What Happened to Covert Movement?

Tarkov’s combat systems are engaging and complex enough that there is a plethora of ways to interact with them. This goes for both fighting AI enemies, as well as other players who pose more of a threat in general. You can run in head first, and just shoot whatever you see. If it moves, you kill it. A very powerful and viable way to play. You can try engage with range, or from different defensive positions; the list is sizeable. But one way to play Tarkov that has changed over the years, is playing sneaky. Sneaky Tarkov can be extremely gratifying when executed correctly. There are many different angles to it; being in the right place at the right time, having an angle or an opportunity that you can recognize quickly and capitalize on, and the ability to not freak out if there are a lot of footsteps around you making all kinds of noise and you feel overwhelmed. Playing sneaky, at least for me personally, always gets my heart racing more than just running around. Because that buildup of anticipation; knowing that depending on how you handle it, you may kill a juiced-out player, or mess it up and lose your opportunity at some free loot.

One of the skills in Tarkov that has been radically changed over the years without really being messed with directly, is Covert Movement. By slowing your character’s speed down to ~25% or less, by using the mouse wheel, or just pressing your slow walk button on your keyboard, your character will slow down and make less noise. Doing this levels up your covert moment skill. Which has a myriad of benefits. Again, this skill can be a little fickle to level up; remember, 25% or less and you’re good. But the benefits are substantial if you can the skill up high enough. Your steps on common surfaces are reduced by 1.2% per level up to 60% at max level, which is insane. Again, you will most likely never max the skill, but the thought of having this level of noise reduction is crazy. For uncommon surfaces it’s only 0.% per level up to 30% at max. To my knowledge, we don’t know exactly what qualifies as common and uncommon, especially considering there are just so many different surfaces you will end up walking on. Combine that with BSG changing a lot of the sounds of various surfaces, and it can feel like there is an exhaustive list of things to keep track of. Moving on, noises created by your weapons will be reduced by 1.2% per level, up to a max of 60%. And since ADS sound is also tied to your weapons ergonomics, if you had a really high base ergo weapon, and a really high covert movement skill, you might actually be able to aim your weapon down and not have the entire lobby hear it. Hyperbole sure, but it sure as shit feels like that sometimes. Your movement speed while being in covert movement increases as well by 1% per level, up to 50% at max, which is probably the most beneficial perk of this skill. Considering, that, at the start of this wipe, movement while crouched was actually fast. It felt like a viable way of moving around, especially if you were indoors and trying to both be sneaky and concealed. But BSG has since changed the speed back because it wasn’t intentional. You technically can move faster crouched if you do it for long enough because your character will gain a little speed if you’re moving for long enough, but the speed at which you traversed while crouched before the revert was really nice. ________________________

Which sucks a lot, because it felt like the change was on purpose to give players an out when they were pinned down but didn’t want to stand up and risk a head eyes death. You could actually maneuver and potentially flank behind for a sneak attack. But, at the speed we move since the change, you can’t really do that. So, I suppose my biggest question to BSG is, do they want us to be able to actually play with stealth in mind?

Stealth is something that hasn’t felt like it actually works for a long time. You’re too slow for how much noise you still make. Back in the day, it kind of worked because if you were underweight, you made almost zero noise. With a high enough covert skill, you might actually make no noise when on the right surface, under the right conditions. But nowadays, with how the weight system works, you can’t be stealthy in the traditional sense. Most of the time, you are already in yellow weight when you load into a raid. So being light enough to make little noise is difficult. Sure, you can be still; not moving from a spot and technically making zero noise, but that’s the difference between stealthy and still. In my mind, stealthy means making plays and movement that encourages a positive change in positional advantage against your opponent. Whether that means getting to higher ground, flanking behind for a surprise attack, or finding a really nasty angle that heavily favors your position over theirs. When you are still, you may be making no noise, but you put yourself in the situation where if someone sees you, you’re dead.

You’re not being active, and unless your aim is godlike, there is a much higher chance that the enemy will be able to out position you and overwhelm your situation. So, you don’t move fast enough to warrant sneaking around people, and it takes arguably too much effort to stay below the weight threshold in 2022 to have stealth feel like a meaningful way to engage with the game. Don’t get me wrong, it can work. It has worked. It will always work. But there is something special about being able to actively say you want to play with stealth in mind, and execute on that narrative. With the way many of the features currently are in the game right now, both sides of the spectrum kind of hate the other, without being able to look at the problem itself. People who prefer to hold W down and run at people, hate the other people who will hide in a bush and surprise, them with a hose of bullets and kill them before the W keys gear can keep them alive long enough for a turn around. But in reality, it’s neither “sides” fault for this mentality. The problem at large is lack of mobility options when you’re really pinned down. It would be nice to have the option to either take your time and be sneaky, or to hit shift and push really aggressively. Sadly, as of right now with how weight works and general audio is in Tarkov, we don’t get that option. You kind of get lumped into one of two camps, and it’s very hard to distinguish yourself with how you move and navigate around the map. It makes sense to drop your backpack, but that creates a ton of noise, and even then, depending on how much loot you have, that might not even be enough to get you underweight for proper sneaking. It all feels strange in regards to what constitutes sneaking now; we can still do it, but there are enough hoops you need to jump through that it makes sense to ask the question of why sneak in the first place.

This is much more of just a rambling about covert movement; for the most part it seems like people are fine with the skill itself. I think it really boils down to the weight system and how harsh it has been this wipe. If BSG gave us, I don’t know, maybe like 5% more weight allocation before we went into the yellow, I could see it be totally fine. But even with level 32 strength, it still feels like I go in with a kit, and pick up one item and I'm instantly overweight. Even if it’s just over the threshold, and you pretty much don’t feel the effects of being overweight at that point, it still sucks. I do miss being able to move relatively freely in crouched slow walk and being able to ambush and catch people off guard. Hopefully as they tune and tweak the other mechanics in the game that have affected covert movement, we will see somewhat of a return to slower, more thoughtful movement, where each step matters. Let me know your thoughts on all things movement and where you want to see Tarkov take any potential changes to it. Faster? Slower? More ways to maneuver around, I want to hear any and all takes so sound off in the comments down below.