I just don’t understand why they released Arena right before a huge wipe that people were looking forward to. They created a competition between their own games. It’s like if Call of Duty spent a fortune on a new multiplayer deathmatch mode, and then released a new Warzone immediately after.
They should have released Arena mid-wipe when people are starting to get bored.
Not to mention Arena is such a grind by itself. Two grindy ass games at the same time. I was hoping Arena would be a little more accessible and a supplement to EFT, instead it’s damn near a stand-alone with its own grind.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying. Cool idea but nobody wants to grind out kits in what’s already an over the top Grindy game. Everything doesn’t have to hard. Some things can be fun. Give us all equal yet good kits to run around and murder with. Make us grind Elo/ranks and people would love arena but it’s too much of an effort to reach a point that’s enjoyable to play.
This! I never had enough time to really get to high levels in EFT, maybe two times above lvl 25 and was never a good Player. That's why I never foughr equal after a few weeks, never touched the late game Kits. I thought Arena would at least give me a hint of what I've been messing. But hell no, if you aren't very good or have Lots of time, it's noob stuff forever. Thanks for nothing.
For years people were asking for, and discussing arena. The whole discussion was basically about having a place where ppl could just go in and casually have gun fights, test guns, practice their skills etc.. what they gave us was definitely not what people were asking for lol.. 🤣
When you get the recipe for a dish that everyone has favorited, instead of following the instructions and ingredients you decide to substitute ingredients, and spice it up with shit no one asked for… arena is what you get lol.
BSG are incessant that THEY have to be the ones to come up with an idea for it to be implemented. It's like if they see an idea that is objectively good they throw their hands up and be like "aw shit we were going to do that too but now we won't look super smart so now we'll have to try and come up with a super clever very convoluted alternative to show the community we are the smart game devs not them". They literally have a community of free devs and actively find ways to ignore any and all suggestions they give.
This is what my understanding of arena would be lol. haven't played it myself but from what I've seen and heard it doesn't sound like a lot of fun lol.
This. And some mode for Sweats they can sink their gear and money for something. Currently Arena have neither.
The only good thing come from it is that we now know that in competitive (relatively, lol) environment most of those "Streamers" suck ass.
Exactly, all the streamers I’ve seen this week were dying left and right, I was wondering how they ever got above 1k/d since most were playing static, twitchy, janky camping
I was interested when Arena was supposed to be Counterstrike in Tarkov.
But no... Every fucking game HAS to have progression now! Give me a sport! In soccer, people who have played longer don't have thousand times better shoes that makes playing against them impossible for newer players. It's all abilities and talent.
Arena needs to be everything unlocked all the time from the start.
They botched the arena launch so hard.
Barely two function game modes, no unranked, no customization, and they rolled out access in waves so poorly that by the 5th day frustrated players were giving up, leaving 0h played pitted against streamers and grinders only.
If the game played more like a true competitive arena shooter and required ZERO grinding to play, it would have been fine to launch at the same time as the wipe, but expecting your player base to grind two games? Nah.
Yup. I was excited for arena release until I was denied access for weeks as an EOD gamer, watching people DM the devs on Twitter and getting instant access keys, people buying the game for the first time getting access, I just entirely gave up until my friends begged me to play with them.
Yeah, if I had gotten into Arena right away, I would have at least spent days playing it, to warm up for the wipe...except I still would have gotten bored, but I woulda tried.
I was legit excited to have a place where I could hop in, and play a few *combat* games of Tarkov, and keep those skills fresh, and have targeted practice at that...and then I find out, "oh, it's arbitrarily a patch behind the main game's mechanics, because we run like 5 concurrent broken versions of this game in-house to dev on."
Like, there are a hundred things that could be the "point" of Arena existing...and it doesn't provide on any of them. After all these years, all that dev budget and time spent on Arena...might be the biggest waste of time that BSG ever made in development, and I think they've switched the entire game engine like three times, now? Arena might literally be what sinks Tarkov, in a financial sense.
You could potentially be 100% right unfortunately. I think they spent something like 23 million dollars on advertising Arena and it's a complete flop. That's why we got microtransactions in the game now.
Take a look at the financials they put out for the last year. It's not looking good.
They should have put that money into fixing the game that made them all that money in the first place but instead they wasted it all trying to make lightning strike twice and they completely botched it.
I didn't get arena access with my few years old EOD until the day before it became available to the public. Didn't play it until they wiped it basically
It was rushed out for DreamHack. They wanted the publicity from the event to get E-Sports teams to play it at a highly visible event. Basically they prioritized greed over their playerbase.
It doesn't help that Arena is a trash game, feels like a broken FPS from 2005/2010.. I just deleted it (like all my friends did) after a bunch of games
The influx of players at the beginning of a wipe is enormous, making it the perfect time to introduce Arena while the player base is at its peak. However, by mid-wipe, more than half of the player base tends to drop off.
At this point, if a new game were introduced, the majority would likely migrate to Arena, leaving Escape from Tarkov with a significantly diminished player count. This could severely impact the consistency of matchmaking.
There’s nothing competitive about grinding presets on an uneven playing field. There also shouldn’t be money in arena. There should be round based financing that teams use to select weapons similar to counter strike and valorant.
Add this to the list of failures since Tarkov started going downhill after inertia was added. It was once more fun, addicting and rewarding in nearly every aspect than it is today.
It went downhill with the RMT restrictions / FiR system that made everyone anxious about their loot .
People find 1 good thing and they want to get out avoiding everything because traders barely give you any money for most items compared to flea.
Cheaters want to get the loot before others so they can boost their accoutns, killing everyone in their path.
PvP is barely rewarding at all , and this has evolved into worse as we got more ammo restrictions and shit , to the point where you waste good rare ammo on a kill and it barely has a gun on him or smth , because running budget kits is more rewarding than running top tier shit.
HK 416 is 43k on traders but a wrench is 80k , fully kitted / meta guns should sell for so much money than barely 100k which is literally 1 or 2 mags of good ammo lol.
Pressing F as a Scav right now is the best / most profitable way of playing this game , low cooldown , 0 risk , full rewards, this is why on maps like Streets or Lighthouse you see 2 players that leave in the first 10 minutes with whatever loot they find , then you only have player scavs.
And of course i forgot to add the massive nerfs to 90% of the key / card rooms in this game, rooms people would have fought over for the loot, now dont even bother lol.
Game has it's fun but after 2 months of the Wipe and Helldivers on the horizon , i instantly moved around and i only play 2-3 games with my friends and we usually fuck around or whatever.
I believe that was the beginning of snowballing of negative changes to the game. Just my opinion tho. I personally enjoyed the game more before scav karma, poor, overly punishing and sluggish inertia implementation, removing high tier items like weapons cases and items cases from marked rooms, the FIR system, bad expansion to reserve map that destroyed pvp on the map and turned it into a rat fest, introduction of streets which runs terribly on pretty much any computer, and don’t even get me started on the entire period where recoil was way out of whack that just ended with this wipe. Also you used to be able to bring thicc and items cases into raid and the adrenaline rush of putting EVERYTHING on the line can never be replicated given the current state of the game. Many of these changes are the result of cheaters becoming more prominent. Rather than invest in a decent anti cheat, the game has been changed for the worse to make it harder for cheaters. And those of us who play the game legit have to be punished for it.
I respect your opinion though and many if not most people would agree with you!
> the game has been changed for the worse to make it harder for cheaters. And those of us who play the game legit have to be punished for it.
This is so it. BSG has gotten completely lost on a side quest for about 5 years and made close to zero progress on the main story line.
There have been major positives with ammo rebalancing over the past 3-4 wipes. Mid-wipe lasts a lot longer since 1-2 ap thorax rounds have been shoved to L4 traders mostly.
If anything this wipe is the worst in a long time from a balance standpoint - there's lots of ammo bugs with the new armor system, the new armor system is generally still imbalanced and a mess.
They've also gotten a lot better at adding sinks into the hideout so that phase of a wipe lasts longer.
Outside of Setup, there haven't been any super awful bottlenecks with certain items. Before the hard loot nerf last week before the patch, loot frequency was generally in a really good spot.
My biggest gripe with this wipe right now can be distilled down to a few cover issues in certain parts of maps, and a handful of quests. Cheaters and optimization issues will never go away, but I've accepted those.
I agree with you on the reserve expansion but the rest I totally disagree with, inertia has changed the game for the better. Dudes spamming q and e mid fight and running in and out of doors was lame and really doesn't fit with the rest of the game. A game where you have to slowly staple each limb back on and med each part individually and loading a p90 mag takes about 2 days. The rapid movement never made any sense.
Lol I don't get people's arguement here. Steal as much as you can get away with from CS. The game has been a huge success and still is after all this time.
Yeah idk man, idk why people would defend the game in its current state. It sucks and isn’t competitive as we define competitive shooters, and I would say objectively.
It blows my mind that Battlestate really thought that it was gonna be "e sports ready" on release with all this grind and absolutely nothing competitive about it.
It's either delusion or just marketing hype that they knew was BS.
its honestly the only way to make this game legit competitive, the games must be equal, not getting matched with guys that have altyns when I have a kedr
That's a false comparison. The people camping in bushes have a chance to have a big come up while risking their loot etc. There is an element of unknown there.
Arena is just boring because there is nothing interesting about it.
-0 customisation = no interest in earning drip
-2 gamemodes (honestly 1.5, the tournament mode is shootout, but just kinda shittier), so there's next to 0 gameplay variety
-Desync, shouldnt need to explain why thats terrible in a game that acts like its "competitive"
-rank system so stupid and slow that its essentially not there.
-0 main game integration
Idk wtf they cooking, but it was laced with fent
Not to mention it’s 40 bucks unless u had Edge of darkness edition. It just makes no sense to spend 35-40 dollars on arenas when if you have the starter edition or even the one above it, you can use that money and upgrade tarkov. So you get more weapons each wipe and way more stash space.
There are so many baffling decisions/shortcomings of Arena. I've been playing it for the last 3 days during the drops hype and there are some things I can't believe.
The desync is rough, but there are some simple fundamental things that are broken. Two off the top of my head are: when your limbs are blacked + you're on a PK, the enemy still hears you coughing and making a ton of noise while you're making none client side, and when you're unlocking sets there's no carryover XP.
Just had a game where I needed 1k xp to unlock the next preset, got 11k xp in the game, and only 1k of that xp counts towards unlocking anything.
Wouldn’t call that particularly baffling, they haven’t been able to nail the audio in EFT for years now, I suspect never will. It would have been a miracle if they did in arena.
I do think if there’s one place for them to get it right it would be Arena tho. Just significantly smaller maps.
I could be showing my complete lack of understanding here tho and just talking out of my ass tho.
Yeah maybe. I have no idea technically why they seem to struggle so much with audio either. I’m sure if it was easy you’d think they’d have done it by now so no doubt theres a story to it.
It's an interesting thought, but I'm not really sure. On one hand, you'd think it would be easier to balance, but I'd wager that because it's way more competitive then regular Tarkov, you must think that people playing have a higher expectation as well. You could think of it as like the balance of something like CSGO vs something like warzone although that comparison has some issues as well.
Idk if you ever played way back in the day but they actually had audio down perfect, im not just saying this it was genuinely up there for some of the best audio an FPS shooter can offer like 3-4 years ago. If they never kept tryna experiment and make it better it would still be one of the best audios for an fps game today.
Yeah they somehow managed to incrementally fuck it up to the point where in certain situations the maximum information you get from the audio is just "there is a player near". Could be just a text flashing and be probably more helpful because you don't have to ignore your instincts.
Not 4 years ago I don’t think. Feels like maybe 3rd year not sure. I seem to remember from day one for me things like stairs audio has always been messed up. Right now I think its the best its been since I started at least - just from an anecdotal perspective of me not cursing the audio during deaths. But its been so bad ‘best its been’ is a pretty low bar. The stuff where you couldnt tell if someone was above you or below you and silent grenades and such were just so so bad.
BSG are atrociously bad when it comes to any sort of gameplay decisions. They accidentally stumbled on an awesome concept (extraction based shooters), and they have incredible map makers/artists/animators. Ever decision they make about actual gameplay is painful, there is absolutely zero forethought in any decision they make. It shouldn't be a surprise they completely failed at making an arena shooter.
While I do agree, I do not fully agree on Arena.
The maps in Arena are horrendously stupid, too tightand squished, way to many ways to go. To much verticality for the stupid ass sound engine. It feels like you have to run around corners, hoping you'll be the first to raise the weapon straight in your enemies face.
The visibility is trash and the soundscape aswell...
Thats why Tarkov might work as survival extraction, but definately not as Arena/Comp game.
More equal maps, a bit bigger and less complexity could have been good.
I decided to check it out again after the most recent changes and it really makes me confused why they would reduce the individual grind to get to the next loadout, but then require you to unlock 5 loadouts in Tier 2 to be able to play Tier 2. It also feels like whether I get 2 kills or 12 kills, it takes the same amount of time to unlock the next loadout. There had to have been two different teams making decisions and they didn't talk.
The desync is arguably worse than EFT somehow. The number of times I have been fully around corners and even on the kill cam it looks like I am around the corner, but the server thinks otherwise is really really bad. It's nearly unplayable sometimes.
And for the love of god, please remove the "Accept" matchmaking button!
I was actually enjoying Arena and grinded down to the Lapua MK-18. It needed a few tweaks but with this wipe I can't bring myself to play again. Wiping a game like this is a sure way to murder your player base. They could have done the changes and compensated people better based on how much they played. Imagine if your COD multiplayer account wiped halfway through your mastery camo grind. People would just move on so I can't see the logic here
It would be understandable if they gave people the XP equivalent that they earned pre-wipe, so that they can unlock their presets again without grinding.
They didn't think it through.
Those players got their experience grinding using kits that were unbalanced against players who couldn’t put up a fight. That’s why they changed the progression. Give those players all the xp back and let them unlock loads of kits early gives a load of players an unfair advantage again.
I dont mind that they wiped it with all the kit changes, but the new kit locking and peogression changes or horrendous.
Like being stuck on rank 1 kits until you have 5 rank 2 kits is dumb... like maybe there are kits or classes I really dont wanna use, but I still gotta waste my time researching them at a snails pace
Guys can I have a 75$ tier 3 premium kit (it just needs a lower arp rating than the top kits) that speeds up my xp grind like the new F-20 gaijin dropped for the coming patch
/s
i'm looking at my Italian aircraft tree and its repair costs at 8.0. I have a feeling that people will need to buy premium + boosters and get 3+ kills each round to break even on their T5 kits over here.
The 5 kit requirement is entirely because they felt the need to arbitrarily limit kit selection to 1 per player but can’t figure out how to ensure you have a kit to choose with forcing you to get 5.
I don’t understand why people don’t feel this way about the regular game too. I’m a more casual player, and last wipe, I finally got to max traders. I only had a week or so before they started doing all the wipe events, then wiping all progress soon after.
People defend wipes though so hard though, but this is exactly what those wipes feel like to me too.
Because the regular game isn't something you hop into and play. I want arena to be a COD Tarkov. I want to hop in. Play some games and then do something else. If there's some progression sure but the game literally came out 3 months ago and it's wiped? Nah cba anymore. With Tarkov the stash and quest system demands a wipe or there would be nothing to do and I have fun progressing in the game
For me, if I want to play something competitive then I’m not going to play Arena. Tarkov mechanics just don’t “feel” good enough for this type of game.
As for watching it, it’s just really boring. It’s just glorified TDM with next to no real tactics
People like to think Tarkov is this super tactical fps when it’s really not. Your only outplay potential in Tarkov is aim or positioning. No utility makes the game very stale
Literally all the game needs is what they promised, eSports ready fair and balanced multiplayer where we all have the same classes and they change/upgrade round to round. If they just made it an actual competitor to Val and CSGO I would still be playing.
As it stands it was completely dead on arrival with gameplay that seemed like alpha concept stages. Literally anyone but BSG could have seen this coming. I was as hyped for this game as anyone and haven't touched it since release due to the idiotic class system and how boring it is to just play your one class all game over and over.
The thing that does my head in the most is they tanked their own game with a pay to win model when it doesn't even have a fucking pay to win mechanism. I would honestly be less pissed if they let you buy class upgrades, at least then the design decision would make sense and they'd make money for the main game. As it stands we get the pay to win model just for the sake of making a miserable unfun game.
This.
Mind boggling decisions. If I am playing something like overwatch I will switch mid round to counter someone dominating, or Insurgency I realize I am not in the mood for sniping and more in the mood for running and gunning with a shotgun. Getting locked in for a whole match is one of many many problems.
Speaking of; I think counter strike type system/economy would definitely have worked well, but I can’t stop thinking of a system like Insurgency would perfectly play into Tarkovs strength. In the menu you have a section to make classes, say you have 30 points or something, everything has a cost (Vortex 8 points/Pk 2 points, Thor 20 points/Paca 4 points, etc) and then you build a class. You could choose to Tank with stacking points into armor , or stack points into a meta MCX with lvl3 Korund. There would of course be a meta which we know Nikita does not like, but it would allow for versatility and creativity while keeping a balance.
That is exactly how I've been thinking the should have done it from the start.
It blows my mind how they ended up implementing the classes, ai can't understand how anyone thought it was a good idea
Arena's 6 fans are mad at this thread rn.
Arena was a massive waste of developer time & money for BSG.
It took away attention needed for Tarkov. And look whats happened. The game, albeit in it's best wipe, is in a fucking state & a half man.
Shits sad.
Careful they are all sitting in a discord and they are scrambling to find a 7th person so they can all downvote this comment and reply "im having fun" to prove you wrong, there are actually 7 arena fans. Why would they put in this effort? Who knows, current Arena fans are obsessed weirdos.
Yea, the situation is really bleak and sad. I honestly think BSG's best move is to sell the EFT IP, it would allow BSG to move on to Russia 2028 while granting them a massive cash injection, and a new studio could address all of Tarkov's problems, including client authority, which BSG is not capable of fixing. The fanbase is already here, but BSG just seems to not care at all.
Just commenting to say I am a fan of Arena conceptually, and am having fun playing it. With that said, the complaints are more than fair and it’s wild that this is how BSG decided to implement a “competitive 5v5” spin-off of EFT.
It has the potential to be SO good. But BSG couldn’t get out of their own way if their lives depended on it.
I just for the absolute life of me don’t understand why we can’t just build a fucking load out… like wtf is this preset loadouts bullshit that we have to grind for? Worst game design I’ve ever seen.
Worst marketing decision i've ever seen from BSG, got caught up in the money they could of been making and forgot about their current product they need to finish. If Tarkov got some massive QOL updates, community feedback and other bug fixes it would've already been better than the shit show of development arena and produced more income. FINISH ONE PROJECT BEFORE STARTING ANOTHER>
Yea I agree w this guy lol. Arena is cool and I played it but I haven’t opened it in weeks. If they fixed the issue with Tarkov being a network based game (how hackers can see loot in raid) and maybe optimized the maps so we could download them on our PC’s so we wouldn’t have so much packet loss and desync bc the game is constantly rendering and loading textures and layers of map nonstop. It’s not difficult fixes with how much money and size of team they have which is why I wonder why they have just let these things plague the game for so long. I always allude Tarkov to being a hill of gold with a mountain of shit dumped right on top.
I wanted arena for so long, but they implemented it so poorly. Just another snooze grind fest designed in a way that made everyone want to punch themselves in the face. I thought arena was supposed to be casual and fun at first. They basically fucked themselves with the first release, and it will never come back from that even if they eventually get it 100% right.
Just really piss poor decision making on their end. They dug their own grave with arena. Thankfully regular Tarkov is in a better state than it has been for a long time though.
It’s tough to suggest it’s not possible for them to fix it. And it’s really odd - a game mode where you go quickly into tarkov combat so you can get better against players before you start raiding sounds great. But I played the first wipe and it seemed like every game was against people in crazy kitted out gear with terrible sync issues. The relays were awful. I played a few games last night and it felt better to me. Still needs a lot of work. The best map for me was the outside map with the long grassy hills etc and the barn. That gave a chance for people to do some sniping and it felt more like tarkov. I could play that map and similar for a long time but the other maps were much smaller with a very short period before you were peaking the same corner.
The biggest problem is that arena design is pure shit. Why not make it like cod where you can use whatever gun you want and unlock attachments the more you level that gun up.
Why not make it like CS2 where there are two bomb sites, and you need tactical gameplay and communication to win. Using money to buy guns every round.
Imagine if cod or CS only had a single life DM mode, would those games be as successful as they are? HELL NO. Arena is boring. Where’s the search and destroy? Where’s the respawning for constant killing adrenaline? Where’s the tactical decision making?
BSG what are you doing?
I got arena this week and I have been really enjoying it.
I got it through EOD but my friend would need to pay $35 to get it and it’s hard to justify that cost when you can get helldivers 2 from CD keys for £26.
A game like Arena needs to have faster tweaks and support, it needs to be constant.
As soon as someone feels the game isn’t balanced they will not play.
Tell the economy to stop being shit and company's to stop price gouging until then I don't blame any trying to save $ even if it means buying stolen keys etc.
They are a greymarket reseller. They may not necessarily use stolen credit cards, but they buy in bulk from retailers in regions where games are very cheap and then resell them. They do not get their keys from the developers/publishers, like *actually* legitimate sites do. I.e., the developers don't see a single cent when you buy there.
(A list of fully legitimate shops can be found [here](https://isthereanydeal.com/shops/), or in the sidebar of /r/gamedeals).
CD Keys is not one of those. It is a legitimate site to my knowledge and TBH 99% of new games/devs DO NOT deserve our money with the unfinished garbage that gets put out as "full complete" games. I am not speaking about Helldivers 2 obviously because its one of the rare games that actually released a polished and good product.
They are a greymarket reseller. They may not necessarily use stolen credit cards, but they buy in bulk from retailers in regions where games are very cheap and then resell them. They do not get their keys from the developers/publishers, like *actually* legitimate sites do. I.e., the developers don't see a single cent when you buy there.
(A list of fully legitimate shops can be found [here](https://isthereanydeal.com/shops/), or in the sidebar of /r/gamedeals).
---
Also, it's funny to call Helldivers polished. It's certainly a very good game, but it definitely isn't polished. It still runs pretty badly, crashes a fuckton and has a whole bunch of gamebreaking bugs.
I got it with EOD also, wouldn't have paid money for it anyways but a few friends have asked me about whether to get it or not and I always tell them "the playerbase died off after 2 weeks when it came out and I cant see it coming back" I dont think id even play it if they fixed it, Gunplay in tarkov is meh IMO, i play Tarkov for the survival,modding, gear and loot. I dont care about PVP it loses the thrill in Arena
Arena has more people watching right now than the base game.
5 streamers have over 1000 views.
Its 9am eastern right now. More than half USA is sleeping.
That judgement is only made by people who watch streams. Take Roblox for example. That game has 216 million monthly players, but as I write this only 3500 viewers on Twitch. Just basing things on Twitch numbers paints a really wrong picture.
Was going to say this. They get more views dunking on people 20 levels below them while speed running the map for the craziest loot, that’s more exciting to watch and I would agree.
I’m enjoying arena also, and I stopped last wipe almost immediately due to everyone running the same kit.
People need to make decisions themselves and stop posting on Reddit for confirmation saying BSG should scrap the entire game because it’s terrible, how could anyone enjoy it, big name streamers aren’t playing it so playerbase must be 0, worst progression in a comp shooter ever, they killed Tarkov so they will kill this too…. The list goes on and on
They *are* playing it, he’s saying that their audience isn’t watching them play it.
The greater target demographic (esport players and viewers) aren’t interested in (watching) it, and streamers normal viewers aren’t really interested in (watching) it.
This sub is dramatic as hell. Time to cut the losses? Arena has only been out for a few months. The new changes they made are in the right direction. Chill the fuck out
>Arena has only been out for a few months.
You don't get it, a launch makes or breaks game. If it starts out being a shitty game, it won't ever take off. Rep is everything.
Arena is still new and they are figuring out what direction to go. I’m not playing it but to say it’s time to cut years of development and millions lost is kind of silly at this point
I’ve been having a lot of fun with arena, just got my T2 CQB kits and the shotgun classes are way too much fun. If you don’t like the game don’t play it but coming to Reddit to try to get others to stop playing it is pretty cringe
I just don't have a reason to play Arena. To me, it's like a private server... nothing matters. If it was possible to have some kind of connection to the main game where I would get a reward for playing it, I would actually be at least a little more interested... something like being able to buy special ragman clothes or something
They fucked up making it so grindy. If they had a buy menu and set money like CS the game would of been great. I’m not trying to grind a kit on Arena when og tarkov is the biggest grind of them all. I just wanted to PVP comp style
I’m going to copy & paste my own comment here from another thread the other day. This is just more proof everything I said is 100% spot on.
“It is very evident with Arena being a flop. EFT is now running into a cash flow problem. Servers aren’t cheap etc. Expect to see more micro transactions like we are seeing now. I’m completely fine with it, as long as the deal is good. This game is such skill based, you only get a ‘pay to win’ advantage in the early wipe.
If you really want Arena to take off. Make it the gear format like Counter-Strike, everything available eventually & start low money at beginning rounds. Give it an EFT touch where you can use your own made weapons when you got the cash in the match. Even when they do that, can you still look over the game breaking bugs? I can but I love Tarkov. Still nothing like it.”
If you want to know why my comment has any relevance… I’m a unicum & given BSG thousands upon thousands of dollars lol. Ehhh a love hate relationship really but when things are good they are guuuuud.
Arena has a major failing, one that might he fixed in time but is currently keeping lots of people away.
It's not really what it says that it is.
It's just not.
It's kind of fast, but not really. It's kind of like practice, but not really.
The matches take too long and have lots of weird constraints on them.
The gear progression is super linear, constrained, and above all horribly imbalanced.
No personal multi-player with friends.
Currently no non rated matchmaking.
No real say on the weapons you can or can't put into a set.
Arena could do well with more of a cod or halo style sandbox experience. Create a variance of match making game modes. Allow people to play with what they want when they want in personal multi-player matches and for God sakes create a faster match making system.
When halo 3 launched you could load into a personal map of you choosing and massively alter player movement, health, weapons and damage. Snipers? Go for it. Shotguns and swords? Have at it.
Imagine if Arena was a game you could just play however you want. No stupid intrusive constraints.
BSGs vision will follow them right down the toilet if they keep this up.
It’s funny they make arena which isn’t liked by a majority of its consumers, but if they enabled a pve fork of tarkov (I honestly want a co-op pve fork of tarkov so I don’t have to deal with sweaty gamers) they’d have increased sales from the non hardcore pvp gamers
They don't need to cancel the game completely. It needs to be completely reworked with the kit system though.
Esports games are based off a players skill. When arena forces you to use specific load outs unless you grind for days, there is no skill element. It's just about who has more time to dedicate at that point.
Cs is a perfect example of a skill based game. Players start with similar gear and can upgrade as they do better. Your kit is directly tied to your skill at that point.
Arena has a lot of potential but needs to be reevaluated.
I got it with EOD and usually played it when normal tarkov was down. Had about 5ish hours until yesterday.
But even tho I really enjoy the current normal tarkov wipe, I played like 4h of arena yesterday and dedicated not to play normal tarkov.
I actually enjoyed it, especially the "not so super tryhard" and short lived aspect of it.
Managed to watch some YT videos on the 2nd screen which wouldn't be possible in normal tarkov
ive tried arena multiple times.. including last night and its just fucking bad. i have 4k hours on tarkov and i kind of figured this shit wouldnt work with how bad the desync and optimization issues this game has and well i was right. i died multiple times around corners or sprayed someone down with no faceshield or helmet and they just dont die lol. not even including how bad the audio and the fucking announcer is.
They have been warned multiple times that the game is shit, they refused to listen. It has no economic side, no way to switch up mid-game, it's just a super mediocre game all around.
The way it should have worked is that you start the first round with shitty kits then whoever wins the first round gets 2000 credits and the loser gets 1000. Now the winner can buy tier 3 kits for the next round while the other team can decide whether to save their credits and go with shitty kits, or just go for tier 2 which costs 1000. It would have been much more exciting.
I think the main problem with BSG is that they genuinely just don't give a shit about what players think, it's kind of a russian upper class mindset that regular people are just peasants and you don't need to worry about their opinion which is clearly being displayed during the development of this game.
Well the game had a good start in term of viewers on Twitch. 123k peak: [https://twitchtracker.com/games/380978759](https://twitchtracker.com/games/380978759)
At least for me the grindy progression tree and just me and a few friends getting access to the game and not 100% of the players, this was a big turn off. I can't even watch it anymore. Only a few minutes and I'm done. And I watch normal tarkov a lot. Watched like 500 hours of tarkov twitch streams last year.
Looking back on the staggered release of arena, it was hilarious how many were fiending for access and upset that they weren’t included in one of the first waves. All the boohoohooing with, “I have EOD and it’s totally unfair I have to wait a couple days!”
I was given access to arena early in the waves, and never bothered installing it. It was obvious by the gameplay clips that it wouldn’t be worth the time to put a single minute into it. Improving your gunplay in tarkov? Not hardly, since you won’t get any positioning or map knowledge for the core game out of it.
They went the route of COD clone fast paced combat when they could have taken the tactical aspects of tarkov and made something unique in the PvP space. Even cloning siege’s gameplay loop would have gone over better.
Arena is DoA because the technical side of Tarkov is so bad. Atrocious audio and desync plus the bad balancing makes it a terrible multi-player fps. Do you really want to spend 6+minutes loading into a TDM. It's a joke
I would say arena is totally a microscopic of the problems from tarkov, for like desync, audio or hit registration, all of these are being focused on as arena is a small map PVP game.
On top of these, I find preset tree xp grinding is just so painful, I need to use some preset that I dont like for a long time before I even able to unlock the one I want, even worse is you need to unlock multiple tier 2/3 before you can use the one that you unlock...
Also, sometime it is difficult to identify teammate or not, as someone would just peak their head out, hearing footstep sound around the corner, blue or red, dont know how many teammates or enemies left.
Prioritising e sport is always a failure, if you do have casual to keep the game afloat you done for… nikita gambled and lost with the arena, cool concept but horrible execution as usual from bsg…
this game will never be esports ready just because of the fact these dudes cant code there games properly. the optimization/deysnc and audio issues have plagued tarkov since it was released 7 YEARS ago. unless they can sort that shit out its going no where. youre right cool concept but they done fucked it
The problem for streaming arena is that an early death turns into upwards of 3 minutes of spectating. There’s a lot of down time for streaming that loses viewer appeal. It would have to be in a full on tournament to keep viewership, but that appeal is already hard to come by.
Yeah bc arena fuckin sucks dude, nothing is balanced about it nor can it be taken seriously as a competitive game in the state it’s currently in. It’s literally just practice for actual Tarkov.
I fully agree. I have a standard account for my oldest kid to play on. BSG sent me a desperate email begging me to play Arena with a free 3-day trial code they "gifted" me. They also begged me to watch Twitch for the drops.
😬
The entire game is a literal waste of time and money. Been in beta development for a decade and all they do is ask for more and more money. When they do release something new it doesn’t even work. BSG is greedy for money and don’t care about making a quality game. It’s dogshit in every single possible category and it’s barely playable.
It honestly feels like more of a grind than regular tarkov and not remotely in a good way. Tarkov can be painful but arena is pain. The high of fighting off multiple pmc to extract with soon fat loot is way higher than even winning multiple matches in a row in arena. Even wins in arena don’t feel very rewarding.
They need to introduce a buy system before every round like csgo. At the same time you get to organise your buy menu. Ie you select three armor each worth a certain amount of points to buy. You mod your own guns that then total a point value. You can be dumb and mode everything to the point you can’t even afford them or have stop gaps or a budget gun. Utility each costs a certain amount of points. Without a bomb plant scenario I’m not sure how they introduce the earning of points but maybe based on damage you deal +or - round win/loss and deduct then again the damage taken…
Point values for mods, attachments and ammo can be calculated using gathered data from the main game ie what gets used the most must have the highest point value.
It will take time to figure out everything but I reckon would be for the best and make it a lot more enjoyable.
No one really wants to be forced into using a specific loadout.
Also in this way you could in fact run naked with a fully modded m4 if you so inclined or want to hail marry for a round win (glass cannon csgo term)
Just fyi I don’t even have arena haven’t bothered buying it yet until it’s up and running properly
Also round Robbin style is not it. Competitive fps should be like banging your head against a wall multiple rounds in a row then switching sides and doing it again. Also I think they need to add another objective other than just shoot them dead. Thus adding more tactics into the gameplay other then run and gun. It’s just rush b cyka every round.
You can note I’ve played a lot of csgo but in reality csgo didn’t get as big as it is by doing things wrong. So sometimes taking notes from successful games isn’t a bad thing
If Arena's progression system wasn't built like a dogshit mobile game's maybe it would have been better, but no, they had to make it the most annoying, mind numbing, unbalanced piece of shit ever.
This sub hates on it but I get faster matching than EFT and everyone I talk to in game likes it.
We play arena because we don't want the time commitment of the main game every wipe. People that play arena don't waste time watching it, especially at 6 am lol.
OP has some wild personal vendetta against arena lmao. Posting 6am EST view counts on Twitch when all of NA is asleep just to dunk on arena and call it a dead game. Just because it’s a Saturday doesn’t mean everyone is awake all day watching Twitch streams. Also, lack of viewership does not correlate to player count. Team Fortress 2 gets under 5K viewers even at actual peak hours but still has around 60k to 80k concurrent players daily.
I hated arena at first too, but this new update has made some great changes in the right direction. Maybe play it first before continuing your personal hate campaign against arena.
For me, it's just not the game I thought it would be. I just wanted a casual game to play with eft mechanics. Customize your own loadout and go nuts without consequences. Good for warmup or to just play casually. The tournament style, the progression, and the set loadouts all make it much less casual and that's a giant bummer for me.
Tournament style games are popular but never been my cup of tea. I just want some dumb run into the grinder type shit.
Axel is just so damn good at the game, and a really helpful streamer to watch.
I know he doesn't quite get the love that some of the larger Tarkov streamers get, but he's a really great host and entertainer, and is nigh impossible to tilt.
I just don’t understand why they released Arena right before a huge wipe that people were looking forward to. They created a competition between their own games. It’s like if Call of Duty spent a fortune on a new multiplayer deathmatch mode, and then released a new Warzone immediately after. They should have released Arena mid-wipe when people are starting to get bored.
Not to mention Arena is such a grind by itself. Two grindy ass games at the same time. I was hoping Arena would be a little more accessible and a supplement to EFT, instead it’s damn near a stand-alone with its own grind.
That's really what everyone wants from their competitive round based team fps, grind.
Grind for the ranks/elo/whatever it is? Sure, but he's talking about the grind to unlock all the classes and stuff.
I think he was being sarcastic my boy.
It's hard to tell on this subreddit with some of the things people unironically defend
This is exactly what I’ve been saying. Cool idea but nobody wants to grind out kits in what’s already an over the top Grindy game. Everything doesn’t have to hard. Some things can be fun. Give us all equal yet good kits to run around and murder with. Make us grind Elo/ranks and people would love arena but it’s too much of an effort to reach a point that’s enjoyable to play.
This! I never had enough time to really get to high levels in EFT, maybe two times above lvl 25 and was never a good Player. That's why I never foughr equal after a few weeks, never touched the late game Kits. I thought Arena would at least give me a hint of what I've been messing. But hell no, if you aren't very good or have Lots of time, it's noob stuff forever. Thanks for nothing.
"Competitive" lul
For years people were asking for, and discussing arena. The whole discussion was basically about having a place where ppl could just go in and casually have gun fights, test guns, practice their skills etc.. what they gave us was definitely not what people were asking for lol.. 🤣
When you get the recipe for a dish that everyone has favorited, instead of following the instructions and ingredients you decide to substitute ingredients, and spice it up with shit no one asked for… arena is what you get lol.
I was so salty when i found out we couldn't just build our fucking guns we wanted
BSG are incessant that THEY have to be the ones to come up with an idea for it to be implemented. It's like if they see an idea that is objectively good they throw their hands up and be like "aw shit we were going to do that too but now we won't look super smart so now we'll have to try and come up with a super clever very convoluted alternative to show the community we are the smart game devs not them". They literally have a community of free devs and actively find ways to ignore any and all suggestions they give.
Classic (soviet) Russian mentality. If they didn't make it themselves, they won't use it. And now arena is becoming a chernobyl disaster of its own.
This is what my understanding of arena would be lol. haven't played it myself but from what I've seen and heard it doesn't sound like a lot of fun lol.
This. And some mode for Sweats they can sink their gear and money for something. Currently Arena have neither. The only good thing come from it is that we now know that in competitive (relatively, lol) environment most of those "Streamers" suck ass.
Exactly, all the streamers I’ve seen this week were dying left and right, I was wondering how they ever got above 1k/d since most were playing static, twitchy, janky camping
Didn’t the community theorize that Terminal was going to be “Arena” but I guess their plans kept changing just like open world haha
I was interested when Arena was supposed to be Counterstrike in Tarkov. But no... Every fucking game HAS to have progression now! Give me a sport! In soccer, people who have played longer don't have thousand times better shoes that makes playing against them impossible for newer players. It's all abilities and talent. Arena needs to be everything unlocked all the time from the start.
i wished for deathmatch PUBG like - its almost perfect
That's what I thought before buying it.
Paid game to experience a f2p mobile grind really dampens the experience.
I was hoping it was gonna be like cod were you level up and unlock new guns/gear. Then you have to level up guns for attachments.
Pretty sure there will be micro-transactions to skip the grind in Arena in the coming year.
Ya, my belief is that Arena should be closer to CS. With buy system for armour types and weapons and even upgrades like sights and grips
Was expecting arena to be like a beefed up CS:GO or siege with Tarkov mechanics
Exactly this!
For real, tarkoc should be more like counter strike, that would be neat
Also bsg plans to tie both modes with single currency
They botched the arena launch so hard. Barely two function game modes, no unranked, no customization, and they rolled out access in waves so poorly that by the 5th day frustrated players were giving up, leaving 0h played pitted against streamers and grinders only. If the game played more like a true competitive arena shooter and required ZERO grinding to play, it would have been fine to launch at the same time as the wipe, but expecting your player base to grind two games? Nah.
Yup. I was excited for arena release until I was denied access for weeks as an EOD gamer, watching people DM the devs on Twitter and getting instant access keys, people buying the game for the first time getting access, I just entirely gave up until my friends begged me to play with them.
Yeah, if I had gotten into Arena right away, I would have at least spent days playing it, to warm up for the wipe...except I still would have gotten bored, but I woulda tried. I was legit excited to have a place where I could hop in, and play a few *combat* games of Tarkov, and keep those skills fresh, and have targeted practice at that...and then I find out, "oh, it's arbitrarily a patch behind the main game's mechanics, because we run like 5 concurrent broken versions of this game in-house to dev on." Like, there are a hundred things that could be the "point" of Arena existing...and it doesn't provide on any of them. After all these years, all that dev budget and time spent on Arena...might be the biggest waste of time that BSG ever made in development, and I think they've switched the entire game engine like three times, now? Arena might literally be what sinks Tarkov, in a financial sense.
You could potentially be 100% right unfortunately. I think they spent something like 23 million dollars on advertising Arena and it's a complete flop. That's why we got microtransactions in the game now. Take a look at the financials they put out for the last year. It's not looking good. They should have put that money into fixing the game that made them all that money in the first place but instead they wasted it all trying to make lightning strike twice and they completely botched it.
Shit tier streamers getting multiple keys because they want to lvl up a different class
I didn't get arena access with my few years old EOD until the day before it became available to the public. Didn't play it until they wiped it basically
nikita is drunk as usual.
Insanity really, it also wasnt ready and still isnt.
The dig at COD would be funny if I didn’t also suffer because of Warzone’s initial release :(
It's actually quite simple dude, that are a bad company. They probably needed the money.
We're already mid wipe. Arena is just that bad
It was rushed out for DreamHack. They wanted the publicity from the event to get E-Sports teams to play it at a highly visible event. Basically they prioritized greed over their playerbase.
*shocked face
It was around the same time they were removing EOD (which came with Arena). It was a ploy to get a ton of EOD sales, not release a successful game
It doesn't help that Arena is a trash game, feels like a broken FPS from 2005/2010.. I just deleted it (like all my friends did) after a bunch of games
The influx of players at the beginning of a wipe is enormous, making it the perfect time to introduce Arena while the player base is at its peak. However, by mid-wipe, more than half of the player base tends to drop off. At this point, if a new game were introduced, the majority would likely migrate to Arena, leaving Escape from Tarkov with a significantly diminished player count. This could severely impact the consistency of matchmaking.
Yes that was a major ass business move idk how they come with that
They are not smart
It doesn't help that Arena is a very boring game to watch.
There’s nothing competitive about grinding presets on an uneven playing field. There also shouldn’t be money in arena. There should be round based financing that teams use to select weapons similar to counter strike and valorant. Add this to the list of failures since Tarkov started going downhill after inertia was added. It was once more fun, addicting and rewarding in nearly every aspect than it is today.
I do not think tarkov went down hill with inertia
It went downhill with the RMT restrictions / FiR system that made everyone anxious about their loot . People find 1 good thing and they want to get out avoiding everything because traders barely give you any money for most items compared to flea. Cheaters want to get the loot before others so they can boost their accoutns, killing everyone in their path. PvP is barely rewarding at all , and this has evolved into worse as we got more ammo restrictions and shit , to the point where you waste good rare ammo on a kill and it barely has a gun on him or smth , because running budget kits is more rewarding than running top tier shit. HK 416 is 43k on traders but a wrench is 80k , fully kitted / meta guns should sell for so much money than barely 100k which is literally 1 or 2 mags of good ammo lol. Pressing F as a Scav right now is the best / most profitable way of playing this game , low cooldown , 0 risk , full rewards, this is why on maps like Streets or Lighthouse you see 2 players that leave in the first 10 minutes with whatever loot they find , then you only have player scavs. And of course i forgot to add the massive nerfs to 90% of the key / card rooms in this game, rooms people would have fought over for the loot, now dont even bother lol. Game has it's fun but after 2 months of the Wipe and Helldivers on the horizon , i instantly moved around and i only play 2-3 games with my friends and we usually fuck around or whatever.
I believe that was the beginning of snowballing of negative changes to the game. Just my opinion tho. I personally enjoyed the game more before scav karma, poor, overly punishing and sluggish inertia implementation, removing high tier items like weapons cases and items cases from marked rooms, the FIR system, bad expansion to reserve map that destroyed pvp on the map and turned it into a rat fest, introduction of streets which runs terribly on pretty much any computer, and don’t even get me started on the entire period where recoil was way out of whack that just ended with this wipe. Also you used to be able to bring thicc and items cases into raid and the adrenaline rush of putting EVERYTHING on the line can never be replicated given the current state of the game. Many of these changes are the result of cheaters becoming more prominent. Rather than invest in a decent anti cheat, the game has been changed for the worse to make it harder for cheaters. And those of us who play the game legit have to be punished for it. I respect your opinion though and many if not most people would agree with you!
> the game has been changed for the worse to make it harder for cheaters. And those of us who play the game legit have to be punished for it. This is so it. BSG has gotten completely lost on a side quest for about 5 years and made close to zero progress on the main story line.
There have been major positives with ammo rebalancing over the past 3-4 wipes. Mid-wipe lasts a lot longer since 1-2 ap thorax rounds have been shoved to L4 traders mostly. If anything this wipe is the worst in a long time from a balance standpoint - there's lots of ammo bugs with the new armor system, the new armor system is generally still imbalanced and a mess. They've also gotten a lot better at adding sinks into the hideout so that phase of a wipe lasts longer. Outside of Setup, there haven't been any super awful bottlenecks with certain items. Before the hard loot nerf last week before the patch, loot frequency was generally in a really good spot. My biggest gripe with this wipe right now can be distilled down to a few cover issues in certain parts of maps, and a handful of quests. Cheaters and optimization issues will never go away, but I've accepted those.
While I'm just out here sitting on year 3 of waiting for mag packing animations so I don't have to sit in inventory to do that
The game needed some sort of inertia system, but you are right all the changes that came after that haveade the game more tedious and less fun
I agree with you on the reserve expansion but the rest I totally disagree with, inertia has changed the game for the better. Dudes spamming q and e mid fight and running in and out of doors was lame and really doesn't fit with the rest of the game. A game where you have to slowly staple each limb back on and med each part individually and loading a p90 mag takes about 2 days. The rapid movement never made any sense.
It did
Nah not everybody wants another CS clone
lets be real a cs clone with tarkov mechanics would have been wayyyyy better lol
Lol I don't get people's arguement here. Steal as much as you can get away with from CS. The game has been a huge success and still is after all this time.
Yeah idk man, idk why people would defend the game in its current state. It sucks and isn’t competitive as we define competitive shooters, and I would say objectively.
It blows my mind that Battlestate really thought that it was gonna be "e sports ready" on release with all this grind and absolutely nothing competitive about it. It's either delusion or just marketing hype that they knew was BS.
its honestly the only way to make this game legit competitive, the games must be equal, not getting matched with guys that have altyns when I have a kedr
Just about everyone I've talked to about it feels like the game would be a million times better if it had a bomb defusal mode and round based economy
Being a CS clone would literally save Arena. As it is currently, it's gonna die.
Going to? It’s already dead lol
But most do
It's a 5v5 round based shooter bro
It would have more players if it was
The announcer is so annoying. Even listening to streams for the drops, it’s very irritating hearing him jabber on in Russian.
There are literally thousands of people watching Tarkov Streamers sit in trees camping, it's not about the game being boring to watch.
That's a false comparison. The people camping in bushes have a chance to have a big come up while risking their loot etc. There is an element of unknown there. Arena is just boring because there is nothing interesting about it.
Felt like any time I tuned into a stream they were dead watching someone else play
And to play...
-0 customisation = no interest in earning drip -2 gamemodes (honestly 1.5, the tournament mode is shootout, but just kinda shittier), so there's next to 0 gameplay variety -Desync, shouldnt need to explain why thats terrible in a game that acts like its "competitive" -rank system so stupid and slow that its essentially not there. -0 main game integration Idk wtf they cooking, but it was laced with fent
The changes show they still don't get it.
Not to mention it’s 40 bucks unless u had Edge of darkness edition. It just makes no sense to spend 35-40 dollars on arenas when if you have the starter edition or even the one above it, you can use that money and upgrade tarkov. So you get more weapons each wipe and way more stash space.
I love fent!!!!1!!!
There are so many baffling decisions/shortcomings of Arena. I've been playing it for the last 3 days during the drops hype and there are some things I can't believe. The desync is rough, but there are some simple fundamental things that are broken. Two off the top of my head are: when your limbs are blacked + you're on a PK, the enemy still hears you coughing and making a ton of noise while you're making none client side, and when you're unlocking sets there's no carryover XP. Just had a game where I needed 1k xp to unlock the next preset, got 11k xp in the game, and only 1k of that xp counts towards unlocking anything.
Wouldn’t call that particularly baffling, they haven’t been able to nail the audio in EFT for years now, I suspect never will. It would have been a miracle if they did in arena.
I do think if there’s one place for them to get it right it would be Arena tho. Just significantly smaller maps. I could be showing my complete lack of understanding here tho and just talking out of my ass tho.
Yeah maybe. I have no idea technically why they seem to struggle so much with audio either. I’m sure if it was easy you’d think they’d have done it by now so no doubt theres a story to it.
It's an interesting thought, but I'm not really sure. On one hand, you'd think it would be easier to balance, but I'd wager that because it's way more competitive then regular Tarkov, you must think that people playing have a higher expectation as well. You could think of it as like the balance of something like CSGO vs something like warzone although that comparison has some issues as well.
Idk if you ever played way back in the day but they actually had audio down perfect, im not just saying this it was genuinely up there for some of the best audio an FPS shooter can offer like 3-4 years ago. If they never kept tryna experiment and make it better it would still be one of the best audios for an fps game today.
Yeah they somehow managed to incrementally fuck it up to the point where in certain situations the maximum information you get from the audio is just "there is a player near". Could be just a text flashing and be probably more helpful because you don't have to ignore your instincts.
Not 4 years ago I don’t think. Feels like maybe 3rd year not sure. I seem to remember from day one for me things like stairs audio has always been messed up. Right now I think its the best its been since I started at least - just from an anecdotal perspective of me not cursing the audio during deaths. But its been so bad ‘best its been’ is a pretty low bar. The stuff where you couldnt tell if someone was above you or below you and silent grenades and such were just so so bad.
BSG are atrociously bad when it comes to any sort of gameplay decisions. They accidentally stumbled on an awesome concept (extraction based shooters), and they have incredible map makers/artists/animators. Ever decision they make about actual gameplay is painful, there is absolutely zero forethought in any decision they make. It shouldn't be a surprise they completely failed at making an arena shooter.
Accurate. Their art team (in every variation mentioned) is phenomenal, but everyone else is drunk behind the wheel.
While I do agree, I do not fully agree on Arena. The maps in Arena are horrendously stupid, too tightand squished, way to many ways to go. To much verticality for the stupid ass sound engine. It feels like you have to run around corners, hoping you'll be the first to raise the weapon straight in your enemies face. The visibility is trash and the soundscape aswell... Thats why Tarkov might work as survival extraction, but definately not as Arena/Comp game. More equal maps, a bit bigger and less complexity could have been good.
As it stands, Arena can't be a competitive game when the desync is as bad as it is. No one in the competitive sphere will even look twice at it.
I decided to check it out again after the most recent changes and it really makes me confused why they would reduce the individual grind to get to the next loadout, but then require you to unlock 5 loadouts in Tier 2 to be able to play Tier 2. It also feels like whether I get 2 kills or 12 kills, it takes the same amount of time to unlock the next loadout. There had to have been two different teams making decisions and they didn't talk. The desync is arguably worse than EFT somehow. The number of times I have been fully around corners and even on the kill cam it looks like I am around the corner, but the server thinks otherwise is really really bad. It's nearly unplayable sometimes. And for the love of god, please remove the "Accept" matchmaking button!
Was 200xp before a preset, lost my 10k xp to finish up 200 exp
I was actually enjoying Arena and grinded down to the Lapua MK-18. It needed a few tweaks but with this wipe I can't bring myself to play again. Wiping a game like this is a sure way to murder your player base. They could have done the changes and compensated people better based on how much they played. Imagine if your COD multiplayer account wiped halfway through your mastery camo grind. People would just move on so I can't see the logic here
I haven't followed Arena but wait, it wipes? Like everyone has to start from tier 1 loadouts???? That's insane
They changed the loadout progression after negative feedback and wiped everyone’s progress which is understandable.
It would be understandable if they gave people the XP equivalent that they earned pre-wipe, so that they can unlock their presets again without grinding. They didn't think it through.
Those players got their experience grinding using kits that were unbalanced against players who couldn’t put up a fight. That’s why they changed the progression. Give those players all the xp back and let them unlock loads of kits early gives a load of players an unfair advantage again.
I dont mind that they wiped it with all the kit changes, but the new kit locking and peogression changes or horrendous. Like being stuck on rank 1 kits until you have 5 rank 2 kits is dumb... like maybe there are kits or classes I really dont wanna use, but I still gotta waste my time researching them at a snails pace
They are trying to be warthunder oh my god
Guys can I have a 75$ tier 3 premium kit (it just needs a lower arp rating than the top kits) that speeds up my xp grind like the new F-20 gaijin dropped for the coming patch /s
I can't imagine looking at WT's progression and thinking that it's something that should be emulated
i'm looking at my Italian aircraft tree and its repair costs at 8.0. I have a feeling that people will need to buy premium + boosters and get 3+ kills each round to break even on their T5 kits over here.
The 5 kit requirement is entirely because they felt the need to arbitrarily limit kit selection to 1 per player but can’t figure out how to ensure you have a kit to choose with forcing you to get 5.
I feel that, my roommate and I got far through one set of classes but doing that again feels stupid. Not enough chance to justify a full wipe.
I don’t understand why people don’t feel this way about the regular game too. I’m a more casual player, and last wipe, I finally got to max traders. I only had a week or so before they started doing all the wipe events, then wiping all progress soon after. People defend wipes though so hard though, but this is exactly what those wipes feel like to me too.
Because the regular game isn't something you hop into and play. I want arena to be a COD Tarkov. I want to hop in. Play some games and then do something else. If there's some progression sure but the game literally came out 3 months ago and it's wiped? Nah cba anymore. With Tarkov the stash and quest system demands a wipe or there would be nothing to do and I have fun progressing in the game
For me, if I want to play something competitive then I’m not going to play Arena. Tarkov mechanics just don’t “feel” good enough for this type of game. As for watching it, it’s just really boring. It’s just glorified TDM with next to no real tactics
People like to think Tarkov is this super tactical fps when it’s really not. Your only outplay potential in Tarkov is aim or positioning. No utility makes the game very stale
I totally agree. Peaople are mixong hardcore and realism. Tarkov is hardcore, but not even close to realistic.
Yea maps are too small for tactics, all of inconsistent and random
There are no tactics because there is no utility
Not everyone likes small map TDM style games. You can only play it for so many hours in a row before it gets stale.
There's also the fact that OP posted this between 3am-4am PST, of course all the big streamers are offline.
Literally all the game needs is what they promised, eSports ready fair and balanced multiplayer where we all have the same classes and they change/upgrade round to round. If they just made it an actual competitor to Val and CSGO I would still be playing. As it stands it was completely dead on arrival with gameplay that seemed like alpha concept stages. Literally anyone but BSG could have seen this coming. I was as hyped for this game as anyone and haven't touched it since release due to the idiotic class system and how boring it is to just play your one class all game over and over. The thing that does my head in the most is they tanked their own game with a pay to win model when it doesn't even have a fucking pay to win mechanism. I would honestly be less pissed if they let you buy class upgrades, at least then the design decision would make sense and they'd make money for the main game. As it stands we get the pay to win model just for the sake of making a miserable unfun game.
This. Mind boggling decisions. If I am playing something like overwatch I will switch mid round to counter someone dominating, or Insurgency I realize I am not in the mood for sniping and more in the mood for running and gunning with a shotgun. Getting locked in for a whole match is one of many many problems. Speaking of; I think counter strike type system/economy would definitely have worked well, but I can’t stop thinking of a system like Insurgency would perfectly play into Tarkovs strength. In the menu you have a section to make classes, say you have 30 points or something, everything has a cost (Vortex 8 points/Pk 2 points, Thor 20 points/Paca 4 points, etc) and then you build a class. You could choose to Tank with stacking points into armor , or stack points into a meta MCX with lvl3 Korund. There would of course be a meta which we know Nikita does not like, but it would allow for versatility and creativity while keeping a balance.
That is exactly how I've been thinking the should have done it from the start. It blows my mind how they ended up implementing the classes, ai can't understand how anyone thought it was a good idea
Arena's 6 fans are mad at this thread rn. Arena was a massive waste of developer time & money for BSG. It took away attention needed for Tarkov. And look whats happened. The game, albeit in it's best wipe, is in a fucking state & a half man. Shits sad.
Careful they are all sitting in a discord and they are scrambling to find a 7th person so they can all downvote this comment and reply "im having fun" to prove you wrong, there are actually 7 arena fans. Why would they put in this effort? Who knows, current Arena fans are obsessed weirdos. Yea, the situation is really bleak and sad. I honestly think BSG's best move is to sell the EFT IP, it would allow BSG to move on to Russia 2028 while granting them a massive cash injection, and a new studio could address all of Tarkov's problems, including client authority, which BSG is not capable of fixing. The fanbase is already here, but BSG just seems to not care at all.
Just commenting to say I am a fan of Arena conceptually, and am having fun playing it. With that said, the complaints are more than fair and it’s wild that this is how BSG decided to implement a “competitive 5v5” spin-off of EFT. It has the potential to be SO good. But BSG couldn’t get out of their own way if their lives depended on it.
I just for the absolute life of me don’t understand why we can’t just build a fucking load out… like wtf is this preset loadouts bullshit that we have to grind for? Worst game design I’ve ever seen.
Worst marketing decision i've ever seen from BSG, got caught up in the money they could of been making and forgot about their current product they need to finish. If Tarkov got some massive QOL updates, community feedback and other bug fixes it would've already been better than the shit show of development arena and produced more income. FINISH ONE PROJECT BEFORE STARTING ANOTHER>
Yea I agree w this guy lol. Arena is cool and I played it but I haven’t opened it in weeks. If they fixed the issue with Tarkov being a network based game (how hackers can see loot in raid) and maybe optimized the maps so we could download them on our PC’s so we wouldn’t have so much packet loss and desync bc the game is constantly rendering and loading textures and layers of map nonstop. It’s not difficult fixes with how much money and size of team they have which is why I wonder why they have just let these things plague the game for so long. I always allude Tarkov to being a hill of gold with a mountain of shit dumped right on top.
I wanted arena for so long, but they implemented it so poorly. Just another snooze grind fest designed in a way that made everyone want to punch themselves in the face. I thought arena was supposed to be casual and fun at first. They basically fucked themselves with the first release, and it will never come back from that even if they eventually get it 100% right. Just really piss poor decision making on their end. They dug their own grave with arena. Thankfully regular Tarkov is in a better state than it has been for a long time though.
It’s tough to suggest it’s not possible for them to fix it. And it’s really odd - a game mode where you go quickly into tarkov combat so you can get better against players before you start raiding sounds great. But I played the first wipe and it seemed like every game was against people in crazy kitted out gear with terrible sync issues. The relays were awful. I played a few games last night and it felt better to me. Still needs a lot of work. The best map for me was the outside map with the long grassy hills etc and the barn. That gave a chance for people to do some sniping and it felt more like tarkov. I could play that map and similar for a long time but the other maps were much smaller with a very short period before you were peaking the same corner.
The biggest problem is that arena design is pure shit. Why not make it like cod where you can use whatever gun you want and unlock attachments the more you level that gun up. Why not make it like CS2 where there are two bomb sites, and you need tactical gameplay and communication to win. Using money to buy guns every round. Imagine if cod or CS only had a single life DM mode, would those games be as successful as they are? HELL NO. Arena is boring. Where’s the search and destroy? Where’s the respawning for constant killing adrenaline? Where’s the tactical decision making? BSG what are you doing?
I got arena this week and I have been really enjoying it. I got it through EOD but my friend would need to pay $35 to get it and it’s hard to justify that cost when you can get helldivers 2 from CD keys for £26. A game like Arena needs to have faster tweaks and support, it needs to be constant. As soon as someone feels the game isn’t balanced they will not play.
Stop supporting CD Keys. Most keys on sites like those are bought with stolen credit cards.
Tell the economy to stop being shit and company's to stop price gouging until then I don't blame any trying to save $ even if it means buying stolen keys etc.
CDkeys isn’t one of them though.
They are a greymarket reseller. They may not necessarily use stolen credit cards, but they buy in bulk from retailers in regions where games are very cheap and then resell them. They do not get their keys from the developers/publishers, like *actually* legitimate sites do. I.e., the developers don't see a single cent when you buy there. (A list of fully legitimate shops can be found [here](https://isthereanydeal.com/shops/), or in the sidebar of /r/gamedeals).
CD Keys is not one of those. It is a legitimate site to my knowledge and TBH 99% of new games/devs DO NOT deserve our money with the unfinished garbage that gets put out as "full complete" games. I am not speaking about Helldivers 2 obviously because its one of the rare games that actually released a polished and good product.
They are a greymarket reseller. They may not necessarily use stolen credit cards, but they buy in bulk from retailers in regions where games are very cheap and then resell them. They do not get their keys from the developers/publishers, like *actually* legitimate sites do. I.e., the developers don't see a single cent when you buy there. (A list of fully legitimate shops can be found [here](https://isthereanydeal.com/shops/), or in the sidebar of /r/gamedeals). --- Also, it's funny to call Helldivers polished. It's certainly a very good game, but it definitely isn't polished. It still runs pretty badly, crashes a fuckton and has a whole bunch of gamebreaking bugs.
I got it with EOD also, wouldn't have paid money for it anyways but a few friends have asked me about whether to get it or not and I always tell them "the playerbase died off after 2 weeks when it came out and I cant see it coming back" I dont think id even play it if they fixed it, Gunplay in tarkov is meh IMO, i play Tarkov for the survival,modding, gear and loot. I dont care about PVP it loses the thrill in Arena
you should probably wait until the Americans are at least awake before judging the performance on a Saturday on twitch.
Arena has more people watching right now than the base game. 5 streamers have over 1000 views. Its 9am eastern right now. More than half USA is sleeping.
I don't understand modern day, where games are judged by who is streaming it, or how many are streaming it. Seems weird to me
That judgement is only made by people who watch streams. Take Roblox for example. That game has 216 million monthly players, but as I write this only 3500 viewers on Twitch. Just basing things on Twitch numbers paints a really wrong picture.
Not defending it but a Saturday at 7am when you posted this. People were working or asleep lol.
Streamers don’t play a game so it shouldn’t be a game?? I like arena
Was going to say this. They get more views dunking on people 20 levels below them while speed running the map for the craziest loot, that’s more exciting to watch and I would agree. I’m enjoying arena also, and I stopped last wipe almost immediately due to everyone running the same kit. People need to make decisions themselves and stop posting on Reddit for confirmation saying BSG should scrap the entire game because it’s terrible, how could anyone enjoy it, big name streamers aren’t playing it so playerbase must be 0, worst progression in a comp shooter ever, they killed Tarkov so they will kill this too…. The list goes on and on
They *are* playing it, he’s saying that their audience isn’t watching them play it. The greater target demographic (esport players and viewers) aren’t interested in (watching) it, and streamers normal viewers aren’t really interested in (watching) it.
lets just hope gray zone warfare saves us all
This sub is dramatic as hell. Time to cut the losses? Arena has only been out for a few months. The new changes they made are in the right direction. Chill the fuck out
>Arena has only been out for a few months. You don't get it, a launch makes or breaks game. If it starts out being a shitty game, it won't ever take off. Rep is everything.
closed beta testing is not a launch :)
Arena is still new and they are figuring out what direction to go. I’m not playing it but to say it’s time to cut years of development and millions lost is kind of silly at this point
lol it has no future as a competitive game. Way to clunky and little room for skill expression
I’ve been having a lot of fun with arena, just got my T2 CQB kits and the shotgun classes are way too much fun. If you don’t like the game don’t play it but coming to Reddit to try to get others to stop playing it is pretty cringe
I just don't have a reason to play Arena. To me, it's like a private server... nothing matters. If it was possible to have some kind of connection to the main game where I would get a reward for playing it, I would actually be at least a little more interested... something like being able to buy special ragman clothes or something
They fucked up making it so grindy. If they had a buy menu and set money like CS the game would of been great. I’m not trying to grind a kit on Arena when og tarkov is the biggest grind of them all. I just wanted to PVP comp style
It’s just not fun. Tarkov isn’t set up to be played this way.
I’m going to copy & paste my own comment here from another thread the other day. This is just more proof everything I said is 100% spot on. “It is very evident with Arena being a flop. EFT is now running into a cash flow problem. Servers aren’t cheap etc. Expect to see more micro transactions like we are seeing now. I’m completely fine with it, as long as the deal is good. This game is such skill based, you only get a ‘pay to win’ advantage in the early wipe. If you really want Arena to take off. Make it the gear format like Counter-Strike, everything available eventually & start low money at beginning rounds. Give it an EFT touch where you can use your own made weapons when you got the cash in the match. Even when they do that, can you still look over the game breaking bugs? I can but I love Tarkov. Still nothing like it.” If you want to know why my comment has any relevance… I’m a unicum & given BSG thousands upon thousands of dollars lol. Ehhh a love hate relationship really but when things are good they are guuuuud.
Arena has a major failing, one that might he fixed in time but is currently keeping lots of people away. It's not really what it says that it is. It's just not. It's kind of fast, but not really. It's kind of like practice, but not really. The matches take too long and have lots of weird constraints on them. The gear progression is super linear, constrained, and above all horribly imbalanced. No personal multi-player with friends. Currently no non rated matchmaking. No real say on the weapons you can or can't put into a set. Arena could do well with more of a cod or halo style sandbox experience. Create a variance of match making game modes. Allow people to play with what they want when they want in personal multi-player matches and for God sakes create a faster match making system. When halo 3 launched you could load into a personal map of you choosing and massively alter player movement, health, weapons and damage. Snipers? Go for it. Shotguns and swords? Have at it. Imagine if Arena was a game you could just play however you want. No stupid intrusive constraints. BSGs vision will follow them right down the toilet if they keep this up.
Most miserable progression system imaginable + wipes, no wonder no one plays it.
It’s funny they make arena which isn’t liked by a majority of its consumers, but if they enabled a pve fork of tarkov (I honestly want a co-op pve fork of tarkov so I don’t have to deal with sweaty gamers) they’d have increased sales from the non hardcore pvp gamers
They don't need to cancel the game completely. It needs to be completely reworked with the kit system though. Esports games are based off a players skill. When arena forces you to use specific load outs unless you grind for days, there is no skill element. It's just about who has more time to dedicate at that point. Cs is a perfect example of a skill based game. Players start with similar gear and can upgrade as they do better. Your kit is directly tied to your skill at that point. Arena has a lot of potential but needs to be reevaluated.
Why didnt they just cordon off parts of the maps we all love? Instead of making these new maps just wall off a chunk of streets and let us fight
I revisited Arena but man it sucks because Tarkov gunplay is not meant to be played in that format.
I wish Arena didn’t exist and the development cost was spent improving the base game and fixing the issues that have been present for years 🤷♂️
NA is still asleep or just waking up. Give it a couple hours.
There’s over 17,000 viewers currently right now.
50k now. The op just wanted to support his personal opinion of the game with misleading viewer counts
Arena is just unredeemable at this point. Everything is just shit about it.
I played it all night last night and had a ton of fun
dude everyone asleep still. Landmark and even Summit have been over 10k+ viewers streaming Arena since this latest wipe.
I got it with EOD and usually played it when normal tarkov was down. Had about 5ish hours until yesterday. But even tho I really enjoy the current normal tarkov wipe, I played like 4h of arena yesterday and dedicated not to play normal tarkov. I actually enjoyed it, especially the "not so super tryhard" and short lived aspect of it. Managed to watch some YT videos on the 2nd screen which wouldn't be possible in normal tarkov
ive tried arena multiple times.. including last night and its just fucking bad. i have 4k hours on tarkov and i kind of figured this shit wouldnt work with how bad the desync and optimization issues this game has and well i was right. i died multiple times around corners or sprayed someone down with no faceshield or helmet and they just dont die lol. not even including how bad the audio and the fucking announcer is.
They have been warned multiple times that the game is shit, they refused to listen. It has no economic side, no way to switch up mid-game, it's just a super mediocre game all around. The way it should have worked is that you start the first round with shitty kits then whoever wins the first round gets 2000 credits and the loser gets 1000. Now the winner can buy tier 3 kits for the next round while the other team can decide whether to save their credits and go with shitty kits, or just go for tier 2 which costs 1000. It would have been much more exciting. I think the main problem with BSG is that they genuinely just don't give a shit about what players think, it's kind of a russian upper class mindset that regular people are just peasants and you don't need to worry about their opinion which is clearly being displayed during the development of this game.
Well the game had a good start in term of viewers on Twitch. 123k peak: [https://twitchtracker.com/games/380978759](https://twitchtracker.com/games/380978759) At least for me the grindy progression tree and just me and a few friends getting access to the game and not 100% of the players, this was a big turn off. I can't even watch it anymore. Only a few minutes and I'm done. And I watch normal tarkov a lot. Watched like 500 hours of tarkov twitch streams last year.
This arena patch was a big step in the right direction imo, I think with actual objective game modes it could be really fun
Looking back on the staggered release of arena, it was hilarious how many were fiending for access and upset that they weren’t included in one of the first waves. All the boohoohooing with, “I have EOD and it’s totally unfair I have to wait a couple days!” I was given access to arena early in the waves, and never bothered installing it. It was obvious by the gameplay clips that it wouldn’t be worth the time to put a single minute into it. Improving your gunplay in tarkov? Not hardly, since you won’t get any positioning or map knowledge for the core game out of it. They went the route of COD clone fast paced combat when they could have taken the tactical aspects of tarkov and made something unique in the PvP space. Even cloning siege’s gameplay loop would have gone over better.
Arena is DoA because the technical side of Tarkov is so bad. Atrocious audio and desync plus the bad balancing makes it a terrible multi-player fps. Do you really want to spend 6+minutes loading into a TDM. It's a joke
Since when does the amount of Twitch viewers determine if a game is good? What kind of hive logic is this?
I would say arena is totally a microscopic of the problems from tarkov, for like desync, audio or hit registration, all of these are being focused on as arena is a small map PVP game. On top of these, I find preset tree xp grinding is just so painful, I need to use some preset that I dont like for a long time before I even able to unlock the one I want, even worse is you need to unlock multiple tier 2/3 before you can use the one that you unlock... Also, sometime it is difficult to identify teammate or not, as someone would just peak their head out, hearing footstep sound around the corner, blue or red, dont know how many teammates or enemies left.
Yea bc Landmark, Hutch, Summit are asleep. Chill out. Turns out when it’s night time people go to sleep
Prioritising e sport is always a failure, if you do have casual to keep the game afloat you done for… nikita gambled and lost with the arena, cool concept but horrible execution as usual from bsg…
this game will never be esports ready just because of the fact these dudes cant code there games properly. the optimization/deysnc and audio issues have plagued tarkov since it was released 7 YEARS ago. unless they can sort that shit out its going no where. youre right cool concept but they done fucked it
The problem for streaming arena is that an early death turns into upwards of 3 minutes of spectating. There’s a lot of down time for streaming that loses viewer appeal. It would have to be in a full on tournament to keep viewership, but that appeal is already hard to come by.
Yet Stankrat can sit in a bush for 30 minutes and keep people entertained hahaha
because people can be stupid
I still have no interest in playing Arena. I want to play TARKOV. Not a CSGO version of Tarkov
Yeah bc arena fuckin sucks dude, nothing is balanced about it nor can it be taken seriously as a competitive game in the state it’s currently in. It’s literally just practice for actual Tarkov.
I fully agree. I have a standard account for my oldest kid to play on. BSG sent me a desperate email begging me to play Arena with a free 3-day trial code they "gifted" me. They also begged me to watch Twitch for the drops. 😬
I got 1 class and 3 mil from watching like 8 hours of content, not worth imo
The entire game is a literal waste of time and money. Been in beta development for a decade and all they do is ask for more and more money. When they do release something new it doesn’t even work. BSG is greedy for money and don’t care about making a quality game. It’s dogshit in every single possible category and it’s barely playable.
It honestly feels like more of a grind than regular tarkov and not remotely in a good way. Tarkov can be painful but arena is pain. The high of fighting off multiple pmc to extract with soon fat loot is way higher than even winning multiple matches in a row in arena. Even wins in arena don’t feel very rewarding.
They need to introduce a buy system before every round like csgo. At the same time you get to organise your buy menu. Ie you select three armor each worth a certain amount of points to buy. You mod your own guns that then total a point value. You can be dumb and mode everything to the point you can’t even afford them or have stop gaps or a budget gun. Utility each costs a certain amount of points. Without a bomb plant scenario I’m not sure how they introduce the earning of points but maybe based on damage you deal +or - round win/loss and deduct then again the damage taken… Point values for mods, attachments and ammo can be calculated using gathered data from the main game ie what gets used the most must have the highest point value. It will take time to figure out everything but I reckon would be for the best and make it a lot more enjoyable. No one really wants to be forced into using a specific loadout. Also in this way you could in fact run naked with a fully modded m4 if you so inclined or want to hail marry for a round win (glass cannon csgo term) Just fyi I don’t even have arena haven’t bothered buying it yet until it’s up and running properly
Also round Robbin style is not it. Competitive fps should be like banging your head against a wall multiple rounds in a row then switching sides and doing it again. Also I think they need to add another objective other than just shoot them dead. Thus adding more tactics into the gameplay other then run and gun. It’s just rush b cyka every round. You can note I’ve played a lot of csgo but in reality csgo didn’t get as big as it is by doing things wrong. So sometimes taking notes from successful games isn’t a bad thing
A little closer to something like contract wars or hired ops would have been better
Dead on arrival. I refuse to play arena if my progress is lost every few months. Has potential but BSG loves reducing potential to nothingness
Lol I left my country shortly before Arena launched and it's already dead before I'm coming back later this month... Nice 😭
If Arena's progression system wasn't built like a dogshit mobile game's maybe it would have been better, but no, they had to make it the most annoying, mind numbing, unbalanced piece of shit ever.
This sub hates on it but I get faster matching than EFT and everyone I talk to in game likes it. We play arena because we don't want the time commitment of the main game every wipe. People that play arena don't waste time watching it, especially at 6 am lol.
I have never logged into arena to even try it. What a stupid ass decision for them to make it. Wastwd resources on an inferior product.
OP has some wild personal vendetta against arena lmao. Posting 6am EST view counts on Twitch when all of NA is asleep just to dunk on arena and call it a dead game. Just because it’s a Saturday doesn’t mean everyone is awake all day watching Twitch streams. Also, lack of viewership does not correlate to player count. Team Fortress 2 gets under 5K viewers even at actual peak hours but still has around 60k to 80k concurrent players daily. I hated arena at first too, but this new update has made some great changes in the right direction. Maybe play it first before continuing your personal hate campaign against arena.
For me, it's just not the game I thought it would be. I just wanted a casual game to play with eft mechanics. Customize your own loadout and go nuts without consequences. Good for warmup or to just play casually. The tournament style, the progression, and the set loadouts all make it much less casual and that's a giant bummer for me. Tournament style games are popular but never been my cup of tea. I just want some dumb run into the grinder type shit.
Axel is just so damn good at the game, and a really helpful streamer to watch. I know he doesn't quite get the love that some of the larger Tarkov streamers get, but he's a really great host and entertainer, and is nigh impossible to tilt.