Escape From Tarkov is adding vaulting, revised recoil, and new guns

Tactical extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov is adding vaulting, a recoil rework and new armour, as revealed in a developer livestream. Of the bunch, it’s vaulting – the act of clambering over a low wall – which has been greeted most feverishly by Tarkov’s community, a fact which is honestly not surprising.

You can watch a low-wall hopping sizzle reel on X:

Vaulting#EscapefromTarkov pic.twitter.com/cmJr0AOstK

— Escape from Tarkov (@tarkov) November 14, 2023

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I think and talk a lot about one of the times I visited EVE Fanfest and saw an announcement of a UI feature which made it slightly easier to transfer items from one spaceship cargo hold to another. The audience reaction was pandemonium – cheers, screams, last-minute goal in the cup final levels of euphoria. The Game Awards next month might see the announcement of a new Mass Effect and a new Grand Theft Auto, but I swear, gamers don’t want new games, they want quality-of-life features for the games they already own.

So it makes sense to me that vaulting is a big deal in Escape From Tarkov, a game about slowly navigating desolate urban environments in which death is extremely costly. It’s got nearly 6000 likes on Twitter versus just 1k for new guns and 3k for a new map.

That said, on the internet, nothing is ever an unequivocal good. In this instance, a Reddit comment thread is thick with discussion. Can a soldier carrying a heavy backpack climb that quickly? Should jumping be nerfed to compensate? Is this an unremarkable feature any modern first-person shooter should be expected to have, a physics-breaking threat to immersion, or the most exciting thing added to the game in years?

I don’t know but from reading community responses I have worked out the feature that would truly blow the minds of Tarkov players: being able to climb ladders. Come on Geoff, make that announcement happen.