A year and a half ago, we wrote a big review of beta Escape from Tarkov. Since then, the game has not gone into a release, but a couple of months ago the developers updated the information on the huge map of Tarkov Street, but we, impressed by what we saw, returned to the expanses of an abandoned city, marveled at the changes, made piles of Luta and wondered: ““ And where is all this moving?". For answers went directly to Battlestate Games and personally Nikita Buyanova, the founder and head of the studio. He told us whether it would be possible to leave Tarkov whether there are hard terms of the release, and also what awaits us after the cancellation of wipes.

How did Escape from Tarkov even begin? How did the idea arose and how much time it took from conditional conversations to the directly start of development?

Nikita Buyanov: The topic is too voluminous, but in short – at first I wanted to make hardcore modification, a kind of Survival Mode for the game Contract Wars. Later, since the game world has already been worked out in detail, a decision was made to make a full -fledged game. We decided, let’s say, to take a chance and make a completely independent project.

How much time has passed from conditional conversations to the directly start of development?

Ideas in principle sounded for a long time, they collected something in the document. And after about a couple of weeks of active discussions, we have already begun to make the first prototypes.

Why did you decide to make the hardcore Militari-Sim from Escape from Tarkov, and not something simpler? “Tarkov”, of course, was lucky to attract the attention of the audience, but the genre itself is extremely niche.

Because we always wanted to make just such a game. That is, it was immediately planned to make a game in the hardcore genre, with deep immersion in the material and knowledge of the matter. And I also wanted to make a game for myself first.

Beginners who are interested in Escape from Tarkov often have the same claim: the entrance threshold. Where are the exits from locations, how to manage a character, how to do other useful things. How you are going to correct this situation?

This is an erroneous opinion – the high threshold of the entrance we do not consider at all a problem. It was never planned to tell absolutely everything, and such an input and immersion into the game are specially planned so that the player independently begins to understand something or wants it. As a result, it was customary to help newcomers and each other with a “Tarkova” community, players make all kinds of detailed guides, draw interactive cards, create additional tools. I can also add that in the release version the first location will be a kind of student, on which it will be possible to learn enough basic mechanics.

Did you have to abandon any mechanic or feature, because even with a sight of realism they turned out to be too fierce in relation to the player?

Of course, it was more than once. Sometimes we have to abandon various mechanics not because they are bad or we don’t like it, but simply because it is difficult for them to manage in the game with the help of a mouse and keyboard. For example, there was an idea to make aiming in the form of a real combination of the fly and a numbering, but it turned out to be extremely difficult to implement. For a game where you need to shoot very little, a feature would be in place, but not in EFT.

Whether the organization of the process has changed from the early stages of development to this day? Let's say whether the team has grown, labor resources, budget?

Of course, it grew up. At the start in the team there were, roughly speaking, five people, now there are more than a hundred of us. Resources, team, budget, number of managers and bosses, responsibility – more has become in total. At the same time, it is often necessary to work for more than 8 hours a day, sometimes even almost around the clock, when we carry out various kinds of large events, tournaments.

Why did you choose the unity as the engine?

So it happened historically. Contract Wars was on Unity, the team has already worked on this engine. We were well versed in it, besides, Unity was the best for browsers then, and in CW it was possible to play only like that.

There is an opinion that this is not the best platform for projects of this sense.

In fact, making such an EFT game will be hard on any engine. On Unity, this is probably harder than on other engines.

Why did not decide to create their own engine in order to adapt it to their needs, without waiting for updates or making special changes from Unity?

To make a game engine on your own, you need a lot of highly qualified expensive specialists, a lot of specific knowledge. In short – making your engine is very expensive and very difficult.

Do you remember some kind of hellish bug that took out your whole soul out of you?

Yes, mass. Many problems caused such emotions. For example, all kinds of problems associated with overloads at the moment when the game sharply began to gain popularity. Bacunde overloaded, paradise 8 casino and the profile was not loaded for hours. And it was necessary to understand what needed to be unloaded so that the game worked.

As for the bugs, now, for example, the inability to withdraw from the location or the inability to spav on it comes to mind, or in general, SPAVN was under the location. At that moment it was sad, and over time and experience you already understand – well, bug like a bug, okay, corrected.

The most unpleasant bugs are those that have to be fixed on the weekend. This is a practical any serious bug that blocks the gameplay. If this happens, for example, on Saturday – it really takes out the soul.

From the side it seems that when choosing which weapons to add to the "Tark", you just open some catalog and transfer from there to the game as much interesting as possible. What are you actually guided? Personal taste, balance of balance, players' requests?

I personally and many in the team have long been enthusiastic about weapons. In Contract Wars, by the way, also under a hundred weapons samples. The main criterion is three – we choose what is interesting, promising and well suited for our world and game. Balance and our taste preferences, the requests of players, sometimes our friends from weapons companies, who offer to add some novelty play a role.

Yes, it happens that we add any popular trunks that can be used within the framework of a hypothetical military conflict in the game, but we mainly guide our taste. For example, add weapons to a caliber that is not yet presented in the game, or machine guns, because there are few of them.

Tell us how you work on modeling and elaboration of weapons behavior? It is clear that in the United States you can simply go and shoot from what your soul wants, but in Russia it is much more difficult to collect information for a reference.

In fact, there is nothing complicated in Russia, here you can also shoot – at the shooters, in tires. Simply, once having figured out, having shot from different types of weapons, you begin to understand how and what works, what can be expected from weapons. On the basis of this experience, requirements for programmers, designers are compiled. And then we embody all this, trying to maintain a balance and create the desired degree of realism in a computer game.

How did you come to the decision to introduce wipes? Is it really that everything rests on the inability to transfer the current bases to new versions of the game, or is it more likely to be related to the intra -game economy/absence of Engseim?

First of all, wypes in EFT are necessary because the new functionality introduced with the next patch requires a completely different profile structure and simply will not work with the old. Also because such a new functionality as, for example, asylum, changes the gameplay in a fundamentally and affects other key play mechanics. We do not make a wipe for the sake of a wip, and all resets are necessary due to critical changes made.

Escape from Tarkov spreads through a very unusual model. Who invented it and how? Are you going to somehow change or expand it? Whether you thought about the direct sale of some intra-game things for real money?

The Pay-to-Play model with several options for the publication has long been known and quite classic. Look at STEAM, all Pay-to-Play games are distributed in various versions with Deluxe prefixes and the like. As for Donat, our position has not changed over the years, it will never be in Tarkov. There will be paid DLCs with various kinds of extensions, new merchants and other things, but sales of domestic goods for real money – no.

One of the recent shocks in Escape from Tarkov was a sharp jump in the Bitcoin course. What are your plans for the future deepening the economic mechanic of the game?

Indeed, this influenced the economy in EFT, as the price of game bitcoin is tied to real. Later we adjusted the situation because the constant growth of bitcoin negatively affects the game economy in the conditions of the infinity of the Luta. In general, in Tarkov, it is still worth expecting other economic changes in the form of events. We continue to experiment.

In the last patch, you introduced karma for wild. There are already some statistics on the behavior of players? Stopped killing their comrades?

In principle, yes, it is noticeable. There are more and more cases when players begin to interact with the wild, new interesting scenarios have appeared. Wild karma has yet to be finalized and improved, but in general it is already working.

Will there be any methods of identifying their Sopartians in Tarkov, except for bandages? For example, why not allow players to color the equipment in one form or another?

Over time, it is planned to add lighthouses and chemical light sources that will help determine additional differences. The coloring of the equipment is definitely not planned.

With the last patch, you did not publish a description of the changes for several days, and it was pretty fun to watch how the players themselves are looking for what changed there. Have you watched this process how accurately the players guessed the changes? Are you going to not publish patches anymore at all?

Of course, they watched. Players accurately, at 70-80 percent, guessed changes. And we will probably repeat this in future patches, that is, at first such changes as corrections and optimization will be published, and innovations later. The idea is that the players for some time detect and study the novelties of the patch, make assumptions, simultaneously immersing deeper into the aspects of the game. So, this time there were cases when the players found something that has long been in the game, but stated that this is a new product. It was interesting to observe this.

How large the streets of Tarkova will be? How the technique will look at this location? Is there a probability that Tarkov's streets will become some hub, from where it will be possible to go into neighboring locations (in addition to the laboratory)?

The card will be very large, we have been talking about it for a long time. More than you saw in the last teasers of the streets, about technology on this location, I can’t tell you yet.

From the streets it will be possible to get to the laboratory, and so far only there, this is a fact. But they will not be a full -fledged hub for sure.

Tell us about the plans for the arena. When you are going to start it and what will be the mechanics of her work?

We will tell in detail when it will be possible and will be.

What should the development of asylum eventually lead to? What are you planning for him in the future?

In fact, the shelter now has an almost completed look. It is also planned to add new zones and tie this mechanics with plot quests. And in the end, the shelter will take a full part in Endheim related to the direct shoot.

Is there now at least some rating system when selecting players?

No, and not planned. This is the whole essence of the game. In Tarkov there is no place for a situation where you are going to fight with the same as you by various parameters by players. This is simply impossible within the framework of our world and concept.

Another thing is the arena. There will be a ranking selection system, but this mode will present a completely different concept of the game.

With the last patch, you have seriously increased the time of pumping the characters. How did you take into account new changes for those who cannot afford more than one or two raids per day?

Not taken into account at all. We do not divide the players into those who can or cannot. At the same time, we have no task to make the characters pump the same for everyone. Everyone chooses his own style of play: who can play and grind, that grindite who cannot – calmly plays at his pace, is slowly developing. If very briefly, we focus on our understanding of the game and what gameplay we want to see in it, that's all.

Whether you thought about new modes of game based on EFT mechanics? For example, why not introduce the conditional zombie regime?

Various interesting modes will be presented in the arena, nevertheless, based on the existing mechanics of the game. There will definitely not be a zombie fashion, you can relax. But we are interested, of course, to experiment on how, for example, EFT mechanics will look in some classic flag capture mode. Let's see.

How the endheim of Tarkov will look like when wipes disappear? What awaits us? How do you see Tarkov 1.0? Do you have any internal tough deadlines for the release of the game?

Of course, there are harsh terms inside the studio, but publicly we are not talking about them. Much still needs to be finished and optimized, redoing the graphics and so on. There is a big specific list, but I will not talk about it in detail either.

In Endheim, you need to immediately escape from Tarkov. How exactly it will look, players will learn later. In EFT 1.0 all planned locations and content will be completed. In fact, the game can be formally passed, that is, the meaning of the shoot and quests for the game will become completely clear. That is, according to the plot from Tarkov, you fled, but you can continue to play and continue without problems.

There will be no main account of the main account, but most likely, with a high probability, the player will automatically have two unrelated profiles, the first without wipes, the second – seasonal with a periodic discharge of progress. It will be possible to play on both profiles depending on the experience that the player wants to receive.

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