Tarkov 1.0 - My Hopes for the Future

The more we hear about what’s on the horizon for Tarkov, the more it gets my mind racing at looking towards the future; what lies ahead for not only the players but BSG as well. This game has been in development for so long, it’s crazy to look back and see how far everything has come. Multiple times throughout the games life I expressed my own personal concerns as to the overall direction and ambition of Nikita’s vision. I don’t want to hate on it; in fact, I kind of envy it. He has such an incredible eye for what he wants his game to be, and if he can see it all the way to the end, I have nothing but the absolute highest respect for him. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of personal concerns for actually having this vision and everything he wants come to fruition. As sad as it makes me say, the longer I play this game, the more of its holes and glaring red flags I notice as well. Granted, that comes with the territory of any game or hobby you enjoy. I don’t want to blindly support what they do and be under the impression that everything will just work out in the end, nor do I want to be a doomer and say it will all fail before it gets released. I’m always trying to be somewhere in between; torn at what can go right, bringing us one step closer to that final goal, and what can’t go oh so horribly wrong. I think this mentality has begun to kind of normalize across veterans of the game. People who have years under their belt, and who have really seen this game grow and evolve over time. Overall, I’m genuinely curious where every lands about not only where we stand currently with Tarkov, but how they feel about everything we’ve seen for the future too. In regards to the immediate future, we have a pretty good idea as to what’s coming this year.

Lightkeeper, our first in game trader, is the primary addition we are all looking forward to. We still have no idea how he is going to function in any capacity; we don’t know what his wares will be. We don’t know what we’ll need to gain special access to him. All we do know, is that he is crucial to the overarching plot of Tarkov as a whole. And other than that, it has been largely left up to personal interpretation and imagination. Again, the doomer in me wants to say his implementation will suck and be either confusing or not intuitive. Or, what he offers won’t be worth what you need to bring him in order to gain access to him. Or even worse, that he will be impossible to actually reach and talk to because once he is in the game, people are just going to camp the lighthouse and never let anyone have access to him. But that’s not fair; we can’t make a proper judgment until after he’s in. And even then, I’m sure once he gets added things around him will change and adjust for “balances” sake. If he is as important as Nikita has emphasized in the past, then I can see some pretty large implications coming with that. Who knows; a lot of the economy could be shaken up because of Lightkeeper. Either way, he’s been the main attraction since the launch of this patch, and we all wait eagerly to hear more or just see him in the game. We’re patient. But eager. Aside from a new vendor. I think what everyone really wants to see is the first iteration of Streets.

I’ve said this to myself since the first Battle for Concordia trailer; that the Streets patch (which sounds like is still slated for patch 0.13) is the most important patch for the game, other than going 1.0. This will truly show everyone, people who are fairly new and don’t have a true grasp of what Nikita’s vision for the game is, as well as people who have stuck around since the start. This patch will lay out a much stronger idea for them. And allow them to make the decision if Tarkov is a game they still want to pursue. I can only speak for myself personally, but at this point I’m willing to try every version of the game and see if it’s for me or not. With how many hours I have put into the game, and how I now have a small following of people who are interested in the game as much as I am (thank you for that by the way I really do appreciate having a place where I can just talk about stuff and be creative), I don’t think I’ll ever not enjoy Tarkov. Sure, I may need some time away from it. But, it’s just such a unique experience that I don’t think I’ll ever truly put it down, like other games that I spent years playing but ultimately had to stop engaging with for one reason or another. There are a lot of expectations that come with this map; well, the first playable version of it. Because right off the bat, the map is so large that it will be coming to us in multiple chunks, with new additions as they figure out the entire blueprint of the map, and how to not only stich it all together, but more importantly, how to make it run so that all our GPU’s don’t explode. Optimization has been a concern for this map since they initially showed it off. And with how large they plan on making Streets, it makes sense that having us be able to even play it, raises concerns for even just the first version of it. It would really suck if this map got hyped up as much as it has, only for it to not live up to BSG’s expectations. I would say ours, but we really don’t know what to expect from the map other than it being the largest map in the game, and the little nuggets of info we have gotten from different interviews with Nikita. At any rate, the anticipation of this map being released has been around for years, and finally feels like it’s reached the climax. So long as there aren’t any major issues that the team runs into, fingers crossed for a safe landing at the end of this year.

Probably my biggest personal request for the game is some form of open world travel across the maps. It’s something that to me, would fundamentally change how we interact with the game. My imagination immediately goes to something akin to DayZ; how you can just cross an entire map in a couple hours if you are fast enough. How the world is literally your oyster; do whatever you want to do, and what you need to do in order to survive. The only part that racks my brain is how the hideout and open world elements would connect. My guess is that you would just leave your hideout and it would spit you out on a random part of a map and you go from there. Or, maybe you get a say in where you go. I’m not entirely sure. Either way, I’ve taken it upon myself to try and create my own little interpretations of open world in two different videos, just to try and visualize somehow what that might look like. And even with my pretty rough job, it gets me excited to just walk up to an extraction and spawn on the other side, in a new map. That idea is just so cool! I know people might be hesitant towards the idea as a whole, but I personally want nothing more than that major change to come to Tarkov arguably sooner than any other feature. That might just be me, but I am hopeful we see it in the future.

In the end, I think what I want most out of anything is for BSG to create the game that they want. I mean no shit, smartass. But seriously. This is their game and if they want it to be drastically different than what it is now that’s fine. I’m willing to wait and see it all hopefully come together down the road. However, I hope it happens in a respectful and timely manner. I just don’t want to see the game go backwards, that’s all. As long as we make positive forward progress, I’ll be happy. But with situations like the removal of steam audio, I can’t help but worry about those kinds of precedents being set. If they’re willing to gut a system like that, who knows what else could be on the chopping block you know? It worries me that they may be taking large steps back instead of forward. But I suppose I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s take this one day at a time; one patch at a time. Let’s see where we are after lightkeeper and streets are both in the game. We’ll get a much better idea for the lay of the land once that happens. And then hopefully, if everything goes smoothly, we’ll be well on our way to a strong 1.0 release in the future. Here’s to hoping for the best, while being cautiously optimistic. Cheers.