Across a wide array of streamers and YouTube creators, there seems to be an overwhelming consensus that Tarkov's treatment of recoil is stupid. Nobody thinks that smgs, pistols, or 556 weapons (the high rof ones) are in a good place. Indeed it is an absurdity that an rd704 is more controllable than an mpx – absurd. Does anybody disagree with this?
The problem as I see it is that bsg – as Veritas notes almost every pogcast – are reactive in their game design. They respond to community complaints like they're playing whackamole, without a vision of the full set of issues. This gun's op?; increase the recoil of its entire class of caliber.
This focus on recoil as the sole means of making combat harder is the central problem with the gunplay and why it is so gear focused. Jesse Kazzam is often talking about how so many high level kills at range are just one taps through scopes; and at shorter range, how hip fire swinging dominates over prepared ads-ing. And Landmark, a very different kind of player, has recently remarked that he thinks aiming is too easy, that the weapons do not sway enough.
All of this seems to point to an enormous gap in how bsg balances gunplay. They use recoil as the sole lever to pull to balance the entire Tarkov arsenal.
So I propose that aiming in Tarkov, be it at range or in high ready, is too damn easy. Since aiming any weapon in Tarkov is pretty much exactly the same in terms of difficulty, the only change left for balance is making ridiculous (and "unrealistic") nerfs and buffs that end up pleasing no one and privileging just a few different gun builds – builds that are best built with level 4 traders.
Aiming a 1911, a Mosin, and a m4 should not all feel exactly the same. It is here that different weapons can and should be given their own personalities and niches, so that recoil can be brought back into some proximity with reality. Some weapons should be slow and clunky to aim while others should be nimble and fast to operate.
Personally, I think there are two main remedies and one secondary one. I think an aiming dead zone should be a thing, based on the weight and ergo of a weapon. Klean has spoken repeatedly and at length about this, and mentioned some games that do it well and others that don't. Suffice to say that it can be done well.
The second is ads-ing. Landmark's comments about the unrealism of the tiny sway when looking through a scope has been supported by many shooters and should be acknowledged by bsg. Maybe holding breath should not be a thing at the very least. And this should also be more dependent on ergo and weight, rather than literally the same for every weapon.
Finally, as Jesse explained in an entire video, the excess of optics in Tarkov simply exacerbates the focus on a handful of builds with excellent ammo to maintain the tap meta, and generally seems consistent with problems with the flea market which makes top gear unobtainable for some and ubiquitous for the rest. But that is another conversation; in this respect, the ease of aiming and the broken recoil balance just make insta-adjusting LPVO's the icing on the meta cake.
To conclude, gunfights in Tarkov feel quite far from the bsg trailers and I feel this is the reason. As long as weapon balance revolves SOLELY around recoil, I think it will never be fixed
Thanks for reading.
