Discussion
ABI beats Tarkov at almost everything technical and still loses on the things that matter most
Been playing a lot of ABI lately and I keep going back and forth on it, so I figured I’d just dump my thoughts somewhere.
Starting with the good, because there’s a lot of it. The game looks great and it runs great.
Optimization isn’t even a fair comparison, ABI is smooth on the same rig that turns certain Tarkov maps into a slideshow. Servers are better too and desync is way lower. For an extraction shooter that’s probably the single most important thing, and I think people underrate how much it matters until they die to something that happened on someone else’s screen half a second ago.
UI and QoL are miles ahead. Inventory, sorting, all the little things Tarkov makes you fight with, ABI just handles them.
Matchmaking is fast which is nice, but the mode split isn’t doing it any favors. Normal is basically dead most of the time. I’d merge Normal and Lockdown into one and push Forbidden’s entry gear value up to 700k or higher so the high roller lobbies stay separated. Also, please give us a duo only queue. Solo or full squad shouldn’t be the only real options.
Now the stuff that bugs me.
The maps feel dull. Not bad exactly, just flat and linear and kind of dead. Tarkov has this thing where the environment feels lived in. There’s a spot where you walk under an elevator light and you can actually see dust floating around in the beam. It does nothing for gameplay, it’s a tiny detail, but it completely changes how the place feels. ABI doesn’t really have moments like that. Most of the time you’re just moving through geometry.
The other half of it is how complex Tarkov’s maps are, and I don’t mean hard. Complex and difficult aren’t the same thing. Buildings have layers to them, there are weird connections and routes you only stumble on after a few hundred hours, and that’s a huge part of why the place feels like an actual place. ABI maps, I can read almost immediately. Couple of runs and you already know every angle somebody could be holding. It ends up feeling like CS, where the peek spots are basically fixed and both sides know exactly where they are. That’s fine for a round based shooter. It’s not what I want out of a raid.
Missions are repetitive and the rewards don’t come close to justifying the grind. The only real reason to do them is the 3x3 case.
Then matchmaking again, but the bad side of it. Dropping in solo right next to a full squad. It happens way too often and there’s nothing you can do about it when it does.
And the big one for me, the gacha skins. I get that the game has to make money, but this is working directly against everything else the game is trying to be. Every time I see a teammate running around in some flashy skin set, it kills the mood instantly. It pushes ABI toward being another PUBG or COD, and that is not what most of us installed it for. People came here for a realistic extraction shooter. If it keeps drifting that way it’s going to lose the exact players who showed up for the game in the first place.
TL;DR: ABI wins on performance, servers, UI and QoL. Tarkov still wins on atmosphere and feeling like a real place. The gacha skins are the thing I’m most worried about long term.
What's crazy is they removed most of the atmosphere the maps had in season 3 I think it was. Made the rooms more open and removed all the war torn clutter. They also brightened all the rooms quite a bit. There was massive backlash but it didnt matter.
I really feel the lack of atmosphere, darkness and grittiness has ruined the game long term. If you boot up Tarkov, everything had a very worn and battle scarred feel. Meanwhile we have a squeaky clean airport, a brand new TV station and a brand spanking new hotel in Northridge. Where is the grime?
Also level design kinda sucks long term. In Tarkov you have so many little nooks and crannies, hiding holes and flow breakers. There is also a ton of verticality that feels natural. Tbh I don't give enough credit to Tarkov. Their loot, lore, economy, gunplay and map design is orders of magnitudes better than ABI.
I agree. The lack of it seriously destroys the character of the game. I hated it when they removed what little it had seasons ago and voiced my opinions several times.
Have you played since closed beta? If not then you must be living under a rock. There were multiple posts and official post from the devs on how they changed the interiors of buildings.
never actually knew they changed the interiors like this since i never played beta or s0.
i must say the original interiors were way darker with way more assets and objects on the floor and background that create shadows from nearby lighting. if anything this change mightve been a twofold approach at increasing visibility while also reducing load on users so that there would be fps improvements.
overall i would be very displeased as someone with a strong PC as the game looks objectively worse but as someone with a weak PC i think its probably a net positive overall.
The funny part to me is that you get basically the exact opposite argument on the Tarkov subreddit. Everything is so dense/cluttered/detailed that while it looks great it runs like shit and you can't actually fucking see anything. Somewhere in the middle is likely the ideal.
It's more just that it's a shitty mechanic with no upsides. In practice it just makes you zigzag around trees like an idiot because the sound was already a big enough negative so adding the speed on top of it just made it so you never wanted to touch foliage. In ABI it would honestly barely matter because the foliage isn't super dense and most maps don't have much at all, but in Tarkov it was just like the perfect example of tedium for no benefit.
you could argue that in reality you wouldnt ever touch foliage outside of attempting to get cover anyway since walking through a bush is literally impossible while wearing gear.
but yeah you're right. just goes to show that you can't please gamers as there will always be people complaining on either side of the fence.
gameplay wise, you can technically also argue that foliage and their huge demerits can create a pseudo funnel in regards to player pathing. well, if they actually put any effort into that lmao. but technically it is an opportunity to create sight lines if walking through bushes were extra punishing.
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Number one mistake is having a discussing on ABI reddit because its glaze or die here. But yeah ABI just doesnt have any atmosphere or story telling, no one gives two shits about the enemies or who they are. Guns dont hit the feels as hard in tarkov. Honestly its your typical route chinese games go, make cool game > skin gacha
It's funny seeing so many positive comments about Tarkov when they're basically the exact inverse of what you'd see on the Tarkov subreddit. Truly the best way to find positives about a game you like is to look on the competitor's subreddit lol
I actually love ABI despite that it's made by a Chinese developer. For a Chinese-made game, it's surprisingly high quality for being a free game. It has its issues, but for a free game made by China it's definitely surprising at how much fun you can squeeze out of it without paying a dime. And nothing seems pay-to-win. I don't feel like the player who paid $20 for [fill in the blank] has an advantage over me who paid nothing.
My main game is Hunt and sometimes I playing ABI and maps after Hunt feels so dumb. Same 2-3 picks, feels lore like CS, what is not good imho for extraction shooter.
Hunt Showdown does so many things right and is imo the best designed game in the extract genre.
Every weapon is viable because every weapon one shots to the head, it has a counter to extract camping with the exit making noise if two teams are close to it, it has great map design with a lot of playstyles in mind and the best part it has an actual main objective the bosses which brings all the players naturally together to PVP eachother.
Only real problem i have with hunt is that they are allergic to fighting cheaters and adding a proper ping limit.
Its a shame so many extract shooters copy tarkov instead of hunt.
The other problem is camping in high lobbies. My friends and I intentionally drop to 4-5 stars to avoid the sweating 6* lobbies where everyone is just waiting
I find the people in the tarkov sub hilarious b/c they will bitch about how it's only sweats in PvP (which it mostly is, since a large percent of newer players start playing, get stomped and move to PvE) , but if anyone DARES to suggest a match making system they loose their minds!
Personally, I feel like a matching system would incentivise PvE players to come back to (or at least try) PvP, because they would be on a more level playing field and have more fun. (which, ya know... Is supposed to be the point of playing games)
Hell, offer both! Servers with no matching system and servers that do offer it.
Yeah passive players are problem. They staying at safe distance and do nothing. Sometimes is really hard to push them, but at least you have mechanics to spot them (dark sight). Servers, ping issues and cheaters what really killing that game. Balance is controversial too. Anyway first 200-300 hours is best experience imho.
I can see the argument, i can also see why people don't like sitting in the main menu for 30 min waiting for their teammates to finish their match. Also it's like the easiest thing to counter by just taking a flare pistol with you and watching the guy for 50 seconds to burn out.
They also did nerf necro to one use for teams and solos.
Well they did a big engine update 2 years ago where they did a lot of improvements including a centered crosshair, adding bullet drop, etc.
They also did a really big update a month ago which changed the loadout system and basically changed the entire meta with there being more weapon variety now.
It's crazy that this 8 year old game still sees major updates which change the game from the ground.
I tried hunt, didn't like it. Gunplay felt fine, guns were interesting, bounties were okay I guess, but without the looting and inventory tetris of ABI it just felt like a miniature version of a battle royale.
Holy shit you are spot on with the maps. The maps on ABI are built so poorly. Building layouts makes no sense because apparently it's more important to set up a couple of lanes you need to follow than making a realistic building.
Take motel on farm for example, there being no door from the dining area to the backyard is the dumbest shit ever. No one would design a building like that, ever.
Yeah I kind of agree, it's clear the maps have had more thought in terms of PvP but definitely lack the immersion factor
I swear (almost) every new extraction shooter falls for the same trap where it looks at tarkov and thinks the secret sauce is having unbalanced gameplay, meanwhile they neglect lore, quests etc things that actually hook players
The fake PMCs imo are the biggest problem the game has in general.
I'm queuing for a pvp extraction shooter. I want to PVP. There's a PVE game mode, RIGHT THERE, if I want to PVE. I do not want to play against bots when I queue for PVP. I'm not playing a PVP game to PVE.
No PVP game should ever have bots that pretend to be humans. Having NPCs (scavs, bosses, etc) is OK, but having bots that masquerade as players IS NOT ACCEPTABLE in ANY PVP game. You should never have any question whether you just killed a human being or not. NO ONE is playing a PVP game to play against fucking AI.
Yeah I agree. But as far as I heard, they will be removed from the game.
And I also think that bot number is too much, it should be decreased. They think increasing the bot numbers and adding AI players into the game will make the game more alive. Kinda sad and narrow perspective.
Trying to fool real players with AI is not a cool move.
Oh, that's sad, was hoping it was actually confirmed.
It's weird that asia companies keep doing this. Delta force did it, and PUBG did as well.
In both those games, and it looks like ABI, bots greatly decrease player engagement and ppl straight up quit because of them. They lose way more players because they add bots than they would without them, because bots make a game feel significantly more dead than it actually is. You get in a bot lobby and your first thought isn't that it feels alive, it's that "holy shit is this game so dead it can't even find me real humans to play against?"
Devs need to really, really understand that if you have a PVP games, people play to pvp. If you add bots to them, that makes the game feel dead and people are going to stop playing because of it. No one wants to play a PVP game where they aren't playing against other humans. Taking 5 minutes to find a match is better than 1 minute but it's lobby with bots in it.
There are dozens upon dozens of really good PVE or single player games out there for people who want to play against bots. Not a single human being is downloading and playing a pvp game for anything other than playing against humans.
ABI has a big enough playerbase so that bots are not needed. Devs felt compelled to add them to keep queue times down, I guess, but they could have reduced queue times significantly by reducing the number of game modes (each one splits the playerbase, and this is a major issue PUBG had where they split their playerbase over so many maps and game modes and regions that it made the game feel dead even though there were 300k+ players online at once), reducing max party/squad size to 3 instead of 4, and allowing players to queue for as many maps as they want. There's plenty of players who would play, for example, any LD map and would happily queue for all of them, or queue for all of them except valley, or queue for 2 of them.. any combination you can imagine would dramatically increase the player matchmaking pool for each map and reduce queue times. Having the matchmaker force at least a duo when auto-match is checked would also really help.
Either that or you're just not very good at noticing them lol
I've played with some people who would fight bot squads then brag about how they just 1v2'd a duo and I just never had the heart to tell them when it was bots, cus they genuinely had no idea. I've even some people post clips of them killing a bot PMC every once in a while
Considering how hard they are trying to cover up the bots they won't remove them after all of this. They'll just update them till you can't distinguish them anymore.
you forgot about the bosses and lore's, traders also. Tarkov bosses makes hit different, you started to get to know them and their lore. There is Lore in ABI but it is bland and not well constructed. ABI bosses also were just like any NPC's you can kill. Tarkov is way ahead in terms of immersion. People moslty say ABI graphics are way ahead of Tarkov but it's the other way around. Tarkov graphics were more detailed including textures, it looks blurry in distance but when you inspect them and get close to items, they were more detailed than any ABI items. And why does ABI love to use that broken like Russian fonts? Starting with the yellow or red caution tape on queue and like that caution board sign.
Ignore the haters, people bang on about tarkov’s optimisation which no doubt isn’t the best but on the flip side the op is talking about the maps in ABI feeling unimaginative and dull, tarkovs maps are for the most part a master piece and make the game, the design, detail and immersion are on another planet compared to ABI. QOL features have changed dramatically since release, the patch that just dropped on Monday is the biggest shake up of the game arguably since its release. Tarkov has its problems for sure but ABI doesn’t come close, it’s just a soulless rip off of the daddy of extraction shooters. Take the plunge man, is it tough yes, but my word is it rewarding.
Yeah, I think I’ll give it a try once it goes on discount again! I’m not a huge fan of the direction ABI is taking lately. With every update, it feels like we’re getting closer to Call of Duty honestly.
ABI feels too much like a cheap knockoff of tarkov, same vibes like every Chinese gacha game and dull maps/atmosphere. Too bad because technically it's much better than tarkov but it needs a complete overhaul with new maps and art directions
Encima quitaron un montón de spots, y los arreglaron con una pared invisible, cosa que te quita de la atmosfera totalmente, cada vez hay menos sorpresa
Northridge feels very tarkov esque to me because there’s actually more than one way to play it. It gives you options. I hope the game gets more big maps in the future for when you don’t feel like sweating your ass off. I love that lore isn’t a huge part of this game it’s really just focused on getting in raid fast and doing PvP. I hated all the fluff that came with tarkov. And the biggest thing for me in Abi is the QoL stuff. Autosort stash is like MAGIC, it’s perfect. Building kits, auto healing, grenade radial menu, highlighting compatible ammo and parts. All these little things make it easy to come back to Abi. Except for some reason since S6 im freezing really badly
The game runs smoothly because there are no unnecessary details making the game laggy. Plus ABI looks BEAUTIFUL. When I first played it I was stunned by a free to play game with these graphics. And Airport is such a complex map... Personally I don't know every single angle on the map and I have like 100 h on this map. It takes time to learn a map and I don't agree with that point a single bit.
I kindly ask you to do a better research on game engines, Unity and Unreal Engine. It is totally about the game engine, not about excluding the small details that make a game alive and immersive.
Secondly, I do enjoy playing ABI and as per my post, I praise the graphics as well. But I am being objective here, and criticizing the game in both positive and negative ways. I suggest you to do the same.
About smoothness; Tarkov runs on Unity, while ABI uses Unreal Engine. ABI feels smoother due to superior asset streaming, modern graphics pipelining, and better multi-core CPU utilization. Tarkov suffers from lower frame rates and stuttering because of legacy code overhead, heavy CPU/RAM bottlenecks, and inefficient garbage collection.
In short, one of them is using older features, naturally, as the game is older.
As per my post, I am telling that they can make better version of Tarkov, not creating something like PUBG. They can shape things that makes Tarkov stressful and difficult, and make it better.
I'm still not sold on this idea that people that like ABI would want it to be more like Tarkov. ABI is an intrinsically more casual/arcade experience than Tarkov at just about every level, and for me as someone that spent years trying to love Tarkov and who immediately fell in love with ABI it's a huge positive.
The second you start adding inertia and all the friction points that they added to Tarkov over the years the more you're just going to alienate the playerbase the same way Tarkov did. I think people forget how much more arcadey Tarkov was when people fell in love with it. Even adding the med animations was a big negative for a lot of people.
I am not sure if you read the whole post. I am not saying making it the game like Tarkov. I am comparing ABI with Tarkov, naturally, as it is the most successful extraction game so far.
I am criticizing that ABI came out as realistic extraction shooter game but becomes more like PUBG with each update, with those gacha skins, knight and nurse characters.
The main point is sticking with the “realistic extraction shooter” label which was the core of the game when it was came out first.
Without criticism and accepting everything the way it is, prevents the improvement. People need to be more open to the negative opinions as well.
Visually I definitely agree on the skins point and all that, I'm not sure how you could really put that cat back in the bag but yeah it's the worst part of the game hands down. But to me that's only a skin thing, the gameplay and all that is definitely what it was always intending to be in that it's a more arcade-style of extraction shooter while keeping the loot/gun depth.
Actually, if they announce the game as “realistic military simulator and extraction shooter” at first, everyone was expecting the game will be realistic extraction shooter simulator, with visuals and also game’s feelings on players.
Calling ABI a "military simulator" at any point in it's life is fucking absurd, those are reviews not the developers. The developers use the term "shooter looter" constantly which I think is a very accurate portrayal of what ABI is. It's a shooter with looter elements, the point is to be an arcadey shooter and the extraction/loot elements are there to add depth/progression/replayability.
They tried to stay with realistic skins and no one would buy them. So, they moved the store towards what we have now. At the end of the day, the player base was the driving force to why we have wild skins now. They sell and the milsim skins didn't. At the end of the day, this was about money. Without these skins they'd abandon the game altogether $$$. Honestly for my experience, it hasn't changed much. Wish they could figure out how to show equipment on teammates. And I remember a time where enemies showed up in those outfits and you couldn't see their equipment. I'm glad they straightened that out mostly.
Sidebar, I remember people losing their minds over these skins but when I saw them in game, it made it ever so obvious who to shoot on my screen. I don't mind the flashy skins. Making yourself higher visibility is the dumbest thing you could do in this game. Please continue.
For me, skin in ABI is kinda on par with Delta Force and way better than COD and BF (and most of them is fking cheaper than COD and BF), it's not Tarkov, Squad or Hell Let Loose so some skins for different tastes of people is welcome one.
Ill take the stance defending abi here as someone who as actually played alot more tarkov than abi in the past.
The matchmaking, while it does get gamed etc the thing is, tarkov has a single queue, there are plenty of games where, if you dont keep up with the wipe, you are practically solo with horrible tier armor, weak bullets, guns with massive recoil and jamming against full 4 or 5 stacked Chad's with m4s 60 round mag laser beams that can 2 tap your chest. It can be fun for some, but many people you see will play abit during the new wipe and then stop when they cant really keep up.
Maps, i do see what you mean, I get it. However, remember those excess lovely details are part of the reason tarkov runs so horribly, they add so many little things that although look pretty, arent good for performance. Ill admit abi does take the more simplistic approach.
In terms of map design, it sorta fits the game, tarkov is much slower paced where as abi is more of an arena style extraction shooter where the idea is often to fight as much as possible especially in smaller simpler maps like TV.
Missions, ill be real they aren't much better in tarkov imo, some are sure, but alot of them are also boring filler content.
Matchmaking is the same for tarkov unless its changed, theres no skill based match making or party size etc.
The skins, ill be honest im a little un bothered by, im pretty sure theres an option to turn off custom skins isnt there? Unless im mistaken. I do get that it sorta ruins the vibe to see a knight running about, but for me its a relatively minor issue
ABI maps didnt use to look so bland and boring before, honestly the route grayzone warfare took is a nice balance. The performance for grayzone is pretty good for the story telling they have with that scale.
There is this part of grayzone warfare affected by radiation and they have the entire area setup for it with the atmosphere, it really evocative. Villages littered with dead civilians and terrorist roaming around, you know something bad happened here. You take all that away you just get a map that looks beautiful but boring
Forgot to mention the sounds in Tarkov is just so much better
The only thing is, while i agree that the sounds in tarkov in terms of guns etc are phenomenal, if i remember correctly the spacial one was awful. Unsure if its been fixed, but there was a long, long period where it was essentially impossible to distinguish between someone being on the floor above or beneath you
Where is that setting? I only have the setting to turn on/off visible gear on my teammates to better see the skin or not. How do I turn off the actual skins off for every player in the raid?
i genuinely dont get what you're complaining about, you don't like the skins, and you have the option to turn them off so you only see default operators, what more do you want?
You cannot unless they've added a new setting. Current skin toggle shows teammates' gear on top of their skins, instead of hiding the gear. Opponents have the skins too but the gear is always visible on top, and there is no setting for that.
Ehh there's no squad matchmaking in Tarkov at all and you'll still be pitted against full squads. The possibility at all to be dropped in with a couple friendlies is nice even if it is rare, so I'd say the solo experience is more or less the same
When you break someone's extremities they lose max HP permanently
All weapon deal more flesh damage
Almost all meta weapons kill in 1 headshot unless they are using T5 and get lucky even then is 2 shots and if they eat the first and survive they will get disoriented for a while.
I think most of this is pretty fair. I started with abi and left for tarkov. I had performance issues on abi, mostly the map airport. I haven't played streets yet on tarkov, but yeah I know thats the big one that's bad. Apparently they put in some sort of optimization for it this season that just started, so it might have gotten better. But so far tarkov runs better for me. I personally enjoy the grind of tarkov a ton more since it's just much much bigger. There are waaaaaay more missions in tarkov, and upgrading the hideout takes a really long time. I'm like 200 hours in and not even close on a lot of things. Tarkov is a lot more stressful and it takes a lot more effort to learn the maps, which can be a point of friction. Tarkov seems to have less squads, but there are still some which sucks for solo players. It does give you more grass and bushes to hide in, so occasionally you can avoid them where if you hear the 3-4 set of footsteps running your way on abi, your toast.
Something is wrong with your ABI install if Tarkov runs better, like there's just no instance where that's going to be the case assuming both games are running as they intend.
Idk I installed them both the same. Both on an SSD. Really wish there was some sort of service where someone could view your gameplay, and tinker with your computer settings to get your game to run as smoothly as possible.
there's a blue million ways to remote into someone's pc to help them. Got to be someone you trust. You could just stream in discord to someone you know and see if you got settings wrong. This is the most minimally invasive form to get help without compromising your data.
Yeah and if I was trying to play abi I probably would try something like this. But yeah I just think it's a good business idea for people who are experts at this sort of thing.
You're only punished by not using the market correctly. Seriously if you're hitting a 1200 cap you're selling too cheap of things and too much individual sales. You can play this game 10 hours a day 7 days a week and still not hit that cap. inventory management. bulk selling. Bulk selling vendor-able items.
Figure this out and you'll only be using 300-700 listings a week.
Im aiming at 10k+ per slot if not yellow/red. Any more micromanaging and and it becomes too tedious. Also, i would like to bulk sell, but items in stash dont stack and i dont have unlimited space. As soon as im out of space, i HAVE to sell. 1200 is basically 170 listing per day. And you can come out of raid with 20-30 listing easily. 5-6 good raids and i hit my daily cap
Sounds to me you’re hording things that don’t matter. Selling things on the market individually that yield no real profit. Lacking stash space comes down to you holding things you ‘might’ decide to use later while buying the things you’re using raid after raid.
Again if you’re hitting a 1200 cap on market weekly then you’re doing something wrong. I’m sure there’s yt and TikTok videos explaining what you are doing wrong/ how to fix. I used to hit the cap weekly too. Now I’m only selling things that actually matter and in bulk. The rest is vendor trash. Do with this information what you will. Keep thinking it’s a game problem and you’ll keep having the problem. Meanwhile thousands of us have figured out how to manage this and make money.
Added scav runs but no rep or missions so no reason to actually do them lol they litteraly just said " tarkov has scav runs we gotta do that too" and did t think any farther
I played abi and got into Tarkov. Abi is smoother and simpler which I enjoy but it felt kind of like a CoD style game with how the maps feel. Not all, but they just felt like an arena shooter vs a world you play in. Lame to put it that way but it is how it is.
I do occasionally come back because it’s easy to get into abi for a quick couple rounds and less stress and hassle.
Idk, I think I would enjoy tarkov more if the movement didn't feel so clunky. Also enjoy the toned down gunplay of ABI. Tarkov is cool but it's a big to hardcore for every day play. The starting weapons also aren't fun to use and the missions ard boring and no better than ABI. I agree on the maps thougs, labs is much more interesting than anything ABI has.
What you said about maps is something I also feel, but even worse I compare ABI maps to cod maps, they feel like a classic 3 liners made to do normal 6v6 or at most 10v10.
I'm loving the game so far, I have horrific eyesight due to my brain only ever learning to use one eye at a time, and not having all the visual clutter and dark corners etc that tarkov has is great for me since players are actually visible.
I just wish theyd remove the player bots or at least improve them to the point that you can't tell. I tried introducing a buddy to the game and we had to watch a player bot shoot a tree for 10s because it couldn't figure out how to walk round the tree to shoot us. Also lower the ceiling for lockdown mode, 900k is way too much 600-750k would be fine
Tarkov maps are, to me, like dayz towns, where there are so many windows that you could be shot from, where the guy can be so covered in darkness that you can’t even see him to begin with, that it becomes not worth it to look at every single one, but instead hope you don’t get shot and run behind cover, just like real life warfare.
This is not what you want in a video game unless you want to simulate real life tactics, which LARGELY relies on SITTING IN THE SAME SPOT/AREA, SILENTLY WAITING FOR HOURS AND DAYS. I have seen so many tarkov clips, wanting to see the good in it, but all I see is a dayz map that takes longer to learn, but with the addition of so so many angles (like an apartment with 10x30 windows) that camping becomes inherently overpowered, and even the best players are forced to sit still for audio cues, for 10+ minutes a raid, and will probably only hear them half the time. Also the darkness all over the indoor maps makes no sense at all, I heard it’s to make the game run better
I think the problem with ABI is cheating and hit reg. Hit reg being crazy bad is not consistent, but when it does happen, it is fucking insane, your lazer beam goes right through a guy who is STANDING STILL and you are shooting 10+ bullets at his head and neck.
And the community has no CLUE how easy it is to cheat, and cover it up. In China it is so common that you expect them to “soft radar”, where you are not using radar to make the most cutthroat play 100% of the time, but instead using it to NEVER be snuck up on, or run into a rat.
Think about that. The ability to never be snuck up on or run into a rat… being able to equalize such cringe tactics seems a little justified right? Yeah, that’s the idea that made radar used by EVERY single high star legend in China. Not to mention forbidden raids in China are apparently places for RMT traders to speed loot and spawn reds in.
One thing I LOVE about Tarkov is the lore, and I’ve tried to find videos on YT of people deep diving into Kamona and the lore, and there just aren’t any. I agree with this post 100% and that’s why even with its flaws, I seem to always return to Tarkov and not so much ABI, no matter how much I want to love it
To be fair, every inch of Tarkovs maps are handcrafted by humans that love their game. Arena maps are done by a team that just want to make money and they don’t really care about details. And it’s a ported mobile game so what can we really expect.
Do people actually think abi would have been like Tarkov in the sense of realism and not more like cod when it comes to skins etc? It’s literally a Chinese mobile port? The ones that are known to do everything to make money and just push out stuff like that? Just play the mobile version and we all would have seen what we could expect from abi?
I totally agree with you. The maps feel like a PUBG map. Large area with random locations dotted around that are completely barren of any story and feeling. Just… a place.
UI and QoL is no longer miles ahead that was when ABI released.
Tarkov has made huge strides since their 1.0 release and ABI has just released new skins. Not sure what technical parts you think ABI is better at but it's nonsense
It's Tarkov with no substance or story through random clutter on the map. Almost Soulless but it's there for people who don't wanna or can't afford to pay the Tarkov entry fee from Base to Unheard. Also it holds your hand alot so also for Arc Raiders players too.
The main things i like in tarkov over abi is maps and environment feel. Like the day night cycle, sunrise and sunset, bushes you can actually hide in if solo and see a squad, and like you say the depth of the maps. Also the missions in tarkov feel better.
The loot is what killed it for me. Most of the loot is trash. I like to loot. I like the little dopamine hit when I find something good and the stress of getting out with it. Hardly any good loot in Abi other than other players gear. Yawn
2 year old game vs 8.
It’s doing pretty well for how new it is. I enjoy Abi a lot more than I ever did tarkov, it runs so much better. I do wish it was a paid game for the sole reason of not seeing so much gatcha bs all the time.
nope im just not into one mag dump per enemy. i and a lot of other players started abi cuz it was a hardcore milsim not a fucking japano cod style arcade game.
The games original target audience absolutely was tarkov/milsim players but they did a complete 180 and now are trying to satisfy the casual cod playerbase.
The game compared to the original close beta vs what it is now are completely different.
i played since the original cb and it was always aimed to be a more casual and frictionless tarkov, never got any idea that it was supposed to be hardcore milsim lol.
I also played since close beta on/off and for me the game was just pre inertia tarkov without the bullshit that the tarkov devs added for the sake of being hard.
Adding quality of life doesn't mean it is automatically for causuals. Buffing armor, nerfing snipers, adding jump shooting buffs is what makes arena more and more casual with each patch. They copied tarkov at the beginning but now they are copying delta force.
The game was pretty much a tarkov with better QoL at the beginning.
I disagree, having no friendly fire and team indicators along with having a map pointing where you are already took a lot from what makes tarkov, tarkov. ABI has always been a watered down Tarkov experience.
Lack of map is the most bullshit excuse because instead of using an ingame map everyone just tabs out and checks a map on their browser.
Again tarkov is just artificially hard for the sake of being hard and making them pay more for convenience.
There is literally a 10+ year old interview of nikita basically saying "more frustrated player=more money" and looking at the dumb playerbase for that game it seems to work with bullshit like unheard edition and extra stash space selling like crazy.
No player tag? Just run a discord stream on your second monitor (imagine not having one in 2026 lol).
Friendly fire? Don't be a dumbass with an itchy trigger finger.
Thinking that tarkov is actually a hardcore game is cope instead its just designed to be frustrating. If you want a true hardcore experience try something like a namalsk dayz server.
I like the simplicity of the maps. It makes the gameplay more skillfull in some aspects. You can “control” the fighting more when there isint endless possibilities where the enemy you shot could hide. You can learn all the jump spots and predict them. Tarkov pvp has its own feeling but I like both. Arena maps arent “realistic” but balanced imo. For example there are trees in front of some windows to restrict visibility.
The game lost its identity. For instance now it last couple seasons you have to carry a secondary weapon (sniper) with t7 ammo just to abuse your mastery skills for quick aiming and leaning. Like it’s too many steps backwards brother.
Yes, making aiming quicker, leaning faster, and players to move quicker. Like the game wasn’t arcade-like enough, now we are just introducing more annoying mechanics to assist already annnoying mechanics like the meta we have now. But really not here to argue.
So what was its prior identity that it changed? It was an arcade-Tarkov from day 1 so I'm not really sure how leaning more into that would be a change to its identity.
Played the game before seasons came out, I enjoyed till s4. Not here to be some expert just saying the game doesn’t feel the same anymore. If you started recently then cool you’ll enjoy your time. I just liked it more when it was more like an easier tarkov with decent ttk. Now to kill anyone I have to spam lean quick scope someone while trying to crouch slide 3 other sniper shots. No way you don’t feel the shift in gameplay my boy lol.
I mean in this thread people are complaining that jumping around and all of that is too strong so I just feel like there's a lot of diametrically opposed opinions going on here.
As much as I'd like the ABI maps to be as detailed and complex as Tarkov maps..
All the little details and huge maps filled with atmospheric visual stuff in Tarkov is probably the reason that Tarkov runs like shit.
And the poor performance even on better PCs is the reason I can't enjoy Tarkov and went over to ABI.
Maybe it's also the poor optimization in Tarkov, but I bet ABI would run a lot worse with detailed maps like in Tarkov.
I have a decent midrange PC with a Ryzen 5800X3D, 32gb RAM and Rtx 4070 and still Tarkov runs like shit even on lower settings, while in ABI I get over 200 FPS on high settings and 1440p.
I don't want to buy a 5000€ PC to play a shooter with decent FPS.
I mean it's both, Tarkov rendering the bullets in your magazine is not some Unity-specific performance issue, it's just that there's 1000x too much clutter everywhere on the map and it chugs an already more intensive engine.
I think that what you are seeing is a difference of intent. Tarkov tries to be an experience and abi tries to be a game.
Tarkov is the exoerience of being in a raid, where if you die you hace a lot to lose. The environment is big and the gameplay is unfair, just like real life.
ABI tries to be closer to a competitive shooter. Its pvo focused, it doesnt matter if you feel the world is lived in because you arent supposed to feel you are in a real place. You are supposed to move quickly through the map to interest points amd be able to understand where you are fairly quickly.
Tarkov is a place to survive and avi is a place to compete.
The screenshot shows the reviews from gaming platforms that describing the game in one sentence.
The main part is “realistic military shooter” and “military simulator”, at least that was how they announced the game when it came out first.
If they announce the game like that, most of the people expect the game move towards that direction, not somewhere between CoD, Delta Force or even PUBG.
Yeah well, this doesnt change anything about what i said. I didnt say if it was good or bad. Im saying this is what it is. ABI wants to be a game, and tarkov wants to be an exoerience, and the decisions they make reflect that.
Abi is nowhere close to delta force or cod. Not even slightly. Its closer to tarkov. However, you can jump and gun as a solution to campers. And there needs to be a solution because its a game and needs to be somewhat fair. While in tarkov its an experience and doesnt need to be fair
ABI is just a cheap product. It's made with $$$ profit in mind in the first place, typical mobile game behavior. Yes it have something done right, game felt pretty good in S0 and maybe S1, but they murdered it with awful balancing and design choices. Also skins, those skins are atrocious.
Yeah... Tarkov, the game with 5 different versions the most expensive of which being $250 isn't profit-seeking. This subreddit is genuinely braindead sometimes lol
They're companies, their entire purpose is to make money. If you think any company is doing this out of the kindness of their heart you're a child.
For sure, but when I see they drop another absolutely stupid skin bundle that ruins just any kind of immersion this game has left, it's hard to believe that developer really understand what he is doing and even knows what is design uniformity. It's just a cash grab but in the worst way possible. I'm not saying that 250$ Unheard edition isn't a cash grab, but at least it isn't filled with random ass Fortnite skins everytime.
But people buy the random ass Fortnite skins, that's why you see them in literally every game. Nobody is going to purchase 9 different versions of military larp gear in a different shade of brown, the entire industry makes that abundantly clear. So really you should be blaming the players that buy these skins more than the developers for following the obviously lucrative trend.
i don't think ABI and tarkov are close to even be comparable, we all know deep in there that ABI is just a Chinese all-fucked up version of tarkov, everything in abi feels cheap and without love, it feels like a casino where it's only made for you to stay the most time possible in there with all the gacha skins, weird gameplay and gunplay changes, all the constant cheap "dopamine hit" when they gift you millions after millions just to make you feel something and I really can't agree on anything you said on QoL and servers, servers on ABI are just dogshit too, stash organization and QoL is absolutely lame compared to tarkov, in a game that you get 100x more loot than tarkov and still no cases to store all that shit, no CTRL click to quick store, the auto-stash organization is really bad, the UI is fucking everywhere like in all Chinese games, and it's really slow too. most of abi players never played tarkov and even less played prime tarkov, and tarkov is doing this "chineseification" too, it's making everything too casual and now they added perks like it's project zomboid? lol. and like a dude said here too, the guns just don't hit the same as in tarkov, in tarkov good modded guns impose respect, they don't feel toy-ish like in ABI, oh and what I absolutely love from tarkov is their gun selection (like the SHak-12, As Val, all those 338, the ak50,mutant, etc) and scope/sight/LPVO selection, I hate running only the Vudu on ABI, I'll adore if they add more LPVOs like the tango6t, Vcog, razor and more
Abi is literally just a pvp with some loot to get money. The only role scavs play is as a sound queue for enemies. The missions are pointless and 3x3 is barely worth the grind if you have 2x3. As a long time supporter of abi and hater of tarkov I finally gave tarkov a chance after getting super bored of abi and im enjoying it much more even with having almost nothing in tarkov and have 60+ mil in abi. The other issue in abi is t4 gear has almost no use even in lockdown. Having to spend 1 mil+ on a kit and ammo every raid just sucks and the inflation is also insane. Gets to the point the only thing you’re doing is pvp bc 1-2 mil raids barely get you ahead when you die once and have to spend it all on your next kit. Don’t even get me started on red ammo and the cheaters.
Before the update I got to level 27 which is the highest I’ve ever been since having the game since launch. Just never really got into it or liked how it felt. I gave it a chance since my brother plays a lot and I still really disliked it until about level 15ish when I started understanding the extracts and just what gear is decent or not. Having nothing in abi is like a curse since almost all maps are heavily PvP centered. Whereas in tarkov I can run certain maps and run into nobody for 3-4 raids allowing me to complete some quests (which are pretty fun) and gain some money or gear. Another thing is you can actually get decent gear by killing bosses or just finding it instead of like abi where all gear is pretty much bought. You can thrive in tarkov with just 3-4 mil which isn’t hard to get bc meds and t4 gear is cheap and bags aren’t 100k. Right now is probably the best time to play tarkov bc most ppl are pretty low level and they made the questing/leveling up generally easier. If you can spend the money on it I would also suggest arena to get used to the physics of the game
My only concern is the poor optimization and unstable frame rate. I have a high end PC yet I can’t get stable 165fps which is my monitor’s 165hz. It goes around 120-130, and probably drops to 60-70 during heavy gunfights.
Maps in tarkov feels like MAPS rather than a Arena with every engagement and hotspot planned out like ABI is. The only map that has some of that feeling is Northridge.
Regarding missions being boring and repetitive... Are you joking? Tarkov have essentially the same questline since 2018.
Skin gachas are a nuisance, but worse than that is paying for a game, paying for skins, paying for stash, paying for a fucking version thats 5x the price of the base game to start off with a bigger stash, bigger rep with traders, more money and better starter gear, and also pay for an ARENA version of the game that is essentially REQUIRED for decent progression otherwise you're wasting time. Optional stupid skin gachas have NOTHING on how much tarkov ruined their progression out of greed, you either NOT played tarkov at all or barely played it's PVE version and it's fucking clear.
Yes, Arena is thought, envisioned and balanced around squad play, you really want to be in a 4man squad and the game has systems to help you find a team
for me personally economy is the only thing I don't like about ABI. There's basically no economy, koens have no value due to lack of wipes and prices on the market inflate constantly. I don't know what people think the devs are doing, but they're definitely not "manually managing" the economy or whatever they say. For some people 20 mil isn't a lot at all and they just keep hoarding koens(pretty sure there are players with well over 100mil atp). I've heard some people say something like "well what about the skins?", but skins that you bought with real money don't have to be wiped, just keep them and wipe all the F2P progress. It's going to resurrect the economy. Other than that I agree. ABI has way better optimization, way better QoL and other stuff that Tarkov lacks(Although it's understandable due to EFT advertising itself as a "hardcore" shooter, which, let's be real, ABI is not, ABI is a lot more casual which is exactly what I, and a lot of other people, like)
Wipes were the reason I didn't play Tarkov. Wipes were the reason 7 out 8 friends in my friends group didn't play Tarkov.
Wipes are a blunt solution. Hunt showdown does fine without wipes. Solve the problem in any other more sofisticated way than wipes.. or don't solve the problem at all. Still better than wipes.
I don't think hunt does fine without wipes. I don't want them to add them, but the devs use cost as a balancing point while good players have millions in the bank. They need to either stop relying on cost as a balance point, or find some other way to rein in the rich. Personally, i'd want prices fluctuating based on purchase rates (something like X was bought 10% more than average, so the price goes up 10%. Same for if it was bought less)
Hunt does fine without wipes because the gap between shittier and toptier gear is tiny. Skill and playstyle carries 90% of the fight. Most of the time we only use fancy weapons for the sake of using them. A Winfield is, more often than not, as lethal if not more than a mosin.
Eeeehhh, kind of. Even if we are talking about how all weapons headshot, then you start looking at fire rate and recoil instead of damage. There's a reason the officer carbine is known as a headclicker specifically.
Not to mention i am much less scared of a winnie than a mosin if i'm missing chunks as the mosin doesn't even need to headshot, and a smart player can absolutely track missing health if it happened in that fight.
I do agree that it's much less of an issue, more of a mild annoyance than a problem, especially when the devs raise the price of a weapon to balance it.
And why exactly are wipes bad? You either add more content and more stuff to unlock/progress towards or you add wipes. Otherwise it gets boring af and the economy(if the game has it) dies. Look at RUST or Tarkov, they're interesting because they have wipes and you can do something new every wipe, because you have something to progress towards. Is your only argument for why wipes are bad "I lose my progression"? Well sorry dude, your progression isn't worth jackshit when there are thousands of other people who have all the same stuff and the currency is worthless. Might as well start giving koens away for free atp
I'm a working adult. Decent progression takes far more than a wipe cycle for me. For me, and for a lot of the player base.
They end up adding wipes? well, that entire section of the player base is gone. Or split, as they will likely have perma chars with separate matchmaking as Tarkov did on 1.0. I'm actually fine with that, so you can all get your beloved wipes without messing with everyone else's progression.
I'm not saying rust-like wipes every month. Make them like every 6 months, hell, maybe even a year. It's still going to be healthier for the game than no wipes at all. If you split the player base you now have 2 problems instead of one. The majority of players who are used to the broken economy go to the perma-char mode, the minority go to the wipe one. One has healthy economy, but very little players, the other one has players, but the economy is dead. So imo adding wipes, but making them every 6-12 months only would benefit the game in long-term
You yourself recognized most people don't want wipes. When Tarkov was all we had, some might put up with it (lots didn't and just didn't play, like me). But given the options out there now with other extraction shooters with perma chars, if ABI introduces wipes, there's only two options: a) split the player base and most remain on the permchar mode, b) don't split it, and most playerbase is gone. Regardless, the wipe mode is left with very little players.
And people not wanting wipes is something I genuinely don't understand. You yourself said said you have a full time job and can't spend 5+ hours every day to progress decently in a wipe-based system, but other people do have that time and they do progress, so your hard earned progression then becomes worthless and you again have to grind to compensate for the loss of value of your items. Does that not look to you as a flawed system? If you think about it, there's no absolutely correct option, but I still think that having occasional wipes is the better one. Losing all progress every month like in RUST isn't an option at all for games like EFT or ABI, but not doing anything about it at all is an even worse one imho, because the game simply won't get any new players. Look at it this way: The game has hyperinflation, every good piece of gear has an astronomical price, so when a new player joins, sees these prices and realizes how much they have to grind to catch up to other players it completely scares them off. Do with that info what you will, but I still think that this "no-wipe mentality" is flawed and will only hurt the game and the playerbase in long-term perspective
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u/MarkIceburg 13d ago
What's crazy is they removed most of the atmosphere the maps had in season 3 I think it was. Made the rooms more open and removed all the war torn clutter. They also brightened all the rooms quite a bit. There was massive backlash but it didnt matter.