Every Tarkov Raid Suffers From This Problem

(Intro)

The worst part of any Tarkov raid is the beginning. Those first thirty-seconds are the tensest, most stressful and have the highest chance of you getting sent back to your stash prematurely. You see the countdown; you don’t know where you are going to spawn, but immediately as soon as your screen fades in from the darkness, you need to quickly assess your circumstance, where you are and figure out where the closest other players will most likely be. It’s tough because while there is a dozen or so spawns across most maps, there are so many variables that determine whether or not someone will be close to your left, your right, in front or behind you. Each map has its own fair share of spawn problems too; some worse than others, but the sheer number of times I have died within thirty-seconds off a Tarkov spawn is crazy. My shortest PvP raid of all time is eight seconds. Granted, that was a long time ago, before Customs expanded to have stronghold and crack house, but that is an impressive number. If you have had shorter raids than that, let me know. Regardless, every single raid in EFT has this problem. “The Mad Dash”, as I am aptly calling it for this video. It doesn’t matter what map you choose, what time of day, the first thirty-seconds are the scariest.

(We have too much information)

After the starting countdown, you spawn into the raid, from there depending on your location, if you have enough experience in the game, you can get a general idea where other players might be. The easiest example to use would be the crossroads spawn on Customs. You know there can’t be anyone behind you, because there is no behind you. The closest person could either be across the street at the trailer park spawn, or ahead of you near the broken bridge. After that, who knows where everyone else spawned. Or more importantly, who cares. By the time you cross the bridge if you are lucky enough to do so, everyone will be deep into the map, away from the outside perimeter. But even just that alone, we have so much information that people have argued for a long time we shouldn’t have. Knowing in general terms, where people might be when it comes to Tarkov gives you a huge leg up in regards of ambushing someone who isn’t so lucky. You can out maneuver them and get to a place where you will drop them before they have a proper chance to launch a counter-attack. There are resources online that will show you all the possible spawn locations across a map. And while each time you load into a map it will always be different, just being able to rule out some possible locations gives you more confidence when entering a certain building or choke point. It’s a challenging thing to try and change; as the game being an instance-based experience, once all the players leave a raid or the timer runs out, that server restarts and goes again. There’s no persistence when it comes to a raid being live longer than the time allotted for it.

(Transit and Open world)

One possible solution to this problem is something a chunk of the player base could only dream of. Which is Tarkov turning into some form of an open-world or at least pseudo-open-world experience. Kind of like how DayZ is. Instead of always being at the start of a fresh and brand-new raid every time you queued up for a match, imagine instead that you get thrown into a server that’s been live for potentially hours on end. The server would have to restart at some point to repopulate AI and loot occasionally, but the biggest advantage to this style of game is that you never know where anyone is. People are constantly entering and extracting from this server; the knowledge check of having any semblance of an idea as to where other PMCs are is now gone, and for the better. It’s one of the many criticisms people have with the way Tarkov handles entering raids. There is a clear distinction between people who know which spawns are the best, where to go from them, and where others might be around them. It's a skill that you will hone them more you play the game, but it takes quite a long time to get to that point. On top of that, you would need to have that knowledge for each of the eleven maps currently in the game. Thousands of hours will get you there, but many people don’t have the time to invest nor the desire to know the spawns of a particular map like the back of their hand. Which is where open world comes into play, or even in EFTs current case, the transit points. My hope when BSG added the transit points was that it might create situations where you are entering raids that are currently active; meaning you don’t have a clue how many players are around, what’s been looted, if the scav boss is around or not. It creates such a more tense dynamic and atmosphere, because you have to gamble every single time you make a movement. And while there is an argument that we currently do that with the system we have, there comes a point where you have better feelings about certain points on maps that are safe. If there is five minutes left in a raid, there is high likelihood that the extraction is safe. But if there is still an hour and twenty minutes before a server restarts once you load onto a new map, who knows what’s been going on. Transit was such an interesting idea with all kinds of potential, but knowing that you ultimately just load into a fresh raid with other players who specifically chose that map, is kind of a considerable let down. It wouldn’t make sense to have a separate server and player pool for people who just want to use the transit points, especially now that the event that introduced this mechanic has been over for a while.

(The spawns need to be redone or reduced)

The number one contributing factor to people dying so early in raids is that there are too many PMCs on any given map. As someone who does enjoy the PvP of Tarkov quite a bit, saying that out loud sounds disingenuous or the opposite of what many players want. But to be real, EFT has never strictly been about the fights you have with the AI and other PMCs. It’s about survival, and the choices you have to make along the way when it comes to whether or not you engage with other entities across the maps. So, reducing the number of players on most maps across the board would only help reduce the pain and strife of dying within the first minute of a fresh raid experience. And I’m not saying halve the number of players, no not at all. Just take two or even one player off of each map; see how they perform after. What the player traffic is like, how people move now that there is a little more room to breathe. Especially on maps like Reserve and Lighthouse, it can be a goddamn nightmare to try and even take a few steps forward without getting your skull caved in by someone who knows the spawns better than you do, and is already perched up on a spot that you can’t see without a scope. For how big these maps can get in terms of traversable terrain, they can sometimes feel so small because of how quickly you bump into other players. Streets is another example where less players wouldn’t be a bad thing. If you get any spawn close to the theatre, there is at least one other person nearby. And if you know this, you can score an easy kill if they aren’t ready; it sucks. So, it’d be very curious what less PMCs would look like on some of the maps in the game. Would it be better, or worse? Who knows.

(Outro)

The Mad Dash is always scary, regardless of how many hours you’ve put into the game. You never know if the person that spawned closest to you is a solo, duo, or more. You don’t know if they have the spawn knowledge either, and what the inevitable fight will be against them. We all have a spawn, on each map that if we get it, we say to ourselves: ‘not this spawn, shit’ and then proceed to play with extreme caution. If there was one element I could fix right now, it would be trying to adjust the spawns in a few different ways to take some of the weight off those first thirty-seconds. Because nothing is worse than getting sent back to your stash after a solid ten minutes of building a kit, and not being able to use it a single time. Don’t you agree? 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 current spawn system in Tarkov, how it could be improved and be sure to subscribe for more videos about trying to fix problems with the game that have only become more problematic as the game has gotten more popular over the years. I hope to see you in future ones.