Skip to main content

The Decision

It's 2020, the year of Covid and craziness.  Everything is closed, visiting with friends verboten.   I was reading a lot earlier in the year, watching some shows, but for an undisclosed "health reason" reading is becoming less viable, and the shows are wearisome.   

So I decided to try my hand at a video game. In years past I enjoyed playing Marathon, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 2142.  Those games are long gone, but there must be something more modern.  Battlefield 1 looks cool and is only $10.   It's very pretty, but the network play is lame.  Players just pointlessly run around willy-nilly. 

A bit of internet research finds two better candidates: Squad and Escape from Tarkov.   Squad looks good and teamwork is important. But upon reflection I realize that I can't play a game that requires talking on a microphone - my family - we are all working, studying or sleeping within earshot always, because Covid.  So I begin looking at Escape from Tarkov.

I watched a video on YouTube of some gamer "jumping in" to Tarkov. He scanned the confusing starting inventory - an assault rifle, some handguns. A shitload of bandages.   He nervously sets aside the assault rifle and equips with just a pistol for his first venture.  The game loads and...woah - his first mistake was made already - he had selected 03:00 for the start time and that's 3AM, not 3PM. It's night and pitch black. He stumbles around in the dark around for a few minutes, looks at the silhouettes of some buildings, shots crack out, and he's dead.   For some reason, I decide, yes, this is the game for me. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Field of Fire of Emplaced Weapons at Lighthouse USEC Base, for BEARS

On the new Lighthouse map, the USEC rogues are very aggressive against BEARS and will sight on you out to 300 meters or more, and will fire on you far quicker than they will on a USEC PMC.  The fixed guns are particularly dangerous as they can kill you with a single hit when you might not even realize you are close to the base. I made a map with some fields of fire noted on it. There are two mounted machine guns on building 1 , two mounted machine guns and a grenade launcher on building 2 , and a single machine gun on building 3 .  Plus there is a mounted machine gun and grenade launcher on the southwest corner of the base (lower right on this map).  I have noted the general field of fire of each of these weapons on the map. Obviously, there is a lot of cover, so just because you are standing in a red zone on this map doesn't necessarily mean you can be seen and hit. BUT, if there is any sort of line of sight (including through trees, bushes, walls and vehicles) and you a...

Quest for Beta! Raid 115

I have a big announcement to share: I have decided to pursue acquiring secure container beta!!   Yes, I know that's not as impressive as acquiring kappa, or gamma, or epsilon, but I need to set realistic achievable goals.  I could just buy a beta container on the flea market, they were going for about 750K rubles last I checked. But I want to do this properly: barter trade with Peacekeeper. In exchange for a beta container Peacekeeper wants 3 Iridiums 2 Virtexes 3 Military Cables 1 Tank Battery That's a lot of military tech, which means I need to go where there are multiple military tech spawns, which means Reserve.  The rules for this quest is that I have to find each of those items in raid, but, for every PMC I kill (starting today) I will allow myself to reward myself by buying one of the items off the flea market.  Also, some of those items are craftable, and if I'm in a bind I'll allow myself to craft them, but only using 75% or more found-in-raid ingredien...

On "The Video"

 No doubt, anyone following Tarkov has seen the video from Goat:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LfGcDB7Ek If you've read my blog before, you know I've tried tracking cheaters in the past by checking all my kills and killers in the in-game chat tool over time. I made several posts, the last of which was this one:  https://itarkovpoorly.blogspot.com/2022/06/counting-cheater-part-4.html My take on the video?  The reason it's called "The wiggle that killed tarkov" is because if cheaters are signaling each other via wiggling, it means there is a CULTURE of cheating and cheaters. And that's the shocking thing. It's not just "some people cheat", it's that there is a whole CULTURE of people cheating, with their own set of spoken/unspoken rules, behaviors, norms and manners. And if you've got a whole culture around something, then it's likely widespread and endemic. And disappointing.  Someone made the remark on Reddit that watching the vi...