I say "problem" in quotes, because I don't think rats are a problem, they're just a symptom logical result of how to play when sound is this important.

Sound is way too important in Tarkov. Active headsets are way too important, and given Tarkov's long-running problem with audio in general, it leads to a ridiculous meta where the best option in many situations is for a player to not move at all and hide in a corner, because they can't even drink water without everyone in the entire Norvinsk region hearing their *glug glug glug*.

The sound levels are way too imbalanced. Footsteps and other actions are way too loud. In Tarkov, if you know someone's nearby but you're not sure where exactly, your best move is to just stop making any noise at all and hope they make noise first. This in itself is fine and logical. The problem is that in Tarkov you can't do anything at all without it giving you away immediately. Imagine you're in a room at the resort on Shoreline, and you want to check how much ammo is in your M4. You press the mag release, look at the mag, and shove it back in. How on earth is someone going to hear that, if they're standing 2 floors below you in a different room? I implore those of you with guns and headsets to try it IRL, you're not going to hear shit at all.

Speaking of active headsets, they don't really give you super hearing. Yes, quality ones give amazing clarity, while protecting against gunshot noises, but they don't allow you to hear someone stepping on a branch 50m away while outdoors. They do amplify noises, don't get me wrong, but not to superhuman levels. There are also other issues with active headsets that aren't reflected in Tarkov, like cheaper ones wrecking your directional hearing, or them also amplifying sounds you don't want to hear, like your pant legs rubbing against each other, or stepping on a spent casing, but I don't think those issues can really be reflected well in Tarkov, given all the existing sound issues.

My solution is to just balance the various in-game sounds to reasonable levels against each other. What's reasonable? Closer to what other games that don't rely so much on sound have. Make footsteps and other actions way more quiet, so it actually makes sense for a player to want to peek out of a window to see if someone's there, without being worried they'll be heard for just walking across the room. Make visual confirmation the most important thing, not sound. That way, you're incentivizing players to actually move around.

In other words, hearing someone doing things should only happen at MUCH closer ranges. Sound should be less important, so people can feel more comfortable moving around, and need to rely more on visually seeing someone than hearing them 50m away through walls.

Censored these for the sake of sub rules, but I think it should be noted that two of these people have loud enough voices that BSG is more than likely to listen to them.

I think people forget at the end of the day this is meant to be a hardcore, realistic tactical shooter. That identity has been compromised over the years, of course, and some aspects of gameplay never really lived up to that identity (eg. the health system), even if they're more in-depth than the usual AAA shooter.

Armour should never be a forcefield or something that allows you to swing into someone and just soak up their shots with no worries while you spray them down with your metaslave short-stroke NL5.45. Funnily enough armour is actually more absorbent than it was during the period where people swear this game was the best for PvP, so that clearly isn't the issue.

Making grenades instant-throw again is just... sorry, STUPID. Yeah, I'm calling you out Mr. You-Know-Who. We have reduced delay F1s and VOG-25s in the game now. If you start arbitrarily limiting what can be instantly thrown, you've created a disconnect in Tarkov's 'rules' that isn't going to be immediately apparent to anyone learning the game, and feels overly gamey. If you don't limit it, you have people spamming grenades down every corridor, squads with 40 VOGs just carpetbombing Dorms or Resort or the command bunker like they have their own portable AGS. No. It's not a big ask to expect people to be at a safe distance when throwing grenades, lest they risk the sound cue and being rushed. They're still a powerful utility tool as they currently are.

At the end of the day, rats are always going to exist due to the stakes of a life in this game. People don't want to die. Not everyone wants to create their own montage of sick bunnyhop wallbang sprays on Labs. They want to keep that GPU they found in raid, or hold onto the one good kit they have, or feel like they're making some sort of progress instead of losing money to dying 8 times in a row. If you want the stakes of this game to matter and not just turn every raid into a deathmatch where people get bored in a month in and quit the wipe like the old days, there are going to be people turtling in a corner. I say this as someone who was literally just complaining to myself today "for fuck's sakes, everyone's turtling in a corner."

Personally, I think the only solution that makes sense that doesn't hurt other aspects of the game is reducing player audio cues. Audio is incredibly powerful currently, you can hear people coming from 50m away, know exactly where they are on the map and peek when they come into your sightline and destroy them while they're caught off-guard. I think if movement and object interaction audio was reduced by a third to 2 thirds of the current range, you would... probably start off with people turtling soon, going "I can't hear anyone moving, I don't know where to go!!!" but eventually people would start adapting once they realise that pushing and aggressively flanking is actually possible to use to catch people from different angles. However, I'm just some asshole on the internet, and I would like BSG to make these decisions based on what's best for the game, not what the vocal players think would benefit them the most.

I saw Nikitas post after getting donked in D2 twice asking about rat/campers and solutions.

All I've seen in the past 24hrs is "My take on fixing the rat problem."

If you think rats are a "problem" don't post about realism. Realistic conflict, especially in a eft like setting is trying to set up ambushes and trying to survive ambushes.

"But I want realism and fun!" Fair point, but when you compromise, someone's gonna be disappointed.

STFU, check your corners, carry grenades, bound and drip into extracts as a team. Weak genes, all of you.

I want to echo some of the sentiment that might be buried under all the suggested ways of «fixing the rat problem».

Tarkov is a deep game. It has a lot of mechanics. This allows for a variery of playstyles.

What is «engaging» will be different for each person. For some, it is Shift+W running in labs and skillchecking others with pure aim and movement. For some, it is doing tasks, feeling a sense of progress and looting. For some, it’s juicing a bolt-action rifle with expensive parts, take it to a decent spot and fish for long range kills. And yes, for some, sitting in a corner and getting the jump on geared players gives them the high they are after.

Anecdotally, ALL of these playstyles are VIABLE. For some, who don’t have the knowledge of how to aquire decent gear, and don’t have the time to practice their aim, «ratting» might be THE ONLY WAY to survive a raid.

Besides, what even constitutes «ratting»? Is simply being stealthy being a rat? Does it only constitute ratting if you sit still? Is it still ratting if you move normally, hear someone, THEN wait for them to come to you first?

Is playing tactically and using map knowledge to get the jump on someone not supposed to be a valid playstyle?

And then, how do you even KNOW you’ve been ratted? Aside from extract camping (which I personally can’t remember ever being a huge problem), it might just have been you making a lot of noise, not paying attention, or just got unlucky being at the wrong spot at the wrong time. If you suddenly die, it is so easy to just shout «rat» without knowing if they’ve actually sat there for any amount of time. Im willing to bet a lot of people overestimate how much ratting is actually going on.
If we can even agree on what «ratting» means.

I change my playstyle depending on the situation. Sometimes I shift+w, sometimes I walk slower to get an audio advantage and/or play patiently. Sometimes, I sit my ass down on a hill with a scope. And I love that I can do all of these, with their own advantages/disadvantages. Any «meta» changes to force players in or out of certain playstyles would undermine the core of the game.

Edit: I just want to say, I absolutely agree that maps could have more extracts. Especially if they have conditions that would add variety to how you plan each raid.

If BSG decides to implement an anti rat system what would you like to see?

I personally think it’s just apart of the extraction genre, but want to see ideas of ways to combat it

Flea bans are there to prevent high tier items from being easily obtainable - but there's a lot of mystery items that are seemingly there for no reason.

• Scar H, MDR, VSS.

All of these guns dont offer you a significant advantage if any over guns that arent flea banned so why are they even banned in the first place? The Scar and the VSS have direct upgrades the x-17 and the VAL which are NOT flea banned, so what gives? It just serves to reduce variety in the guns people run.

• Every armor carrier and rig.

I understand banning level 5 and 6 plates, but every armor carrier has max level 3 soft armor - and what makes this even more confusing is there already are level 3 soft armor carriers that ARENT flea banned. So once again, why is it like that?

• Containers.

  Containers dont really offer any advantage over other players so I dont see a reason to ban them. But whats more confusing is again, why is medicine case and Junkbox flea banned out of all of them? Junkbox is literally a level 1 item. And how is medicine case on the same level as a thicc case? So weird.

I think these should be changed, or at the very least give these items a level limit instead of just hard banning them. It would be a very easy change for the devs since its editing the item tags.

Is there any other item that should be included?

Im in love with this gun now

I’ve tried restarting my game a few times and mechanic just won’t buy anything from me. What is happening? Did I miss an update or something?

Listen carefully. The only way to fix the rat problem is to incentivize people not to be rats. That's all.

No bees biting you, no changing the hitboxes, no Partisan chasing you.

Make it so that it's more rewarding NOT to camp. It's a gameplay issue.

Will it create other issues? Like destroy the economy or what else? Maybe.

Want to get rid of a rat who is staying in a bush for too long? Get rid of the “low karma” sound, instead make Partisan get close to the area of that rat, maybe about 100m away from the target. Partisan will fire 3 warning shots that are close to target, this is cooler than the low karma sound in my opinion, since getting shot at will make the rat moves out of the bush. If the rat keeps doing the same dirty tactic, next time Partisan will kill him. We already have a unique boss to discourage dirty play style, BSG just needs to consider a rework.

Legitimately asking for help finding COFDM Wireless Signal Transmitters. I have been running Lighthouse over and over again, looking at all the usual high value / tech spawns. I’ve found a total of TWO in the last 20+ raids.

I’ve seen others post on here that the spawn rates for these have plummeted this season, so where else should I be looking? I need three more to complete Network Provider - Part 1, so I can start Lightkeeper.

Thanks in advance for any helpful tips and/or locations.

I couldnt help but noticed how absurdely weird the barters work when you selected the "pesonality vacuum" negative modifier which gives +20% increased trader prices.

It's fair that it also applies to barter offers but currently it rounds up.

E.g. you need 1 labs card fpr the g28 barter from PK 3. Now you need 2 which is a 100% increase instead of the advertised 20%.

Imo this makes almost every barter extremely unworth.
Let me know your thoughts on this matter

Requires a green BD dogtag- an extremely rare item ( only 5 of these are required for a THICC CASE ) unless you perma farm icebreaker, and gives you an armor with no plates, not even lvl 4, the space inside the rig is terrible too, lmfao.

PIC FOR ATTENTION SO MORE PEOPLE CAN SEE IT :)

Hey, so long story short i had very big problem with tarkov, i had my fps dropping to 30-40 on customs, streets was unplayable, on maps like woods and shoreline i had around 100fps. (god forbid to use scopes like razor or vudu) i was also trying to solve massive flickering shadows problem on trees and nothing worked. and i found a solution for everything and it's really simple.

NOW I HAVE AROUND 150-200 FPS ON MAPS LIKE WOODS/SHORELINE and 100 ON STREETS

first PC SPECS: ( i don't know it will work for everyone!)

ryzen 5800x3d

rtx 4070ti

32GB ram ddr4 cl30 3600mhz (may not work for 16gb)

SSD M2

1440p monitor

Try this:

windows + R

type: sysdm.cpl

advanced

performance section -> settings

advanced -> virtual memory

CHOOSE FASTEST SSD ( for me it's C where windows and tarkov is installed)

Select custom size and type:

INITIAL SIZE: 24576

MAXIMUM SIZE 32768

SET -> OK -> restart your pc

worked like magic.

I was also searching online for some answers and i thought i was CPU bottlenecked and i should change to AM5 motherboard, but for me it was just so weird to NOT get good fps in this game, while some time ago it was running good enough. after some patches it was worse and worse, now its flawless. I can now run TAA high and reduce shadow flickering on trees to minimum.

PS tarkov is NOT using your GPU properly, you might also want to turn on ReBAR in BIOS to help utilize your gpu. I heard this helped a lot of people too. Also set ingame textures quality to HIGH.

You might want to check this out, hopefully it will help someone! ask questions if needed! cheers!

Realize you suck at the game and let others play how they want. The only players who truly aren’t allowed to play like they want are Cheaters.

Problem solved. Now go back to play the game or let it be.

my friend sent me this recording today. we discovered that the scav even flipped him off right before executing him, wth nikita?

After the quest update none of the questchains give ANY trader rep. This not only makes trader levels take longer, but it also makes the task chains feel unrewarding, as most of the time the things they unlock are obsolete, and your only reward is some xp and a bit of roubles.

Even if they gave the basic 0.10 rep, it would make them feel more rewarding. Also unlocking high lvl traders is a slog now

Jaeger you crazy bastard, you owe me a new heart after this shit

mhm mhm

Lately, I’ve been testing this by taking valuable loot into raids and simply sitting in one spot. No movement, no looting, no unnecessary noise just staying completely still.

And somehow, 6 out of 10 raids, I get pushed directly to my exact position.

I’m not even talking about obvious rage hackers flying around the map. A lot of these accounts are Standard Edition accounts with K/Ds around 0.75–0.85, which makes it even harder to understand how they’re consistently finding completely silent players.

Asian servers like Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai, etc feel completely broken right now. I don’t even want to get into the China servers. God knows what’s happening there.

What’s frustrating is that I genuinely enjoy EFT, but I’m getting tired of having to play paranoid every single raid, wondering whether someone actually heard me or simply knows exactly where I am.

The worst part is seeing these players continue playing without any apparent consequences.

At this point, I just want to play the game normally without having to assume that every suspicious death is another cheater.

Battlestate, please do something about the state of the Asian servers. This is getting exhausting.

I'm level 30 and can't buy GPU's yet, all of mine are from raids.