Escape From Tarkov has had issues with cheaters just about from the beginning, however regardless of being vocal about its efforts to rid the sport of their affect—and infrequently referring to cheaters as “scum of the Earth”—some gamers aren’t satisfied that developer Battlestate Video games is all that severe about coping with the issue. A brand new anti-cheat effort rolled out within the newest patch would possibly change some minds on that entrance: The studio is now providing “compensation for reporting gamers who violated sport guidelines”—in different phrases, a bounty on cheaters.
“Gamers will obtain in-game forex compensation after the report that led to the blocking of the violator,” the 0.14.9.5 patch notes say (by way of GamesRadar). “Compensation comes with an in-game message informing of a profitable report. Compensation for a number of profitable reviews can be mixed.”
It is gentle on element—there isn’t any phrase as to how a lot gamers can be paid for a profitable report, whether or not any sort of threshold needs to be met earlier than payout happens, or how reviews from a number of individuals about the identical cheater can be dealt with—and naturally the worth of an uptick in cheater reviews depends solely on what Battlestate does with them. Nonetheless, it looks like a step in the best path, though whether or not this system has any long-term affect on dishonest stays to be seen.
This is not precisely an unique thought. At the least one redditor urged Battlestate implement a bounty program like this greater than a 12 months in the past, noting that Yager supplied a really related program in The Cycle: Frontier. The response to that suggestion was combined, as they are saying; the final consensus gave the impression to be that even when the plan was workable, Battlestate was both incapable or unwilling to make it occur. Now that it is embraced the bounty scheme, we are able to solely hope it really works out higher than it did for Yager. The Cycle: Frontier was shuttered in September 2023, partly due to the adverse affect of cheaters.
Regardless of widespread frustration with cheaters, it is adjustments to NPC AI that is attracting probably the most consideration from gamers proper now. Merely put, AI-controlled PMCs can be extra aggressive, reactive, and communicative following this patch; they’ll now journey wherever in a location, will dash when transferring throughout open terrain, and can reply when different close by bots spot the participant.
Most gamers appear to assume these are constructive adjustments (though there’s some concern that the AI enemies could also be a bit too good now), however redditor Thatguydrew7 captured a barely completely different temper being felt by some: “Excited for this however PMCs wandering round with aimbot on scares the shit outta me.”
The patch additionally lastly allows offline play for the controversial PvE mode Battlestate unveiled, to widespread outrage, in April; the studio mentioned on Twitter that the mode can be made out there for buy for all Escape From Tarkov house owners “inside 1-2 weeks after the sport’s infrastructure is stabilized and confirmed prepared.”
