May 24, 2024 • 18 mins
Escape from Tarkov set the stage, but are you ready for the intense evolution it spawned in the gaming world? Strap in as I take you on a high-octane journey through the fast-growing realm of extraction shooters, a genre where every decision could mean the difference between digital life and death. In this heart-pounding episode, we dissect the allure and adrenaline-fueled gameplay that's luring players away from traditional FPS games and into the immersive worlds of titles like Hunt: Showdown and the innovative Grey Zone Warfare. With personal anecdotes and seasoned insight, I peel back the layers of these games, revealing the persistent worlds, realistic health systems, and the nail-biting tension that defines them, all while navigating the turbulent waters of early access pitfalls like server woes and optimization hurdles.
As the digital gunfire echoes into the future, I cast a gaze towards 2024—a year that could very well mark the zenith of extraction shooters. Find out why the upcoming Arena Breakout Infinite might just revolutionize our beloved genre and challenge the throne of Tarkov. Join me, and let's explore together the virtual landscapes where every play is a story, every shot is a gamble, and every extraction is a pulse-pounding triumph.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
let's do this shit.
I don't have a plan.
We're just here for moment.
We cracked open a cold one withthe boys the boys aka me
because everyone else is superbusy with life stuff right now,
(00:31):
just as I am, and we'reliterally just going to be
talking about extractionshooters.
What's going on with the market?
Why is there this trend ofextraction shooters?
Where did it start?
And what is Grey Zone Warfare, agame that I have made content
on, I have streamed that, I'vewrote in, wrote in, yeah,
written blogs about, and I'mgoing to close my conversation
(00:52):
of the game with the grandfinale, also known as this
podcast.
So thank you all for joining mefor this unhinged episode of
ink and bites and let's justjump into it and see what
happens, because I honestly haveno idea.
I'm kidding, I'm, I'm, I havean idea.
I'm not as unprepared as I makeit seem.
(01:13):
But what are extractionshooters and why do people like
them so much?
Simply put, an extractionshooter is a genre of game,
particularly fps's, but if youwant to be wild, there are some
third-person ones out there andthese games share, and some are
(01:46):
significantly more unforgivingas others.
So in these games, if you diewith stuff that you have during
your mission or raid or session,you lose all of it.
And for a lot of sane peopleunlike me, who is not sane this
type of game you would neverwant to play, because why would
you want to spend hours to getstuff and then lose it when you
(02:09):
die to some some crap?
But that is what draws the mostpeople.
It gives them an adrenalinerush when they get into
conflicts with other people andit's just something that a lot
of other games, like call ofduty, can't replicate, because
when you're playing call of dutyyou're literally just waiting
to get 360 no-scoped by some10-year-old who just got an F on
their fucking math quiz andthey have to release their anger
(02:31):
on some 40-year-olds in a Callof Duty lobby and everyone's
screaming absurdities at eachother.
Because that's what we do as ahuman race, that's what we find
enjoyment from, I guess.
But the extraction shooter genrereally started from a game that
if you're a regular listener ofthe show have heard of, which
is Escape from Tarkov.
I really won't go much into thegame because I talked about it
(02:52):
to death, I read it about it todeath, I play it too much and
honestly I kind of hate it andlove it at the same time.
But Escape from Tarkov kind oforiginated this genre of shooter
.
It found its footing and itjust blew up and because of that
success a lot of other gamestudios have come out to try and
replicate it.
In the early days of this genrewe had another competitor come
(03:14):
out that I don't really classifytoo much as an extraction
shooter, but most people do soit's fallen into that
categorization and that is thehunt showdown, which is just a
lot of cowboys with lever actionrifles hunting down demons and
monsters from hell trying to gettheir bounty and then
extracting with it.
It's in the same realm butpersonally it doesn't feel like
(03:35):
an extractor shooter for me.
I call extraction shooters thehardcore, realistic military
shooters.
Usually those are the ones Icall extraction shooters.
The science fiction ones andthe wild west ones just feel
like stylized survival shooters,if anything but a lot of moral
(03:55):
of the story.
A lot of competitors came out totry to steal the crown from
escape from tarkov and no onehas officially or effectively
done so yet.
Eft has really sat high ontheir throne for the longest
time and the popular saying wasnobody can kill Escape from
Tarkov other than Escape fromTarkov and that's almost what
they did with the unheard ofdrama.
(04:16):
Check out my episode beforethis for a full breakdown on
that, because it's a wild storyand that really opened up the
floodgates for this trend tokind of grow faster than it has,
because for years we've onlyreally had escape from targoth
and the hunt showdown.
Every other extraction shooterreally never made success or
headlines and there's a lot offailed attempts.
(04:38):
But because of the drama and themass exodus of a lot of players
from EFT, a lot of these othergames started to get a lot of
attention and a lot of footing.
Two of those games are GreyZone Warfare or GZW, and Arena
Breakout Infinite, which this iskind of nutty was actually a
(04:59):
phone game first and now isbeing ported over to PC and
riddle me this Batman.
But it looks kind of fuckingamazing, which is confusing that
it's coming from a phone gameand I've played it and it's
actually pretty good and I wentinto that thinking it was going
to be a candy crush but withguns and it's actually pretty
well developed and I'm lookingforward to that coming out.
(05:20):
They're doing a lot of betatesting as of as of now and it's
almost close to coming out.
But Grey Zone Warfare is what Ireally kind of want to chat
about, go over what it is, somepros and cons, and just give my
thoughts on it.
So Grey Zone Warfare is an openworld extraction shooter
(05:41):
Keyword on the open world.
All of these other games in thegenre are instance based,
meaning you select an area thatyou want to go to and you load
into it and you duke it out withother people, ai and loot and
try to leave.
Grazen Warfare takes that andflips it on its head and gives
you an entire open world that ispersistent, that keeps going
(06:02):
even if you're not playing.
People are always going in,leaving, doing quests, leaving
AI or living in the world, andthat is the main draw of the
game for a lot of people, meincluded, because one issue that
we've had with escape fromtarkov and other games is that
not other games pretty muchescape from tarkov because
(06:24):
that's the one big game here.
Everybody in that ecosystemhave been playing the game for
many years, to the point wherethey know exactly what you're
going to do, when you're goingto do it and what quests are
active at the time, depending onwhen in the wipe you're playing
, because notoriously, escapefrom Tarkov resets itself every
(06:45):
six or so months with newcontent and everyone's back to
square zero.
But it's been a repeated cyclefor so long that the sweats of
the game know everything andit's very hard for casual
players to break into it.
There are or the average playtime of an EFT nerd is like
4,000 hours.
If anybody has under 4,000hours, people actually just
(07:09):
report them for cheating.
It's actually kind of crazy,but with an open world setting,
people no longer can down to ascience pinpoint where you are
and what you're doing.
Instead, it adds this elementof unpredictability to every
game session that you play,because it's persistent.
No one's starting.
(07:29):
At the same time, you can gointo an area that someone's been
in for an hour and it's just.
It's so refreshing.
This game just came out recentlyand it's currently sitting in
early access on steam, but it'salso in very early alpha.
The devs have come out to statemadffinger Games that it is 20%
(07:52):
completed and there are a lotof good things.
I already mentioned one of themthe open world, persistence,
all of that stuff.
There's also a lot of bad, solet me just finish up with the
good and then we'll look at thebads.
There is a lot of tasks in thegame.
There's 150 tasks and theprogression of those tasks are
(08:12):
really nice.
So when you first start off andyou're playing for the first
time, all of your tasks aregoing to be in the starter town
of your faction and everyfaction has the same town at the
start.
And once you progress throughthose, well, I think there's
like there's too many in thestarter town.
There's like 12 or 13 of them.
But After you complete those,the game progresses in a manner
(08:34):
that tasks become harder and youget to start being pushed
inland to other points ofinterest that are marked on the
map, that are likely to bringyou into conflict with other
players from other factions,which is really nice, because
the progression in otherextraction shooters doesn't
really feel like that.
It just feels like here arethings to do, do them.
But in this it kind of feelslike you're progressing through.
(08:55):
I don't want to say a story yet, but you're progressing through
, uh, just a nice challenge,difficulty ladder and the other
pretty neat thing that othergames don't have.
You can argue that escape fromtarkov has it with choosing usek
or bears the gris and warfarekind of feels like it's more in
depth with their faction system.
(09:16):
There's three of them that youcan pick from.
Each have their own story uh,mithras or I can't remember all
the top of my hand, butsomething like that crimson
shield and lemang recoveryinitiative.
And the lemang recoveryinitiative is more altruistic,
trying to help people on theisland.
Of course, because I'm a nicehuman being, I picked that.
But it's really cool because itadds this role play element to
(09:39):
the game.
And the devs classify gray zonewarfare as an mmo, which I kind
of find myself struggling toreally agree with.
Doesn't feel too much like anmmo outside of the uh gameplay
style.
But it's really neat to havethese factions and they're
saying that there's going to beI hope anyway that there's going
to be a faction specific quests.
(10:01):
That would be pretty cool tosee to kind of influence people
to try other factions as timegoes on.
But it's a really neat system.
I don't think any of the othergames really capitalize on that
as much as gzw does.
The realism elements as wellare spot on.
The guns feel nice, the armoractually feels like you're
wearing armor and when you getshot you feel it.
(10:23):
The health system is really indepth, just like escape from
tarkov, but instead in gzw alsohave an added layer of organ
damage and that is like a wholeanother layer of complexity.
But like if you're shot in yourlungs, you get a special debuff
that makes you cough and youhave to heal that.
And the animations for allthose things are really slick.
(10:44):
I actually I hate needles.
I think needles are gross and Ican't stand them.
But there's a animation thatinvolves needles pretty
extensively and I actually haveto look away because it makes me
cringe.
That's how you tell theanimators did a really good job,
because that's never happenedto me before.
But all that being said,there's so much awesome in this
(11:06):
game at the current stage thatit's at for being only 20%
completed and unfortunately alot of people have.
This is going to be a segue intothe negatives of the game.
The game isn't optimized at alland there's a lot of server
instability.
It's getting better each day,but this has caused a lot of
(11:30):
people to go on the forums andslam their face against their
keys and insult the devs, demandfinancial compensation, insult
other people who like the game,and it's kind of funny.
I just sit back with popcornand read some of these things
because you can tell they justgot out of high school and they
just need to vent because If thegame doesn't run on their
(11:52):
supercomputer it's a bad game.
So that's the thought processthere.
It's not really that deep, butthe game is early access and
early alpha and they make thatvery clear.
But it's the same phenomenathat happens in almost every
early access title.
People always go in thinkingthat it's going to be a
completed game and then they getdisappointed when it's not the
(12:14):
game's only 20 completed but thethis, the optimization
warranted, is really bad and ifyour computer is outdated you're
likely not going to be able torun it, or if you do, it's going
to run very badly, but all itrequires really is some
tinkering to figure out whatsettings are best for you.
There's a lot more to videogames than just graphics.
I think.
As we get spoiled by bettergraphics and engines and
(12:36):
software that make games lookstunning, to the point where you
honestly don't know what's realanymore, we've lost the fact
that games are things we play toenjoy.
Games are narrative, they'reexperiences, they're glimpses
into other perspectives and it'sjust painful that we kind of
forgot in a lot of that and weonly look at.
Is rock cool enough?
(12:57):
Does water reflect?
Can I look at mirror and seeface?
It's like we evolved back intoapes in that concept.
But just mess with settings andthere's gonna be a combo
setting that works for you.
Just, we need to go back to atime where games are more than
just graphics, that they wereplayable experiences.
(13:18):
So there's been a lot ofnegative feedback in that
element of the game, butthankfully, what that's going to
do is it's going to weed outthe people who don't have
patience and don't have anyactual valid criticisms to bring
to the game.
So the people who are left aregoing to be people who actually
kind of have more of a grasp onhow these things work and will
(13:38):
have valuable feedback.
We just need to be moreconstructive about these things,
especially since it's so earlyand a lot of this feedback is
going to mold how the devs goabout the game.
And, speaking of the devs, theyhave shown that they're really
motivated and this game isn't atarkov killer like everybody and
their mother was saying when itwas being teased.
(13:59):
And, matter of fact, we gotaccess to this game
significantly sooner than wewere supposed to because the
whole unheard drama moved uptheir timetable to where they
decided they made a businessdecision to release it now to
get in front of as many escapefrom tarkov refugees as they
could.
It was a smart businessdecision.
Could it be argued that theyshould have waited an extra week
(14:19):
or two to make sure the serverswere good and the optimization
was a little bit better?
That argument can be made, butit was still a good decision.
That has proven to be worth it,because they jumped to the top
of steam sale charts and theymade a lot of profit from it,
which is then being reinvestedinto the game.
That's speculative.
We can never assume what devsare going to do, but from the
(14:41):
interviews they had, they'vebeen very vocal with their
community.
The reception to them has beengood and they seem really
motivated to make this gamefantastic and maybe possibly
make it close to an escape fromtarkov killer.
That it can be, because it hasa fantastic amount of potential.
But outside of the optimizationand service stability things,
(15:02):
there's a lot of scummy thingsthat people do, like what's
called landing zone camping orlz camping.
Now this game genre invites thescummiest of human beings out
there that exist purely to ruinyour day.
Escape from tarkov has this inexit campers who sit in the exit
and will kill you after youbasically grabbed everything you
needed or spent 30 minuteswasting your time.
(15:24):
It's just going to be something.
It's human nature.
There's some people that aregoing to want to seek out the
ways to punish other people andmake their lives hell, so
unfortunately, that's just aside effect of the game.
Thankfully, there's a.
There's a fix in the works.
They're looking at ways tomitigate landing zone campers,
which is pretty nice.
People suggested having justguns on the helicopters that
auto-target these people, orsmoke screen, or invulnerability
(15:48):
when you land.
Personally, I'm a fan of theinvulnerability, because having
a minigun that auto targetspeople kind of doesn't seem like
it's going to answer theproblem.
There are a lot of times wherepeople aren't exit camping.
They're just passing by orthey're trying to leave
themselves.
I've had people land right nextto me when I'm traversing the
map and I'm not trying to exitcamp them, I'm just trying to
leave.
But you have to defend yourself.
(16:08):
So that's.
Those are really the biggestissues.
If you want to read more of thegranular negatives, feel free
to check out my blog atthe-worldbuildercom.
The-world-buildercom, you knowFridays.
Today is an interesting one andthere I kind of go over in depth
(16:29):
everything I like and hateabout the game.
But it's worth it.
It's a really, really awesomegame and I'm so glad to see that
there's competition happeningbecause I, honestly, as much as
I love EFT and as much as that'smy online content creation
persona, it is really painful toplay.
It is such a hard game to playcasually and it's just so nice
(16:53):
to have other games to go tothat fit that or that scratch
that itch in a different way.
The only other game that isgoing to come close to defeating
targov is arena breakoutinfinite.
Now that is the closest thingto eft.
Gray zone warfare is basicallyin its entire own world of
extraction shooter.
Arena breakout infinite hasundeniably clear influence from
(17:15):
escape from targoth.
That's the game that thedevelopers, nikita and so on,
actually went out and insulted,calling them a copycat and a
ripoff, an infringement on theirproperty, and you can see it
has influence.
But I don't think it's an assetflip or a copy, but moral of
the story.
It's just so freaking nice tosee competition.
(17:37):
It's like I'm a or I shouldn'tsay I it's like extraction
shooter fans are starved in themiddle of the Sahara desert with
one drop of water left and justhoping that a mirage of an
oasis appears on the horizon.
And finally that mirage is kindof cementing itself into
something real and 2024 seems tobe the year of extraction
(17:59):
shooters.
I'm coining that right now,2024 is the year of extraction
shooters, but either way, I'mreally excited to see what
happens.
So I'm going to wrap this uphere, because I have a shit ton
of energy and I'm just ramblingand that's probably coming
through.
But you know what.
You only live once.
Got to energy and I'm justrambling and that's probably
coming through.
But you know what.
You only live once gotta.
Gotta do what you like, right.
So thank you for listening tothis hyped up on caffeine madman
(18:21):
talking about video games again, I am getting ready to move, so
the coming months might bequiet, but once I'm set up and
hopefully I have a routine inplace and hopefully I can manage
to survive in this newenvironment, I'm going to Things
will go back to normal.
I'll have a regular contentschedule again.
So thank you so much forhanging out with me.
I hope you have a fantastic dayand I'll see you in the next
(18:46):
one.
let's do this shit.
I don't have a plan.
We're just here for moment.
We cracked open a cold one withthe boys the boys aka me
because everyone else is superbusy with life stuff right now,
(00:31):
just as I am, and we'reliterally just going to be
talking about extractionshooters.
What's going on with the market?
Why is there this trend ofextraction shooters?
Where did it start?
And what is Grey Zone Warfare, agame that I have made content
on, I have streamed that, I'vewrote in, wrote in, yeah,
written blogs about, and I'mgoing to close my conversation
(00:52):
of the game with the grandfinale, also known as this
podcast.
So thank you all for joining mefor this unhinged episode of
ink and bites and let's justjump into it and see what
happens, because I honestly haveno idea.
I'm kidding, I'm, I'm, I havean idea.
I'm not as unprepared as I makeit seem.
(01:13):
But what are extractionshooters and why do people like
them so much?
Simply put, an extractionshooter is a genre of game,
particularly fps's, but if youwant to be wild, there are some
third-person ones out there andthese games share, and some are
(01:46):
significantly more unforgivingas others.
So in these games, if you diewith stuff that you have during
your mission or raid or session,you lose all of it.
And for a lot of sane peopleunlike me, who is not sane this
type of game you would neverwant to play, because why would
you want to spend hours to getstuff and then lose it when you
(02:09):
die to some some crap?
But that is what draws the mostpeople.
It gives them an adrenalinerush when they get into
conflicts with other people andit's just something that a lot
of other games, like call ofduty, can't replicate, because
when you're playing call of dutyyou're literally just waiting
to get 360 no-scoped by some10-year-old who just got an F on
their fucking math quiz andthey have to release their anger
(02:31):
on some 40-year-olds in a Callof Duty lobby and everyone's
screaming absurdities at eachother.
Because that's what we do as ahuman race, that's what we find
enjoyment from, I guess.
But the extraction shooter genrereally started from a game that
if you're a regular listener ofthe show have heard of, which
is Escape from Tarkov.
I really won't go much into thegame because I talked about it
(02:52):
to death, I read it about it todeath, I play it too much and
honestly I kind of hate it andlove it at the same time.
But Escape from Tarkov kind oforiginated this genre of shooter
.
It found its footing and itjust blew up and because of that
success a lot of other gamestudios have come out to try and
replicate it.
In the early days of this genrewe had another competitor come
(03:14):
out that I don't really classifytoo much as an extraction
shooter, but most people do soit's fallen into that
categorization and that is thehunt showdown, which is just a
lot of cowboys with lever actionrifles hunting down demons and
monsters from hell trying to gettheir bounty and then
extracting with it.
It's in the same realm butpersonally it doesn't feel like
(03:35):
an extractor shooter for me.
I call extraction shooters thehardcore, realistic military
shooters.
Usually those are the ones Icall extraction shooters.
The science fiction ones andthe wild west ones just feel
like stylized survival shooters,if anything but a lot of moral
(03:55):
of the story.
A lot of competitors came out totry to steal the crown from
escape from tarkov and no onehas officially or effectively
done so yet.
Eft has really sat high ontheir throne for the longest
time and the popular saying wasnobody can kill Escape from
Tarkov other than Escape fromTarkov and that's almost what
they did with the unheard ofdrama.
(04:16):
Check out my episode beforethis for a full breakdown on
that, because it's a wild storyand that really opened up the
floodgates for this trend tokind of grow faster than it has,
because for years we've onlyreally had escape from targoth
and the hunt showdown.
Every other extraction shooterreally never made success or
headlines and there's a lot offailed attempts.
(04:38):
But because of the drama and themass exodus of a lot of players
from EFT, a lot of these othergames started to get a lot of
attention and a lot of footing.
Two of those games are GreyZone Warfare or GZW, and Arena
Breakout Infinite, which this iskind of nutty was actually a
(04:59):
phone game first and now isbeing ported over to PC and
riddle me this Batman.
But it looks kind of fuckingamazing, which is confusing that
it's coming from a phone gameand I've played it and it's
actually pretty good and I wentinto that thinking it was going
to be a candy crush but withguns and it's actually pretty
well developed and I'm lookingforward to that coming out.
(05:20):
They're doing a lot of betatesting as of as of now and it's
almost close to coming out.
But Grey Zone Warfare is what Ireally kind of want to chat
about, go over what it is, somepros and cons, and just give my
thoughts on it.
So Grey Zone Warfare is an openworld extraction shooter
(05:41):
Keyword on the open world.
All of these other games in thegenre are instance based,
meaning you select an area thatyou want to go to and you load
into it and you duke it out withother people, ai and loot and
try to leave.
Grazen Warfare takes that andflips it on its head and gives
you an entire open world that ispersistent, that keeps going
(06:02):
even if you're not playing.
People are always going in,leaving, doing quests, leaving
AI or living in the world, andthat is the main draw of the
game for a lot of people, meincluded, because one issue that
we've had with escape fromtarkov and other games is that
not other games pretty muchescape from tarkov because
(06:24):
that's the one big game here.
Everybody in that ecosystemhave been playing the game for
many years, to the point wherethey know exactly what you're
going to do, when you're goingto do it and what quests are
active at the time, depending onwhen in the wipe you're playing
, because notoriously, escapefrom Tarkov resets itself every
(06:45):
six or so months with newcontent and everyone's back to
square zero.
But it's been a repeated cyclefor so long that the sweats of
the game know everything andit's very hard for casual
players to break into it.
There are or the average playtime of an EFT nerd is like
4,000 hours.
If anybody has under 4,000hours, people actually just
(07:09):
report them for cheating.
It's actually kind of crazy,but with an open world setting,
people no longer can down to ascience pinpoint where you are
and what you're doing.
Instead, it adds this elementof unpredictability to every
game session that you play,because it's persistent.
No one's starting.
(07:29):
At the same time, you can gointo an area that someone's been
in for an hour and it's just.
It's so refreshing.
This game just came out recentlyand it's currently sitting in
early access on steam, but it'salso in very early alpha.
The devs have come out to statemadffinger Games that it is 20%
(07:52):
completed and there are a lotof good things.
I already mentioned one of themthe open world, persistence,
all of that stuff.
There's also a lot of bad, solet me just finish up with the
good and then we'll look at thebads.
There is a lot of tasks in thegame.
There's 150 tasks and theprogression of those tasks are
(08:12):
really nice.
So when you first start off andyou're playing for the first
time, all of your tasks aregoing to be in the starter town
of your faction and everyfaction has the same town at the
start.
And once you progress throughthose, well, I think there's
like there's too many in thestarter town.
There's like 12 or 13 of them.
But After you complete those,the game progresses in a manner
(08:34):
that tasks become harder and youget to start being pushed
inland to other points ofinterest that are marked on the
map, that are likely to bringyou into conflict with other
players from other factions,which is really nice, because
the progression in otherextraction shooters doesn't
really feel like that.
It just feels like here arethings to do, do them.
But in this it kind of feelslike you're progressing through.
(08:55):
I don't want to say a story yet, but you're progressing through
, uh, just a nice challenge,difficulty ladder and the other
pretty neat thing that othergames don't have.
You can argue that escape fromtarkov has it with choosing usek
or bears the gris and warfarekind of feels like it's more in
depth with their faction system.
(09:16):
There's three of them that youcan pick from.
Each have their own story uh,mithras or I can't remember all
the top of my hand, butsomething like that crimson
shield and lemang recoveryinitiative.
And the lemang recoveryinitiative is more altruistic,
trying to help people on theisland.
Of course, because I'm a nicehuman being, I picked that.
But it's really cool because itadds this role play element to
(09:39):
the game.
And the devs classify gray zonewarfare as an mmo, which I kind
of find myself struggling toreally agree with.
Doesn't feel too much like anmmo outside of the uh gameplay
style.
But it's really neat to havethese factions and they're
saying that there's going to beI hope anyway that there's going
to be a faction specific quests.
(10:01):
That would be pretty cool tosee to kind of influence people
to try other factions as timegoes on.
But it's a really neat system.
I don't think any of the othergames really capitalize on that
as much as gzw does.
The realism elements as wellare spot on.
The guns feel nice, the armoractually feels like you're
wearing armor and when you getshot you feel it.
(10:23):
The health system is really indepth, just like escape from
tarkov, but instead in gzw alsohave an added layer of organ
damage and that is like a wholeanother layer of complexity.
But like if you're shot in yourlungs, you get a special debuff
that makes you cough and youhave to heal that.
And the animations for allthose things are really slick.
(10:44):
I actually I hate needles.
I think needles are gross and Ican't stand them.
But there's a animation thatinvolves needles pretty
extensively and I actually haveto look away because it makes me
cringe.
That's how you tell theanimators did a really good job,
because that's never happenedto me before.
But all that being said,there's so much awesome in this
(11:06):
game at the current stage thatit's at for being only 20%
completed and unfortunately alot of people have.
This is going to be a segue intothe negatives of the game.
The game isn't optimized at alland there's a lot of server
instability.
It's getting better each day,but this has caused a lot of
(11:30):
people to go on the forums andslam their face against their
keys and insult the devs, demandfinancial compensation, insult
other people who like the game,and it's kind of funny.
I just sit back with popcornand read some of these things
because you can tell they justgot out of high school and they
just need to vent because If thegame doesn't run on their
(11:52):
supercomputer it's a bad game.
So that's the thought processthere.
It's not really that deep, butthe game is early access and
early alpha and they make thatvery clear.
But it's the same phenomenathat happens in almost every
early access title.
People always go in thinkingthat it's going to be a
completed game and then they getdisappointed when it's not the
(12:14):
game's only 20 completed but thethis, the optimization
warranted, is really bad and ifyour computer is outdated you're
likely not going to be able torun it, or if you do, it's going
to run very badly, but all itrequires really is some
tinkering to figure out whatsettings are best for you.
There's a lot more to videogames than just graphics.
I think.
As we get spoiled by bettergraphics and engines and
(12:36):
software that make games lookstunning, to the point where you
honestly don't know what's realanymore, we've lost the fact
that games are things we play toenjoy.
Games are narrative, they'reexperiences, they're glimpses
into other perspectives and it'sjust painful that we kind of
forgot in a lot of that and weonly look at.
Is rock cool enough?
(12:57):
Does water reflect?
Can I look at mirror and seeface?
It's like we evolved back intoapes in that concept.
But just mess with settings andthere's gonna be a combo
setting that works for you.
Just, we need to go back to atime where games are more than
just graphics, that they wereplayable experiences.
(13:18):
So there's been a lot ofnegative feedback in that
element of the game, butthankfully, what that's going to
do is it's going to weed outthe people who don't have
patience and don't have anyactual valid criticisms to bring
to the game.
So the people who are left aregoing to be people who actually
kind of have more of a grasp onhow these things work and will
(13:38):
have valuable feedback.
We just need to be moreconstructive about these things,
especially since it's so earlyand a lot of this feedback is
going to mold how the devs goabout the game.
And, speaking of the devs, theyhave shown that they're really
motivated and this game isn't atarkov killer like everybody and
their mother was saying when itwas being teased.
(13:59):
And, matter of fact, we gotaccess to this game
significantly sooner than wewere supposed to because the
whole unheard drama moved uptheir timetable to where they
decided they made a businessdecision to release it now to
get in front of as many escapefrom tarkov refugees as they
could.
It was a smart businessdecision.
Could it be argued that theyshould have waited an extra week
(14:19):
or two to make sure the serverswere good and the optimization
was a little bit better?
That argument can be made, butit was still a good decision.
That has proven to be worth it,because they jumped to the top
of steam sale charts and theymade a lot of profit from it,
which is then being reinvestedinto the game.
That's speculative.
We can never assume what devsare going to do, but from the
(14:41):
interviews they had, they'vebeen very vocal with their
community.
The reception to them has beengood and they seem really
motivated to make this gamefantastic and maybe possibly
make it close to an escape fromtarkov killer.
That it can be, because it hasa fantastic amount of potential.
But outside of the optimizationand service stability things,
(15:02):
there's a lot of scummy thingsthat people do, like what's
called landing zone camping orlz camping.
Now this game genre invites thescummiest of human beings out
there that exist purely to ruinyour day.
Escape from tarkov has this inexit campers who sit in the exit
and will kill you after youbasically grabbed everything you
needed or spent 30 minuteswasting your time.
(15:24):
It's just going to be something.
It's human nature.
There's some people that aregoing to want to seek out the
ways to punish other people andmake their lives hell, so
unfortunately, that's just aside effect of the game.
Thankfully, there's a.
There's a fix in the works.
They're looking at ways tomitigate landing zone campers,
which is pretty nice.
People suggested having justguns on the helicopters that
auto-target these people, orsmoke screen, or invulnerability
(15:48):
when you land.
Personally, I'm a fan of theinvulnerability, because having
a minigun that auto targetspeople kind of doesn't seem like
it's going to answer theproblem.
There are a lot of times wherepeople aren't exit camping.
They're just passing by orthey're trying to leave
themselves.
I've had people land right nextto me when I'm traversing the
map and I'm not trying to exitcamp them, I'm just trying to
leave.
But you have to defend yourself.
(16:08):
So that's.
Those are really the biggestissues.
If you want to read more of thegranular negatives, feel free
to check out my blog atthe-worldbuildercom.
The-world-buildercom, you knowFridays.
Today is an interesting one andthere I kind of go over in depth
(16:29):
everything I like and hateabout the game.
But it's worth it.
It's a really, really awesomegame and I'm so glad to see that
there's competition happeningbecause I, honestly, as much as
I love EFT and as much as that'smy online content creation
persona, it is really painful toplay.
It is such a hard game to playcasually and it's just so nice
(16:53):
to have other games to go tothat fit that or that scratch
that itch in a different way.
The only other game that isgoing to come close to defeating
targov is arena breakoutinfinite.
Now that is the closest thingto eft.
Gray zone warfare is basicallyin its entire own world of
extraction shooter.
Arena breakout infinite hasundeniably clear influence from
(17:15):
escape from targoth.
That's the game that thedevelopers, nikita and so on,
actually went out and insulted,calling them a copycat and a
ripoff, an infringement on theirproperty, and you can see it
has influence.
But I don't think it's an assetflip or a copy, but moral of
the story.
It's just so freaking nice tosee competition.
(17:37):
It's like I'm a or I shouldn'tsay I it's like extraction
shooter fans are starved in themiddle of the Sahara desert with
one drop of water left and justhoping that a mirage of an
oasis appears on the horizon.
And finally that mirage is kindof cementing itself into
something real and 2024 seems tobe the year of extraction
(17:59):
shooters.
I'm coining that right now,2024 is the year of extraction
shooters, but either way, I'mreally excited to see what
happens.
So I'm going to wrap this uphere, because I have a shit ton
of energy and I'm just ramblingand that's probably coming
through.
But you know what.
You only live once.
Got to energy and I'm justrambling and that's probably
coming through.
But you know what.
You only live once gotta.
Gotta do what you like, right.
So thank you for listening tothis hyped up on caffeine madman
(18:21):
talking about video games again, I am getting ready to move, so
the coming months might bequiet, but once I'm set up and
hopefully I have a routine inplace and hopefully I can manage
to survive in this newenvironment, I'm going to Things
will go back to normal.
I'll have a regular contentschedule again.
So thank you so much forhanging out with me.
I hope you have a fantastic dayand I'll see you in the next
(18:46):
one.
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