What Would Seasonal Tarkov Characters Look Like?

(Intro)

Now that Tarkov is past its official launch, we have the full game in front of us. From here, we don’t really know much about the future of the game regarding additional content, expansions, DLCs, and anything else BSG would want to add to the game. With the exception of expanding scavs in some capacity down the line, you either play online with the PvP version of Tarkov or go against full AI enemies by yourself or with friends in PvE. And from the sounds of things, PvE is more popular than anyone anticipated it being. But what about an optional third way to play the game that has been mentioned on more than one occasion by Nikita for years now? Seasonal characters; similar to what something like Diablo or Path of Exile do where every so often your character that is on those servers will wipe consistently, meaning everyone will always be reset at the same time regardless of how deep into the game’s progression you are. We are unsure if this is still even on the table for Tarkov, but I think just the idea alone is interesting enough to be worthy of a conversation. So, let’s talk about seasonal characters in EFT; how would they work, whether or not they would be popular, would the behave any differently than how the game works currently and whether they are still even going to happen for Tarkov. We’re so used to wipes with this game and seasonal characters could be the answer for those who are still interested in resetting a couple of times a year.

(How seasonal characters could work)

Most of this conversation is going to be pure speculation on my part. We’ve never been given concrete ideas of mechanics regarding how seasonal characters could work in EFT. The most they’ve ever told us is that there would most likely be a wipe on a seasonal character every three to four months, which sounds like the best number. Six months or more starts to run into the problem of players getting bored out of their minds and looking for things to do other than PvP assuming they’ve done most of the endgame content. And we’ve also had enough wipes previously in recent years where they dragged on for even longer than that, and it didn’t benefit the game in any way really. But how I would imagine they work is pretty much like the way our normal PMC characters work currently. When you boot up the game, you get to choose which character you would like to play. One is the seasonal character, and the other is the non-seasonal character we’re accustomed to. Only I would have to guess there would be a new system implemented that keeps track of your progress per season so you can go and look back at previous seasons and compare your statistics between all the seasons and see where you are playing well or areas that you could improve.

What this would also do again assuming the non-seasonal character doesn’t wipe ever again, is that it allows people to experience the early game constantly. Because for many, myself included, it’s where some of the most fun and good stress can be had when playing Tarkov. Crappy guns, scrappy fights, and desperately trying to get out of the early game quest funk. Now obviously, having to do those early game quests constantly, the mental stack of fatigue would definitely add up quickly, so it would be cool to see early game quests, and their order of operation jumbled around constantly whenever the seasonal character wipes. Imagine a new season starts and the first quests you get are from Ragman, and you begin the Interchange arc which normally happens in the mid-game, now immediately as a fresh character? To me, that sounds incredibly interesting because now more people might go to Interchange and other available maps more often right at the start instead of the usual Customs, Woods and Ground Zero. But I also just realized that now with the main story quests, the order in which you unlock maps will prevent certain locations from ever being at the start with this hypothetical idea. Because starting somewhere like Reserve as a level one would be cool, but you don’t get access to Reserve until you complete a handful of main story progression. And I doubt they would want to mess with the order of those missions so quickly after being added to the 1.0 version. But hey, any variety in quest order that feels feasible without breaking the pacing of the main story would do wonders. But even if they do come to pass, many people are going to ask a very fair question: what’s the point of playing on them?

(What’s the benefit of playing on them?)

The easiest answer to this other than just getting to experience Tarkov in its entirety in terms of the games progression constantly, I would like to imagine that BSG would put either some kind of ranked system into the game like they had on their official website where it showed who had the most kills, which would be something to work towards. Some kind of tangible goal that can be unlocked or achieved on top of all the other hugely late game content that has been added already. It’s crazy to think the answer to this question is just more live service styled content for those who no life the game. Pretty silly when you say it out loud. Maybe it’s more prestige levels beyond whatever their original maximum level was going to be, maybe it’s more unique cosmetics. I’m not entirely sure what it could be. But unique rewards have always been the go-to option for figuring out what to reward players who engage with that part of the games' content. I would say adding content that is only available by playing the seasonal content, but that alienates players and forces them to do something they might not or can’t feasibly do, which is no good. Of course, while there is a lot of potential for this idea to be cool and something the community is on board with, what are some of the potential problems it could run into?

(What are the potential downsides?)

The biggest potential downside I personally see is dividing more of the player base. I would imagine that each character would have their own servers so that each group can kind of coexist in their own ecosystem. Or... maybe not? Thinking about it for a couple of minutes, marathon players were always lumped into raids with regular players, so would it make sense to separate seasonal characters from normal ones? For anyone that can provide insight, for games like Diablo or Path of Exile where you have seasonal characters, do they exist separately from the rest of the game or is it all together? Because I could see both worlds but would personally prefer everyone to be playing on the same servers. At least this way, queue times won’t get any worse than they already are. Other than that, I can’t immediately think of any negative consequences for bringing in a new optional way to play the game. It’s like how anyone who’s ever willingly participated in hardcore Tarkov with the classic ruleset always had to play with regular players. It was the only option, and yet it worked out fine for people who wanted to engage with the game in a different way. And being able to freely swap back and forth between either character would make the experience both seamless and painless. If you are struggling with your seasonal character and are frustrated, you can just switch to your permanent character and run some raids there to cool off. What matters is that you have a character that is resetting on a schedule across the year and one that is just kind of hanging out. I mean BSG did say that at some point we’d have two playable PMC characters to choose from, so this feels like the best solution to not only include that second character but allowing players the choice of what kind of character they’d like to play. But at this point, post 1.0; would BSG even go so far to add it to the game?

(Would it even be worth it for BSG?)

I severely question whether BSG would actually implement it. I still see the chance of a second character happening; I mean we have two factions in the game, so it only makes sense to have one character from each side playable. But seasonal wipes, rewards, constantly monitoring who’s playing the most; it just feels like a lot of extra steps that at this point, I don’t think BSG want to engage with. Maybe several years ago if the game had released in a more timely manner, but man we pretty much got the main story new gear and that was it. I would be impressed if they ended up adding a second character and having it be seasonal. But in proper BSG fashion, somehow, someway they would screw it up and make it unbalanced, messy or just not function correctly. I don’t mean to be rude, but we recently had the bombshell drop from Nikita that the final mission on Terminal isn’t offline or PvE. You will be put into a game with other players, and there isn’t enough space on the boat out of Tarkov for everyone, so at least one person will not be leaving. Which would be a cool like betrayal style finale to the game, if it wasn’t for the fact that you need to spend an ungodly amount of time and in-game money to even attempt to escape. It sours the entire experience and the knowledge that you could pour half your life into getting an ending in Tarkov and for it to go to waste because someone get to a weapon faster than you, and now you need to repeat that process all over again is agonizing. This might be worth its own video, but speaking on whether BSG would do it, at this point I truly don’t know. It all depends on what they have in store for the game next year and how long they are willing to support EFT. Could be a year, could be more, could be less. Either way, seasonal characters could be cool; it all hinges on how they implement it.

(Outro)

Seasonal characters could be a highly effective way for players to experience the entire game arc that is Tarkov while also having the option to engage with it or not. Allowing people two playable PMCs, one character on those seasonal wipes and one that isn’t gives players the agency to make choices with how they want their play session to go. If their experience on their seasonal character isn’t going well, they can just swap to the other PMC and enjoy that for a bit. I’m sure there would be some growing pains with having two characters, the early game becoming stale for Tarkov because it’s happening so consistently now, and whether or not BSG would even add this to the game, but it’s something they have talked about in the past and would be cool to see added. It would make some players happy because now everyone kind of has an experience more tailored towards their particular way of engaging with Tarkov. But again, it depends on whether BSG is even going to do it at this point. 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 idea of an additional seasonal character, how you think it should work, if you would play on it and be sure to subscribe for more videos about outlandish ideas that could work on paper but will most likely be botched by BSG in the infancy stages of the idea coming to pass. I hope to see you in future ones.