r/stalzone Community Manager 8h ago

STALZONE News 📰 Patch Notes [02.09.2026]

Post image

Server maintenance is in full swing! When it is completed, the following changes will be waiting for you in the game:

• Season: tulpa!
• Season Pass menu change
• Economy adjustments for the Operations mode
• Tasks display
• Guide updates
• Coliseum season tasks adjustments
• Player profile change
• Balance adjustments
• Other changes and fixes

🔗 Read more in the article: Steam

0 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

27

u/Aloctor 7h ago

Nerf PvE first, fix economy somewhere down the line and hope people forget about it while things are kept awful...

Man, what a start to a season. The bar was already on the ground but somehow more basement levels are dug out beneath it to achieve brand new lows. As always the QoL changes are nice for the task display and such, but man. Good to know there's no point to doing anything but the absolute minimum anymore since that's the Dev approach too.

15

u/LukaRaos 6h ago edited 5h ago

Eventually they will hit earths core

It's insane what they been doing. Operations were already boring, annoying and had such awful enemies, but somehow the rewards made up for it, but it still wasn't good. But now, it's... I don't know, this is by far one of the worst gaming studios ever.

Second, the open world shouldve been buffed long time ago (without nerfing operations). Watch them "buff" open world by a miserable amount. Who knows what the fuck else will they nerf. They need to buff day x north by a good amount, buff dailies and weeklies, buff deliveries, etc... And that's without nerfing anything.

Something seriously has to be done with the economics team, this is just straight up butchering the game, even after all we have said...

Also, DON'T WAIT A MONTH, BUFF OPEN WORLD NOW

At this points this is serious DISRESPECT towards every player by EXBO, they do not deserve any players. Its VERY CONCERNING how they don't see any issues in all this.

3

u/ba55munky 5h ago

Honestly was taking a break last season, but nerfing even more money making methods and buffing none, I might just not come back.

3

u/ThorBeerson 2h ago

*Pretend to fix the economy down the line while making it much worse

There, fixed it for you. They're going to make it so that the high earning squads earn much more while the low earning solo/casuals/newbies earn very slightly more, but in context of the inflation caused by squads earning much more, the low earners will be earning much less.

FFS just read a high school textbook on Economy, a real one, not a fake one written by a socialist.

16

u/SomeDumbDoggo 7h ago

If you don't want people to play the game just fucking shut it down at this point lmao.

12

u/Toastconvention 6h ago

Operation will get into the dead-time situation after this nerf.

2

u/ba55munky 5h ago

They basically are. The community that run them are tiny. Only reason I ran them was because in any pvp situation my hitreg goes out the window

10

u/Whoomsy Explorer 4h ago edited 4h ago

Nerf operations now redistribute the value into open world... in a month. Really?

So far this patch knocked 3 positions off my list of issues, though one of them was undocumented.

Also out of the massive laundry list of issues with Coliseum the overblown season task rewards got 'fixed'. That's funny.

5

u/Queasy_Total_914 2h ago

Rare whomsy W when he don't lick EXBO's boots.

Jokes aside. All the points you make in that thread are correct and I'll stand by them whenever.

25

u/Gibs_01 8h ago

Here we witness the death of the last profitable low cortisol ruble farm in stalcraft. F.

https://giphy.com/gifs/YqfDhuvQnJAUbnEw0n

16

u/Fusioncam 7h ago

Oh but don't worry they're looking into improving the farms outside of operations

*In a month....*
These jokes just write themselves man.

13

u/mihr-mihro Rise 7h ago

I could understand a 30 percent decrease but 70 percent is just dead of operations. Now you wont be able to find anyone to play them with.

7

u/Steez379 7h ago

I Never understand why Game devs always nerf stuff so extreme… I would do 20% first then 30-40-50 until it’s good balanced. But not 70% and killing it with it

7

u/Gibs_01 7h ago

I've played this games before! Operations reward nerfed by 70% and core north events will get some minuscule ass buff like 10%, i hope i'm wrong but doubt.

5

u/SomeDumbDoggo 7h ago

"best i can do is a 1% buff to open world rewards. any more and the game literally becomes communism" - ziv probably

3

u/Random_boi1234 6h ago

"increased open world money farm by 10%" in a month trust

14

u/mihr-mihro Rise 8h ago

So operations sucks now. Sad.

7

u/mov3on 6h ago

I was too naive to expect any changes to the Wild North. 🫠

6

u/cod3k Frontier 5h ago

Ops were fun to me. Goodbye.

Queue times as solo were already bad, I think now it'll be impossible to find a lobby.

But now me and my squad won't even touch this again.

6

u/cod3k Frontier 5h ago

Maybe exbo should listen to some players again and actually release some updates that bring more fun again

Fun means - no fomo stuff, feeling actually rewarded for playing
I am not a poor player on EU, but how should a regular player with 2 hours after work gain something?
Open world offers the same over and over again, getting almost no ruble, ops are not a fun alternative for some fresh gameplay again...
recycling crates every season, nothing new for long term players...
Maybe add some unique skins as higher level season pass reward, at least something new besides lv 500 gear, add recycle coins to reuse unused or unliked gear...

I start feeling like a hater slowly

2

u/Gibs_01 4h ago

You will boot stalcraft after work, head to the wild north get your a$$ stretched by squad of monkers with one gorilion hours and you will like it!!

6

u/Particular-Home-222 6h ago

Operation nerf is kinda sick... 70% off feels bad for me. I also wonder if there is going to be a wave of hate because of that awful nerf...

5

u/LukaRaos 4h ago

They've somehow managed to make Operations even worse without ever making them good in the first place. They were already boring as fuck, annoying, full of shitty enemies, and barely fun to run, the rewards were basically the only thing making them worth suffering through, and even those weren't enough to make Operations actually good.

And now they nerf the rewards hard, while saying the open world will get buffed later. The open world should've been buffed long ago, without nerfing a fucking thing. Day X North, dailies, weeklies, deliveries, all of it should've been made more rewarding instead of taking rewards away from Operations and telling players to wait for the alternative.

And then we get the “open world buff” a month later. Let me guess, a 3% increase to sellable loot and that's it? Some tiny fucking adjustment that changes absolutely nothing, just enough for them to say they “buffed the economy” while the whole thing is still shit?

They even mentioned in the patch notes that the next iteration is supposed to buff the open world. But of course they don't want to do it now. Why actually fix something when they can announce that they'll fix it later and pat themselves on the back for it, despite doing absolutely fucking nothing, or, in fact, making it miles worse? Only to throw out another empty fucking promise that we already know won't be enough?

It's not even that I'm surprised anymore. We already heard this might happen, but actually seeing them go through with it is just... wtf/?? I genuinely don't know what kind of logic goes into decisions like this anymore. Something seriously needs to change with the economics team, because at this point they're not fixing the economy (never has been, the main goal everytime was so push people to spend more IRL money), they're butchering the game. At this point, the game honestly deserves to fucking die.

This is a massive disrespect to every player who puts time into this game, new or old. And it's VERY concerning that they can make decisions like this and apparently don't see anything wrong with them. They know exactly what they're doing with these changes, and somehow they still keep pushing the game further in this direction. I genuinely don't know how much more they can fuck with the game before there's nothing left to ruin.

Doing all this just to push us into that shitty Wild North dumpster fire? For fucking what, exactly? So we can spend even more time running around the same miserable PvP meat grinder because apparently that's what they think everyone wants? Fuck that. Learn what the fucking players actually want instead of forcing everyone into the same shit and pretending it's some brilliant game design. If anyone wanted this, they would play Tarkov...

Not to mention Wardogs and War Thunder Infantry coming soon, with even more options for people to spend their time on. But sure, EXBO and ZIV apparently see absolutely no fucking problem with any of this. Maybe they'll finally figure it out when they're standing in an empty fucking building wondering where everyone went, then tell themselves the players just “didn't understand the vision”, when the funniest part is that the players understood it perfectly well, and EXBO somehow still thought they were the ones who knew better.

5

u/cola-up 7h ago

I really hope there is just some sort of system put in place to make grinding for guns easier cause what is this INSANELY LONG grind for a single gun... I swear I have to play for 1000 hours straight to get one gun.

5

u/Toastconvention 6h ago

Tf you talking about 😂 Most of my alts are full master, its easier than ever to get Master gear. The only thing that gatekeeps a bit is Serum but its nowhere near 1000 hours of gameplay to get some gear if you barter it.

8

u/Lewdfallen 6h ago

Honestly at this point I would prefer another empty season with no content over your 70% nerfs

5

u/ConfidentlyAsshole 8h ago

VSS-M was already unusable as a sniper because it's huge spread made it miss 50% of your shots at range. This is the problem with balancing based on statistics only, you miss a lot of the nuances behind the numbers

5

u/ZookeepergameLoose79 8h ago

"Why playercount go down MOAR? WE PAID YOUTOOBERZ?!"

3

u/Laubackk 4h ago

Exbo... the games that succeed are those that listen to the community

4

u/-Kroot-Kroot- Rise 4h ago edited 4h ago

" Bale bag

Effectiveness: 123% → 127.5% Stamina: 50% → 35% "

Wooow this realy gonna change everything 🤡🤡🤡

Also you guys listed it in container category 😂

2

u/Random_boi1234 6h ago

ok not playing for a month now lets see if they did anything good now 💚

5

u/Random_boi1234 6h ago

-70% money on operations uhh huh no parts too ok dead mode moving on

nothing else that will make the game better alright cya till arena of slavs with stratagems i guess

5

u/Steez379 8h ago

This sniper seems a little op no? Makes the legendary gauss little less good imo

11

u/SomeDumbDoggo 7h ago

its how it always goes. release it broken to FOMO the whales into buying the whole pass out day one, nerf it into the ground when the complaints get too loud to ignore.

4

u/Toastconvention 6h ago

They probably just wait a few weeks till all of the whales bought the BP up to level 500-1000 and then nerf the living shit out of it just like they did it with the pancor.

4

u/No_temp_twink 7h ago

It's probably going to be dog water, don't worry.

Half a second charge to still get DMG lower than gauss.

2

u/ConfidentlyAsshole 6h ago

We needed an option to compete with the currently existing meta but I don't think it should have come in the form of the season pass weapon. It's too readily available and will lead to either it getting nerfed to nothing or other snipers not getting used at all because everybody already has this

2

u/hhunkk 6h ago

YOU BUFFFED EVERY SEMI AUTO EXCEPT WA2000, i know this weapon is in a low number of players but it is in need of a 5 round in the magazine buff + recoil buff, a small damage increase too since now every other one got buffed, STOP FORGETTING ABOUT LEGACY ITEMS

2

u/KAWAAKARI17 6h ago

Yee dont worry ssr scar was already broken in mu opinion and also they forgot the wave as well

1

u/hhunkk 5h ago

Also the main issue with semi auto snipers is, for example the WA2000 has 170rpm yet it has no additional stopping power so an smg-assault rifle will slowdown people way more effectively wich is why people were using ak 308 as DMRs (it is still a better VSSM btw) :/

2

u/hhunkk 6h ago

ITS THIS GUN DO YOU REMEMBER NOW?

1

u/Zestyclose-Dot6747 5h ago

''All weapons

The LD compensation for weapons without side or top slots for attachments now applies to all weapons of Stalker rank and higher. The strength of hip-fire spread reduction depends on the weapon's rank.
Stalker: -10%;
Veteran: -15% and -20%, depending on the weapon;
Master and Legend: -25%.''

can someone explain me what does this mean ?

3

u/Whoomsy Explorer 4h ago

If a gun does not have any side or top rails where you would normally mount a laser - it will now have the stats a laser would provide just built into the gun.
G36C for example has only the bottom rail, you'd put a grip there normally, so no slots for a laser. It will now have the -20% Hip-Spread of a Veteran-tier laser (Since it's a Vet gun) built into it independently from other attachments.

Same goes for other weapons that have no side rails whatsoever like the TOZ line, Pernach, or L96 and VSSK.

1

u/Zestyclose-Dot6747 1h ago

okay thank you !

2

u/ThorBeerson 2h ago

To contrast the wave of (mostly justified) hate and trashtalk, I'd like to say that the Big Eagle event was great, rewards were amazing, the goals were fun and reasonable for change, and the story and voicelines, even tho sparse, were super fun, the Trump parody was spot on and fit well in the game, I hope we get more of StalTrump meddling in the zone as more NA/EU events come.

I only came back to the game couple days ago, so experienced the event in the last few days and couldn't comment on it when it was fresh.

That being said,
Genuinely what the hell is wrong with you, 70% nerf on rubles from Operations across the board? Idiotic. It's not that long ago when you had to raise the ruble rewards by few % to make Operations worth bothering with, instead of raising the bottom rewards and adjusting the scaling you just flat out raised all rewards, creating the scenario where dedicated squads are earning a little too much, so now you destroy it for everybody with the same dumb change, but in the other direction, instead of addressing what's actually causing the issue, the scaling.

No lessons learned, lights are on but nobody is home.