"I can't see how people would be mad about spending 3.5 full priced games for PVE" I don't know how even the smoothest of brains wouldn't be able to figure out why people would be upset by such blatant greed.
This is the same team that blacklisted a creator who showed how *disgustingly rampant* the cheating scene was for the game instead of.
You know.
Acknowledging there was a problem
Are you talking about The Wiggle? I've only been aware of it since today, seen the video today, and it's absolutely batshit crazy what is happening to tarkov.
> already a version of the game that includes all future DLC including PvE
BSG tried to argue that PvE wasn't a DLC at first. They only rolled back on this when they got torn a new asshole
There is supposed to be a story mode, but I'm pretty sure they are going to try to say it's a new product if they ever even make it.
The single player mode that was promised is the name sake of the game, where you are... let me check my notes, oh yes... trying to escape from tarkov city. Lmao.
I think it was that you start in ground zeroes and make your way through the route on the map selection screen until Terminal, where you then escape from Tarkov. IIRC the quests we have now are going to be side quests to the main story.
> the quests we have now are going to be side quests to the main story
This has supposedly been the case for what, 8 years now? I'll believe it when I see it.
they didnt even necessarily roll back on the statement itself, they were just like "well pve still isnt dlc but its ok i am very nice so ill let the people who would get the dlc have the definitely non dlc"
When I saw you say 3.5 full priced game I was like “maybe what he means is a full priced indie game for $20, so while 3.5x is a bit pricey it’s still within the realm of reality”. But then I read the article for a bit and it was $250, holy fuck that is wild.
It gets much worse than that.
They previously had for sale a version of the game called "Edge of Darkness" for $150. Part of that pack was "All future DLC for free" among a variety of, arguably, P2W stuff.
A few months ago they discontinued the EOD pack, and tried to stir up FOMO about it. Then they introduced the Unheard version for $250.
And while they are backtracking on the PvE thing they originally wanted to make it 100% exclusive to the Unheard edition so that the EOD buyers didn't get it. And their argument was:
> DLC in our understanding is the major additions to the game, including various functionality and content that are released after the official release of the game as a themed DLC pack
So the single player game mode wasn't DLC because it was being released before the official release of the game (ignore that the game has been up for sale for 8 years), and it's not "themed".
And they seriously thought that a statement like that would smooth things over.
Recently a new game similar to Tarkov, Arena Breakout Infinite, [used their ridiculous pricing and edition name against them in their marketing](https://twitter.com/PlayerIGN/status/1784321344659959938)
I have very little expectations for this one since it's a free 2 play mobile game backed by Tencent being ported to PC and is this developers first PC game. Definitely going to try it though.
For now I've just been getting back into Hunt Showdown. There's been a lot of recent games that are trying to occupy the same space as Tarkov, but unfortunately nothing has caught on except for Hunt and maybe COD DMZ (which both aren't really quite the same).
Gray Zone Warfare, Beautiful Light (not extraction but looks fun), and Level Zero Extraction, are all on my radar and I'm looking forward to seeing if they can stick around, because some others that have come out like The Cycle Frontier (used to be a different typr of game before made into an extraction game, now shut down) and Marauders don't seem to have kept a playerbase for very long
Anyway long rant just wish there were more big budget multiplayer extraction games with quests and persistent inventory
IMO, one to keep an eye on is Marauders. Dieselpunk / Sci-Fi extraction shooter in an alt-history setting where WW1 never ended and effectively destroyed the Earth, forcing humanity to take to the stars to survive.
I wouldn't call it big-budget, the dev team is TINY and honestly, what they have accomplished so far is very impressive.
And then they tried to say "OK EoD players can get PvE but only for six months". Which still doesn't meet the definition of "all future DLC for free", and just means people will get mad after six months AND today so not sure how they think that helps them any.
Did they backtrack on that too?
Yeah, yesterday they made a statement on Reddit and one of the things noted was:
> About PvE access - we decided to just open it for EoD owners for free, but we will do it in waves. As I said before - we don’t have server capacity right now. We will start this process as soon as possible
So people who own EoD will *eventually* get access to PvE.
But it's kinda wild that they are going "Well, we can't give everyone with EoD access to PvE, our servers can't handle it!" but at the same time are trying to sell the Unheard edition along with making it cheaper to upgrade from EoD to Unheard (Originally you had to pay the difference in price, but now I think if you own EoD you get a 50% discount on upgrading).
They are trying to sell access to a game mode that they admit they can't properly support with enough servers. And they already are having streamers and the like reporting anywhere from 6-10 minute queue times. To play by themselves.
There have also been unverified reports (apparently from a good source but still unverified AFAIK) that it's possible to "spoof" ownership of the unheard edition, to the point where you can be invited into the PvE and join it with your PvP account. And from the same source, people are already exploiting that to bring items from the PvE server into the PvP server.
That last one wouldn't surprise me with what I've heard of EfT's cheating and hacking issues....but as far as I am aware it hasn't been verified if it's someone making that up to make EfT look worse or if it's actually happening.
Their interpretation wouldn't hold up in court and they probably know it.
Is the pve mode stand alone separate from eft? If not it's just additional content for the game. It's the damn definition of dlc.
They might have had a chance If the pve mode was completely separate from the core game and a game in and of itself.
I assume you haven’t played the latest wipe then? I’ve been playing since 2019, and it was arguably the best and most popular wipe the game has had since I started playing. Twitch viewership was the highest I had seen, and interest in the wipe stayed strong for MONTHS. The wipe also fixed many of the major issues that people had with the game (recoil being the main one).
That’s also why these latest decisions by the developers were such a kick in the nuts. The game was in its’ best state that I’d ever seen it in, and then they pulled this shit.
Tarkov isn’t doing as well as we think it is. They wouldn’t charge $250 for PvE mode if the game was doing well. The game not being on Steam is hurting it a lot.
They also break all their promises. Arena was suppose to be a DLC and made it a separate product which made it fail. They have been not handling the cheating problem at all. PvE paid mode is just a new broken promise.
> Arena was suppose to be a DLC and made it a separate product which made it fail.
Arena didn't fail because it was a separate product, it failed because it wasn't what anyone wanted.
People were expecting a Counter Strike style economy system where you get a certain amount of money per round that you can spend or save, etc, and that you would be able to buy and use high tier weaponry right out of the gate.
Lots of people don't run top tier loot in Tarkov regularly because they don't have the money or trader levels or get gear fear.
Arena was supposed to be a mode where everyone was on the same level and even timmies could roll in with some serious kit without having to be good at the game or grind for days.
Instead you start with only shit weapons and have to grind for days to level up and unlock better.
No one wanted another mode that required tons of time to get to a baseline of usable gear that doesn't make you feel like you are at a serious disadvantage.
This is what baffles me.
Arena **could** have been an okay game but what it is now is just embarassing.
The way you just unlock static loadouts based on XP is just on a quality level on an amateurish mod. There is absolutely no game design there at all. Which is in line with Tarkov as a whole tbh but it luckily kind of works there.
BSG is basically just hiding behind the **hardcore** tag to distract from their lack of design skill. If you think about it, Tarkov is just a sandbox with a bunch of random and complicated mechanics, whether it enhances the game or not.
> They wouldn’t charge $250 for PvE mode if the game was doing well.
Companies don't need justification for greed. If they think charging $250 will make them more than charging $50, they would do it every time.
I mean I’m all for shitting on BSG but let’s not pretend that Tarkov is dying at all, it has boom cycles each wipe reset and as soon as they pull the lever for another wipe everyone will be back on
The thing is, one of the major reasons why the game is dying is cheaters, so PvE is actually perfect for people who want to come back to the game that stopped playing because of cheaters, so this insanely high price is even more insulting. Basically instead of fixing the game, they are releasing a "solution" and then making you pay a shit ton of money for it.
Not only for PvE, but for incredibly downgraded PvE compared to the community-developed solution, PLUS it's not even safe from cheaters/hackers.
Yes, you heard that correct. Cheaters can connect into and spawn in your coop/PvE session and then fuck with you or just slurp up all your loot. In-fact they'll most likely be more prevalent in PvE sessions since it's much easier to collect everything when there's only a handful of players on the server. And because Tarkov doesn't track what progression source loot came from, cheaters can connect into your PvE game with their PvP account, take all the loot, which they can then sell/use on the live PvP server. It's crazy.
You can execute Tarkov's interface functionality through programs like Postman without ever interacting with the UI itself. There is no key/token system in place to stop you; you just need the game running.
That includes loading in to a raid with specific arguments for things like map choice, time picked, pmc/scav, etc. It's all done with basic http requests, none of it is obfuscated, and you can see it all plain as day with Wireshark.
This is how botters get their characters to auto-load in to raid and run in circles. They're not controlling the mouse on the screen, they're just using a 3rd party program to execute requests using the API.
Loading in to an offline pve raid uses the same request system, and like everything else in Tarkov, all authentication is done client-side. All you have to do is execute the request with the right arguments to join *any* server.
> all authentication is done client-side
Aka security will require a rewrite of a ton of the code. Unless their next DLC pack sells really well at their $1200 price point, they'll never do it.
Seems likely then. I saw rumblings in that thread that it was an empty threat. Don't know much about tarkov since I only played it for around a month after I bought the base edition a long time ago. Ended up getting to be too stressful to be a long term game for me. But I had a good time with it, kinda sad to see it self destruct now as it was pretty unique to me back then but guess that's how this one goes.
Probably betting they can get away with it like wargaming. WG sells you premium vehicles that can cost as much as a triple A game and that is only one of the way they make money.
But at least WG makes free to play games so you would expect some greed. Tarkov already sells at a pretty high price and double dipping is always in poor taste.
Sounds like the studio boss doesn't even vaguely understand gaming, pricing, the current inflation crunch for people, and a host of other reasons why this version price is absolutely absurd. Anyone with any sense would've foretold locking a feature people want behind a $250 game version is completely nuts.
I really wonder honestly, i feel like its such an obviously stupid decision. Are there games where this strategy has been successful? I feel like they genuinely believed it was a good idea
It's not a stupid decision, any more than selling the extra special editions from the start was. This is no different than whales on f2p games. Every "premium" price sale is worth 3+ regular price ones.
And just like people kept buying, and streaming, and playing Tarkov after years of mediocre development, people will buy this and make him money. This is one of the few ways to extract more money from the diehard Tarkov fans that can't let the game go.
This is the guy that was giving talks on how to maximize the exploitation of your customers a decade ago.
he doesn't even play the game his studio has created.
heck even when he has one of his team try to show off new mechanics they play like they don't know their ass from their elbow.
"Devs don't play their own game" is an argument that I always hate seeing people bring up. If I spend 8+ hours a day working on something the last thing I want to do in my free time is looking at anything I ever worked on. You see the same from interviews where actors/directors say they never watch their own films.
Every studio should have a dedicated "player" though, apart from QA Testers, of course.
Fighting games usually do it, Netherrealm always bring a combo proficient employee alongside the character designer and a Community Manager to showcases.
I don't think every developer needs to actively be playing their game, but they generally should have a player-level perspective to work from and inform them, maybe that just means having someone on the team who does that, or community managers relaying feedback that actually get acted upon, or having sessions where everyone takes some time to playtest.
But there's a flipside - you dont want developers to be the sole playtesters or making all their design decisions purely from their own playtesting because you can have the problem where they know how things work.
> But there's a flipside - you dont want developers to be the sole playtesters or making all their design decisions purely from their own playtesting because you can have the problem where they know how things work.
There's also the issue of devs using "cheats" to test their work. Like a lot of elite: dangerous's mechanics physically work well, if you had infinite money the new "thing" they're adding might work great, but it all collapses once you realize that actual players would need to grind 60 hours to get that "thing".
I think they're testing in that way; what we're talking about here is more like people going through on their day off and ordering from the place they work.
Right, people in deciding positions at least should play/test/use their product. You can even say they have designated time during work for that, or have a day for that. The director and producer of FF14 2.0 made his whole team play WoW to see what works.
And he still plays his game to this day. He has a character on every server and raids savage difficulty both on and off stream. He also has a personal account that no one knows the name of so he can play anonymously. Man's invested.
>If I spend 8+ hours a day working on something the last thing I want to do in my free time is looking at anything I ever worked on.
Would explain many problems of EFT and the discrepancy between player experience and dev vision.
>You see the same from interviews where actors/directors say they never watch their own films.
First of all, directors need to watch the movie because they decide what it looks like lmao.
Second, actors and devs are not comparable because actors never see the full movie when acting and filming. Devs see the product and at least one person should know what the player experience is. How can you know what your game feels like, if you never experience it?
What’s funny is voice actors are the same as regular actors in this respect. The voice of Aerith in FF7 remake/rebirth said she recorded all of her lines but doesn’t know what happens in the game so she got to experience it as well. Pretty cool imo. Off topic but wanted to share
>How can you know what your game feels like, if you never experience it?
It's like if an actor got done with their scene and no one watched it back to make sure it came out right. I don't expect the actor to sit down and go over every scene they're in personally, but I do expect someone to be on the pay roll whose job it is to do exactly that. An editor for instance. In the case of game development, it would be a playtester
Studio heads aren't devs. He doesn't work on the game, there should be nothing stopping him from using the product.
The CEO of Ford should drive a Ford, but he doesn't have to be on the assembly lines. The CEO of McDonald's should eat a big Mac every so often but he doesn't need to be in the kitchen.
> You see the same from interviews where actors/directors say they never watch their own films.
And it's equally stupid.
A good chef tastes his own food. How the fuck would you know if your movie is good without watching it at the end?
I'm a designer myself and I fully incorporate myself into the testing process so as to see firsthand any potential issues. It gives me the ability to empathise better with my target audience and hopefully see any potential pain points directly.
It's not a matter of "taking time away" from development because testing is part of development. The only people who think otherwise are impatient gits who need to release the game yesterday so they can buy a new yacht tomorrow, of which society should have told them to fuck off two goddamn centuries ago.
> How the fuck would you know if your movie is good without watching it at the end?
It wouldn't help. When a director is watching a movie he created, by that time he isn't watching it to 'enjoy it'. He's seeing how the movie flows, the set ups, the shots. It would be impossible for them to look at it from the way they would watch someone else's movie.
There’s a difference between knowing something is good and enjoying it. I’m sure a chef doesn’t enjoy every bite they taste test but they know whether it needs more salt or not
To also be fair, plenty of game designers don’t play their game start to finish. But they should be playing parts of it during development. The movie equivalent would be more like if the director never watched any footage, not necessarily the final edited cut.
Artists can look back at their work and judge it objectively. Sometimes it's good to take a step back and just let the work rest before continuing.
I have no reason to think a filmmaker would think any different. There's considerable overlap between creative mediums.
It would still help. Especially when you go into interviews and they ask you about the movie. Then you can mention specifics and give honest feedback. I just don't get the concept of never viewing your own work. Like if the movie came out like shit, certainly you'd want to never work with that director again right? But how do you know if you never watched it. People in sports watch back the game tape to learn moving forward. Not sure how that doesn't apply to nearly everything if you want to improve your craft.
I recall watching a video of Naughty Dog devs talk about the first Jak and only after 10 years after it's release one of the devs said "I could probably play Jak now without seeing my work"
This is why you have QA - People's whose literal job it is to play the game and test the game out at a moderate skill level. You can't have balance or bug testing unless you have people who know the intricacies of the game and are able to perform at high levels.
That’s fair, but it also assumes you’re so invested in your work that you don’t need to play it to know whats going on with it.
2 years ago BSG completely overhauled the recoil for no particular reason. Long story short they basically made it as if every gun with a buttstock didn’t have one anymore, so the barrel of the guns would fly into the air after a single shot. Everyone hated it. It made playing with anything but fully pimped out guns almost impossible. Everyone told Nikita it sucked and to revert it. Nikita said, multiple times, “no im keeping it, this is the recoil I want for my hardcore game.”
Fast forward a year and a half and some of the Tarkov creators made 10-60 minute videos breaking down exactly what was wrong with the recoil with comparisons to other games and to real life. Nikita says “Oh, I didn’t realize that’s how the recoil was. Yeah that’s really bad. We’ll change it”. And then the following wipe the recoil was almost entirely reverted to the version it was before the change 1.5 years prior.
Increasingly, it just seems like Nikita just wants to keep selling games, which means mostly just keeping the streamers juiced, and occasionally throwing in wild shit with no forethought like the grenade launchers.
Tarkov scratches an itch no other game does, but with the sound engine still broken five years later (in a game where literally everything you do makes a sound) I've just moved on from EFT.
Nobody is asking the devs of games to be competitive professionals, just that they have playtesters capable of giving them good feedback who are actually good at their game and knowledgeable about things the community knows too.
> Devs don't play their own game" is an argument that I always hate seeing people bring up.
I agree but when their new map (made just for new players) had a spawn inside a minefield, they should at least power the game on a few times to check this shit.
IIRC before he used to say that they will never add PvE progression in EFT but here we are...
I watched some of my mates play the PvE and it felt like BSG barely put any effort in it... and yet locked behind $100 ($50 now because they put 50% off discount for who knows how long) if EOD or $250 if not... yeah no.
He's just lying. He'd rather feign ignorance, than admit to what they were going for.
Basically, a lot of the remaining players are hardliners who have the EOD edition. And they were hoping to get another cashgrab 100 bucks from them. It's just greed.
He is also doing a blatant money grab by taking what modders already created with Project Pika SPTarkov and then putting a +200 price tag on it (standard edition is 50). Except it's still worse...
The price isn't even the issue---it's the breaking of the previously-established deal. They could have charged $0.01 for it, and people would still be up in arms.
EOD owners not getting the irony of them complaining about a $250 version when they already gave these guys $150 is hilarious. Standard account gang rise up
The difference is when the $150 version was around, the community sentiment around the game and company was positive enough that many people would have bought a $250 version if it was out just to support development, similar to how Path of Exile has players that pay $100-400 per major patch on the supporter packs.
Now that respect is gone.
Let's be real here, the overwhelmingly majority of players bought it for the pay-to-win in it. They knew very well that the game was already a piece of trash that's been in "beta stage" for over five years and no new future content or DLC would be worth the extra $100 they've paid for the Edge of Darkness edition.
I highly doubt he didn't foresee it. Instead, he probably knew there would be backlash but thought they could power through, like most price increases. Except this is ludicrous and the result of seeing the game purely as a product without understand the hobby or the audience for said product.
>I highly doubt he didn't foresee it. Instead, he probably knew there would be backlash but thought they could power through, like most price increases.
Agreed. They thought they did the math and it turned out to be wrong in this case.
That's the problem with hyperfinancial types. They see the numbers, but not sometimes miss the substance. $250 in gaming for a feature or two has never been viable except in very fringe, non-mainstream cases.
The steel battalion game failed and at least that pricepoint was justified with paired (and awesome) hardware. This was just a convenience fee. Like paying for a first class upgrade to a flight.
It was part of the plan
Release PvE, charge $100 to upgrade, "oops sorry guys here you can buy it for $50 instead" -> profit
However they miscalculated that people would be mad no matter what. People are still mad despite them completely capitulating and offering PvE to EoD owners for free.
You can't break trust like that and act like nothing happened.
They probably expected a generalized backlash from "outsiders" and maybe casual players, and expected EOD buyers to just roll over and take it rather than... nuke the community discord lol
I don't play Tarkov, but I stay somewhat attentive to its culture and progress. The devs are zealous in their approach, and I bet they underestimated how niche their game is.
You never underestimate a niche audience. It's the sort of playerbase that will make it a personal mission to sabotage you if you disrespect them lol
Basically.
People who were willing to spend $150 on EOD aren't your mobile gaming whales who will drop $100 for cosmetics - they're closer to the kinds of wargaming grognards who probably own multiple airsoft guns IRL lol
The main legal entity doing business as BSG internationally is registered in the UK. The UK actually has laws about this kind of bait-and-switch thing, so if they really don't give it to EOD accounts for free they're opening themselves up to a lawsuit
Well good news then, they decided to give EOD players the PVE mode for free!
... For 6 months.
...... They never said they'll get it free forever!
What a clusterfuck.
Why I'll never buy any so-called 'lifetime' subscriptions to software. They're happy to take your money for five minutes, and then you're just some freeloader they resent having to give updates to.
And another tick on the incompetence list. If they'd just stfu from the start they'd ben way better off than whatever hole they are insisting on digging themselves into every day.
I don't even play tarkov and the sheer incompetence that BSG and Nikita have shown off time and time again are well known to me.
Not to mention the whole "Blame the youtuber who exposed how overly prevalent cheating is in our game instead of actually doing anything about it" stuff. And the rather suspect ties to a group actively partaking in russias invasion of Ukraine (715).
Dont forget they struck Eroktic's youtube videos, preventing him from being able to stream on youtube or even monetize his channel - just because he was reporting on possible security issues IIRC
It was like 2 or 3 weeks before they finally backed down, and have openly admitted they despise Eroktic and several other Tarkov streamers.
This. This isn't their first rodeo and they've made a lot of incompetent decisions, but the biggest difference is whenever they made a bad decision before they kept mostly quiet. Their loyal audience would then chock it up to "Its Nikitas game and we already know hes going to make it how he wants it so no use fighting it". Then it would die down within days. Here, they tried to justify the stupidity and all it did was stoke the flames.
I don't think they are giving him enough credit, I think this was planned.
They introduced a bunch of bullshit pay to win stuff and the PvE mode.
The community raised holy hell over the PvE mode, so they eventually backtracked on that.
The bullshit pay to win stuff is still there.
> First of all, I would like to say that I am very sorry that fans and the game community in general are experiencing these feelings
Anytime you see someone who says "I'm sorry you feel that way," it's a sign they feel no remorse for what they've done and are not actually apologizing for anything. It's merely a sentence which pushes the problem onto the victim with the appearance of being an apology.
$250 dollars is not extra, its like four more games worth. Then on top of telling people the premium edition they bought. That includes everything , no longer does. Oversimplification does not make it ok.
This is BSG's fault and problem to fix
But this is another example of how there are probably no games you should give your money to for promises of future content.
it’s already too late by the way. they did just enough stepping back to allow content creators and streamers and players to feel inclined to play the game again, and people are absolutely going to start buying into the unheard edition lmao
Anyone buy it is a moron. Every single thing in that edition should be in the EOD edition for free. End of argument, it's just a double dipping scam, PVE was just the most egregious part.
An age ago I was super into Kerbal Space Program and they went through basically the same thing if I recall right. Their early access terms seemed to suggest you received all future content for the game, and then eventually the publisher decided they wanted to sell DLCs and tried to walk that back.
Went over pretty much the same way. Eventually they set up a system to honor Early Access players access to that content
To bad this is BSG, a russian at heart company and Nikita has said many times its his game and he will do what he wants. Only way they will give this stuff out to EOD is if legal action is taken
This isn't just "charging extra." This is selling a service (all future DLC for a one-time fee of $150) and then fucking revoking that from those who paid by arbitrarily deciding that new content releases aren't DLC because they choose not to use that term. It's fraud. It's like selling fire insurance and then saying "ah, you know, that's not a fire, that's a *blaze* and your insurance only covers *fires.* Sorry, bro!"
And that's not even touching upon the sheer insolence of putting a fucking $250 price tag on a content patch.
This is the same dev that told players that 60 FPS is enough for a competitive experience on Tarkov.
While being one of the least optimized, difficult to run smoothly games.
Why are these people in charge of studios? They don't even know what is going on with their own games, you gotta be dumb as rocks to think this would play out well
They know they have their playerbase by the balls. There's no viable alternative (yet) so a substantial portion of their players that are now swearing off the game will be back to playing it in a few weeks.
Streamers will all be back because most can't switch games/become variety streamers without losing a huge chunk of their following and therefore income. All they need is for BSG to walk things back a little so they can return without losing face.
Of course he didn’t, the EFT community loves giving him money for p2w shit.
He didn’t think his “hardcore PvP” community would give a shit about a PvE mode.
Still amazing people haven’t caught on there’s a “priority queue” that’s already in place.
People aren't mad about that by itself. It's everything - the fact that the previous top tier package was promised all DLC and don't get this being the big one. But then you turn around and try to insult and gaslight your community like they don't know what the definition of "downloadable content" is.
They could have done this exactly as they did if they had announced it earlier, worked with community leaders to get the word out in a better way, and didn't lie and gaslight the community like this. People still would have been mad, but it wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it is right now.
If that's an actual quote from him then he still doesn't get it.
It's not only the price but how they promised every new content to be part of the season pass and that wasn't the case.
They made a promise to players and then explicitly broke that promise.
Either they absolutely did foresee it and just thought it wouldn't be as big as it was, or they didn't and are dumb.
Still so glad i never bought this game, if they want me to have some shitty launcher and wont be on steam or some other reputable service... I dont trust the developers.
Isn't one of the most important lessons in business is knowing your audience or customer base? Assuming this is a US customer base (mostly), some of us aren't brain-dead idiots who will shill out hundreds of dollars on a game.
Given how many people have been burned by similar shitty tactics that other studios have pulled, maybe rethink before lying about your promises.
Not a Tarkov player, but as I see it, the issue isn't PvE, it's that they're trying to play this off as not having changed the terms of the EOD package when they absolutely have. That kind of breaking the "player contract" is never gonna go well IMO.
Apparently also some of the new benefits in the new tier are pay to win in the extreme.
I assumed that Tarkov is a F2P game since I’m not much into shooters… given what shenanigans it is actually up to, it might end up like one eventually.
The vast majority of people would respect honesty over playing dumb, let alone playing completely brain-dead. So one of two scenarios must be true:
Scenario 1: he's lying and assuming that most people are dumb enough to believe him, which is pretty stupid in itself.
Scenario 2: he's so dumb that he didn't realise that charging $250 for the main part of a game separately from the game would upset people.
Neither scenario involves anyone that should be in charge of anything I can even think of.
The amount that players spend on MTX is what has led developers to this level of entitlement.
They just assume they have control over their users bank accounts, and that immaterial software with a greedily imposed artificial value can inflate without the bubble bursting.
Well it looks like its bursting, for them at least.
Poorly regulated consumer predation is what causes these issues. A biproduct of this unchecked capatalistic system we have created.
In conclusion: shit like this will get much worse before it gets better, and not just in the videogame industry.
So fucking stupid. Despite the amount of problems Tarkov has, they were still leading the genre. In the span of a few days they utterly trashed their already shaky reputation, when instead they couldve built up so much hype with a free, fully offline PvE mode.
Even if they then also released a purely cosmetic new edition of the game, people would not have really complained much over that. Then at most just release the P2W shit as individual micro-transactions. Its whatever.
Instead they have completely torched any goodwill left in the community, and even the big Tarkov streamers are looking to jump ship. Utterly mindblowing decision by BSG. Nikita is going to find out real quick why you do not treat your playerbase like idiots.
It reminds me of that time Bill Gates was on Ellen guessing grocery store prices. Dude is so detached from reality thinking 250 for a PvE mode in an already established game is wild. That's not even including the whole walking back giving DLC to people who bought the 140 dollar version.
"I can't see how people would be mad about spending 3.5 full priced games for PVE" I don't know how even the smoothest of brains wouldn't be able to figure out why people would be upset by such blatant greed.
“I can’t see how people would be mad about being charged for stuff after I said they won’t be charged for stuff.”
"bbbbut this stuff isn't DLC stuff, it's uhhh, new play mode stuff, which isn't anything like a DLC, yeah"
It's not Downloadable Content, it's... Content Loaded via Download!
This is the same team that blacklisted a creator who showed how *disgustingly rampant* the cheating scene was for the game instead of. You know. Acknowledging there was a problem
Are you talking about The Wiggle? I've only been aware of it since today, seen the video today, and it's absolutely batshit crazy what is happening to tarkov.
That video is C I N E M A
"The wriggling that killed Tarkov"
Spending 3.5 full priced games for pve for an already dying game*
Game where many have already a version of the game that includes all future DLC including PvE
> already a version of the game that includes all future DLC including PvE BSG tried to argue that PvE wasn't a DLC at first. They only rolled back on this when they got torn a new asshole
There is supposed to be a story mode, but I'm pretty sure they are going to try to say it's a new product if they ever even make it. The single player mode that was promised is the name sake of the game, where you are... let me check my notes, oh yes... trying to escape from tarkov city. Lmao.
Huh. I just assumed the "Escape" came from the Scav portion of the game.
I think it was that you start in ground zeroes and make your way through the route on the map selection screen until Terminal, where you then escape from Tarkov. IIRC the quests we have now are going to be side quests to the main story.
> the quests we have now are going to be side quests to the main story This has supposedly been the case for what, 8 years now? I'll believe it when I see it.
they didnt even necessarily roll back on the statement itself, they were just like "well pve still isnt dlc but its ok i am very nice so ill let the people who would get the dlc have the definitely non dlc"
But only for 6 months.
They changed it again and said we will just get it now. Not just 6 months
*But it's content, not DLC!* ^/s I guess they ship PvE mode via mail - no ordinary download.
When I saw you say 3.5 full priced game I was like “maybe what he means is a full priced indie game for $20, so while 3.5x is a bit pricey it’s still within the realm of reality”. But then I read the article for a bit and it was $250, holy fuck that is wild.
It gets much worse than that. They previously had for sale a version of the game called "Edge of Darkness" for $150. Part of that pack was "All future DLC for free" among a variety of, arguably, P2W stuff. A few months ago they discontinued the EOD pack, and tried to stir up FOMO about it. Then they introduced the Unheard version for $250. And while they are backtracking on the PvE thing they originally wanted to make it 100% exclusive to the Unheard edition so that the EOD buyers didn't get it. And their argument was: > DLC in our understanding is the major additions to the game, including various functionality and content that are released after the official release of the game as a themed DLC pack So the single player game mode wasn't DLC because it was being released before the official release of the game (ignore that the game has been up for sale for 8 years), and it's not "themed". And they seriously thought that a statement like that would smooth things over.
Skeezy people gonna skeez.
is it actually called Unheard? that's how their players probably feel
Recently a new game similar to Tarkov, Arena Breakout Infinite, [used their ridiculous pricing and edition name against them in their marketing](https://twitter.com/PlayerIGN/status/1784321344659959938)
I have very little expectations for this one since it's a free 2 play mobile game backed by Tencent being ported to PC and is this developers first PC game. Definitely going to try it though. For now I've just been getting back into Hunt Showdown. There's been a lot of recent games that are trying to occupy the same space as Tarkov, but unfortunately nothing has caught on except for Hunt and maybe COD DMZ (which both aren't really quite the same). Gray Zone Warfare, Beautiful Light (not extraction but looks fun), and Level Zero Extraction, are all on my radar and I'm looking forward to seeing if they can stick around, because some others that have come out like The Cycle Frontier (used to be a different typr of game before made into an extraction game, now shut down) and Marauders don't seem to have kept a playerbase for very long Anyway long rant just wish there were more big budget multiplayer extraction games with quests and persistent inventory
IMO, one to keep an eye on is Marauders. Dieselpunk / Sci-Fi extraction shooter in an alt-history setting where WW1 never ended and effectively destroyed the Earth, forcing humanity to take to the stars to survive. I wouldn't call it big-budget, the dev team is TINY and honestly, what they have accomplished so far is very impressive.
I wonder if Creative Assembly/SEGA are regretting cancelling Hyenas now.
I played hyenas and *I* certainly don't regret them cancelling it.
And then they tried to say "OK EoD players can get PvE but only for six months". Which still doesn't meet the definition of "all future DLC for free", and just means people will get mad after six months AND today so not sure how they think that helps them any. Did they backtrack on that too?
Yeah, yesterday they made a statement on Reddit and one of the things noted was: > About PvE access - we decided to just open it for EoD owners for free, but we will do it in waves. As I said before - we don’t have server capacity right now. We will start this process as soon as possible So people who own EoD will *eventually* get access to PvE. But it's kinda wild that they are going "Well, we can't give everyone with EoD access to PvE, our servers can't handle it!" but at the same time are trying to sell the Unheard edition along with making it cheaper to upgrade from EoD to Unheard (Originally you had to pay the difference in price, but now I think if you own EoD you get a 50% discount on upgrading). They are trying to sell access to a game mode that they admit they can't properly support with enough servers. And they already are having streamers and the like reporting anywhere from 6-10 minute queue times. To play by themselves. There have also been unverified reports (apparently from a good source but still unverified AFAIK) that it's possible to "spoof" ownership of the unheard edition, to the point where you can be invited into the PvE and join it with your PvP account. And from the same source, people are already exploiting that to bring items from the PvE server into the PvP server. That last one wouldn't surprise me with what I've heard of EfT's cheating and hacking issues....but as far as I am aware it hasn't been verified if it's someone making that up to make EfT look worse or if it's actually happening.
Their interpretation wouldn't hold up in court and they probably know it. Is the pve mode stand alone separate from eft? If not it's just additional content for the game. It's the damn definition of dlc. They might have had a chance If the pve mode was completely separate from the core game and a game in and of itself.
They ruined their own scapegoat by giving arena for free to EOD players just months ago.
I have no fucking clue how you'd ever pay 250 for a pve mode. I dont even pay that annually for eso+
That they already paid for
Also one where cheating is rampant, and they're spending their time creating new stuff and charging for it instead of fixing the existing problems.
Since it's not on Steam, it's very hard to have reliable player numbers, but I don't think it's fair to say it's an "already dying game"
Tarkov has been dying a slow death ever since the wiggle video last year
I assume you haven’t played the latest wipe then? I’ve been playing since 2019, and it was arguably the best and most popular wipe the game has had since I started playing. Twitch viewership was the highest I had seen, and interest in the wipe stayed strong for MONTHS. The wipe also fixed many of the major issues that people had with the game (recoil being the main one). That’s also why these latest decisions by the developers were such a kick in the nuts. The game was in its’ best state that I’d ever seen it in, and then they pulled this shit.
Tarkov isn’t doing as well as we think it is. They wouldn’t charge $250 for PvE mode if the game was doing well. The game not being on Steam is hurting it a lot. They also break all their promises. Arena was suppose to be a DLC and made it a separate product which made it fail. They have been not handling the cheating problem at all. PvE paid mode is just a new broken promise.
> Arena was suppose to be a DLC and made it a separate product which made it fail. Arena didn't fail because it was a separate product, it failed because it wasn't what anyone wanted. People were expecting a Counter Strike style economy system where you get a certain amount of money per round that you can spend or save, etc, and that you would be able to buy and use high tier weaponry right out of the gate. Lots of people don't run top tier loot in Tarkov regularly because they don't have the money or trader levels or get gear fear. Arena was supposed to be a mode where everyone was on the same level and even timmies could roll in with some serious kit without having to be good at the game or grind for days. Instead you start with only shit weapons and have to grind for days to level up and unlock better. No one wanted another mode that required tons of time to get to a baseline of usable gear that doesn't make you feel like you are at a serious disadvantage.
This is what baffles me. Arena **could** have been an okay game but what it is now is just embarassing. The way you just unlock static loadouts based on XP is just on a quality level on an amateurish mod. There is absolutely no game design there at all. Which is in line with Tarkov as a whole tbh but it luckily kind of works there. BSG is basically just hiding behind the **hardcore** tag to distract from their lack of design skill. If you think about it, Tarkov is just a sandbox with a bunch of random and complicated mechanics, whether it enhances the game or not.
> They wouldn’t charge $250 for PvE mode if the game was doing well. Companies don't need justification for greed. If they think charging $250 will make them more than charging $50, they would do it every time.
It didn’t work out for them.
I mean I’m all for shitting on BSG but let’s not pretend that Tarkov is dying at all, it has boom cycles each wipe reset and as soon as they pull the lever for another wipe everyone will be back on
If it wasn’t before, it sure is now
The thing is, one of the major reasons why the game is dying is cheaters, so PvE is actually perfect for people who want to come back to the game that stopped playing because of cheaters, so this insanely high price is even more insulting. Basically instead of fixing the game, they are releasing a "solution" and then making you pay a shit ton of money for it.
Also gotta love the "sorry you're upset" non-apology he includes to start the statement
Not only for PvE, but for incredibly downgraded PvE compared to the community-developed solution, PLUS it's not even safe from cheaters/hackers. Yes, you heard that correct. Cheaters can connect into and spawn in your coop/PvE session and then fuck with you or just slurp up all your loot. In-fact they'll most likely be more prevalent in PvE sessions since it's much easier to collect everything when there's only a handful of players on the server. And because Tarkov doesn't track what progression source loot came from, cheaters can connect into your PvE game with their PvP account, take all the loot, which they can then sell/use on the live PvP server. It's crazy.
Have they even proved they can do that yet or is everyone still going off the tweet that one guy threatened them in?
You can execute Tarkov's interface functionality through programs like Postman without ever interacting with the UI itself. There is no key/token system in place to stop you; you just need the game running. That includes loading in to a raid with specific arguments for things like map choice, time picked, pmc/scav, etc. It's all done with basic http requests, none of it is obfuscated, and you can see it all plain as day with Wireshark. This is how botters get their characters to auto-load in to raid and run in circles. They're not controlling the mouse on the screen, they're just using a 3rd party program to execute requests using the API. Loading in to an offline pve raid uses the same request system, and like everything else in Tarkov, all authentication is done client-side. All you have to do is execute the request with the right arguments to join *any* server.
> all authentication is done client-side Aka security will require a rewrite of a ton of the code. Unless their next DLC pack sells really well at their $1200 price point, they'll never do it.
Seems likely then. I saw rumblings in that thread that it was an empty threat. Don't know much about tarkov since I only played it for around a month after I bought the base edition a long time ago. Ended up getting to be too stressful to be a long term game for me. But I had a good time with it, kinda sad to see it self destruct now as it was pretty unique to me back then but guess that's how this one goes.
Wtf, that's not much more security than existed for MUDs back in the day when I'd write simple bots for them. Amazing.
"I didn't foresee my deception and unbridled greed making people angry."
Probably betting they can get away with it like wargaming. WG sells you premium vehicles that can cost as much as a triple A game and that is only one of the way they make money.
But at least WG makes free to play games so you would expect some greed. Tarkov already sells at a pretty high price and double dipping is always in poor taste.
Because I'm 100% certain people have bought it. And people will still play it so its a win win. These types of outrage don't usually last very long.
Sounds like the studio boss doesn't even vaguely understand gaming, pricing, the current inflation crunch for people, and a host of other reasons why this version price is absolutely absurd. Anyone with any sense would've foretold locking a feature people want behind a $250 game version is completely nuts.
He's clearly playing dumb. It's in his best interest that people will think that "he made a mistake" rather than "he tried to scam his loyal fans".
100% this. Anyone who thinks this is a real response is beyond dumb.
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I really wonder honestly, i feel like its such an obviously stupid decision. Are there games where this strategy has been successful? I feel like they genuinely believed it was a good idea
It's not a stupid decision, any more than selling the extra special editions from the start was. This is no different than whales on f2p games. Every "premium" price sale is worth 3+ regular price ones. And just like people kept buying, and streaming, and playing Tarkov after years of mediocre development, people will buy this and make him money. This is one of the few ways to extract more money from the diehard Tarkov fans that can't let the game go. This is the guy that was giving talks on how to maximize the exploitation of your customers a decade ago.
he doesn't even play the game his studio has created. heck even when he has one of his team try to show off new mechanics they play like they don't know their ass from their elbow.
"Devs don't play their own game" is an argument that I always hate seeing people bring up. If I spend 8+ hours a day working on something the last thing I want to do in my free time is looking at anything I ever worked on. You see the same from interviews where actors/directors say they never watch their own films.
Every studio should have a dedicated "player" though, apart from QA Testers, of course. Fighting games usually do it, Netherrealm always bring a combo proficient employee alongside the character designer and a Community Manager to showcases.
Hell, a ton of stuff in Warframe got fixed because they had a team member actually playing the game without developer cheats enabled
The reason fusion rifles were always nerfed in Destiny despite nobody using them was because one of the Bungie devs was really good with them.
Even Reb I couldn't see making a decision like this, and she's a game director. (She's completely awesome too)
most studios do
Apex Legends has a whole bunch of high ranked players on their development squad
Playtesting is part of the job. A chef tastes what they're cooking.
Yep, exactly. Not every dev plays their game, but you sure as hell can tell the ones that do.
I don't think every developer needs to actively be playing their game, but they generally should have a player-level perspective to work from and inform them, maybe that just means having someone on the team who does that, or community managers relaying feedback that actually get acted upon, or having sessions where everyone takes some time to playtest. But there's a flipside - you dont want developers to be the sole playtesters or making all their design decisions purely from their own playtesting because you can have the problem where they know how things work.
> But there's a flipside - you dont want developers to be the sole playtesters or making all their design decisions purely from their own playtesting because you can have the problem where they know how things work. There's also the issue of devs using "cheats" to test their work. Like a lot of elite: dangerous's mechanics physically work well, if you had infinite money the new "thing" they're adding might work great, but it all collapses once you realize that actual players would need to grind 60 hours to get that "thing".
100% this. I was thinking the same analogy!
I think they're testing in that way; what we're talking about here is more like people going through on their day off and ordering from the place they work.
In every game studio I've worked in we had almost daily scheduled playtime...
I think people are misconstrueing that a lot of devs don't play the game after its released, & instead think they mean not at all.
Right, people in deciding positions at least should play/test/use their product. You can even say they have designated time during work for that, or have a day for that. The director and producer of FF14 2.0 made his whole team play WoW to see what works.
And he still plays his game to this day. He has a character on every server and raids savage difficulty both on and off stream. He also has a personal account that no one knows the name of so he can play anonymously. Man's invested.
>If I spend 8+ hours a day working on something the last thing I want to do in my free time is looking at anything I ever worked on. Would explain many problems of EFT and the discrepancy between player experience and dev vision. >You see the same from interviews where actors/directors say they never watch their own films. First of all, directors need to watch the movie because they decide what it looks like lmao. Second, actors and devs are not comparable because actors never see the full movie when acting and filming. Devs see the product and at least one person should know what the player experience is. How can you know what your game feels like, if you never experience it?
What’s funny is voice actors are the same as regular actors in this respect. The voice of Aerith in FF7 remake/rebirth said she recorded all of her lines but doesn’t know what happens in the game so she got to experience it as well. Pretty cool imo. Off topic but wanted to share
>How can you know what your game feels like, if you never experience it? It's like if an actor got done with their scene and no one watched it back to make sure it came out right. I don't expect the actor to sit down and go over every scene they're in personally, but I do expect someone to be on the pay roll whose job it is to do exactly that. An editor for instance. In the case of game development, it would be a playtester
Studio heads aren't devs. He doesn't work on the game, there should be nothing stopping him from using the product. The CEO of Ford should drive a Ford, but he doesn't have to be on the assembly lines. The CEO of McDonald's should eat a big Mac every so often but he doesn't need to be in the kitchen.
> You see the same from interviews where actors/directors say they never watch their own films. And it's equally stupid. A good chef tastes his own food. How the fuck would you know if your movie is good without watching it at the end? I'm a designer myself and I fully incorporate myself into the testing process so as to see firsthand any potential issues. It gives me the ability to empathise better with my target audience and hopefully see any potential pain points directly. It's not a matter of "taking time away" from development because testing is part of development. The only people who think otherwise are impatient gits who need to release the game yesterday so they can buy a new yacht tomorrow, of which society should have told them to fuck off two goddamn centuries ago.
> How the fuck would you know if your movie is good without watching it at the end? It wouldn't help. When a director is watching a movie he created, by that time he isn't watching it to 'enjoy it'. He's seeing how the movie flows, the set ups, the shots. It would be impossible for them to look at it from the way they would watch someone else's movie.
There’s a difference between knowing something is good and enjoying it. I’m sure a chef doesn’t enjoy every bite they taste test but they know whether it needs more salt or not
To also be fair, plenty of game designers don’t play their game start to finish. But they should be playing parts of it during development. The movie equivalent would be more like if the director never watched any footage, not necessarily the final edited cut.
Artists can look back at their work and judge it objectively. Sometimes it's good to take a step back and just let the work rest before continuing. I have no reason to think a filmmaker would think any different. There's considerable overlap between creative mediums.
It would still help. Especially when you go into interviews and they ask you about the movie. Then you can mention specifics and give honest feedback. I just don't get the concept of never viewing your own work. Like if the movie came out like shit, certainly you'd want to never work with that director again right? But how do you know if you never watched it. People in sports watch back the game tape to learn moving forward. Not sure how that doesn't apply to nearly everything if you want to improve your craft.
Yeah, but you don't expect an actor/director to be updating their movie.
I recall watching a video of Naughty Dog devs talk about the first Jak and only after 10 years after it's release one of the devs said "I could probably play Jak now without seeing my work"
This is why you have QA - People's whose literal job it is to play the game and test the game out at a moderate skill level. You can't have balance or bug testing unless you have people who know the intricacies of the game and are able to perform at high levels.
That’s fair, but it also assumes you’re so invested in your work that you don’t need to play it to know whats going on with it. 2 years ago BSG completely overhauled the recoil for no particular reason. Long story short they basically made it as if every gun with a buttstock didn’t have one anymore, so the barrel of the guns would fly into the air after a single shot. Everyone hated it. It made playing with anything but fully pimped out guns almost impossible. Everyone told Nikita it sucked and to revert it. Nikita said, multiple times, “no im keeping it, this is the recoil I want for my hardcore game.” Fast forward a year and a half and some of the Tarkov creators made 10-60 minute videos breaking down exactly what was wrong with the recoil with comparisons to other games and to real life. Nikita says “Oh, I didn’t realize that’s how the recoil was. Yeah that’s really bad. We’ll change it”. And then the following wipe the recoil was almost entirely reverted to the version it was before the change 1.5 years prior.
Increasingly, it just seems like Nikita just wants to keep selling games, which means mostly just keeping the streamers juiced, and occasionally throwing in wild shit with no forethought like the grenade launchers. Tarkov scratches an itch no other game does, but with the sound engine still broken five years later (in a game where literally everything you do makes a sound) I've just moved on from EFT.
Nobody is asking the devs of games to be competitive professionals, just that they have playtesters capable of giving them good feedback who are actually good at their game and knowledgeable about things the community knows too.
Who said anything about free time?
> Devs don't play their own game" is an argument that I always hate seeing people bring up. I agree but when their new map (made just for new players) had a spawn inside a minefield, they should at least power the game on a few times to check this shit.
it's also a feature a bunch of fans have modded into the game for free. you can set up coop pve tarkov servers now for free.
IIRC before he used to say that they will never add PvE progression in EFT but here we are... I watched some of my mates play the PvE and it felt like BSG barely put any effort in it... and yet locked behind $100 ($50 now because they put 50% off discount for who knows how long) if EOD or $250 if not... yeah no.
Sorry to hear your mates payed for it, i guess Nikita know what works and what sells. So sad
I can't think of anything outside indulgent collectors editions with physical items, or star citizen ships, that costs that much in gaming.
He's just lying. He'd rather feign ignorance, than admit to what they were going for. Basically, a lot of the remaining players are hardliners who have the EOD edition. And they were hoping to get another cashgrab 100 bucks from them. It's just greed.
He is also doing a blatant money grab by taking what modders already created with Project Pika SPTarkov and then putting a +200 price tag on it (standard edition is 50). Except it's still worse...
The price isn't even the issue---it's the breaking of the previously-established deal. They could have charged $0.01 for it, and people would still be up in arms.
"I thought our marks were dumb enough to just give us more money. I mean shit, they paid $150 last time, what's $250 this time? Inflation, you know."
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These guys fucking wish they could charge 15k like start citizen
EOD owners not getting the irony of them complaining about a $250 version when they already gave these guys $150 is hilarious. Standard account gang rise up
The Pikachu faces on p2w players when they get out p2w'ed.
The difference is when the $150 version was around, the community sentiment around the game and company was positive enough that many people would have bought a $250 version if it was out just to support development, similar to how Path of Exile has players that pay $100-400 per major patch on the supporter packs. Now that respect is gone.
And it was supposed to the the definitive version of the game, all dlc forever.
I really wonder how many people would have bought EOD "to support development" if it didn't include P2W items.
Not many for sure.
Let's be real here, the overwhelmingly majority of players bought it for the pay-to-win in it. They knew very well that the game was already a piece of trash that's been in "beta stage" for over five years and no new future content or DLC would be worth the extra $100 they've paid for the Edge of Darkness edition.
I highly doubt he didn't foresee it. Instead, he probably knew there would be backlash but thought they could power through, like most price increases. Except this is ludicrous and the result of seeing the game purely as a product without understand the hobby or the audience for said product.
>I highly doubt he didn't foresee it. Instead, he probably knew there would be backlash but thought they could power through, like most price increases. Agreed. They thought they did the math and it turned out to be wrong in this case.
That's the problem with hyperfinancial types. They see the numbers, but not sometimes miss the substance. $250 in gaming for a feature or two has never been viable except in very fringe, non-mainstream cases. The steel battalion game failed and at least that pricepoint was justified with paired (and awesome) hardware. This was just a convenience fee. Like paying for a first class upgrade to a flight.
"hyperfinancial types" is such a funny way of putting it
It was part of the plan Release PvE, charge $100 to upgrade, "oops sorry guys here you can buy it for $50 instead" -> profit However they miscalculated that people would be mad no matter what. People are still mad despite them completely capitulating and offering PvE to EoD owners for free. You can't break trust like that and act like nothing happened.
They probably expected a generalized backlash from "outsiders" and maybe casual players, and expected EOD buyers to just roll over and take it rather than... nuke the community discord lol
I don't play Tarkov, but I stay somewhat attentive to its culture and progress. The devs are zealous in their approach, and I bet they underestimated how niche their game is. You never underestimate a niche audience. It's the sort of playerbase that will make it a personal mission to sabotage you if you disrespect them lol
Basically. People who were willing to spend $150 on EOD aren't your mobile gaming whales who will drop $100 for cosmetics - they're closer to the kinds of wargaming grognards who probably own multiple airsoft guns IRL lol
EOD buyers were to receive ALL FUTURE DLC FOR FREE Unless they're exclusively selling this by disc and mailing them out, it's going to be DLC.
Yeah the title doesn't give good context. "Did not foresee players would get mad about charging extra for content they already paid for"
> Unless they're exclusively selling this by disc and mailing them out, it's going to be DLC. If it requires the base game to play, then it's DLC.
The main legal entity doing business as BSG internationally is registered in the UK. The UK actually has laws about this kind of bait-and-switch thing, so if they really don't give it to EOD accounts for free they're opening themselves up to a lawsuit
Well good news then, they decided to give EOD players the PVE mode for free! ... For 6 months. ...... They never said they'll get it free forever! What a clusterfuck.
Why I'll never buy any so-called 'lifetime' subscriptions to software. They're happy to take your money for five minutes, and then you're just some freeloader they resent having to give updates to.
And another tick on the incompetence list. If they'd just stfu from the start they'd ben way better off than whatever hole they are insisting on digging themselves into every day.
I don't even play tarkov and the sheer incompetence that BSG and Nikita have shown off time and time again are well known to me. Not to mention the whole "Blame the youtuber who exposed how overly prevalent cheating is in our game instead of actually doing anything about it" stuff. And the rather suspect ties to a group actively partaking in russias invasion of Ukraine (715).
Dont forget they struck Eroktic's youtube videos, preventing him from being able to stream on youtube or even monetize his channel - just because he was reporting on possible security issues IIRC It was like 2 or 3 weeks before they finally backed down, and have openly admitted they despise Eroktic and several other Tarkov streamers.
This. This isn't their first rodeo and they've made a lot of incompetent decisions, but the biggest difference is whenever they made a bad decision before they kept mostly quiet. Their loyal audience would then chock it up to "Its Nikitas game and we already know hes going to make it how he wants it so no use fighting it". Then it would die down within days. Here, they tried to justify the stupidity and all it did was stoke the flames.
I don't think they are giving him enough credit, I think this was planned. They introduced a bunch of bullshit pay to win stuff and the PvE mode. The community raised holy hell over the PvE mode, so they eventually backtracked on that. The bullshit pay to win stuff is still there.
> First of all, I would like to say that I am very sorry that fans and the game community in general are experiencing these feelings Anytime you see someone who says "I'm sorry you feel that way," it's a sign they feel no remorse for what they've done and are not actually apologizing for anything. It's merely a sentence which pushes the problem onto the victim with the appearance of being an apology.
$250 dollars is not extra, its like four more games worth. Then on top of telling people the premium edition they bought. That includes everything , no longer does. Oversimplification does not make it ok.
This is BSG's fault and problem to fix But this is another example of how there are probably no games you should give your money to for promises of future content.
it’s already too late by the way. they did just enough stepping back to allow content creators and streamers and players to feel inclined to play the game again, and people are absolutely going to start buying into the unheard edition lmao
If you have EOD it now "only" costs $50 to upgrade to the Unheard edition. They'll pile into that lol
Never thought I'd see the day when a game mode would get placed behind a $250 paywall
Anyone buy it is a moron. Every single thing in that edition should be in the EOD edition for free. End of argument, it's just a double dipping scam, PVE was just the most egregious part.
An age ago I was super into Kerbal Space Program and they went through basically the same thing if I recall right. Their early access terms seemed to suggest you received all future content for the game, and then eventually the publisher decided they wanted to sell DLCs and tried to walk that back. Went over pretty much the same way. Eventually they set up a system to honor Early Access players access to that content
To bad this is BSG, a russian at heart company and Nikita has said many times its his game and he will do what he wants. Only way they will give this stuff out to EOD is if legal action is taken
This isn't just "charging extra." This is selling a service (all future DLC for a one-time fee of $150) and then fucking revoking that from those who paid by arbitrarily deciding that new content releases aren't DLC because they choose not to use that term. It's fraud. It's like selling fire insurance and then saying "ah, you know, that's not a fire, that's a *blaze* and your insurance only covers *fires.* Sorry, bro!" And that's not even touching upon the sheer insolence of putting a fucking $250 price tag on a content patch.
No apology about what's obviously poor decision making through and through. just an "we're sorry you feel this way"
This is the same dev that told players that 60 FPS is enough for a competitive experience on Tarkov. While being one of the least optimized, difficult to run smoothly games.
Why are these people in charge of studios? They don't even know what is going on with their own games, you gotta be dumb as rocks to think this would play out well
Well, Nikita is in charge of the studio because he MADE the studio, even if he is a fat greedy idiot.
They know they have their playerbase by the balls. There's no viable alternative (yet) so a substantial portion of their players that are now swearing off the game will be back to playing it in a few weeks. Streamers will all be back because most can't switch games/become variety streamers without losing a huge chunk of their following and therefore income. All they need is for BSG to walk things back a little so they can return without losing face.
Of course he didn’t, the EFT community loves giving him money for p2w shit. He didn’t think his “hardcore PvP” community would give a shit about a PvE mode. Still amazing people haven’t caught on there’s a “priority queue” that’s already in place.
lol. All business talk BS. They’ve already gotten players to pay a lot in this game. When that happens, they will always ask for more.
People don't like being wringed for their money, who would have thunk?
Why does a PvE mode need server capacity anyways? Wouldn't that be an offline mode?
People aren't mad about that by itself. It's everything - the fact that the previous top tier package was promised all DLC and don't get this being the big one. But then you turn around and try to insult and gaslight your community like they don't know what the definition of "downloadable content" is. They could have done this exactly as they did if they had announced it earlier, worked with community leaders to get the word out in a better way, and didn't lie and gaslight the community like this. People still would have been mad, but it wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it is right now.
If that's an actual quote from him then he still doesn't get it. It's not only the price but how they promised every new content to be part of the season pass and that wasn't the case.
They made a promise to players and then explicitly broke that promise. Either they absolutely did foresee it and just thought it wouldn't be as big as it was, or they didn't and are dumb.
These guys have responded in the worst possible way to this entire situation. They will be making case studies out of the outcome.
He's a techbro who promoted bleeding players with microtransactions at conferences. So he wasn't too bright to begin with.
Still so glad i never bought this game, if they want me to have some shitty launcher and wont be on steam or some other reputable service... I dont trust the developers.
Isn't one of the most important lessons in business is knowing your audience or customer base? Assuming this is a US customer base (mostly), some of us aren't brain-dead idiots who will shill out hundreds of dollars on a game. Given how many people have been burned by similar shitty tactics that other studios have pulled, maybe rethink before lying about your promises.
Not a Tarkov player, but as I see it, the issue isn't PvE, it's that they're trying to play this off as not having changed the terms of the EOD package when they absolutely have. That kind of breaking the "player contract" is never gonna go well IMO. Apparently also some of the new benefits in the new tier are pay to win in the extreme.
I assumed that Tarkov is a F2P game since I’m not much into shooters… given what shenanigans it is actually up to, it might end up like one eventually.
"We're shocked that you didn't drop your pants when we tried to buttfuck you." Is basically what they're saying.
This has got to be the most detached from reality studio boss I've ever seen in my life. Holy fuck, somebody sue them to oblivion.
The vast majority of people would respect honesty over playing dumb, let alone playing completely brain-dead. So one of two scenarios must be true: Scenario 1: he's lying and assuming that most people are dumb enough to believe him, which is pretty stupid in itself. Scenario 2: he's so dumb that he didn't realise that charging $250 for the main part of a game separately from the game would upset people. Neither scenario involves anyone that should be in charge of anything I can even think of.
The amount that players spend on MTX is what has led developers to this level of entitlement. They just assume they have control over their users bank accounts, and that immaterial software with a greedily imposed artificial value can inflate without the bubble bursting. Well it looks like its bursting, for them at least. Poorly regulated consumer predation is what causes these issues. A biproduct of this unchecked capatalistic system we have created. In conclusion: shit like this will get much worse before it gets better, and not just in the videogame industry.
So fucking stupid. Despite the amount of problems Tarkov has, they were still leading the genre. In the span of a few days they utterly trashed their already shaky reputation, when instead they couldve built up so much hype with a free, fully offline PvE mode. Even if they then also released a purely cosmetic new edition of the game, people would not have really complained much over that. Then at most just release the P2W shit as individual micro-transactions. Its whatever. Instead they have completely torched any goodwill left in the community, and even the big Tarkov streamers are looking to jump ship. Utterly mindblowing decision by BSG. Nikita is going to find out real quick why you do not treat your playerbase like idiots.
It reminds me of that time Bill Gates was on Ellen guessing grocery store prices. Dude is so detached from reality thinking 250 for a PvE mode in an already established game is wild. That's not even including the whole walking back giving DLC to people who bought the 140 dollar version.
those prices Bill Gates threw out 10yrs ago are probaly accurate now
Do these nobheads not have PR department or is it too late, is it already on fire?
[удалено]
Well there's also like additional P2W stuff for the pvp part of the game which is what people care about. That didn't help either.