[Discussion] The 'Suppressor Meta' has been consistently harming mid-late wipe player interactivity for years and needs to be addressed.

This turned into a monster of a rant, so I'm providing this BLUF to summarise my issues with suppressors and my thoughts on possible solutions:

Suppressors are too quiet, too accessible, and too beneficial to weapon stats, granting PMCs too high a degree of safety. Some of these aspects, preferably sound and accessibility, need to be adjusted.

  • Make suppressors audible out to 300m, and consider testing out to 400m.
  • The further away you are from a suppressor firing, increase the level of ambient sound generated, to simulate the "confusion" effect suppressors create when firing outdoors where it sounds like it is coming from everywhere, and offset the distance nerf.
  • If using subsonic ammunition, lower the sound range back to it's current 100m. Give players a reason to use these rounds.
  • Fuck the overheating mechanic off and trial a durability mechanic instead, or make overheating meaningful to any automatic weapon other than the AS VAL.
  • Consider upping the rarity of intermediate-calibre suppressors to limit their availability while encouraging the use of weapon types with easier access (e.g. SMGs).
  • Consider adjusting more high-calibre weapons to follow the design philosophy of the SVDS, i.e. you have to make a choice between weapon handling (overswing) and reduced sound signature. You cannot have both.
  • Conversely, encourage use of other muzzle devices to offset these negatives. Maybe add a deafening effect indoors to entities not wearing hearing protection, I don't know.

//BEGIN RANT//

Playing this game over the last six years or so I've seen numerous changes to try and preserve early game content, such as all of the changes to FIR, ammunition & armour access at trader levels, quest-locking good gear, delaying flea market access and so on.

Enter suppressors. An attachment type with mechanics which has remained stagnant for years. In suppressors lie an issue which I feel has never been addressed in any meaningful way, and one which I believe is the single biggest reason (outside of flea market) why the "early wipe" feeling people love so much drops off so dramatically every single wipe.

I base this on one simple fact: sound drives player interaction, as much as or perhaps even more so than map design. This is particularly evident now that the various other methods of establishing player encounters have all been neutered in some way.

  • Bosses - Spawn mid-tier armour/ammo, damaged weapons and are far too rare for too long to make a meaningful contribution to player activity.
  • Major loot rooms - Have all been nerfed into the ground, with valuable loose spawns uncommon now on most maps except Labs, and generally aren't visited as often anymore unless they have special containers (e.g. safes).
  • Airdrops - Have you EVER pulled anything valuable enough from one of these to justify the risk? Player scav bait, pure and simple.
  • Quests - The abundance of quests take you to too many different areas of the maps now. This isn't a bad thing per se, but its impact on player interaction should be acknowledged, since a greater number of quests means that players are less aligned in quest progress and have less opportunities to stumble into each other after the initial quest chains.
  • Map Design - Woods, Customs, Reserve and Factory expansions, though positive and refreshing experiences, have all arguably had a negative impact on map flow when it comes to player encounters. Reserve is particularly frustrating as it is most impacted by poorer loot pools and boss spawns. Factory and Customs, on the other hand, have contradictory designs where they were once built to force encounters at certain areas which are now easily avoidable. Though they at least have quests which force combat in certain locations, once complete the added loot zones deter players even more from visiting those areas again than ever before. On Woods it's just down to chance whether you see anyone unless you're willing to sit in FOB, USEC camp or sawmill for the raid.

The changes to map design and quests are reflective of BSG's vision for this game and so, though urksome, I can't judge these issues too harshly for that reason. Airdrops and loot rooms deserve a buff to be worth the effort and risk, and boss spawns have been done to death by the community.

What is not reflective of BSG's design philosophy for this game, however, are the absurd arcadey benefits suppressors afford a PMC. Once you are beyond 100m, you CANNOT be heard by your target.

This goes against every consideration afforded to the sound design in this game and how it encourages player detection and combat. Aside from some very random actions, like loading magazines, almost every single thing you do in this game generates some sound.

BSG, to their credit, tries to keep the sounds only audible to realistic distances. Some are still a bit absurd, like the searching sound where my character is apparently a goblin tearing the container to shreds, but as evidenced this wipe with the reduction of footstep sounds, as well as the removal of silent crouch-walking a couple years back, they clearly have the aim to keep actions audible to the reasonable distance you'd expect to hear them.

Every action follows this rule.

Except suppressors.

I mean for fuck sake, you are more likely to hear the sound of a bullet hitting flesh than you are the gun itself firing. It is beyond absurd and, worse still, has demonstrable impacts on gameplay.

  • Macro Gameplay - Once a certain point of wipe hits it becomes near impossible to identify, with any certainty, the approximate positions of players. Scavs and the odd PMC running something loud become the sole means of identifying map movement. Map knowledge, loot spawns, PMC spawns and quests only offer possiblities. This leads directly into the following point:
  • "Dead Raid" - Unless you have waited 5+ minutes for a queue it is generally unlikely you are in a truly dead raid, at least at spawn. The problem is that you just can't fucking hear anyone. Again, the game knowledge you have only lets you predict locations. You rely on a player slipping up and letting a scav get a shot off to even get an idea of where they might be.
  • Limited Risk - I am of the opinion that every action a player takes should afford a degree of risk. Shooting your weapon should be one of the riskiest endeavours, and indeed are with a loud weapon, as by eliminating a threat you are potentially creating more by providing information on your whereabouts. Suppressors eliminate this risk entirely. There are limited reasons not to fire to eliminate a threat, such as a close-quarters environment where you MAY still be heard, and even if you are the sound drop-off is so dramatic that even past 50m it becomes very difficult to ascertain anything other than a vague direction. Estimating the distance when you are blessed with the sound of a suppressed shot is unintuitive.
  • Deciding Factor - It is difficult to react to a suppressed shot. Given sufficient distance the only noticable effects are bullet impact sounds/visuals, bullet cracks and blurred vision. Of these only the impact sound/visual can reliably give you enough information to estimate a direction. This alone wouldn't be a problem if you could hear the shots further than 100m, but given Tarkov has relatively short engagement ranges, and 100m-200m fights are pretty common, you will often find yourself having little to no way of responding to the shot. It can easily be the deciding factor in a gunfight.
  • Usually BIS - Suppressors are heavy, and the controlled gas release contributes to a lower felt recoil. I feel that the benefits of lower recoil almost always outweight the negatives. Combining the stats of the muzzle device with the suppressor is a major contributor to this, but simply I think the impact on weight does little to deter their use. Length is a great deterrent for indoor engagements but still insufficient. This is why I highlight the SVDS in the intial points as it is one of the only weapons that has a definite trade-off for using a suppressor.

In typical Tarkov player fashion I must air my grievances towards BSG. We have had so many years to test better ways of balancing the impact and strengths of suppressors and somehow it has amounted to a single mechanic:

Overheating

and it's fucking useless. The only purpose it serves is to keep the AS VAL in check.

Please, I implore you BSG, use the time left in beta to actually test and play with the effectiveness of suppressors so that they don't detract from the PvP experience of yet another wipe.

//END RANT//