Breaking Down All the Changes for Tarkov’s Hardcore Wipe

(Intro)

We know Tarkov’s July wipe will be hardcore. And now BSG has given us more information about what to expect with all the changes that are leaning this wipe into more of a hardcore experience. Some of it is very on-brand with what we were predicating it would entail. And some of it, has people very concerned with how this whole thing will play out. Over the course of the last week, BSG has put out three different pictures explaining the incoming changes to better prepare players for what they will need to adjust to when the time to wipe finally hits. Today, we will be going over each picture and each change within them to figure out what the general gameplan should be for jumping into the final wipe before 1.0. And of course, just giving general thoughts and impressions about these ideas as they are written. We don’t know how any of this is going to play out in actuality, but one thing is for sure: this will be without a doubt Tarkov’s most interesting, most unique, and most controversial wipe, in the game’s history.

(Looking at page one)

The first screenshot has five changes with what I’m assuming is the most impactful at the top. And, to no one’s surprise, the removal of the flea for the entire wipe is confirmed. Again; no one should be taken aback by this. We’ve had smaller events throughout the years where the flea is either heavily restricted or removed entirely. And with all the changes to how it operates under normal EFT, it makes sense for BSG to want to see how players engage with the game without any easy access to buying things from other players. Not much else to say about the flea but adding more items to modules and upgrades in the hideout while also removing the found in raid requirement is interesting. The biggest thing we need to know is adding more by how much. If we now need something like twenty plus lightbulbs, that is going to really suck. But if it’s a handful more, sure it will slow people down, but this wipe already kind of cemented that with the FIR requirement for the hideout. But I’m glad they are meeting us halfway on this one. I’ve always said from the start, you can slow people down in the hideout one of two ways: found in raid or increasing the number of items needed. But you can’t do both, glad they also thought about it this way too.

Reducing the amount of ammo crafts in the hideout is also going to have a smaller impact across the board. Because most of the ammos people want to make were already locked behind deep endgame quests. So, if you wanted something like 55A1, you needed to complete your car needs a service. So, while certainly impactful for those who lived in the hideout, for many others you might not even notice a difference in what you can make. It all depends on how adamant you were about completing everything in the hideout. The final change for the first screenshot is reducing the spawn chance of rare loot. Now, this alone was a little confusing to read, so much so that a developer had to clarify after the post was made being more specific about what that means. It’s specifically targeting good ammos you can find out in the world, attachments and the like. It appears treasure loot and high tier items like LEDXs will remain the same, which is good. But overall, this first page is both fair and expected regarding what a hardcore wipe would look like. The second page though... oh boy.

(Page two)

Another round of five changes and the most contentious one by far, is the restricted location accessibility. Meaning, depending on what map you load into, if you want to get to other maps, you will need to use the transit points found across most maps to access them. Now, I’m seeing a ton of opinions being thrown out left and right online. Anywhere from people finding the idea interesting to downright calling it stupid. And honestly, I almost wanted to make an entire video about this one change, but I think I can get my thoughts out here. I am genuinely interested to see what this looks like. What maps are available at the start and which ones we will need to transit to. Because it says most locations, not all. So, it really boils down to which ones we have access to all the time. Another major concern or complaint is how the technical side of this change might cause people to either crash whilst loading into their second of third map, or how the memory leak issues Tarkov still has will cause their framerates to tank overtime. And those are one hundred percent valid concerns. I even have some reservations about how the performance of this game will be if we constantly need to go from map to map. If people can’t play the game because they are crashing all over the place and the game generally feels worse with each transit, then yes, it would make sense for them to either lift the restricted maps somewhat or to remove this one feature from hardcore entirely.

But I want to see how it plays out first. And for others who are complaining about load times in between each map? My guy, what game have you been playing for the last five plus years? Tarkov is a queuing simulator; that’s all we’ve been doing. So, what is the difference between what we have now, which is queue for five minutes into a map, play for fifteen minutes, extracting, and then requeuing again, versus queuing for five minutes, playing for fifteen, and then using a transit to another map which you then queue for another five minutes? Are people worried about how long it will take between each transit? If so, yeah that’s a valid concern, and we won’t know how good or bad it is until we play it. Are people worried about the influx of players on wipe day making queuing impossible? For some reason and I could be totally wrong here, I have a feeling this wipe won’t have that problem. The hardcore nature is going to put off a lot of people from even trying, and many others are simply waiting for the 1.0 release later this year. I could be so wrong in this regard, but something tells me this wipe will have the lowest player count Tarkov has seen in years. Lots of people watching instead of playing because they can’t invest that much time and effort into a hardcore scenario, where the game might’ve already been hard enough. Either way, tangent aside, this change has people talking and ultimately all I can say is, let’s wait and see what happens. If it sucks, then we let BSG know and hopefully they are paying enough attention to remove this one hardcore restriction.

Moving on, our secure container is now unable to hold ammo, certain medicines and money. The only part of this that is rough is the money; because since we need to use transit points, if you want to offload certain items you find along your travels, that costs money. I feel like it would make more sense to put a harsh cap on how much we can carry, but if they want our money out in the open than okay. Better start hitting the registers across the maps. And the last changes on page two are trader related; less items across the board on all traders, and the buy/sell prices are going to be proportionally higher and lower. Again, something we probably all came to expect. This is really where the hardcore changes are going to be felt; a much more restricted selection of items that cost more and selling stuff for less means money is going to be tight for the first time in like maybe five years.

(Page three)

And the final page of five changes, bosses now have a one hundred percent spawn chance on all maps. This is something a lot of people are actually going to like because now they can get better gear if they are lucky enough to take out either Reshala, Glukhar, or Sanitar. Their gear in in the early game is extremely useful, with good armors, ammos and weapons. So, making an effort to take out these bosses a couple of times early on is going to be a priority. Reduced experience for taking out enemies and dying. The first half I understand, but the latter half confuses me somewhat. Reduced experience for dying; does this mean a penalty if we die? Are we going to lose experience? We’ll have to wait and see. Increased experience for survival. A simple but effective change; put more emphasis on surviving your raids instead of taking out the entire lobby. That’s what this game is all about, I like this change a lot. And finally, increased AI difficulty. What this means exactly again, we don’t know. Hopefully it means the AI have better gear and are tougher to kill and not that they will just three-sixty aim bot us from hundreds of meters away. But I expect we will be dying to scavs a lot more this wipe. And those are all the major changes coming with this hardcore wipe. They also mentioned that these changes will be coming in waves as the wipe progresses; meaning the deeper we get into it, BSG has some plans for how they want some aspects of the gameplay to change. Like opening more locations up across the map that we can just queue into. This is good; it means the fears of the insanely long queue times for transit points will only matter for maybe a couple of weeks as they open the locations up.

(My thoughts)

My general thoughts about the hardcore wipe are that I am extremely interested to see what happens. Tarkov hasn’t had a shakeup to the core gameplay loop on this scale in years. It’s about time how players engage with EFT be turned on its head. We’ve all gotten a little too complacent with the more deathmatch like style that EFT has turned into over the years, and this hardcore experience will be taking the game much closer to its roots. How the game was like before the addition of the flea market, and before the game really exploded in popularity and became the juggernaut in the industry, we know it to be. I’m actually surprised that some mechanics were either not mentioned or changed at all. Scaving is something I was almost certain would be changed either by making the cooldown longer, or by making you queue into a random map each time you scav. But there is no mention of that anywhere which is interesting. I’m also surprised that insurance wasn’t touched. Maybe they thought because people are going to be dying a lot more this wipe, messing with insurance would be too much. Again, they could add more, they could make changes; BSG is going to be very active in watching what happens and adjusting things if any of these changes get out of control. Which is reassuring to hear. And the fact they have plans to adjust stuff as time goes on is nice to hear as well.

(Outro)

Tarkov’s hardcore wipe is certainly going to be one for the books. Three pages of fifteen massive mechanical adjustments that we will all have to learn and figure out when we hope into the wipe for the first time. This is exciting; like I said earlier, the game has needed a massive shakeup to the formula, and BSG is delivering on all fronts. Obviously, this is going to put some people off, but I would suggest to everyone to at least give it a try and see if you might like it. The more hardcore nature means stuff matters more. Your life as a PMC matters so much more. Survival matters more. So, hopefully a shift in mindset and gameplay will yield more successful raids and you can still enjoy Tarkov even though it just got a lot harder and ball busting than ever before. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to watch this video. Let me know down in the comment section below your thoughts on the hardcore wipe changes, what are you excited for, what worries you, if you will even play, and be sure to subscribe for more videos about the experience playing this hardcore wipe when it releases and whether or not it was even a good idea in the first place. I hope to see you in future ones.