4Game

I started playing Tarkov pretty recently (~3 weeks) and although the first couple of raids were a real slog, I've been having lots of fun the rest of the time. I was doing mostly scav runs, with PMC runs mostly for tasks; the game struck a good balance between being punishing and rewarding. As of about a half a week ago I started doing a lot more PMC runs, again mostly focusing on tasks (often doing 2-3 per raid). In that time, I've steadily been liking Tarkov less and less – and the new 'scav curse' fix was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back.

I do a lot of minimally geared runs for tasks, mainly because I'm trying to level up and get trade rep as quickly as possible. I rarely go all the way to being a hatchling, but for some tasks it really doesn't feel worth it to throw money away. If I run a 100-200k loadout, I'll do fine vs scavs but still get popped by geared players 9/10 times. Therefore, when doing tasks that involve fetching or delivering items, I usually just bring a pistol or nothing. Of course, with the recent scav change, even pistol runs are no longer possible. Every time I get bumrushed often within 10~ seconds of spawning and immediately killed by multiple scavs. The first big problem with this change that I don't see mentioned often is that it isn't communicated at all in-game. I didn't realize it was happening until I checked twitter – how is it supposed to deter hatchlings if they don't even know why its happening? As a new player I thought it was bad luck the first couple of times.

Dying and losing gear is an important part of Tarkov and obviously the stakes are what make the game fun. However, I firmly believe that the reason people do hatchling runs is not strictly out of fear of losing their gear, but rather because they don't believe that investing more gear is worth it. At the very least, I don't.

Tarkov is chock fucking full of tasks that are basically "sit in the open of a high-traffic area for a full 30 seconds" where no amount of gear is gonna eliminate the (substantial) risk of getting dropped out of nowhere. The watch in the truck, the panels on factory, Skier's Extortionist, etc are all either in the open, or in buildings that are in the open. Even if you survive initial shots, you become pinned down in an absolutely awful position. Think from the perspective of someone who has a <1mil ruble bank. If you expect your survival rate to plummet, why would you waste your money?

"Fixing" the hatchling "problem" with punitive measures would amount to forcing new players to bring an amount of gear that they can't afford to lose, and then lose it trying to complete a task that takes maybe 3-6 tries on average. Rather than punish players who are already short on options, the best way to reduce the number of hatchlings would be to implement changes that make risk in Tarkov more manageable. If bringing a medium amount of gear would dramatically increase your survival rate, then people would have no reason to do hatch runs.

All this, of course, is if you even believe hatchlings are a problem at all, but that discussion's been had plenty.