It isn’t exactly an uncommon take to suggest that EFT’s hardcore wipe has been a polarizing mish-mash of great ideas executed poorly and terrible ideas executed as perfectly as any terrible idea could be. Anyone who plays the wipe for more than a couple raids quickly finds out that the locked early tasks, the lack of available maps, the necessity to spend twice the amount of time in queue thanks to transits, the necessity to spend twice the amount of time looting for hideout, and the constant boss farming make the game less hardcore and more tedious. Truly, this hardcore wipe has been the worst best wipe ever.
As a matter of fact, the only few aspects to this wipe that are definite home runs are the flea ban, the increased item prices, and what is effectively no insurance policies. Aside from these keys aspects, the hardcore wipe takes the initiative in being sure to punish players more than their character. That is, the person playing Escape From Tarkov is being punished more than their character in-game is. Effectively, their time is spent accomplishing very little.
Locked Early Quests
The fact that BSG felt the need to stop quests from being completed on day one reeks of two things: story-based immersion and casual-friendly capping. Both of these, if indeed relevant, were done incorrectly:
- If the idea was that our characters weren’t experienced enough to get tasks from the traders, and locking their tasks was a simulation of that fact, BSG dropped the ball by making the quests locked behind time instead of levels. A hardcore wipe wouldn’t be all that strange for increasing the task level curves, so why not just do that?
- If the idea was to simply give casuals the opportunity to do the tasks in tandem with the chads, the idea was implemented incorrectly. To cap player’s effective in-game leveling and task efficiency, you’re supposed to lock them out of progress up to a point, not lock them out of all progress until a certain time.
Altogether, poor ideas.
Increased Hideout Requirements
Yes, the loot on the ground might have been buffed overall, but increasing the number of items required to upgrade hideout by 2x just seems unimaginative and, frankly, boring. Do we love looting in EFT? Yes. Do we love being forced to farm specific spots on maps that we have to transit to just to do it effectively and for twice as long? Naur, we don’t.
Standard accounts, in particular, are feeling the pain since they have to hoard twice the amount of items as normal just to upgrade their hideout, soaking up stash space something fierce. And with the nearly 2m ruble junk box, getting more efficient space is no easy task.
Transits and Map Locks
This is easily the worst aspect to the Hardcore Wipe. Locking maps behind a transit has been such a blunderous move on BSG’s part that it almost goes without saying that it’s a miserable experience. 5 minute queue times to get into Customs followed by 8 minute queue times to get to transit? Or how about another 5 minute queue time to get into woods? How about neither, BSG?
The ONLY way to properly implement the feeling of needing to travel from location to location is to kill the queue times to one minute or less. The solution? Cut the time selection from the game and let transit players join a raid with diminished player numbers and slightly extended raid times.
This would effectively merge the night and day players into one category while also allowing transit players to find half-finished raids in the same way a scav does instead of needing to start a new one, thus increasing queue times.
It’s a terrible idea that was executed with exactly the right demeanor as required for a dev team known for never apologizing for dropping the ball. Honestly, they KNEW this was going to happen and did nothing to prepare the game for this kind of change. It’s poor development on BSG’s part, truly.
The Good Stuff.
Locked flea market, increased item prices, no insurance. (Shoutout to nerfed containers)
The locked flea is easily the best part of this wipe. If EFT was totally balanced around having to trade with players in-game or not at all, it would be perfect: exactly as EFT was meant to be.
Increased item prices? Sure, why not! Although punitive, it makes farming cash registers and being stingy with looting methods far, far more viable! And as for no insurance, the game’s economy is built around insurance fraud, and in a bad way. Making it so players are virtually guaranteed to lose all items they bring into a raid is radical. Radically cool, that is.
Lastly, banning the use of items like meds and ammo in the cases essentially makes the secured containers a hideout insurer. Since there is no FIR requirement for hideout upgrades, this eases the increased hideout requirements and gives PvPers increased anxiety, since their precious ammunition is probably going to either be spent or it’s definitely being dropped alongside them upon death.
Altogether, Escape From Tarkov’s hardcore wipe has been a miss, so far. BSG and Nikita have a vision for the game that clearly doesn’t mesh with the concessions they’ve made to the majority of the player-base over the years, and this wipe shows that the game has not been prepared to perform under that vision at all.
Great game, genius developers, but man what a missed opportunity. This wipe’s theme could have been the best version of this game, but instead has fumbled itself into being the worst.
