Late Spawns: The Number One Worst Part of Tarkov

Tarkov is a hardcore, instanced, looter shooter.

Thats all that needs to be said to show that SPAWNING LATE into a match as a PMC is entirely game breaking.

If you want a match to be 100% full, then dont start it until it is. Your talking about a player base that will sit in a bush for upwards of 20 minutes: WE WILL WAIT for a game.

If a match has started, close matchmaking. Period. No one NEEDS to have a 100% full game, most raids people only engage 2-5 players out of the 10-15 that can spawn. And on bigger maps sometimes you dont see any players regardless of how many are actually in the game.

Once you spawn late you are fodder. Either killed in spawn, out camped, loot is gone, there is literally no strategy you can take to recover. It doesnt matter if you brought an SJ6/Adrenaline or light gear, you are not making your objective in time. You cant strategize around lanes or spawn migration. You are just at the whim of everyone else who has the privilege to spawn at the intended starting time.

Even in the best case scenario its still annoying: bringing hundreds of thousands of rubles in kit, just to 1-tap a guy whos already damaged. Obviously everyone loves loot, but just being given an easy kill and free stuff isnt satisfying when I geared up for combat and get none, simply because your thrown into a match in progress. Scavs for your kill quest are dead, hotzones like LEDX spawns are cold, and any enemies left have broken armor and missing limbs and are halfway to extract. This is the opposite of rewarding.

No, Im not talking about HDD users, or people playing on dial up. This is a broken feature of the backend that makes the game unplayable.

EVERY PMC deserves a countdown, EVERY match. Tarkov is already inherently unfair and unbalanced but adding late spawns on top of the intended hardcore design makes it just pointless to struggle through the rest of the game. It turns a Risk vs Reward game to a "Risk Vs uhhhh Fuck You" loop of disappointment.