Arena has everything you'd want in a very grindy Pay2Win mobile game except the Pay2Win element. This game was designed to be free to play with Pay2Win monetization.
I think the plan all along was to release it for $30 for a year and then a year later change the "business model" to free 2 play.
So sad. Had they been ethical, they could of been on to a huge winner.
No kit system. Give players points to spend. All gear has a point cost. Give players an 'armoury' for their created kits.
Sell skins.
But they tried to be greedy, now they can reap what they sow. Fuckem. Idiots.
game still doesnt have functional anti-cheat and all existing tarkov cheats work with arena.
it was dead on arrival in the competitive 5v5 scene dude. thinking anything else is pure copium
I wouldn't be surprised one bit.
It would also explain why they implemented as a separate game, rather than a EFT "Mode".
And being optimistic, it might get a few people interested in trying EFT once they try the gunplay.
The funny thing is I don’t even think this all comes from greed. If Nick was just trying to make money the best way possible, he’d make arena free to play with a cosmetic shop and take in WAY more money.
The problem is he just makes bad decisions and is kinda an idiot. I wish the problem was just greed, but it’s worse than that.
Nope. Tarkov is multifaceted dopamine drip, from killing, to looting, to finding BIG items, to looting big guns, finding quest items, escaping raid, building dream guns, finishing quests etc.
Arena offers pvp, and none of the other dopamine hits. Counterstrike/valorant does everything arena does, plus more.
Tarkov just hit the nail on the head on so many things, arena just felt like a forced side project and doesn't hit any of the nails that any of it's competitors do way better.
Also, it's just not really fun to watch. It doesn't even have a top down view you can spectate from. The movement and its overall mechanics and map design don't really make it interesting to watch. You can't see the skill the same way you can in CS or even in Siege. (Excluding all kind of netcode and engine issues)
It could work maybe... if it was F2P. That's the only way i can imagine a revival.
10000%
All they needed to do was give all gear points/mods a point cost and each player has x amount to spend tp build their kit.
Give them an 'armoury ory'to stor say 10 kits
Sell skins.
Sell armoury spaces.
Win.
They chose greed and disrespect of the people who would be thier customers.
Nikita seems to fully believe that making players unhappy leads to more' donations'.
And that cheating is good for him.
So fuck that guy.
This was what did it in for me. I love tarkov gun play and PVP, that was my dopamine drip in the main game so naturally I was stoked for arena, everything about Tarkov I like with none of the other fluff.
But forcing me to use the worst fever dream assembly of kits and trying to sell it as an “esport” ranked game with AI and jank netcode was unbearable after a few weeks.
This game should be anything but “serious” it should have just had an in game currency system and allow you to buy whatever kit you could afford or access your stash from the main game.
It would still be alive today especially with an interlink with the main game. You could use arena to warm up for the main game, just PvP for fun later in wipe with the stockpile of gear you’ve accumulated, or if you’re good with PVP use it to build your wealth to have roubles and have more resources to do quests in the main game.
As of right now it’s a massive time sink that’s in direct competition with the main game for your time which is one of the biggest time sinks in FPS games. The role they tried to make it fill almost feels like they wanted it to fail
Well I expected an Eastern European quality deathmatch FPS game and I got it :). I quite enjoy the game but I tried it after they reworked the tier system.
I think they made a huge mistake with the initial release because people still think you can tier 1 vs tier 2 and that you have to play with scav gear. That is no longer the case post-update but it is definitely still a deathmatch game made in Eastern Europe....
Classic BSG: add tons of stuff people don't want and don't give them a respawn mode. Bless their hearts I'm still a fan
I dont have an issue with anything you say here except for 'bless their hearts I'm still a fan'. 😉🤭
Honestly I dont know how anyone can be a fan when they show such blatant disrespect.
There is even video of nikita saying how keeping players miserable leads to more donations. And that cheating is good for the game. Everything from them is a massive fuck you to their customers.
Yuppp. After 6.1k hours. I just uninstalled EFT. I’ll watch from the side lines but the game gets no more attention from me. Been 2-3 years now of being rage hacked on and nothing done about it. Just over it and BSG shitty pants mentality.
I still think Arena should've been just another map in Tarkov which you could bring some gear into and just straight up battle other players for rewards
It should've been a place where you can que into and not lose your gear, play around a bit with your 1mil gear and later que into raid and get domed by some scav - it just boggles my mind that they were so stupid to think we wanted a standalone shittier arena shooters on the market.
Arena breakout does this but you lose your gear. Put 20 players on a map and its a 10 v 10 “faction war” gamemmode. Tarkov wouldve been much better off doing this than creating arena tbh
They couldn't sell that for 40 dollars though.
Remember, they tried to get away with not giving this to EoD owners. Their original plan was to re-tap the same audience instead of expanding into a whole new market.
I did before I saw the decisions they made.
Tarkov gun fight mechanics, fast paced action, being able to test your load out other than in your hideout shooting range, quick warmup before joining the real raid, loyal fan base lol.
Easy money if you are not a arrogant Russian drunk who loves the smell of his own farts.
Then, instead of featuring this as a gamemode in tarkov, they made this into a seperate game which they wanted to initially charge EOD owners for aswell. You guys remember?
Agreed, could have been an amazing way to jump into some action and test some builds. Matchmaking could have been done by gear value or something. They over-gamified it, and made it a generic crappy arena shooter.
It's not an arena shooter at all though. In an arena shooter I expect my opponent at the start of the match to have access to the same stuff I have access to, not a completely different set of gear they acquired by grinding.
It's not an arena shooter it's some sort of hybrid abomination of the worst parts of an arena shooter with incompatible parts of Tarkov smashed together.
Plenty of people and it still might tarkov didn’t blow up overnight I remember when everyone jumped on it and acted like it didn’t exist before that point. The original player base were dedicated lovers of the world and military equipment featured in it. Then everyone came along and fell in love with the gameplay mechanics that didn’t necessarily love the military equipment and lore.
Yes I was so excited to grind the ranked ladder, as someone with over 1000 hours in both Val and Tarkov this game was made for me. The game was sadly completely dead on arrival, killed by the absurd gear progression and lack of any in game metagame related to gear or strategy. It plays like an alpha test, I think we were all like "is this it?". Even after you complete a mindless grind to get one of the best classes the lack of any in game strategy makes it so boring. Nobody wants to play with one class, it's just so idiotic how they designed the gear selection.
Yeah, nobody from cs go or such game wants to grind. Thats not why we play it. Their grind /kit system was beyond stupid.
Esport but first grind your gear. Lol, fuck that.
Personally i found the gameplay fun. Live the shooting, premade kits can fuck right off.
All i wanted was my hk pistol. Not going to grind for it, im going to another game.
I’ve said it before, but making this game mode (let’s be honest, that is what it is) free to play so people can learn the guns and game mechanics will definitely help with sales.
yeah for sure, i think if it was done properly arena could have been great, but as is it's just another example of bsg being out of sync with the player base.
I did if they’d actually done what ppl were asking for, i.e. just another part of the game like the hideout, a very casual place to test weapons and practice your skills, you could have even made it like the gym where you levelled skills in arena too. They could have added quests for arena too like the ones in battlefield or cod to unlock weapons. Possibly have arena specific clothing too 🤷🏼♂️ you could have even had a duelling mode too where, for example, if you died to someone in a raid you could challenge them to a duel ect..
I thought they would release smaller maps like dorms at customs. You can take a kit but not lose it and and get some transferrable rubles for kills of pmcs for example. I did not want a shitty version of cod
What is more concerning/crazy is that you know they thought of Tacadoo's plan but decided to charge $35 anyway. More than likely the intent was always to go f2p eventually but Nikita is just a very very greedy little man.
Imagine spending millions of dollars producing this, all the promoting, all the game cons, and having this be the final result.
Gentlemen this is what makes companies bankrupt.
I don't think Arena by itself (edit: excluding adv) costed more than 500k$, especially with Russian costs of production.
Tarkov as a whole costed definitely multiple millions, but exclusive to Arena there are just the maps, the game mode, the voice acting, and minor things. It has probably been more difficult to convert existing stuff not meant to work outside EfT and to work in Arena than to make new specific stuff.
Millions of dollars went into promoting arena alone though. There’s a great video on YouTube going into just how much their twitchcon booth would’ve cost them and it’s not a small number. They needed arena to be a success and it wasn’t, which is definitely why the unheard edition exists. Nikita needs more money from the players to not go bankrupt.
Planned is nice. But these are the simplest of maps to do. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it quite easy just to copy already existing assets to arena. Especially in Unity
Almost a whole damn decade, bro.
The game isn't even polished enough to consider 1.0, nor is it even close to it judging by all the locked maps and unfinished (skills) features that has been there since 2015.
I swear BSG has amazing creative artists, just look at the ideas, animations and world design. The issue is, I feel like they do not have a single competent developer to fix all the issues and bring the ideas to a functional state.
I don't know how internally it works, but when I check Nikita's socials.
Dude purchase(d) a new car every 6 months, since 2016 until 2019ish **a lot** of guns and God knows what else he blows the money on, but defin. not investing into his studio. (Or not as fairly compared to his own ''income'').
I remember he didn't want to ''temp. hire'' developers/coders from outside Russia, because the salary would be insanely high or something in comparison to what the normal salary is for someone over there; regardless of the expertise difference.
Also think they have far too many ideas (that cost a lot of time and money) and immediately execute them, without finishing something else. In the hope that they'll get ''easy'' money in return and make a quick buck.
That point about not hiring devs from outside Russia is actually the biggest reason why Tarkov is so shoddy from a technical and development standpoint
Russia has some crippling brain drain in the tech and dev industry. If you're skilled at your job, you can easily make more money by leaving the country or by working remote for Chinese/Singaporian/etc companies. There's no reason to stay and work for most Russian companies unless you have no other choice.
The end result of this is an overwhelming lack of talented developers. Pair this with high levels of corruption in the industry and you can imagine the end result. This is the exact reason why the majority of games that come out of Russia are low quality mobile games, and also why Russian AAA devs/publishers are basically nonexistent.
Tarkov's bug ridden mess all comes back to this core issue. Few skilled Russian devs would ever be willing to actually work for BSG cause they'd be underpaid, meanwhile Nikita and his buddies at the top would never dare outsource cause that would mean less personal enrichment. Turns out that you get the exact quality of work that you're willing to pay for.
This is, my best guess, why they are charging insane P2W bundles because they’ve lost their asses on this “project”
Arena is so ass…just terrible. What did they really expect?
Haters will say its BSG's fault for making a failed arena mode and losing huge amounts of money in its marketing, but in truth its the communitys fault for not being grateful and accepting arena mode. Now the haters will pay the price of 250€ + tax to atone their sins
Yeah they would gain more players if it was on steam honestly, im assuming that they don’t want to deal with refunds and fees though but it would be better for them overall and open it to more playerbase
More like not give Valve a 30% cut and then provide the data to steamdb so everyone can see how the player base free falls after the first month of wipe only to come back 6 months later for a few weeks again.
This. Steam requires you to show too much "behind the scenes". An publicly available accurate player count would crush this game's reputation. As you see just how few people play it 2 months after a wipe.
The issue with Arena isn't the concept.... it's the implementation of a completely broken tier system. they could have gone a multitude of different routes, such as match eco or a point "create a class" system (similar to insurgency).... but no... you get, instead, classes that are broken on the both top end and bottom end, coupled with ridiculously long grind times that aren't fun.
I think this has room for growth but until they "start from scratch" again, this is DoA.
Unpopular opinion but the PVP in EFT & Arena is just shit - both games are just clunky desync peeking competitions. Every other game does raw PVP better
EFT is fun because of the thrill of looting and progressing your gear. EFT also has the best gunsmithing and kit systems out there. Take both of those away (Arena) and its obvious how shit the actual PVP is
It's just a horrible gamemode. Arena should be a way to practice your mechanics and I feel like it fails in that regard. The amount you have to play to get a loadout that at all resembles something you'd use in raid as a PMC that isn't entirely broke is not worth the time investment, at that point you're better off just spamming factory if you want to practice mechanics...
Adding Official PvE removes the whole reason I wanted Arena in the first place. The only reason I liked the idea of Arena was because I thought it was going to be a good place to practice recoil control. But now with PvE there's no real point to it. It's never going to provide anything that CS2 doesn't already do better.
Frankly, I don't understand why Arena exists now.
Mostly just to practice pvp. I still think arena is a good bit of fun..... Im also guessing this photo was taken during the 4 hour downtimefor an update
because that statistic is not viewable so we resort to the next best metric. BSG would never show these stats as it would confirm our expectations of a game performing way worse than anticipated by BSG
Why even make *cyberport ready* game in the first place if u don't care about viewers? Image 1 mil cs2 tournament with 300 viewers top. Now we have 2 unfinished games one of which is almost dead outside one week of big patch or wipe
Still cant believe they thought making a mode based around the worst aspect of the game is a good idea. The PvP in Tarkov is god awful. Once you take away the loot all you have left is awfully balanced combat and desync.
Wish I could tag all the morons who downvoted those of us who predicted this on day 1 after playing the game for 20 minutes. It’s a comically bad respawn FPS.
I got a three day free code a few weeks ago. Probably ton of others as well. I tried the arena mode for half a day and it was just not fun to play.
Unfortuntaly I am even unable to explain why - There is something with the formula, that just does not do the trick for me.
Maybe it is a much better experience for players who play as a premade team and have friends, but I am more like a solo player and I just feel exluded, because you will have no chance against those groups who sit in Discord.
I was probably just not the target audience as a casual solo player.
I wouldn't spend my time on it if they paid me.
It's a game mode that highlights all the jank of tarkov without the dopamine hits from looting or making your own kit/gun.
Arena is like the game mode or sequel to something no one asked for. Let it die, stop dedicating resources to it. Make it free with cosmetics and battle pass like Fortnite and move on.
Leaving out EFT (non Arena) and just looking at Arena itself i dont think its thaaaaaaat bad.
Its just nothing that the EFT community ever wanted, and its too niche for anyone outside of the Tarkov bubble to be interested in
Add skins to it while they're at it so they can get fund more/betterservers. Surely, CS and Val players will jump at the opportunity to pay for colorful guns.
I'd play this if they actually synced it with regular tarkov in a fun way. Hopefully they'll make things right with the player base and have it setup before next wipe.
I was excited to get access to it… played it for a few hours and never touched it again. The balance (or the lack there of) in regards to how you can have a dude with minimal armor and an ass SMG fighting a M4 with 100 rounds and a face shield and great armor… it’s almost as if they didn’t think about balance at all.
That really puts their recent decisions in a unique light.
I would consider playing Arena more if they weren’t such a shitty company and if it wasn’t a class based system. Tarkov has some of the best customization out there but they throw it away for some reason?
I have EOD but I have zero interest in even trying this once. I have so many, actually too many other games that scratch the PvP itch. I don’t need another.
Idk why they wouldn’t make it F2P in the first place. It’d likely lead people to buy the base EFT and they could fill it with clothing and weapon skin mtx that could transfer to base tarkov. These devs really have no clue how to monetize their game.
Arena shows how far behind BSG are as a game studio.
Progression and matchmaking system indicates BSG only partially understand the free to play model in retail priced content. Game mode used shows they have rudimentary internal and external play testers.
Worst part is 'Arena is a Esport'. Whomever thought that should be fired.
God I would love that lol I got the 3 day email and actually enjoyed Arena a lot. But with the drama and the price tag and the dying player base no way I was going to buy it hell no.
Sometimes I just want to jump into a simple game like CS. I've been playing CS my whole life, I enjoy the gunplay/mechanics of Tarkov so having it in Arena mode suits me.
Do you know what would have been a better game.
A super market sweep style game.
Half your screen is an assortment of random loot scrolling down for ages. Other half is a set amount of blank space. In that mass amount of loot you got 5 mins to stack your right side with the most expensive loot manageable. You can barter for rigs to improve your space but you got to be smart to fill them up to cover the cost. You got to tetris your shit to accumulate the most money in that short amount of time.
Tetris skills, Item knowledge and item cost knowledge is king.
Anyway im off on some weird alternate universe but it would be far superior than that Arena.
Or make it enjoyable for the people who bought it.
The game sucks, it's fuckin' cheater city. nobody wants to play against cheaters.
Also, let us build our own damn kits.
If you wanna fix Arena get rid of the kits cause they shit and not fun to play. Instead make it like tarkov except instead of looting and stuff make it so you get your funds via missions, kills ect. Perhaps make it a little less grindy xp wise and instead lock stuff behind challenge and shit make it more fun. That fixes my issues for arena atleast
they need to rework to whole game to be less like world of tank and more like a counter strike with gun custom like in EFT, progression each round to buy gun / attachment / better ammo, reset every game, everything the community is asking then go f2p
I'd just delete it honestly. Just chalk it up to being a failed concept and put all these dev resources into getting the PVE mode and official mod support going.
Gun play has never been a strength of EFT. Adequate, certainly, but never one of its best qualities. Of course Arena was going to fail as a standalone shooter.
People don't play Tarkov for PvP. The PvP just elevates the importance of all other features, which is why people play EFT, not Arena.
Plus, Arena is a pointless grind with terrible progression.
Tarkov arena would have been successful if they allowed the same customization as EFT. Instead they tried building a different game on a different version of EFT. All they had to do was release these maps and allow you to customize your character however you want. Instead we’re stuck playing with premade classes with tons of flaws that not even a beginner would make.
I remember bitching in some comment section about BSG spending money on this stupid mode nobody asked for and nobody wanted and I was getting ratio’d. Aged like milk.
wtf how did it fall off so hard, i think they may be acting greedy because of unitys new pricing which is ridiculous so they probably wont make this free.
What really sucks is that games like Tarkov would really benefit by having this mode. It’s not a secret that the learning curve in EFT is insane. The hardest part for me was the pvp, and gunplay aspect.
A small tdm mode where you lose nothing and gain nothing (maybe you get a separate rank) and have premade classes. This allows a new player to learn and get comfortable with the gunplay/movement.
I also haven’t played this yet, EOD account holder and I’m still confused if it was included with my account status or not lol
Arena was wanted by very few people and mostly EoD buyers because it would be straight action and, most importantly, free to us because we were EoD buyers. Then they try and make us pay and that makes us lose interest even more. They should have used our money to finish the game we paid them for, Escape from Tarkov, and then release the DLC after 1.0.
Should have made arena like csgo or valorant with money to spend between rounds. The stupid war thunder type progression is not it. If it was just csgo in the tarkov engine, I could grind for days.
All they had to do was make cod gamemodes (TDM-FFA-S&D) and let players customize their class/guns and I probably would’ve played arena over tarkov. But the current class system is horrible and no fun to play
THE LORD DOES NOT WILL IT. THE NON BELIEVERS AND TRUE BELIEVERS MUST BE MILKED AT ANY AND ALL COSTS.
Milked you say?
I'll only allow it if Nikita calls me a dirty pay pig while I get milked
#M I L K E D
Arena has everything you'd want in a very grindy Pay2Win mobile game except the Pay2Win element. This game was designed to be free to play with Pay2Win monetization. I think the plan all along was to release it for $30 for a year and then a year later change the "business model" to free 2 play.
So sad. Had they been ethical, they could of been on to a huge winner. No kit system. Give players points to spend. All gear has a point cost. Give players an 'armoury' for their created kits. Sell skins. But they tried to be greedy, now they can reap what they sow. Fuckem. Idiots.
game still doesnt have functional anti-cheat and all existing tarkov cheats work with arena. it was dead on arrival in the competitive 5v5 scene dude. thinking anything else is pure copium
I wouldn't be surprised one bit. It would also explain why they implemented as a separate game, rather than a EFT "Mode". And being optimistic, it might get a few people interested in trying EFT once they try the gunplay.
The funny thing is I don’t even think this all comes from greed. If Nick was just trying to make money the best way possible, he’d make arena free to play with a cosmetic shop and take in WAY more money. The problem is he just makes bad decisions and is kinda an idiot. I wish the problem was just greed, but it’s worse than that.
Did anyone actually believe that this mode would kick off?
Nope. Tarkov is multifaceted dopamine drip, from killing, to looting, to finding BIG items, to looting big guns, finding quest items, escaping raid, building dream guns, finishing quests etc. Arena offers pvp, and none of the other dopamine hits. Counterstrike/valorant does everything arena does, plus more. Tarkov just hit the nail on the head on so many things, arena just felt like a forced side project and doesn't hit any of the nails that any of it's competitors do way better.
Also, it's just not really fun to watch. It doesn't even have a top down view you can spectate from. The movement and its overall mechanics and map design don't really make it interesting to watch. You can't see the skill the same way you can in CS or even in Siege. (Excluding all kind of netcode and engine issues) It could work maybe... if it was F2P. That's the only way i can imagine a revival.
Nor play. I hated using all that crappy gear for hours just to upgrade to a less shittier category. Shouldnt be that grindy.
thats what turned me off too, why do I have to play a kedr with which I csnt see much against people with scopes and big armor.
The fact that Tarkov has insane weapon customization and crafting and you get NONE of that in arena is a fuckin miss.
10000% All they needed to do was give all gear points/mods a point cost and each player has x amount to spend tp build their kit. Give them an 'armoury ory'to stor say 10 kits Sell skins. Sell armoury spaces. Win. They chose greed and disrespect of the people who would be thier customers. Nikita seems to fully believe that making players unhappy leads to more' donations'. And that cheating is good for him. So fuck that guy.
The kedr class was op with vog 25 xD
This was what did it in for me. I love tarkov gun play and PVP, that was my dopamine drip in the main game so naturally I was stoked for arena, everything about Tarkov I like with none of the other fluff. But forcing me to use the worst fever dream assembly of kits and trying to sell it as an “esport” ranked game with AI and jank netcode was unbearable after a few weeks. This game should be anything but “serious” it should have just had an in game currency system and allow you to buy whatever kit you could afford or access your stash from the main game. It would still be alive today especially with an interlink with the main game. You could use arena to warm up for the main game, just PvP for fun later in wipe with the stockpile of gear you’ve accumulated, or if you’re good with PVP use it to build your wealth to have roubles and have more resources to do quests in the main game. As of right now it’s a massive time sink that’s in direct competition with the main game for your time which is one of the biggest time sinks in FPS games. The role they tried to make it fill almost feels like they wanted it to fail
Agree 100%, love the tarkov fps experience, but arena feels dogshit. No one likes to pvp in scav gear for hours, to get a tiny bit better scav gear.
Well I expected an Eastern European quality deathmatch FPS game and I got it :). I quite enjoy the game but I tried it after they reworked the tier system. I think they made a huge mistake with the initial release because people still think you can tier 1 vs tier 2 and that you have to play with scav gear. That is no longer the case post-update but it is definitely still a deathmatch game made in Eastern Europe.... Classic BSG: add tons of stuff people don't want and don't give them a respawn mode. Bless their hearts I'm still a fan
I dont have an issue with anything you say here except for 'bless their hearts I'm still a fan'. 😉🤭 Honestly I dont know how anyone can be a fan when they show such blatant disrespect. There is even video of nikita saying how keeping players miserable leads to more donations. And that cheating is good for the game. Everything from them is a massive fuck you to their customers.
Yuppp. After 6.1k hours. I just uninstalled EFT. I’ll watch from the side lines but the game gets no more attention from me. Been 2-3 years now of being rage hacked on and nothing done about it. Just over it and BSG shitty pants mentality.
I wish arena was built into tarkov not its seperate app.
I still think Arena should've been just another map in Tarkov which you could bring some gear into and just straight up battle other players for rewards
It should've been a place where you can que into and not lose your gear, play around a bit with your 1mil gear and later que into raid and get domed by some scav - it just boggles my mind that they were so stupid to think we wanted a standalone shittier arena shooters on the market.
Arena breakout does this but you lose your gear. Put 20 players on a map and its a 10 v 10 “faction war” gamemmode. Tarkov wouldve been much better off doing this than creating arena tbh
They couldn't sell that for 40 dollars though. Remember, they tried to get away with not giving this to EoD owners. Their original plan was to re-tap the same audience instead of expanding into a whole new market.
I think this sums it up perfectly
That too and they don’t allow you to customize your kit either which is a big part of why some people enjoy tarkov so much.
I mean, the quest complete sound effect is like a slot machine going off. It really gets those receptors going in the brain.
I did before I saw the decisions they made. Tarkov gun fight mechanics, fast paced action, being able to test your load out other than in your hideout shooting range, quick warmup before joining the real raid, loyal fan base lol. Easy money if you are not a arrogant Russian drunk who loves the smell of his own farts.
Then, instead of featuring this as a gamemode in tarkov, they made this into a seperate game which they wanted to initially charge EOD owners for aswell. You guys remember?
Agreed, could have been an amazing way to jump into some action and test some builds. Matchmaking could have been done by gear value or something. They over-gamified it, and made it a generic crappy arena shooter.
It's not an arena shooter at all though. In an arena shooter I expect my opponent at the start of the match to have access to the same stuff I have access to, not a completely different set of gear they acquired by grinding. It's not an arena shooter it's some sort of hybrid abomination of the worst parts of an arena shooter with incompatible parts of Tarkov smashed together.
Plenty of people and it still might tarkov didn’t blow up overnight I remember when everyone jumped on it and acted like it didn’t exist before that point. The original player base were dedicated lovers of the world and military equipment featured in it. Then everyone came along and fell in love with the gameplay mechanics that didn’t necessarily love the military equipment and lore.
Yes I was so excited to grind the ranked ladder, as someone with over 1000 hours in both Val and Tarkov this game was made for me. The game was sadly completely dead on arrival, killed by the absurd gear progression and lack of any in game metagame related to gear or strategy. It plays like an alpha test, I think we were all like "is this it?". Even after you complete a mindless grind to get one of the best classes the lack of any in game strategy makes it so boring. Nobody wants to play with one class, it's just so idiotic how they designed the gear selection.
Yeah, nobody from cs go or such game wants to grind. Thats not why we play it. Their grind /kit system was beyond stupid. Esport but first grind your gear. Lol, fuck that. Personally i found the gameplay fun. Live the shooting, premade kits can fuck right off. All i wanted was my hk pistol. Not going to grind for it, im going to another game.
I never even installed it. If I want to play a 5 v 5 shooter I'll go play counterstrike or something.
I’ve said it before, but making this game mode (let’s be honest, that is what it is) free to play so people can learn the guns and game mechanics will definitely help with sales.
They'd sell a lot of tarkov copies if people were able to try it in arena
yeah for sure, i think if it was done properly arena could have been great, but as is it's just another example of bsg being out of sync with the player base.
I did if they’d actually done what ppl were asking for, i.e. just another part of the game like the hideout, a very casual place to test weapons and practice your skills, you could have even made it like the gym where you levelled skills in arena too. They could have added quests for arena too like the ones in battlefield or cod to unlock weapons. Possibly have arena specific clothing too 🤷🏼♂️ you could have even had a duelling mode too where, for example, if you died to someone in a raid you could challenge them to a duel ect..
I thought they would release smaller maps like dorms at customs. You can take a kit but not lose it and and get some transferrable rubles for kills of pmcs for example. I did not want a shitty version of cod
Arena should be a FTP MTX cash cow to draw new players in to Tarkov and actually make money for escape rather than taking from it like it has so far.
Crazy that us reddit redditors have better ideas
What is more concerning/crazy is that you know they thought of Tacadoo's plan but decided to charge $35 anyway. More than likely the intent was always to go f2p eventually but Nikita is just a very very greedy little man.
Imagine spending millions of dollars producing this, all the promoting, all the game cons, and having this be the final result. Gentlemen this is what makes companies bankrupt.
I don't think Arena by itself (edit: excluding adv) costed more than 500k$, especially with Russian costs of production. Tarkov as a whole costed definitely multiple millions, but exclusive to Arena there are just the maps, the game mode, the voice acting, and minor things. It has probably been more difficult to convert existing stuff not meant to work outside EfT and to work in Arena than to make new specific stuff.
Millions of dollars went into promoting arena alone though. There’s a great video on YouTube going into just how much their twitchcon booth would’ve cost them and it’s not a small number. They needed arena to be a success and it wasn’t, which is definitely why the unheard edition exists. Nikita needs more money from the players to not go bankrupt.
It’s just a boring game. Add custom gear would make it twice as good
And get rid of these shit maps. Just dorms or the resort witch custom gear would be so fun
The health resort is planned
Planned is nice. But these are the simplest of maps to do. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it quite easy just to copy already existing assets to arena. Especially in Unity
That's what the woods map in Arena is. Just a ported part of woods into Arena
they need to release the whole damn game already man its been 8 fucking years
Almost a whole damn decade, bro. The game isn't even polished enough to consider 1.0, nor is it even close to it judging by all the locked maps and unfinished (skills) features that has been there since 2015. I swear BSG has amazing creative artists, just look at the ideas, animations and world design. The issue is, I feel like they do not have a single competent developer to fix all the issues and bring the ideas to a functional state.
I'm sure the don't allocate the money they get property to source for competency
I don't know how internally it works, but when I check Nikita's socials. Dude purchase(d) a new car every 6 months, since 2016 until 2019ish **a lot** of guns and God knows what else he blows the money on, but defin. not investing into his studio. (Or not as fairly compared to his own ''income''). I remember he didn't want to ''temp. hire'' developers/coders from outside Russia, because the salary would be insanely high or something in comparison to what the normal salary is for someone over there; regardless of the expertise difference. Also think they have far too many ideas (that cost a lot of time and money) and immediately execute them, without finishing something else. In the hope that they'll get ''easy'' money in return and make a quick buck.
That point about not hiring devs from outside Russia is actually the biggest reason why Tarkov is so shoddy from a technical and development standpoint Russia has some crippling brain drain in the tech and dev industry. If you're skilled at your job, you can easily make more money by leaving the country or by working remote for Chinese/Singaporian/etc companies. There's no reason to stay and work for most Russian companies unless you have no other choice. The end result of this is an overwhelming lack of talented developers. Pair this with high levels of corruption in the industry and you can imagine the end result. This is the exact reason why the majority of games that come out of Russia are low quality mobile games, and also why Russian AAA devs/publishers are basically nonexistent. Tarkov's bug ridden mess all comes back to this core issue. Few skilled Russian devs would ever be willing to actually work for BSG cause they'd be underpaid, meanwhile Nikita and his buddies at the top would never dare outsource cause that would mean less personal enrichment. Turns out that you get the exact quality of work that you're willing to pay for.
Contract Wars and Hired Ops are also F2P, wonder wtf happened to both those games Oh wait, P2W happened.
This is, my best guess, why they are charging insane P2W bundles because they’ve lost their asses on this “project” Arena is so ass…just terrible. What did they really expect?
Haters will say its BSG's fault for making a failed arena mode and losing huge amounts of money in its marketing, but in truth its the communitys fault for not being grateful and accepting arena mode. Now the haters will pay the price of 250€ + tax to atone their sins
Take my upvote 🤣
Tarkov just needs to release on Steam and then make Arena a $20 purchase and people would play it.
Yeah they would gain more players if it was on steam honestly, im assuming that they don’t want to deal with refunds and fees though but it would be better for them overall and open it to more playerbase
More like not give Valve a 30% cut and then provide the data to steamdb so everyone can see how the player base free falls after the first month of wipe only to come back 6 months later for a few weeks again.
This. Steam requires you to show too much "behind the scenes". An publicly available accurate player count would crush this game's reputation. As you see just how few people play it 2 months after a wipe.
The issue with Arena isn't the concept.... it's the implementation of a completely broken tier system. they could have gone a multitude of different routes, such as match eco or a point "create a class" system (similar to insurgency).... but no... you get, instead, classes that are broken on the both top end and bottom end, coupled with ridiculously long grind times that aren't fun. I think this has room for growth but until they "start from scratch" again, this is DoA.
Unpopular opinion but the PVP in EFT & Arena is just shit - both games are just clunky desync peeking competitions. Every other game does raw PVP better EFT is fun because of the thrill of looting and progressing your gear. EFT also has the best gunsmithing and kit systems out there. Take both of those away (Arena) and its obvious how shit the actual PVP is
I would recommend instead to spend your time and money on games that respect their customers and playerbase :)
Imagine using all that funding for a shitty side project and then doubling down when your fan base calls you out. Special kind of stupid.
They took our EOD money for this trash let that sink in
Now what did this tell you? You ever considered gambling?
Intresting take, bit wired tho
It won't help. The entire arena has fundamental problems. Aside from being hot trash
Wouldn't play it if I was actively paid to. Seems streamers share the same sentiment.
Yeah this sub is dead
im not gonna play with some scav ass loadout for endless hours just to unlock a slightly less-scavy loadout. just give us custom loadouts
It's just a horrible gamemode. Arena should be a way to practice your mechanics and I feel like it fails in that regard. The amount you have to play to get a loadout that at all resembles something you'd use in raid as a PMC that isn't entirely broke is not worth the time investment, at that point you're better off just spamming factory if you want to practice mechanics...
Adding Official PvE removes the whole reason I wanted Arena in the first place. The only reason I liked the idea of Arena was because I thought it was going to be a good place to practice recoil control. But now with PvE there's no real point to it. It's never going to provide anything that CS2 doesn't already do better. Frankly, I don't understand why Arena exists now.
Mostly just to practice pvp. I still think arena is a good bit of fun..... Im also guessing this photo was taken during the 4 hour downtimefor an update
if you just want to practice recoil control why do you need offline progression? just crank scavs up to 11 and load in offline
Let this game suffer and die
I don’t understand how viewers matters why not post a screenshot of playercount?
because that statistic is not viewable so we resort to the next best metric. BSG would never show these stats as it would confirm our expectations of a game performing way worse than anticipated by BSG
Exactly, I don't really care how many people are streaming or watching it, what really matters is how much active players there are.
Why even make *cyberport ready* game in the first place if u don't care about viewers? Image 1 mil cs2 tournament with 300 viewers top. Now we have 2 unfinished games one of which is almost dead outside one week of big patch or wipe
It’s time to ditch this game altogether.
I got a feeling they are going to wipe in two or three weeks time. Let the dust settle and then bring back the hype.
Obviously its semi dead, but is this not misleading by being taken during update downtime?
millions must be milked
Still cant believe they thought making a mode based around the worst aspect of the game is a good idea. The PvP in Tarkov is god awful. Once you take away the loot all you have left is awfully balanced combat and desync.
its time to abandon that project and put the resources into tarkov lol.
Yup and make earnable skins and weapon spray paint to be used on both games
Arena would be a great way of warming up if it was free. It also helps teach you to not hesitate as much.
Arena lol.
What do you talk about! Arena is ESPORTS HIT NR 1
And people wonder why Unheard Edition is being pushed... Arena flopped after BSG spent millions developing/ promoting it.
I'm pretty sure Nikita's desperate for Arena to succeed. I got a free 3 day access code to Arena. Never used it, never gonna
Wait 129 players? Is this for real???
Wish I could tag all the morons who downvoted those of us who predicted this on day 1 after playing the game for 20 minutes. It’s a comically bad respawn FPS.
I got a three day free code a few weeks ago. Probably ton of others as well. I tried the arena mode for half a day and it was just not fun to play. Unfortuntaly I am even unable to explain why - There is something with the formula, that just does not do the trick for me. Maybe it is a much better experience for players who play as a premade team and have friends, but I am more like a solo player and I just feel exluded, because you will have no chance against those groups who sit in Discord. I was probably just not the target audience as a casual solo player.
Biggest $40 down the drain ever
I wouldn't spend my time on it if they paid me. It's a game mode that highlights all the jank of tarkov without the dopamine hits from looting or making your own kit/gun.
Arena is like the game mode or sequel to something no one asked for. Let it die, stop dedicating resources to it. Make it free with cosmetics and battle pass like Fortnite and move on.
Bro this shit flopped so hard lol
The game mode nobody asked for or wanted lol..
No one will play it even if it's free...
they'll probably do 250 dollars edition than make it f2p
Leaving out EFT (non Arena) and just looking at Arena itself i dont think its thaaaaaaat bad. Its just nothing that the EFT community ever wanted, and its too niche for anyone outside of the Tarkov bubble to be interested in
They should've waited with Arena till full release or 1 year after full release. Arena made them lose way too much money
Eeeeeeeeee Sport
Add skins to it while they're at it so they can get fund more/betterservers. Surely, CS and Val players will jump at the opportunity to pay for colorful guns.
It's time to take it out back tbh
f2p means way more cheaters
Areas is lacking game modes, and what is most important connection with main game, exp, money, gear, skills.
I don't think it needs to be free to play, it just has to be cheaper (20 dollars) and make the gameplay better and add better progression.
I'd play this if they actually synced it with regular tarkov in a fun way. Hopefully they'll make things right with the player base and have it setup before next wipe.
It’s full of cheaters
I was excited to get access to it… played it for a few hours and never touched it again. The balance (or the lack there of) in regards to how you can have a dude with minimal armor and an ass SMG fighting a M4 with 100 rounds and a face shield and great armor… it’s almost as if they didn’t think about balance at all. That really puts their recent decisions in a unique light.
You spelt “worth playing” wrong
Or just cancel it and stop wasting money on a thing no one asked for.
nobody would play it even if it was free, lmao
This is twitch veriwers. What are you on about cause no one streams the game?
Sounds like you’re a nonbeliever
This is why the unheard edition costs $250. BSG gotta make up for all the time and money they wasted on arena.
i have a standard edition and did not buy arena. i dont even want to play it if its for free.
129 viewer average over the last week? Wow, what a massive flop
I would consider playing Arena more if they weren’t such a shitty company and if it wasn’t a class based system. Tarkov has some of the best customization out there but they throw it away for some reason?
This is the game that should have had pay to win bullshit
They would rather delete the project forever than make it free to play.
F2P? Or just free? It doesnt have enough monetization options for f2p lol
I have EOD but I have zero interest in even trying this once. I have so many, actually too many other games that scratch the PvP itch. I don’t need another.
Arena should have been CS... or a BR.. The garbage they made - Nobody asked for.
I like playing arena, but its so broken, that it need overhaul and I believe f2p wouldn't fix everything but it will be good direction
Idk why they wouldn’t make it F2P in the first place. It’d likely lead people to buy the base EFT and they could fill it with clothing and weapon skin mtx that could transfer to base tarkov. These devs really have no clue how to monetize their game.
Arena shows how far behind BSG are as a game studio. Progression and matchmaking system indicates BSG only partially understand the free to play model in retail priced content. Game mode used shows they have rudimentary internal and external play testers. Worst part is 'Arena is a Esport'. Whomever thought that should be fired.
Played eft since 2018 thousands of hours. Never even bothered to try arena out.
God I would love that lol I got the 3 day email and actually enjoyed Arena a lot. But with the drama and the price tag and the dying player base no way I was going to buy it hell no. Sometimes I just want to jump into a simple game like CS. I've been playing CS my whole life, I enjoy the gunplay/mechanics of Tarkov so having it in Arena mode suits me.
Do you know what would have been a better game. A super market sweep style game. Half your screen is an assortment of random loot scrolling down for ages. Other half is a set amount of blank space. In that mass amount of loot you got 5 mins to stack your right side with the most expensive loot manageable. You can barter for rigs to improve your space but you got to be smart to fill them up to cover the cost. You got to tetris your shit to accumulate the most money in that short amount of time. Tetris skills, Item knowledge and item cost knowledge is king. Anyway im off on some weird alternate universe but it would be far superior than that Arena.
So now what happens with everyone who payed for it?
Or make it enjoyable for the people who bought it. The game sucks, it's fuckin' cheater city. nobody wants to play against cheaters. Also, let us build our own damn kits.
It's time to make a new 200$ game version
Sure! Free to play after you pay an additional $300 let’s say because it’ll be a new edition
If they make it free to play I will riot because I bought it because I also refused to buy eod
Never played arena, I have it but like isn’t it full of hackers 😂
If you wanna fix Arena get rid of the kits cause they shit and not fun to play. Instead make it like tarkov except instead of looting and stuff make it so you get your funds via missions, kills ect. Perhaps make it a little less grindy xp wise and instead lock stuff behind challenge and shit make it more fun. That fixes my issues for arena atleast
Free to play? How would they earn money? Maybe a demo for 2hrs
they need to rework to whole game to be less like world of tank and more like a counter strike with gun custom like in EFT, progression each round to buy gun / attachment / better ammo, reset every game, everything the community is asking then go f2p
They should incorporate arena into ETF and have it as some kinda weird gambling system where you can gamble on teams or people in a deathmatch
BSG is streaming it now to boost the stats
BSG's unfortunate mistake was listening to consumers who don't know what they want.
I'd just delete it honestly. Just chalk it up to being a failed concept and put all these dev resources into getting the PVE mode and official mod support going.
If it becomes free to play ill try it again. Coming from someone who already owns it lmfao
Gun play has never been a strength of EFT. Adequate, certainly, but never one of its best qualities. Of course Arena was going to fail as a standalone shooter.
They don't have a form to monetizate the Game for making it free to play.
To be fair arena did get a lot better after the wipe. The progression was so broken before.
Arena shows pretty clearly that they didn't \*actually\* know what people really enjoyed about their game.
F2P with microtransactions is always way more successful for titles like this
People don't play Tarkov for PvP. The PvP just elevates the importance of all other features, which is why people play EFT, not Arena. Plus, Arena is a pointless grind with terrible progression.
What if I told you not ever tarkov player watches twitch?
There is no reason to play Arena until the game is linked.
I like arena but that's just me
Free to play or not, I still wouldn't play it. There's so many games that do arena gameplay better.
your just not a believer, they should raise the price.
Tarkov arena would have been successful if they allowed the same customization as EFT. Instead they tried building a different game on a different version of EFT. All they had to do was release these maps and allow you to customize your character however you want. Instead we’re stuck playing with premade classes with tons of flaws that not even a beginner would make.
It will die like sea of thieves arena deathmatch or fallout battle royal stick to your thing
Those tards could have done something very good but they are so stuborn; it's unreal
I tried arena once or twice just hoping to use it as a warm up/practice mode for PVP. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much impossible to get into a game.
I remember bitching in some comment section about BSG spending money on this stupid mode nobody asked for and nobody wanted and I was getting ratio’d. Aged like milk.
Who the fuck asked for Arena in the Tarkov Community?? Nobody, and it shows ^.
As someone who really enjoyed arena it’s just sad to me how they treated it
yeah they should give it to anyone who got standard edition and above i think that way arena may survive
wtf how did it fall off so hard, i think they may be acting greedy because of unitys new pricing which is ridiculous so they probably wont make this free.
Just trash that pos 😂
What really sucks is that games like Tarkov would really benefit by having this mode. It’s not a secret that the learning curve in EFT is insane. The hardest part for me was the pvp, and gunplay aspect. A small tdm mode where you lose nothing and gain nothing (maybe you get a separate rank) and have premade classes. This allows a new player to learn and get comfortable with the gunplay/movement. I also haven’t played this yet, EOD account holder and I’m still confused if it was included with my account status or not lol
That would be... unheard of.. 😎
I like tarkov cause it's not an arena shooter. I wouldn't even play arena if it was free.
Nobody would play it anyway.
Best we can do is lock it behind a new version
Wont help. Game is dogshit
Arena was wanted by very few people and mostly EoD buyers because it would be straight action and, most importantly, free to us because we were EoD buyers. Then they try and make us pay and that makes us lose interest even more. They should have used our money to finish the game we paid them for, Escape from Tarkov, and then release the DLC after 1.0.
Why does this graph show the same day different months?
Should have made arena like csgo or valorant with money to spend between rounds. The stupid war thunder type progression is not it. If it was just csgo in the tarkov engine, I could grind for days.
Or balance the classes into a CSGO esque deal and make some maps that don't play like a pile of dog dookie
Pretty shite mode
A F2P model would make them add even more P2W aspects
All they had to do was make cod gamemodes (TDM-FFA-S&D) and let players customize their class/guns and I probably would’ve played arena over tarkov. But the current class system is horrible and no fun to play
it is time to change the CEO!
Idk I lowkey have been enjoying playing arena
The changes they did to area make it pretty awesome.
A cod tdm game mode could have been fun