We need to talk about scavs

Today’s your day. You’re having an amazing raid, Customs has been unusually kind with offering up 8 different PMCs for stacked with gear and you outplayed them all. You have a raid backpack utterly filled to the brim. You’ve popped your M.U.L.E. Stimulant and you’re hauling it to ZB-013 like no tomorrow. Suddenly, you hear a Scav on the other side of breach wall. No big deal, how bad could it be. You jiggle peak the opening, no Scav, wide swing and spot him 40 meters away. But in the instant you see him he fires and one taps your ass. Your full slick plate and Air Frame you looted? What armor? Some scav with pellets just domes your ass less than a quarter of second from seeing you. You think to yourself “This has to be a player scav with hacks! I’m going to report him!” You wait for the death screen to load, to see that normal ass scav name there with no report button. You’ve just been Tarkov’d. What could you have done differently? Naded for a scav in the direction? Probably not worth it, most of the times scavs won’t kill you instantly. But it still happens, and you feel cheated every single time. You should feel cheated, you got aimbotted and wall hacked on quite literally. The only difference is it was an actual ai with programming to do just that created by the Devs, and its unacceptable every single time.

Scavs are broken nonsense. They ignore cover, they can see through walls (and sometimes shoot at you through them I found this out on Customs just today), see perfectly in the dark, and have a percent chance of one tapping you the instant your available. How many times have you seen a reddit post with a video of someone getting one tapped by a scav the instant they peeked at them, and then the comment section is filled with similar commentary. Are we really okay with this? You’re honestly going to tell me you like getting aim botted and wall hacked on by the ai so that you had zero chance of ever coming out on top? That you’re only option against Scavs should be to pray that they don’t god mode you whenever you have to fight them? That the only thing of value you can learn and improve on is get lucky? Really?

Funnily enough, this game is actually better when Raiders replace every single Scav. I know people in the community are terrified of raiders, for some reason, but they are incredibly fair. They have an incredibly reliable and consistent pattern. Their aiming is incredibly consistent as well. A raider never shoots you in the instant frame it sees you, there’s always this (approx) 1.5 second delay before he proceeds to black every limb not covered in armor in a matter of seconds. It's that “you better hope he’s dead or you're in cover because you’ll either be dead or messed up.” That’s fair because you know what’ll happen because it happens every single time. You can approximate, there’s a pattern you can learn from and adapt to.

The problem with Scavs is they go from garbage missing every single shot at point blank range to better than Killa in every conceivable way. I don’t have an issue with seeing a scav and they start firing and the second or third shot (which by that time I’ve had plenty enough time to react) I get Head, Eyes’d because I knew standing out in the open to line up a shot with my mosin was a brain damaged thing to do (BUT I NEED TO GET MY TASKS DONE, DAMNIT!). No, I’m talking about when (two weeks ago) I unloaded 30 rounds of m80 into the chest of a REGULAR scav on Interchange at near point blank range (it's the only reason I know I hit every single time because I was watching the impacts and on his chest) and the scav tanked every shot then proceeded to flip me off, just stood there and gave me the bird. In hindsight, it's hilarious, but also complete bullshit. This other time I was on Reserve in the exterior 2nd floor cubby and heard a scav inside train, so I quickly peeked the window and the scav 180’d and one tapped me before I could even move my mouse. This was after I killed Gluhar and all his buddies inside train station. I have dozens of these stories. I’m terrified of Scavs, not raiders. What could I have done differently in those situations? Literally, every other aspect of the game teaches me not to expect that because that’s nonsense, and cheap nonsense at that.

And before you get your knickers in a twist and start sputtering “but realism” or “immersion” or “that’s just the difficulty” or some other inane, inconsequential, moronic drool driveling spatter of words without any thought put behind them I already have my reply ready for you: if you enjoy it so much, how about we make it so every single Scav in the game can one tap you the instant they see you. “But-but-but its the diversity in the game that makes it interesting, you know random!” Okay, you’re right. Tell you what, we’ll introduce a coin flip mechanic into the game every time you load into a raid. Heads, you die instantly, tails you get to go on. But don’t worry, we’ll weight it so that tails happens 85% of the time, and we’ll make it so it can happen at any time in the raid so that you’ll feel the ever constant pressure of death. You know, because at any moment, without warning, you’ll just explode. Doesn’t that sound fun? Doesn’t that sound immersive?