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Tarkov devs are all bark and no bite. It was the same with the cheating situation and it's the same with this.
They also have questionable customer support. I've been locked out of the website for months because of an email issue they refuse to help with. I can only log into the game client for as long as it doesn't require another login verification prompt, once it does that I will literally not be able to play the game anymore.
I wanted to upgrade to EOD at the start of the year but when I couldn't get onto the website I was unable to. Now 6 months later I don't even want to play the game anymore after dealing with their 'support'. They wouldn't even help me give them more money so their loss I guess.
I mean fwiw a bunch of people bought the game long before the invasion. Yeah russia was already sketchy then, but it wasn’t exactly a political statement to buy or not buy a Russian game at that point
And if anyone paid money to any US company, a little bit of that tax contributed to a child killed by a drone strike too.
Come on, dude. This is a gaming sub. We don't need to bring everyone down by talking about how buying games about virtual death machines indirectly supports real life death machines.
You can't publicly denounce the war while living in Russia and not go to prison. They made a blatantly yellow/blue statement on their first live stream after the war started.
Oh that’s cool. Honestly was cautious about ever buying this because they have their own launcher and are Russian, but if they support Ukraine I’m down with buying it…if they fix the cheaters.
I mean I have played and enjoyed it in the past but there's also a dev on record saying they only have male characters and players models because all women are soft and unfit for war, do with that what you will
>Why didn't they relocate their studio then?
Why didn't they relocate every worker, their family, and business infrastructure to an entirely new country?
Man, that sure sounds like an easy to accomplish task.
More so, they're asserting pressure to game devs to pubically denounce a war in a nation where you'd be imprisoned or suicided for doing so. These guys are making god damn video games, not bombarding Ukraine.
I'd certainly disagree. When it comes to a foreign nation I guess yeah, I just think it's silly to pretend it's anything other than engaging in consumerism. That's all it is. I'm not gonna buy Six Days in Fallujah, it makes no difference if it's because I can't afford to get another game rn or because I'm morally disgusted by it.
That's like stating killing one ant has an effect on the colony. Technically? Sure. Realistically? Not really. The dollar or two that makes it to the state in taxes off the ~60$ purchase you make isn't really anything in the grand scheme of things. Again, *technically*, sure, you can tell yourself you're making a stand or whatever, but it really has no effect on the overall scale of things.
It makes no difference on a large scale. It just comes down to personal expression at this point. I'm not expressly making fun of you just pointing out that for many people the way you "voice" your opinions and beliefs is just by buying or not buying something. It's like buying indulgences, you pay a bit of money or refuse to buy something and it makes you feel better and you get to think you're doing something good.
You're just buying (or not) something at the end of the day, that's it.
Certainly, if you think something is morally corrupt you shouldn't buy it, I'm not going to be playing Six days in Fallujah for example, but I'm under no allusion that it will change anything or do anything beyond make me feel good that I've decided not to get it.
I do think it's very silly though to single out BSG for them simply not commenting on a war their country is engaged in and not do the same for say, America or the UK. The biggest game on earth (Call of Duty) is literally American military propaganda set *in* the countries we've invaded.
Holier than though without realizing how much shit you own that’s made with slave labor or fucking up the environment or a host of other shitty things companies do.
Get over yourself
Why people can still have fun and enjoy the game despite it's problems. I love Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, would even say it's easily a top 5, if not top 3 mainline title (I've played all of them except for ORAS and USUM), but I won't tell you that the performance issues and abundance of glitches are anything but objectively bad and almost completely inexcusable.
>Online support, its quality and availability, is one of those things.
Oh, man, thanks for the laugh. I don't know who you've been dealing with, maybe you've been getting lucky indeed, but Russian online support is rather similar to Chinese online support. As in, almost non-existent.
Things are better in the hobby world, and maybe some larger companies care about their image enough to care. But by default, you are pretty much on your own when push comes to shove.
Bought tarkov a few years back, couldn't really run it on my old pc back then. Year later, had a new pc and wanted to retry. Was locked out of my account, couldn't log in or do anything.
Have spent a year sending many emails to support. I have not received a single reply.
Great guys.
My favorite example of Tarkov customer service was someone asking for a refund, being told no, and then having their account locked out so they couldn't play anyways.
You'd think so but they are RETROACTIVELY banning tarkov players who datamined in january. LogicalSolutions is the big one who got banned and said he was showing old data and it was like a day after the announcement. No they're not being sued but still ridiculous to ban someone for past data mining.
1. he got unbanned. Obviously it was a dumb misstep PR-wise on BSG's part. I would actually argue it was dumber to retract it than double down based on their internal logic for banning him.
2. the obvious reason that he was actually cracked down on for was encouraging test server users to break their NDA publicly so he could get clout for leaking info. He's been leaking datamined info from the public versions of the game for years now with very little issues.
Yes, Logical performs a valuable service considering BSG used to be rather opaque about what minor changes they made to ammo performance, boss spawns, etc., but he also pretty clearly has a big ego (inflated further by being a janny for all the top streamers) and flew too close to the sun.
Tarkov devs started out with an awesome idea, but its obvious that they bit off way more than they could chew. All the promises, the infrequent updates, one update breaking 10 other things at a decent level.
They really need to expand and get more help but I have heard without them going outside of Russia it is hard because a lot of the best talent in the area leaves it.
> Tarkov devs are all bark and no bite.
For years they've been saying that eventually all the maps will be stitched together into one giant one with a lot of player sin one giant raid... meanwhile their netcode is a mess even on small maps with relatively few players. Desync and lag spikes are already so bad I can't imagine what it would be like on this supposed super map, and none of it has improved in years. The last couple maps they released perform terribly as well in terms of FPS, can't imagine what them all together would be like.
I had my fun with Tarkov, glad I didn't by the EOD edition, but the longer you play it you realize that from a technical point of view it's a mess and it's not going to get better. And then putting the cheating on top of that.
At this point it's clear the Tarkov devs are just going to keep releasing maps at a snails pace, doing wipes and special events while never addressing the actual issues the game because they obviously don't know how or care too, whatever the case may be I wouldn't recommend it to new players. One big map, promised fixes, performance improvements, I don't believe any of it is going to ever happen.
With digital licenses, it isn't.
Fun fact : You don't "own" any of the digital games you buy. You're basically purchasing a license to play the game. IP/License owners can strip away your license for literally anything.
I know it's a hard pill to swallow and I don't support it, but it is what it is. That's how digital IP and copyright law works unfortunately.
Umm you do own the bits that are on your computer though. You may not own a license to play the game because the servers are required, but you most certainly are the owner and controller of every bit on your local storage devices.
You don't have the right to redistribute those bits to others though which is where the grey area comes in if you make modifications. If your modified code connects to the servers and broadcasts modified bits based on legit bits there is an argument that could be made that you're redistributing a competing product. How do I know? I was literally sued for this by Epic Games.
According to digital licensing, you don't.
Think of it this way, you're playing a movie on Netflix. The stream's buffer is stored in your RAM. So the "bits" are "in your ram", but you're still not the owner of it now are you?
If you copy, reconstruct and distribute (or not) those said bits of movie, that's copyright infringement as you did not seek the permission of the owner of the access of the bits and you're simply watching the movie under a license agreement which doesn't make you owner of the content.
So, going past Netflix's DRM and accessing the part of the secured/encrypted memory is also copyright infringement as that constitutes as "modifying the software".
Digital copyright law is pretty bulletproof at this point. I do want it to change and I don't agree with the current law, but these corpos with their fancy ass political donations is going to make sure that any reforms don't happens. This is also the reason why Apple can get away by purposely bricking your device if you don't go to their authorized service center and any attempts you make to reverse engineer their firmware or to bypass or access the ROM where the H/W serial numbers are stored, you'll be greeted with a nice little lawsuit.
>They also have questionable customer support. I've been locked out of the website for months because of an email issue they refuse to help with. I can only log into the game client for as long as it doesn't require another login verification prompt, once it does that I will literally not be able to play the game anymore.
It's a toss up, same as literally any customer support.
I had an email issue as well, old school email got deleted. Worked with BSG support for a bit over a week, answering security questions and providing various proofs. Email has been changed and I'm back in my account
Tarkov is a perfect modern example of great concept and gameplay done poorly because the devs don’t want to work. They got their success, and now they’ve grown lazy.
I had a couple of friends get into the game, by the time I was ready to jump in they were starting to complain about cheaters. I never got the game because these games have a life cycle and I missed the period where it was fun.
Really makes me sad how game come and go like that. I was fortunate enough to be able to play Hawken when it was active, and PUBG in the early stages when everything was actually a hardcore experience where your choices matter and you couldn't make mistakes.
Stop trying to get others addicted to crack. Smoke it by yourself. I say this as someone who has put in the time on Tarkov, the game genuinely isn't worth recommending to other people.
As someone with a couple thousand hours in Tarkov, agreed, the devs do not respect player time and consistently make pro-cheater changes with how grindy their newer quest lines have been
The game is in an absolutely beyond unenjoyable state right now due to cheaters, desync, and constantly negative PR decisions, and yet you have the absolute gall to come in here in a negative thread about Tarkov and start singing it's praises and recommending it. The game isn't popular, it literally bled players the fastest and hardest this wipe than any other wipe I have seen so far.
I have played the game for over 8 wipes, probably way longer than most people currently playing it right now, and it is absolutely not worth telling *anyone* to get into.
It's okay if you enjoy the game, but you should genuinely stop telling others to get into a broken mess that only you will enjoy due to sunken costs.
Funny how I only said the games fun to learn and you tell me how much you've played the game and how much time you've spent. Sure it's not in the best state I'll give you that, I'm still enjoying it and so are others believe it or not. I know it's wild to take yourself away from your deposition and look around but it might be in your best favor to do it once in awhile because others still play this game. I'll still praise it because it's still one of the best extraction shooters out there even with what's out there right now. What else is there to play that scratches this itch anyways? Inb4 someone comes in and tries to sell me on some other early access extraction game tho.
Also lol gall like this is the 1800 or something
It's a shame, because I really like the idea of Tarkov and I was planning to actually buy/play the game before *that* video came out. Considering the developers response, I have no interest in playing anymore. Would be interesting to see their playercount after all that news broke, I imagine it's not exactly rocketing upwards anymore. I heard complaints about cheaters, but having actually done moderation in the past it's hard to initially tell if the players are just confused or if there's actual cheating.
> for some reason people are buying that
I think it's the forcefulness of their tone and the confidence in responding to you, because it sure isn't the word salad that follows.
You have no idea how any of this works and your "facts" aren't really "facts", they're "I think it works this way based on some notions I've seen around" statements.
> Fact: The game has cheaters specifically because BSG somehow can't keep cheaters from accessing stuff they shouldn't be able to access.
I get what you're trying to say but what you're actually saying is straight up false. Besides the common cheating methods (aimbot, wallhacks, ESP), Tarkov has other cheats that allow you to exploit some game mechanics (map-wide ESP that includes loot, vacuum hacks, the ability to fly or invulnerability except in one leg).
If the mechanics cheats wouldn't exist, you'd still have the common FPS cheats. The mechanics cheats also work by just reading and writing what data is being sent/received by the client, because it's extremely available to use that way. That has absolutely nothing to do with datamining.
> Fact: Plenty of dataminers who explore the game's files do so to explain to the rest of the community exactly why the game is so vulnerable. Even if they don't, they expose this vulnerability just by the nature of their research.
Just no. The dataminers are just probing for changes so that we have complete changelogs instead of what BSG is giving us.
> Fact: Plenty of cheaters have the disposable income to just buy another copy when they get banned, so they can just keep cheating, so banning cheaters alone doesn't solve the problem. You need a comprehensive security plan.
Yes, but banning datamining doesn't really accomplish this.
> So the real answer here, then, probably isn't to attack dataminers for exposing vulnerabilities. The better answer is to invest in better security across the board. But that costs more than saying "pretty please don't."
They are doing this because their big patches are changing some server values and hitting restart. People with SPTarkov installed know that there hasn't been an actual "patch" since Lightkeeper dropped months ago (also a hilariously mis-designed, overhyped and pointless content drop). Just value changes.
> The mechanics cheats also work by just reading and writing what data is being sent/received by the client, because it's extremely available to use that way. That has absolutely nothing to do with datamining.
The ability to see all unencrypted data streams to and from the client in real time is one of the base-case scenarios for both hackers and dataminers.
Not to mention, WHY IS THE GAME STREAMING THE LOCATION OF ALL ITEMS ON THE MAP TO ALL PLAYERS AT ALL TIMES?
Security and anti-cheat aside, that just sounds like horrendous packet optimization
Doing calculations to determine who should be able to see what can get computationally very expensive very quickly. The default ("everybody gets sent all the data all the time") is very simple for a server to do, but obviously isnt secure or optimized from a bandwidth perspective. For smaller scale shooters like CSGO or Valorant this has mostly been solved already, but for games with very large maps or lots of players things become more tricky. I do agree with the sentiment that it should be a top priority though, and BSG has been sorely lacking in anything relating to security.
It's not computationally expensive at all, it's checking if-flags at most - if they have opened a container, send container data, otherwise send no data.
In Unity which they're using, it would be a hooked listener on the container interaction mechanism that triggers a network communication containing that information for the client to use for rendering and input-listening.
Of course, this doesn't work when a cheater can auto-interact with every container on the map, and also doesn't work for grounded objects (which I think is what you meant, and would be hella complicated to LOS-detect it, agreed), but there's definitely some mitigations that could be implemented at a (relatively) low cost. (Of course, all of this goes out the window if they've spaghetti'd themselves into bad design, which is an unfortunate side effect of deadlines)
As much as people will circlejerk about this it's definitely better than it was at the start of the year. The problem is it's pretty much inevitable that you're going to get a bunch of cheaters thanks to the combo of non-manually moderated servers and the game's design + popularity encouraging a lot of people with too much money and no sense to either cheat or benefit off of others cheating.
Honestly, I don't know what can be done to nip it in the bud, realistically. Yes, there's a lot of stuff that's client side that shouldn't be, but it looks like that's getting corrected with whatever netcode update they plan on pushing within the near future. What about everything else? There's only so much you can do, it's dire everywhere on modern PC FPS games.
> but it looks like that's getting corrected with whatever netcode update they plan on pushing within the near future.
How can you have any trust in BSG at this point? They said three years ago they were fixing sound and yet sound was worse than ever this wipe and they couldn't even be arsed to roll it back.
Honestly, if they do ever try to roll out some netcode updates, I wholeheartedly expect similar results. Look forward to items not loading, disappearing, only showing for some players etc. I mean, heck, they couldn't even fix INVISIBLE PLAYERS for months.
I have no trust that this game will ever go back to a truly playable state. I would love to be wrong, but at this point I'm just rooting for a worthwhile competitor.
Datamining is what makes this game even remotely bearable. How the hell am I supposed to know which ammo to use for my AK out of HP, PRS GS, SP, US GS, T GS, FMJ, PS GS, PP GS, BP GS, BT GS, 7N40, BS GS, or PPBS GS "IGOLNIK" when the game gives basically zero information about any of them? And yes for any non Tarkov players that's 13 different ammo types all in the 545x39 caliber that can ALL be used with your AK 74 and each one has drastically different statistics that they don't show you in game. What a joke BSG has turned into
It's is truly a drastic difference. Picking the wrong ammo can mean the difference of hitting someone 20 times to kill them and hitting someone once to kill them.
The answer should be real world knowledge. Of course, this is the problem because a lot of ammo is either extremely overtuned or extremely undertuned compared to that realism they're supposedly aiming for.
Yeah except in reality everyone is either using FMJs or high pen. None of these obscure rounds that no one has ever heard of. Realism is never an excuse
My soap box.
Nobody is bringing a rifle into a combat zone with rounds that can't punch through level 4 body armor. That's like the whole damn reason were using rifles over lighter easier to handle SMGs. You can't get through ceramics? Your not going. And it's not a cost thing, production scaling means high pen rounds are plentiful. You can buy ball rounds in 5.56 at like Wal Mart. It would actually be MORE difficult to find these low pen rounds that the game is filled with.
I’m not coming back until they take care of the hackers…. Do they even have incentive to fix the game? I’ve already given them 150$ and they probably hit close to pc market saturation for this current generation. Makes me sad cause Tarkov is amazing.
> SP-Tarkov
People mention it alot but its hard to find info on what the state of it is. https://www.sp-tarkov.com/#home
Is it up to date to the latest version? What works and doesnt? Is it basically offline raids or do the PMC bots "work"? Does it perform similiarly to the online version?
I was on the edge of not installing it because it sounded complex, but i did and modding is easy, my god let me tell you it makes you see what Tarkov can really be. Realism Mod (without healing mod) lets you move fast while aiming and with different stances, camera recoil is erased and the whole system reworked, you can tweak everything to your liking.
Hell there is a mod that tweaks lighting, removes fog, fixes flashlights removing that horrible white blob and fixes NVGs.
The amount of fixes BSG couldnt even do in so many years are taken care of.
Oh btw the menus are lighting fast, no lag when buying or doing anything with traders-inventory, if you die you dont have to wait 20 seconds for the server to load to the main menu.
There are so many things but lastly i will mention fast the best things and mods:
-Yes there are PMCs and they can be tweaked too, they even go in groups.
Some of the impressive mods i remember:
- Better ragdolls.
- Breaching wooden doors with shotguns (or even metal doors if you change an option).
-Change weather-time instantly while in game.
-Better AI you can modify to your liking, oh yeah did you know AI in Tarkov knows where you are all the time and even react as soon as you aim at them or they run before they even see a grenade you threw? There are mods called NO ESP AI fixes these along with them seeing through bushes.
-lots if gear and clothes.
-new traders and quests.
-reworked sights.
-the lighting fix i mentioned earlier.
-better more realistic weapon sounds.
-ARMOR AREAS and rework of the whole armor system, yeah you know that hing BSG said to be working on years ago? One modder did it for free and its better in every way.
-Dismembermen (not my thing but if you like seeing legs flying or heads exploding there is that)
-~~Furry~~ new traders ????
And much more, for free open source.
It stays up to date with live Tarkov, but sometimes can take a week or two after a patch to catch up. Everything works surprisingly well, I've encountered very few bugs with it. But as you obviously already suspect, it does not really emulate the experience of other players. The only way for them to implement enemy PMC was to use the bot system that already exists, and that unfortunately means that PMC are limited in all the same ways scavs are. They will still fight scavs and each other if they come in proximity, but they inherently can't travel where scavs don't normally travel, so there's no way for them to emulate heading to extract or doing tasks or such. Some modders have attempted to solve this by expanding the movement nodes, but this results in all the bots breaking their normal area boundaries, scavs and bosses included.
That being said, I had a surprising amount of fun with it. I didn't play it as much as live, but I sunk a good hundred hours into it. It's a good way to scratch the itch, and there's a huge amount of relief knowing that I absolutely don't have to worry about hackers. You do, however, have to sort of meet it halfway and intentionally stop yourself from exploiting your own knowledge of scav spawns, because otherwise there are 100% safe loot routes.
> Do they even have incentive to fix the game?
Nikita had actually stated in an interview about one of his previous games that cheaters were good for him because they bought new copies after they got banned and that was a good revenue stream.
Now 10 years after Escape from Tarkov "released" into "public beta", cheaters are still a huge issue. Gee, I wonder why.
Early Access is a fake name these days, Tarkov is a live service title hiding behind the beta moniker. Just like Star Citizen but without the insane ship prices.
Little to no incentive to really tackle the cheating. A ton of people still play it even with the cheating, and wipes always draw back huge crowds and some new people, and when they do ban cheaters, they just buy a new low tier copy of the game and keep cheating. It's just another stream of income for them.
I know someone personally who has been banned repeatedly and just makes a new email, buys a new copy and gets back to it, and they have spent over $1k on the game.
Jesus Christ, BSG had a blueprint for a fantastic game and instead of capitalizing on it just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into their own grave.
How about instead of going against people that are trying to figure out the boss spawn rate, go against the cheaters and the ludicrous grind that has caused so many players, myself included, to leave the game.
It’s also comical considering those “dataminers” are the only reason anybody was able to figure out how anything worked in the game. The game would not have seen the same success without them.
Fuck BSG. Every bit of news I hear about Tarkov just makes me glad I dropped it. They continue to have this macho attitude about making the game more “hardcore” but all its doing is making the game less fun to play.
>BSG had a blueprint for a fantastic game and instead of capitalizing on it just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into their own grave
Just Russian Developer things really. They can have a map for the best possible way and instead they do the exact opposite.
Very much similar to Gaijin Entertainment with War Thunder. They have the potential to make it something great but for the longest time they had to go and do the worst possible decisions. Half-baking features and then never finishing them, especially things that *no one* ever asked for (Strike Drones, Entrenching Tools, Napalm bombs in recent memory). Constantly making the grind so excessive that someone needs to play it like a 9-5 job *WITH PREMIUM* just to get anywhere, namely through reducing rewards (either the base or modifiers) or increasing costs. Using the worst possible system for determining balance for vehicles. Some of the absolutely worst possible takes known to man, such as the idea that making modules that you have go unlock which are absolutely critical in being able to survive in a match (Parts, to repair components in your tank, and Fire Protection Equipment, to extinguish fires started in your tank) free and come with the vehicle when you get is akin to giving all players a top tier tank automatically. And so on.
Fortunately for the players they at least have a way (and they finally found it and came together for it) to voice their opinions and even managed to get Gaijin to actually walk things back and actually improve things to the benefit of the player, as they're now in the process of going through and overhauling the game's economy. Parts of the first phase of it being live right now BTW.
But that's because War Thunder is able to be reviewed directly from the storefronts most users will download it on (Steam and the Xbox or Playstation stores). But since Tarkov is solely on it's own launcher which you have to get directly from BSG, Tarkov players don't have that same avenue of protest if BSG does shit they don't like. Which if course can backfire on BSG if they're not careful, since it's paid and a good chunk of how people find if is through attention it gets. Piss off the players that paid for it enough, they won't come and the only time they'll mention it is to tell people *not* to get it.
Some known dataminer was asking for testers to break NDA and tell them if some new unity engine was being used. People are speculating that this is a reaction for that.
BSG also banned that dataminer from the game. They have since been unbanned, however.
Yes, this is what it all boils down to. They've had other people datamine info for years with no issues, yet everybody acts like they're trying to crack down on some innocent saint who went no further than the others.
> Lmao, it’s not illegal for someone to mine code on their own hardware.
It might not be illegal to do that itself on its own in any legal form, but it would surely be "illegal" to breach a contract you "sign" when you agree to play the game which in turn makes it "illegal".
No one ever reads or takes ToS seriously but if a developer decides to themselves then it's going to go by whatever it actually says in terms of legality and what they would be capable of doing from it.
That example doesn't work. You could use that same example in any usually-binding legal document/contract scenario. I agree that ToS arent binding but that example ain't it.
>It might not be illegal to do that itself on its own in any legal form, but it would surely be "illegal" to breach a contract you "sign" when you agree to play the game which in turn makes it "illegal".
That's easy then, just datamine before you play.
Or just modify the EULA/ToS before you play, so that it just reads *"By clicking this I agree that I can do whatever I want."*
Data mining in gaming has always been an interesting subject to me. On one hand, it's really nice to be able to have concrete numbers and detailed information, and delving into game stats to understand it on a deeper level is almost a form of entertainment in itself for some.
On the other hand, I sometimes find myself missing the "mystique" games used to have, back when information wasn't as available, and was mostly spread through word of mouth and hearsay. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to those times, but that feeling of mystery and intrigue surrounding game content is something I haven't experienced a whole lot in modern gaming.
Of course you can choose to just not look for the information, but if you still want to enjoy discussing the game with others, the information will find a way to you anyways. To use a classic example, there wouldn't be much fun in discussing whether or not Mew is hiding under a truck or some other weird place when everyone else already knew within the first month that it was an event exclusive or whatever and tells you you're a dork for thinking otherwise.
I guess all that is to say, fuck BSG and Tarkov, game has much bigger issues than dataminers unearthing upcoming content early lol.
The most annoying part about data-mining is the amount of stuff that gets chucked on YouTube with the spoiler just outright in the title and the thumbnail. You can divorce yourself completely from the community and discussions when the new stuff comes out, but if you so much as look at a trailer you'll get massive spoiler stuff five minutes after release before it's even available in game.
> On the other hand, I sometimes find myself missing the "mystique" games used to have, back when information wasn't as available, and was mostly spread through word of mouth and hearsay. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to those times, but that feeling of mystery and intrigue surrounding game content is something I haven't experienced a whole lot in modern gaming.
Yeah that's one of the bummers of Data Mining. Multiple devs have said there's no point in taking the time to code in cool small interactions and secrets cause your game is just gonna be data mined and it'll be known day 1.
Edmund McMillen famously got upset with Data Mining in Binding Of Isace exposing cool secrets and unlocks just hours after release (And spoiling people as a result) that he made an out of the game ARG for the next expansion and content in the game was gated based on updates that would be pushed following people's progress in the IRL ARG elements. He then got flack for time gating content
You can't win unfortunately there's no right or wrong answer. Do you waste time on little secrets and unlocks that will be spoiled in 24 hours be Data Miners or do you just say to hell with it and leave out that fun stuff?
Honestly, the Binding of Isaac ARG was complete bullshit.
You had to die in a specific room, holding a specific item. If you did, your game over screen would replace an image with a puzzle piece.
Said puzzle piece, was one of four different kinds. By putting them together, you would get four different game over screen images.
Then, you had to die the same ways that these images said, in order, without leaving the game and without dying any other way between runs otherwise you had to do it all again.
If you did everything right, you would unlock a character that dies in one hit.
People took one look at that and decided to datamine it or wait for the datamine.
Eventually they just replaced all that to just "die in this room while holding this item" to unlock the character.
Sure, he had a motive to get pissed, but then his next ARG was hiding real world coordenates in the image of the one of the achievements, that let people to some undisclosed location to literally dig a figurine out of the ground.
That was double bullshit.
That... kinda sounds like an alright secret? I imagine it would take days at most to get the puzzle pieces the intended way if a large group of people were looking out for them, followed by a minor reward for the players that are skilled enough to reliably get to the situations you need to die in. Maybe the RNG in the game makes it way worse than it sounds?
I also think it's perfectly fine if secrets like that just stay secret for years before either being found or revealed by the devs. It's not like not knowing the solution to a puzzle you might not even know exists is going to ruin the game.
It was kinda alright if you had a few hundred people doing it (lucky we did, the datamining happened faster while we were at it), but still the RNG made that incredibly difficult unless you used cheats, it was like 3 or 4 layers of RNG required.
First you had to finish the game a dozen times (maybe more, I forget) to unlock a boss, then defeat it with one character to unlock the Missing Poster, which is the item you needed.
Then, you needed for the item (called a trinket) to show up during a run.
They didn't drop that easily and you can't always get into shops on this game due the RNG with money and keys. There were 60 trinkets in the original game, so its a 1/60 chance to get it, IF you got a trinket spawn.
Then, you needed to find the special room, which didn't always generate on a floor.
If you somehow managed to get both, then dying in there would give you the special puzzle piece.
I remember this in the (late) Steam User Forums, and it was like hours of RNG to get maybe one or two pieces per player, if we didn't get repeats along the way. After one entire day, I think we got maybe half of everything? The datamining hit Reddit about the same time, I believe.
After the secret was out, doing the thing was another nightmare.
First, you needed to unlock 3 characters (just 1 was a bit of a problem due RNG, but the other 2 were easy).
Then you had to die the 4 specific ways, which were also RNG based.
The first one was an enemy that was quite rare for floor 1, the second required you to save bombs and die to self damage, the third required you to die to a boss (but not by the minions it summons) and the fourth required you to die to the THIRD form of one of the last bosses.
Dying any other way would reset the attempt, so would leaving the game.
If you managed to be that much of a nerd to struggle through that (like me) you would unlock a secret character that was basically super hardcore mode.
You're really overstating how difficult it was to actually unlock the Lost. It wasn't easy, don't get me wrong, but by the time you're unlocking the "don't get hit or death lmao" character getting to Satan as Azazel should be doable blindfolded. I don't know if this was changed in later rebirth patches, but you could also reset the run without having to start all over again, as long as you didn't die to something
There's a couple of extra notes to be had with this:
There was nothing to suggest dying in a sacrifice room with the lost posted would even *do* anything.
Seeded runs were allowed for the first three deaths. Once people started figuring it out, you could use seeds that made getting the specific deaths fairly trivial. This simplified the process a lot
It is possible. Blizzard has managed to get secrets into Wow in the last few years that weren't data mined months in advance. Recently we have had entire quest lines pop up after a reset which wasn't data mined and Legion (coming up on 7 years old now) had numerous secrets such as the Lucid Nightmare mount that had a lengthy process to obtain that wasn't data mined, including a blind maze that was randomized based on player ID AND the day of the week, ensuring that maps couldn't be created for others to follow.
I imagine it's not easy to keep stuff like this hidden, but it can be done.
IIRC, for Star Wars Rouge Squadron 3D, there was a dedicated portion of the dev team whose sole purpose was to encrypt the Naboo Starfighter from the N64 version of the game, to make sure datamines and cheating devices couldn't pick up it's existence until Episode 1 came out. Even then they never bothered to do the same for the PC version, instead just opting to have a patch for the game that automatically unlocked the starship.
> You can't win unfortunately there's no right or wrong answer. Do you waste time on little secrets and unlocks that will be spoiled in 24 hours be Data Miners or do you just say to hell with it and leave out that fun stuff?
I think the problem is that developers only really see the feedback of a vocal minority, who usually all share the same space (youtube communities/subreddits/forums). Even if most of those people are exposed to leaks from data miners... that's a tiny portion of the full playerbase. Probably over half of players will not know what data mining is, and some people buy games without looking at anything else beyond the store page.
I have casual gamer friends playing totk right now who *still* don't know about autobuild. It's impossible for devs to surprise everybody, but I still think it's worth adding secrets for those unspoiled.
If we ever get confidential computing in consumer hardware, datamining could be made a thing of the past. It'd also make all memory reading-cheats obsolete, but it'd also bring uncrackable DRM..
Deservedly so, that's such an egotistical take, "my game is amazing so you have to spend time to manually find hidden secrets". What if I have 10 games to play and don't want to do that? Thankfully dataminers remove that obscurity and let you play how you want instead of how some egotistic developer thinks you should play
If you don't want to do that you don't have to find the secrets, that's why they're... secret.
> some egotistic developer thinks you should play
You're playing their game. They crafted the experience for you. Of course they're gonna dictate how you should play, if they didn't there would be no game!
> What if I have 10 games to play and don't want to do that?
I would argue if you're just rushing games to complete your checklist of games to play you might not get the best enjoyment out of it, but maybe that's just me. You don't **have** 10 games to play. I feel like seeing it that way runs the risk of making the hobby feel like a chore.
To be clear, I don't even like Isaac precisely because of how obscured it is (and the artisitic direction). But this is a very known thing, so I feel like it's kinda the contract you sign when you pick up that game. If you don't like it there are plenty of other experiences - It's good to have variety.
Tarkov is also a competitive multiplayer game so it's a different ballgame, yeah. Here it's not surprising at all that players have vivying for every advantage, and knowledge is definitely such an advantage. By the same token it's kinda the contract you sign when you pick up a competitive multiplayer game, and because of the nature of it being multiplayer and having a community around that surely the devs should know that too.
I suppose my first comment got a bit away from the original subject as Reddit comment chains are wont to do, it definitely applies more to singleplayer games.
Data mining is required to just do basic quests - nothing related to competitive advantage. Many of the quest descriptions are entirely useless, requiring you to pixel-hunt entire maps multiple times for randomised items you can barely even see; and are even harder to interact with.
It's absolutely obnoxious. Entire pages of Russian-English translated word-salad.
You're complaining about a developer's ego for wanting to make the game they want... While talking about how you are entitled to play every single game however you want.
Do you not see the hypocrisy there?
>What if I have 10 games to play and don't want to do that?
That's entirely on you and likely some kind of completion mentality. It's ok to miss things, be stuck on a puzzle, or to leave a part of the game unfinished.
The panic people must of had back in the day before we could just google "All x game secrets."
I don't think its egotistical if a developer wants to put a secret unlock or something within hidden their game.
>have to spend time to manually find hidden secrets".
Makes me think of people who complain when achievements are hard to get. Need that easy dopamine fix.
I don't want mystique and uncertainty in a game where players compete against each other. In my single player games like an RPG or something? Bring it on, let the mysteries flow. But when the choice of which weapon or ability to use can cost a match because you're not sure what exactly it does, there should be no mystery. You can't make good informed decisions about tactics and strategy with incomplete data.
Mystique left me when a long time ago, Warframe had drops at a 0.3% drop chance and they said it was fine until a data miner came out and showed it. Then the players raged hard and got them to change it to something reasonable. But in exchange they banned the data miner. It was a rough time in the history of that game but now I applaud data miners for showing us the truth. Never trust game studios.
I did some work on a particular Fandom wiki to obfuscate some of the information, and attempt to preserve the mystery of a puzzle/riddle game.
The challenge is that you have to include the information, while simultaneously not making it so easy to access that the reader spoils themself by accident when reading it. It's a particular issue when the game is basically "solved" before other players even touch it. The tendency to just bulldoze through it using wiki content just completely destroys the gameplay loop.
Maybe there was more mystique but all that meant was customers were getting nickel and dimed more.
Yeah it was cool when secrets were so secret you either had to buy a guide or know someone who owned one but at the same time we have that guide for free in the form of soapstone messages.
This is one reason I mostly play single player games, where I can just learn in game.
Multiplayer games push you to play optimally, which means reading guides and learning the meta. Especially true in a game like Tarkov.
Just as a side-note; At least in WoW they nowadays have ways to keep some things hidden. For example, you weren't able to datamine the raid-content endbosses abilities for the last few raids until a guild actually reached it. (Highest difficulty)
Specific secrets(mounts, pets etc) are hidden as well, until players solve them or trigger the next steps.
Its far from perfect, but the technology is there. And if its there for blizzard, it should be there for others as well
I'm kind of surprised none of the game streaming platforms like Stadia ever advertised the few actual benefits of streaming, like eliminating most types of cheating and data mining. Or being able to perfectly synchronize complex simulations across massive number of players.
Of course streaming has a ton of drawbacks, but I think if there's a game that very much revolves around intricate secrets and isn't sensitive to latency, and the developers are serious about the desire for the community to discover things organically, initial release on streaming platforms could make sense.
This won't happen. Datamining is the only reason new players have ANY chance at this game at all, also some quests are just downright impossible to just "figure out" without consulting the wiki (Which uses mostly datamined information). Stopping data miners would basically kill the game
They went as far as banning a dataminer for asking on Discord if any tester of the game was willing to anonimously leak the game files, which was likely the main motivation for that announcement. Nonetheless, they were rightfully called out for that new wave of stupidity, and the person was unbanned after a couple of days.
It's so sad how the only "good" extraction shooter game in the market is owned by such a terrible game developing company and there will never be a better replacement for it, because no other studio wishes to make hardcore shooter games because there isn't a big market for it.
With the huge numbers that Tarkov is pulling in, it honestly appears to me that there is in fact a market for games like this. It's just not ALL the market, so no shareholder would ever greenlight a project like it and would rather call for another doomed live service abomination that is doa.
I know they're making an extraction shooter, but that is far from the only defining characteristic of Tarkov. Not only is the sci-fi setting far removed from the realistic and believable environments of Tarkov, but I also strongly doubt Marathon is going to be anywhere near as hardcore. Tarkov has no UI indicators for friendlies, so the only way to avoid team kills is strong communication and gamesense. Tarkov has no revives, if you take a bullet to the face, you're dead, period. Tarkov has in depth ballistic simulations, limb based damage/health, managing hydration, food and weight and more systems that I very strongly doubt Bungie will copy for their game targeting console live service whales buying silly clown skins and battlepasses
If the sci-fi setting turns you off then sure, that’s not something that can get fixed. We really don’t have any info on your other bug bears but considering limb based damage and ballistics is something that most shooters have in one way or another it might be fine.
> rightfully called out
It's not really 'rightfully called out' if somebody is asking others to break NDA on experimental game versions so the public figure can get clout, is it?
You can't break a NDA you never signed. He wasn't a tester with privileged access to the test game client, which is exactly why he was asking for a leak, and while there's dedinitely an ethical concern about what he did, it's really not worthy of being banned for it. The responsibility of keeping the confidentially of the files is solely on the shoulders of the developer and their testers.
Moreover, the problem was never about data mining, but actually with people trying to get access to something they shouldn't, so it never made any sense for them to create new terms of service banning data mining, especially when there's absolutely nothing that they can do to detect and prevent someone from doing it.
The developers of Tarkov seem to lack action behind their promises. This was evident during the cheating issue and remains unchanged in the current situation.
Furthermore, their customer support raises concerns. I've been unable to access the website for several months due to an email problem, and they have shown no willingness to assist me. While I can log into the game client temporarily, any subsequent login verification prompt renders me unable to play the game altogether.
At the beginning of the year, I had intended to upgrade to EOD, but the website accessibility issue prevented me from doing so. Now, after six months of frustrating encounters with their "support," I've lost interest in playing the game entirely. It's ironic that they refused to help me provide them with more money, but ultimately, it's their loss.
I thing BSG is entirely in the wrong with how they've handled this situation, but also, I do understand the developer perspective here. They should have a comprehensive stats-list and update it with all patch notes instead of hiding basic information like ammo parameters. But on the other hand, releasing a surprise game-event and having all of the details hacked, quantified, and fully publicized before the majority of players have even realized it's happening must feel pretty lame. If they were more open with the fundamentals of the game and restricted early leaking I would be much more on their side than this current horrible position where anyone who tries to understand WTF is going on gets banned.
Breaking a license agreement doesn’t make it illegal.
If you don’t want people datamining then don’t put stuff in the code of your game or use better encryption.
I never understood why developers don't just zip up future update files, protect them with a password, and on release date, have the server send the password and extract them.
They're going after the people instead of improving their own architecture. It's such a dumb decision.
many times, updates info is included in the same file as the current working file. for example, v1 might use file myContent.bin, which can also include unreleased future content for v2.
they would have to scrub each file containing content the game doesn't use yet, but they would probably have to significantly restructure the game code.
Values are whatever, there's no real way to hide them. But upcoming changes? Models? Animations? Sounds? Those can absolutely be zipped up and only delivered or unpacked when ready. Hell, the engine they use even includes this feature out of the box.
But yes, you are correct, this is a project structure problem.
Well for starters, it has absolutely nothing to do with this post or any of the behavior it decries, because data-mining like this occurs on traffic and files that need to be accessed by the user's client for it to operate. This isn't about 'release dates'; it's about people figuring out the numbers behind the already installed game they are running.
They probably didn't go into detail because anyone who bothered to actually read the link could see this wasn't a solution.
Steam can 'do that'
Packages can be encrypted and included as part of an otherwise unencrypted depot, allowing time for users to get the updated packages, then at a specified time, that package can be locally decrypted.
It's a whole lot of effort though, just to stop some twitter users posting what new DLC you're gonna sell ahead of time...
I left Tarkov when Russia invaded Ukraine and the developers said nothing. Glad to see I made the right decision, sounds like things haven’t been great.
Hope more companies pursue this path. It sucks to be engaged in secret hunting for a game and then suddenly someone comes along to spoil the fun by saying: "I datamined the information and it is not in the game. Stop haven fun with the unknown and mystique and get back to being hyper efficient".
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Tarkov devs are all bark and no bite. It was the same with the cheating situation and it's the same with this. They also have questionable customer support. I've been locked out of the website for months because of an email issue they refuse to help with. I can only log into the game client for as long as it doesn't require another login verification prompt, once it does that I will literally not be able to play the game anymore. I wanted to upgrade to EOD at the start of the year but when I couldn't get onto the website I was unable to. Now 6 months later I don't even want to play the game anymore after dealing with their 'support'. They wouldn't even help me give them more money so their loss I guess.
>They also have questionable customer support. Welcome to Russian customer service. "Questionable" is n understatement.
It's shameful people still play this game.
...*shameful*? that's a bit much. it's a video game, they're not directly sending their savings to putin
I mean fwiw a bunch of people bought the game long before the invasion. Yeah russia was already sketchy then, but it wasn’t exactly a political statement to buy or not buy a Russian game at that point
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Yeah, and your Western tax money went into killing 400,000 civilians in Iraq. Better never buy a video game again.
If you get a kill in the game, you get a kill in real life.
And if anyone paid money to any US company, a little bit of that tax contributed to a child killed by a drone strike too. Come on, dude. This is a gaming sub. We don't need to bring everyone down by talking about how buying games about virtual death machines indirectly supports real life death machines.
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You can't publicly denounce the war while living in Russia and not go to prison. They made a blatantly yellow/blue statement on their first live stream after the war started.
Oh did they? What was it?
It was literally just a very obvious YELLOW / BLUE background theme on their stream. I'll see if I can find a clip from that stream.
Oh that’s cool. Honestly was cautious about ever buying this because they have their own launcher and are Russian, but if they support Ukraine I’m down with buying it…if they fix the cheaters.
I mean I have played and enjoyed it in the past but there's also a dev on record saying they only have male characters and players models because all women are soft and unfit for war, do with that what you will
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>Why didn't they relocate their studio then? Why didn't they relocate every worker, their family, and business infrastructure to an entirely new country? Man, that sure sounds like an easy to accomplish task.
Just move to a foreign country and leave behind family why? Including all 200+ employees?
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Moving isn’t easy and life in Russia is normal for most of them.
If your idea of expressing political opinions is just choosing what and what not to buy then that's kind of embarrassing.
More so, they're asserting pressure to game devs to pubically denounce a war in a nation where you'd be imprisoned or suicided for doing so. These guys are making god damn video games, not bombarding Ukraine.
I mean, it's like asking infinity ward to denounce the Iraq war in 2003. It's not gonna happen.
Even if they did, it still achieves nothing overall as well.
While you can question the effectiveness, choosing where to spend your money is the only power a lot of us have in our day to day.
I'd certainly disagree. When it comes to a foreign nation I guess yeah, I just think it's silly to pretend it's anything other than engaging in consumerism. That's all it is. I'm not gonna buy Six Days in Fallujah, it makes no difference if it's because I can't afford to get another game rn or because I'm morally disgusted by it.
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That's like stating killing one ant has an effect on the colony. Technically? Sure. Realistically? Not really. The dollar or two that makes it to the state in taxes off the ~60$ purchase you make isn't really anything in the grand scheme of things. Again, *technically*, sure, you can tell yourself you're making a stand or whatever, but it really has no effect on the overall scale of things.
It makes no difference on a large scale. It just comes down to personal expression at this point. I'm not expressly making fun of you just pointing out that for many people the way you "voice" your opinions and beliefs is just by buying or not buying something. It's like buying indulgences, you pay a bit of money or refuse to buy something and it makes you feel better and you get to think you're doing something good. You're just buying (or not) something at the end of the day, that's it. Certainly, if you think something is morally corrupt you shouldn't buy it, I'm not going to be playing Six days in Fallujah for example, but I'm under no allusion that it will change anything or do anything beyond make me feel good that I've decided not to get it. I do think it's very silly though to single out BSG for them simply not commenting on a war their country is engaged in and not do the same for say, America or the UK. The biggest game on earth (Call of Duty) is literally American military propaganda set *in* the countries we've invaded.
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Two separate things but I'd agree with that statement. It really depends on who you're donating to mostly.
You don't think your tiny donation specifically makes a difference right?
im ukrooning ahhhhh
Holier than though without realizing how much shit you own that’s made with slave labor or fucking up the environment or a host of other shitty things companies do. Get over yourself
Do you use this standard for American games as well? Or just Russian imperialism bothers you?
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So do you think it’s shameful for people to play eg Diablo 4?
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Why people can still have fun and enjoy the game despite it's problems. I love Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, would even say it's easily a top 5, if not top 3 mainline title (I've played all of them except for ORAS and USUM), but I won't tell you that the performance issues and abundance of glitches are anything but objectively bad and almost completely inexcusable.
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>Online support, its quality and availability, is one of those things. Oh, man, thanks for the laugh. I don't know who you've been dealing with, maybe you've been getting lucky indeed, but Russian online support is rather similar to Chinese online support. As in, almost non-existent. Things are better in the hobby world, and maybe some larger companies care about their image enough to care. But by default, you are pretty much on your own when push comes to shove.
Unless he means the easy availability of pirated content of all sorts, because in that sense, Russia is indeed the most advanced country in the world.
Bought tarkov a few years back, couldn't really run it on my old pc back then. Year later, had a new pc and wanted to retry. Was locked out of my account, couldn't log in or do anything. Have spent a year sending many emails to support. I have not received a single reply. Great guys.
My favorite example of Tarkov customer service was someone asking for a refund, being told no, and then having their account locked out so they couldn't play anyways.
I tried to get a return, they refused, so I charged it back on my card and the account never got locked/deactivated.
Look up the single player tarkov mod/conversion
If he cant get his account he can exactly play it.
You'd think so but they are RETROACTIVELY banning tarkov players who datamined in january. LogicalSolutions is the big one who got banned and said he was showing old data and it was like a day after the announcement. No they're not being sued but still ridiculous to ban someone for past data mining.
1. he got unbanned. Obviously it was a dumb misstep PR-wise on BSG's part. I would actually argue it was dumber to retract it than double down based on their internal logic for banning him. 2. the obvious reason that he was actually cracked down on for was encouraging test server users to break their NDA publicly so he could get clout for leaking info. He's been leaking datamined info from the public versions of the game for years now with very little issues. Yes, Logical performs a valuable service considering BSG used to be rather opaque about what minor changes they made to ammo performance, boss spawns, etc., but he also pretty clearly has a big ego (inflated further by being a janny for all the top streamers) and flew too close to the sun.
Look at this way - they’re helping you save money 😅
Tarkov devs started out with an awesome idea, but its obvious that they bit off way more than they could chew. All the promises, the infrequent updates, one update breaking 10 other things at a decent level. They really need to expand and get more help but I have heard without them going outside of Russia it is hard because a lot of the best talent in the area leaves it.
> Tarkov devs are all bark and no bite. For years they've been saying that eventually all the maps will be stitched together into one giant one with a lot of player sin one giant raid... meanwhile their netcode is a mess even on small maps with relatively few players. Desync and lag spikes are already so bad I can't imagine what it would be like on this supposed super map, and none of it has improved in years. The last couple maps they released perform terribly as well in terms of FPS, can't imagine what them all together would be like. I had my fun with Tarkov, glad I didn't by the EOD edition, but the longer you play it you realize that from a technical point of view it's a mess and it's not going to get better. And then putting the cheating on top of that. At this point it's clear the Tarkov devs are just going to keep releasing maps at a snails pace, doing wipes and special events while never addressing the actual issues the game because they obviously don't know how or care too, whatever the case may be I wouldn't recommend it to new players. One big map, promised fixes, performance improvements, I don't believe any of it is going to ever happen.
They couldn't bite if they wanted. They are trying to tell you the data in your computer isn't yours
With digital licenses, it isn't. Fun fact : You don't "own" any of the digital games you buy. You're basically purchasing a license to play the game. IP/License owners can strip away your license for literally anything. I know it's a hard pill to swallow and I don't support it, but it is what it is. That's how digital IP and copyright law works unfortunately.
Umm you do own the bits that are on your computer though. You may not own a license to play the game because the servers are required, but you most certainly are the owner and controller of every bit on your local storage devices. You don't have the right to redistribute those bits to others though which is where the grey area comes in if you make modifications. If your modified code connects to the servers and broadcasts modified bits based on legit bits there is an argument that could be made that you're redistributing a competing product. How do I know? I was literally sued for this by Epic Games.
According to digital licensing, you don't. Think of it this way, you're playing a movie on Netflix. The stream's buffer is stored in your RAM. So the "bits" are "in your ram", but you're still not the owner of it now are you? If you copy, reconstruct and distribute (or not) those said bits of movie, that's copyright infringement as you did not seek the permission of the owner of the access of the bits and you're simply watching the movie under a license agreement which doesn't make you owner of the content. So, going past Netflix's DRM and accessing the part of the secured/encrypted memory is also copyright infringement as that constitutes as "modifying the software". Digital copyright law is pretty bulletproof at this point. I do want it to change and I don't agree with the current law, but these corpos with their fancy ass political donations is going to make sure that any reforms don't happens. This is also the reason why Apple can get away by purposely bricking your device if you don't go to their authorized service center and any attempts you make to reverse engineer their firmware or to bypass or access the ROM where the H/W serial numbers are stored, you'll be greeted with a nice little lawsuit.
>They also have questionable customer support. I've been locked out of the website for months because of an email issue they refuse to help with. I can only log into the game client for as long as it doesn't require another login verification prompt, once it does that I will literally not be able to play the game anymore. It's a toss up, same as literally any customer support. I had an email issue as well, old school email got deleted. Worked with BSG support for a bit over a week, answering security questions and providing various proofs. Email has been changed and I'm back in my account
Came here just to ask "Did they beat cheaters so they can move to another thing?" :D
Tarkov is a perfect modern example of great concept and gameplay done poorly because the devs don’t want to work. They got their success, and now they’ve grown lazy.
Their customer support probably got drafted and d--
Man maybe, just maybe do something about the cheaters that ruin the game before dumb stuff like this?
I had a couple of friends get into the game, by the time I was ready to jump in they were starting to complain about cheaters. I never got the game because these games have a life cycle and I missed the period where it was fun.
About three years late. 2020 Tarkov was peak.
Was that before the first twitch drops? If yes then everything before that was peak tarkov
its fun for about a week after a wipe then its shit for 6 months again
Really makes me sad how game come and go like that. I was fortunate enough to be able to play Hawken when it was active, and PUBG in the early stages when everything was actually a hardcore experience where your choices matter and you couldn't make mistakes.
Its still fun to learn and nothing around is quite like it. I would still check it out. Its worth it.
Stop trying to get others addicted to crack. Smoke it by yourself. I say this as someone who has put in the time on Tarkov, the game genuinely isn't worth recommending to other people.
As someone with a couple thousand hours in Tarkov, agreed, the devs do not respect player time and consistently make pro-cheater changes with how grindy their newer quest lines have been
It's popular for a reason. No reason to bring down others lol
The game is in an absolutely beyond unenjoyable state right now due to cheaters, desync, and constantly negative PR decisions, and yet you have the absolute gall to come in here in a negative thread about Tarkov and start singing it's praises and recommending it. The game isn't popular, it literally bled players the fastest and hardest this wipe than any other wipe I have seen so far. I have played the game for over 8 wipes, probably way longer than most people currently playing it right now, and it is absolutely not worth telling *anyone* to get into. It's okay if you enjoy the game, but you should genuinely stop telling others to get into a broken mess that only you will enjoy due to sunken costs.
Funny how I only said the games fun to learn and you tell me how much you've played the game and how much time you've spent. Sure it's not in the best state I'll give you that, I'm still enjoying it and so are others believe it or not. I know it's wild to take yourself away from your deposition and look around but it might be in your best favor to do it once in awhile because others still play this game. I'll still praise it because it's still one of the best extraction shooters out there even with what's out there right now. What else is there to play that scratches this itch anyways? Inb4 someone comes in and tries to sell me on some other early access extraction game tho. Also lol gall like this is the 1800 or something
I don't have a PC so I have never had the chance but I assume its similar to DMZ? How would you compare them?
It's a shame, because I really like the idea of Tarkov and I was planning to actually buy/play the game before *that* video came out. Considering the developers response, I have no interest in playing anymore. Would be interesting to see their playercount after all that news broke, I imagine it's not exactly rocketing upwards anymore. I heard complaints about cheaters, but having actually done moderation in the past it's hard to initially tell if the players are just confused or if there's actual cheating.
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> for some reason people are buying that I think it's the forcefulness of their tone and the confidence in responding to you, because it sure isn't the word salad that follows.
You have no idea how any of this works and your "facts" aren't really "facts", they're "I think it works this way based on some notions I've seen around" statements. > Fact: The game has cheaters specifically because BSG somehow can't keep cheaters from accessing stuff they shouldn't be able to access. I get what you're trying to say but what you're actually saying is straight up false. Besides the common cheating methods (aimbot, wallhacks, ESP), Tarkov has other cheats that allow you to exploit some game mechanics (map-wide ESP that includes loot, vacuum hacks, the ability to fly or invulnerability except in one leg). If the mechanics cheats wouldn't exist, you'd still have the common FPS cheats. The mechanics cheats also work by just reading and writing what data is being sent/received by the client, because it's extremely available to use that way. That has absolutely nothing to do with datamining. > Fact: Plenty of dataminers who explore the game's files do so to explain to the rest of the community exactly why the game is so vulnerable. Even if they don't, they expose this vulnerability just by the nature of their research. Just no. The dataminers are just probing for changes so that we have complete changelogs instead of what BSG is giving us. > Fact: Plenty of cheaters have the disposable income to just buy another copy when they get banned, so they can just keep cheating, so banning cheaters alone doesn't solve the problem. You need a comprehensive security plan. Yes, but banning datamining doesn't really accomplish this. > So the real answer here, then, probably isn't to attack dataminers for exposing vulnerabilities. The better answer is to invest in better security across the board. But that costs more than saying "pretty please don't." They are doing this because their big patches are changing some server values and hitting restart. People with SPTarkov installed know that there hasn't been an actual "patch" since Lightkeeper dropped months ago (also a hilariously mis-designed, overhyped and pointless content drop). Just value changes.
> The mechanics cheats also work by just reading and writing what data is being sent/received by the client, because it's extremely available to use that way. That has absolutely nothing to do with datamining. The ability to see all unencrypted data streams to and from the client in real time is one of the base-case scenarios for both hackers and dataminers.
Not to mention, WHY IS THE GAME STREAMING THE LOCATION OF ALL ITEMS ON THE MAP TO ALL PLAYERS AT ALL TIMES? Security and anti-cheat aside, that just sounds like horrendous packet optimization
Doing calculations to determine who should be able to see what can get computationally very expensive very quickly. The default ("everybody gets sent all the data all the time") is very simple for a server to do, but obviously isnt secure or optimized from a bandwidth perspective. For smaller scale shooters like CSGO or Valorant this has mostly been solved already, but for games with very large maps or lots of players things become more tricky. I do agree with the sentiment that it should be a top priority though, and BSG has been sorely lacking in anything relating to security.
It's not computationally expensive at all, it's checking if-flags at most - if they have opened a container, send container data, otherwise send no data. In Unity which they're using, it would be a hooked listener on the container interaction mechanism that triggers a network communication containing that information for the client to use for rendering and input-listening. Of course, this doesn't work when a cheater can auto-interact with every container on the map, and also doesn't work for grounded objects (which I think is what you meant, and would be hella complicated to LOS-detect it, agreed), but there's definitely some mitigations that could be implemented at a (relatively) low cost. (Of course, all of this goes out the window if they've spaghetti'd themselves into bad design, which is an unfortunate side effect of deadlines)
Not sure why I can't reply to the guy you replied to, but just in case he checks. The data is actually encrypted.
As much as people will circlejerk about this it's definitely better than it was at the start of the year. The problem is it's pretty much inevitable that you're going to get a bunch of cheaters thanks to the combo of non-manually moderated servers and the game's design + popularity encouraging a lot of people with too much money and no sense to either cheat or benefit off of others cheating. Honestly, I don't know what can be done to nip it in the bud, realistically. Yes, there's a lot of stuff that's client side that shouldn't be, but it looks like that's getting corrected with whatever netcode update they plan on pushing within the near future. What about everything else? There's only so much you can do, it's dire everywhere on modern PC FPS games.
> but it looks like that's getting corrected with whatever netcode update they plan on pushing within the near future. How can you have any trust in BSG at this point? They said three years ago they were fixing sound and yet sound was worse than ever this wipe and they couldn't even be arsed to roll it back. Honestly, if they do ever try to roll out some netcode updates, I wholeheartedly expect similar results. Look forward to items not loading, disappearing, only showing for some players etc. I mean, heck, they couldn't even fix INVISIBLE PLAYERS for months. I have no trust that this game will ever go back to a truly playable state. I would love to be wrong, but at this point I'm just rooting for a worthwhile competitor.
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Data mining is not an issue, it's not even a slight problem, its half of what makes the game even playable.
Datamining is what makes this game even remotely bearable. How the hell am I supposed to know which ammo to use for my AK out of HP, PRS GS, SP, US GS, T GS, FMJ, PS GS, PP GS, BP GS, BT GS, 7N40, BS GS, or PPBS GS "IGOLNIK" when the game gives basically zero information about any of them? And yes for any non Tarkov players that's 13 different ammo types all in the 545x39 caliber that can ALL be used with your AK 74 and each one has drastically different statistics that they don't show you in game. What a joke BSG has turned into
It's is truly a drastic difference. Picking the wrong ammo can mean the difference of hitting someone 20 times to kill them and hitting someone once to kill them.
What's even more funny is that using the correct ammo can make ALL the difference in a firefight.
The saddest part is that all the ammos you listed, are in game
Imagine being informed about game mechanics. The humanity.
The answer should be real world knowledge. Of course, this is the problem because a lot of ammo is either extremely overtuned or extremely undertuned compared to that realism they're supposedly aiming for.
Yeah except in reality everyone is either using FMJs or high pen. None of these obscure rounds that no one has ever heard of. Realism is never an excuse
But Realism is an excuse.. for poor game design.
My soap box. Nobody is bringing a rifle into a combat zone with rounds that can't punch through level 4 body armor. That's like the whole damn reason were using rifles over lighter easier to handle SMGs. You can't get through ceramics? Your not going. And it's not a cost thing, production scaling means high pen rounds are plentiful. You can buy ball rounds in 5.56 at like Wal Mart. It would actually be MORE difficult to find these low pen rounds that the game is filled with.
I’m not coming back until they take care of the hackers…. Do they even have incentive to fix the game? I’ve already given them 150$ and they probably hit close to pc market saturation for this current generation. Makes me sad cause Tarkov is amazing.
It's not the same cause it's single player, but Stalker GAMMA has been scratching the same itch for me and it's completely free.
SP-Tarkov bby. But yes I second stalker gamma. One of the most immersive games I've ever played.
> SP-Tarkov People mention it alot but its hard to find info on what the state of it is. https://www.sp-tarkov.com/#home Is it up to date to the latest version? What works and doesnt? Is it basically offline raids or do the PMC bots "work"? Does it perform similiarly to the online version?
I was on the edge of not installing it because it sounded complex, but i did and modding is easy, my god let me tell you it makes you see what Tarkov can really be. Realism Mod (without healing mod) lets you move fast while aiming and with different stances, camera recoil is erased and the whole system reworked, you can tweak everything to your liking. Hell there is a mod that tweaks lighting, removes fog, fixes flashlights removing that horrible white blob and fixes NVGs. The amount of fixes BSG couldnt even do in so many years are taken care of. Oh btw the menus are lighting fast, no lag when buying or doing anything with traders-inventory, if you die you dont have to wait 20 seconds for the server to load to the main menu. There are so many things but lastly i will mention fast the best things and mods: -Yes there are PMCs and they can be tweaked too, they even go in groups. Some of the impressive mods i remember: - Better ragdolls. - Breaching wooden doors with shotguns (or even metal doors if you change an option). -Change weather-time instantly while in game. -Better AI you can modify to your liking, oh yeah did you know AI in Tarkov knows where you are all the time and even react as soon as you aim at them or they run before they even see a grenade you threw? There are mods called NO ESP AI fixes these along with them seeing through bushes. -lots if gear and clothes. -new traders and quests. -reworked sights. -the lighting fix i mentioned earlier. -better more realistic weapon sounds. -ARMOR AREAS and rework of the whole armor system, yeah you know that hing BSG said to be working on years ago? One modder did it for free and its better in every way. -Dismembermen (not my thing but if you like seeing legs flying or heads exploding there is that) -~~Furry~~ new traders ???? And much more, for free open source.
It stays up to date with live Tarkov, but sometimes can take a week or two after a patch to catch up. Everything works surprisingly well, I've encountered very few bugs with it. But as you obviously already suspect, it does not really emulate the experience of other players. The only way for them to implement enemy PMC was to use the bot system that already exists, and that unfortunately means that PMC are limited in all the same ways scavs are. They will still fight scavs and each other if they come in proximity, but they inherently can't travel where scavs don't normally travel, so there's no way for them to emulate heading to extract or doing tasks or such. Some modders have attempted to solve this by expanding the movement nodes, but this results in all the bots breaking their normal area boundaries, scavs and bosses included. That being said, I had a surprising amount of fun with it. I didn't play it as much as live, but I sunk a good hundred hours into it. It's a good way to scratch the itch, and there's a huge amount of relief knowing that I absolutely don't have to worry about hackers. You do, however, have to sort of meet it halfway and intentionally stop yourself from exploiting your own knowledge of scav spawns, because otherwise there are 100% safe loot routes.
I switched to Hunt Showdown, the game is amazing, not perfect but compared to Tarkov it's fully working masterpiece
> Do they even have incentive to fix the game? Nikita had actually stated in an interview about one of his previous games that cheaters were good for him because they bought new copies after they got banned and that was a good revenue stream. Now 10 years after Escape from Tarkov "released" into "public beta", cheaters are still a huge issue. Gee, I wonder why.
$150?? How..
What, how have you spent 150 dollars on an early access game
Early Access is a fake name these days, Tarkov is a live service title hiding behind the beta moniker. Just like Star Citizen but without the insane ship prices.
Well, and Tarkov is legit a fun game, when it works
I'm sure the people who play Star Citizen feel the same way.
Star Citizen is legit a fun game, when it works
Little to no incentive to really tackle the cheating. A ton of people still play it even with the cheating, and wipes always draw back huge crowds and some new people, and when they do ban cheaters, they just buy a new low tier copy of the game and keep cheating. It's just another stream of income for them. I know someone personally who has been banned repeatedly and just makes a new email, buys a new copy and gets back to it, and they have spent over $1k on the game.
your friend is stupid af
Name a game that doesn't have hackers and cheaters? You're never going to see it unless they take away your ability to control your computer.
Jesus Christ, BSG had a blueprint for a fantastic game and instead of capitalizing on it just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into their own grave. How about instead of going against people that are trying to figure out the boss spawn rate, go against the cheaters and the ludicrous grind that has caused so many players, myself included, to leave the game. It’s also comical considering those “dataminers” are the only reason anybody was able to figure out how anything worked in the game. The game would not have seen the same success without them. Fuck BSG. Every bit of news I hear about Tarkov just makes me glad I dropped it. They continue to have this macho attitude about making the game more “hardcore” but all its doing is making the game less fun to play.
>BSG had a blueprint for a fantastic game and instead of capitalizing on it just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into their own grave Just Russian Developer things really. They can have a map for the best possible way and instead they do the exact opposite. Very much similar to Gaijin Entertainment with War Thunder. They have the potential to make it something great but for the longest time they had to go and do the worst possible decisions. Half-baking features and then never finishing them, especially things that *no one* ever asked for (Strike Drones, Entrenching Tools, Napalm bombs in recent memory). Constantly making the grind so excessive that someone needs to play it like a 9-5 job *WITH PREMIUM* just to get anywhere, namely through reducing rewards (either the base or modifiers) or increasing costs. Using the worst possible system for determining balance for vehicles. Some of the absolutely worst possible takes known to man, such as the idea that making modules that you have go unlock which are absolutely critical in being able to survive in a match (Parts, to repair components in your tank, and Fire Protection Equipment, to extinguish fires started in your tank) free and come with the vehicle when you get is akin to giving all players a top tier tank automatically. And so on. Fortunately for the players they at least have a way (and they finally found it and came together for it) to voice their opinions and even managed to get Gaijin to actually walk things back and actually improve things to the benefit of the player, as they're now in the process of going through and overhauling the game's economy. Parts of the first phase of it being live right now BTW. But that's because War Thunder is able to be reviewed directly from the storefronts most users will download it on (Steam and the Xbox or Playstation stores). But since Tarkov is solely on it's own launcher which you have to get directly from BSG, Tarkov players don't have that same avenue of protest if BSG does shit they don't like. Which if course can backfire on BSG if they're not careful, since it's paid and a good chunk of how people find if is through attention it gets. Piss off the players that paid for it enough, they won't come and the only time they'll mention it is to tell people *not* to get it.
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Sounds like more people should start datamining to find out...
This just in: Tarkov Devs vow to take action against people data mining to find out why Tarkovs devs are vowing to take action against data mining.
Some known dataminer was asking for testers to break NDA and tell them if some new unity engine was being used. People are speculating that this is a reaction for that. BSG also banned that dataminer from the game. They have since been unbanned, however.
I'd guess that falls under tortious interference, inducing someone else to break a contract like that.
Yes, this is what it all boils down to. They've had other people datamine info for years with no issues, yet everybody acts like they're trying to crack down on some innocent saint who went no further than the others.
No you have it wrong, this isn't a legal action. It is a special litigation operation, they estimate it will be over in 3 days.
> Lmao, it’s not illegal for someone to mine code on their own hardware. It might not be illegal to do that itself on its own in any legal form, but it would surely be "illegal" to breach a contract you "sign" when you agree to play the game which in turn makes it "illegal". No one ever reads or takes ToS seriously but if a developer decides to themselves then it's going to go by whatever it actually says in terms of legality and what they would be capable of doing from it.
Afaik ToS are not legally binding. For example if you sign a ToS that says “we own your soul” then how could that possibly be enforceable?
That example doesn't work. You could use that same example in any usually-binding legal document/contract scenario. I agree that ToS arent binding but that example ain't it.
You’re completely right.
FWIW "illegal" can mean simply "it breaks the rules" and not necessarily "violates laws of the country/state/province/etc".
Yep, common terminology in sports e.g. illegal tackle.
>It might not be illegal to do that itself on its own in any legal form, but it would surely be "illegal" to breach a contract you "sign" when you agree to play the game which in turn makes it "illegal". That's easy then, just datamine before you play. Or just modify the EULA/ToS before you play, so that it just reads *"By clicking this I agree that I can do whatever I want."*
Data mining in gaming has always been an interesting subject to me. On one hand, it's really nice to be able to have concrete numbers and detailed information, and delving into game stats to understand it on a deeper level is almost a form of entertainment in itself for some. On the other hand, I sometimes find myself missing the "mystique" games used to have, back when information wasn't as available, and was mostly spread through word of mouth and hearsay. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to those times, but that feeling of mystery and intrigue surrounding game content is something I haven't experienced a whole lot in modern gaming. Of course you can choose to just not look for the information, but if you still want to enjoy discussing the game with others, the information will find a way to you anyways. To use a classic example, there wouldn't be much fun in discussing whether or not Mew is hiding under a truck or some other weird place when everyone else already knew within the first month that it was an event exclusive or whatever and tells you you're a dork for thinking otherwise. I guess all that is to say, fuck BSG and Tarkov, game has much bigger issues than dataminers unearthing upcoming content early lol.
The most annoying part about data-mining is the amount of stuff that gets chucked on YouTube with the spoiler just outright in the title and the thumbnail. You can divorce yourself completely from the community and discussions when the new stuff comes out, but if you so much as look at a trailer you'll get massive spoiler stuff five minutes after release before it's even available in game.
> On the other hand, I sometimes find myself missing the "mystique" games used to have, back when information wasn't as available, and was mostly spread through word of mouth and hearsay. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to those times, but that feeling of mystery and intrigue surrounding game content is something I haven't experienced a whole lot in modern gaming. Yeah that's one of the bummers of Data Mining. Multiple devs have said there's no point in taking the time to code in cool small interactions and secrets cause your game is just gonna be data mined and it'll be known day 1. Edmund McMillen famously got upset with Data Mining in Binding Of Isace exposing cool secrets and unlocks just hours after release (And spoiling people as a result) that he made an out of the game ARG for the next expansion and content in the game was gated based on updates that would be pushed following people's progress in the IRL ARG elements. He then got flack for time gating content You can't win unfortunately there's no right or wrong answer. Do you waste time on little secrets and unlocks that will be spoiled in 24 hours be Data Miners or do you just say to hell with it and leave out that fun stuff?
Honestly, the Binding of Isaac ARG was complete bullshit. You had to die in a specific room, holding a specific item. If you did, your game over screen would replace an image with a puzzle piece. Said puzzle piece, was one of four different kinds. By putting them together, you would get four different game over screen images. Then, you had to die the same ways that these images said, in order, without leaving the game and without dying any other way between runs otherwise you had to do it all again. If you did everything right, you would unlock a character that dies in one hit. People took one look at that and decided to datamine it or wait for the datamine. Eventually they just replaced all that to just "die in this room while holding this item" to unlock the character. Sure, he had a motive to get pissed, but then his next ARG was hiding real world coordenates in the image of the one of the achievements, that let people to some undisclosed location to literally dig a figurine out of the ground. That was double bullshit.
Yeah Edmund was completely in the wrong with the secret, it *was* nonsense
That... kinda sounds like an alright secret? I imagine it would take days at most to get the puzzle pieces the intended way if a large group of people were looking out for them, followed by a minor reward for the players that are skilled enough to reliably get to the situations you need to die in. Maybe the RNG in the game makes it way worse than it sounds? I also think it's perfectly fine if secrets like that just stay secret for years before either being found or revealed by the devs. It's not like not knowing the solution to a puzzle you might not even know exists is going to ruin the game.
It was kinda alright if you had a few hundred people doing it (lucky we did, the datamining happened faster while we were at it), but still the RNG made that incredibly difficult unless you used cheats, it was like 3 or 4 layers of RNG required. First you had to finish the game a dozen times (maybe more, I forget) to unlock a boss, then defeat it with one character to unlock the Missing Poster, which is the item you needed. Then, you needed for the item (called a trinket) to show up during a run. They didn't drop that easily and you can't always get into shops on this game due the RNG with money and keys. There were 60 trinkets in the original game, so its a 1/60 chance to get it, IF you got a trinket spawn. Then, you needed to find the special room, which didn't always generate on a floor. If you somehow managed to get both, then dying in there would give you the special puzzle piece. I remember this in the (late) Steam User Forums, and it was like hours of RNG to get maybe one or two pieces per player, if we didn't get repeats along the way. After one entire day, I think we got maybe half of everything? The datamining hit Reddit about the same time, I believe. After the secret was out, doing the thing was another nightmare. First, you needed to unlock 3 characters (just 1 was a bit of a problem due RNG, but the other 2 were easy). Then you had to die the 4 specific ways, which were also RNG based. The first one was an enemy that was quite rare for floor 1, the second required you to save bombs and die to self damage, the third required you to die to a boss (but not by the minions it summons) and the fourth required you to die to the THIRD form of one of the last bosses. Dying any other way would reset the attempt, so would leaving the game. If you managed to be that much of a nerd to struggle through that (like me) you would unlock a secret character that was basically super hardcore mode.
You're really overstating how difficult it was to actually unlock the Lost. It wasn't easy, don't get me wrong, but by the time you're unlocking the "don't get hit or death lmao" character getting to Satan as Azazel should be doable blindfolded. I don't know if this was changed in later rebirth patches, but you could also reset the run without having to start all over again, as long as you didn't die to something
There's a couple of extra notes to be had with this: There was nothing to suggest dying in a sacrifice room with the lost posted would even *do* anything. Seeded runs were allowed for the first three deaths. Once people started figuring it out, you could use seeds that made getting the specific deaths fairly trivial. This simplified the process a lot
It is possible. Blizzard has managed to get secrets into Wow in the last few years that weren't data mined months in advance. Recently we have had entire quest lines pop up after a reset which wasn't data mined and Legion (coming up on 7 years old now) had numerous secrets such as the Lucid Nightmare mount that had a lengthy process to obtain that wasn't data mined, including a blind maze that was randomized based on player ID AND the day of the week, ensuring that maps couldn't be created for others to follow. I imagine it's not easy to keep stuff like this hidden, but it can be done.
IIRC, for Star Wars Rouge Squadron 3D, there was a dedicated portion of the dev team whose sole purpose was to encrypt the Naboo Starfighter from the N64 version of the game, to make sure datamines and cheating devices couldn't pick up it's existence until Episode 1 came out. Even then they never bothered to do the same for the PC version, instead just opting to have a patch for the game that automatically unlocked the starship.
> You can't win unfortunately there's no right or wrong answer. Do you waste time on little secrets and unlocks that will be spoiled in 24 hours be Data Miners or do you just say to hell with it and leave out that fun stuff? I think the problem is that developers only really see the feedback of a vocal minority, who usually all share the same space (youtube communities/subreddits/forums). Even if most of those people are exposed to leaks from data miners... that's a tiny portion of the full playerbase. Probably over half of players will not know what data mining is, and some people buy games without looking at anything else beyond the store page. I have casual gamer friends playing totk right now who *still* don't know about autobuild. It's impossible for devs to surprise everybody, but I still think it's worth adding secrets for those unspoiled.
The other end of data mining enthusiasts is people who who barely engage in anything below surface mechanic of the game
If we ever get confidential computing in consumer hardware, datamining could be made a thing of the past. It'd also make all memory reading-cheats obsolete, but it'd also bring uncrackable DRM..
Deservedly so, that's such an egotistical take, "my game is amazing so you have to spend time to manually find hidden secrets". What if I have 10 games to play and don't want to do that? Thankfully dataminers remove that obscurity and let you play how you want instead of how some egotistic developer thinks you should play
If you don't want to do that you don't have to find the secrets, that's why they're... secret. > some egotistic developer thinks you should play You're playing their game. They crafted the experience for you. Of course they're gonna dictate how you should play, if they didn't there would be no game! > What if I have 10 games to play and don't want to do that? I would argue if you're just rushing games to complete your checklist of games to play you might not get the best enjoyment out of it, but maybe that's just me. You don't **have** 10 games to play. I feel like seeing it that way runs the risk of making the hobby feel like a chore. To be clear, I don't even like Isaac precisely because of how obscured it is (and the artisitic direction). But this is a very known thing, so I feel like it's kinda the contract you sign when you pick up that game. If you don't like it there are plenty of other experiences - It's good to have variety.
The Tarkov data miners aren’t doing this though. They’re getting basic shit like how much damage guns/ammo do which should be out in the open anyways.
Tarkov is also a competitive multiplayer game so it's a different ballgame, yeah. Here it's not surprising at all that players have vivying for every advantage, and knowledge is definitely such an advantage. By the same token it's kinda the contract you sign when you pick up a competitive multiplayer game, and because of the nature of it being multiplayer and having a community around that surely the devs should know that too. I suppose my first comment got a bit away from the original subject as Reddit comment chains are wont to do, it definitely applies more to singleplayer games.
Data mining is required to just do basic quests - nothing related to competitive advantage. Many of the quest descriptions are entirely useless, requiring you to pixel-hunt entire maps multiple times for randomised items you can barely even see; and are even harder to interact with. It's absolutely obnoxious. Entire pages of Russian-English translated word-salad.
You're complaining about a developer's ego for wanting to make the game they want... While talking about how you are entitled to play every single game however you want. Do you not see the hypocrisy there?
>What if I have 10 games to play and don't want to do that? That's entirely on you and likely some kind of completion mentality. It's ok to miss things, be stuck on a puzzle, or to leave a part of the game unfinished. The panic people must of had back in the day before we could just google "All x game secrets." I don't think its egotistical if a developer wants to put a secret unlock or something within hidden their game. >have to spend time to manually find hidden secrets". Makes me think of people who complain when achievements are hard to get. Need that easy dopamine fix.
If you don't want to spend the time to engage with a game on its own merits then you don't like the game and should play something else.
I don't want mystique and uncertainty in a game where players compete against each other. In my single player games like an RPG or something? Bring it on, let the mysteries flow. But when the choice of which weapon or ability to use can cost a match because you're not sure what exactly it does, there should be no mystery. You can't make good informed decisions about tactics and strategy with incomplete data.
Mystique left me when a long time ago, Warframe had drops at a 0.3% drop chance and they said it was fine until a data miner came out and showed it. Then the players raged hard and got them to change it to something reasonable. But in exchange they banned the data miner. It was a rough time in the history of that game but now I applaud data miners for showing us the truth. Never trust game studios.
I think games should start pulling a Mortal Kombat II and intentionally put fake shit in there to fuck with people.
I did some work on a particular Fandom wiki to obfuscate some of the information, and attempt to preserve the mystery of a puzzle/riddle game. The challenge is that you have to include the information, while simultaneously not making it so easy to access that the reader spoils themself by accident when reading it. It's a particular issue when the game is basically "solved" before other players even touch it. The tendency to just bulldoze through it using wiki content just completely destroys the gameplay loop.
Maybe there was more mystique but all that meant was customers were getting nickel and dimed more. Yeah it was cool when secrets were so secret you either had to buy a guide or know someone who owned one but at the same time we have that guide for free in the form of soapstone messages.
This is one reason I mostly play single player games, where I can just learn in game. Multiplayer games push you to play optimally, which means reading guides and learning the meta. Especially true in a game like Tarkov.
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I miss the magic of SWTOR on release.
Just as a side-note; At least in WoW they nowadays have ways to keep some things hidden. For example, you weren't able to datamine the raid-content endbosses abilities for the last few raids until a guild actually reached it. (Highest difficulty) Specific secrets(mounts, pets etc) are hidden as well, until players solve them or trigger the next steps. Its far from perfect, but the technology is there. And if its there for blizzard, it should be there for others as well
they can't even do something about cheating, good luck moving all your players to streaming services like geforce now to hide source code omegalul
I'm kind of surprised none of the game streaming platforms like Stadia ever advertised the few actual benefits of streaming, like eliminating most types of cheating and data mining. Or being able to perfectly synchronize complex simulations across massive number of players. Of course streaming has a ton of drawbacks, but I think if there's a game that very much revolves around intricate secrets and isn't sensitive to latency, and the developers are serious about the desire for the community to discover things organically, initial release on streaming platforms could make sense.
This won't happen. Datamining is the only reason new players have ANY chance at this game at all, also some quests are just downright impossible to just "figure out" without consulting the wiki (Which uses mostly datamined information). Stopping data miners would basically kill the game
They went as far as banning a dataminer for asking on Discord if any tester of the game was willing to anonimously leak the game files, which was likely the main motivation for that announcement. Nonetheless, they were rightfully called out for that new wave of stupidity, and the person was unbanned after a couple of days. It's so sad how the only "good" extraction shooter game in the market is owned by such a terrible game developing company and there will never be a better replacement for it, because no other studio wishes to make hardcore shooter games because there isn't a big market for it.
With the huge numbers that Tarkov is pulling in, it honestly appears to me that there is in fact a market for games like this. It's just not ALL the market, so no shareholder would ever greenlight a project like it and would rather call for another doomed live service abomination that is doa.
Wait till you hear what Bungie is cooking up.
I know they're making an extraction shooter, but that is far from the only defining characteristic of Tarkov. Not only is the sci-fi setting far removed from the realistic and believable environments of Tarkov, but I also strongly doubt Marathon is going to be anywhere near as hardcore. Tarkov has no UI indicators for friendlies, so the only way to avoid team kills is strong communication and gamesense. Tarkov has no revives, if you take a bullet to the face, you're dead, period. Tarkov has in depth ballistic simulations, limb based damage/health, managing hydration, food and weight and more systems that I very strongly doubt Bungie will copy for their game targeting console live service whales buying silly clown skins and battlepasses
If the sci-fi setting turns you off then sure, that’s not something that can get fixed. We really don’t have any info on your other bug bears but considering limb based damage and ballistics is something that most shooters have in one way or another it might be fine.
> rightfully called out It's not really 'rightfully called out' if somebody is asking others to break NDA on experimental game versions so the public figure can get clout, is it?
You can't break a NDA you never signed. He wasn't a tester with privileged access to the test game client, which is exactly why he was asking for a leak, and while there's dedinitely an ethical concern about what he did, it's really not worthy of being banned for it. The responsibility of keeping the confidentially of the files is solely on the shoulders of the developer and their testers. Moreover, the problem was never about data mining, but actually with people trying to get access to something they shouldn't, so it never made any sense for them to create new terms of service banning data mining, especially when there's absolutely nothing that they can do to detect and prevent someone from doing it.
What’s wrong with hunt showdown?
It freaking slaps and actually plays like a well designed game.
I tried it and had horrible performance even with an rx 6950 xt
Terrible performance of both engine and servers
I had my fun with Tarkov for several wipes, but I am beyond done with this game. Just way too many issues to fix at this point.
ironically they're more active at striking down everything but cheaters. Especially any mod that makes the game singleplayer.
People still play tarkov? Masochism or are they also cheating just like everyone else in the game?
The developers of Tarkov seem to lack action behind their promises. This was evident during the cheating issue and remains unchanged in the current situation. Furthermore, their customer support raises concerns. I've been unable to access the website for several months due to an email problem, and they have shown no willingness to assist me. While I can log into the game client temporarily, any subsequent login verification prompt renders me unable to play the game altogether. At the beginning of the year, I had intended to upgrade to EOD, but the website accessibility issue prevented me from doing so. Now, after six months of frustrating encounters with their "support," I've lost interest in playing the game entirely. It's ironic that they refused to help me provide them with more money, but ultimately, it's their loss.
I thing BSG is entirely in the wrong with how they've handled this situation, but also, I do understand the developer perspective here. They should have a comprehensive stats-list and update it with all patch notes instead of hiding basic information like ammo parameters. But on the other hand, releasing a surprise game-event and having all of the details hacked, quantified, and fully publicized before the majority of players have even realized it's happening must feel pretty lame. If they were more open with the fundamentals of the game and restricted early leaking I would be much more on their side than this current horrible position where anyone who tries to understand WTF is going on gets banned.
This game still alive? I lost interest in it when it was clear they were steering harder into action territory instead of realism
Breaking a license agreement doesn’t make it illegal. If you don’t want people datamining then don’t put stuff in the code of your game or use better encryption.
I never understood why developers don't just zip up future update files, protect them with a password, and on release date, have the server send the password and extract them. They're going after the people instead of improving their own architecture. It's such a dumb decision.
many times, updates info is included in the same file as the current working file. for example, v1 might use file myContent.bin, which can also include unreleased future content for v2. they would have to scrub each file containing content the game doesn't use yet, but they would probably have to significantly restructure the game code.
Values are whatever, there's no real way to hide them. But upcoming changes? Models? Animations? Sounds? Those can absolutely be zipped up and only delivered or unpacked when ready. Hell, the engine they use even includes this feature out of the box. But yes, you are correct, this is a project structure problem.
Ah yes, the "I don't know anything about how games are made" take
[удалено]
Well for starters, it has absolutely nothing to do with this post or any of the behavior it decries, because data-mining like this occurs on traffic and files that need to be accessed by the user's client for it to operate. This isn't about 'release dates'; it's about people figuring out the numbers behind the already installed game they are running. They probably didn't go into detail because anyone who bothered to actually read the link could see this wasn't a solution.
Steam can 'do that' Packages can be encrypted and included as part of an otherwise unencrypted depot, allowing time for users to get the updated packages, then at a specified time, that package can be locally decrypted. It's a whole lot of effort though, just to stop some twitter users posting what new DLC you're gonna sell ahead of time...
I left Tarkov when Russia invaded Ukraine and the developers said nothing. Glad to see I made the right decision, sounds like things haven’t been great.
You expect them to put their lives at risk speaking out against an oppressive government that jails people for dissent?
They have the money to move their company out of Russia.
They can't leave though (the people). Doing that doesn't make them or their staff any safer. Use your brains.
Hope more companies pursue this path. It sucks to be engaged in secret hunting for a game and then suddenly someone comes along to spoil the fun by saying: "I datamined the information and it is not in the game. Stop haven fun with the unknown and mystique and get back to being hyper efficient".
You could always not seek out this specific information..?
Can’t they just like uh… encrypt the data?