Player's input on the game

June 4, 2018

Hatchlings, juggernaut squads, campers, etc. Love them or hate them, but they are what they are, and they all play their part in creating the experience that is Escape From Tarkov.

How you decide to play affect everyone else's experience, on that particular server. Most of us seem to have a similar approach to how we conduct ourselves in Tarkov. We gear up, go for a raid, kill everything that moves, loot up, get out.

I do try to interact as much as possible with other PMCs. Unless, due to the very high risk, I am geared and they are geared. If I am pretty geared up and I spot a hatchling, or even a pistol wielding player, I prefer to try the wiggle or mumble to get some kind of interaction going. Several times pistol PMCs have opened up on me, but I have still given them a couple of quick wiggles, showing I am not hostile. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes not so much.

Last night I was playing a couple of raids with two friends. In this one raid on Interchange my two friends had medium tier gear on, while I was rocking Fort with an M4 or something similar. One friend gets killed early on, and I off the dude who killed him. Moments later a hatchling appears. I am USEC, he is USEC. I started wiggling and mumbling, showing with movement the location of the downed player, trying to get this hatchling to pick up his gear and join us. My second friend joined in, showing we were not hostile.The hatchling was acting a bit strange, not picking up the gear, but just stepping around being cautious of our presence, even tho we could have snatched the life out of him any second.

Personally, I would have loved that invitation, and would have grabbed the gear and joined up in a heartbeat. This hatchling didn't, and sort of went off in another direction. I was like "meh", and didn't pay much more attention to it. The hatchling then found a weapon in a store close by, ran back and shot me in the back before my remaining friend took him out.

In my opinion, that hatchling's mindset and approach to a game like EFT is nearly as bad as hackers. This troll-like behavior, the total indifference to a friendly interaction in game, is another negative factor added to final experience that can be dynamic, surprising, and rewarding in so many different ways, but ends up being somewhat linear.

Killing and looting, without an actual end-game in mind, or with nothing but sheer greed as an incentive to go for another raid, is not an "issue" I feel fall on the developers to counteract. This is something the EFT community, and its players, need to work on.

So how do we change this predictable and negative trend? We lead by good example. We put the overall experience and dynamics of a raid first, and loot second. We wiggle and mumble as often as possible to hatchlings and pistol PMCs, maybe geared players as well, even if it means a high risk of getting whacked.

Am I completely wrong here? Is there no room for a more dynamic "roleplay" type experience? Is EFT supposed to be a merciless shooter, kill everything that moves?

Thoughts?

3.4k · June 4, 2018

7 minutes ago, PuddleMurda said:

Thoughts?

VOIP will make this game 200% times better.

Being able to tell an other player scav that there's a fully geared PMC in the bulding and that we better team up for now. That's what i'm looking for.

Most of the time, when you face a player, you don't actually think you are facing a human being, but more kind of a killing/looting machine that only cares about kills. VOIP will make players understand that other players are actual human and that they have a better chance of winning if they help each others.

Edited June 4, 2018 by PIG-Mathieu

1.3k · June 4, 2018

Chances are that pmc was bricking it that the second he became a theat you would end him thus avoiding the gear or maybe he though the other guy would want it dumped in a bush for recovery and was trying to be nice. (In a weird roundabout way.)

Most of the co-op storys you hear are great and i wait for the day i find a pmc buddy and we rekt the whole map e.c.t.

But from my time in the game it seems scavs cant even stop themselfs from mowing down everyone they id as a person.

51 minutes ago, PIG-Mathieu said:

VOIP will make this game 200% times better.

i see your voip and i raise you useable radios with faction/scav channels and ways of encoding infomation into a general chat with somthing like a one time pad so only people with the crypograpic key can see said message.

i like to think people would use stuff like that but then again i often get shot for wiggling at other scavs.

June 4, 2018

1 hour ago, PIG-Mathieu said:

VOIP will make this game 200% times better.

10 minutes ago, smokey-phil said:

i see your voip and i raise you useable radios with faction/scav channels and ways of encoding infomation into a general chat with somthing like a one time pad so only people with the crypograpic key can see said message.

VOIP would probably not be enough, as a wiggle most of the time isn't. The encounter is already danger close, and the defensive instinct to kill on sight might be stronger than attempting to communicate.

Radios, e.g. like in Squad, to communicate with other PMC of your faction, to get bearings of friendlies, and to call out enemy sightings / contact for other PMCs sounds like a pretty solid solution.

Karma system if you kill PMCs of your faction? The problem here would be if you have a friend, who has progressed quite far in another faction, will you not be able to play together?

Different tools would be helpful, but I still have a feeling that the community must start going in a different direction, in terms of gameplay.

1.3k · June 4, 2018

10 minutes ago, PuddleMurda said:

VOIP would probably not be enough, as a wiggle most of the time isn't. The encounter is already danger close, and the defensive instinct to kill on sight might be stronger than attempting to communicate.

i see you may have played rust

but yeah at the end of the day people need to start finding reasons to co-op be it that your more likely to get out of the raid with 2 of you or from a reward/punishment that comes from playing nice/not nice

but if you go to far down that road you take away from chaos that is a destabilized region where its every man for himself

so i guess it would be better to put it on a reward axis rather than punitive one maybe extra exp for exiting with a non group pmc like a lot maybe x3-x5 region (i mean that would get gamed so hard but its an idea )

i dunno i'm just typing whats coming into my head now so feel free to poke holes

Edited June 4, 2018 by smokey-phil
*edit -spellling