Escape From Tarkov has an endgame problem, but it's always been about the journey

It's been a busy week for me workwise, and a quiet week shooter-wise. This means the newsletter will be a bit shorter. I spent the weekend at a friend's wedding and then busy with various chores, so I missed the Exfil playtest, which I'm a little gutted about. It has former Squad developers working on it and the Steam page references Novalogic's original Delta Force series, Arma, and America's Army, game franchises which pretty much operate like my sleeper agent activation code for getting me interested in a shooter. 

Chuck the overly harsh tactical lights and a long shot of a man toting a gun in one hand and a GPS in the other and I'm down to give it a go. I was accepted to this weekend's playtest, so hopefully I'll be able to get in on the next one or cajole developers Misultin Studios into showing me more. 

Instead this week, I got an achievement for completing Escape From Tarkov's newest Mortar Event quest line, which involved heading into the middle of a lot of ultra-lethal mortar strikes to pick stuff up. I also got this this ridiculous sniper rifle kill. The frequency, lethality and duration of those strikes have been massively toned down now, but for a little bit it was like holding your W key on a march into hell in every single match. The constant booming and instant death from above of the last few days has led to most of my friends taking some time away from the four maps where strikes are inbound. 

It didn't dissuade me at all. Back in April, I thought I'd stop playing after Battlestate Games released a new version of the game with some poorly thought-out additions, instead I've learnt to accept that Battlestate likes to take big experimental swings, and while I don't agree with many of them, it does keep the game from getting too dull.

It's needed, because at around this point – as I get to level 40 and start to max out all of the in-game traders and finish most of the quests that aren't a pain in the arse – things start to feel a little slow. I've really enjoyed this wipe: the rework to the Factory map has made for some compelling gunplay due to the collection of new routes and angles. Meanwhile the new Uzi and Desert Eagle are great fun to use. But, at its core, Tarkov is a game about kicking over sandcastles. Big success often comes from killing other players and taking their stuff, while the tension often comes from being nervous about losing the gear that you're carrying.  Yes,while finding a graphics card or LEDX in-raid is a real buzz, the biggest rush in Tarkov comes from killing another player and getting your hands on their hard-earned gear. The ice water in your gut feeling as you're nervously pushing around a corner is because you don't want to die and drop the stuff you brought in with you. 

This is why the PvE version of Tarkov - whether that's the popular SPT mod or the official mode that you can have if you pay BattleState Games an extra $25 - doesn't quite work for me and it's also the reason I think the game is always doomed to get less popular a month or two after each wipe. 

After all, when you arrive at your destination — the game state when you've got a stash full of high-end military firepower and enough cash that you can buy just about anything you want — then death isn't that terrifying anymore and you also have access to so many things that you don't need to hope the person you're killing has a level 5 armour plate or a long-ranged optic. You're a strong independent PMC and you can buy stuff with your own money. 

Once you're here, it's impossible to win in Escape From Tarkov. Instead, you can only lose. Or I guess get some sort of neutral result, where you don't so much escape from Tarkov's titular city but instead continue to ass around in the woods, hoping not to get shot in the face.  This seems like a design flaw that's tough to fix, but there's not a way to solve the problem. Play long enough and you'll hit a point where you actually do escape. At least, for a short amount of time.

It doesn't mean I'll stop crawling back to Tarkov each and every wipe. Arena Breakout didn't quite scratch that itch for me and I haven't found anything else with firefights as compelling as the ones here. But it does mean I can feel my enthusiasm waning, along with many others. 

As a result, I reckon I'll soon start to taper off from Tarkov for the rest of the wipe in favour of something else. I'm incredibly excited for No More Room In Hell 2 to get my co-op survival fix, and Streets of Rogue 2, which is less of a shooter and more of a top-down immersive sim. Cruelly, both are launching on the same day.

Gibs

• While most things CAN run Doom, Quantum computers still can't quite manage it. I don't understand quantum computing because I am an idiot, so I'll just quote this PC Gamer news story: "Quandoom requires 70,000 qubits and 80 million gates to run. Currently, Atom Computing holds the record for the most powerful quantum computer, with 1,225 qubits. So, we're only looking at roughly 70x the qubits in order to enjoy ourselves a bit of Doom on a quantum machine then."
• I stumbled upon 15 minutes of Beautiful Light footage from earlier in September. Beautiful Light is basically Hunt Showdown with a little bit of SCP thrown in and it's been on my radar for a little bit now. I played the game with the developers themselves back in May and it had some real promise, but felt like it was missing something.  There are a few cool moments here, I'm into the look of the weapon handling, but also the featured wrist-mounted tablet in this which seems to be a working compass. Very cool. Something I loved while playing was how technical it felt. As you move from the derelict structures and down into the lab there is a lot of turning on switches and running computer programs that doesn't come across in the footage shown so far. It's a sort of complexity that, frankly, we've sort of lost in PC multiplayer early in the '00s. 
• Fortnite seems to have a new experimental First Person Camera mode. Fortnite feels fantastic to play but the weapon handling doesn't feel tight enough for me to have a good time shooting. If the same level of care and attention can be lavished on a first person mode as they did to making the driving or even web-swinging work, I could see myself getting quite into it. I still play a fair bit of Fortnite just because the movement and action is so well done, so if Epic (and some enterprising Fortnite creators) make a fun first person mode, I fear it could be over for me.
• It's getting cold in London and so, right on cue, I find myself wanting to listen to Echo Beach a lot. Funny that.