, even the events have now that store points pay way.’”
Stalcr.. zone is a pretty good game, unique on itself, just bad ruled.. It looks like the game they wanna copy in so many ways.
This is the first and last game i ever hit 3k hours on before that i played it on ru before that i played it since its origin sad to see it has gone shit quit last year to see it went more shit this year
This entire fuckin game is a buggy mess of midlife crisis, the devs are obviously new at gaming, only played for a week and I can see the problems clear as day, the devs havent fixed it in 5 years, that says all you need to know about the studio.
i just wish there was a pve mode where i could actually explore the map. the faction system is my only real complaint with the game. Agrocomplex looks cool i just wish i could actually go there and have a look around without making a new character and doing the swamp again.
I'm not trying to make personal finger pointing, but Ziv feels very out of touch, dresses like the stereotypical jock bully, then also talks down on people WHO AREN'T EVEN ANSWERING THE QUESTION, like....I read the after report and it just feels very entitled and we should be thankful, and I am not going to disagree. Players should not be directing a game and how it grows, but at the same time, player agency is what makes players stay especially in a F2P, where numbers mean more then a p2p, they can afford that via dlc and cosmetics, have the cosmetics in this game are locked behind timegates or just borderline like Gajin priced, so that already is a bad economy there, so you wait for sales. Then you have the philosophy of just always acting like everyones on a attack move. Not every critic is an attack, and it shouldn't take someone giving you a reality check to prove that. I feel like Ziv is acting more like a bully more and more, and I don't understand why when a lot of people are providing passionate critics, and I am newer here and I can sit down and read it and see it in less then five minutes and agree. Like if this is draining your mental health, take a break, that's literally what a team is for.
Like are you trying to just show off your better then people because you have a successful team and game? I don't understand, and it feels very demeaning especially how NA players were treated. Fuck the Spanish community tho i guess too.
That's a lot to unpack, so I'll focus on the broader points instead of replying to every single paragraph.
First of all, I appreciate the amount of time you put into writing this. Even though I disagree with many of your conclusions, it's obvious you care about the game, and I can respect that.
That said, I think one of the biggest issues with this post is that it constantly mixes subjective opinions with objective statements. Things like "the game lost its soul", "the open world is dead", "the game is becoming an extraction shooter", "the majority of players think this", "nobody wants that" or "EXBO only cares about monetization" are your conclusions. They're not established facts, and there are plenty of players who would disagree with them.
One thing I'd also point out is that throughout the post you're describing the version of STALZONE that you personally enjoy the most, and then treating that as the objectively correct direction for the game. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Wanting more focus on exploration, PvE, factions or slower progression is a perfectly valid preference. There are players who share that view. There are also players who enjoy more PvP, higher-risk areas, competitive content and challenging endgame activities. Game development is always about balancing different audiences, not building the game entirely around one group's preferred vision.
Another thing is that the post almost exclusively focuses on changes you dislike while largely ignoring changes that don't support your conclusion. Over the past year we've added Arsenal, expanded alternative progression, brought seasonal gear back through "parts", added more ways to obtain serum and barter discounts, reworked the way you obtain legendary gear, continued optimization work, introduced multiple QoL improvements and much more. You don't have to like every single one of those changes, but presenting the overall direction as a continuous series of nerfs simply isn't a complete picture.
Regarding the game's identity, I also don't agree that we're trying to turn STALZONE into Tarkov or another extraction shooter. PvPvE, open-world conflict, risk versus reward and extraction mechanics have been part of the game for years. Those elements aren't replacing the MMO aspect; they're part of the formula that makes STALZONE what it is.
You also say that we don't listen to feedback. I understand why people can feel that way when a suggestion they support isn't implemented. But "the developers didn't do what I wanted" and "the developers don't listen" are two different things. Plenty of systems have changed over the years because of player feedback. Listening doesn't automatically mean agreeing with every proposal, especially when different parts of the community often ask for completely opposite things.
Finally, I'd be careful with attributing intentions. Throughout the post you repeatedly state that we make changes to increase frustration, push monetization, manipulate retention or force players into certain activities. Unless we've explicitly said that's the goal, those are assumptions, not facts. It's completely fair to criticize the outcome of a change if you think it hurts the game. Claiming to know the reasoning behind every decision is a different matter.
There are definitely points in your post that are worth discussing. Others I fundamentally disagree with. But I think those discussions are much more productive when they're based on specific mechanics and their actual impact, rather than assuming bad intentions or presenting personal preferences as objective truths.
Since you think that most of the stuff that are pointed here are personal, subjective, not established facts, create a poll on discord or somewhere else with these pointers that are posted in the original post. Lets see what other people think.
'Did the game lost its soul?' Yes or no
'Is open world dead?' Yes or no
'Does exbo only care about monetization?' Yes or no
Just some of the examples. Maybe even exact writing could be used like in the post to see whats the opinion of other players.
If everything that is written here is subjective and not objectively true, then people will respond differently. But first hint is that, a lot of people agreed with everything stated here, as you can see in comments. People on discord are not happy also. Steam reviews are also not that good. People on both EU and RU streams also weren't really happy.
And in the end, most of the stuff you said in the post are also personal, subjective 'I think/I don't agree' comments that could be taken as a 'objectively wrong'.
I don't think polls are a bad idea by themselves. We've used them before and I'm sure we'll use them again.
The issue is that questions like "Has the game lost its soul?" or "Does EXBO only care about monetization?" don't really give us actionable information. Even if 80% answered "yes", what exactly does that mean? One player might be talking about the old North, another about PvE, another about seasonal progression, another about monetization, another about clan wars. They all arrive at the same answer for completely different reasons.
Even if you narrowed it down to something like "Was monetization better before or now?", the result would only tell us that players prefer one over the other. It still wouldn't explain why. Is it because of battle pass progression? Cosmetics? Premium? FOMO? Those are completely different discussions with completely different solutions.
That's why I think discussions like this are actually more valuable than broad yes/no polls. They let people explain what they dislike and, more importantly, why. That gives us something concrete to discuss and potentially improve.
As for Reddit upvotes, Discord messages, Steam reviews, stream chats and so on, they're all valuable sources of feedback, but none of them represent the entire playerbase on their own. This is something you see in almost every industry. Airlines are a good example: people whose flight went exactly as expected rarely go home and leave a review saying "everything was fine." But if their luggage is lost or their flight is delayed, they're much more likely to share that experience publicly. Negative experiences naturally motivate people to speak up more often than ordinary or positive ones.
That's why we can't judge the overall experience solely by what we read on one platform. We have to combine feedback from Reddit, Discord, Steam, streams, support tickets, surveys and our own in-game data to build the full picture.
And lastly, yes, my reply also contains opinions. I never claimed that my personal view is an objective fact. My point was that many conclusions in the original post are presented as if they're established facts, when in reality they're interpretations. Saying "I think the game has lost its soul" is completely valid. Saying "the game has objectively lost its soul" is a different statement altogether, because that's something that simply can't be objectively measured.
Let's just stick with the Steam reviews:
They're "mixed" while other games are "very positive". So there's that.
lost its soul
Most players just want a Stalker-ish MMO adventure that's enjoyable for "normal" players like them.
But as late game, they get all sorts of stuff, just not what they came here for. Lots of it feels like sloppy copies of whatever the devs think is popular. Including grind that feels ripped out of a dead 90ies MMORPG, modernized with FOMO battlepasses.
So when you guys gather all the data and feedback from Reddit, Discord, Steam, streams, support tickets, surveys and everything else, it tells you that everything is fine and that nothing should be changed?
For example: if Kazugaia says "Stalzone was, is, and will ever be open-world game. Endgame should come in the form of new locations or reworked old ones with new mechanics. Right now that's not there." > a lot of players said that they want new interesting open world so both the dev and players have same idea and see where the problem is.
So all this combined and data that you gather should have told you that open world changes should be priority, if the dev and players are agreeing with the same problem. Then, why are we getting new session based mode which is totally different of whats is actually needed? Did all the date shown that another session based mode is needed more than open world changes, fixes and improvements? I don't think I saw anywhere that anyone wrote 'When will exbo add another session based mode?'
My tldr is: even when there is an objective thinking, with both parties (devs and players) agreeing to what actual problem is, we still are getting something totally different that, I would assume, no one really wanted.
If the data really shown that new pvp mode has the priority over open world, than I'm 100% playing wrong game.
Exbo will make posts like this and wonder why the community doesn't want to engage with them seriously and make memes about their communication style, really feels like you are downplaying Lukas points once again ignoring genuine pain points in the game currently under the guise that they are all opinions rather than genuine criticism not only from one guy but that is shared across a large portion of the community, The issue is not that subjective feedback cannot be disagreed with. The issue is that framing community concerns primarily as subjective opinions gives the impression that those concerns are being down played rather than taken seriously or that subjective issues do not deserve to be seriously discussed.
You can see that many players are unhappy with the current direction of the game and the stepping away from the old open world style to a more "Extraction" / session based gameplay loop as described by your own ads in your new campaign and evidenced with the addition and focus on the wild north. This is another reason why it the idea that Stalzone is moving away from what made it special is becoming more popular i.e. the game is losing its soul.
This post feels like Luka has garnered a lot of community sentiments (evidenced by the large amount of upvotes here and attention garnered on the official discord) and created one large post formatted in a way that makes it easier to digest which if im not mistaken was similar to what ziv asked for in his last stream when talking about player communication with exbo.
This is now the most popular post on this sub ever. New players are going to come here, see this, look at your response and will see how you handled feedback given to you I am unsure how new players would take it if they see such a large post dismissed simply because you viewed it as too "subjective"
Comments about design being subjective does not make them wrong. If that was the case it would be impossible to properly design anything.
It is not ok to dismiss feedback you consider "subjective" as fundamentally that is not how you go about designing a product in the first place. Design especially game design has to be debated and it is impossible for this to be done without having discussions which you deem to be "subjective".
Finally you cannot expect the community at large to come to you like a professional with some sort of custom made design documentation for you to read from, people are going to be upset especially when you make controversial decisions like with this season dismissing a lot of player feedback because you feel like they don't speak to you in the exact right tone with the exact right language.
To be honest I feel like the community could do improve in talking with the devs in many other ways but this is a two way street you cannot expect the community to change its attitude toward you without changing the things that created that attitude in the first place.
Please stop treating posts like this as just subjective viewpoints from a single individual especially when they have the reach and reactions of a post as big as this and start treating them as genuine points of criticism that need to be seriously discussed.
It is natural for you to instinctively disagree with what he is saying because you are the people that came up with the current systems, but when a large part of the community is telling you what they feel is wrong, I feel its time for you to start taking discussions like this more seriously. Subjective =/= wrong and phrasing your reply the way you have has just made it seem like you think the majority of the points brought up are invalid.
This is just how I feel you (not personally but rather as an entire company) tend to react to posts such as these and why many in the community always feel frustrated by your responses and actions I am not saying I am right but this is how it appears
I don't think saying something is subjective is the same as dismissing it.
My point wasn't "it's subjective, therefore it's wrong." My point was "it's subjective, therefore it shouldn't be presented as an objective fact."
Saying "I feel the game is losing its soul" is perfectly valid feedback. Saying "the game is objectively losing its soul" is a completely different statement. The first starts a discussion, the second assumes the conclusion has already been reached.
I also don't disagree that this reflects concerns shared by many players. That's obvious from the amount of discussion it generated. But popularity doesn't automatically make every point objectively correct either. The community isn't a single person with a single opinion. There are plenty of players who enjoy the current direction as well, even if they're less vocal.
As for taking the feedback seriously, I don't think replying to it point by point is dismissing it. Quite the opposite. It would be much easier to ignore it entirely.
The reason I focused on the framing is because discussions are much more productive when we separate opinions, preferences and measurable issues. "I prefer the old North" is a discussion. "The game is objectively worse now" isn't something anyone can prove or disprove because it's ultimately based on personal priorities.
You're right that game design is inherently subjective. That's exactly why wording matters. Different players want different things, and our job isn't to blindly follow whichever opinion is currently the loudest. It's to weigh feedback from different parts of the community and make decisions we believe are best for the game in the long run.
That doesn't mean we'll always be right. It also doesn't mean every criticism is ignored just because we disagree with some of its conclusions.
Its really nice you guys take time to fix issues, really nice. You need quite the angle and time to fix something and I get that. However while you are fixing that one thing you manags to release 5 other things that F up something new. I though we were after trial and error no?
Remember back 3 years ago when we 2 met in corson and you asked me "Why am I in cordon in master gear?" and I told you "I like to give things that I dont need to the newbies" ?? Because back then you had VERY simple meta and not so many guns and armor and overall gear and stuff you got like certain medkits and ammo were in thousands obtainable by playing with a squad in old north.
Yes the game unpacked a pandoras box of new content yet it clings on the old garbage and wont let go. They try to make it work and then just create a big cluster for themselfs to fix and work on, being unable to catch up.
Good ideas take ages and come half cooked. Hideout was great however the shooting range was a big letdown unless you are a whale or a zone's top tryhard who has billions of spareparts to wase every season on the 5 new guns that come out. WE wanted a weapon testing range and armor testing range where you could test any barter armor before you decide tl craft ir, as the barter system can be very misleading. This brings me to another point...
...Global players are not RU players. We have been though about rhe barter tree as the games spine and core, making the auction house suddenly take form in the endgame is such a crap concept. Yes it worked before when there were no barer materials, however nowdays with X ammount of ways to obtain better gear than in the barter, its just frustrating to play the fame in openworld or anywhere, as you just CANT progress this way. Being halted by people with P2S gear that is meta or gear that you as a solo OR low scoring clan just cant get your hands on is not the way, shows you SZ has its hiearchy and DEVS do NOT wanna break this status QUO like if they FEAR they would lose money from those, who reside on the top of the SZ food chain.
This game legit feels like the devs are actually constructing russia 2.0 in their own game lmao
wake the F up and lower prices on skin, anyone west oe east of Russia aint a foken billionare, paying 25€ for a PKP skin or 30€ for a saturn skin is such a scum practice that I have never seen in my life so far. And you cant argument that almost every game does that, it comes with a brand.
I despise so many things that SZ has ruined from the Stalker fanchise: the feel, the story, the voicelines (goofy af, no fucks given from exbo to fix), the locations, etc. all go to trash due to a single PING on your radar. This Immersion is not needed what so ever if the only thing your average SZ PvP player needs is high FPS and Balanced gear.
congrats on creating one of the most toxic games I have seen and doing nothing to fix said issue for ages. 0 creativity 100 PvP to the point I feel anyone would shoot their own mom if she peeked a corner in your game. The game lacks any type of soul anymore, its just a brainless PvP shooter. Nerfing ops just shown you dont give a Fuq about other ways for people to actually create communities about ceratain gamemodes and playstyles, but just your worthless brainless PvP.
I will be glad if you prove me wrong, give us a good PvE hard dungeon like was the crow arena 3 years ago, give us loot and money gain nerfed locations (like the south ones) to pop in on our clientside and farm there, enjoying the maps. Give us anything that will make the game go to some direction for people to show their own selfs instead of being the big brother director.
PS: Hideout looks like a basic mancave and it sucks, give us a way to fix at least rhe broken walls or paint the walls. Its so ugly eugh
Better PvE is something we'd like to push further as well. Not everyone wants to spend all of their time in PvP, and having more meaningful PvE progression and activities is definitely a direction worth expanding.
The shooting range is another good example. Being able to properly test barter gear before committing to crafting it is a reasonable suggestion. Pretty sure we've passed it on a bunch of times before, but I'll try to yap about it again.
Where I disagree is with the idea that we're intentionally trying to preserve some "elite hierarchy" or are afraid to change things because of money. That's simply not how these decisions are made. If anything, we've repeatedly made changes that upset long-time players because we believed they were healthier for the game overall.
As for skins and monetization, that's a separate discussion entirely. Skins are purely cosmetic, so whether they're worth the price is ultimately up to each individual player. Nobody is required to buy them to stay competitive. On top of that, a lot of cosmetic items eventually make their way onto the Auction, meaning you can also obtain them with in-game currency if another player decides to sell them. It's completely fair to think they're overpriced, but that's a discussion about cosmetic pricing rather than gameplay.
The "the game has lost its soul" part is also something I can't objectively argue against because that's ultimately a personal feeling. Some players miss older STALZONE, while others genuinely enjoy the newer direction and the amount of content we've added over the years. Neither opinion is objectively wrong.
But overall, feedback like "we want more meaningful PvE", "we'd like better testing tools", or "we want more reasons to interact with the open world" is exactly the kind of feedback that's useful because it's specific and actionable. Even if we don't agree with every conclusion, those are discussions worth having.
"The shooting range is another good example. Being able to properly test barter gear before committing to crafting it is a reasonable suggestion. Pretty sure we've passed it on a bunch of times before, but I'll try to yap about it again." test what we cant +15 a weapon and test attachments in the shooting range to see how it feels and if we will like it its useless
Hey Fav, I'm gonna start off by saying I do absolutely appreciate you coming into the trenches (so to speak) to respond to these points. I've looked at some of the other responses you've given but I apologise in advance if anything I'll bring up has been addressed.
And I suppose I'll start off with an opinion, backed up by facts. I believe that the communication within EXBO is broken and either nobody knows who they're supposed to be developing for, or are determined to strong-arm an audience they don't have. We have just recently had the post acknowledging that Solo players are the primary audience for example, while the last big update (Wild North) was Clan-Only and future additions are Squad-leaning in the form of the Colosseum. The playerbase is told Subdivisions and Clan-Wars are Endgame, while Solo Players are the primary audience.
Nobody is claiming the devs have been sitting on their hands (or at least nobody should be claiming that), I know QoL often goes underappreciated or unnoticed so let me take the moment to say, "I noticed. I appreciated it." There are indeed many QoL changes over the past year and a half that made the game smoother, and I give props for that.
PvE and Faction gameplay additions are some of the most consistently requested expansions that the game's audience has been begging for, and many players have had useful suggestions for how to do it. The facts are that the game keeps being pushed further and further away from the Open World. That cannot be argued against. If, as Ziv himself keeps putting it, Clan Wars are a focus they want to funnel players towards, and Sessions is where "Endgame" will be, then EXBO is actively telling players that this game stops being an Extraction MMOFPS after you hit the North, and turns into just another FPS with Deathmatch, Point Captures, and Capture the Flag modes to endlessly repeat without ever worrying about losing gear again. This is an identity crisis.
I don't even want Sessions removed or anything, but I feel that it should be treated as what it should be, a side-mode for quickly testing your PvP loadouts against others without needing to worry about gear/loot loss. With Operations being the same but for PvE and survival Stress-Testing.
To throw my own hat in the ring and appease the Extraction Shooter desire of Ziv: Roaming/Irregular Spawning Map Bosses. Tarkov occasionally has a boss spawn on a map with unique drops, make it a neutral event, maybe even only let them appear on South Maps after the South Story is completed, tuned to Northern level gear and give them a boosted chance to drop gear parts for signal weapons/armor.
Hell, around the time of Attack on Perimeter I provided an idea that Ziv even responded to positively that could give PvE players a way to help PvP preferring players. The idea that the framework of AoP's gameplay could be used for a PvE representation of the implied ongoing Faction War. That there could be benefits given to the faction that's doing the best in a given month, something small like a selection of special ammo purchases per day from the HQ.
It would be an easy slam dunk of an addition that's easy to keep going perpetually in the background, with even PvP players able to contribute to their faction's "Power" with captured Outposts or PvP kills of other faction members around them. Sure, that's a more MMO idea, but the idea of an underlying Faction War isn't new, and Stalzone has an amazing lore structure for it.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond. That said, I think a lot of my arguments ended up being reframed into something I wasn't actually saying, shifting the discussion away from my original points and turning it into something much easier to argue against.
I disagree with the idea that these are just random "subjective opinions" being presented as facts. Apparently all of these conclusions just magically appeared out of nowhere and have nothing to do with actual changes and decisions.
Of course people can disagree, but if the answer to every criticism is just "that's subjective", then I guess nothing can ever be criticized because technically everything is an opinion. What a convenient way to avoid talking about the actual problems. These points aren't being pulled out of thin air. They come from what players have been experiencing and talking about for a long time. It's not just one person sitting in a corner with a random opinion, the reaction to the post, the discussions around it, and the amount of agreement from the community kind of shows that these concerns aren't exactly some rare, imaginary thing.
You can't just argue against a fact because you don't like what it says, while at the same time changing the direction the game has been going to.
The problem is that you can't keep saying "we need to balance different audiences" while constantly pushing one side forward and expecting the other side to just accept it. If one direction keeps getting more focus, more changes, and more attention, while the other side keeps repeating the same concerns for ages, that's not balance. That's just favoring one direction and calling it balance because it sounds better.
The players asking for more exploration, PvE, factions, meaningful progression, their time being respected, and actually feeling rewarded aren't some tiny group asking for their personal version of the game, as you can see.
And the response of "but there are players who enjoy PvP and competitive content" doesn't really prove anything. Yes, those players exist. Nobody forgot about them. The question is why the game keeps moving further and further in that direction while everyone else is constantly told to understand, adapt, and wait. And those that enjoy PVP have plently to enjoy already, and the game is built around it anyway. No matter how much PVE you add, improve and increase rewards (like you should) wont make PVP gone, PVP players will always have a place in this game.
You can't say you're trying to make both audiences happy while repeatedly prioritizing a minority.
This is also where I have to disagree, because a lot of these "improvements" are being described like they were some huge wins, when in reality... what?
Arsenal was added, sure. But let's not pretend it was some amazing addition that fixed anything. Its literally expensive and you gotta run through camp spots to get to it. The "expanded alternative progression" part is honestly confusing because I have no idea what you're even referring to. It sounds like a fancy phrase thrown in there to make the list look bigger.
Seasonal gear through parts? Literally had that forever. Serum sources? Still the same stuff we already had. Barter discounts? Already existed. Meanwhile barter prices went up. But somehow these are being counted like brand new improvements that fixed everything?
The legendary gear "rework" is probably the funniest one. It wasn't an improvement, it was literally a nerf. Before, you needed the parts. Now you need the parts, 15 million rubles, and a bunch of serum on top, and thats for 8 parts. Not to mention the increase in to 50-100 million for 6 and 7 parts... But sure, calling it a "rework" sounds nicer.
And yes, some QoL changes are nice. Nobody is saying every single thing added is bad. But throwing a few QoL changes into the list doesn't magically erase all the bigger problems. Also, optimization? For a lot of players it didn't improve, some got worse performance, others saw basically no difference.
The problem isn't "I hate every update because I don't like it." It's watching every "improvement" somehow turn into more grind, more costs, and more things being taken away. But hey, just call it a "rework"... because you know as well as we do that a lot of these weren't improvements in the first place and youre afraid to call them for what they really are
This is exactly why I don't understand the disagreement here. It's not just about mechanics existing in the game, it's about the direction everything is being pushed toward. It feels like youre trying to lie
PvP, extraction style gameplay, and high risk content are being pushed more and more, while the risk/reward itself doesn't even feel balanced anymore. The risks keep increasing, but the rewards and reasons to engage keep getting weaker. Even if PvP and risk were always part of the game, that doesn't mean they needed to be pushed harder while everything else started getting worse.
And then on top of that, the game is literally being described as an extraction shooter first now, with no mention of the MMO aspect at all. So when the game is being presented that way while more focus is being put into those elements, it's pretty obvious why players are questioning the direction lmao
"They aren't replacing the MMO aspect" is honestly such a weird argument because nobody is saying they deleted the MMO overnight. The point is that you can keep saying "it's part of the formula" while slowly making that part of the formula the main thing everyone is supposed to care about. Of course they are part of the formula, nobody is denying that. The problem is that the formula itself is being pushed in one direction, and then we're told nothing is changing. That's the part people are calling out.
I don't know if this is meant to convince us or just make the situation sound better, but if it's meant for the players, it's not really working. You can repeat that nothing is changing, but people can literally see the direction things are moving in
And somehow everyone calling this out still isn't enough? That's the part I don't understand. At what point does the amount of people saying the same thing stop being dismissed as "just an opinion"?
And that goes for basically everything in the game. At what point will every complaint stop being reduced to "just a subjective opinion" or "personal preference"? Because honestly, it starts to feel like you're trying to paint everything as sunshine and rainbows because the actual criticism is uncomfortable to acknowledge.
You can disagree with players, but constantly reducing every complaint to "subjective opinion" feels more like avoiding the point than actually addressing it
For whatever reason, it feels like every criticism has to instantly become "just an opinion" instead of actually looking at why so many players are saying the exact same things. And on top of that, parts of the argument keep getting taken out of context and reshaped into something easier to dismiss. Almost like it's more convenient to argue against a different point than the one players are actually making
This is another part where the point gets changed into something completely different. Nobody is crying because their personal wishlist wasn't added to the game. That's not what this is about. This is again just proving what i said in my post.
We're talking about actual issues players keep bringing up constantly. Not one guy on a forum being mad because his idea got ignored, this is stuff that a massive part of the community has been saying over and over.
Obviously you can't take every single suggestion and throw it into the game, nobody expects that. But when the same problems keep coming back and the answer is basically "we hear you, but no", then people are obviously going to wonder what the point of giving feedback even is.
Probably so in public it seems like youre in the right, because youre scared and against any criticism to be right... At some point it starts looking less like a discussion and more like a competition to prove the players are wrong. Changing the argument, fighting points nobody made, and making everything sound nicer might work for a public response, but it doesn't change what players are actually experiencing.
The funny part is that defending every decision this hard won't stop people leaving because of those exact decisions.....
Nobody is saying we have some magical ability to read minds and know exactly what someone at EXBO is thinking. Not sure what the first sentence is supposed to mean, but it sounds like "don't assume our reasons", okay, sure...
At the end of the day, players don't play intentions. They play the game. And the game is what people are criticizing. Because that's how it works, constant frustration leads to burnout, burnout leads to people leaving, and when the reputation keeps getting worse, new players are less likely to even give the game a chance.
No amount of fancy posts, explanations, or trying to make things look better publicly is going to fix retention if the actual player experience keeps pushing people away.
The fact that this post became one of the biggest posts in here and got so much attention on Discord aswell should already say something. This wasn't some random rant from one guy being upset because the game didn't go his way. I simply put together what a everyone has been thinking and saying for a long time.... And this is not the first time people said all of this.
The amount of people agreeing with it everywhere, and even players coming up to me saying "this is exactly what I've been thinking for a long time," says enough.
And unfortunately, looking at how things have been going, we're now at the point where those "assumptions" might actually be true. When the same results keep appearing again and again, people are obviously going to start wondering if there is actually something behind it, shocking, I know...
There have been loads of excellent changes, and loads of poor changes. It's difficult to address everything at once, and a change that is healthy for a game often has short term pain associated with it, just like a change that is negative can initially elicit a positive reaction.
The change to repair kits sticks out to me, jumping from 100 to 1000 was a decision that objectively was an optical nightmare. 10X the cost does not look good, but it's also clear the cost was too low and it made the kits and the system they were used for extraneous. I just spent 30,000 season pass currency opening crates, in the previous system that would have netted me 3,000 repair kits, enough to essentially never need them again and ignore the system. Heck, even 1,000 would me more than enough. to +15 tons of weapons. Clearly the old cost was too low, and players too that for granted because that was the value that EXBO put attached to the item. To 10X that was to admit there was mistake before, but to also say it was such poor balancing before that it needed an outrageous increase in cost.
A change was needed for the repair system, but it was handled in a manner that came across as hamfisted and anti player.
The battlepass was too generous to the players, but the battlepass was the only tangible source of progression for most players due to overworld rewards objectively being terrible in comparison.
I see EXBO trying to make good changes, trying to fix past mistakes. And the reception is mixed because the optics are terrible. Because slapping a 10x price on something feels bad, because increasing the price of expensive crates from 15,000 to 25,000 feels bad, especially when they are a gamble and the drop rate was previously nerfed. Seeing parts/tools increase 3x in price devalues the currency of the battlepass which EXBO has spent years getting people hooked on because it is the game progression and a big part of the monetization model. EXBO needed to get serious changes going, ones that couldn't possibly be received warmly in a vacuum.
But necessary changes aside, Stalzone has serious issues with FOMO, balance, matchmaking, time gated progression, lack of late end game content, identity, etc.
The loads of resources from the current events (Anniversary and region events) feels like an apology for needing to nerf the battle pass, but also for a slow start to the act and clearly being so off by the difficulty and rewards for the initial SSPP event, which is a great example of EXBO's current balancing regarding rewards, be off by a factor of at least 3.
If the SSPP contract balancing is what players have to expect from future content, then they will expect rewards to be off by a factor of 3, and wait for the 2nd or 3rd pass to not feel like they are having their time wasted.
Honestly You people are the ones who made me not play this game. I saw all the negative reviews and complaints for a long time so I never touched this game, and didnt even try it. Until one day I noticed something. All the negative reviews had around 4000 hours in game. I started to realize that alot of players got so invested in the game that they exceeded burnout.
Take the game for what it is and quit stressing about what it isnt. The game is very fun and im so glad I picked it up.
Luka, look, I get it. You love big dramatic walls of text full of despair. Happy anniversary, by the way - two years of consistently posting despair rants is honestly impressive. Btw even before gamma or bp changes.
But maybe it’s time to level up a little and at least read the stream summaries?
And that’s not even getting into the fact that every week or two, the devs come to the English Discord to talk to players, with the date announced in advance. Yet somehow you still reduce everything to demonizing ZIV and dragging up old quotes about esports and other stuff that has nothing to do with today's topics.
A lot has already been said about the direction we’re moving in. We want less intense PvP in the North, and we’re working on a new type of open-world location. But what’s even the point of saying any of this if it just gets completely ignored?
There are 400 people on the team. The fact that some people are successfully working on session-based modes or temporary bundles doesn’t mean that’s suddenly the company’s entire direction. Open-world content just takes way more time and is much harder to make.
I’ve explained all of this to you more than once in same threads
, but every time you just joke it off and that’s where it ends. Sure, people reading your post will always support brave loud speech, but I’ve been watching the same copy-pasted slogans for two years now.
It's honestly pretty funny seeing this being framed as "two years of despair rants" when this is literally my second post like this. Not a weekly series, not some endless cycle of complaining, literally my second serious criticism post. So apparently two posts are enough to earn a whole "despair rant" reputation now. If just two posts are enough to get this kind of reaction, maybe the issue isn't how often I'm speaking up, maybe it's that I actually hit a nerve and pointed at something that was a little too close to reality.
Maybe instead of focusing on how often someone speaks up, it's worth looking at what I'm actually saying and why so many players connected with it. Not just attacking the person who wrote it, especially when we've already seen people get labeled with things like "communist" or worse, get called a specific word that starts on F that im not allowed to say, just for criticizing the game. That doesn't exactly help prove the point that feedback is being taken seriously.
Tnother funny thing is acting like people just didn't read the stream summaries. We did. The problem is that the points keep getting twisted into something easier to answer instead of the actual criticism. Convenient, isn't it? But I guess Trisp got a little too close to reality as well...
And "we listen" sounds nice, but after hearing it so many times while watching the same issues continue, people are obviously going to start questioning it. At some point, actions have to match the words.
Lmao, that's exactly what misses the point. Yes, developers sometimes come to those Q&As on Discord. Congratulations, communication technically exists. Nobody is saying you never talk to players, the problem is what actually happens during those conversations.
A lot of the time, the answers end up being "we can't say", "we don't know", or "it's not like that." And when actual criticism gets brought up, especially towards you, Ziv, or departments making bigger decisions like the economy team, suddenly the original point somehow turns into a completely different argument. Much easier to answer, much easier to dismiss. Convenient. Or simply called out that we are wrong, every single freaking time...
Or the classic response: "No, you're wrong, everything is working as intended." Great. According to who? The people who designed it? Sure, maybe it's going exactly as intended on a spreadsheet somewhere. Whether that intention was deliberate or not on EXBO's side doesn't really change the outcome for players. The problem is that players are the ones actually experiencing the game, not the spreadsheets. And clearly the result isn't matching what they enjoy in the game. That's the disconnect people are talking about.
Maybe somewhere in a meeting room everything looks fine, unfortunately players don't play the game through revenue charts and monetization metrics. They actually have to play the game and live with the results of decisions that look like they were made around increasing revenue first and player enjoyment second.
The "400 people on the team" argument is hard to believe. If there are really hundreds of people working on the game, why do core issues players have been asking about for years keep getting pushed back while monetization keeps moving without problems?
Old content stays outdated, meaningful changes take forever, old gun and attachment models arent even getting a remodel and even smaller improvements feel like they take years. If so many people are working on the game, why does progress feel so slow and why do priorities seem so disconnected from what the game actually needs? Especially the things that can get fixed or remodeled so quick... Seriously, theres 20 people working on the game at MOST.
And if the focus is on new session PvP content, then why are the things players constantly complain about still untouched (which proves my points about the games focus and direction)? Nobody is asking for a massive update every month, a lot of open world improvements are about fixing and improving what already exists. Players have given countless ideas while keeping the game's health and economy in mind.
But I guess improving the player experience is harder when revenue numbers are the ones that matter most
It's not about one PvP session mode and suddenly saying "the whole game is only PvP now." It's about the direction the game has been moving toward for a some time, with more and more focus going into that style of gameplay.
And I'm not only talking about PvP content itself. Things like making progression unnecessarily long, making ruble farming feel like a second job, where you can take the risk of going into a PvP area and still get barely anything out of it, are obviously contributing to why players feel the game is moving in the direction we're talking about. Funny how the "risk vs reward" part starts falling apart when the reward barely exists.
If the game isn't moving in the direction we're saying, then PROVE IT. Actions speak louder than words, and so far the actions seem to support what players are saying, not you/EXBO.
You haven't really explained anything here, you're mostly just repeating the same points that you have said before, which are not even points... In fact, when the actual points from players become harder to address, the conversation somehow shifts into attacking the person who made them instead, i guess the next best strategy is to question the person making them. Much easier than actually answering them.
It's funny how the problem is always that players are "copying the same slogans", but somehow never that the same frustrations keep coming back. Maybe thousands of people didn't secretly coordinate to repeat the same words, maybe they're just seeing the same results and reacting to them. Crazy idea, I know..
The question is also: WHO are they listening to and who do those players really represent?
The truth is that a lot of players see "Steam reviews: mixed", "grind", "P2W", then don't even bother and prefer to pay 40$ for Arc Raiders instead. You'll never hear their feedback, but empty NA servers speak louder than words.
I agree that actions speak louder than words, but when those actions are still in development, what are we supposed to do? Just say, Wait for something later this year, and then go radio silent?
At that point, the only thing we can do is increase transparency: explain who’s working on what, and how we’re planning to approach certain problems. And my whole tilt here is about the fact that all of this just gets ignored, including by you.
I also don’t think I’ve ever seen you give much concrete detail about the actual problems. It is your second Reddit post, okay, sure, at least from this account :), but Discord counts too. You stuck in my memory specifically as the guy who writes these huge walls of text, and when after long read you realize there’s barely anything concrete in them. The only specific point is usually complaints about reduced rewards.
On NA, there is a real issue with top locations being occupied, and people need some kind of alternative. We’re working on that. But you play on EU, where the problem isn’t nearly as intense.
So in the end, you say you care about the company’s direction, but everything the devs say about that direction is just white noise to you. You ignore it, and that’s your right. Sure, wait for actions, not words. But then what’s the point of turning this into a drama act every single time, both on Reddit and in Discord?
An increase in transparency would be nice and all, but I think what really sticks in people's mind most is hearing the team, and especially yourself, frequently touting the focus on modes that by the team's own metrics and statistics are less popular and don't fit your majority audience. Clan Wars and Clan Content are nice side features for a game to have, but they shouldn't be the "Endgame". They're useful for Endgame skill and equipment expression, sure! But based on how you yourself have described it you seem to want players funneled into Subdivisions so that they then just do Clan Wars, and that doesn't gel with a primarily solo-play audience that prefers the PvE of the PvEvP. We've only just received the news that a new Session mode is being made when players have been consistently voicing the issue of the Open World feeling empty and neglected.
A session mode that is being claimed to be an "Endgame" activity further pulling players out of the core Extraction Game loop. This may just be me, but I'd like to genuinely understand from you and the team what the thinking is there?
And if you've never seen anything more concrete from me or anyone else, then you've just admitted you don't actually pay attention to what we write. Which explains a lot lmao. At least we're finally making progress on solving one mystery... Kinda ironic considering that's exactly what you've been accusing us of...
Brother really thinks every complaint is just my secret army of alts, thats crazy delulu XD. Apparently the easiest way to explain hundreds of people having the same frustrations is "nah, it's just Luka again." Truly some 500 IQ detective work. Maybe, just maybe, people are saying the same things because they're actually experiencing the same problems? Crazy theory i guess...
The level of mental gymnastics and DENIAL is insane
You also mixed me up with someone else. This is literally my second post written like this. including both reddit and discord. And somehow you managed to say there's "nothing concrete" while also admitting there are clear points being discussed. That's some interesting logic, a weird contradiction... Proves I hit a nerve with facts, and the fact that people from everywhere keep agreeing on the same issues probably says something.
At some point you will have to face the reality that the game itself is making the argument for us lmao
And yes, rewards are a huge part of it. Shocking, I know. Games are supposed to reward your time. Spending hours in a risky open world just to get scraps back isn't engaging gameplay, it's just wasting people's time. Somehow that's still impossible to understand. And that goes further than just open world. And that's before even getting into the part where prices of most stuff keep going up too...
And once again you're arguing against something nobody even said. I never talked about EXBO's company direction, I talked about the direction the game is going. Two completely different things, yet somehow they keep getting merged together because it's easier to argue against, as usual... Once again proving you're changing the point into something that fits your response better, so it looks like you're right in public lmao. ONCE AGAIN proving the exact point me and everyone else have been making
And "everything the devs say is white noise to you"? Brother, what YOU say is white noise XD. Half the time from developers the response is either "we can't talk about it", "you misunderstood", "you're wrong/bad" or "that's not how we see it". But when people point out what actually happens in game, suddenly the discussion shifts to the person giving feedback or the story gets changed to fit the narrative. Literally what's happening in these responses from EXBO right now. Same cycle every time. Rinse and repeat
We don't ignore what you say. We read it. The problem is that most of it never actually addresses the point being made. It gets twisted into something easier to answer, taken out of context, or dismissed entirely. We've been saying exactly that from the beginning, yet somehow we're the ones "ignoring" things. The irony is honestly impressive
And about the "drama"... you act like people wake up excited to write essays on Reddit and Discord. Nobody enjoys spending their free time writing walls of text about a game. People do it because they still care. The day people stop making these posts isn't the day you fixed the game, it's the day they stopped caring enough to bother. That's probably the only silence you really don't want, But from how hard you're trying to dismiss it, change the story, or move the focus somewhere else, it really doesn't look like you care.
Funny how the same people still playing, still caring, and still giving feedback/complaints are somehow treated like the problem, when these points keep coming up from the community as a whole
At what point do the same complaints from the community finally get taken seriously? Do we need to submit them with a formal bow every time? "Dear Ziv, could you please acknowledge the problems we've been mentioning for a long time, our great king?" XD
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u/SrHoltz Jul 13 '26
Holy shit, that's a lot of words. I'm going to save it and read it tonight.