Hello, thank you for reading through this. This is an important topic for me personally when it comes to tarkov and I think many people don't realize how important such small things are and how much they can help. I don't want to go into detail about why I think it's important for me personally, but let's just say I have a decent backstory in this community.
Always record your gameplay.
This one should be an obvious one, but for many people it isn't. Recording are incredibly important for things like bugs, hackers or even teamkill reports in public and private groups. No matter how well you can describe a bug, a recording is often required for the devs to analyze it and even if it isn't, it will make it 200% easier for anyone to check and figure out what happened. When it comes to hackers, recordings are required. No matter if you report a hacker in the , mention it in a support ticket or contact someone who can pass it on directly, you need videos. The last example I made, teamkill reports in public and private groups, should be self-explanatory, just make sure you record your voice chat software as well so the admins/mods of that group can verify it and take action. Both AMD and Nvidia offer easy-to-use recording methods in their graphics driver softwares, AMD ReLive and Nvidia Shadowplay. If you can't use any of them, you can just use a program like OBS to record your gameplay, but make sure to adjust your settings to find a good balance between performance and quality. 720p@30fps should be good enough and as an example for the x264 encoder (available in OBS as well), you can adjust settings like "Tune" (I recommend setting that to "animation") and "CPU Usage Preset" (closer to "placebo" = better quality, but worse performance) to fine-tune your settings based on your hardware.
Make frequent use of the bug report feature in the launcher.
Developers can only fix the broken stuff and bugs they know about. Therefore please, whenever you notice any bug, report it via the launcher. Make sure to attach all logs, describe the issue as much as possible, add your system details, try to replicate and make a video of it. Really just try to get as much information on your own to make it easier for the devs. It doesn't have to be a game-breaking bug or anything gameplay-related at all. It can just as well be a graphical issue in the menu, a crash when you do something specific or really only just something you are not even sure about whether it's a bug or not. When your game crashes, it asks if you want to send info to the devs and please do that. Also if you are really into that, you can just hunt for bugs and report them, but please only do it online if you absolutely have to. Most bugs can be done offline as well with only minor differences online.
Not every single "instant corner headshot" or "silent death on an open map" comes from a cheater.
Just a small thing to keep in mind. This community is filled with clips of them getting killed by a "cheater" when it's just a nice kill from the other persons perspective. You are on woods or shoreline and suddenly get killed while in the open but didn't hear a shot? Hacker? Maybe. Likely? No. What probably happened? Someone just used a suppressed sniper how they are supposed to be used. Same goes for many of the "how was he/she supposed to know where I am?!" situation in small maps like factory or labs. Hacker? Maybe. What probably happened? They heared you roaming around and killing people in a specific area so they came to check it out. When they were close, they just waited a bit and listened for sounds you made until they roughly knew where you were. A single controlled burst was all they needed to kill you. I don't want to say this game is actually hacker-free, but I think a lot of "hacker" situations can be explained very easily. What else can you do then? If you follow the first advise in this post, it's very easy: Look at the recording. Try to figure out how the other person could have pulled it off. If it's a "how did he not die?" situation, check where your bullets landed. Once you understood the situation, learn from it.
Found something interesting or new? Share it! Help others!
No matter if it's a screenshot or some cool new location or loot spot, share it with others! This community is huge for helping others out, either via the amazing wiki (which you should definitely contribute to!) or other platforms, or via more direct help like sherpas, private groups etc.. The wiki has a ton of information, but not everything is perfect or complete. Share your information on there so others can make use of it. Interested in helping others directly? Check the forum, reddit or discord server, you can be sure you will find someone who needs help with both technical and gameplay related issues. Got a nice skill like video/photo editing, great writing or just explaining stuff? Put it to use! And if you find someone who is wrong, don't be mad or make them quit the community, correct the issues and make sure they will be right next time.
Be a part of the community, be nice to others and make yourself a name.
With that I don't mean you have to be a professional streamer, wiki admin, discord mod or whatever. With that I mean make anyone you help, play with or whatever remember you as a good part of the community. It doesn't have to be much, but just not being an "annoying kid" that complains about every single thing, trolls whenever it can and starts a big bad discussion is more than enough. Of course if you can, focus on a specific thing you like and make yourself a name in that area. I, for example, focus on technical stuff and helped people in the discord a lot. Others, for example, are simply nice people on the forums or are just fun teammates to play with. Especially in times like this, with both stress outside and inside the gaming/tarkov world (virus outside, "gib wipe reeee" inside), it's a bit harder, but not impossible!
Don't trust every single thing someone popular or even slightly related to BSG says, especially about leaks/insider info/wipe dates/whatever.
It might be true that certain well known people in the community are in contact with some devs or higher ups. People like forum or discord mods might also have more contacts or infos than normal players. That, however, does not mean those people are the devs and are in a position where they can give out previously unknown or unclear but trusted information about anything related to the game, updates or wipe dates. Really the only people that can do that are the devs or community representatives/emissaries/managers. So please, don't freak out if certain streamers say "pre-wipe event will probably start within 7 days" or something similar. It might be true and it might make sense based on previous statements from trusted people, but we all know how reliable estimates made by the devs are. 😉
Last but not least: Have fun. Good luck out there.
