Escape from Tarkov - Online first person action RPG

Have you tried it recently? I’ve got a pretty old system and it seems to work decent now, at least on some maps (interchange, customs, factory)

been a month or so, I can try again

Patch 0.9 dropped a couple of days ago and it’s been absolutely fantastic. The game runs 60fps on my old machine on every map other than shoreline. Once you get passed the initial learning curve, the game really opens up and is just so fun. It’s great because even if you don’t get pvp kills, you can still come out of it with lots of rewards and fun times. It feels like a survival horror mmo rpg shooter, to me. It’s incredibly tense to extract out of a map with a ton of loot (which has lots of purpose beyond use in that one raid) and kills. There is a large skill system that you level up over time. The attention to detail is pretty staggering; bullets ricochet, com sets muffle sounds, bullets can fragment in people.

I think Tarkov is shaping up to be the best “permadeath” fps around. It’s good fun.

So, if you pre-order this from their site, you get access to the beta? Or not? It’s kind of unclear.

So, you lose all your items when you die. But what about XP and skills? Do you lose them too?

It’s beta, they do periodic wipes.

No. You just lose you inventory when you die. You can choose to insure some of your inventory to get a chance to recover it.

Well, you only lose what you had on you at the time. So it’s similar to PUBG in that respect, everything you pick up is lost on death. The big difference is that whatever you take out, you get to keep and bring into other raids, including weapons ammo armor backpacks etc.

XP is gained by looting items, killing, headshots etc. You don’t lose that if you die. You do get a big bonus if you extract, though. Level is important because you need to be a higher level to unlock higher loyalty levels for traders, which lets you build more advanced and expensive guns. There is also an array of skills that are persistent.

A large part of the game is doing quests for the traders, which range in difficulty. Some of them are things like kill x scavs (AI scavengers wandering around, that players can also spawn in as to do budget raids), which is actually much more engaging than it sounds since by killing scavs, you are making a ton of noise for other players to hear, not to mention the scavs can easily kill you if you aren’t careful. Others are more inventive, like picking up documents and surviving on one map and dropping it off on another, or to mod a gun to specific parameters etc. You don’t have to survive for these to be counted as complete, also, which is great. Even if you don’t kill any players, the game is still super tense and fun and thrilling, something that is quite hard to achieve in other competitive shooters.

also, the modding system is fairly indepth for guns. It is a bit overwhelming at first, as it seems as though every gun part is simulated somehow. But it really only took me 10 hours or so to become pretty closely familiar with the whole system. Also, it’s neat because you can trick out guns to your hearts content, and the more you customize the gun, the more you are risking when you go into a raid.

They are running a beta, by which they mean the current game doesn’t really represent the final product. They actually have quite ambitious goals for the game, and I guess they are just refining the engine and the game systems right now. I won’t lie, there have been bugs and issues with the game in the past but the devs fix them fast and it’s clear they care about the game.

If you pre order, you get instant access to the beta. You’re basically buying the game. They have a bunch of different pre order levels, the highest of which gives you more stash space and a bigger container, something you can use to bring things into the level without losing them when you die.

You can pay a small price to insure things, which means that if no one picks it up off the raid, you get it back. It happens pretty often, tbh. Looting people is not always possible, and it also can take a while compared to pubg or similar games.

Ok, I picked this up, after looking at stuff and reading some things. I’m a sucker for this concept, and the Russians, well, they do seem to do this type of game well (brutally, but well).

I wonder if anyone has any answers to a few questions. One, I had to poke around a lot to just find a list of controls. Not sure how up to date it is, but it’s something. I still have not found any way to change settings (video, audio, etc.). Is there a settings screen or option somewhere? If so, where?

After watching a few beginner’s videos, I have a fuzzy-ish idea of what to do to start. For me, I think offline exploring and Scav playing a bit to familiarize with the maps, plus getting the maps online and studying them. The game is a bit different that I sort of anticipated; I was thinking more open-world ish, but it seems fairly episodic, and some of the videos focus intensely on memorizing routes, spawns, and common pathways in a very Counter-Strike-ish sort of way. But the overall vibe is pretty appealing.

EDIT: Found the settings icon, doh. Of course, the game is now crashing with irql_not_equal_to errors, so I’m updating the NVIDIA drivers to see if that helps.

Would be cool if someone made a game like this, but set in feudal Japan.

Well, plenty of games out there with good melee/bow combat, so it’s doable. I’m not sure this particular format would work, unless everyone is a freakin’ ronin, but the idea of an open-world combat/RPG set in the classic samurai era…yeah, that sounds cool.

Basically, you spawn into the map in a couple of random spawn locations, and you generally have to make your way to the opposite side of the map for the default extract. There are also various other special extracts with unique properties, like needing 3000 rubles or a certain key etc. The maps usually take around 45- 1 hour to end, you can run to the exit or stick around and loot the whole map. Other players will spawn near you and on the opposite side of the map coming towards your side to extract. Scavs will litter various areas and respawn a couple times over the course of the raid time. I usually focus on doing quests and then play the game nautrally.

Some maps are WAY more open than others. For example, I assume you’ve been playing customs, because that map is indeed quite linear (at least until you find the factory key!!). It’s basically the black hole from whence loot does not return. I would suggest trying your hand at Interchange or Shoreline if you want to feel more open world gameplay. They are WAY WAY WAY larger and more open. Woods, factory and customs are pretty small and more geared for PvP. The devs are actually quite ambitious with the project, and apparently the end goal is to have some kind of large storyline where you unlock up to 10 maps and then end up getting into one large, combined map with everything in one. It’s ambitious but, I like the game so far so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

However, you are right about the maps. I’d suggest downloading a map on your phone and learning how to get around. It’s incredibly important because once you know the map, you won’t be as surprised when you run into someone in your same locked off section of customs and you will know the frequently traveled paths.

It ends up being basically an hour long raid in which you can run around, loot a lot of stuff, and maybe run into enemies trying to do the same. Also, you can send me a friend request if you’d like to play together, the game is a lot easier with people who can watch your back. discord name is Kyle#8194. I also don’t care nearly as much about takign guns and armor into raids if I have someone else there, so it’s partially selfish haha

Here’s some good maps for the various ones, the interchange one is SUPER useful as thats where i go to get free guns and lots of money.

It’s not quite the same since you don’t enter PUBG with anything to lose either. In PUBG, you expect to “lose” every round, but (I guess) here you expect to “win” (leave the raid with your items). This means losing here is way more rage inducing than losing in any battle royale game, and thus I don’t expect this genre ever to escape being niche (and the lack of public interest in Hunt: Showdown on Steam and Vigor on Xbox One seems to prove me right so far).

Is Fallout 76 a competitive quester too? Maybe that will bring the genre to the masses then, but we’ll see.

Thanks for the info! Very helpful. I’m TANSTAAFL #2200 on Discord, I sent you a friend invite. In Tarkov I’m Lord_of_Poodles (character name King_Poodle).

I’ve always played games like Diablo and Path of Exile hardcore, to have some incentive to be cautious, and I used to like the more hardcore one-shot-one-kill, no respawn military shooters, so Tarkov is pretty much up that alley. It helps that I’m nowhere near as concerned about losing pixel guns and pixel loot any more. I find Tarkov extremely tense, so that I can’t play for long sessions, but I appreciate the rush. But yes, it’ll be a niche game for good reason.

Yeah, looking at those Hunt stats, it seems like the people who like it REALLY like it.

I’m playing Tarkov from time to time, i havent played since the last wipe. I like the game a lot, the gunplay feels really nice and the weapon modding is interesting.

The problem i have with the game, is that i dont want to take my shiny guns into the raid because im afraid of losing them so i end up raiding with shit guns (but that also makes it really satisfying when you leave with better stuff)

yeah, you are right. you can bring things in with you from other raids. It can be frustrating to lose stuff, but it’s something you get over after playing for a while. you just have to realize that you WILL lose every. single. piece. of. gear. It’s not that difficult to make a lot of money back, so i focus on doing quests.