Battlestate Games recently deployed a major overhaul to Escape from Tarkov’s PvE platform, making it so that solo players can run the game on their local PC as opposed to a centralised server. It was intended to reduce matching times to mere seconds, and while that box was ticked, the changes introduced a string of problems that are getting up the noses of players worldwide – as if BSG needed more bad publicity.
They Broke It
Along with the ‘offline PvE’ changes came several tweaks to how the game’s ‘player-vs-environment’ AI characters behave, particularly when roaming the map and interacting with loot crates and such. Battlestate applied a serious update that makes them much freer, which immediately means that players are having a tough time predicting their movements. This is where the issues begin – and it’s a long road from there.
Due to new ‘homing AI’ updates, if the computer-controlled enemies know where you are, they’ll descend upon your location with reckless abandon, which just isn’t right. Players are reporting ‘Scavs’ and PMC characters – again, all AI – almost joining forces in an unrealistic way to combat the solo and terrified players exploring a little PvE.
There are also reports of PMCs ‘over-spawning’ on maps, with the most extreme claims suggesting that more than double the normal amount of PMCs are appearing in AI form. They’re smarter, more tactical, and less afraid of making a group push towards a player cowering in a corridor somewhere, holding that angle.
Further, the ‘offline PvE’ change seems to have made it tougher for people to run the base game without experiencing issues. On certain maps, frame rate drops are now commonplace, with some players complaining that Escape from Tarkov has ‘become unplayable’. Battlestate Games has promised that further tweaks are inbound to address these issues – as always.
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