Hi,

I've played this game since 2016, taking part in most of the wipes and I don't remember the game being as bad as it is right now…

The game still being in beta

Both hardcore fans & BSG love to try and defend the issues that Tarkov faces by talking about the game being in alpha/beta, the game is 6 years old… It's an utter joke to try and hide behind the game being in beta especially after the game was in alpha for a ridiculously long time.

The developers keep introducing new things, new changes rather than fixing the current issues first. The addition of the gym, the new map, new guns… etc should have been put on the backburner until all of the existing issues were fixed like the terrible audio (even before binaural audio).

Invisible Players

The invisible player bug is a game breaking bug, it should be BSG's topmost priority to get this bug fixed and should have already been resolved. The bug became even worse with the latest patch.

The fact that it got worse and BSG couldn't fix it within a reasonable amount of time then there should have been a rollback of the patch to minimise the disruption of the bug so that it can be worked on in the staging/development servers.

If we look at my experiences over the last 3 days:

• 3 Days Ago: We did 10~ Woods raids and 10~ Shoreline raids, in about 30% of them at least one of us was invisible to eachother. We also had a situation in Woods where my teammate who was invisible to me got in a fight with a player and died so I flanked around to get an angle, no one was there… Next second later, I'm getting hit by multiple bullets all over my body with no gunfire noise. The enemy was invisible to me too.
• 2 Days Ago: We did 11 raids in a row on Shoreline trying to get my teammate a LEDX, out of the 11… a total of 7 of them either I was invisible to my teammate or he was invisible to me.
• Yesterday: As a 4 man we did 5 reserve raids, in 4 of them at least one of us was invisible to at least one person. In one of them we had a round robin of being invisible to the next teammate… We did about 15 Interchange raids and at least 80% of the raids at least 1 person was invisible. On one particular raid one of my teammate was invisible and he got in a fight with a team, he killed them but I heard nothing, I couldn't see any bodies but we pressed on through the raid only to get in 2 more fights and in total we killed 8 other players but every single enemy was invisible to me, there was no body of theirs on the floor. To top it off, the next raid we got in a fight and my teammates killed 2 enemies, they got killed by 1 guy who I then killed… Next second I'm getting shot by an invisible player and I die.
• Today: Second raid… we run into a team of 2 who are BOTH invisible to me, this is after I had already restarted my game / reconnected because a teammate was invisible. I die yet again because I can't see them, yet they can see me.

It's ridiculous that this issue is still ongoing and BSG have been radio silent up until yesterday with a fix that isn't even a full fix "Fixed the majority of the causes for invisible players in raids". Up until yesterday it was radio silence with no updates, no patches, no rollbacks… Nada.

A shitshow of a game with this invisibility bullshit.

Terrible Sound

The audio is still beyond terrible, this game relies very very heavily on having good and accurate audio cues and they just aren't there.

The "binaural audio" feature is still a joke when in buildings & sounds worse than having it disabled. The introduction of this feature clearly wasn't tested at all and it shouldn't have been put into the game until it was at a satisfactory level.

If you have binaural audio turned off you hear people in the basement of of Interchange when you are on the top floor… Hearing footsteps through two very thick concrete floors is terrible for gameplay. It's one of the most key things that needs to work and it doesn't.

The amount of times players are unsure of what direction the gunshot came from or if the walking is on your level or a different level really ruins the game.

Crazy Desync

The desync in this game is out of this world… It's so much worse than any other FPS game. The amount of times you get shot when very clearly behind a wall has 100% increased from previous wipes and even then in previous wipes it was bad

The inertia mixed in with the desync just makes this problem so much worse because you may run and stop behind a wall on your screen but to the enemy they see you temporarily pop out from behind the wall.

Awful server stability

The servers in this game are truly awful.

We've all experienced multiple servers crashing where you are all disconnected from the raid and eventually after 15mins~ of reconnecting over and over end up in the lobby with all of your gear

The vast majority of players have been disconnected from a raid randomly when it's not an issue with our internet, rather the server having a hiccup.

We've all had multiple packet losses appear in the top right of our game even though the actual users internet is fine, sometimes you'll notice this with a small rubberband, sometimes you won't notice it; that doesn't mean it's not affecting you somehow.

Most users who are connecting to servers with a ping of 120+ see packet loss many many times per raid, even though they are comfortably under the ping limit and often get disconnections. If I try and connect to US East servers for example I have a ping between 70ms and 100ms yet some raids I'll get disconnected 8+ times.

Disconnections

The disconnections in this game are still handled ridiculously, so many games do it better.

If you are disconnected when doing a specific action, like running, walking, medding, eating, drinking… your character keeps doing this constantly until you get back into the raid. The server should be able to detect that you've disconnected.

It wouldn't even be hard for the game to ping the server after it gets to the "Disconnected" screen to inform the server that the player has lost connection, triggering the character to stop their current action.

On top of that the reconnect times are a joke, if you're disconnected the game shouldn't be clearing it's the map, loot tables, loaded loot… etc from memory it should hold all of this in memory so that the reconnection is much quicker.

Mid-Wipe Changes

The mid-wipe changes that keep happening are not the way to go, they should be brought in at the start of the wipe so it equally affects everyone.

The changes to quest keys, if we look at Unknown Key, Machinery key for example all of the players who got on early, including the hardcore players & streamers had keys with multiple uses allowing them to go in over and over to get the quest completed so if they got killed the first time they wouldn't have to go and re-acquire the key. This gave an advantage to those players (me included) and some players had to go in over and over and over just to get access to one of the keys because so many players were purposely just dropping the key to annoy other players (Unknown key was one of the more notable keys)

The changes to scopes & ammo if we look at scopes and ammo, those of us that got to unlock the traders before the changes were able to buy a bunch of good ammo & scopes in advance of the changes. This change massively benefitted streamers & the hardcore players

These types of changes should never happen mid-wipe because of how it negatively affects to casual players.

Cheating…

For years, so many people have downplayed the cheating situation in this game when it's always been a shitshow. BSG aren't doing enough to prevent cheating, there are so many things that could be implemented, could be done but BSG doesn't… we all know why but some of you don't want to admit it.

1. Introduce an end of raid (after the raid has fully concluded) way to go and view your death cam & their kill cam, so you can check to see whether the player just got a good shot, a lucky shot or the player was straight up cheating. The excuse of this being unrealistic is just plain stupid. There's a fuck ton of unrealistic bullshit in this game, I don't see you complaining about them… The best thing about having the replays available after the raid has fully concluded is it gives the player some time to cool down from their death and gives them time to think about the death, this mixed in with the ability to see the death & kill cams would improve the accuracy of the "Report Player" feature and actually be useful for finding cheaters. Over time, you could start implementing a reporting reputation system for example if player X has reported 50 players and 48 of them have been cheaters, his report vote would be counted as more than one vote.
2. Introduce a system like "The Cycle: Frontier" where Fence & his scavs retrieves your gear (and all items you had in your character at the time of your death) if you were killed by someone in the past 30 days who is then banned for cheating. The cheaters can see the value of your gear or see specific items that you may have equipped for example an Exfil Helmets, GPNVG, T-7 Thermals, REAP-IR, Hex Grids, Slicks and they will specifically target you. We had a situation the other day on Shoreline where we had a LEDX found in raid and were running it to path to shoreline only for all 3 of us to be killed by someone flying in the sky… It took us another 80+ raids to find a new LEDX for this teammate.
3. Be more proactive looking for RMT traders, there are so many RMTers on the market that are beyond blatantly obvious for example right now as I type this, there is two players in the top 20 barter items (sorted by market rep) with a market rep of 60.36 and 58.66. The first seller is selling 38 power cords for 311,111 each which is over 300k more than they should be. In an hour or so, these will be all sold and if you sit there and refresh now and again you'll see them slowly being purchased. The second seller is selling 30 medical tools for 111,111 each which is about 100k more than they should be. It doesn't take a genius to realise they're RMTing, so monitor them, check their sales and spectate them in-game… it won't take long to see they're cheating.
4. Introduce a flagging system, instead of a banning system where cheaters are flagged and put into pseudo raids with long queue times, longer wait times and fake players (clones of real players), make the AI 500% harder, make it so they have a chance of getting some major packet loss, some disconnections, "server crash", "game crash"… etc. You would make it so all of the items they try and purchase / sell on the market would be tracked so you can find out their alt accounts, their customers… etc
5. Start suspending players who play multiple raids with cheaters, banning them is a little unfair because of the times players have unknowingly played with cheaters and because cheaters would end up purposely partying with people in Discord for example just to get this policy changed.
6. Start looking into suspicious activities, for example start looking into players who are bringing in big backpacks with 2-4 big rigs inside of it (specifically for labs & lighthouse) because this is a very common trend for the cheaters who carry players in those maps.
7. Force 2FA on accounts via SMS 2FA or Token 2FA as this would protect accounts from being hacked and then used for cheating. It also adds a very very minor annoyance to legitimate players but a bigger annoyance to cheaters who have to set up another service in order to cheat. It's all about adding more hurdles for the cheaters that minimally affect legitimate users.
8. Force mobile number verifications onto accounts, this one is another small hurdle that makes it annoying for hackers as now every time they get a new account they have to also get a new email, new burner mobile number and setup 2FA.

For those that are going to try and claim that some people don't have mobile phones, you really underestimate how many people have mobile phones. 98+ of Tarkov players will have a mobile phone because of the demographics of what this game attracts. A loss of 100~ players vs the gains of increased account security & more hurdles for cheaters is 100% worth it.

For those that claim try and claim that they don't want BSG to have their mobile number, ultimately there's not much they can do with your number and if they wanted to be malicious… they could because you've got a program installed on your computer.

The simple solution for anyone with these excuses would be for them to stop playing this game OR for Tarkov to add two types of queues in game, one where verified players can play against other verified players and another where unverified players can play. The flea market would then also have to be separated.

Locking quests & hideout rare to find items…

It's ridiculous to lock the hideout being the Far Forward devices that only appear on Labs especially because Labs is the #1 spot for cheaters to go because the loot on the map is some of the best in the game. The result of this is some quests are then locked behind this item because some people struggle to find a LEDX found in raid and the craft for this item is only available once you've managed to find the far forward devices to unlock the ability to craft it in the intelligence center and the only way to be able to barter for the far forward devices is locked behind Lightkeeper quests… which one of them is locked behind the LEDX

Cheaters love to go to Reserve as there is a lot of tech loot, Lighthouse because there is a lot of tech loot, valuables & raider loot, Shoreline's resort because of the medical loot & graphics cards & Labs because it has a lot of the high tier loot.

At least the likes of Tank batteries are way more common than LEDX's and are way more common in your scav case. It wouldn't be so bad if both LEDX's and Far Forward GPS/Current Converters were BOTH possible in scav cases. I've done about 75~ intel scav cases and not received either of them so there will be people 100% struggling to find them.

TLDR:

Big rant about the major issues this game has, how BSG don't do enough to solve them in adequate time and try and hide behind the game being in a "beta" (after 5+ years of the game being available to the public)

Thanks for reading if you read it all, appreciate it 🙂