Escape From Tarkov might just be one of the most addictive titles that we’ve seen in recent years, offering a tension-filled sortie with every raid attempt where one corner holds immediate death, and another corner holds untold wealth.
Inevitably, you will run across both corners throughout your time in Tarkov, resulting in an anxiety-ridden ping-ponging between extravagant wealth with MREs and bottles of water, and inexplicable lows where you’re hedging on Scav runs managing to find anything of value.
In such an intense atmosphere, the smallest slight from, per se, network hiccups, can infuriate fans that have been playing for years as it skews fairness, and can result in hours of work undone during a climactic moment to clear a mission. Sending the affected players spiraling downwards in wealth, however temporarily.
Recent changes, however, insinuate that Battlestate Games (BSG) is struggling valiantly to handle the increased server load as it becomes more popular, which results in a player base that eventually leaves in frustration. A title with a high skill ceiling where all are fighting for survival is fine, yet when desyncs are found in every match the frustration makes itself known.
Add on to this that Battlestate Games has recently drastically reduced Scav spawns in maps, meaning players are now far more likely to run across a fellow fully-decked out PMC player than a Scav, so the desyncs have been reported far more consistently while the servers are arguably under the lowest load they’ve been in the past year.
Battlestate Games have announced that they’re bringing a 40-player map for Streets where pandemonium should have the rats hiding in corners while bringing in fresh new locales to battle within – this is precisely what is giving users such pause at the moment.
Escape From Tarkov has dropped the number of Scavs in maps, theorized to be an attempt to stifle growing server problems, while promising that the next map released is going to introduce even more people inside a single raid.
Ideally, a raid that includes more than three Scavs, but we’ll cross our fingers on that.
This means that either the incoming Street map will come with a massive rewrite of the core game to ensure that maps that have far smaller populations can offer reliable gameplay without desync issues, BSG will release the upcoming map while dropping the proposed player count considerably, or they’ll try to release it and have 40 players stuttering around the map with general invulnerability thanks to hitboxes not being able to keep up with character models, meaning more deaths while you’re behind cover as well.
BSG has been confronted multiple times regarding the server issues at the moment, but they haven’t responded to requests. In keeping with their apparent tradition of failing to communicate with their fanbase, leaving everyone grasping in the dark, one of the most exciting games in recent memory could collapse before it fully releases.
