Explaining Why Tarkov Might Not Feel Fresh Anymore

(Intro)

Raise your hand in you think that Tarkov doesn’t feel fresh anymore. And when I say that I mainly refer to not having the feeling of excitement for opening the game up and playing it. It has become such a part of your gaming cycle that you just kind of open it and go about whatever you primarily find yourself doing inside the game. Or you find yourself staring at that play button in the client, before simply closing the whole thing and looking for something else to play. Now there’s a lot of reasons for why you might feel this way. The most obvious is that for many of us, we’ve just been playing for so long. Even if we take breaks or skip entire wipe cycles, when we do inevitably return to the game, not much has changed. We might’ve missed an event or two, some new quests, but nothing that was so impactful across the entire ecosystem that we feel bad for missing it, or that EFT feels like a new game somewhat. In the last couple of years, that feeling of stagnation has only magnified as the launch of the game gets closer. It feels as though the game has somewhat felt neglected in favor of getting 1.0 ready, which I somewhat understand. But it still sucks that even things like the hardcore wipe sanctioned by BSG didn’t land the way we all hoped it would. Other than time played, there are other reasons why the game doesn’t feel fresh or even exciting in the slightest. For those that are new or still get enjoyment out of the game, I’m glad you are still having fun, and I hope that doesn’t end for you anytime soon. But for everyone else, let’s have a conversation about why Tarkov just doesn’t hit the way it used to anymore.

(9 years later)

Again, the most obvious reason is simply time. This game has been around players for almost nine full years, which is so long in the grand scheme of games being developed actively. I mean, just off the top of my head quickly, the only other games that have lasted that long finished or not, are games like League of Legends, and Star Citizen. I’m sure there are tons of games that I’m not thinking of as I write this. But that begs a good question: should games have a certain length of time they can be around in the spotlight, or should they just keep going until they fade into nothing? On one hand, having a game just keep getting updated and worked on for years and years is great for those who play and enjoy it. But eventually you have to ask yourself, how much longer can this go on for? When should the day come where a game in active development finally just releases, or when a game that’s been out for a long time should have its post-launch development sunset but the game still playable for everyone who enjoys it? It’s a tough tightrope to traverse because even with an infinite budget, time and manpower, at some point or another, the people interested in your game with either get tired of it not being finished, or simply just walk away once they’re bored. In the particular case of Tarkov, we are finally about to hit the 1.0 launch. But for many, there is just nothing but this looming disaster about to unfold. And to be honest, with the track record BSG has, that’s a fair assessment to make. I can’t remember the last time they released an update, patch, hotfix, anything, and it simply just working as intended. No weird major bugs, glitches, or misunderstandings. They just roll something out, it works, and the community knew exactly what to expect and were happy with the update. That trust has been slowly eroded over the years and now players are skeptical if they can even execute this 1.0 release with any sense of completion. Again, it’s justified because BSG hasn’t done a good job especially recently with tempering expectations and keeping the community happy even if there are disagreements with where the game’s direction is currently going. Time has taken its toll on this game, and whether or not finally releasing it to 1.0 will satiate those who just want what's best for the game, is another thing entirely.

(Player optimization)

On top of the game being around in development for so long, the player base has completely figured out the game. As you’d expect with any game that isn’t seeing its meta shifting constantly. The quests, the routing, the optimization; there isn’t anything new to learn or figure out for a large majority of players. And because the game has been around for so long, this problem has only been magnified as the audience for Tarkov has gotten larger. Early on, it felt like a wild west kind of game where people were just playing and figuring out as they went along. It was fun that way; you don’t know anything, and there wasn’t a ton of content out there telling you what weapons to run, what armor is the most efficient and everything else in less than sixty seconds. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but the mystique, the magic of what makes Tarkov so interesting and addicting at the start, is the learning process. While you can watch every video out there about how to play and play effectively, you won’t start to fully understand until you put the reps in and actually play, much like any other game out there. But there is something to be said about a player base essentially 100% a game to the point where there is something to watch for every conceivable circumstance thrown at you. Hell, even new quests that get added into the game in 2025, within twenty-four hours, will be solved on the fan wiki. Again, there’s nothing wrong with people sharing information online, but it’s like damn, people really just solved it that fast, huh? What doesn’t help this problem is the weird ambiguity when it comes to quests and their descriptions. If you want us to solve it without outside resources, you can make it weird, but we need direct hints as to when and where things are located or where we need to collect and drop off items. It’s kind of a shame when things don’t get time to stew and the community gets to chew on something for a while; coming up with all sorts of conclusions that may or may not be right. But that’s not even the community's fault; it’s just the state of the internet.

(Technical problems)

With time comes problems, and Tarkov has a lot of problems. Specifically technical ones. Even if we take the cheating out of the equation, because we’ve talked to death about how bad it is, this game is a technical nightmare made up of at least a decade's worth of tech-debt that has not been paid. The fact that this game runs of Unity of all engines blows my mind, but the problems in 2025 have come to a head. At this point, all people want are as few backend errors as possible, smooth frame rates, and decent pings. And every new major update, it feels like a dice roll as to whether or not it will simply feel good to play. And when you’re new, it can be forgiven because you don’t fully understand how much is going on and what the game needs to do in order to run. But after a while, it feels unforgivable that the game still has a map that a chunk of the player base cannot play on without dropping below thirty frames. And just the little, small interactions with the game that don’t work or are delayed or that require a strange chain of events to have happen. At this point for many, it’s those small things that really piss people off. We all just want this game to be functional for everyone, even if it means we don’t see any new content until 1.0. They did a good job following their roadmap until about August and then things kind of fell apart. Most likely because they are so hyper focused on release. Which I get; it’s just a shame the game feels this poor right before release. And the game just magically feeling better, people getting ten or more extra frames across all the maps; I just don’t see that happening. We’ve wanted this game to feel good for a long time, and the odds of that happening after November, are slim to none.

(Outro)

Tarkov has not felt fresh in a long time. It’s not because of a lack of content coming in or not playing well. It's because this game has been around for so long, some people are sick of waiting for the game to get good. People are done with how optimized and figured out everything is, and how people literally speedrun to solve and finish things in the game. People are sick of how poorly the game runs and all the errors and crashes they have to slog through in order to just play the game. This game hasn’t felt fresh for a long time, and again for those who jumped in recently, I hope you avoid these negative feelings for as long as you possibly can. Because this game can be genuinely awesome to play with some of the most stressful moments I’ve ever experienced in a game. But eventually, those will all fade away as you surf through your list of games, trying to figure out what to play next. 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 this game feeling fresh, when it stopped feeling that way for you personally and be sure to subscribe for more videos surrounding the odor that currently is Tarkov right before release, that we all hope fixes a lot of what people hate about the game. I hope to see you in future ones.