The Easiest Solution for Longer Tarkov Fights

(Intro)

Tarkov fights can feel like either an instant one tap, or a long grueling battle of flanking, repositioning, and trying to get the better of your opponent. It’s been this way for quite some time; the nuance of players engaging with other players can be lost at times due to how insanely fast the time-to-kill can be in the game sometimes. If you have poor protection, you feel like you always get dropped by another player before you could register he was even there. And if you have bad ammo, you feel like you dump an entire magazine into someone and they just soak the damage, turn around, and take you out. It never feels like both parties in the fight are on even grounds. And while that’s partially the intent behind EFT and the nature of an extraction game, there have been some attempts to bring the power levels more in line. One example is almost five years old; when BSG decided to raise the health points of the thorax from eighty to eighty-five. Although small in relative terms, it was seen as a huge shake up because now many powerful ammos that were popular at the time could no longer one tap a player. And if BSG or even the players want longer fights in the game, they could lean into that change once more. The easiest change to make in the game for longer fights, would be to raise the HP of the thorax again, all the way to one hundred. And it might do more good than harm. Hear me out.

(The delicate balance of the health system)

Tarkov’s health system is more complex than it has any right to be. With seven different body parts, each with their own health pools that you need to keep track of and manage their statuses, the values are almost an afterthought. You really only pay attention when things start to go wrong, or if a body part is in the red. But this system while confusing and overwhelming at times, is fairly nuanced when you break it down. Applying health to each body party on top of having a combined health pool, means that you could be down a leg, an arm, and your stomach, but your two vital parts, the head and thorax could still be full health; meaning you are still able to fight other players. Obviously, you would want to try and patch yourself up as much you can before doing so, but that situation is honestly more favorable than having your head and thorax down by half health. Because the lower your vital organs are, the weaker the ammo can be to stop you in your tracks. And with a potential one hundred health on your thorax, it just means more ammos struggle to take you down in a single shot. Landing that critical shot on the head becomes the primary goal, instead of taking a gamble and spraying their chest down and taking them out with sheer volume of fire. The reason why I am emphasizing the thorax so much is because the head being at thirty-five points is the magic number. If I had it my way, every single entity in the game, AI, bosses, everything would have that much HP on their head. It's baffled me how raising that value on the AI to create artificial difficulty was the solution. It doesn’t make the game feel interesting to play; it’s jarring when as simple scav tanks multiple rounds to the head because each scav is different and has a few different health pools they might spawn with. I think I’d honestly prefer them being more accurate and dangerous if it meant they all would get put down with a single bullet from any caliber in the game. Which is something the game might potentially benefit from.

(What 100hp would really do)

In reality, adding more health to your thorax will simply slow the game down, at least somewhat. Of course, the ability to one tap players in the head will always be prevalent as it should be, but losing a fight to your chest becomes less of a problem. There would be only a handful of rounds in the game that could truly one tap you while wearing at least level four armor on at that point. The non vital parts have plenty of health, and since we established we don’t want to mess with the head, the thorax is the next logical part to mess with. Again, adding fifteen more points doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but combined with layers of protection from armor and all the math that goes into figuring out those numbers, I can only think of a handful of rounds in the game that could still one tap the thorax. We kind of have an idea of what that would look like... sort of. Arena has interesting balancing for each of the classes, where they are limited on the kinds of ammo they can use. And because of this, when you have games primarily made up of either assault or enforcer, that’s probably the best example of what the TTK would feel like in EFT. Slower, being able to take a couple of rounds depending on aim. Again, it’s hard to discern if this would be a generally liked change or if people would complain they can’t kill other players, but let’s go into this idea a little bit deeper.

(Is Tarkov’s TTK too fast?)

Is Tarkov’s TTK too fast? It's an interesting question to ask. But a difficult one to answer. EFT isn’t Call of Duty, where the weapon determines how much damage you do, and the only other main factor is range. In this game, it’s the round that matters the most. With so many different ammunitions, people usually just say pick the ammo that has the highest penetration. And over the years, those options have become harder and harder to get ahold of on a regular basis (with some exceptions in recent years but you know what I mean). Honestly, it’s tough; the game is so volatile; so many outside factors that contribute to whether you win or lose. It isn’t so much about you, but more so about everything around you. As the player, you are a single entity on a map populated with both AI and other players. You could be at the wrong place and wrong time, get into a fight you were not prepared for and lose because you were caught off guard, not because the TTK is so short. On the other hand, we’ve all had those experiences where you ambush a player who was unaware of our presence, whiff the shot and then lose control of the fight and die because of it. In those instances, you could’ve dropped that player with a single shot, but ultimately you were the main factor as to why that didn’t happen. It’s why the early game is always so interesting, because most of the time, players don’t have the ammunition to plow through even a basic PACA. So, fights tend to drag out a little longer than the first bullet or even the first magazine, which can be exciting. But we also don’t want to go back to the days of EFT where people were so tanky and ammo was generally just poor, to the point where multiple magazines are needed to take out a player wearing a Zabralo. I think it boils down to this; if you can hit the headshot, you should be rewarded for a quick and painless takedown of any entity in the game. If you can’t you need to work a little harder to break through their defense and come out on top. As we’ve talked about before, the delicate balance of EFT and all its mechanics needs to be measured properly. Or you run the risk of the game swinging too hard in either direction, which of course we don’t want. So, to answer the question, I honestly don’t know if the TTK in Tarkov needs to be adjusted at all. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And I think for a game like this, that’s kind of where you want it.

(Outro)

Increasing the HP of the thorax would fundamentally change the game forever. More health means more opportunities to make mistakes, survive fights and swing them back in your favor. It means less rounds in the game can drop you with a single shot, and players will generally have to work harder to get their kills. Headshots are the name of the game, and that would only be reinforced more should the thorax get more health. Either way, BSG did it once, and it generally was well received. Now, five years later, maybe it’s time they did it again. 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 whether BSG should add more health to the thorax, if you think the TTK in this game is too fast and be sure to subscribe for more videos about potentially game breaking changes that may or may not resonate with the community after all of these years. I hope to see you in future ones.