DiscussionBear

100% true, but I also feel like Stalker 2 has pandered more to those casual gamer audiences since they clearly can't survive as a game developer off of us fans alone.

Stalker 2 definitely feels less abrasive and challenging than previous titles and mods.

But I also have hundreds of hours in GAMMA and Anomaly so I've got my biases and know how Im suppose to play. I am use to being aggressively abused and punished by the game, which is a very different experience from the casual "mainstream" gamers.

I think that heavily depends on what is being defined as "mainstream".

Is it the same buggy, broken mess it was during the first week of launch.....no.

Is it a smooth bug free well optimized game. Not even fucking close.

You still need a pretty decent beefy system to play it comfrontably and even then it's still littered with problems.

It's the same reason we got all those let's play screaming youtubers in the 2010s.

They appeal to much younger and more impressionable demographic of young teens and children that are easily entertained through what most adults would probably label as annoying and very shallow content.