248
Tarkov studio claims it actually doesn't have the server capacity for everyone who bought the game for $150 to play its upcoming PvE mode, still wants players to pay extra (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
71 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] [email protected] 90 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah honestly, I bought Tarkov second-hand for $8 and even then I felt like I was getting ripped off.

It's probably not news to anyone but the game has extremely lax anti-cheat controls.

As for why people would cheat in an online game, it always seems obvious from a psychological standpoint, but the cheats for Tarkov are so egregious they're like full blown developer offline DEBUG TOOLS.

I don't mean "oh no, aim assistance, and they can see you through walls" -- the cheat tools are hooking into features of the GAME ENGINE ITSELF, allowing players to see:

PlayerName, Current HP, Current Level, Full inventory contents, currently equipped weapon, position, heading, estimated value of inventory, estimated value of your account, age of account creation, and so on.

They can also: Teleport, FLY, increase or decrease their run speed, jump height, and so on.

The cheaters are basically running around with admin privileges in the game, and the developers don't give a flying fuck. It's like GTA5 levels of cheating.

Why would anyone play such a game, much less pay $150 to be abused by people? You can slam your dick in a car door for a lot less.

[-] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago

Whats sad is that people keep wanting more client-side anticheat to fix this, when the real answer is server-side anticheat and changing the engine to stop being so leaky with that much information.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

It's easy to just handwaive and say "Server side will fix it" but here's a major issue:

You have to render people in before they appear. How do you do that without the client knowing where people are?

[-] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

but here’s a major issue:

You're acting like other games have never successfully ran server-side before. Hell the whole net engine doesn't need to be server-side at all. But you can run server side checks on shit at the very least. A player being 100 ft in the air is likely a cheater... A player making a shot through impenetrable terrain is likely a cheater. Tarkov is missing these basics. Forget ESPs and other bullshit.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If you should absolutely be checking for repeat issues and basics. Not trying to excuse that shit, just saying server side isn't a silver bullet.

load more comments (12 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If the trajectory and speed says either the client or another player will cross a wall soon where the player sees them THEN it could send the data to the client. You need some tolerance for ping up to maybe 200ms but that's it. Wallhacks could give you at most a flash of a couple specific people.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You need to account for every gap in the wall, nook and cranny and peephole for these sightlines. You'd have to bake so much detail into every calculation server side that it would effectively be rendering the entire map to host a single game.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

There are many ways of doing this. I know the source engine uses visboxes, which are calculated once at map compile time. It takes a while to compile, but it means that clients can use the pre-compiled data to calculate parts of the map that are visible and the server can use them to determine what the player can see at a given time. I'm not sure whether it does that or not, but it would make sense to use that data.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It could be a client-side check with verification on the server. Basically transmitting which places are in view. Ray casting like the other person said. Not raytracing which is much more computationally intensive. A server side check basically so that the client can't just say they're looking around every corner at once.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

You do something called raycasting to determine visibility beforehand, and don't render anything not visible.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

lol raycasting isn’t optimized for server side deployment, it would increase the poly count of the mesh tenfold, which would in turn increase average ping and fps. Couple that with the client side rendering problem and I don’t know anything about development just kidding

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Your suggesting the server maintain a real time render for every single player and somehow manage to get the data back to them in less than 17ms so that they don't have empty frames that suddenly become people?

Because that's a ludicrous requirement in terms of latency (ping is totally reasonable at any value under 100ms) and server capacity.

Because your solution sounds like it would cause popping constantly and be a major burden on the server, which is already the largest overhead on a released game.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

By rendering people, as in sending data about an object that should be rendered, in a few pixels before they would be visible. And not at all on distances, without a scope (as they would not be visible). Footsteps etc. could be represented by two noise levels precalculated by the servers very roughly, so you can tell someone is there behind you, but a cheat could not determine where exactly.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You want a server to determine if a player should be visible (ie render each player's perspective) and then get that back to them right before someone walks around the corner? With latency you'd need to render people in at least 200ms before they appear... Which is still plenty of time for a hacker to flick to them and kill them.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I don't know game development but uh do you? What are you rendering when the player can't see them? I might legitimately just not get what you mean

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

You constantly have to render people in when they can't be seen but will soon be seen. Which also means instead of keeping track of just locations the server needs to render the scene in sufficient detail as to determine sightlines.

Usually games just do this by sending info to clients of where everyone is and letting the clients render people in when the client determines that the sightline isn't interrupted.

Some games will just not send the positions until they're within a certain range of each other, but I'm a realistic game like tark you'd need several kilometers of info in case someone scoped in.

If you don't do this correctly it leads to characters popping into existence from thin air

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

I mean, i'd argue that a car costs a bit more than $150, but i see your point.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Call an Uber

[-] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Cheating is such a hard problem.

Like, this is what leads to invasive client-side anti-cheat. Which also happens to be one of the main blockers for OS portability.

But if you make it so that the server has to constantly validate the game state, you get terrible lag.

You really have to design your game well to deter cheaters. And you have to empower server moderators to ban cheaters. This sorta implies releasing the servers so that communities can run their own instances, because these studios don't have the resources to handle moderation themselves.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Cheaters are a big problem in this game. To experience the cool parts of the game without all the bulshit, there is still SPT-AKI for playing solo and also the SIT mod for PvE multiplayer coop.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I'd rather pay someone else to slam my dick in a car door for 150 clams.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 71 points 5 months ago

Who the fuck is paying $150 for a fucking video game? Sounds like suckers who got scammed

[-] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago

*for a new game mode in an existing game

[-] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

Actually the game mode is on a pack selling for 250$

People who already bought the 150$ price only get a 6 month free trial of the game mode.

Or they pay an extra 100 to upgrade

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

$250?! What?! Why??

[-] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

The $150 isn’t for the new game mode. People that paid $150 were told they’d get all DLC. The devs are saying this isn’t DLC and these folks will get it for free once the game is out of early access. People that paid $250 can play this now. People that paid any more will have some level of discount to purchase access to this mode.

It’s all in the article.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Star citizen taught them well.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There's nothing remotely close to this in SC history. Also full access to SC is actually less than the cheapest Tarkov package.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Rubes.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

It's actually 250 euros for the top tier (267 $us)

I mean, seriously, what the actual fucking fuck?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago

Fellow gamers, if you don't push back against this nonsense now, you will be living with this treatment as customers for a long time, if not forever.

~CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0~

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

This. People paying hundreds for a skin in CS and hundred for a new game mode that they might not even get into are the reason things we get games like Suicide Squad.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago

If only there was a way for dedicated fans to run their own servers for PVE co-op with friends...

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Is there?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

No. And considering how they are gatekeeping the feature behind a 250$ purchase, it is very lucrative for them to keep it that way. Unless shit hits the fan and the players decide they won't pay.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

SPT with MPT mod.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

They are a Russian Developer with contacts to military units who support the war in Ukraine and also mocked Ukrainian with screenshots in their game...so why expect you no shitty behavior from them?

Stop supporting them and let their game fail.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Source? I would love to confirm this. If it's true I will stop playing instantly

[-] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

From what I found they have made no comment other than “they will not leave any markets due to war”

As for being Russian

"We have a mix of talent, some veteran developers, some new to game development. But everyone loves guns and FPS games. One of the studio leads is actually a former Spetsnaz officer, the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Special Forces."

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I am aware they aren't Russian, and I don't expect them to actively condemn the invasion, as it would be dangerous for them. If there is proof they were actively supporting the war or mocking Ukraine, that's a different story.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

This makes me happy I never got to play Tarkov.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

I was a big fan of the game. Always thought it had potential to be great. I had already quit this wipe pretty much as soon as I hit Max traders. Don't think I'll be returning back next wipe.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Grey Zone Warfare is almost done, why would I give money to tarkov devs, especially now that everyone can plainly see they'll do shitty shit to their playerbase?

[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Interesting aside - gamers continue to enable these thieves by "leasing" their products. Boycott? No?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Many streamers are actively boycotting right now

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
248 points (98.1% liked)

Gaming

19765 readers
559 users here now

Sub for any gaming related content!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]