Tarkov is Hard to Play for Fun Right Now

“This game isn’t supposed to be fun”. Those are words taken from Nikita himself many years ago, whilst talking to some streamers on a podcast. We all joke and meme that Tarkov isn’t technically supposed to be fun. And yet here we are; there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of players for this game. All willing to try and put with the BS Tarkov has to offer because the experience it delivers is unique to only itself. But I’ve noticed, as the scope and scale grows, so do the compounding issues it delivers to us on a wipe-to-wipe basis. This will very much be a subjective conversation today. I know this sentiment isn’t carried across the entire community and that’s totally fine. If you are still enjoying Tarkov and are having a great time leveling up and getting tasks done, I’m glad. Please, enjoy yourself. This is honestly more for me than anyone else. I look back at this wipe, seeing as how we have been in it for over 50 days, and a lot has happened. Some good, and some... not as much. But I find it harder each day to enjoy Tarkov and just have fun playing the game, without it feeling like something else entirely.

I think it’s safe to say that this wipe has been the most tumultuous wipe on launch we’ve ever gotten. Reserve was bad; Lighthouse was rough around the edges. But I don’t think either of those come close to Streets. So many backend issues are still alive even now. The map itself has gotten better and more stable, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to how good reserve plays now, even with the D-2 expansion. I wonder if there are people who still can’t even run the map because their PCs aren’t powerful enough to do so, and the map hasn’t been optimized enough for them. The map itself is awesome and will only get better as time goes on and they expand it. But if the map is this rough day one, how bad is it really going to perform after even just one expansion. People still talk about performance even to this day. I just hope that some level of salvation comes sooner rather than later, but I’m not holding my breath.

It’s difficult to just go into a raid and enjoy myself. Even with a beefy kit, I usually just end up dying before the armor or weapon I am using gets any time in the sun. And while that’s part of the expectation when playing Tarkov, you can only deal with that so many times in one night, before you just throw your hands up and downgrade to a rat rig and Mosin or something akin to that kind of kit. Or just closing the game entirely. And even when inside that raid, you notice a lot of little things that on their own, aren’t that big of a deal; little rubber-band here and there, a cracked sniper scav that has it out for you and only you; those kinds of situations where you kind of just shrug your shoulders and move on. But recently, it’s been more than that, and far worse. How we still have invisible players running around in the game is beyond me. I feel as though that’s an issue worth taking the game down for some time and you really try to diagnose what the problem is. It falls under the same category as audio issues; we rely on our sense so much in Tarkov, and not being able to trust your ears, or worse, your own eyes makes dying to invisible players hellacious. People have said the entire gambit on these issues. We've gone from I have never died or had the issue of invisible players, all the way to dying multiple times in a row to them. I know personally I was invisible once with a teammate as he died to someone else who was invisible, and it’s incredibly frustrating. But what makes it worse, is that it’s still in the game. Like I said before, this game should’ve gone down for hours once the issue was brought to BSG’s attention. This is a close to a critical game bug as we can get, any further over the line and we run into crashes and stuff of that sort; where the game is actually unplayable.

So, we know about all these issues. The laundry list is rather substantial. So, what’s to be done? BSG has said many times they are working on resolving these issues, and to their credit, I believe that they are doing their best to get them fixed. But in the meantime, that hasn’t stopped the community from taking matters into their own hands, at least as much as they can. Many people have taken to Discord to try and create something similar to Counter-Strike's Overwatch system; where footage on potential cheaters is submitted and people go and watch the footage to try and discern if the person is cheating or if it was just typical Tarkov jank. And to those people taking time out of their day to do that, I commend you. It’s not easy to look at footage without the full raid context and make that kind of call. Where you know without a shadow of a doubt that the person is cheating, before sending the clip to wherever it needs to go. But here’s the thing: we shouldn’t have to do this in the first place. We shouldn’t have to feel responsible for policing the game and trying to do what BSG and Battleye seem to struggle with somewhat. I mean are people doing this in the wrong? Absolutely not. I’m glad people are willing to take up the mantle and try to make the game have even just one less cheater in the game. But I just wish the systems that are already in place worked as intended, and we could confidently say BSG’s anti-cheat worked, and that it worked well. But it doesn’t. And what does that leave us with? The community basically says fine I’ll do it myself. Again, props to anyone that is trying this, but you shouldn’t have to. You get what I am saying?

And I think the most repulsive thing that has been brought to light recently, is that bringing gear for your teammates can get you temporarily banned for 60-days, because the systems at play see what’s happening in raid as some form of RMT, when in reality it could just be me giving my teammate his back from the previous raid because he died and I managed to get it out. They have doubled down on this and pretty said anyone who has gotten the hit by the banhammer it’s staying that way, don’t drop or take gear from teammates. Which is asinine to think about; a game where they really want you to play in squads and work with others, and you get in trouble for trying to be a good teammate because the systems can’t tell the difference between normal gear being dropped and actual RMT. Why would you even try to play the game with friends if at any point you could get shut down and have basically no reason as to why. That level of fear and hesitation is palpable; it’s one of the underlying reasons why I play solo as much as I do. And when I do play with friends, it’s the same handful of people I’ve been playing with for years. And forget even trying to find new buddies to play Tarkov with. One might be a bad actor and get you banned. Which is messed up beyond belief. It’s reasons like everything I’ve mentioned so far, but this one man.... this one takes the cake why this game ain’t fun anymore. There are no set rules for this, and if there were, only a select group of people would know about them, which is atrocious. At this point, any good will and faith they have gotten for fixing the recoil and making the movement useable in the game is gone in my eyes. There is a level of, I'd call it, scathing distrust from BSG that is blatantly being shown here. I think what’s also frustrating is that we must rely, once again, on community members like OnePeg and Pestily to let everyone know this is going on, instead of officials at BSG going out online and telling this to everyone. Only people withing the content creator community see these happen live. And any message that they put, isn’t sent out to everyone else, so how are people going to know not to group with randoms so they don’t get flagged for RMT and can’t play for 60-days? I just... I don’t know man.

Again, this is very much a subjective conversation. I hope others are having fun. But I can’t look past everything, everything that is going on right now and call into question what is still getting me to open the game and load into a raid. Maybe it’s the variety of guns on offer. Perhaps it’s the unique experience that can only be felt by playing Tarkov. Or something else subconsciously that isn’t coming to mind right now. I will say that making videos about Tarkov and having fun doing that is a contributing factor. But with the way things are right now, if they don’t improve over the course of time, I can’t see that lasting forever, you know? The goal of this channel is just to be a creative outlet for me and the things I find interesting. And Tarkov takes up the bulk of that interest right now. And while I have ideas for other videos about other games on my mind, as it stands, Tarkov has me by the cajónes, to say the least. The question is, how long will that last with the direction(s) BSG are going right now? Who knows. Thank you very much for watching, be sure to leave any thoughts down in the comment section and be sure to subscribe for more videos about the potential implosion of a game we all know, love and just want to see become the best it can be. I hope to see you in future ones.