i'm looking at this game and my impression is that it might actually be TOO LATE to join this game.
Escape from Tarkov (henceforth Escape) is a FPS where a few bullets can kill you. The TTK is very low, the kill distance is very long, and you can own gear that helps you kill faster and die slower.
In addition, when you lose, you lose the gear you equipped. When you win, you steal that gear, which you can then sell, and buy better gear.
This means that, if you add skill difference, experience in the game, and offensive and defensive gear, the newer players will get rekt, and lose what little they have, and the early-beta, more experienced player will get yet even better gear.
basically you are looking to get raped for a few months, until you catch up, to players who have more experience AND the extra months on top of that, that it took you to get there.
been there, done that. the same was happening in Survarium and Blacklight, although Blacklight will pretty much level off after 6 months or so, in Survarium you don't stand a chance. Thinking of it, Dark Age Of Camelot was also similar, at least in PvP.
it does look amazing though. Not sure if i can cope with the "lean" mechanics, i'v enever used lean in any shooter.
source: i'm *pretty good* at shooters. not Dreamhack-good, but pretty good.
You'd think it'd be too late to catch up, but this is actually a really good time to get in if that's your concern. You have to remember that there is always going to be somebody better than you, so everybody is constantly losing gear. You'll have nights where you start with nothing, go to a full stash, and then lose it all. Gear circulates between players like crazy, and nobody is an exception. I'm not sure why this is the case, but I think the limited stash space also plays a role in this. Eventually, the top players will only have room for the best of the best, so their stash will only be M4A1s (best gun in the game right now), maybe a few snipers for fun, and top tier vests and helmets; they won't have room for tier 2 gear. Then there's you who isn't to that level yet. You'll be insuring your MPXs, MP5s, AK74ns, and AKMs. When you die, since these guys aren't picking up your gear, you'll get it back in 24ish hours.
Right now there are only 4 maps to play: Factory, Customs, Woods, and Shoreline. Factory is pretty close quarters, and the other 3 have quite a bit of room to roam around. On factory, it's pretty easy to start with a pistol (or hatchet/knife if that's your thing) and work your way up to either a civilian AK rifle, or an AK74u in one round, potentially even better if you find a PMC that geared up. Factory is a neat map because most players go in undergeared so it's a good farming place for beginner guns. After that, you can go into the other 3 maps. Those maps have a lot more geared players so you can risk yours there.
I'm not sure how much of this will change once the game releases and goes open world, but what I'm saying is now is the best time to practice. We had a wipe about a week ago, so people are still running around with barely anything. Even before that, it took until the final few days before most people were comfortable with bringing out their better guns. A lot of people are scared of losing their best so they just use lower tier guns and no armor. You'll always find somebody that can be killed with a pistol with ease. If you practice now, you'll have a jump on all the people that buy into it at full release, but even then all you carry over is your experience and even that is mainly how familiar you are with the map. The gunplay is a little different than other games, but that can be learned fairly quickly, especially from anybody coming from an ARMA background.
This is probably the game I'm most interested in right now. I'm not going to lie and say it's perfect, in fact I don't recommend any of my friends to purchase it yet. There's a lot of bugs and server issues that'll hit just as you bring in your best setup. It's runs poorly on anything but the top tier systems right now. I've seen a lot of games release in early access and fail. I've played legacy Rust, DayZ mod/standalone, WarZ, ARK, 7 Days to Die, pretty much if it was an early access survival game, I've played it. Notice that every single game in this list is still a terrible game trying to deliver on a promise. Other than PUBG, I never wanted to buy another early access game, but something is special about this one. I've seen real developments over time. The final product still seems like a ways away, and even though the game is in Beta, it still feels like an Alpha release. Purchase with caution.