Tarkov-style battle royale Marauders won’t ruin the game with scopes

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Escape from Tarkov-inspired battle royale and extraction shooter Marauders intends to keep the gameplay more balanced and prevent the overall experience being ruined by limiting the number of scopes that players can use on their weapons, developer Small Impact tells PCGamesN at Gamescom 2022.

Set in a dystopian, space-faring future where the First World War never truly ended, Marauders has you play among a small squad, challenged with breaking into rival spaceships, and grabbing whatever resources and supplies you can before making it back to your base. From what we’ve seen so far, it depends on small-scale but highly intense PvP battles where every shot can be fatal, either for your opponent or for you.

In order to maintain the game’s balance, Small Impact is taking the unique decision – when compared to battle royale rivals like Tarkov and Warzone – of limiting players’ ability to use scopes. Initially, the team did not want to feature scopes at all. Now, however, Marauders will feature at least some extended-range weapon sights – but they will only be available for a small number of guns.

From the perspective of Small Impact, this is to ensure the tense and cerebral gameplay of Marauders isn’t disrupted by SMG-based, spray-and-pray tactics. The goal is to move slowly, plan your infiltration, and take out enemies using manoeuvring and skill. Without any scopes at all, players would be tempted to just blast and blast until they hit something.

But put them on every gun, and shooting and killing become too easy, undermining the severity and tension of each encounter. It’s a bold move, especially considering how scopes, be they mid or long-range, are taken for granted in shooters like Tarkov and Warzone, but Small Impact seems to be attempting a different pace of play.

Also conducive to this, rather than the traditional player name and health bar used to distinguish who’s on your team and who’s an enemy, Marauders will encourage you to synchronise the colour of you and your squad’s armour. This means relying on your own senses and target identification instead of a videogame UI, ostensibly to make the Marauders experience feel more real. Changing your armour colour will cost a small amount of in-game currency – it is unclear at the moment whether this will be obtainable purely through play, or require real-money purchases.