Tarkov.community: Player Power is Shaping the Future of Escape from Tarkov!

A new community-driven platform called Tarkov Community has recently been launched, significantly influencing the development and direction of Escape From Tarkov and Tarkov Arena. While many initially believed it was an official Battlestate Games (BSG) initiative, the website was actually created and independently managed by a dedicated group of EFT Emissaries from the OCE region, known as the “Spicy Bush Team.”

The portal was initially conceived as a way to track player suggestions, bug reports, and to facilitate direct communication between the community and developers. Despite being independently managed, Tarkov.community quickly attracted the attention and active engagement of Battlestate Games (BSG).

Its community-oriented approach allows players to propose changes, engage in constructive discussions, and prioritize issues through a voting system.

Recent community-driven changes implemented through feedback on the platform include adjusting the spawning times of player Scavs to 17 minutes into raids (excluding maps like Factory and Reserve), and removing the "Sawmill" map from Tarkov Arena. Additionally, discussions on the website led BSG to conduct an in-game survey to gather player opinions about weather conditions, especially regarding the rapid transitions between weather states such as sudden fog or heavy rain, though no direct changes have yet been implemented.

Trentbraidner, one of the EFT Emissaries part of the “Spicy Bush Team” that created Tarkov Community clarified that the moderation and prioritization of issues on TC are handled independently by his team, aiming to provide an open and constructive space for player voices to be collectively heard through a voting system.

Crucially, feedback and bug reports confirmed through direct communication with BSG are marked with official tags (Planned, Started, Completed and Declined), ensuring transparency, accuracy, and clear differentiation from community-driven ideas awaiting official acknowledgment.

The posts on Tarkov Community can be filtered by these tags, allowing players to quickly identify topics of interest and clearly see which ideas have been accepted, are currently in progress, have been completed already or have been declined.

Declined

Developers feedback also provides valuable insights. For example, several suggestions like "PVE Clothes", "PVE needs to be reworked as a feature incomplete training mode," "Be able to customize PVE experience," "Increase Boss/cultist spawn chance in PVE permanently," have been Declined quoting a reply by appl3z0r, BSG Community Manager: "It's not possible to make mechanics in PVE different from PVP."

This necessary uniformity between PvE and PvP was previously unknown and unfortunately invalidates many player suggestions and requests.

Other responses provide valuable insights into the developers' philosophy and future plans.

For example, the suggestion to "Bring back the old PK-06" optic was declined because, as explained by BSG, "The PK-06 Is a shitty optic in real life, and Nikita wants to keep parity to that. The alternative is to use the Wilcox BOSS Xe."

Another suggestion was asking to stop banning people for doing viewer kits was declined because "People are not bieing banned for doing viewer kits" also quoting Nikita that said "the principle is simple - if you will give millions of rouble price items and will do it often - you will get banned. if you want to just return gear from time to time - its ok". This is a nice piece of information too, as many streamers stopped doing viewer kits being afraid of getting their viewers banned in doing so. Also many people were afraid to return kits to their friends that died in a raid, or to give gear in raid to less experienced friends in need of help.

Clearly, it's also very useful to filter posts by the tags "Planned," "Started," and "Completed," to gather information on what BSG already intends to implement, what they are currently working on, and what has already been completed.

Planned

For example, we can see that "Provide more detailed after-raid combat statistics," "Lighthouse rework," and "Keys alternative – Lockpick / Breach" are all planned for the future.

Completed

Additionally, we learn that suggestions such as "Boss and guard loot should be full durability and good," "PVE – PMC weapon durability should not be the same durability as scav weapons," and "Paracord in special slot" have already been implemented based directly on community feedback.

Started

Regarding suggestions already in the process of implementation, there are interesting items such as "Buff the overall loot pool in raids," "No more spin looting scavs," "Complete Loot/Economy Rebalance," "Interchange loot Buff," "Fog and Weather," and "AI/bot/scav Visibility not equal to PMC visibility."

Particularly noteworthy is the suggestion "Add container in stash & hideout for keys," which not only received a response on Tarkov Community but also had a follow-up post on X by Sergei Domontovich, a Senior Game Designer at BSG. He shared an initial concept for the key container and invited followers to provide input on how many slots it should include.

BSG Responded and BSG Submitted

The tags "BSG Responded," which highlight posts already addressed by BSG, and "BSG Submitted," indicating suggestions or bug reports forwarded to BSG for review, are also valuable for players seeking clear, official feedback.

My 2 Cents

This type of direct insight into developer intentions and decisions offers the community unprecedented clarity and involvement in shaping the future of Escape from Tarkov. The Tarkov Community platform marks a significant step forward in collaborative game development, empowering players with a robust platform to actively participate in shaping the game's evolution.

In my opinion, this is another positive sign for the future of Escape from Tarkov, marking a clear shift from the past when BSG seemed less responsive to community comments and requests.

It's one thing to submit a suggestion and not even receive a response. It's entirely another to receive even a rejection, but accompanied by a clear explanation of the reasoning behind it.

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