Escape from Tarkov is in a rough spot right now after patch 0.13. The updated audio system is busted, AI scavs are basically aimbots, weapon handling has been in the pits, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The community has been clamoring for Battlestate Games (BSG) to provide an update, and with patch 0.13.02 coming tomorrow, there’s hope.
BSG has already addressed weapon handling in a set of hotfixes today, but they announced the larger patch will go live at 1:00 AM EST tomorrow morning.
The Tarkov community is no stranger to early wipe issues, but this time has been particularly rough. The major update came with the long-awaited Streets of Tarkov map, but disconnects, massive performance and latency issues, and lengthy queue times plagued its release. When these began to settle, players began to see the other problems in starker contrast.
Related: How to Check Escape from Tarkov Server Status, Matching Time, and Ping
The easiest to notice was the audio issues. Tarkov moved from a system called Steam audio to Oculus Audio, and it didn’t take long to realize that it was now impossible to tell where anyone was based on the sound of their footsteps, gunshots, or other noisy actions. All you could tell was that one or multiple people were nearby, but not in which direction or how far away.
Scavs, the game’s NPC faction that fills out many of the maps, are meant to be occasional threats in great numbers or as a means to reveal player locations. However, they’ve been inadvertently turned into aimbots for months, so much so that many players refuse to engage with them altogether.
There are also rampant performance issues, with crashes, disconnects, an apparent memory leak that causes framerates to tank after just a few raids, and the recently added DLSS functionality does essentially nothing.
BSG acknowledged almost all of these issues in an earlier Twitter thread on January 19.
No timeline for these updates was provided at the time, and there’s no info on how big patch 0.13.02 will be or how much it will address, but players in the Tarkov subreddit are already excited by the hotfixes, so BSG has a chance to garner even more goodwill with this update.
