(Intro)

If there is one mechanic that was added to Tarkov a few years ago, and since then hasn’t received a ton of attention in terms of adjustments or balance, it’s weapons overheating. Something that certainly can happen if not taken into consideration in regards to your weapon builds and ammunition consumption, and can be the culprit for some untimely deaths. This is definitely more of a later game Tarkov problem. In the early game and even parts into the mid game, you won’t have the ammunition and builds around consistently enough to notice this mechanic. You might, on occasion see the barrel of your weapon begin to smoke and turn a soft red color. But usually that’s about it. We’re also just not dumping magazine after magazine early on because finding ammo, especially good ammo is precious and difficult. Still, once you are established and are just building weapons however you like, overheating becomes a real problem that you need to think about. And sadly, like a lot of other problems in the game, it’s not balanced equally across the different weapons, calibers and too extreme in certain cases for certain weapons. It renders some types of weapons almost impossible to use unless under very specific circumstances. Which you can certainly make an argument that having special use cases for certain types of guns and ammos should be how things work. On the flipside, with that being how this mechanic works currently, the weapons mostly affected should be adjusted in other aspects to counteract how easily they can overheat, either with their price, fire rate or recoil. We’ll get deeper into this, but while there are some extreme cases, overheating is more annoying than it is a way to balance weapons and ammo.

(Overheating; TLDR)

Overheating is simply another type of malfunction that was added into the game on December 12, 2021. By firing a weapon rapidly and repeatedly, the barrel will begin to heat up, and visually you will first notice little streaks of smoke and then as the weapon heats up the barrel will glow a brighter hue of red. Fire it too much without pausing, and the weapon will jam. Simple as that. But underneath there are a few levels to the overheating status. The game doesn’t tell you this, but the hotter the barrel gets and the closer it gets to jamming, the weapons accuracy will go down, the chance of another type of malfunction goes up, overall durability goes down faster, and even the fire rate can be negatively affected. It’s a rather in-depth system for how simple on the surface it looks. And for not saying anything about in game except for some little pieces of text on ammos and attachments that mention heat percentages going up, it’s pretty thought out. And there are attachments and ammo that both negatively and positively affect how fast a weapon will overheat. Some will actually decrease how fast a weapon heats up and how fast it loses durability, and others that will do the opposite to an extreme level. So, when looking to build a weapon, if you are concerned about overheating, be sure to look at what your attachments are actually doing to the weapon. You might invertedly be making it worse. Unless you don’t care, in which case, you do you.

(Not all weapons are cooling equally)

The biggest problem to me with this mechanic is how some weapons and calibers are disproportionally affected by this mechanic. Some will immediately say that’s how it works in real life, or that’s how you attempt to balance the game and the more powerful weapons, which I fully understand and appreciate you mentioning. But if I’m being honest, the entire catalyst for this video even being made is the AS-VAL. For how awesome this gun is, how fun it can be to use, it overheats way too fast. It’s kind of ridiculous and silly how after a single thirty or even twenty-round magazine or not even the good ammo, it looks like it wants to jam. I notice this in Tarkov all the time, but when playing with it in Arena in last hero, the gun is almost unusable after one magazine because it takes so long to cool off. Just looking at the ammo chart for 9×39 ammo, every round worsens how fast it overheats. Even the worst round, FMJ, is plus twenty-four percent to heat buildup. And it has seventeen penetration; it’s objectively a bad round, but it’s my main round I go to when using the gun. Because I am so worried about being halfway through a mag and then hearing those dreadful three pip sounds, notifying you hey you gun don’t work no more until you fix it.

(It doesn’t have to be so hot)

There are numerous ways to adjust this. Because while we could sit here and call it a problem that needs to be fixed, it only needs to get adjusted. I am aware that making any adjustments to the VAL might bring back flashbacks of the game from many years ago where this weapon was king and the only thing people used. But honestly, the game is so much different now than when that was the norm, I doubt making the VAL and other weapons overheat slower would change how people play the game. The Spear is still in the game, and running ranged optics is still the meta. The VAL just doesn’t really fit in with what people want out of their weapons, so halving the heat value for at least the bottom three or even two rounds is a simple start. The fire rate of the VAL doesn’t help, being at nine-hundred rounds per minute. I know BSG said that slowed it down somewhere in the past, but it doesn’t really feel like the case. All the 9×39 weapons would also benefit from this. The VSK, SR-3, VSS, and the 9A-91. These guns see seldom use in the game for a myriad of reasons but overheating is one the top problems. But this caliber isn’t the only one that stands to benefit from adjusting heat values. All of them honestly can see some boost. It’s one of those cases where if all the calibers get adjusted slightly, then no one feels left out. It’s a mechanic that could be toned down by a single digit percent and people wouldn’t be upset about it. I don’t mind it being in the game, in fact it’s kind of sick looking when you kill a squad of players or a gaggle of scavs and all that remains are the dead bodies and you with a gun that looks like it wants to melt. Visually it’s a cool element and a clear indicator of hey you are shooting too much too fast. But the barrier between the too much and uh oh the guns jammed isn’t equal across the board. Remember when malfunctions were first introduced? I’m glad my brand-new gun can’t jam on the first shot anymore, but it still sucks to have some weapons and calibers feel useless because they heat up too fast.

(Outro)

Overheating is a rather smaller issue in the grand scale of things that BSG needs to fix and/or add to the game for a proper 1.0 release. It’s been in the game for almost three full years and I in regular Tarkov I have had maybe less than five weapons get so hot the jam on me. But that doesn’t mean it should be as egregious as it currently is for some. It feels as though it should either be simply toned down across the board, or controversially, have more of an impact on more weapons and ammos. Something like an MP7 or the Vectors should be getting as hot as a VAL because they shoot at the same fire rate. An HK should be bright red after a mag or two of the good stuff. Maybe I just haven’t used some of these weapons enough in recent times and that’s just how it is currently. But to me, overheating isn’t balanced across the board correctly and could use another round of adjustments. It’s either too extreme for some or not enough for others. And that just feels bad. Thank you very much for taking the time out of you day to watch this video. Let me know your thoughts on overheating down in the comment section below, whether it’s fine as it is, more weapons should have harsher or less penalties and be sure to subscribe for more videos about insignificant subject matters in a game that needs a lot more attention. I hope to see you in future ones.