Developers Battlestate Games have shared their plans to punish those looking to gain unfair advantages by “ping abusing” in Escape from Tarkov.
It is usually seen that gamers will attempt to get the best ping possible when playing online matches against others for a better experience.
However, the opposite is the case for some Escape from Tarkov players, who have found a way to get an unfair advantage over other players by playing with a higher ping.
Escape from Tarkov has been troubled with players that have been using VPNs to play on distant servers where they will have much higher ping than usual.
It has been claimed that players with high ping tend to have a peeker’s advantage, giving them the upper hand in a gunfight when abusing this tactic, but now Battlestate is looking to put an end to it.
The developers announced that they had measures in place to start kicking those with excessively high ping which would have the potential to cause problems for local players on the server.
Attention! Tomorrow we plan to switch on server side high ping kicks. The limit will be 250 for a start and it will be lowered for compromise number during testing time #EscapefromTarkov
— Battlestate Games (@bstategames) April 2, 2020
“Tomorrow we plan to switch on server-side high ping kicks. The limit will be 250 for a start and it will be lowered for compromise number during testing time,” they announced, revealing that the limit was subject to change.
They later revealed that the new changes were unlikely to affect those who suffer from the occasional ping spike, explaining that only players whose ping remains above the limit for a period of time, would be kicked from the game.
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Kick will not be instant when you reach limit number. You will need to stay several seconds above the limit to get kicked
— Battlestate Games (@bstategames) April 2, 2020
“Kick will not be instant when you reach the limit number. You will need to stay several seconds above the limit to get kicked,” the Battlestate devs clarified.
Some players were disappointed with the new announcement, however, with many voicing their concerns for their own region or playing with friends from around the world.
great now my and my OCE friends cant play together anymore not liking this idea he gets 220 ping on avg when he plays on our NA servers and if someone wants to they could just use a vpn so your not stopping any non legit people
— mark riordan (@Darcness7) April 2, 2020
So for us brazillians who can only find games on US servers that’s basically a huge “screw you”?
I have just under 300 raids in my account and I’ve only managed to find a raid in the brazillian server 5 times. If that.
— King T’Chello ?? (@OMarcelleza) April 2, 2020
This new countermeasure won’t apply to players residing in the US and EU, and those playing co-op together from these regions would not be affected as the usual ping between the US and EU countries is often well under 200.
As Battlestate has revealed that they will be testing this new feature, which went live on servers on April 3, the final server ping cap may vary from the 250 that they announced.