Tarkov's Arena Launch is a Disgrace

Arena’s launch and everything that has happened since then has been nothing short of a disaster. I normally try not to be so superfluous, but this has been an awful experience. And I mean that in the sense that I haven’t experienced arena because I still don’t have access. And the fact that apparently, people on twitter are bugging BSG for access and getting in, whilst people who have had EOD for years are still waiting is disgusting, disrespectful and shameful to sit back and watch. The worst part? Arena is fun! Like genuine good ass fun. Sure, the gameplay loop is marred with issues, grind, and complete unbalance, but running around in arena and shooting other players is such a good time. But everything... everything around the gameplay is such a problem. Access issues, balance, unnecessary grind; this was supposed to be a massive and relatively easy W for BSG. I can see why they waited so long to release it now. It was never fully ready. Granted, we knew that going into it, but my god is it worse than we thought. This whole thing is just so disappointing, if I may be real for a moment. I was excited to jump on and test things, give some feedback, but alas I am not in yet. So, for the time being, I guess we’ll just go over what I’ve witnessed watching a lot of arena and figure out what direction the ship should be steered in.

The first and biggest problem was how this entire thing was “rolled out”. The waves BSG said that they were going to use are prioritizing the wrong people. If I recall correctly, it was supposed to be based on how long your account has existed. And if you had EOD, that would bump you up the priority list. And initially, that seemed to be the case. As people that I know personally whose accounts have existed for over 5 years got in day one. But after 3 full days, who knows how they are going about it. This morning as I am writing this, another relatively large wave of people managed to get in, which is good. But that also seemed to overload the servers, so now no one can play. Classic Tarkov. And it’s going to be so bad when wipe happens in the near future. It just.... *sighs* I’m not surprised. At all. But for some reason I had some level of hope that maybe, just maybe things would work out for arena. We’d get in, get to play, maybe experience some bugs here and there and some unbalanced stuff but the game would work. But in the day and age of 2023, we shouldn’t forget how bad launches for games can be (I’m looking at you The Day Before). Either way, the fact many people who have had EOD since at least 2020, and still haven’t been granted access is shameful at this point. I have no idea how access is being given, but it certainly seems like the wrong people are being prioritized. And I don’t mean content creators much larger than myself (hell I wouldn’t even call myself one at this point). That will always just be how it currently is. But people who decided arena was interesting and bought it within the last couple of weeks. It sucks for those of us that thought we might be given some assistance to getting into this anticipated new game mode, but alas it is up to good old RNG to bless us with an email confirmation saying the client is ready to download arena. I may sound like an entitled little shit, and to be brutally honest, I kind of am. After thousands of hours and a fat $140 tag on a version of the game I enjoy so much, you’d hope that all would be taken into consideration for who gets access to the shiny new mode. But this is a reminder that a company of any kind doesn’t owe you anything. So, hopefully we see everyone playing arena sooner rather than later (God, just saying soon and seeing that word on the launcher gives me an aneurism). Regardless of my woes on getting in, once you do, how is the actual game?

Again, as I said earlier, it’s fun. The simple act of engaging in PvP with Tarkov’s mechanics in a more controlled environment where death means nothing is extremely engaging and compelling. It’s awesome to be able to try and go for something risky and if you die, it doesn’t matter. Win or lose, you respawn at the start of the next round as if nothing happened. That alone is going to make so many people who like Tarkov but hate the idea of building a kit and then dying a minute into the raid more confident to take fights and do things that are outside of their comfort zone. It’s tense, stressful, and when you clutch up a round, it feels incredible. Just like any other arena shooter out there. But again, the devil is in the details with arena mode.

For one, how you select your loadouts and what is available to you is a bit of a doozy. Your rank in the arena comes with a handful of curated presets for you to choose from. As your level goes up, your access to better kits goes up as well. Each preset comes at a price, which is reimbursed to you upon a victory. Alongside those, there are different classes that have a huge almost skill tree like setup whereby using certain kits, you unlock new ones down the tree that get better. Now, the problem with this is that your rank might not be a perfect indicator as to how far down a specific tree you have worked through. You could still be at rank D or D+, but because you’ve put in the time with only one preset tree, you are almost to the bottom and have access to some extremely powerful kits. And in the ranked mode, which is the only one available right now, there are no restrictions to what you can use. So, there is a very distinct power dynamic that is being abused right now, because there wasn’t any real foresight into how ranked play could be affected by how much people have put into the game. A very simple solution would be to only allow presets that are available with your rank to be used in the ranked playlist, and everything else in the unranked mode. But since we don’t have that, the unbalanced gameplay has already reared its ugly head. People with the stock SAG AK with no dust cover are going up against people with Altyn’s and it hurts my soul that this was allowed to happen.

On top of that, when the servers aren’t causing wildfires across the internet, having to double confirm that you want to play arena seems redundant. If I queue into ranked or any game mode, this isn’t league, we don’t need to confirm once more that yes, I would like to play the videogame. You know? What happens is that there is always that one dood and if you are a CSGO player you know what I am talking about, where the last person doesn’t confirm, and you get sent back into looking for a match. It sucks.

And you know what sucks more? The grind. Level up your account rank as well as each tier of the preset tree feels painfully and artificially inflated for the sake of game extension. I don’t mind it if we need to put some time in just like the normal game. And one area this could be improved by just lowering the EXP needed to get to the next preset is to reward games with more EXP when they end. Typically, you earn between 6-8k points on a win, and around 3-4k on a loss. Which doesn’t sound too bad especially when comparing to normal Tarkov leveling. But when your next preset that you really want is 150,000 EXP total, yeah, it’s going to take a while. And again, it doesn’t need to be halved or anything. Maybe something like a 10-12% increase would be nice. Or have the number of enemies kills you get have more weight regarding how much EXP you earn. This is something I’m not too concerned with because this will probably be the easiest thing to adjust to if they deem it necessary. It would also be nice to use any loadout in the tree you are working towards, instead of the one that is most recent. It sucks having to use one kit repeatedly to get something new, especially if the previous loadout is much more enjoyable for you to use.

I’ll touch briefly on the maps, because it was the one aspect of arena I was the least concerned with. They’re solid. Like BSG’s history with designing maps, they are the strongest part of the game. The locations are varied and interesting, there is verticality, with plenty of points of interest. And are small enough that you will always find someone within a 30s period unless maybe you’re in a 1v1 situation. But again, won’t harp on this too long, the maps are cool.

And of course, there are many small gripes with the game currently that some QOL changes will fix. Menuing, load times, bugs, disconnect problems. There’s a gambit of things that will hopefully get adjusted over time, but at the end of the day, arena is interesting, engaging and most importantly, fun when everything is working correctly. It's just a damn shame that this whole thing is being marred by atrocious release practices. I hate to beat a dead horse here but being four days into this and not being able to play, with each passing day, my desire to get in and play some arena goes down. Even if the game wipes with Tarkov in the next couple of weeks, and we all start on the same playing field once more, it feels that this even had to happen. Yes, regardless of how they divided up the player base to get in, people were going to get shafted. But if you say it’s based on account and how long it’s been around, stick to it. Don’t pussyfoot around and hand people the keys to arena when there are tons of other accounts that meet your own set criteria. All in all, arena is exciting for those who are playing, while also being frustrating at the same time. And for everyone else who can’t get in, just sit tight. And hopefully, by the end of next year, we will have our seat at the arena table. 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 if you got into arena and what your experience has been like and be sure to subscribe for more videos about the complete and utter failure that sometimes is BSG and their ability to release things in any kind of coherent manner. I hope to see you in future ones.