Interview with Nikita Buyanov about the past, present and future of Escape from Tarkov.
How did Escape from Tarkov start? How did the idea come about and how long did it take from conditional conversations to the immediate start of development?
Nikita Buyanov: The topic is too voluminous, but in short – at first I wanted to make a hardcore modification, a kind of survival mode for the game Contract Wars… Later, since the game world had already been worked out in sufficient detail, it was decided to make a full-fledged game. We decided, let’s say, to take a chance and make a completely independent project.
How long did it take from conditional conversations to the actual start of development?
Ideas, in principle, sounded for a long time, something was collected in a document. And after about a couple of weeks of active discussions, we have already started making the first prototypes.
Why did you decide to make Escape from Tarkov a hardcore military sim, 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 that kind of game. That is, it was immediately conceived to make a game in the hardcore genre, with a deep immersion in the material and knowledge of the matter. And first of all I wanted to make a game for myself.
Newbies interested in Escape from Tarkov often have the same complaint: the entry threshold. Where are the exits from the locations, how to control the character, how to do other useful things. How are you going to remedy this situation?
This is a misconception – we do not consider a high entry threshold a problem at all. It was never planned to tell absolutely everything, and such an entrance and immersion in the game was specially planned so that the player independently began to understand something or wanted it. As a result, it became customary in the Tarkov community to help newcomers and each other get into the game, players make all sorts of detailed guides, draw interactive maps, and create additional tools. I can also add that in the release version, the first location will be a kind of training, where you can learn enough basic mechanics.
Have you had to give up any mechanics or features, because even with an eye on realism, they turned out to be too harsh in relation to the player?
Of course, it happened more than once. Sometimes we have to give up various mechanics, not because they are bad or we do not like, but simply because they are difficult to control in the game using the mouse and keyboard. For example, there was an idea to make aiming in the form of a real combination of front sight and rear sight, but this turned out to be extremely difficult to implement. For a game where you need to shoot very little, the feature would be appropriate, but not in EFT.
Has the organization of the process changed from the early stages of development to the present day? For example, has the team, manpower, budget grown?
Of course it has grown. At the start, the team had, roughly speaking, five people, now there are more than a hundred of us. Resources, team, budget, number of managers and bosses, responsibility – the most. At the same time, we often have to work more than 8 hours a day, sometimes even almost around the clock, when we hold all sorts of major events and tournaments.
Why did you choose Unity as the engine?
It happened historically. Сontract Wars was on Unity, the team had already worked on this engine. We knew it well, besides, Unity was then the best for browsers, and CW was the only way to play it.
There is an opinion that this is not the best platform for projects of this kind.
In fact, making a game like this EFT would be difficult on any engine. It’s probably harder on Unity than on other engines.
Why didn’t you decide to create your own engine to adapt it to your needs without waiting for updates or 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 own engine is very expensive and very difficult.
Do you remember any of the most infernal bug that took your whole soul out of you?
Yes, mass. Many problems generated similar emotions. For example, all sorts of problems associated with overloads, at a time when the game began to rapidly gain popularity. The backend was overloaded and the profile didn’t load for hours. And it was necessary to understand what needs to be unloaded for the game to work.
As for the bugs, now come to mind, for example, the impossibility of leaving the location or the impossibility of spawning on it, or in general the spawn took place under the location. At that moment it was sad, but with time and experience you already understand – well, a bug is like a bug, okay, we fixed it.
The most annoying bugs are those that have to be fixed over the weekend. This is almost any serious bug that blocks gameplay. If this happens, for example, on Saturday – it really takes out the soul.
From the outside it seems that when choosing which weapon to add to “Tarkov”, you simply open some catalog and transfer as many interesting things as possible into the game from there. What are you really guided by? Personal taste, balance considerations, player requests?
I personally and many on the team have been passionate about weapons for a long time. In Сontract Wars, by the way, also under a hundred samples of weapons. There are three main criteria – we choose what is interesting to us, promising and well suited for our world and the game. Balance and our taste preferences play a role, as well as requests from players, sometimes from our friends from arms companies, who suggest adding some novelty.
Yes, it happens, we add some popular barrels that can be used in the framework of a hypothetical military conflict in the game, but mostly we are guided by our own taste. For example, we add weapons for a caliber that is not yet represented in the game, or submachine guns, because there are few of them.
How are you working on modeling and working out the behavior of the weapon? It is clear that in the USA you can just go and shoot anything your heart desires, but in Russia it is much more difficult to collect information for reference.
In fact, this is not difficult in Russia, here you can also shoot – at shooting ranges, in shooting ranges. It’s just that, once you figure it out, having shot from different types of weapons, you begin to understand how and what works, what you can expect from a weapon. Based on this experience, requirements are drawn up for programmers and designers. And then we embody all this, trying to maintain balance and create the necessary degree of realism in a computer game.
How did you come to the decision to introduce wipes? Is it really all about the impossibility of transferring the current bases to new versions of the game, or is it more likely to do with the in-game economy / lack of an endame?
First of all, wipes 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 one. Also, because such new functionality as, for example, the Vault, changes the gameplay radically and affects other key game mechanics. We do not wipe for the sake of wipe, and all resets are necessary due to the critical changes being made.
Escape from Tarkov is distributed according to a very unusual pattern. Who invented it and how? Are you going to somehow change or expand it? Have you thought about directly selling some in-game items for real money?
The pay-to-play model with several edition options has long been known and quite classic. Check out Steam, almost all pay-to-play games are distributed in various versions with deluxe consoles 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 more, but sales of in-game goods for real money will not.
One of the recent shocks in Escape from Tarkov was the sharp jump in bitcoin prices. What are your plans for the future deepening of the game’s economic mechanics?
Indeed, this has had an economic impact on EFT, as the price of in-game bitcoin is tied to the real one. Later, we corrected the situation, because the constant growth of bitcoin negatively affects the gaming economy in the context of infinite loot. In general, other economic changes in the form of events are still to be expected in Tarkov. We keep experimenting.
In the last patch, you introduced karma for the Wilds. Do you already have some statistics on the behavior of players? Have you already stopped killing your comrades?
In principle, yes, noticeably. More and more cases when players begin to interact with the Wilds, new interesting scenarios have emerged. Karma Dikikh still has some work to do and improve, but in general it is already working.
Will there appear in “Tarkov” any methods of identifying their fellow party members, except for bandages? For example, why not allow players to paint equipment in one form or another?
Over time, it is planned to add beacons and chemical light sources to help identify additional differences. Equipment coloring is definitely not planned.
With the last patch, you didn’t publish a description of the changes for several days, and it was quite fun to see how the players themselves are looking for what has changed there. Have you watched this process, how accurately the players guessed the changes? Are you not going to publish any patch notes at all?
Of course they did. The players guessed the changes quite accurately, 70-80 percent. And we will probably repeat this in future patches, that is, changes such as fixes and optimizations will be published first, and innovations later. The idea is for players to discover and study the new features of the patch for some time on their own, make assumptions, along the way, diving deeper into aspects of the game. So, this time there were cases when players found something that has been in the game for a long time, but declared that it was a novelty. It was interesting to watch this.
How big will Tarkov Streets be? What will the vehicle look like at this location? Is there a possibility that Tarkov Streets will become some kind of hub, from where it will be possible to move to neighboring locations (in addition to the laboratory)?
The map will be very large, we have been talking about this for a long time. More than you saw in the last teasers of Streets, about the equipment in this location, I cannot 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 your plans for the Arena. When are you going to launch it and what will be the mechanics of its operation?
We will tell you in detail when it will be possible and what will be.
What should the development of the Vault lead to in the end? What are you planning for him in the future?
In fact, the Vault is now almost complete. There are also plans to add new zones and link this mechanic to story quests. And as a result, the Vault will take a full part in the endgame associated with the immediate Escape.
Is there any kind of ranking system for matchmaking now?
No, and it is not planned. This is the whole point of the game. In “Tarkov” there is no place for a situation when you go to fight with the same players in different parameters as you. This is simply not possible within the framework of our world and concept.
Arena is another matter. There will be a ranked matchmaking system, but this mode will introduce a completely different concept of the game.
With the latest patch, you have seriously increased your character leveling times. How did you take into account the new changes for those who cannot afford more than one or two raids a day?
Not taken into account at all. We do not divide players into who can or cannot. At the same time, we do not have the task of making sure that the characters are pumped the same way for everyone. Everyone chooses his own style of play: who can play and grind, he grind, who cannot – calmly plays at his own pace, slowly develops. In short, we focus on our understanding of the game and what kind of gameplay we want to see in it, that’s all.
Have you thought about new game modes based on the EFT mechanics? For example, why not introduce a conditional zombie mode?
The Arena will feature a variety of interesting modes, 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, the EFT mechanics will look like in some classic flag capture mode. We will see.
What will the Tarkov endgame look like when the wipes disappear? What awaits us? How do you see Tarkov 1.0? Do you have any internal hard deadlines for the release of the game?
Of course, there are tight deadlines within the studio, but we don’t talk about them publicly. A lot still needs to be completed and optimized, graphics reworked and so on. There is a large specific list, but I will not talk about it in detail either.
In endgame, you need to directly escape from Tarkov. How exactly this will look like, players will find out later. All planned locations and content will be completed in EFT 1.0. In fact, the game can be formally passed, that is, the meaning of the Escape and quests for passing the game will become finally clear. That is, according to the plot, you escaped from Tarkov, but you can continue playing without any problems.
There will be no wipes for the main account, but most likely and with a high probability the player will automatically have two unrelated profiles, the first one without wipes, the second seasonal with a periodic reset 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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