Escape From Tarkov

imagine making a game where if it's getting updated it keeps getting worse no matter if you in that period of time get your PC upgraded
at first you may like it but then it...

I have a troubled relationship with this game because, like many early access indie titles, its development has been a constant quality rollercoaster, and its developers have become embroiled in a non-zero amount of controversies over its multi-year development cycle. Still, I stuck with it over the years and saw it gradually mature until it hit its current apex. Not only is Tarkov more popular than ever, but it has truly reached its stride in terms of gameplay as well.

No matter how many times I die because my gun suddenly stops firing for no discernible reason, my grenade boomerangs back and explodes in my face, an AI snipes me in the face from across the map, a player lags around a corner and headshots me, or a cheater aimbots me, I can't stop coming back to this game. In other words, I can't escape from Tarkov.

The Good:

The sheer number of weapons and equipment--combined with an eye-popping number of attachments and customization features--is staggering and easily more expansive than any triple A release. Not only is the breadth of Tarkov's armory astounding, but it's chasmically deep too: Optics, laser accessories, folding sights, and magazines vary in more ways than just cosmetic. For example, different magazines have better/worse ergonomics, faster/slower loading/checking speeds for bullets, and of course different capacities as well. Lasers come in a variety of forms and combinations; there are green lasers, red lasers, and IR lasers that are invisible to the naked eye but which can be seen through night vision goggles. There are also visible and IR flashlights, and different modules exist that pair all the above in different ways. To put it as succinctly as possible, this game simulates all the real world militaria you could dream of, and it does so faithfully.

Gunplay is brutal, engaging, and well-balanced. Every gun feels viscerally different and has tangible recoil. Gunshots are very loud and, owing to the fact that they were sourced from real guns during field recording sessions, authentic too. I was pretty surprised when I fired an AR-15 in Tarkov and it sounded exactly like a real one, which is refreshing in contrast to the Hollywood-style layered effects common in the industry. In the same vein, an intricate level of interaction is available to the player. There is no ammo counter in Tarkov, but instead a key combination that allows you to pull out the magazine and check how full it is. You can also check the chamber, unchamber the gun, and chamber it at will, as well as switch fire rate and check fire rate without flicking the switch--oh, and you can fold/unfold certain stocks too. There's even a CS:GO-style inspection button, and loads of other features, like the ability to swap reticle types for certain optics, switching to secondary optics, and changing zoom level on some scopes. Weapons available range from knives to fully-automatic battle rifles; however, despite the availability of some truly-powerful firearms, a player with a 30,000 rouble Mosin Nagant can take out a highly-geared opponent who spent a million on his gear in one shot--the prime determining factor in the outcome of a firefight is almost always player skill.

Despite its skill emphasis, Tarkov manages to strike a fine balance where other games fall flat: Gear is not useless, but nor is it gamebreakingly overpowered. Body armor, which only covers the chest, stomach, and head, never turns players into outright juggernauts and can always be overcome with the right ammo or shot placement. Shotguns, pistols, and submachine guns aren't useless as one might ordinarily expect, but instead are very viable if used differently from rifles, for example. Hollow point rounds and buckshot/slugs deal a ton of damage and can quickly drop even the most highly-armored opponents with a few leg shots. Overall, I feel like I have a pretty good chance at succeeding in a raid with any weapon provided I change my strategy accordingly.

Furthermore, the in-game economy is handled surprisingly gracefully. Rarity of weapons is generally pretty low, and if you really want a particular gun, you can simply buy it off the in-game flea market, which functions like the equivalent in other MMOs. Making money is relatively easy thanks to the secure container--which allows you to keep certain items after you die--and the flea market, but it's not difficult to go bankrupt if you take out expensive gear on raids constantly.

Tarkov's environments range from the small enclosed factory map, which functions a bit like a fast-paced, low-investment Call of Duty/Airsoft experience, to the expansive reaches of Reserve, Shoreline, and Woods. On top of all that, there is even a linear three-lane map, Customs, that should scratch that tactical shooter itch for CS players. Not only do the maps look good, but they play beautifully as well, and each offers a categorically different experience to the player--a bit like a buffet. These locales, set in a titular, fictional Russian city and its surrounding economic/industrial zones, are rendered beautifully and truly evoke that attractive STALKER vibe. My favorite map, Interchange, takes place in a freaking shopping mall. After playing Dead Rising, I've always wanted to see what a PvP firefight would feel like in a huge shopping mall, and finally, I got my wish--Interchange is amazing.
The next map is slated to arrive shortly, which will take place in the streets of Tarkov city itself, and it's supposed to be the game's most ambitious environment yet. Battlestate has definitely outdone themselves with Tarkov's map design.

Ultimately--and this is the part that really matters--the gameplay loop is incredibly addictive. No matter how many times I die and lose all my expensive gear, I still feel driven to go back in and try to regain it all, basking in the glory of my accomplishments and lamenting my failures. It's almost as if Tarkov has captured the bare essence that made DayZ mod so great back during its heyday minus the whole walking simulator bit: Winning a fight feels VERY good because the stakes are high, and it's always rewarding. At this point I've put about 350 hours into this wipe (the developers delete your progress after a major update to facilitate testing and reset the economy,) and I consistently have millions of in-game roubles, so I don't really have a whole lot to grind for, and yet I still feel like going on raids, gobbling up loot, getting into intense gunfights, and raking in more profit. Honestly, I've asked myself why anyone would actually want to escape from Tarkov, given how fun and profitable it is to be there.

The Bad

As expansive as this game is, it is bound to have some flaws. First, let's start with the most obvious issue: Server instability and lag.

After the developers concluded a marketing event on Twitch with resounding success, Tarkov's playerbase grew exponentially, far exceeding the maximum capacity of the network infrastructure. As of now, months after the end of that event, the servers are still struggling to keep up, and it's not uncommon during peak hours to either be completely incapable of logging in, or to be constantly kicked out of raids due to connection loss. Like many others, I have died in raids as a result of losing connection in a gunfight, or lagging out in an inconvenient spot, and sometimes I lose connection and can never reconnect, causing my character to die and my loadout to disappear into the void. There is virtually no way to avoid falling victim to these issues other than playing at non-peak hours. Forget about even trying to get into a raid on the weekend.

Second, there is a controversial and oft-denied problem that threatens to render the game completely unenjoyable for regular players: cheating. As the wipe grows older, I've noticed an increase in the number of "suspicious" deaths and players who seem to have uncanny awareness and accuracy, or players who camp in very dangerous spots to specifically kill me (i.e. out in the middle of a field, on a rooftop, in the middle of a high-traffic hallway, or inside a window.)

Before you dismiss me, take into consideration that there is plenty of evidence that a huge number of cheaters infest Tarkov. Cheat forums are full of people discussing cheating in the game, there's a pretty high number of public cheats available at the moment, and curious players are sometimes making videos on YouTube in which they use cheats to identify and record cheaters. There is a particular one you can find through a quick search (Tarkov cheat experiment) that shows exactly how many people are cheating on the labs map at a given time (spoilers: 1 in 4 games has obvious cheaters, and the real number is higher because some people hide their cheats better than others.)

Tarkov has always had a cheating problem, and Battlestate has repeatedly failed to address it sufficiently over the course of its growth. Just before the release of the game's current patch, Battleye anti-cheat was added, and it practically eliminated cheating for a while; however, within just days of the release of 0.12 and the subsequent marketing event, fully-featured public cheats were also released that had bypassed Battleye completely. Within the past couple of weeks, as I said previously, even more cheats are out, and many of them are free. Compounding the maelstrom of cheating, the game just went on sale for 20% off, and now cheaters have stocked up on fresh accounts. This seems to happen about every wipe; the early raids are enjoyable and fun, and the fights seem fair. It's possible to outmaneuver and outplay your enemies pretty consistently if you 're good; however, later in the wipe, as the cheats are updated and released, everyone knows where you are and there's no possible way to outmaneuver or sneak up on your opponents anymore, and you will start to die every other raid to the most unlikely circumstances--mostly player scavs using aimbots and wall hacks (cheaters will often raid as player scavs because it hides their account name on the death screen, preventing you from reporting them easily.)

The worst part of this disaster is that Battlestate doesn't seem interested in clamping down on cheaters very hard. Cheats that are completely impossible to implement in other games due to security implementations and sanity checks (speed hacks, remotely grabbing items, anti-recoil, infinite ammo, etc.) are still possible in Tarkov and I've seen no steps made to combat them through the game code. While I understand that the cheating arms race is no simple undertaking and has no easy solution, I'm tired of the total radio silence on BSG's end and their failure to undertake an effort to implement the same security features found in games like CS:GO. Even a mere acknowledgement of the problem would suffice, and perhaps a promise to never put the game on sale again to combat cheaters stocking up on accounts.

Third, the progression system is paced very poorly, and leveling up traders can be a glacial, frustrating affair. To unlock different tiers of traders, it's necessary to complete quests in order to raise your reputation level and to gain enough XP to reach the required player level for the trader. These quests range from trivial to frustrating to nearly impossible in difficulty, and many of them are heavily RNG-dependent. Compounding that with the fact that you can't place most quest items into the secure container and that you lose your items when you die, questing easily becomes the worst part of progression. That's not even the worst of it, because BSG continues to crank up the difficulty of the quests, and by difficulty, I mean the specificity of quest objectives. Quests that in the past only required you to kill 10 players on a specific map now require you to wear specific gear (usually terrible gear) while doing it and with specific weapon attachments (this gets very expensive when you're required to use a thermal scope or suppressor.) The most infamous quests are the Shooter Born in Heaven quests, which require you to score no fewer than THREE headshots at >= 100 meters on three maps, one of which barely even has any sight lines over 100 meters, and of course, there is no way to range targets in this game yet. That kind of tedium isn't "difficulty," it's outright poor game design and needs to be axed.

The Ugly

It was clear from the outset that Tarkov's server infrastructure was going to be unable to keep up with the pace of its own growth stemming from the Twitch event, but nevertheless Battlestate went forward with it anyway without preparation or foresight. Allegedly BSG can't even physically buy more servers because they're locked into a contract with a specific provider, who literally has no more space left in the datacenter to set up Tarkov servers. In fact, Battlestate making unwise decisions like this is a rather common thing:

There was a controversy last year in which Tarkov's development company abused the DMCA takedown system on YouTube in order to silence the criticism of two Tarkov YouTube content creators: Eroktic and EL_Dee. What were they guilty of you ask? Eroktic made a video about possible security vulnerabilities in Tarkov's website and login database, and El_Dee created videos demonstrating how to use an exploit the Factory map for the purpose of making its use widespread to force Battlestate's hand in fixing it (the bug allowed players to be invulnerable in the map's exit location and was present in the game for a very long time before he made the video.)

Both users discovered that multiple videos on their channels were stricken and taken down by Battlestate through YouTube's copyright system despite no actual infringement having taken place (assuming the gameplay footage + commentary is covered under fair use.) On Eroktic's channel, 47 videos were stricken and taken down by the game devs, all over one video about some potential security flaws.

[Obligatory I am not a lawyer and this is not intended to be legal advice]

Now, if you're familiar with the DMCA at all, you should know that the purpose of these takedown requests is to remove content that copies/rehosts content without substantial alterations or which otherwise infringes upon a copyright. In defense of the takedowns, Battlestate claimed that the channels were spreading "misinformation" and "negative hype" that was harmful to the company, and that pursuing other legal means would have been too time-consuming.

First, I want to point out how truly insidious it is to redefine criticism as "negative hype" and to justify censorship on the grounds that it damages the company. That's equivalent to a company removing negative reviews on Amazon for its products, or removing low user ratings on metacritic. I assume they meant that, rather than pursuing a slander case, Battlestate decided to just use the DMCA takedown system instead in order to silence criticism (this is very illegal!) because there would be no need to prove a willful lie, damages, and that the damages were caused proximately by the lie (this is usually a very difficult thing to prove.) The only grounds on which Battlestate justified the takedown of 47 of Eroktic's videos was that the videos contained gameplay of Escape from Tarkov; however, the videos were overlaid with commentary (this has been long-established to meet the substantial alteration criteria for fair use in most cases) and Eroktic was clearly visible over the gameplay, making a fairly obvious alteration.

In general, the whole situation was a mess, and I don't want people to forget how Battlestate nearly ruined a Tarkov fan and streamer's livelihood simply because he published some criticism of their company. While this debacle has little bearing on my enjoyment of the game itself (hence why I published this as commentary rather than a review,) I still think it's important to let people know that Battlestate is not to be trusted to treat the community fairly under any circumstances. They are as rotten as EA or Activision-Blizzard, they just have a fraction of the money and are safely nestled away overseas, outside the English limelight.

Tarkov's accomplishments far outweigh its flaws, even if the few flaws are sometimes so enraging that they seem to overshadow it all. It's worth buying for sure, but you need to have more than a little bit of patience to enjoy it.