Realism ≠ Difficult

Hi everyone, I wanted to make an in-depth post/discussion about a common stigma floating throughout the tarkov community, and it's quite frustrating. Now of course not everyone thinks what I'm about to discuss, in fact there might be quite a lot of people that agree with me and think the same, but I've seen it so much throughout multiple platforms that it's really hard to not mention.

"Realistic", does not mean hard.

Now that seems like a given for most people right? You would be surprised how many people think otherwise. While there's definitely a high skill cap in tarkov definitely caused by the realistic aspects, not all of the realistic aspects necessarily mean difficult. Here's some major examples I've noticed throughout a shit ton of reddit posts, discord servers, and of course: twitch chat.

• ITEMS

I was in a twitch chat, and I suggested the idea for fun saying "man it would be cool if we could like customize our uniforms with our teammates so we're more recognizable to each other, and it adds like more variety to visual customization" (which actually recently BSG showcased something similar to that in their recent stream) and then two people replied: one saying "nah that sounds too easy" and the other said "don't try to make the game unrealistic or easier because that's not what i paid for". And it genuinely fucking boggled my mind how someone could think custom camo uniforms is "unrealistic".

Another really popular example of this incorrect mentality is the compass. The amount of posts dug really deep riddled with hundreds of dislikes (which is a good thing) complaining about the compass and saying how it's "unrealistic" or "too easy" on this subreddit is ridiculous. It's literally a fucking magnet that tells you cardinal directions. As well as knowing BSG, they would DEFINITELY NOT make it a HUD, but simply a holdable item in raid.

Now the most common one of course, which is actually quite valid in some aspects, but not enough for the repercussions people are suggesting for the item, are thermals.

Yea I know I know, thermals are pretty fucking annoying, especially in their current state. But thermals are a realistic thing in the game, due to it being a scope used quite often in military IRL. In their current state though, they are DEFINITELY not realistic whatsoever. There's actually quite a lot of really well-done in depth posts on this subreddit explaining the way thermals work in tarkov compared to IRL thermal scopes. They simply do not function the way thermals actually do IRL in real firefights or technologically. The idea of having thermals in the game is realistic, but the way they work isn't. What I mean by the repercussions being way too much, is the common idea people are recommending is to just remove them from the game entirely. If it's a temporary removal to fix the thermals, I completely agree. That'd be actually really healthy from the game, and it would let BSG really really fix the way thermal sights and scopes work in this game, and would actually be way more balanced; whether it's by price, the way it looks or the way it handles, doesn't really matter. Thermals aren't OP just because they're realistic, they're OP because they're designed super incorrectly in the game at the moment. As long as it's fixed properly. Now this ties into something else which I would like to mention.

• HYPOCRISY

It's pretty irking that the majority of the people complaining about adding items that are realistic but "too easy", are the same people who complain about them adding other stuff that are realistic, but are "annoying" or "pointlessly difficult". I remember when they added off-raid healing, and as well as animations FOR healing mid-raid, a shit ton of people went fucking bonkers and said that "the game's gonna die", "it's too annoying" blah blah blah "this makes the game tedious".

Now look, I don't wanna sound like a 15 year old armchair commando preaching about how the game should be 100% realistic according 100% to every single IRL statistic about absolutely everything. I'm not necessarily trying to refer to the actual values of IRL things – but simply if they just exist or not. For example, I don't care if they add grenade launchers or anything, I really don't. As long as it's balanced as a VIDEO GAME. I also don't give a shit on HOW they implement the compass; again, just as long as it's balanced. I'm hoping for the game to stay realistic yes, because that's what makes the game's niche really fun, but I don't want the game to be too overboard with it, because it stops being a fun game, and starts being inconsistent. As long as BSG can successfully balance of a bunch of real life qualities and keep them similar to real life, while keeping it still a video game that's balanced, the game will be fucking amazing.

I just believe the standards of what is "realistic" for this really special video game, is completely mishmashed throughout the community, and it feels like everyone wants something different. Whether it's completely super super realistic and to real life, or generally realistic while still keeping it balanced for a video game. I just really wanted to point out the people associating realism with the game being hard, because that mindset is just really wrong and is pretty unhealthy for the game, and doesn't let the game grow into something so much better.

I really wanna hear your guys' thoughts on the topic too, because I know there has to be more to this that explains it way better than I can. I don't wanna TL;DR this since I'm worried about misinterpretation, so I'd really appreciate that you guys read the whole thing. and If you're reading this right now, you probably did, so thank you!