Lighthouse is A Mess and The Developers Confirmed It

(Intro)

If I asked you what the worst map in Tarkov to play is, you’d most likely say Lighthouse. As many would agree, Lighthouse is easily the map with the most problems across the board. As interesting as a concept as it is, and as cool on paper as it could be, the execution was the worst from the developer's part. We’ve gone over this map in the past, and the dismay that comes with trying to queue into it and be successful. Fundamentally, the map is flawed; from the general layout and flow of the map to many of the interactions across the entire thing feeling almost forced because of how players are supposed to engage each other, Lighthouse has a reputation of being not fun to play, and not fun to quest on either. And apparently, the developers agree. At least somewhat. Recently they put out a developer diary talking about Lighthouse as a map; where they feel the map is problematic, what their goals are to fix it, and going over some of the community's sentiment about possible solutions. Again, this level of communication and transparency is always appreciated, so that’s what we’ll be going over today. In their own words, what’s wrong with Lighthouse, what solutions they brought to the table, and delving a little deeper into what’s actually wrong with the map. Lighthouse like most maps in this game, are awesome ideas on paper and in concept, but miss the mark by a rather large amount when they were executed.

(What’s wrong with the map)

Before we get into what battle state might try to do and fix the map, we should probably first go over what’s actually wrong. Firstly, the map’s shape; a rectangle with the central point of interest at the north most side of the map creates basically a river flowing in one direction. Everyone wants to get to the rouge camp, and because of that most players are going to work their way across the map all going in the same direction. Unlike say, Customs or even Interchange, these maps have at least one alternate direction players can move across the map to create natural friction points where they bump into each other. Lighthouse while yes, technically some people can spawn on the north side and need to work towards the southern road extract, if they are close to the rogue camp, they will most likely just clear it out as best they can because they got the God spawn for it, and then take that loot and either wait for the train or check the car extraction and get out early. Even though there are other places where loot can be found and fights can be had, the main reason to go to Lighthouse other than the lighthouse is the rogue camp. We know it, the developers know it; it’s why their loot has been toned down, their spawn rates lowered, but for some reason, their aggression levels haven’t. If you get the spawn on the south most part of the map, good luck getting anything meaningful from the camp. Because by the time you get there, if you can survive across the whole map to do so, that entire camp will most likely be picked clean of any and all valuables. And there isn’t anything of intense value to the other locations that are lootable. There was, but once again those spots got nerfed too. In general, Lighthouse is a good location to scav on, but running around as a PMC looking for loot is asking for trouble. And even if you go for the real reason this map exists, to go see Lightkeeper, the requirements to even see his face are daunting for players. Is it cool that you can talk to him as a live raid is happening in the background? Yeah, for sure; it’s super cool to hear gunfire off in the distance as you talk to him and get new tasks. But again, the effort that goes into getting him can’t be ignored. But, to be sure about exactly what’s wrong with this map, let’s hear it from battle state themselves.

(The developer diary)

The diary isn’t super long or dense with information, but they express that Lighthouse has been a particularly difficult map to get right with the player base. They acknowledge that the water treatment play takes up a large amount of real estate on the map with the mounted weaponry covering a large portion of the area in front of the plant and is the primary reason players even queue to load into it. The main objective they hone in on are player spawns and their philosophy with them on Lighthouse being: player spawns should be distributed evenly across the east and west parts of the map, players should never spawn in the sights of the rogues, and that players that spawn should not be immediately vulnerable to other spawns. And from these three restrictions, I would say that only one of them is true. There aren’t any spawns that immediately put you in line of sight of the rogues. But the other two don’t really exist. Sure, the spawns are across the entire map, but that doesn’t mean fair or balanced by any means. Again, the southern road spawn means you basically don’t get to play that raid unless you get lucky with someone running across the open areas to reposition. Which brings us to some of the... the developers use the term nuance here, but I would just call them problems that this location has.

The terrain is very open if you are not on the eastern half of the map, climbing the mountains and staying at higher altitudes. But it does allow for one of the better maps with long ranged gameplay in mind. Most people bring either marksman rifles or bolt actions to work on quests or just to engage with those ranges that other maps don’t really have the space to offer. But the problem comes from the western half of the map, the coast. There are plenty of mountains and places to get higher elevations, but also there is nothing but sand and ocean if you spawn behind those mountains. What compounds this problem further is knowing that if you get a coastal spawn, there is someone immediately to both your left and right. It just comes down to which direction you want to run in and scope down before you see someone run across your sights. It also explains why the spawns are located where they are. They don’t want us right next to the rogue camp, and anything on the main road would be instant death, so the edges of the map south of the camp are the only locations where players can spawn. They acknowledge this and even refer to some potential solutions mentioned by the community. They can’t remove the spawns on the shore; putting all of the spawns on the chalet and the eastern mountains would simply create a funnel that everyone has to run through. Once players understand the exact locations, it would be about setting up ambushes that you would inevitably run into if you didn’t immediately run down towards the coast. And while suggesting they change the entire layout of the map is more reasonable from the developer's perspective, that would require a monumental number of resources and time to fix. They would basically have to start over from scratch. Which hey, I’ll be brutally honest and say that’s their problem; you made the map, you should have to take responsibility and do whatever is necessary, even if that means redoing that map over again. For the time being, here’s what they have done so far: added more player spawns north of the camp in the trainyard and reworked most other spawns across the entire map. Which reading that makes you go, that’s it? Again, the transparency is appreciated, but adding and moving spawns doesn’t fix Lighthouse's problems. And it begins to create this narrative of can they even fix this map in the first place?

(Can it be saved? Will they fix it?)

From the sounds of this diary, the odds of them revamping the map from the ground up or even from about fifty percent is very unlikely. Which is a shame considering they made this map and must’ve not seen the potential problem points until after they collected a bunch of data and heat maps showing where players tend to move around and end up. Again, the idea is so cool on paper, but their execution was far from it. The whole reason this map even exists is to give Light keeper both a home and a mechanic in general. And while his inclusion is still generally a disappointing and missed opportunity to have an actual high trader with valuables in raid, perhaps that just too much for them to get even remotely right in terms of implementation. Other than him, the map itself is kind of boring if I may be so bold. It’s a couple of buildings, some high elevation for sniping, and the water treatment plant. That’s your lot. The road that runs down the middle has nothing to offer; the one dilapidated building on the coast is a cool piece but has little to no reason to interact with it. In general, there is a lot of dead air, large chunks of map that serve little to no purpose other than ground to traverse to the next point of interest. All maps have this to an extent but usually provide smaller locations that you can at least check out if you’re morbidly curious or are in no rush to get to your main goal. But from the suggestions and actions they’ve taken so far, it seems like they at least know this problem is much deeper than just surface level stuff. For me, if I was in charge, the first thing I would do is lower the number of PMCs on this map across the board. By how many, I’m not exactly sure, but at least this way, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming in the first thirty seconds if they can’t get the spawns right. Next to that, all the PMC kill quests on Lighthouse would either be drastically reduced or simply moved to other maps. Punisher part four could be on other locations and even increasing the amount of PMCs needed to compensate, but trying to fight other players is a pain in the ass and the longer you take to get to those quests, the harder it becomes because less people are queuing onto that map. At least we got some level of acknowledgement from the team that things need to change. It’s just a matter of what the changes are and when can we expect them.

(Outro)

Lighthouse has sadly been a problematic map since pretty much day one. We just didn’t see it initially because any new Tarkov map was hype and exciting. There is no better feeling in this game than loading onto a new map and having no clue where to go or what to do. We all went through it and when everyone experienced it together, it was a magical time. Even Lighthouse for the first wipe or two was cool. But now, the cracks have shown, the poor design and thought process for what purpose this map should serve is now showing its ugly head. And when even the developers know and are trying to come up with solutions, you know it’s a big problem. Regardless, they are talking about Lighthouse; I can’t remember if this is the first or even second time, but I’m glad they are. It could be a cool map, but it most likely needs to be redesigned which who knows how long that would take. That combined with a less than stellar implantation of the main man himself Light keeper and you have a double whammy of bad choices and shortcomings creating an experience that is less than average at best. Here’s to hoping we see some updates in the future with rather substantial changes that everyone can get behind. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to watch this video. Let me know down in the comment section below your thoughts on Lighthouse as a map, whether or not this diary was enough for you, if you think they can even fix the map and be sure to subscribe for more videos about awful locations in Tarkov that have needed changes for god knows how long. I hope to see you in future ones.