The topic of this article comes from a place of love, believe it or not. Escape from Tarkov is, without a doubt, the best extraction shooter on the market today. One could even go as far as suggesting that it’s the best military SIM in the gaming world, despite none of the characters featured in the game being involved with formal militaries.
Despite this brightly shining crown displayed over EFT’s head, there’s a ragged robe just beneath that fails to meet the casual gamer’s eye through word of mouth or the occasional read in the news cycle: Escape From Tarkov is a time sink. A heavy time sink.
The gunplay is reliable, the weapon customization is legendary, the audio is gorgeous (if inconsistent), and the questing/resource management is one of a kind. But damn, is Escape From Tarkov anything but a huge waste of time for anyone who wants to enjoy their time playing games casually.
This is because progression in Escape from Tarkov, theoretically, is quite quick. It isn’t uncommon to see top-tier players reach end-game content within a month (or sooner) of a new wipe. This speed of progression is barred by three main factors, though: Meta-gaming, skill, and no-lifeing.
To meta-game is to google the best methods available for any given stage of wipe. Map structure, quest guides, weapon and ammo charts, the whole kazoo, it’s a meta-game. To have skill is to have skill. You can aim well, your movement is solid, and you combine these (and other) facets of your gameplay with the meta-gaming mindset to hard-push through content. To no-life is to do nothing but play Tarkov.
No-lifeing in other games isn’t like no-lifeing in Tarkov because Tarkov actually demands that you no-life it to stay relevant in the meta. Thanks to the admittedly fun nature of realism, there’s a huge gap between a skilled player using late-game equipment and a skilled player using early-game weapons, armor, and rounds. That is because the former can kill and protect reliably while the latter has a hard time going toe-to-toe with scav equipment (or simply is scav equipment).
When you don’t no-life in WoW or OSRS, you still progress at any given point in your character’s career as you would without playing every waking hour of every day. But in Tarkov, you actively hurt your chances of being able to contest other players as the meta shifts into the mid and late game unless you play just as much as most other players (which is way too much).
For someone who isn’t full-timing the game, playing blind, and is mediocre to bad in skill, there’s always this lingering feeling, even just a week after wipe, that tells you that the game is a waste of your time, despite being great.
