Escape from Tarkov: The frustrations of a Paid Alpha

Escape from Tarkov has been under the radar of a lot of Gamers since it was first unveiled, its level of detail and what appeared to be complex and in-depth survival and shooting mechanics led it to be one of the most anticipated survival games.

So much so that when an early access to the game was available for 140$ people jumped to the chance to play it.

The Experience

Funny thing about Alphas and early access, the games not officially done yet, so there’s still a lot of missing content and loads and loads of errors and issues, and Escape from Markov is no different, to be fair it certainly has a level of polish and presentation that is incredibly high especially for a game done in the unity engine, but it’s still in Alpha stage so it has its issues, and players are starting to see that.

The experience with it despite what many videos would lead you to believe is that for the most part, the game is unplayable a majority of the time, finding matches outside of the European Region is rare and that isn’t even counting if the game continues working after the fact.

Sure you might think that “Since it’s an Alpha people SHOULD be expecting this kind of stuff” and while yea that is true, I think the fact it costs so much to even participate is what makes things a little different, were still in a total grey area when it comes to this type of stuff, it brings up the debate of Early Access and Developers cashing in on their games hype, because Gamer’s can’t wait.

And since your technically paying for a product, people are entitled to say what they want, regardless of how its going to change in its future

Complaints

The Developers put this Early Access game out as a way to get feed back, and most people who got the game seem to be fully aware of that, So with that being said, it should be expected to received the amount of feed back that they have from players.

Yet it seems the developers only want positive things shown about the game, rarely you will see any content creators showcase the main problems the game has, and even then, they get shut down or ignored by the fans that wont have any of it.

So now we have an alpha, that is supposed to be getting feedback, but most negative feedback is dismissed.

And in the case of BigFry, a unlift of his NDA prohibiting him from showing the game in any capacity until release.

Alphas Change, Charging can help or hurt in the long run

The thing to keep inning at the end of the day, is that, unlike Betas, Alphas receive a majority of the changes the game will get, so there will always be issues and of course the game might be way different by launch, so when your charging a lot for people to play it, any type of feedback usually should be accepted and considering this is supposed to be for testing purposes, communication should be open, sure in this games case it might be difficult since the Devs are Russian, but it’s what people expect since their still technically paying for a product.

Don’t want the huge amount of people giving harsh feedback on an alpha build, then maybe getting Paid testers would’ve been better at least until beta, instead of charging people 140$ to play test.

It will be hard to tell how reception will be after the alpha, if the game changes a lot from what it is now, then the reaction might not be too good since people are used to how it plays now, but if its a good change it might not matter as much, for now though getting Escape from Tarkov now seems a little steep for most people, hopefully the game doesn’t go the way of other early access games and never officially releases, i have my hopes up for this one.