Escape From Tarkov: You Can Close The Thread But You'll Never Escape

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Oysters Autobio: Mar 13, 2017

Idiot Doom Spiral posted:

Something isn't "difficult" because it eats a lot of time. It's not difficult to come up with 1800 baby names starting with J, but it sure as hell takes time.

The problem with passive playstyles in the current Tarkov is it's effectively an arena with some demo-economy features tacked on. People spawn in, maps are static and the only real goal is to hog some loot and get it to the exit. That is it - the tension that people find in it is largely the power of their imagination, because going broke doesn't have real penalties, nor does finding good stuff have some greater, game-changing impact. You can't really use it to cooperate with each other, change the map, change the game or what not. You can't even take anything from anyone that they don't basically consent to you taking.

So when that trends towards camping, you get a very silly experience, where the only limit is people's willingness to poopsock. Memorize spawns, flow and know your run times - reach a spot, hold out, sound whore and pop anybody silly enough to not have memorized enough. Lay low again, and head towards the exit. Ironically this was also a fairly large problem with more aggro playstyles that used parts of this approach to mitigate risk. Calling this kind of thing 'asymmetrical information' is very kind when that information is only gained in an out-of-game, meta way (namely by playing over and over and having a second screen up) - it's not that you gained information and took risks that led to your future advantage. You simply repeated a task until you were guaranteed to have an advantage.

The key problem with Tarkov is that it was made sort of under the influence of early 2k-MMOs, and the idea of building an 'immersive simulator' - it brings all the worst dregs of that era with it: Heavy instancing, item spawning, loot tables, doing runs and endless grinding and loot inflation. Even the dread skill system would feel at home in one of those games (repeat action to gain skill at action? Huh, sounds kinda familiar). And every part of the game that comes from this line of thinking is 100% dysfunctional, a turnoff and useless. The two good things it has going for it are the gunsmith (...until the stat-balancing again is very MMO-ish) and the audio-visuals of gunfights - unaided by huds, in helmets that smear, ringing and smoke and blasts left and right. No markers to aid you, just your memory of where your pals are to know where to run, how to flank and who to shoot. This is great, because it puts a lot of immediate challenge on the player, in ways that are fair, dynamic (they can't be learned by rote) and allow for tons of possible solutions.

To fix Tarkov would be quite a task and require tearing large parts of it down. Which is largely why I quit. It was only fun when we were pretending it was some kind of squad shooter and got ourselves in trouble for no good reason. Playing to win at Tarkov seemed like the silliest waste of time.

Unfortunately then I guess the game just wasn't for you. If you don't buy into the looting and survival aspects, like I said earlier just playing this as a squad arena shooter would get old fast.

During the last pre wipe event, I totally intended to play non stop and get a chance to rock great gear, but I ended up only playing like one or two raids because without any stakes (even if they are made up in your head, yeah) the game is super stale

# ? Jul 6, 2020 12:10

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 19:25

Orv: May 4, 2011

Two people posting essays at each other how they're wrong about why neither play Tarkov is some peak close this dumbass thread bullshit.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 12:11

Oysters Autobio: Mar 13, 2017

Orv posted:

Two people posting essays at each other how they're wrong about why neither play Tarkov is some peak close this dumbass thread bullshit.

Nah

# ? Jul 6, 2020 12:26

twig1919: Nov 1, 2011; I am an inconsiderate moron whose only method of discourse is idiotic personal attacks.

Gabriel S. posted:

What would fix the game? Decreasing the availability of top tier guns and ammo along with some kind of "blacked" arm or leg penalty that is completed negated by painkillers?

I don't understand how we'd making body armor more realistic would change things for the better. That'd probably just make it stronger.

1) nerf painkillers so they take ~1 minutes to take effect. Nerf their effect time to maybe 2 mins max. Add a 1-2 minute cooldown between painkiller uses. Add more charges to painkillers to compensate. The effect of this is to remove the knowledge check of running painkillers 100% of the time and giving 0 fucks about blacked limbs. It also gives you time to take tactical advantage of limb shots. It also gives an avenue to making otherwise useless painkillers good. For example, morphine could take only 15 seconds to kick- in making it a top teir item.
2) increase lethality of limb shots to around 4-5 bullets to kill. It shouldn't take a full magdump into someone's thigh to kill them.
3) nerf high teir weapons recoil to be more in line with stock guns.
4) possibly increase the blacked arm penalty 50% or so.

Availability isn't the problem and the more they mess with availability it just exacerbates every other issue.

twig1919 fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jul 6, 2020

# ? Jul 6, 2020 14:12

VulgarandStupid: Aug 5, 2003; I AM, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, UNFUCKABLE AND A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT TO EVERYONE. DAE WANNA CUM PLAY WITH ME!?

Add addiction. To everything.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 14:49

Pornographic Memory: Dec 17, 2008

VulgarandStupid posted:

Add addiction. To everything.

Getting addicted to slickers bars and having to loot a regular supply of insulin injections in raids to compensate for the penalties

# ? Jul 6, 2020 15:10

BONESTORM: Jan 27, 2009; Buy me Bonestorm or go to Hell!

twig1919 posted:

The problem isn't the body armor itself. The problem is that the damage system has serious flaws. It takes literally 10-15 rifle rounds to kill someone with arm shots and 7-10 for leg shots. Even having stomach armor is a straight up negative because taking 5 bullets to the stomach is inconsequential while 2 bullets to the chest is instant death, so wasting armor durability on protecting the stomach is pointless.

Additionally, there is no real penalty for blacked arms/legs. There pretends to be a penalty but 1) it can be undone with a common and cheap item (painkillers) and 2) its so minor to not matter. You can still aim with a blacked arm and running on blacked legs does like 5 damage every few seconds out of 435 max hp.

There are also issues with no body part penetration on limb shots so a bullet hitting someone in the arm from the side doesn't pass through it and perforate their unprotected lungs like it should.

What all of this means is that wearing top teir has 0 counter play other than having top teir ammo. If they fixed their damage model to work in a halfway realistic manner then it would solve a lot of issues. 1) top teir poo poo would still be good, but it wouldn't be a 95% win button. 2) running and gunning will be nerfed because arm/leg shots would mean more (right now run and gun is the objectively best way to win a firefight because moving heads are harder to click). 3) it would make it possible to nerf high teir ammo availability without loving over non-poopsockers.

There are also a lot of issues with top teir guns being low ttk laser beams with literally 0 recoil. Mosin 1 shot kills are bullshit for the same reason that meta 4 sprays at 150M are, they provide no interesting engagements or counterplay. A meta m4/ak will win every fight every time over any other weapon unless the person using it can't even aim within the general direction of their opponent.

Instead of evaluating these core mechanical issues and rebalancing mechanics/items the dev team is just loving around with restricting access to these bullshit win buttons in tedious and annoying ways at the expense of anyone who isn't a professional poopsocker playing 9 hours a day. This is also why the skill system with game breaking elite abilities is complete garbage. It's almost like there is a theme...

With this latest wipe I am now firmly in the camp that Nikita is a complete idiot who doesn't understand his game or the mechanics of how it works at all.

The fact that the game is universally regarded as best early wipe just farther highlights that the problems are primarily how high teir items interact with the core mechanics. The only real solution to the games problems are to fix the core issues instead of loving around with items/loot/values/market.

Agree with pretty much all of this. Having realistic armour only works when the rest of the health system is as realistic. I once had a close range player scav on player scav fight on shoreline where we surprised each other. Unfortunately we were both only armed with those .366 bolt action rifles. We both shot one another at the very least half a dozen times, with me only barely winning the encounter after we both ran out of ammo and it came down to using our knives. Neither of us had any armour.

The weird Mechwarrior style health system has some consequences where you can tank a ridiculous amount of damage to little effect, or you are one tapped. I�m pretty sure the other guy landed the first hit in that fight I described, so I imagine he was frustrated rather than just confused like I was.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 15:36

idiotsavant: Jun 4, 2000

Idiot Doom Spiral posted:

To fix Tarkov would be quite a task and require tearing large parts of it down. Which is largely why I quit. It was only fun when we were pretending it was some kind of squad shooter and got ourselves in trouble for no good reason. Playing to win at Tarkov seemed like the silliest waste of time.

I really appreciate your whole take on this, and while I disagree a little on the asymmetrical info point (isn�t strategic experience ie �out of game meta� part of any game?) the rest of your critique is really on point. I think I still enjoy Tarkov for what it is (try to hit the loot pi�ata and see what falls out), and honestly more and more the �get yourself in trouble for no good reason� is becoming the reason it�s still fun for me.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 18:29

fknlo: Jul 6, 2009; Fun Shoe

I still always find talk about "realism" in this game where you can perform surgery on your own stomach or run around on broken legs because you put a splint on them comical.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 20:28

animist: Aug 28, 2018

i feel like VoIP would make the game a lot more dynamic tbh. being able to actually team up with people and communicate beyond spamming voicelines would be pretty neat

# ? Jul 6, 2020 20:44

animist: Aug 28, 2018

as soon as I can sprint around interchange micspamming hardbass the game will be complete :colbert:

# ? Jul 6, 2020 20:47

Orv: May 4, 2011

Literally no one would team up even if VOIP were implemented. Look at the number of times Smoke has done his hatchling friend gimmick successfully versus the number of attempted betrayals when he does. It's not worth it, Tarkov players are way, way too greedy and distrustful.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 20:48

ChesterJT: Dec 28, 2003; Mounty Pumper's Flying Circus

Idiot Doom Spiral posted:

Playing to win at Tarkov seemed like the silliest waste of time.

Seriously though it's true because no matter how much money you get, no matter how many quests you finish, no matter how complete your hideout is it will all go away in a few months and it starts again. It's like some serious existential crisis Russian poo poo he's sucked us in to. Imagine an MMO too lazy to create new content so once or twice a year they wipe all the servers and you start over from level 1 replaying the same content because they spent all their development time working on how tired your character gets while running.

ChesterJT fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jul 6, 2020

# ? Jul 6, 2020 21:54

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

What's realistic armor? Are we saying we want the top tier class to be completely be un-penetrable by low calibers or are we adjusting the how the hit scan works?

# ? Jul 7, 2020 00:20

ShowTime: Mar 28, 2005

ChesterJT posted:

Seriously though it's true because no matter how much money you get, no matter how many quests you finish, no matter how complete your hideout is it will all go away in a few months and it starts again. It's like some serious existential crisis Russian poo poo he's sucked us in to. Imagine an MMO too lazy to create new content so once or twice a year they wipe all the servers and you start over from level 1 replaying the same content because they spent all their development time working on how tired your character gets while running.

In 1 way, yea, but he does eventually plan on doing seasons long term. So you'll always have that stash to play in "regular" mode and then you'll have that seasons gear to play in "seasonal" mode. Who loving knows when that happens and right now the wipes are to mimic that, but I agree that sometimes it just feels like a waste.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 00:29

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Dumb question,

Is there a way to record the game's ping to a *.csv by chance? I want test playing the game on my wireless connection vs. weird and see if there's even a notable difference.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 01:58

Oysters Autobio: Mar 13, 2017

animist posted:

as soon as I can sprint around interchange micspamming hardbass the game will be complete

This is exactly why I don't want VOIP, that and the 12 year olds telling me they'll gently caress my mom.

I hope though VOIP will be for in squad comms only. In theory it sounds great to be able to talk and have fun scenarios like negotiating but unfortunately there'll be enough assholes who will ruin it too.

Even in more MilSim communities, like Squad has assholes spamming dumb music or soundboards and honestly, quite frankly let's be honest, most people who play videogames are mouth breathing losers who mumble rap talk or have extreme vocal fry so I don't want to hear that poo poo.

Unfortunately VOIP was apparently announced in the last Russian podcast with Nikita so it is supposed to be coming

# ? Jul 7, 2020 02:36

Umbreon: May 21, 2011

Oysters Autobio posted:

This is exactly why I don't want VOIP, that and the 12 year olds telling me they'll gently caress my mom.

I hope though VOIP will be for in squad comms only. In theory it sounds great to be able to talk and have fun scenarios like negotiating but unfortunately there'll be enough assholes who will ruin it too.

Even in more MilSim communities, like Squad has assholes spamming dumb music or soundboards and honestly, quite frankly let's be honest, most people who play videogames are mouth breathing losers who mumble rap talk or have extreme vocal fry so I don't want to hear that poo poo.

Unfortunately VOIP was apparently announced in the last Russian podcast with Nikita so it is supposed to be coming

I want VOIP specifically because of idiots who will try to spam things in a game where the slightest footstep at the wrong time can give away your position instantly get you killed. The more free and easy PMC kills, the better :colbert:

# ? Jul 7, 2020 05:16

VulgarandStupid: Aug 5, 2003; I AM, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, UNFUCKABLE AND A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT TO EVERYONE. DAE WANNA CUM PLAY WITH ME!?

I hope they add a charisma stat to pass persuasion checks. Oh wait. There is a charisma stat...

# ? Jul 7, 2020 05:28

Mega Comrade: Apr 22, 2004; Listen buddy, we all got problems!

I thought the wipes were to force people to test out new content?

Mega Comrade fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jul 7, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 12:05

Umbreon: May 21, 2011

Mega Comrade posted:

I thought the wipes were to force people to test out new content?

They are, yes.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 14:05

Lemon: May 22, 2003

So I finally got my bitcoin farm up and running for the first time and, like most of this game, I don't fully understand it.

I've got two cards running in it at the moment and it gave me a timer of around 20 hours if I remember correctly, showing 0/3 bitcoins. I assumed this meant that after the timer was up, I'd have 3 bitcoins.

But when I logged on earlier, the timer was down to about 7 hours as expected and I had 1/3 bitcoins. I put that one in my inventory, so I'm back to 0/3. It doesn't appear that I get 3 bitcoins spread out over the time, because if that was the case I'd have thought I'd have my second one by now.

So what's the deal? Do I get 3 bitcoins, or 1, or what? What happens when the timer reaches zero?

# ? Jul 7, 2020 17:47

Olesh: Aug 4, 2008; Why did the circus close?

A long, chilling list of animal rights violations.

Lemon posted:

So I finally got my bitcoin farm up and running for the first time and, like most of this game, I don't fully understand it.

I've got two cards running in it at the moment and it gave me a timer of around 20 hours if I remember correctly, showing 0/3 bitcoins. I assumed this meant that after the timer was up, I'd have 3 bitcoins.

But when I logged on earlier, the timer was down to about 7 hours as expected and I had 1/3 bitcoins. I put that one in my inventory, so I'm back to 0/3. It doesn't appear that I get 3 bitcoins spread out over the time, because if that was the case I'd have thought I'd have my second one by now.

So what's the deal? Do I get 3 bitcoins, or 1, or what? What happens when the timer reaches zero?

You get one bitcoin. Your farm can hold a maximum of three. It it fills up, you stop making more bitcoins until you pull out the ones it's already made. This is to prevent you from just starting up your bitcoin farm and loading up fuel, walking away for a week, and then coming back and having a couple dozen bitcoins ready to go. It "encourages" people to log in more if they want the full benefit.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 17:53

Lemon: May 22, 2003

Olesh posted:

You get one bitcoin. Your farm can hold a maximum of three. It it fills up, you stop making more bitcoins until you pull out the ones it's already made. This is to prevent you from just starting up your bitcoin farm and loading up fuel, walking away for a week, and then coming back and having a couple dozen bitcoins ready to go. It "encourages" people to log in more if they want the full benefit.

OK, so what happens with the timer that's at 5 hours now? Does it just reset when it gets to zero? What's the point of a timer if I got a bitcoin before the end of it?

Edit: I'm assuming that I get 1 bitcoin in the timer window, but at a random time? So I have to wait for that window to close, even though I've already got the bitcoin and then start a new one? I guess that makes some kind of sense.

Lemon fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jul 7, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 18:02

Sidesaddle Cavalry: Mar 15, 2013; Oh Boy Desert Map

Did Nikita finally get single player progression in this game yet or is it aww forget it I'm not even going to bother

Also what's this I hear about single player mod servers, I just want to dress up gun barbie without having to interact with people who play video games at all

# ? Jul 7, 2020 18:08

ThePineapple: Oct 19, 2009

You get one bitcoin at the end of the timer, just like any other craft. You should not have gotten a bitcoin midway through a timer. Is it possible that the first 20 hour timer completed, giving you one bitcoin, and then you left it for 13 hours more? That could explain how you had one bitcoin and 7 hours left on the timer (to get your second)

# ? Jul 7, 2020 18:09

Lemon: May 22, 2003

ThePineapple posted:

You get one bitcoin at the end of the timer, just like any other craft. You should not have gotten a bitcoin midway through a timer. Is it possible that the first 20 hour timer completed, giving you one bitcoin, and then you left it for 13 hours more? That could explain how you had one bitcoin and 7 hours left on the timer (to get your second)

it's disquieting that I've managed to lose some hours somewhere but I concede that this is probably more likely

# ? Jul 7, 2020 18:13

Galaga Galaxian: Apr 23, 2009; What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!

Nomyth posted:

Also what's this I hear about single player mod servers, I just want to dress up gun barbie without having to interact with people who play video games at all

A third party Tarkov Emulator exists that mimics the serverside stuff and saves progression. It�s bit of a kludge job and you have to have a valid BSG account to download the game to copy over but it does exist.

I�m not gonna link it for obvious reasons but it shouldn�t be too hard to find.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 18:30

beneatsfood: Feb 19, 2008

They need to make this game harder. I started this wipe a little later to avoid frustrations with servers. Single player progression seems fine, I progressed myself two PMC loadouts in reserve. You can win with skill and patience. Please continue to leave your visors up for me.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:11

Sgt. Cosgrove: Mar 16, 2007; How about I bend your body into funny balloon animal shapes?

Buddy just got banned for " deception", I think because we was a good player and giving some of us guns here and there. Basically be careful y'all, Nikita is a ruthless rear end in a top hat.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 03:13

Sidesaddle Cavalry: Mar 15, 2013; Oh Boy Desert Map

Galaga Galaxian posted:

A third party Tarkov Emulator exists that mimics the serverside stuff and saves progression. It�s bit of a kludge job and you have to have a valid BSG account to download the game to copy over but it does exist.

I�m not gonna link it for obvious reasons but it shouldn�t be too hard to find.

Thanks for this. I found enough support that I think I can try as a project later.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 03:26

Umbreon: May 21, 2011

Sgt. Cosgrove posted:

Buddy just got banned for " deception", I think because we was a good player and giving some of us guns here and there. Basically be careful y'all, Nikita is a ruthless rear end in a top hat.

Considering BSG explicitly said you will not get banned for doing something like that, I severely doubt your buddy is telling the whole truth

# ? Jul 8, 2020 04:17

VulgarandStupid: Aug 5, 2003; I AM, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, UNFUCKABLE AND A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT TO EVERYONE. DAE WANNA CUM PLAY WITH ME!?

Your buddy is cheating.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 05:38

RestRoomLiterature-: Jun 3, 2008; staying regular

Your buddy is while I can�t vendor pmc�s equipment anymore. Also you buddy is responsible for hatchet runners and all dsync.

He was prob cheating.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 07:09

Oysters Autobio: Mar 13, 2017

Sgt. Cosgrove posted:

Buddy just got banned for " deception", I think because we was a good player and giving some of us guns here and there. Basically be careful y'all, Nikita is a ruthless rear end in a top hat.

lol dude, yeah your buddy was cheating or RMTing

# ? Jul 8, 2020 12:05

Great Beer: Jul 5, 2004

Turns out battleye is trivially easy to bypass. RIP
https://secret.club/2020/07/06/bottleye.html

# ? Jul 8, 2020 13:58

Famethrowa: Oct 5, 2012

Great Beer posted:

Turns out battleye is trivially easy to bypass. RIP
https://secret.club/2020/07/06/bottleye.html

I don't know about easy. The main issue seems to be VMProtect is no longer protecting the code from being accessed, which required a lot of work to crack from what I can tell.

That genie is out of the bottle now though. If they can access the init and do man in the middle poo poo, Battleye is gonna have to come up with a whole new way to virtualize their code.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 14:48

SSJ_naruto_2003: Oct 12, 2012

They've unbanned people before after mistaken bans but it took six months of reddit uproar so,cheating or not, he'll probably never get unbanned lol

# ? Jul 8, 2020 14:57

Sgt. Cosgrove: Mar 16, 2007; How about I bend your body into funny balloon animal shapes?

I think the issue was he was on and off streaming game from a data center to his home pc, so BSG probably thinks he�s account sharing since it�s 2 separate machines in different states, regardless gonna be hard to appeal.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 15:43

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 19:25

Umbreon: May 21, 2011

Sgt. Cosgrove posted:

I think the issue was he was on and off streaming game from a data center to his home pc, so BSG probably thinks he’s account sharing since it’s 2 separate machines in different states, regardless gonna be hard to appeal.

I routinely play on and off with VPNs, and have friends and my brother who do the same. None of us never been banned.

A significant portion of the player base is using VPNs right now because they are remoting into work and playing tarkov on the side.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 16:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Escape From Tarkov: You Can Close The Thread But You'll Never Escape

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