What’s new in Tarkov?

There was a whole slew of information this time around. We’ll first get into everything that Escape from Tarkov director Nikita Buyanov promised we’ll see before next year. New weapons, further expansions to the Lighthouse map and more!

The big news today is probably that the new map, Streets of Tarkov is planned to release sometime within this wipe cycle. Nikita mentioned several times that it is one of the big focus points of the team to get the map to a state that it’s playable. Similar to previous maps, Streets of Tarkov will probably be rolled out in various phases until the team can ensure a stable performance across multiple configurations.

Nikita said many times during the live stream that Streets of Tarkov will easily be their biggest map yet. That it would probably be big enough to have the entire game be set within it. The goal is to have up to 40 PMC’s (Players) on the map during the raid, paired with SCAV’s and all kinds of bosses this should probably give you an idea of how big the map will eventually end up being. He also boasted that the map is in fact so big that the team is afraid that players might not even run into each other over the course of a round.

What’ll also be implemented over the course of the next few months, is the highly anticipated Lighthouse Keeper. Escape from Tarkov’s first in-raid trader that players will have to interact with for quests or just to go shopping. The feature is apparently coming along nicely, but since the Lighthouse Keeper is the first NPC of his kind, work on him will probably still take some time. But it also means that this will lay the groundwork for more in-raid NPC’s and will make things easier in the foreseeable future.

The team is also hard at work to fix all the issues introduced with the last wipe in late June. They are aware of most things, especially the odd desynch issues that have been plaguing the game from time to time. But those things take time and Nikita asked all players to be patient, it is high up on their list of priorities.

There’ll also be a bunch of new stuff that Nikita was way too excited to talk about. Making grandiose claims that you have to experience some of those changes and new features and they simply can not bring themselves to spoil them. So if Escape from Tarkov secretly adds the 0.5% that your PMC can have a heart attack in the middle of the raid, that was probably what he meant.

The Future of Escape from Tarkov

Everything we mentioned so far, is all stuff that’ll probably come to Tarkov within the next few months. Of course, we’ll keep you updated on that. But Nikita also revealed some other plans they have for the future. New systems that’ll be introduced, more options and features are still to come.

The big one was the system that allows you to put buffs on weapons and armor if you repair them yourself. So depending on what your skill in Weapons Maintenance, Light Vest and Heavy Vest is, repairs can apply all sorts of buffs to the repaired item. Be it something like a slight decrease in weight, an increase in accuracy, or ergonomics. It can be anything and the buff will be applied randomly.

There’ll also be an update to the Hideout. According to Nikita it has been a while since they implemented the Hideout and it could use some updates. One of them will be a gym that’ll allow your PMC to work out and increase his skills. He did however not mention how that’ll work in detail. So we can only hope that you can send your PMC into a workout session while you’re offline.

Another plan is to generally overhaul the friendlist and group search features. What they’ll exactly look like is still up in the air, but it’ll probably be way easier to instantly get a group together. Probably in preparation for the launch of Escape from Tarkov Arena.

And while we’re on the subject of Arena, there were no solid updates on that standalone game mode. Nikita only elaborated on their plans for it. Arena will launch with at least 4 maps, maybe even more. We can however ease everyone’s worries that’ll take away from the development on Escape from Tarkov proper. There is a completely separate team, working tirelessly on the project and they’re still in full force production. He also mentioned that Escape from Tarkov Arena will be geared towards esports. So we’ll definitely keep an eye on it.

One of the bigger features they plan to include is the ability to knock someone unconscious. You’ll then be able to either tend to someone by injecting an adrenaline shot, rob them blind or do ‘whatever you want’, according to Nikita. This will also include being able to drag and carry someone. What the extension for that feature will look like is yet unknown. But we have the suspicion that’ll also mean you can carry downed teammates to the nearest exit. In the same vein, they’re also planning to make some adjustments to the current animation systems, especially the way feet are positioned on sloped surfaces.

BattleState Games also has plans to overhaul the audio system in its entirety, which means you’ll hopefully, finally get some accurate sounds from where shots are actually coming from. But also some minor adjustments. When that overhaul is going to be released is still unknown but it should be relatively soon. The idea is to get the system to a place in which the team won’t have to touch anymore until after the full release. Oh, and there’ll also be a new system for volumetric fog.

The director also assured players that even if it looks like development is slowing down, it is all because many still unreleased systems are tied to the story mode that’ll come with the full release. He full-on bragged about the extent of most of those features to hype people up. For those not in the know, Escape from Tarkov will include a full-on campaign that’ll revolve around you actually escaping Tarkov while also learning what is actually going on here.

There is actually a lot of lore tugged away in the oddest of corners within the game and we’ll probably only learn the full extent of it once the full release hits. But that release might still be way off. Escape from Tarkov has been in development for over six years at this point and there is no release window in sight yet. But the course of the game is still true to the vision BSG outlined back when that first teaser was released. Hopefully, we’ll get some more details and at least a peak inside what the full game has in store for us. Because all those claims sound like we’ve seen nothing yet.

Nikita praised streamers and content creators for making good use of the new offline coop feature that was introduced in the latest patch. And they’ll plan to expand the options for it, so players can set up costume game modes or maybe even encourage some roleplay? He was very pleased to see the wacky things people came up with and would like to see more of it.

Last but not least, they also talked about the hackers plaguing the game and they’ll plan to change the current anti-cheat systems. Nikita assured players that they’re on the issue, but it has turned into a kind of arms race between BSG and third-party tool developers. The team is doing their best but it’s always just a question of time till someone finds a workaround.

This sums up our summary of the latest Escape from Tarkov Podcast. There is still lots to come for Tarkov and we plan to keep you updated as soon as we learn anything new. You can also check out some of our guides on Escape from Tarkov and gaming and esports news here on ESTNN