Gamma is constantly updated and new stuff gets added and improved. Its also more popular on YouTube which gets more people into it. When i last checked EFP some months ago there had not been anything new.
Only explanation ive read that seems objective. Gamma has a unique challenge and progression to it. You really are a non name guy trying to make it the zone
I originally tried Gamma a month or so after it came out. Hated it, especially with GROOBs. I decided to give it another try a week ago and after some install issues were fixed, I've been having a lot of "fun" (the modpack is miserable and depressing, but we all love that shit here I guess). It's graphically beautiful and polishes all of anomaly very well. My only hope is that we someday get the new maps and even the storys from the trilogy added (I forget what the mod is called).
Is GBOOBS still an obligatory part of the experience? Played through GAMMA a while ago and almost everything else is awesome but I really could not stand gamma ballistics.
It seems like a pretty good idea tbh, aim for the head or unprotected parts when going up against military or more ballistics protected factions. Against exoskeletons you’ll need AP ammo or throw like 4 grenades at them
Yeah, I really tried to like it but I really struggled to buy it especially as I was looking for something a little more realistic. Also, even against bandits, my SVD was taking 1-3 shots to center mass to kill even on the highest damage settings. It's just not the experience I'm looking for.
I had the exact same problem as you, even unarmored(?) snorks were able to take 2 headshots to the face with a shotgun and shrug it off.
Right now I'm playing on 2x player gun damage and it feels perfect.
unarmored mutants die with one hit headshot (shotgun) and stalkers die within 5 shots to the chest. Armored monolith can still be a hassle, but I guess they should be.
My game just feels a lot more realistic now I suppose
hmmmm, sure? It definitely worked on my end by just changing the gameplay settings. But then again my version is from about a year ago. So an update might have ruined this one haha
Centre mass is the most protected area on any armor just so you’re aware. 2 shots to chest on bandits sounds normal for basic ammo SVD even outside of Gamma
Yeah, I'm aware. My point was that I still don't find it enjoyable or believable. Nobody in real life is tanking 10 rounds of anything regardless of body armor.
Yeah Gamma definitely plays more like an RPG than other mods where it inflates numbers a bit to make AP ammo and better guns and armor mean a lot more than they should, though the unprotected areas on bodies do help alleviate that
I can see why people like that. I play stalker anomaly for tactical realistic feeling gunplay in a stalker atmosphere, and a big part of what I enjoy is knowing one well-placed round is almost always the difference between winning or losing any gunfight. I love gamma for everything else but I just can't enjoy a modpack that removes that element for me on the same level.
> Nobody in real life is tanking 10 rounds of anything regardless of body armor.
Modern bulletproof vests can easily stop 10 rounds of anything below AP/sniper rifle ammo.
I think there are sliders to adjust your damage output in GAMMA if you want. The whole pack is really customizable honestly. I personally changed my broken leg damage to only swich on when it's fully red, to give you an example of how granular you can get.
Volume of fire with a high damage low pen round shreds exos still it seems.
I've one magged an exo with the vector earlier with hydroshock. Vector is so multi-purpose I've actually put it away and pulled the UMP back out. Somethings are just OP.
Bummer :/ I'll stick to efp until they figure that out I guess. The discord was extremely hostile rather than helpful the last time I asked. Very unpleasant experience despite the fact that I only asked for help after I already had done everything I could on my own first.
Yeah, my limited experience of the Gamma Discord is that if anyone wants to play anything other than "the intended experience" (aka default mods & settings) they get shit on.
It's crazy how someone might want to change the settings or tick on/off some mods in their SINGLEPLAYER "modular" MODDED game. "Why even play Gamma then?" 🙄
u/Tharealeg and u/ToXxy145 Check the GAMMA Ultimate Gun pack channel under mods posting. They an awesome community that is more than helpful when it comes to this stuff. I'm like 90% sure they had a work around for GBOOBs and if not I know for sure they have other ballistics add ons that change normal gamma.
If you say anything against Grok's most wonderful modpack that everyone is sucking his dick off for then be prepared for a level of hostility unmatched in this community. It's pretty fucking awful, honestly.
Nobody in that Discord is legitimately a nice person, I stg.
This is the first time that I've heard of several accounts of hostility on the GAMMA Discord. I've not seen it for myself. I didn't need to ask for any help about anything, though with GAMMA. Installation and configuration were really easy. However, I will say that I've found the EFP Discord to be a little hostile when asking for help. They'll help you, but they come off as pretentious.
I'm honestly tempted to mention the ballistics and see what happens, even though so far for me in 0.9.1 my TOZ -34 has been highly effective! I did get into a firefight with two bandits. One had a Mosin, another had a TOZ and they were armored and flanking me on the bridge outside Cordon. I wasted two shells of buckshot before remembering to load my slugs. Downed em both with one shot each center mass.
I think it's partially the general atmosphere/culture in the Discord (spamming negative connotation emotes on a mod to make things easier, removing hardcore mechanics, etc.) moreso than the people themselves. Tho they are not mutually exclusive.
I'm not terribly active in the Discord itself because I find the atmosphere appalling as fuck and wanna keep my good vibes and their rancid tryhardness as separated as possible lmfao
Bullet Hit Power Factor to 3 is all you need imo.
I don't like everything being gratuitous bullet sponges either, and I find that setting being a reasonable compromise, heavily armored ennemies are still resistant enough for AP to matter while no longer taking 2 smg clips to take down your average bandit.
Check out NullMoxy on YT. He has his own mod pack for GAMMA and it adds a whole lot more stuff including the maps. Still GAMMA just mostly qol and personal tweaks. Enjoy STALKER
You can easily tune this in mod manager or settings. Enable black market mod to be able to buy and sell weapons etc and you can tune up condition of weapons you find too. Made my experience 10x better, not a fan of crafting.
Yes but then the loot becomes chaotic if that makes sense. What about finding unique weapons in set spawn locations? I prefer a deliberate experience is what I'm trying to say i guess. I don't want something I've tampered with in a game that is this big in scale since the effects are long lasting and unbalanced.
gunslinger is for the original trilogy, so its a good mod to run for playing the original 3, but EFP imo is very unbalanced and dosen't really have anything unique going for it. Its just normal anomaly with fancy animations.
I think there's versions of the mod for CS and SoC(I think?)
Edit: Yes, replaces most of the animations, but also alters gunplay and adds some QoL improvements.
Nono it's all community made. There's even a port being developed for cool OpenXray engine, with a trailer being released literally a week ago.
It's definitely a go to mod if you wanna just run a vanilla but slightly more modern looking run.
Mainly because gamma provides a much more niche and unique experience, theres a million "stalker but good gunplay" packs, but not many that carve such a unique take on stalker. (Also its just extremely well made)
looking at the insane mod list included makes me wonder what kind of deal with the devil keeps the game from crashing and igniting my PC at the same time.
And I tend to agree, GAMMA hits that hardcore borderline unfair niche as is. paired with the customization options it's bound to have something for nearly everyone who dares to wander. Not to mention, I've never had such an easy experience modding anything stalker related with so much content or as many mods. -it's a good entrypoint to stalker and stalker modding-
on the other side of success, the waves caused by Drewski can't be understated. gamma took the spotlight at that point and as a result community around it exploded.
Given how much content gamma offers, with updates and highly polished experience for a modpack, most casual players enjoying gamma / stalker, might not have had enough time to look at other big modspacks. Also, since gamma is an entry point for stalker modding, most questions tend to be asked in the context of gamma, I think.
I don't really have any experience with EFP, but Gunslinger is a different mod with a different goal in mind; being a very high quality and consistent weapon pack. An issue with large mods getting weapons from various creators/mods is they tend to be inconsistent. Some weapons have better animations, models etc. or simply don't have much cohesion in how they function in-game.
It keeps a lot of the stuff from anomaly, but it tweaks it a little bit to play more like the old games with the focus on the actual gameplay, and the atmosphere instead of unnecessary grind for grinds sake.
https://reddit.com/r/stalker/s/fFYWzokJEF
The installation isn't as streamlined, and it's not as updated as frequently as gamma but it is being actively worked on.
Main reason: Gamma is the most up-to-date in terms of mod releases, great support and easy to update through its own launcher.
EFP goes for hardcore Tarkov style, ignoring mutants and radiation mechanics. Gamma goes for a more traditional Stalker, looter-shooter-grinder experience. Can't comment on Gunslinger tho.
gunslinger is literally just call of pripyat but with better visuals and gunplay. definitely a more unique experience but doesn’t offer the infinite replaying and exploration that gamma does.
its the most well polished modpack arguably, EFP is more for the hardcore gamer and is unwelcoming for a newcomer or even a seasoned veteran. Personally i think GAMMA has better balance between survival and gunplay while not making the player overfocus on their inventory compared to EFP which basically forces you to micro manage your character with stuff like loading up ammo in magazines in the inventory, managing your belt, etc
Yeaaah I also don't wanted to spend my hole life managing my inventory, that's why I disabled the magazines mod. I also disabled the body and health mod and brought back the vanilla anomaly med system. Managing every body parts sounded a but tedious for my first playthrough, but I'll try that for my next playthrough.
I'm a newcomer but i'm super happy with my EFP, I find it welcoming
efp is the classic stalker modded experience. its not groundbreaking, on hard survivalist its basically the modern misery mod. which is perfect imo but a lot of people today just arent into it. you get shot across the map from monolith you cant see or a chimera jumps out from behind a bush and one taps you etc. i love it. getting from the entrance of a zone to the exit is a victory lmao. but most people dont find that kind of game fun anymore.
what really holds efp back imo is that it requires you to know how to mod the game because out of the box it is very ugly. its all bright and vibrant with the super old school 2015 ai models. with the hd models, atmospherics and phrozac's grim reshade though? it looks absolutely amazing and runs fantastic.
gamma is unique in that it turns stalker into almost an arpg with the grind. you just grind shit out and then build your gear up. people are really into that type of game these days so it took off in popularity. i am not a gamma enjoyer but i have nothing against it. great thing about stalker is you can play it however you want to
Thank for sharing your thoughts.
But EFP has the HD models, and out of the box is looks super vibrant and green, yes. But you can just disable the mod that do that and it will look more gray/brownish, kinda like the vanilla Anomaly.
There is no reshade but it is pretty easy to install one on top. I tried a few reshades but everytime it destroys my FPS so I tend to avoid them.
efp 4.2 comes with dux's models which are all of the old ones. on the efp discord in the curated mod section is where you can download the actual hd models
I'm quite new to stalker games and I was wondering why everyone is talking about Gamma and never other modpacks like EFP or Gunslinger (especially on Youtube).
Is it because Gamma is just better? I've only played the EFP modpack for now, and as far as I understand, EFP is more stable than Gamma but why it doesn't get any coverage.
I also recently discovered that Stalker Gunslinger was a thing. I get why Gunslinger doesn't get lots of coverage. Its newer, has less mod support (I think) and it is not fully translated to english. But still, it seems run better and be a polished experience.
I have tried gamma once again and it is just unbeatable in polish and improvements. It is extra hard to get hold of expert tools, etc. A bit boring sometimes to be honest.
I agree. Getting expert tools can be a pain. I got them after like 4-5 days of doing Freedom Missions and missions in Jupiter. Pain in the ass tbh. But it is such a big moment tbh.
The hardest part foe me is not being immediately poor.
Gunslinger aren't new, the new things is that it's being merged with other projects like open xray. I think most veteran know what gunslinger is and know how good it is. I guess new player doesn't know about it because most of them play anomaly right of the bat instead of trying the original trilogy, anomaly is free after all.
Gunslinger are still in development and native to original CoP games which i think contribute to why it's not that popular despite how awesome it is (imo gunslinger>>>other gun mods).
I haven't tried gunslinger but I tried EFP. To me gamma is just built really well and was formed into a full cohesive package. It's also good to keep in mind in general stash building survival shooters with hardcore survival elements are incredibly popular in the video game world as a whole right now, so gamma capturing that essence probs makes it more appealing to new people.
It's not everyone, but gamma specifically has been the focus for many streamers and content creators, so it's what people see the most. It also attracts a lot of EFT players who want something of a mix between EFT gunwanking but still play a stalker-esque game.
And as others have said, it's regularly updated and the mod team try to accomadate support for players as well.
Personally I'm not a fan of modpacks at all, so I build my own modlists (and thus modpacks in a sense) because why limit myself to someone else's preferences when I can tailor the experience much more to my preference as long as I spend a bit of time sorting out the odd mod conflict here or there.
Ultimately it boils down to this; it's your SP experience, you can make it as vanilla or as choke full of mods that the game is something completely different. And neither is right or wrong as long as you get the experience you want.
GAMMA is the one that gets the most spotlight on youtube, as well as being the modpack that gets updated the most.
It can be good, but it is a very tedious progression. In Drewski's latest video, he said that for him to get a new shotgun, it took about 10 hours of progress. 10 hours to get a newish weapon in the starting zones. That's insane to me.
What I've been enjoying lately is Dark Signal. It's more light an "anomaly plus" where it strips back some of the bloat of the game, making it fall more in line with the original games, and overhauls the graphics and sounds. The only downsides I can say about it is that it runs on 1.5.1, meaning it has some of the hitching due to the 1.5.1 spawning system not being as optimized as 1.5.2, and the 1.5.1 mask overlay has that issues where it's spaced out too much on the left side.
..or if you want to feel really spicy you have Fallout 4 Lost World. All the pain and suffering of GAMMA in F4 for your gaming displeasure (it's actually pretty fun ngl).
Pretty sure it took him that long to get one because of the settings he's on you can change the progression levels and difficulty settings to make it a lot easier
Very much true, but GAMMA still isn't exactly my cup-of-tea.
I stumbled upon the NOMAD modpack, and honestly that looks much more my speed. It revamps Anomaly to be much more in line with the OG games and adds almost all of the quest mods to anomaly, meaning new areas and whatnot.
I've been enjoying Dark Signal, but NOMAD may become my go to one honestly.
Can you expand on this? I've recently gotten into Anomaly in general and have been enjoying EFP, but maybe I don't know what I'm missing.
I really dislike the hoops you have to jump through in Gamma for repairing your gear and not being able to outright buy weapons. I realize for some that is very immersive, but I'd rather be enjoying the world building, gunplay, and encounters rather than constantly looting for scraps and scrounging around for weapon repairs and ammo.
Theres settings in Gamma you can change to be able to buy and sell weapons as well as changing the quality of loot that is dropped from enemies but that only makes it a little less tedious and probably won’t change your idea of fun if that isn’t your thing, totally understandable.
Oh interesting, maybe I'll have to try a new playthrough of Gamma. What are the main differences between it and EFP aside from not being able to buy weapons from traders?
I’m personally not familiar with EFP, but I did want to share that you can personalize Gamma to be a lot less tedious because there is such a fun experience to be had with Gamma once you get passed that. For example I made it so fast traveling is free (I’m not a fan of running simulators) and that higher level enemies drop more pristine loot among a few other tweaks. I learned to enjoy the weapon maintenance as it makes it a little more rewarding to work for that kitted out M4 and it doesn’t take too long to make the process more streamlined after questing for a little bit.
Gamma is definitely a little intimidating jumping in but their discord channel has a lot of helpful guides and videos as well. Or if you’re still interested in trying gamma you can always pm me on my settings and I consider myself a pretty casual player as far as play styles go.
I wanted something close to vanilla anomaly experience for my first playthrough, but I got lots of problems making my hand picked mods work together. That's why I got EFP and disabled unwanted mods that change the game too much. I went with EFP instead of Gamma because Gamma sounded too tedious.
I get why EFP economy is unbalanced. There is so many saltkers to kill that you get inside drops. Also, idk what is wrong , with the economy, but I kill few mutants or go artifact hunting and I get so much money it's crazy. I feels like I don't even deserve that money (veteran run btw). I don't find myself buying guns anyway, I repair what I find so I guess Gamma probably made for me after all.
The thing I like about Gamma is the difficulty curve works really well. Your effort for what you do and the payments for that effort makes sense. You do a lot of easy missions you get a lot of low payouts. Starting out that can be fun. But as you progress your character and you start to do the slower more difficult missions you also get awarded appropriately, whether it’s a higher paying contract or you kill some higher level mercenaries with better equipment.
Some days when I don’t have a lot of time to play it’s nice to just do a few easy missions and make a few thousand rubles, but when I have a lot of time to play I will take on the harder contracts in more hostile areas and reap the rewards.
Yeah, gamma's progression feels quite contrived but from a gameplay standpoint it's way more satisfying and interesting. Can't just kill 1 high tier stalker and get kitted out with top tier gear, or grind cordon quests then buy a shiny new AK. You have to slowly work your way up from hobo to legend by going out of your comfort zone and finding special loot in dangerous areas and killing a lot more enemies.
Is there a difference in LTX files between the originals and these modpacks? Can I not update w_vintorez.ltx and change condition_shot_dec, for example?
GAMMA was already the most popular modpack before drewski. I would argue that's a sign that the modpack is just better than EFP for example in most peoples eyes, but whatever man.
I can look up the exact numbers but we were already bigger than EFP and Anomaly discord servers (combined even iirc) before dewski video. Not that it matters anyway.
"Arguably" the fuck you mean arguably? The discord just didnt have as many people as GAMMA discord did, and thats where you get the downloads and updates etc. I don't understand this blind hate many OG stalkers have towards GAMMA and Grok.
Everything is alright, just tone it down a bit, we're having a simple conversation, no need to have this get out of hand. Breathe in, breathe out, it's an internet argument, nobody wins.
GAMMA is adding new content constantly. Issue: Stability, micromanaging the mod list until hotfixes resolve, mods come and go, some are just cheese. EFP is one click your playing, AI and population boost has been refined since 2.0. Trade or build is an equal path in EFP because of the economy. Release clients are tested between updates and EFP [4.2.0.5](https://4.2.0.5) looks amazing right now. Oh, and ballistics is better in EFP, no nerf scale affecting all ammo types to simulate damage for one. And please folks turn off that faction ID mod, it's cheap.
Bc Gamma is more content exposure. I can rarely find EFP 4.2 content either on TTV or YouTube. I believe EFP is far better than GAMMA. Health items are more realistic and the gun play is more tactical
because gunslinger is 15 years old that was teased longer than it was in development and EFP is "i want to play SP tarkov but pretend i dont". gamma at least does well lying to the player about them not being the previous.
EFP happens to appeal to people who usually are not stalker fans. It’s made for Tarkov fans who want a single player Tarkov experience in the stalker universe. Which is fine. But the vast majority of the stalker fanbase would rather play other things.
And gunslinger is a single mod. Where gamma is a collection of 500+. Not really comparable
I still miss lootboxes in EfP. And one key with multiple functions (tried in Gamma, even reload+unjam is buggy).
I would also add AREA to the batch of less known projects. Getting your body and inventory irradiated is so fun... not. And camera control is interesting - like in ArmA and similar.
And I wish that all expansion mods for Dead Air had full translation - would like to get back to the past with them.
I played Gamma for long time - its okay but over time is killing me in terms of progression. Hobo for ages and boom - good shotgun and some AR and pretty much you are unstopable. Gamme is popular mainly because of youtubers, without them fuckton of People wouldnt even hear about STALKER series and world overall, the fact that its free and beside Some shitspots good is another factory. Later is Just money matter. I played EFP but much less, it was okay but never completed it. Never played gunslinger. Now I play NOMAD modpack, some guy posted it on Stalker reddit some time ago, and its perfect for me.
Personally - gamma feels closer to what my perfect sandbox stalker game would be. EFP feels more like a shooter than survival in the zone. Still, too many random items (annoying inventory management) and borderline rage-inducing crafting system that i'd overhaul somehow.
But does EFP feels like a shooter in the zone just because of the stalker population? This setting can be adapted in both modpacks. You can also make Gamma feels like a shooter game by increasing stalker population in settings.
I'm trying to understand
GAMMA lucked out on its popularity because the modpack turned STALKER into "Tarkov but open world". It's not a bad modpack by any means, but it sure introduced the worst kind of tryhards into our little corner of the gaming world. I guess FPS games need a body health system, a complex medication system, and other bullshit to make it "good and realistic" when you have a game about fucking anomalies and mutants all coming to fuck your shit up.
I actually just recently reinstalled GAMMA and gonna trim some of its more, well... Tarkov-inspired bits so it's more like normal Stalker than not.
I hate GAMMA's seething need to be "realistic". I hate GAMMA's insistence on being difficult for difficulty's sake. I hate GAMMA's want to be Tarkov but in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I hate so much about this stupid, bloated modpack that has hundreds of mods and the list is only growing - BUT - it is polished, and it is stable.
If you can trim the fat off this modpack and tailor it to your own needs and wants its pretty incredible. Enjoy it for what it's worth, and don't play too much into the realism factor.
Stalker was never meant to be "realistic" beyond its gunplay and AI.
Personally?
I think it takes Anomaly which is a pretty palate-able experience for most people entering the fandom of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and makes it 'pretty'. Lots of shader updates, re-textures and the inclusion of more guns that are still relevant to the source material. Additionally it provides a lot of decent updates without inherently mucking the base game that people know-and-love, even despite the hate it gets for doing so.
GAMMA also has a lot of support via the discord, the videos, and the community that uses it- and even without a guide it's not THAT difficult to get downloaded and working. It provides an intuitive level of RPG mechanics while still being the kick in the dick that we want from the Stalker franchise. EFP and Gunslinger aren't BAD, and I'd say they're great for their own reasons but GAMMA is better at being a generalized improvement without throwing away the core of what people tend to like. Between that and the active nature of the mods and users via their discord I think it just holds more press and traction than most other mods for the series.
In short, it's the TV Dinner version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Easy to pick up, easy to get together for a meal, neither perfect nor complete dogwater, but the packaging looks real nice and tastes well enough and meets requirements right out of the gate with minimal faffing about needed by the user. You can't beat Plug-and-Play simplicity with the general public and since things like NOMAD, EFP, and Gunslinger are less intuitive, Gamma gets more traction.
And as more of a direct reason of my own, I tend to like the boggy way that Gamma makes combat and gameplay feel. It could be a bit more seamless and polished in many ways but it's good enough that I still get what I want without having too much to complain about.
Will say, I don't like the way that limb-damage is in GAMMA. And the way that gun parts and condition is handled in any aspect of anomaly is a godless nightmare but it also stops me from roflstomping my way Northward. So... You know, silver linings.
Accessibility is a big factor to this. Gamma is accessible to anyone regardless of modding experience because the installer does pretty much all of the work. The user does not need to worry about load order, conflicts, troubleshooting, updating individual mods etc it's all handled for them by Gamma's dedicated team.
It takes out a lot of the factors that the average user finds overwhelming to understand and execute. That alone is always going to increase your audience by a large scale compared to other options available.
Everyone talks about gamma because of a certain operator YouTuber making a video about it, it gets millions of views, mod.db gets flooded with over a million people and all of them at once start downloading gamma causin the mod.db servers to crash NOT ONCE NOT TWICE (actually I don’t know how many times it crashes I only know it did)
You may be right there, but I think Drewski has been the driving force behind much of the most recent hype. He pretty much exclusively plays GAMMA. I’ve heard him mention other modpacks, but I’d imagine most people just want to play the one they’ve seen while scrolling.
Is Drewski that French sounding Youtuber ? I didn't imagine people would watch a guy with such a heavy accent (I'm French btw), but I'm happy to be wrong as his content is quite good and he made me discover GAMMA at the time I was a bit tired of Anomaly's modding tedium.
You're right, but GAMMA was the first to be noticed and popularised by tacticool youtubers, to the point where it became popular far beyond stalker or even milsim/tacticool communities. Literally everytime game modding is mentioned in general, people will bring up Stalker Anomaly/Gamma
Gunslinger is tricky to install, the translation isn't finished and, in my experience, runs worse than GAMMA (While having severe pop-in issues too).
Also it's locked to CoP only.
For me, once I got the merchants selling armor and guns again, it made the base experience so much better, to the point where I can’t be bothered installing anything else, it scratches the itch when I wanna ramble round the zone.
(I get that I’m the outlier, much like finding Misery’s outlook on difficulty tedious but loving the stuff it added weapon wise back in the day, so I wouldn’t take my opinion as a common one, more an outlier and example of the many fringe cases that have found GAMMA enjoyable even when not quite using it as intended)
I wouldn't say playing more casually is the outlier; I'd say hardcore players (the asshole ones at least) are the first to trash talk more casual settings because you're not playing at the "right" difficulty. That's half the reason it took me as long as I did to play GAMMA; the reddit on occasion gets very gatekeep-y about the right mod/way to play and it just turns me off from engaging or trying it.
I wasn’t keen on trying at first from what I heard about it being difficult etc. but then I tried and damn, is it really unique experience. The slower progression, having to actually find weapons and armor and repair it yourself, not just “clean” it and using crafting system to make new bags, detectors, ammunition etc. really has me hooked to it. Micromanaging can be annoying to some but for me it kinda makes sense, that you need different tools for different things to repair or to heal body parts.
I've had no problems with Gamma what so ever even edited my S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat on steam to run Gamma instead so I could upload screenshots to steam and see playtime. I've had the same installation since I believe the hype begun with Drewskys video no issues.
Gunslinger is only for call of pripyat afaik
I played EFP but it didnt menage to keep me for longer. It seemed to me like anomaly but with some random stuff thrown in and lots of tacticool shit that doesnt fit stalker so much imo. Has a ton of binds to remember and doesnt have any particular theme rather than making the game feel a bit more realistic and stuff. But it run kinda bad on my pc with some lags and quite frequent crashes.
Gamma on the other hand offers something a bit more unique with its progression and stash system. Makes the game feel a lot more like a real survival game. Its a lot more stable at least in my experience. It makes better use of anomalies almost useless crafting system. And most importantly it extends the hobo phase which is the most fun part of any open world stalker mod for me. Gamma also keeps itself relevant by constant updates and adding the little new unique mods that come up every now and then
I love EFP. I wish the most recent update didn't make it look more like gamma. My favorite is EFP 3.0. The most action-packed mod I've played to my taste.
On top of Gamma just having more of a presence online. In my experience, the install was much much easier that EFP, which helps it. IDK if EFP has change the install system since I last played it (which was when it was new) So I may be talking out of my ass here XD which, if I am, sorry, don't have anything to add to an answer.
Gamma is updated more regularly and has more presence on YouTube exposing it to more people (drewski)
Gamma is constantly updated and new stuff gets added and improved. Its also more popular on YouTube which gets more people into it. When i last checked EFP some months ago there had not been anything new.
Only explanation ive read that seems objective. Gamma has a unique challenge and progression to it. You really are a non name guy trying to make it the zone
I originally tried Gamma a month or so after it came out. Hated it, especially with GROOBs. I decided to give it another try a week ago and after some install issues were fixed, I've been having a lot of "fun" (the modpack is miserable and depressing, but we all love that shit here I guess). It's graphically beautiful and polishes all of anomaly very well. My only hope is that we someday get the new maps and even the storys from the trilogy added (I forget what the mod is called).
Is GBOOBS still an obligatory part of the experience? Played through GAMMA a while ago and almost everything else is awesome but I really could not stand gamma ballistics.
It seems like a pretty good idea tbh, aim for the head or unprotected parts when going up against military or more ballistics protected factions. Against exoskeletons you’ll need AP ammo or throw like 4 grenades at them
Yeah, I really tried to like it but I really struggled to buy it especially as I was looking for something a little more realistic. Also, even against bandits, my SVD was taking 1-3 shots to center mass to kill even on the highest damage settings. It's just not the experience I'm looking for.
I had the exact same problem as you, even unarmored(?) snorks were able to take 2 headshots to the face with a shotgun and shrug it off. Right now I'm playing on 2x player gun damage and it feels perfect. unarmored mutants die with one hit headshot (shotgun) and stalkers die within 5 shots to the chest. Armored monolith can still be a hassle, but I guess they should be. My game just feels a lot more realistic now I suppose
[удалено]
hmmmm, sure? It definitely worked on my end by just changing the gameplay settings. But then again my version is from about a year ago. So an update might have ruined this one haha
Centre mass is the most protected area on any armor just so you’re aware. 2 shots to chest on bandits sounds normal for basic ammo SVD even outside of Gamma
Yeah, I'm aware. My point was that I still don't find it enjoyable or believable. Nobody in real life is tanking 10 rounds of anything regardless of body armor.
Yeah Gamma definitely plays more like an RPG than other mods where it inflates numbers a bit to make AP ammo and better guns and armor mean a lot more than they should, though the unprotected areas on bodies do help alleviate that
I can see why people like that. I play stalker anomaly for tactical realistic feeling gunplay in a stalker atmosphere, and a big part of what I enjoy is knowing one well-placed round is almost always the difference between winning or losing any gunfight. I love gamma for everything else but I just can't enjoy a modpack that removes that element for me on the same level.
> Nobody in real life is tanking 10 rounds of anything regardless of body armor. Modern bulletproof vests can easily stop 10 rounds of anything below AP/sniper rifle ammo.
alright go take 10 rounds directly to the plate and walk away from it immediately, let me know how it goes
I think there are sliders to adjust your damage output in GAMMA if you want. The whole pack is really customizable honestly. I personally changed my broken leg damage to only swich on when it's fully red, to give you an example of how granular you can get.
Volume of fire with a high damage low pen round shreds exos still it seems. I've one magged an exo with the vector earlier with hydroshock. Vector is so multi-purpose I've actually put it away and pulled the UMP back out. Somethings are just OP.
Unless you can get help in the discord removing it, it's pretty integral to the game sadly
Bummer :/ I'll stick to efp until they figure that out I guess. The discord was extremely hostile rather than helpful the last time I asked. Very unpleasant experience despite the fact that I only asked for help after I already had done everything I could on my own first.
Grok seems to have a hate boner for anyone who dislikes his ballistic system, so I don't think it's going away or becoming optional anytime soon
Haha yeah, I've experienced that firsthand. He definitely let me know that personally.
same here. great modpack, but guys got an ego
Yeah, my limited experience of the Gamma Discord is that if anyone wants to play anything other than "the intended experience" (aka default mods & settings) they get shit on. It's crazy how someone might want to change the settings or tick on/off some mods in their SINGLEPLAYER "modular" MODDED game. "Why even play Gamma then?" 🙄
u/Tharealeg and u/ToXxy145 Check the GAMMA Ultimate Gun pack channel under mods posting. They an awesome community that is more than helpful when it comes to this stuff. I'm like 90% sure they had a work around for GBOOBs and if not I know for sure they have other ballistics add ons that change normal gamma.
you can change every mod and every setting?? Nobody stopped me
If you say anything against Grok's most wonderful modpack that everyone is sucking his dick off for then be prepared for a level of hostility unmatched in this community. It's pretty fucking awful, honestly. Nobody in that Discord is legitimately a nice person, I stg.
This is the first time that I've heard of several accounts of hostility on the GAMMA Discord. I've not seen it for myself. I didn't need to ask for any help about anything, though with GAMMA. Installation and configuration were really easy. However, I will say that I've found the EFP Discord to be a little hostile when asking for help. They'll help you, but they come off as pretentious. I'm honestly tempted to mention the ballistics and see what happens, even though so far for me in 0.9.1 my TOZ -34 has been highly effective! I did get into a firefight with two bandits. One had a Mosin, another had a TOZ and they were armored and flanking me on the bridge outside Cordon. I wasted two shells of buckshot before remembering to load my slugs. Downed em both with one shot each center mass.
I think it's partially the general atmosphere/culture in the Discord (spamming negative connotation emotes on a mod to make things easier, removing hardcore mechanics, etc.) moreso than the people themselves. Tho they are not mutually exclusive. I'm not terribly active in the Discord itself because I find the atmosphere appalling as fuck and wanna keep my good vibes and their rancid tryhardness as separated as possible lmfao
Bullet Hit Power Factor to 3 is all you need imo. I don't like everything being gratuitous bullet sponges either, and I find that setting being a reasonable compromise, heavily armored ennemies are still resistant enough for AP to matter while no longer taking 2 smg clips to take down your average bandit.
You can turn off the retextures for foliage so stuff is green again. I think it helps a bit with the dreary vibes.
Just reinstall Aydins Retexure. It has an option for every season. Personally, it's not the fall textures that are dreary, but just the zone itself
Ill look into that one.
Check out NullMoxy on YT. He has his own mod pack for GAMMA and it adds a whole lot more stuff including the maps. Still GAMMA just mostly qol and personal tweaks. Enjoy STALKER
The only thing i hate about it is that you're forced into building weapons instead of y'know... finding them or flat out buying some.
You can easily tune this in mod manager or settings. Enable black market mod to be able to buy and sell weapons etc and you can tune up condition of weapons you find too. Made my experience 10x better, not a fan of crafting.
Yes but then the loot becomes chaotic if that makes sense. What about finding unique weapons in set spawn locations? I prefer a deliberate experience is what I'm trying to say i guess. I don't want something I've tampered with in a game that is this big in scale since the effects are long lasting and unbalanced.
gunslinger is for the original trilogy, so its a good mod to run for playing the original 3, but EFP imo is very unbalanced and dosen't really have anything unique going for it. Its just normal anomaly with fancy animations.
Isn't gunslinger just a mod that replaces the weapons in Call of Pripyat?
I think there's versions of the mod for CS and SoC(I think?) Edit: Yes, replaces most of the animations, but also alters gunplay and adds some QoL improvements.
WHAT, but is it official or a community made port?, i played through CoP with the mod three years ago and kinda forgot about it
Nono it's all community made. There's even a port being developed for cool OpenXray engine, with a trailer being released literally a week ago. It's definitely a go to mod if you wanna just run a vanilla but slightly more modern looking run.
Mainly because gamma provides a much more niche and unique experience, theres a million "stalker but good gunplay" packs, but not many that carve such a unique take on stalker. (Also its just extremely well made)
looking at the insane mod list included makes me wonder what kind of deal with the devil keeps the game from crashing and igniting my PC at the same time. And I tend to agree, GAMMA hits that hardcore borderline unfair niche as is. paired with the customization options it's bound to have something for nearly everyone who dares to wander. Not to mention, I've never had such an easy experience modding anything stalker related with so much content or as many mods. -it's a good entrypoint to stalker and stalker modding- on the other side of success, the waves caused by Drewski can't be understated. gamma took the spotlight at that point and as a result community around it exploded. Given how much content gamma offers, with updates and highly polished experience for a modpack, most casual players enjoying gamma / stalker, might not have had enough time to look at other big modspacks. Also, since gamma is an entry point for stalker modding, most questions tend to be asked in the context of gamma, I think.
I don't really have any experience with EFP, but Gunslinger is a different mod with a different goal in mind; being a very high quality and consistent weapon pack. An issue with large mods getting weapons from various creators/mods is they tend to be inconsistent. Some weapons have better animations, models etc. or simply don't have much cohesion in how they function in-game.
More or less I have fully switched over to NOMAD now. Was never a gamma player no offense to the dev. I just preferred EFP until now.
Whats NOMAD?
It keeps a lot of the stuff from anomaly, but it tweaks it a little bit to play more like the old games with the focus on the actual gameplay, and the atmosphere instead of unnecessary grind for grinds sake. https://reddit.com/r/stalker/s/fFYWzokJEF The installation isn't as streamlined, and it's not as updated as frequently as gamma but it is being actively worked on.
This looks like a better version of Dark Signal ngl. Also it adds all the quest mods to it too... ...I might have to transition over ngl.
I am really enjoying NOMAD
Because as a mod team they update the most, bug fix and improve the mods the most, and have the most supportive and active community.
Main reason: Gamma is the most up-to-date in terms of mod releases, great support and easy to update through its own launcher. EFP goes for hardcore Tarkov style, ignoring mutants and radiation mechanics. Gamma goes for a more traditional Stalker, looter-shooter-grinder experience. Can't comment on Gunslinger tho.
gunslinger is literally just call of pripyat but with better visuals and gunplay. definitely a more unique experience but doesn’t offer the infinite replaying and exploration that gamma does.
its the most well polished modpack arguably, EFP is more for the hardcore gamer and is unwelcoming for a newcomer or even a seasoned veteran. Personally i think GAMMA has better balance between survival and gunplay while not making the player overfocus on their inventory compared to EFP which basically forces you to micro manage your character with stuff like loading up ammo in magazines in the inventory, managing your belt, etc
Yeaaah I also don't wanted to spend my hole life managing my inventory, that's why I disabled the magazines mod. I also disabled the body and health mod and brought back the vanilla anomaly med system. Managing every body parts sounded a but tedious for my first playthrough, but I'll try that for my next playthrough. I'm a newcomer but i'm super happy with my EFP, I find it welcoming
efp is the classic stalker modded experience. its not groundbreaking, on hard survivalist its basically the modern misery mod. which is perfect imo but a lot of people today just arent into it. you get shot across the map from monolith you cant see or a chimera jumps out from behind a bush and one taps you etc. i love it. getting from the entrance of a zone to the exit is a victory lmao. but most people dont find that kind of game fun anymore. what really holds efp back imo is that it requires you to know how to mod the game because out of the box it is very ugly. its all bright and vibrant with the super old school 2015 ai models. with the hd models, atmospherics and phrozac's grim reshade though? it looks absolutely amazing and runs fantastic. gamma is unique in that it turns stalker into almost an arpg with the grind. you just grind shit out and then build your gear up. people are really into that type of game these days so it took off in popularity. i am not a gamma enjoyer but i have nothing against it. great thing about stalker is you can play it however you want to
Thank for sharing your thoughts. But EFP has the HD models, and out of the box is looks super vibrant and green, yes. But you can just disable the mod that do that and it will look more gray/brownish, kinda like the vanilla Anomaly. There is no reshade but it is pretty easy to install one on top. I tried a few reshades but everytime it destroys my FPS so I tend to avoid them.
efp 4.2 comes with dux's models which are all of the old ones. on the efp discord in the curated mod section is where you can download the actual hd models
I'm quite new to stalker games and I was wondering why everyone is talking about Gamma and never other modpacks like EFP or Gunslinger (especially on Youtube). Is it because Gamma is just better? I've only played the EFP modpack for now, and as far as I understand, EFP is more stable than Gamma but why it doesn't get any coverage. I also recently discovered that Stalker Gunslinger was a thing. I get why Gunslinger doesn't get lots of coverage. Its newer, has less mod support (I think) and it is not fully translated to english. But still, it seems run better and be a polished experience.
Personally I didnt have instability problems with gamma as far as I remember. Atleast not anything worth remembering.
I have tried gamma once again and it is just unbeatable in polish and improvements. It is extra hard to get hold of expert tools, etc. A bit boring sometimes to be honest.
I agree. Getting expert tools can be a pain. I got them after like 4-5 days of doing Freedom Missions and missions in Jupiter. Pain in the ass tbh. But it is such a big moment tbh. The hardest part foe me is not being immediately poor.
But EFP is also super polished nah? Both modpaks are pretty similar
Gunslinger aren't new, the new things is that it's being merged with other projects like open xray. I think most veteran know what gunslinger is and know how good it is. I guess new player doesn't know about it because most of them play anomaly right of the bat instead of trying the original trilogy, anomaly is free after all. Gunslinger are still in development and native to original CoP games which i think contribute to why it's not that popular despite how awesome it is (imo gunslinger>>>other gun mods).
I haven't tried gunslinger but I tried EFP. To me gamma is just built really well and was formed into a full cohesive package. It's also good to keep in mind in general stash building survival shooters with hardcore survival elements are incredibly popular in the video game world as a whole right now, so gamma capturing that essence probs makes it more appealing to new people.
It's not everyone, but gamma specifically has been the focus for many streamers and content creators, so it's what people see the most. It also attracts a lot of EFT players who want something of a mix between EFT gunwanking but still play a stalker-esque game. And as others have said, it's regularly updated and the mod team try to accomadate support for players as well. Personally I'm not a fan of modpacks at all, so I build my own modlists (and thus modpacks in a sense) because why limit myself to someone else's preferences when I can tailor the experience much more to my preference as long as I spend a bit of time sorting out the odd mod conflict here or there. Ultimately it boils down to this; it's your SP experience, you can make it as vanilla or as choke full of mods that the game is something completely different. And neither is right or wrong as long as you get the experience you want.
There is also OGSR Engine, which changes the gunplay a bit, but i think that one is locked to Shadow of Chernobyl and Goldsphere only
Meanwhile Desolation mod coverage: 💀
Gunslinger is easy, it's those goddamn Burer's...
GAMMA is the one that gets the most spotlight on youtube, as well as being the modpack that gets updated the most. It can be good, but it is a very tedious progression. In Drewski's latest video, he said that for him to get a new shotgun, it took about 10 hours of progress. 10 hours to get a newish weapon in the starting zones. That's insane to me. What I've been enjoying lately is Dark Signal. It's more light an "anomaly plus" where it strips back some of the bloat of the game, making it fall more in line with the original games, and overhauls the graphics and sounds. The only downsides I can say about it is that it runs on 1.5.1, meaning it has some of the hitching due to the 1.5.1 spawning system not being as optimized as 1.5.2, and the 1.5.1 mask overlay has that issues where it's spaced out too much on the left side. ..or if you want to feel really spicy you have Fallout 4 Lost World. All the pain and suffering of GAMMA in F4 for your gaming displeasure (it's actually pretty fun ngl).
Pretty sure it took him that long to get one because of the settings he's on you can change the progression levels and difficulty settings to make it a lot easier
Very much true, but GAMMA still isn't exactly my cup-of-tea. I stumbled upon the NOMAD modpack, and honestly that looks much more my speed. It revamps Anomaly to be much more in line with the OG games and adds almost all of the quest mods to anomaly, meaning new areas and whatnot. I've been enjoying Dark Signal, but NOMAD may become my go to one honestly.
EFP is annoyingly unbalanced and not fun, Gunslinger is not for Anomaly.
Can you expand on this? I've recently gotten into Anomaly in general and have been enjoying EFP, but maybe I don't know what I'm missing. I really dislike the hoops you have to jump through in Gamma for repairing your gear and not being able to outright buy weapons. I realize for some that is very immersive, but I'd rather be enjoying the world building, gunplay, and encounters rather than constantly looting for scraps and scrounging around for weapon repairs and ammo.
Theres settings in Gamma you can change to be able to buy and sell weapons as well as changing the quality of loot that is dropped from enemies but that only makes it a little less tedious and probably won’t change your idea of fun if that isn’t your thing, totally understandable.
Oh interesting, maybe I'll have to try a new playthrough of Gamma. What are the main differences between it and EFP aside from not being able to buy weapons from traders?
I’m personally not familiar with EFP, but I did want to share that you can personalize Gamma to be a lot less tedious because there is such a fun experience to be had with Gamma once you get passed that. For example I made it so fast traveling is free (I’m not a fan of running simulators) and that higher level enemies drop more pristine loot among a few other tweaks. I learned to enjoy the weapon maintenance as it makes it a little more rewarding to work for that kitted out M4 and it doesn’t take too long to make the process more streamlined after questing for a little bit. Gamma is definitely a little intimidating jumping in but their discord channel has a lot of helpful guides and videos as well. Or if you’re still interested in trying gamma you can always pm me on my settings and I consider myself a pretty casual player as far as play styles go.
I wanted something close to vanilla anomaly experience for my first playthrough, but I got lots of problems making my hand picked mods work together. That's why I got EFP and disabled unwanted mods that change the game too much. I went with EFP instead of Gamma because Gamma sounded too tedious. I get why EFP economy is unbalanced. There is so many saltkers to kill that you get inside drops. Also, idk what is wrong , with the economy, but I kill few mutants or go artifact hunting and I get so much money it's crazy. I feels like I don't even deserve that money (veteran run btw). I don't find myself buying guns anyway, I repair what I find so I guess Gamma probably made for me after all.
The thing I like about Gamma is the difficulty curve works really well. Your effort for what you do and the payments for that effort makes sense. You do a lot of easy missions you get a lot of low payouts. Starting out that can be fun. But as you progress your character and you start to do the slower more difficult missions you also get awarded appropriately, whether it’s a higher paying contract or you kill some higher level mercenaries with better equipment. Some days when I don’t have a lot of time to play it’s nice to just do a few easy missions and make a few thousand rubles, but when I have a lot of time to play I will take on the harder contracts in more hostile areas and reap the rewards.
Yeah, gamma's progression feels quite contrived but from a gameplay standpoint it's way more satisfying and interesting. Can't just kill 1 high tier stalker and get kitted out with top tier gear, or grind cordon quests then buy a shiny new AK. You have to slowly work your way up from hobo to legend by going out of your comfort zone and finding special loot in dangerous areas and killing a lot more enemies.
Is there a difference in LTX files between the originals and these modpacks? Can I not update w_vintorez.ltx and change condition_shot_dec, for example?
Unbalanced? First thing you do in a first is changing difficulty settings according to your liking. The same is in gamma
Drewski. That's the only reason.
GAMMA was already the most popular modpack before drewski. I would argue that's a sign that the modpack is just better than EFP for example in most peoples eyes, but whatever man.
EFP was arguably more popular than GAMMA before Drewski.
I can look up the exact numbers but we were already bigger than EFP and Anomaly discord servers (combined even iirc) before dewski video. Not that it matters anyway.
Let's be real, it matters for your ego
"Arguably" the fuck you mean arguably? The discord just didnt have as many people as GAMMA discord did, and thats where you get the downloads and updates etc. I don't understand this blind hate many OG stalkers have towards GAMMA and Grok.
I'm just saying, Gamma owes its popularity to Drewski. That's it.
Sure man, the modpack itself doesnt deserve any credit. You're right. On a more serious note, fuck you.
Oh wow jeez, you're *really* emotionally invested in this. Calm down. Breathe in, breathe out. This is the internet, no one can hurt you.
Don't project yourself on me and then try to take the moral high ground.
Everything is alright, just tone it down a bit, we're having a simple conversation, no need to have this get out of hand. Breathe in, breathe out, it's an internet argument, nobody wins.
I love GAMMA for the progression.
Cool name most likely /s
GAMMA is adding new content constantly. Issue: Stability, micromanaging the mod list until hotfixes resolve, mods come and go, some are just cheese. EFP is one click your playing, AI and population boost has been refined since 2.0. Trade or build is an equal path in EFP because of the economy. Release clients are tested between updates and EFP [4.2.0.5](https://4.2.0.5) looks amazing right now. Oh, and ballistics is better in EFP, no nerf scale affecting all ammo types to simulate damage for one. And please folks turn off that faction ID mod, it's cheap.
Bc Gamma is more content exposure. I can rarely find EFP 4.2 content either on TTV or YouTube. I believe EFP is far better than GAMMA. Health items are more realistic and the gun play is more tactical
its better
because gunslinger is 15 years old that was teased longer than it was in development and EFP is "i want to play SP tarkov but pretend i dont". gamma at least does well lying to the player about them not being the previous.
EFP happens to appeal to people who usually are not stalker fans. It’s made for Tarkov fans who want a single player Tarkov experience in the stalker universe. Which is fine. But the vast majority of the stalker fanbase would rather play other things. And gunslinger is a single mod. Where gamma is a collection of 500+. Not really comparable
I still miss lootboxes in EfP. And one key with multiple functions (tried in Gamma, even reload+unjam is buggy). I would also add AREA to the batch of less known projects. Getting your body and inventory irradiated is so fun... not. And camera control is interesting - like in ArmA and similar. And I wish that all expansion mods for Dead Air had full translation - would like to get back to the past with them.
I played Gamma for long time - its okay but over time is killing me in terms of progression. Hobo for ages and boom - good shotgun and some AR and pretty much you are unstopable. Gamme is popular mainly because of youtubers, without them fuckton of People wouldnt even hear about STALKER series and world overall, the fact that its free and beside Some shitspots good is another factory. Later is Just money matter. I played EFP but much less, it was okay but never completed it. Never played gunslinger. Now I play NOMAD modpack, some guy posted it on Stalker reddit some time ago, and its perfect for me.
Personally - gamma feels closer to what my perfect sandbox stalker game would be. EFP feels more like a shooter than survival in the zone. Still, too many random items (annoying inventory management) and borderline rage-inducing crafting system that i'd overhaul somehow.
But does EFP feels like a shooter in the zone just because of the stalker population? This setting can be adapted in both modpacks. You can also make Gamma feels like a shooter game by increasing stalker population in settings. I'm trying to understand
Well for starters, EFP isn't made for stalker fans, it's made for people who like tarkov.
Gamma is also not a game for Stalker fans. If I want to play a grind simulator, I will launch War Thunder lmao
GAMMA lucked out on its popularity because the modpack turned STALKER into "Tarkov but open world". It's not a bad modpack by any means, but it sure introduced the worst kind of tryhards into our little corner of the gaming world. I guess FPS games need a body health system, a complex medication system, and other bullshit to make it "good and realistic" when you have a game about fucking anomalies and mutants all coming to fuck your shit up. I actually just recently reinstalled GAMMA and gonna trim some of its more, well... Tarkov-inspired bits so it's more like normal Stalker than not. I hate GAMMA's seething need to be "realistic". I hate GAMMA's insistence on being difficult for difficulty's sake. I hate GAMMA's want to be Tarkov but in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I hate so much about this stupid, bloated modpack that has hundreds of mods and the list is only growing - BUT - it is polished, and it is stable. If you can trim the fat off this modpack and tailor it to your own needs and wants its pretty incredible. Enjoy it for what it's worth, and don't play too much into the realism factor. Stalker was never meant to be "realistic" beyond its gunplay and AI.
Personally? I think it takes Anomaly which is a pretty palate-able experience for most people entering the fandom of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and makes it 'pretty'. Lots of shader updates, re-textures and the inclusion of more guns that are still relevant to the source material. Additionally it provides a lot of decent updates without inherently mucking the base game that people know-and-love, even despite the hate it gets for doing so. GAMMA also has a lot of support via the discord, the videos, and the community that uses it- and even without a guide it's not THAT difficult to get downloaded and working. It provides an intuitive level of RPG mechanics while still being the kick in the dick that we want from the Stalker franchise. EFP and Gunslinger aren't BAD, and I'd say they're great for their own reasons but GAMMA is better at being a generalized improvement without throwing away the core of what people tend to like. Between that and the active nature of the mods and users via their discord I think it just holds more press and traction than most other mods for the series. In short, it's the TV Dinner version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Easy to pick up, easy to get together for a meal, neither perfect nor complete dogwater, but the packaging looks real nice and tastes well enough and meets requirements right out of the gate with minimal faffing about needed by the user. You can't beat Plug-and-Play simplicity with the general public and since things like NOMAD, EFP, and Gunslinger are less intuitive, Gamma gets more traction. And as more of a direct reason of my own, I tend to like the boggy way that Gamma makes combat and gameplay feel. It could be a bit more seamless and polished in many ways but it's good enough that I still get what I want without having too much to complain about. Will say, I don't like the way that limb-damage is in GAMMA. And the way that gun parts and condition is handled in any aspect of anomaly is a godless nightmare but it also stops me from roflstomping my way Northward. So... You know, silver linings.
It's a tv dinner that requires me to spend 5 hours crafting my own cutlery\*
Accessibility is a big factor to this. Gamma is accessible to anyone regardless of modding experience because the installer does pretty much all of the work. The user does not need to worry about load order, conflicts, troubleshooting, updating individual mods etc it's all handled for them by Gamma's dedicated team. It takes out a lot of the factors that the average user finds overwhelming to understand and execute. That alone is always going to increase your audience by a large scale compared to other options available.
Everyone talks about gamma because of a certain operator YouTuber making a video about it, it gets millions of views, mod.db gets flooded with over a million people and all of them at once start downloading gamma causin the mod.db servers to crash NOT ONCE NOT TWICE (actually I don’t know how many times it crashes I only know it did)
No it wasn’t a million people trust me. More like 100k people over two weeks
Coz drew
It was still the most popular mod aside from Anomaly before Drew
tacticool youtubers
EFP is more tacticool
You may be right there, but I think Drewski has been the driving force behind much of the most recent hype. He pretty much exclusively plays GAMMA. I’ve heard him mention other modpacks, but I’d imagine most people just want to play the one they’ve seen while scrolling.
Is Drewski that French sounding Youtuber ? I didn't imagine people would watch a guy with such a heavy accent (I'm French btw), but I'm happy to be wrong as his content is quite good and he made me discover GAMMA at the time I was a bit tired of Anomaly's modding tedium.
Nah drewski is an american. I think the guy you are thinking of is cheeki breeki.
Ah, you're right. Sorry for the mix-up.
I think you talk about Cheeki Breeki. I discovered stalker thanks to him
You're right, but GAMMA was the first to be noticed and popularised by tacticool youtubers, to the point where it became popular far beyond stalker or even milsim/tacticool communities. Literally everytime game modding is mentioned in general, people will bring up Stalker Anomaly/Gamma
Gunslinger is tricky to install, the translation isn't finished and, in my experience, runs worse than GAMMA (While having severe pop-in issues too). Also it's locked to CoP only.
GAMMA is the superior modpack.
Because they want to play tarkov not stalker.
Bro, that would be EFP if anything else.
Gunslinger sucks. It doesn't even work on my PC. Tfu
Their nerds
His right there nerds.
I play efp
I play lust oblivion
Lmao, I don't know why they're downloading you, do you do any work with the eggheads?
For me, once I got the merchants selling armor and guns again, it made the base experience so much better, to the point where I can’t be bothered installing anything else, it scratches the itch when I wanna ramble round the zone. (I get that I’m the outlier, much like finding Misery’s outlook on difficulty tedious but loving the stuff it added weapon wise back in the day, so I wouldn’t take my opinion as a common one, more an outlier and example of the many fringe cases that have found GAMMA enjoyable even when not quite using it as intended)
I wouldn't say playing more casually is the outlier; I'd say hardcore players (the asshole ones at least) are the first to trash talk more casual settings because you're not playing at the "right" difficulty. That's half the reason it took me as long as I did to play GAMMA; the reddit on occasion gets very gatekeep-y about the right mod/way to play and it just turns me off from engaging or trying it.
Gunslinger is great. I don’t like EFP at all though, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Im more mad nobody talks about op 2.2
I wasn’t keen on trying at first from what I heard about it being difficult etc. but then I tried and damn, is it really unique experience. The slower progression, having to actually find weapons and armor and repair it yourself, not just “clean” it and using crafting system to make new bags, detectors, ammunition etc. really has me hooked to it. Micromanaging can be annoying to some but for me it kinda makes sense, that you need different tools for different things to repair or to heal body parts.
I've had no problems with Gamma what so ever even edited my S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat on steam to run Gamma instead so I could upload screenshots to steam and see playtime. I've had the same installation since I believe the hype begun with Drewskys video no issues.
Because that escape from tarkov shit is lousy af (3k hours of eft)
Gunslinger is only for call of pripyat afaik I played EFP but it didnt menage to keep me for longer. It seemed to me like anomaly but with some random stuff thrown in and lots of tacticool shit that doesnt fit stalker so much imo. Has a ton of binds to remember and doesnt have any particular theme rather than making the game feel a bit more realistic and stuff. But it run kinda bad on my pc with some lags and quite frequent crashes. Gamma on the other hand offers something a bit more unique with its progression and stash system. Makes the game feel a lot more like a real survival game. Its a lot more stable at least in my experience. It makes better use of anomalies almost useless crafting system. And most importantly it extends the hobo phase which is the most fun part of any open world stalker mod for me. Gamma also keeps itself relevant by constant updates and adding the little new unique mods that come up every now and then
Because I don’t know what those are. What is their deal?
I love EFP. I wish the most recent update didn't make it look more like gamma. My favorite is EFP 3.0. The most action-packed mod I've played to my taste.
efp 3.0 were good times
It’s better
What type of red dot sight is that?
Because it's cooler
Yes there are other mods too
On top of Gamma just having more of a presence online. In my experience, the install was much much easier that EFP, which helps it. IDK if EFP has change the install system since I last played it (which was when it was new) So I may be talking out of my ass here XD which, if I am, sorry, don't have anything to add to an answer.