Why is Escape from Tarkov related to gambling?

Escape from Tarkov is a realistic hard-core FPS game; PvP and PvE survival gameplay in the game's big map. The difference is the player, the ultimate goal in the game is to reach the evacuation point and retreat safely. A single game is like "gambling" ": The player decides what equipment to bring into the battlefield in each game. If you successfully evacuate, you can leave with the loot. If you fail to evacuate, you will lose all your items.


On the outside, Escape from Tarkov has long-term development elements. Players can harvest loot from the game and take them out of the game. They can upgrade their hideouts/buy better equipment/complete dealer quests, etc., thereby improving the character's combat level. Have a better play.

The entire game is designed around a "gambling" character: the outside is to accumulate "gambling capital", the equipment brought in each game is "gambling", and the internal resources are the banker's big market. BOT is the money-making trap of the banker, and the entire internal battle is A "big game". Therefore, this article will mainly focus on this "gambling" word, to talk about Escape from Tarkov.




1. Escape from Tarkov game analysis

1. Escape from Tarkov system



2. Escape from Tarkov core



It can be seen that the design of Escape from Tarkov was carried out according to three core purposes: ① Intensifying the intense the experience brought by gambling elements in a single game; ② Emphasizing realistic design within the game; ③ The pursuit of long-term development experience outside the game. In this article, we will analyze the game from these three dimensions.



2. Escape from Tarkov Gambling Elements

1. Escape from Tarkov, like a gambling game, but not a gambling game
Escape from Tarkov has a setting that is very rare in other single-game games: the player must use the accumulated resources outside the game to replace the equipment and bring it into the game. Players have great freedom in outfitting: you can spend 10,000 Rouubles to buy a pistol for self-defense and you can enter the game; you can also spend millions to buy M4 and full body armor. But no matter how much you put in, once you die in the game, all your items may become the loot of other players and be lost in the game.

Moreover, the bet invested in the game is directly proportional to the possible profit: the better the equipment, the more likely to plunder better resources, which makes the game full of gambling flavor.


But Escape from Tarkov is different from gambling games. Because gambling games usually have low-tech characteristics, it makes players believe that winning or losing is pure luck so that players can continue to gamble. However, Escape from Tarkov uses FPS as the core gameplay carrier, which provides players with sufficient depth at the technical/strategic level in the gambling game, resulting in an "unfair" game that is won by technology.



2. Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of adding gambling elements in technical PvP confrontation
Escape from Tarkov, because of the existence of gambling elements, there is a full sense of tension and substitution in every game. And because of the great randomness in the gambling game, players with poor equipment can also use technology to make up for the equipment, plus luck, to kill the fully equipped big landlord. It is precise because the game provides enough uncertainty in the game that the game can be played in a single game.

However, the shortcomings of the game are also very obvious. If there is a bet, there will be a loss. Tarkov's game loop is not a closed loop. For players with poor skills, there will be continuous loss of principal and the difficulty of maintaining a balance of payments (card Develop a bottleneck).


Therefore, the game needs very good novice guidance to help players get out of the novice stage as soon as possible, and realize the excitement of gambling and the refreshment of gambling as soon as possible. It is a pity that this is exactly what games are very scarce nowadays.

The basic operation of Escape from Tarkov is no different from that of FPS on the market. New players can already complete the most basic and core operation of mobile shooting. Therefore, I think the game is very suitable for training in a situation similar to Rainbow Six, extracting typical areas (such as customs/factory) in the battle royale map, adding AI, and designing fixed levels for teaching, so that players can master the complexity of the game in practice Mechanism and combat strategy.

3. Dealing with frustration in gambling games
If you have a bet, you will lose. Especially in a highly uncertain gambling game-like Escape from Tarkov, when a situation of high investment and low the return occurs, it is very easy to stimulate players' frustration. Therefore, the game adopts the following measures to reduce frustration:

① Insurance system: 
Players can pay low money to insure their equipment before entering the battle. Once the insured, even if the player dies in the battle, as long as the equipment is not taken out of the battle by other players, the equipment will be returned to the player in a few days.

The insurance system can leave the player with a fluke mentality after the player is frustrated: the equipment may be returned to reduce the player's frustration. Even waiting for several days for the return of the insured items can make players forget their frustrations, and when they get the returned equipment, they will have the joy of winning.

The design of the insurance system is very clever to reduce frustration through a fluke, and it can even turn frustration into surprise and turn corruption into magic.

② Low-risk SCAV mode, neutralizing frustration
There is a zero-input SCAV mode in the game, which allows players to get random/white equipment to enter the game, although the SCAV mode has a cooldown of up to half an hour and cannot be played continuously. However, it completely plays a role in relaxing/reducing frustration for players after high-pressure gambling.



3. Long-term development experience


1.Game Outside long-term accumulation - - PUBG + MMO
Escape from Tarkov, adds very rich development gameplay outside the game, pursuing a long-term development experience: It is precisely because of the addition of nurturing elements that Tarkov has become a successful case of PUBG+MMO integration that everyone talks about. So what effect does this fusion have? First, look at the core features of MMO and Tarkov as shown in the following figure:



Tarkov integrates the two, and the long-term development of foreign exchanges increase user stickiness and provide more commercialization possibilities compared with pure single-game games. 


Moreover, the game's super-high single-game repetitive playability also allows the development of content even After being consumed, the game still has high playability, which is the best of both worlds.

2. How does Tarkov as a PvP game with long-term development ensure fairness in the game?
①Strong survival rather than strong confrontation
Usually, PvP will have strong confrontations, forcing players to compete with each other to form a victory or defeat. At this time, fairness is very important. Therefore, PvP games will be very cautious about the development of character abilities outside the game, and will avoid the negative evaluation of the player group due to excessive Pay to Win during commercialization; its commercialization methods are mostly concentrated on appearance levels such as fashion Items.

However, Tarkov weakens the importance of confrontation and emphasizes survival in the in-game PvP battle, which allows the long-term development of the outside game to coexist harmoniously with the PvP in the game: there can be players of different combat strengths in the game, but because the player's purpose is to survive, The entire single game has formed an ecosystem where the weak will survive, the strong seek to plunder, and players of different combat powers expect to differentiate, and it is difficult to produce unfair shouts within a single game.

② Give the player the freedom to choose the combat power of a single game
In Tarkov, players are free to take risks and choose to bring in the quality of the equipment in the game. Whether the player is strong or weak in a single game can be decided by the player to a certain extent. This further reduced the negative emotions caused by unequal combat power in the game.

3. The shortcomings of Escape from Tarkov's long-term development
①Flea market ruined growth experience
One of the most core development elements in the game is the development of Dealer levels:


However, the existence of the flea market allows players to purchase all the equipment, the importance of upgrading the Dealer level is greatly reduced, and the sense of accomplishment that is developed has also been greatly reduced. In addition, in order to prevent players from being able to buy all items through the flea market at the beginning, the game has added a 15-level limit to unlock the flea market, which makes the game development experience very strange: only very low-level equipment can be used before level 15. All top equipment can be purchased immediately after level.

Therefore, I think that since the purchasing power of the equipment is strongly related to the merchant level, one of the core development points of the merchant level is the main driving force for the player to upgrade/play the merchant mission. Then you can cancel the equipment transaction in the flea market. Equipment can only be purchased from merchants / plundered within the bureau; while the flea market is a free circulation place for tradable items, forming the following economic cycle.


② Too much dependence on the internal output to develop resources leads to an excessive gap between rich and poor
In Tarkov, almost the only way to obtain cultivation resources is to plunder in the battle, and the battle in the battle is very technically demanding. In addition to playing a single game by improving technology, the game lacks a way to obtain more stable development progress by investing time/money.

This causes players with better skills to quickly snowball and develop; while players with poor skills are prone to becoming bottlenecks and difficult to develop upward. This causes the game to be prone to a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and the game still uses the unsustainable way of deleting files and clearing the progress of all players every once in a while to solve this problem.




4. Realistic-oriented game design


Generally, when designing a game, the design should be driven by gameplay. Most of the time, in order to make the game have good playability, the mechanism needs to violate reality. The most famous example is Mario's jumping physics.

Escape from Tarkov, as a hardcore immersive FPS game, requires more immersion in the game design process. So how does Tarkov pursue realism while maintaining good game playability; allowing players to enjoy the realism of the game while also having smooth operations and logical strategies?

1. Life system: damage mechanism by part
In reality, bullet damage to individual soldiers is tremendous. Many realistic games such as "Rebellion" set the bullet damage to a high level in order to kill the bullets on the realistic battlefield so that one shot can kill two shots. effect. But this also leads to the extremely short TTK of the game and there is almost no room for the player to operate the gun (the one who shoots first wins), which reduces the game's playability.

Tarkov, on the other hand, cleverly achieved the effect of both immersion and playability by calculating the points of life:


In the game, the damage of the rifle bullet is about 40, and the effect of one shot and two shots are achieved. And when the part is destroyed, the blood cannot be recovered through ordinary blood recovery props and an extremely expensive surgical kit must be used to repair the part before the treatment can continue.

It is precisely because of the design of different parts that damage to the non-core parts will not lead to death, so the gun TTK is longer in the game, coupled with the protection of the chest cavity and head and other important parts of the armor and helmet, making the gun strategy Both sex and operating space is greatly increased. But at the same time, one or two bullets can destroy the part in the process of gun alignment, which greatly increases the difficulty of subsequent survival, and satisfies the sense of the immersion that bullets can kill.

In addition, the game has a set of hunger and thirst, which is full of realism. The hunger and thirst will continue to be consumed in the battle, but only after the hunger and thirst are returned to zero will it have a negative effect on the character. Therefore, the setting of hunger and thirst has the effect of increasing the difficulty of survival in the late game and speeding up the process of ending a single game. This is also a design that does not deviate from the playability.

2. Realistic core interaction
Escape from Tarkov uses complex realistic designs for most interactions. However, the result of the most realistic designs in the game is to increase the depth of the strategy in the battle, and some of the most basic interactions in FPS games: walking, running, aiming, and shooting is tuned very smoothly and feel very good.

In fact, the interactions that players use 80% of the time in the game actually account for only 20%. Designers need to design this 20 % interaction as smooth/concisely as possible; while the remaining 80% of the interactions that are used less frequently, you can Appropriately complicate, enrich the strategy depth of the game, and clearly distinguish between high-level and low-level players.

3. Realistic gun modification
Since the realistic FPS game hobby group and the firearm hobby group are highly overlapped, the gun-changing system in hard-core FPS should be standard. Moreover, Tarkov's gun modification system is extremely complicated. Each gun can be completely split into barrels/air ducts/core firing pin system/grip/stock and other parts according to reality. The assembly compatibility between parts is also in full compliance with reality.

However, Tarkov has made a lot of optimizations on the extremely complex gun modification system: excellent gun modification interface, the one-click saving of presets, one-click purchase of all parts and assembly, copying of guns matched by other players on the market, etc. As a result, even players who are not very good at guns can quickly get started with changing the gun system.

4. Realistic sound system
Paying attention to the wind and grass on the battlefield is something every the soldier must pay attention to at all times, and Escape from Tarkov restores this height to the game, and perfectly combines the sound system with gameplay strategy/level design.

①Different ground materials produce different sounds
In the game, the number of footsteps made by the character stepping on the ground of different materials is different, from big to small, the order is iron plate> plank> slate> grass; in addition, the friction between the character and the bush/barbed wire in the wild will also produce great The sound.

This leads to the game's level design, in addition to horizontal obstacles and vertical height difference, there is a whole new dimension: the surface material. For example, I can put an iron board close to the wooden house to provide more strategy for the game level.

②Headphone system
There is special equipment in the game: earphones, equipped with earphones can reduce environmental sound, amplify footsteps, etc., which is an indispensable important equipment in the game.

It is a pity that the current headset equipment has a single function. Later, you can discover a variety of functionally differentiated headsets to create more strategies.




5. Summary


From the analysis and summary of the article, it can be seen that the design of Escape from Tarkov is mainly centered around the core players of realistic FPS/firearms hobby. The gambling elements that enter the game perfectly create a precious sense of life in the formal game, allowing players to continue to stay nervous during the game, and to bear pressure every time they make a decision. The game also has extremely realistic interactive methods and system design. Although the realistic design is very difficult to learn, once you are familiar with it, you will find that Tarkov's realistic design has no sense of separation but has formed a unique fighting rhythm.

In addition, the degree of freedom of the game is extremely high. Players can freely choose equipment/free choice of targets to enter a single game, and can also change the target at any time within the game. Everything is uncertain, and players can make any decision within the game. And the sense of victory in a single game is rich in sources: plundering/surviving/completion of tasks/even encountering big bosses to escape can give players a sense of accomplishment.

Escape from Tarkov's outside development is relatively simple at present, the connection between the several development lines is weak, and there is almost no strategy for development. In addition, most of the rewards for out-of-office development are resources for small play, lacking some development milestones that have phased changes to the game, resulting in a relative lack of motivation and sense of accomplishment for the game development.

And what can be seen is that as a buyout game, Tarkov is currently in the Beta stage and it has no intention of making EFT Roubles in a short period of time. But I believe that this set of systems that integrates long-term development and PvP has no internal PvP fairness issues, and it is very easy to make a good commercialization plan.

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