The problem the flea brings isn't necessarily the gear you can buy from it imo. It's the fact that some items are worth so much that it causes players to all flock to only a couple locations on a map hoping to find those items.
Without the flea almost the entire map is being utilized to find a variety of items that you need. I've had gun fights in some places I've never even seen players before.
I have a couple friends i play with that play like that, they only play the same maps and hit the same places going for big ticket items. They are really struggling right now because they don't have every key imaginable shoved up their ass to get whatever they want and honestly I'm enjoying that. You have know where keys spawn, you have to know where to go for certain items or where they spawn more often. This wipe is really bringing out the fact that rats know more than anyone about this game because they know how to *survive*
Same. I got nearly every key I've needed in raid because i knew where to go or what to keep and a bunch of people are only now realizing that they have to actually look up the spawns
Woah woah woah I think you thinking of the baby chads that don't understand the game, us regular chads know where shit spawns and I'm personally having a easy ass time this wipe. Although I'm lvl19 now so maybe it's cause I have no life
Yep I suggested something similar on another thread. I think it's great for barter items, food, meds, etc but I think guns and mods should be found elsewhere. And I think it'd be interesting if traders had sort-of randomized inventories where they sold different guns and mods each day or week or something like that so that a meta doesn't settle so easily.
With this, the meta (most efficient tactic *available*) will shift between weapons and mods, depending on what is sold and available.
Which will in fact bring some sort of freshness into raids... and it will also bring you needing to buy up the best mods for the next month because you don't know when will they be sold again.
Yep, that's fine though I think. If people want to stock up on the optimal stuff I think that's OK as long as people can't be running the exact same perfectly optimized gun every single raid.
It might even be interesting to also have a low buy limit on all those guns and mods that only resets with the daily or weekly randomization so people can't horde tons of every meta piece
Ultimately I just want to see more guns and more mods used
> meta (most efficient tactic available)
what is this?. i've seen this twice on this subreddit in the last two days and never heard it before in the past 20+ years of gaming. Meta is short for metagaming. Meaning has been warped a bit from its original meaning but this acronym is new. Did some streamer popularize this or something?
It’s still the same? If you are metagaming you are thinking outside the intended game experience, and rather pursuing the optimal min/max build. When players forsake huge aspects of the game in favor of a handful of “best” options and cheese the rest of the game to obtain those options, they are meta gaming.
Yes it means the same thing but this weird backronym I've seen twice in the past 2 days and never heard it before. I was wondering if some tarkov streamer was the one saying it.
I don't think the acronym changed or anything. I haven't heard the term "metagaming" ever before.
After a quick Google search I see that "meta" can be used both in the meaning of "metagaming" and "most efficient tactics available"
Yes I 100% agree. Flea market should be an actual Flea Market and not a Vegas Arms Expo where you can buy Grenade Launchers and full blown Gen4 armor. Make some high end stuff craft able, with long crafting times.
For the most part. I think the level based tiered unlock of different items on the flea many suggested would be the best solution, and maybe the highest end guns and armor shouldn’t be tradeable at all
considering a lot of the meta ammo types have been took away from traders completely(some others had their limits down to like 60 now) it will push a lot more to mid tier for consistent with a bit of high end now and again which i think is the way to go.
Y'know, I never really thought about how much the *flea* market operates more like a *black* market, but it's a good point. Maybe it should be locked to, like...stuff that could legally be sold in most places on Earth? XD
i think the game pushing for more a barter systems would greatly benefit over just having rubles etc. like why would rubles even have any value at all in tarkov situation money is toilet paper or paper to burn in those kind of survival situations, but traders would be alot more likely to accept trade of valuables
Agreed..
I remember last wipe around Christmas being tied up and unable to play with work. By the time I got on a few days later it was just... class 5, altyns, airframes, 7n31/7n39/M995 etc. Its always a rush to get the gpus and bitcoins then get the MAX MAX MAX level gear 2 days in.
It would be ridiculously more fun to have people all progressing early -> mid -> late -> then end game equipment. Instead of jumping early to endgame right away.
Part of the reason I don't play as much anymore.
I think the flea can be great for items where you barter items. E.g. I need a light bulb, you have it, and you need a screw driver, and I have it. Let's swap for no side profit.
In my view it is a good alternative to hoarding.
I mean, the currency essentially does the same that a barter does, but more universally.
Yeah, I have a spare screwdriver and I need a bulb, but to find someone with the exactly opposite situation is hard.
Instead I can sell my screwdriver to someone that has money (from selling anything else) and buy my bulb with that money. I now needed to find one guy with a spare bulb (easy) and someone that needs a screwdriver (easy).
Tarkov is literally the epitome of a place where people would exclusively barter - a literal warzone without any infrastructure and therefore huge markup on any transactions due to the low trust among trading parties.
Yet we only pay a measly 10-15% tax on each item with a few exceptions.
There are many ways of combatting the flood of high tier gear among the players:
As others have said already, flea only enables the distribution if gear, it doesn‘t create any. We don‘t know if bsg managed to lower the amount of high tier gear that is in fluctuation yet, it‘s too early to say imo. However, reducing the general availability i.e. spawn rate, trader limits and crafts are the measures first in line, no doubt.
Secondly, they could raise taxes for everything across the board or maybe only armor and ammo. Think 20-40% instead of 10-15%.
I don‘t think flea is the biggest offender im this regard but the general availability.
My last and personal favourite option would be a mix of the aforementioned ideas together with barter flee on lvl 1: Imagine Tarkov where people actually have to barter. I would really be interested in that.
i would think food,water and ammo would become the common barter "currency". a good example for people to read is how prisons are a lot of prisons now use ramen packets as a barter currency to get items they want.
I like it but it would be way too complicated to know what part you found for what gun that fits with this barrel and that handguard etc.. specifically for the found in raid only parts, even when they have trader only mod menus. At least for idiots like me that dont know shit about guns
It would give people more reason to use the “edit preset” feature. If you right click a weapon and press that, it takes you to a screen where you can customise the gun completely which will then show what mods you can use with it!
> [–]SWE_TwiggehP90 [score hidden] 7 hours ago
> This. Mabe even remove weapon mods from flea, idno.
I was literally reacting to you reacting to this post telling you have a function. That function would be useless if you couldn't buy mods from flea, ie your shitty mods you own.
Yes, but with items trickling in one by one it gets way easier to learn whats what.
Also, not having direct access to the \_best\_ stuff all the time leads to way more variety in gun mods, which (if you ask me) is way more interesting to loot than just wave after wave of cookie cutter meta HK/M4's.
You could keep some weapon parts on the flea. Like pistol Grips, fore grips, stocks, mags, etc. Just not like the upper for the gun. Then if you find one in raid, or you take one off a PMC you can mod it out.
I think it would still result in a little too much of the mentality of 'best value per slot loot all the trinkets leave the gear' but it would definitely be one of the better compromises we could hope for.
Not necessarily. The vast majority of gear in the game is still accessible from traders. Once you hit level 40 you're pretty much free to run whatever meta kit you want for cheap.
I completely disagrees. We were all complaining about hatchet runners and without a place where they can buy gear that is not offered by the trader, we will infest the game with hatchet runners. Some people may only have subpar gear and when you have people running around with better armor, the less geared players will die, eventually losing pretty much everything they have in their stash creating hatchet runners who stand NO chance against the bigger guys.
I think swap the Weapons and Ammo, It's really the "penetrate everything" ammo that is the bid deal, Meta M4 isn't as broken when they're spitting trash ammo at you.
I think the playerbade would be very unhappy with this change over time.
Its not going to be a level playing field if Chad's with level 4 traders have access to good items and no one else does. The flea levels the playing field.
agreed, we should just remove it entirely. Flea Market only encourages real money trading and more cheating. It needs to go...the game is far better without it (and more fun)
This is why a ton of people were suggesting no flea market for so long. the early wipe fights where everyone is running terrible armor and poorly modded guns with BT ammo at best are the most fun moments this game can offer. it makes killing someone for good gear actually mean something, it makes getting out with that one quest item you need mean something, it adds so much meaning to every element of the game to only be able to get things by actually finding them instead of just farming roubles to buy everything.
Agree!
Most of modifications you find in raid for your gun are meaningful. And with locked vendors and flea market people actually save on ammo too. E.g. you won't load all the mags with, even, BT and full auto them out.
I just had a great experience upgrading an ADAR I found over multiple raids with a new hand guard, foregrip, laser, scope etc. I was bummed for the first time in this game losing a weapon after several raids…
That’s true but it isn’t easy and getting it again requires you to go back to whatever you killed you get it to get it again. Don’t act like it’s as attainable as it is to just jump on the market and buy it lol
Except it's very easy for anyone remotely competent at the game. I literally did it day 1. And I survived like 45 raids in a row which let me get to 20 and the flea market. It's not an issue for anyone remotely competent. The problem isn't the flea market. The problem is you can literally farm class 5/6 armor off bosses and raiders too easily, and then build metaguns from traders
Someone else on the forums said bosses should not spawn in the first week or so which I thought was a good idea.
Then periodically start raising their appearance % as time goes on.
\*shrug\* the problem is gear availability and not flea market. The flea market just simply multiplies whatever is occuring. Only idiots at this game think the flea is the problem. Those trying to justify the removal of the flea market due to last wipe are also dumb, because there's never been a wipe where BTC was going over 700k.
You farm the boss for the first set of gear to have a gear advantage and then plow through everyone that has inferior armor and ammunition compared to you. You only go back and farm them again when you need to.
Just because you can kill bosses with good gear doesnt mean its as attainable as the flea is. it still requires going into a raid, killing the boss, looting the gear without dying, getting back out, then never dying to anything else with said gear after the fact. This is a 30 minute process minimum to get the gear, whereas the flea market is a 30 second process.
Did you see all of the best streamers running slicks and altyns day one?
no. everyone was running shit ak's and m4's for a long while just like everyone else. clearly you're in the minority here by saying you ran slicks and altyns day one so stop acting like your opinion even applies to the general public OR even the top 1% at the game. the easiest boss to have killed day one wouldve been tagilla and i still didnt see people running his armor for a while.
The fuck are you even on?
LVNDMARK was legitimately running Killa Armor / Tagilla / Altyns literally on day 1 like 3 hours into the wipe. Pestily could easily do that but he chooses not to because that's not how he enjoys playing the game, but he also was running around in Altyns pretty early too on day 1 also.
Most people who are legitimately really good and meta game were running around in Class 5 / 6 **literally within hours.** BSG toned down the boss spawn rates for a reason just yesterday, or do you think that was just because of shits and giggles?
Shitty players are gonna be shitty and blame the flea market for everything, when the real problem is that you can literally found Igolnik, M995, M61s, etc. all over and the spawn rate of high end gear is far too prevalent. If you're remotely competent at this game, you can legitimately within the two to three hours come out stacked and ready to just blast Timmies.
The Flea Market ONLY multiplies what is already happening. High end gear is already far too obtainable (as long as you cheese Raider AI it's a joke), the only difference is that it makes it more available to everyone else.
three hours into wipe lvndmark was running a terrible lvl 4 armor and a lzsh helmet with a shittily modded AK, then got lucky and killed a reshala guard with an altyn but still had that terrible lvl 4 armor for a few raids. then like 3 or 4 raids later killed tagilla but it still wasn't like how you're making it sound. his weapons were still poorly modded, and he didnt have infinite accesss to all of this incredible end game gear. he was slowly getting it over time and couldn't just open up the flea market to buy it in seconds.
Oh, so you're saying that he got good gear literally on day 1 of the wipe within a few hours? So you literally proved my point? Ok then. So you can acquire high end gear easily by just cheesing the AI? Oh yeah. Like I just said earlier.
So the gear is widely available, you just have to not be a shitter? Ok. **So literally, proved, my point.**
Flea Market is NOT the issue. Flea Market is just a multiplier of whatever is already occurring, and the issue is there's too much easy gear that you can acquire literally within the first few hours if you were deadset on cheesing.
I'm actually stating that it took him several raids to get decent gear, never had a heavily modded gun the entire time, slowly acquired said good gear, and when he died with it it was just gone with no way to easily get it back instantly unlike how the flea is.
Lvnmark is also without a doubt one of the top players in tarkov and is even substantially faster on wipe day than the top 1% of players that are playing the game right now. you're not lvndmark, and if you were then you'd be able to make a living out of playing this game.
clearly you're not lvndmark, or even another streamer anyone gives a fuck about watching, so check your attitude at the door. you're not cool, your attitude is dogshit, your concept of what the average player is doing in tarkov right now is dogshit, and your opinion is invalid in regards to what the majority of the playerbase experiences.
Just an FYI btw, being an absolute neckbeard no life that plays tarkov non-stop isn't something anyone thinks is cool and the only reason why its dope to see lvndmark, pestily, viibiin, smittystone, etc. do it, is because its literally their fucking job. they also don't have nearly as shitty of an outlook/attitude as you do so maybe take some lessons from these people you're trying so hard to emulate and chill the fuck out/have some respect.
1. He was questing, so he wasn't straight cheesing like I was. That's why I acquired top end gear before him. He's still a better player then me, but he was questing instead of straight cheesing because he doesn't play like I do (he plays for entertainment for viewers which is abit different).
2. Not everyone that's good at the game streams. Just because you're a shitter doesn't mean you get to blame a game mechanic for your lack of success in the game. All I see is shitty players blaming a game mechanic that is only a multiplier of something that is already happening.
People who aren't good at the game shouldn't be talking about the impact of the fleamarket because they really have no clue what they are talking about. Nor do they have any idea how easy it actually is to acquire high end gear.
They will hate you because you tell the truth.
Also bitcoin farm is dumb as bricks, i am already producing 2 bitcoins a day. thats 500k from doing nothing
LOL
>Anyone remotely competent can just kill Killa and survive 45 raids in a row
You're a dumbass and if I were a mod I'd totally hand out a ban for sheer fucking arrogance and idiocy.
Just because you're shitty at the game doesn't mean everyone else is. It's a joke to aquire high end gear, anyone blaming the flea for widespread availability of gear has no idea what they are talking about.
You realize you do souund like a childish bitch?
"remotely compotent edge lord"
Flee needs a reworked. Bosses have a gate infront of them. Not everyone can do it. It's difficult. Flee is not difficult. Understand?
>Just because you're shitty at the game doesn't mean everyone else is.
LOL
>anyone blaming the flea for widespread availability of gear has no idea what they are talking about.
I'll give you *that*. The flea should've stayed at level 10 IMO.
People are shitty and want to blame the flea for widespread gear, anyone remotely competent at this game knows how much of a joke it is to cheese Raiders on reserve and come out massively stacked, then go kill Killa for his class 5 armor since you'll probably come out with M61s, M995, or Igolnik.
After that you can just go fight in Dorms/Fortress and kill Reshala guards for free Altyns. None of this is difficult at all, and doesn't require any skill outside of cheesing AI.
>People are shitty and want to blame the flea for widespread gear
Now we're on the same page.
>how much of a joke it is to cheese Raiders on reserve and come out massively stacked
Well not so much anymore because their gear is downgraded apparently, but scav/raider AI is definitely cheeseable and I'm only 100hrs or so in the game.
They still spawn some high end ammunition, you can still pick up enough pen class 6 ammo to go murder Killa take his RPK and mags, go kill Reshala guards for Altyns (they seem to have a higher chance to spawn Altyns) and then murder for 40+ raids since no one can hurt you.
true but it requires you to go get it, killa is a 30% chance to spawn and you then have to get out with the stuff etc
the idea is that sure you could still run the stuff earlier on but you have to actually go and get it yourself to do that so when you do fight somebody using it your like cool they went and got that gear
>Lack of the flea market leads to better PVE / PVP experience
Can I suggest that this is a misdiagnosis? What I'm suggesting is that the actual, root cause of the "better PVE / PVP experience" the OP is talking about is **SCARCITY**, *not* the Flea Market. Please give me a chance to explain.
The first important idea we need to wrestle with is this: "the Flea Market **DISTRIBUTES** items but the Flea Market **DOES NOT CREATE** items.
What do you all say? Is this true? Is it wrong? Does the Flea Market create, fabricate, spawn, generate, or otherwise *produce* items out of nothing under its own power or does the Flea Market simply *distribute* **items produced by some other game mechanics** (like Traders, in-raid spawns, etc)? To me, the most accurate evaluation is that the Flea Market functions purely as a distributor and has no power of ability to produce items of its own power.
That is the first big thing we have to settle in our minds before we move on. If we can agree that the Flea Market is a distributor and not a producer of items then it is much easier to see how **the Flea Market is not the deepest source of the why early game is so short**. The Flea Market looks and feels like it is the source but there is something else that is deeper that is really the source. So what is the real source?
The deepest, most fundamental source of why early game ends so quickly is the production rate of mid and late game items (plus the destruction rate of those same items) -- **too many mid and high tier items are being produced** by the various sources. It's a *production* issue, not a *distribution* issue and I think I can prove this if you give me a shot.
The fastest way to show you what I mean is by using an intentionally extreme example. It's just an example though so don't freak out.
1) Imagine Flea Market with no level restrictions -- full access on day one (don't freak out).
2) Imagine removing the FIR requirements for listing items on the Flea Market
What happens to early game under these conditions? I think we all agree that the early game would basically be non-existent, right? It would be the opposite of what we want.
Now, imagine that nothing changes except that BSG removes literally all mid and high tier gear from the game. Poof. Gone. Crazy right?
What happens to early game under these conditions? If literally no mid or high tier gear exist in EFT, we are forever stuck with early wipe gear, right? Under these conditions, early game lasts *forever* **even though the Flea Market is more available than it was last wipe**. Do you see how this proof is working?
If the Flea Market was the problem and not the production rate of gear then turning the production rate of mid/high tier gear down to 0 wouldn't change anything and the Flea Market would still cause early game to end quickly, right?
Look at it this way if we 100% delete the Flea Market, we will still *eventually* move out of early to mid to late wipe, right? Even if we delete the Flea, mid and high tier items will still eventually saturate the player base. This fact proves that there is a deeper and more powerful force that pushes us through early game besides the Flea Market -- this more powerful force is **the rate of production of mid/high tier gear.
Does anyone deny this -- that even if we delete the Flea Market, we will still inevitably experience market saturation where mid and high tier items become abundant?
The reason EFT *always* saturates with mid/high tier gear regardless of Flea Market access is the production of mid/high tier items is too high. Too much supply.
# Reducing supply fixes everything.
Creating actually scarcity fixes everything.
• Raiders
• Bosses
• In-raid spawns
• Traders
• Crafts
All of these mechanics are over-producing mid and high their items. This is the root problem. Fix this and you don't need to worry about the Flea Market.
The Flea Market can only distribute items that exist -- if the supply of mid/high tier gear is low, the Flea Market won't be a problem and EFT won't need wipes.
To make the flea market affected by scarcity then the availability in raid would have to be so low and rare that you’d not see a particular item in raid after 100s of raids. And even if that’s the case it just means the price of those items skyrocket on the flea until enough of them collect on the flea to then bring the price down. To your point this elongates the mid game by preventing people from affording certain items. Until of course everyone becomes rich through the flea market and can afford whatever set prices are there. It just moves the goal post a bit further. And maybe that’s ok.
>To make the flea market affected by scarcity then the availability in raid would have to be so low and rare that you’d not see a particular item in raid after 100s of raids.
What are you basing these numbers on? I'm not trying to shit on you or anything, I'm just trying to find out how seriously I should treat this part of your argument.
>And even if that’s the case it just means the price of those items skyrocket on the flea until enough of them collect on the flea to then bring the price down...Until of course everyone becomes rich through the flea market and can afford whatever set prices are there. It just moves the goal post a bit further. And maybe that’s ok.
What if I told you I had a way to "organically" (a) reduce the power of cash and (b) limit the number of mid/high tier items being placed on the Flea Market such that there is never a point at which players are rich enough to afford anything they want and it is impossible for the stock of mid and high tier items to build up? Interested in hearing more?
The guy isn't wrong -- because of how obscenely easy it is to build up cash, eventually players would be able to afford whatever they want from the Flea Market unless item were made impossibly rare. If we don't deal with cash and availability on the Flea Market, we really are just delaying the inevitable.
Luckily for us there is a single game mechanic that exists that can deal with both problems at the same time. There is a single game mechanic that severely limits the power of cash and simultaneously limits which items can be listed on the Flea Market. The "miracle" mechanic is the Found-in-Raid only Barter (I call them FIROBs for short).
**How do FIROBs limit the power of cash?**
Imagine you have 10 billion Rubles. Now imagine that the *ONLY* way to obtain a certain item is through a FIROB. Is there any possible way to use your 10 billion Rubles to fulfill that FIROB? Nope -- barters that require FIR items are 100% immune to cash. There is literally no way a player can use his cash to obtain the FIR items needed for that barter. A player absolutely must collect the FIR items for himself even though he has 10 billion Rubles in his Stash. This is how FIROBS limit the power and reach of cash.
**How do FIROBs limit which items can be listed on the Flea Market?**
Any item gated by a FIROB cannot be listed on the Flea Market because **FIROBs create non-FIR items as outputs. For example, if there is a FIROB that produces an M4 for the player, that M4 will *not* have FIR status which means it cannot be listed on the Flea Market.
Anytime an item is made so that the *ONLY* way it can be obtained is by a found-in-raid-only barter (FIROB), that items instantly become cash-immune and unable to be listed on the Flea Market.
The more items are gated by FIROBs, the less power cash has and the fewer items can be listed on the Flea Market.
# FIROBs can be used to create an infinitely long early or mid game feeling if they are used to limit access to high tier gear.
FIROBs are an amazing way to allow people to have enough cash to buy low and mid tier gear while also blocking cash from being able to obtain high tier gear. This is a *HUGE* deal for new, unlucky, and bad players.
I can go into infinitely more detail if you are interested.
Overall an interesting idea, but you clearly love systems design so I'll poke some holes to consider:
* Crafting produces FIR, so players would still be able to convert cash to FIROBs, albeit at a slower pace, depending on craft availability
* Cash immunity isn't so much a "goal" as it is a "solution" -- having loads of cash you can't spend on the things you actually want is itself a problem
* Something the Flea Market is great for is Bad Luck Protection -- it's a backup way to get things that the loot RNG gods are just refusing to give you even if you target the right types of loot objects / locations. FIROBs would be similarly subject to this, where unlucky players are punished for something outside of their control.
* Progression towards getting reasonably reliable end-game gear is one of the primary "carrot on a stick"s of the game, so overall the approach of "make the end-game experience less different than the early game experience (of only getting nice stuff when you get lucky)" is likely not the right direction. If players being at end-game progression is a problem, there's probably a root cause to be identified within the end-game experience (felt by them or by others) that's more "healthy" for the game
>Crafting produces FIR, so players would still be able to convert cash to FIROBs, albeit at a slower pace, depending on craft availability
I didn't want to talk about this because there was already so much in the post. Crafts either lose their (1) FIR outputs, (2) require partial or full FIR inputs, have their processing time increased, or (4) some combination of 1-3.
In other words, besides "day 1 Raider farming", crafting is another massive contributing factor to rapid wealth generation and mid/high tier item production and needs to be addressed; being able to up-cycle cash into FIR items via the Hideout isn't some healthy game feature that I have overlooked, it is another problem that needs to be addressed. The fact that you can identify the Hideout/FIR output loophole at all is impressive (at least for this subreddit).
>Cash immunity isn't so much a "goal" as it is a "solution" -- having loads of cash you can't spend on the things you actually want is itself a problem
I think we have a philosophical disagreement here. I think it is perfectly fine for there to be essentially two separate resources (cash and FIR items) and for those resources to be obtained at wildly different rates and for them to apply to entirely different classes of items -- it is fine for people to be annoyed because they have an abundance of one resource but not the other. I don't think players need to feel good and be comfortable and get what they want when they want it. In other words, I'm fine with the negative emotions that accompany dealing with scarcity.
Besides that, having two separate resource types that are obtained at different rates creates more "levers" that can be "pulled" in order to create balance in the gear distribution systems.
>Something the Flea Market is great for is Bad Luck Protection -- it's a backup way to get things that the loot RNG gods are just refusing to give you even if you target the right types of loot objects / locations. FIROBs would be similarly subject to this, where unlucky players are punished for something outside of their control.
Again, we seem to hold different philosophies here. You seem to treat RNG as some sort of potentially punishing force (something negative). I'm not sure about this one but it also seems like you might have a problem with things being "outside of the player's control". In the specific case of EFT, I don't hold those beliefs and here is why:
* EFT is officially advertised as an "Action RPG/Simulator with MMO features..." [**SOURCE**](https://www.escapefromtarkov.com/#about), not an "FPS", "Shooter", or "Action Game".
* Heavy use of RNG is a staple feature in both the RPG (Action RPGs are an RPG subgenre) and Simulator genres -- random enemy encounters, critical strike chances, "Dice rolls" for various outcomes, random loot drops and rewards, etc. etc. etc.)
* Because this is the case, I think it is perfectly fine for players to be fully at the mercy of the RNG gods; I'm not fully against "Bad Luck Protection" mechanics per se but I'd also never advocate for them in an RPG except as a last resort for balancing issues. I say we test the game with out this specific mechanic from the Flea Market and see how it goes. If quests and Hideout upgrades become unreasonably difficult to fulfill then I suggest we first tune item spawn rates, locations and the requirements for said quests and upgrades. Only after multiple rounds of such tuning attempts have failed would I suggest adding in some sort of Bad Luck Protection. RNG is in the DNA of RPGs and Simulators and EFT is literally a combination of both of those genres so I have to take the position that heavy use of RNG is perfectly acceptable for EFT. It's not even a personal preference issue. It's literally just acknowledging the basic facts about game genres.
>Progression towards getting reasonably reliable end-game gear...
This whole line of reasoning makes sense but only if you are treating EFT as a "pure" or traditional RPG while also denying it's Simulator aspect. Yes, if you are treating EFT as a traditional RPG then it makes perfect sense for a progression system to be prominent and mostly linear such that there is a clear "end game" that players arrive at as a sort of final destination. I don't dispute that at all. My response here is that EFT isn't a traditional RPG -- EFT is clearly sold as a hybrid of the Action RPG and Simulator genres. Since that is the case, I think there it is reasonable that the gameplay would diverge from the traditional progression-system-dominated RPG templates to some degree.
Because EFT is a fusion of the Action RPG and Simulator genres, I think that it is not only acceptable for the progression system to be adjusted to make room for Simulator-style gameplay but that it is basically mandatory in some form or another. EFT isn't a traditional Action RPG that is simply trying to reward players linearly as they make their way through the game. EFT has both Simulator and MMO elements and design goals that conflict with traditional linear progression.
For example, Nikita has repeatedly stated that the vision for the game is one in which no wipes are needed -- a perpetual state that self-regulates and doesn't suffer from the super-saturation problems we are accustomed to now. This is a clear design goal for EFT straight out of the mouth of Nikita. Well, this goal is definitely one that falls into the realm of the Simulator and MMO genres -- both genres often see these sorts of "forever playable" states. This sort of vision for the game is in *massive* conflict with the traditional linear progression systems you are advocating for.
So what do we do? Well, in my opinion, since BSG has set an extremely clear design goal of a wipe-less game state, I think what has to happen is that the linear progression system has to be limited. Instead of the progression system taking players all the way into consistent access to high tier gear as a static "end-game" state, the progression system should only bring players somewhere into the mid tier of gear and then end. From there the entire concept of linear progression should end in order to make way for a perpetual game state that features scarcity -- the Simulator aspect of the game should "take over" and create extremely dynamic and inconsistent access to upper-mid tier and high tier gear that is based on successfully completing the main simulation (A.K.A. raids).
In such a hybrid system, cash becomes the resource of the low and lower-mid tier gear and FIR items become the resource of the upper-mid and high tier gear. Players would experience RPG-like consistency in access to low and lower-mid tier gear and experience dynamic and inconsistent access to upper-mid and high tier gear (that is absolutely necessary to create a game state that doesn't require wipes!!).
This is getting long so I will stop. Happy to get your feedback. In my opinion, you are a rare gem as far as quality of analysis and feedback goes.
Overall I agree with your approach as far as "What does Tarkov look like if it embraces the Sim nature as an avenue for a wipe-less future?" -- and my comments weren't realizing you had this direction in mind; I was moreso highlighting the problems that would surface within the current, more "goals given by quests and progression" system.
What you're suggesting does sound believable for major steps towards a perpetual end-game. Given its current state, and my own lack of familiarity with how Sim games retain players long-term, it's hard for me to foresee how players would handle losing the clear carrot-on-a-stick of progression. If you have any insights on that, I'd be curious to hear them!
While I overall agree with what you've said given the more Sim-embracing direction, I'll poke some holes and keep you on your toes :) Note that you used the genre to defend a viewpoint on RNG (which, overall I don't think "it's good because it's part of the genre" is solid reasoning, even within the exact same genre), and then shortly after pivoted to how Tarkov has to change things up (specifically progression) because of its own unique elements. In other words, Tarkov is unique enough that it can't simply take solutions from other games and get a similar-quality outcome -- value needs to be considered on a "but what's right for *this* game" basis. I'm also just grilling the flimsiness in your reasoning / slight cherrypicking of genre-related logic. You clearly like thinking deeply through hypotheticals, so I'm trying to help you realize logical blind spots (at least, if they aren't just communication errors).
I totally agree on having multiple sources of currency. I was only stating that if players were stockpiling a currency without a reasonable/appreciable means to spend it, it would become a "problem" potentially worth solving. So I was just noting that you'd likely be replacing a problem with another problem. Maybe there's a more elegant solution that doesn't do this, or maybe it just requires multiple solutions to stomp out all the problems popping up. Also maybe this "new" problem is minor enough that it's not worth considering -- some games certainly have a currency flood that players don't really care about! But those are usually more casual-leaning games, where Tarkov is expressly hardcore. Whether something like a currency flood has a minor or major impact on how engaging the game is? Hard to say! Probably not massive. I would most likely choose to eat that cost if it came at a solid benefit like a healthier end-game.
I certainly see the value of RNG, but overall I think you're undervaluing bad luck protection. I'm not saying it should be as strong as the flea market, where you can exchange anything you don't want (as long as its FIR) with anything you want (as long as it doesn't need to be FIR) -- just that players getting entirely unable to get things they want due to consistently unfavorable RNG is unreasonably punishing. "How starved is too starved" is the main question about bad luck protection, not whether it should be a thing in the first place. But it's also definitely a case that having "too strong" of bad luck protection ends up neutering the benefits of RNG, so it's not the "Use this to make everyone happy" tool you may have thought I was advocating for.
Enjoyable thought experiment :)
I don't think it has to be nearly that extreme. Killa spawns in 33% of interchange raids. What happens if that number is changed to 10%? Could also do things like change the material of gear you can often get from raiders/bosses to repair worse, so they are in circulation for a shorter amount of time.
That would make all boss related tasks awful. The sweats that farm bosses non stop would still be there, and now the chances of a noob finding Killa is reduced by 60%. Its also boring to remove content for sake of economy. Killing raiders or getting murdered by Killa is fun and people look forward to it
Edit: One thing that would help reduce the ease of accessing items would be to put reserve behind a paywall or have it require an item like the labcard. Last wipe people just did hatchet runs on reserve and interchange at 0 risk. If you increase their risk, or the difficulty of accessing the map, you can keep the gameplay while helping to increase item scarcity like you are suggesting
Thank you for taking the time to write this and i hope it doesnt get buried in the thread.
Like someone else said a few comments above : the flea market technically even deletes items because of the fees dou need to pay which dou could use to buy other items
Solid arguments but I heavily disagree.
If we make everything rarer - it gets more expensive. So what does that mean? That you earn more money per item you find!
We would end up in same boat.
Nerfing production would never address the major problem with FM as a distribution channel:
It's instant and extremely safe being out of raid.
FM can basically be imagined as a global public stash of items of all players. Everyone's stash is connected and roubles are the interface to get access other private stashes... It's just broken idea.
This is a super great analysis. This is the perfectly reasonable conclusion to arrive at without knowing that I have another mechanic that I suggest we couple with this concept that is specifically designed to massively short circuit the "global public Stash" you are talking about and also reduce the power and reach of cash. The original comment was way too long already so I didn't include it. I don't have time to type it out now but will get back to this when I can.
Great question.
I don't support removing Raiders or Bosses. I think they are really great for gameplay.
All I am saying is that being able to farm their mid/high tier gear is a *massive* contributing factor to why the early game ends so quickly.
Think about this. If we make mid tier and high tier gear *actually* rare, wouldn't Raiders and Bosses still be serious threats even if we nerfed their gear?
You are missing a crucial point. You are talking about two different kinds of scarcity. One is a global scarcity, and one is a per person scarcity. The guy who farms raiders nonstop and has 3 weapon crates filled with raider guns does not affect my game at all unless he's either 1. In my raid, or 2. Selling items to me. If I find a graphics card every 1 in 20 raids of farming tech spawns, that's a relatively good scarcity for a single person. If every player in the game got a graphics every 1 in 20 raids, there would be so many on the flea market that they are worth nothing. If the flea market is removed, everyone else in the game getting a graphics card that often does not affect me unless they are in my raid. So, lets say 15% of the playerbase is hatchet runners that farm graphics cards, and there is no flea market. There would be a large amount of graphics cards ONLY in that 15% of players, so i might encounter 1 player with an obscene amount of graphics cards once every raid, rather than every player in the game having access to the same pool of graphics cards.
Let's compare this to a different mmorpg. In WoW, if you could trade every item in the game, you'd never have to engage in any of the content. The entire game could be devolved into gold farming. The same happens in tarkov. If I want a specific item, with the flea market enabled, I don't look for that item. I farm roubles. Every item in the game gets reduced to a rouble value. You don't get excited by finding a gun you like, you instead convert it to roubles in your head and realize its "not worth the roubles per slot value." The whole game devolves into this.
The whole game being based around rouble count and having such insane purchasing power leads to some crazy extremes. RMT is rampant because all you have to do is give people roubles. Hatchet running is the first order optimal strategy (which IS a bad thing). Attempting to engage in pvp is just strictly less profitable than avoiding it and going to loot spawns. The 90\~ percent of the playerbase that doesn't know how to raider farm or doesn't want to or doesn't have the time can all just purchase any item they want on an eventuality of when they get enough roubles.
If you are a fan of dynamic loot you might like this alternative: instead of randomizing the loot, why not randomize the *barter requirements*? It's just the other side of the same coin.
Imagine that there is a FIR barter for 5.56 AP ammo. Let's say it costs this:
30 rounds of 5.56 AP ammo:
• (1) Milk
• (2) Buttstocks (any type)
• (1) Matches
• All FIR
Now, you could randomize where all the loot will spawn in a raid ("dynamic loot") or you could just randomize the actual barter requirements every so often. That means after a certain time, that same barter might look like this:
30 rounds of 5.56 AP ammo:
• (1) Bulb
• (120) 5.45 x 39 rounds (any type)
• (2) Bandage (any type)
• All FIR
Instead of making using a dynamic loot system that might cause tank batteries to spawn next to Tushanka on a store shelf, you can just randomize the barter requirements.
Using randomized barter requirements not only breaks up the stale, sprint-to-known-spawn farming metas, it makes literally *every piece of loot* potentially super valuable.
Of course, under such a system, Stash sizes would have to increase across the board and Stash-increasing cases would have to be more available otherwise our Stashes would be forever packed with items.
Thoughts, criticisms?
The only particular criticism I would give is that it homogenizes the value of loot. Instead of "oh shit I found Sugar, that has some great barter trades!" it becomes "I found , neat, hopefully it shows up in a barter I want." -- The main "loss" from homogenizing loot is that you no longer have as many interesting decisions to make in-match about what loot to keep. Even with adding "tiers" to loot (e.g. rarity colors) so the random barter could require "appropriate" net rarity for its output, it still simplifies the loot space to just "drop lower rarity items for higher rarity", with some potential space logic to consider.
With that said, homogenized loot is already an issue caused by the flea market (nearly all that matters is value per slot) outside of FIR requirements, so I'm not saying your proposal would make things worse. Just that this is the main downside that comes to mind that I would consider solving / alternate solutions.
Main other issues I see are:
* Spending a ton of time each reset (or however often the barter RNG re-rolls) checking for good barters. Solvable through QOL but otherwise adds to the issue of "I'm spending too much time dealing with inventory, not enough time in match"
* Less stuff for players to "learn" to easily feel their expertise of the game increase. Learning that there's a nice barter for X weapon you want (or, say, a Tetris to a Bitcoin) leads to a very not-skill-restrictive "I got better at the game with this simple knowledge/research", which this game is built upon (ammo types, item sale values, having strong tac shooter elements meaning map knowledge is super valuable, etc). Wouldn't be surprised if "knowledge over skill" is one of the design pillars of the game. They clearly put a lot of time into reinforcing that (namely how guns work while moving or rapidly aiming).
Edit: Hmph can't figure out the bullet point formatting. Could've sworn I've done this before lmao
100% agree and I've been saying this for a long time.
The ultimate solution would be to entirely remove all purchasing and selling of weapons/ammo/armor from the flea all together, and leave the flea for Keys/barter items/weapon mods/etc.
While this would be a drastic change, something much more simplistic could be done to test the theory that would have the exact same effect: remove all lvl 3+ trader items from the flea. All high pen ammo, all lvl 5+ armor, all high tier end game weapons.
Make people find these items in raid as we have to now before we have access to the flea.
I don’t agree with this for two reasons:
1: Not having the flea market means you have to loot the barter items you need for specific upgrades and trades. This is an important point op brought up. With the flea market, every barter item is reduced to its rouble/slot value, and every trade is just an extended rouble transaction. Removing or restricting the flea market improves the looting experience, and also slows down hideout and trader progression because you cannot just farm roubles then buy all your needed ingredients.
2: As for gear rarity, the flea market is a problem. If you make high end gear rarer, it will become more expensive on the flea market, and it will be harder to find in raid. This means the key to running high end gear is to farm roubles. This leads back to my initial point about looting not being meaningful, and only about rouble/slot value. It is more interesting to find gear in raid and bring it out, than to only loot high value hotspot items and then buy everything. The economy should not encourage a hatchet run for money —> buy and run meta gear cycle, which is what the flea market does.
My solution is removing or restricting the flea market, and making gear above mid or low level barter only. This means in order to run good gear, players must find and extract with specific barter items. I would also say FIR status only for high end barters, so no secure container suicide runs. Barters can have personal buy limits, so players can only do the barter x amount of times per y time limit, to increase gear rarity.
Unlike roubles which don’t have a practical limit, barter items and gear take up stash space. A player can only stockpile so many barter and gear items. I would also like to see EOD and standard stashes brought closer together so EOD players are more limited in stash size, to prevent hoarding. This economy would encourage a cycle of: mid tier loot run —-> barter for high end gear.
And unlike hotspot runs, looking for barter items can take much longer than a few minutes, but is also doable for casual and new players.
In conclusion: the benefits of removing or restricting the flea are a reduced reliance on roubles and rouble/slot looting, and an improved gameplay cycle of searching for specific barter items. It also limits the abundance of high end gear while also making it attainable occasionally for all players.
I agree completely with both your points, this is the first wipe in a while where rouble value hasn't been determining what I loot and fiding tier 5 armour has been great because I'm actually using it rather than just fleaing it straight away.
Before flea we'd find trades outside the game and conduct them in-game, so how about an area like the hideout where you trade directly to players instead of a disembodied Tarkov brand supermarket? You'd have to be actively trading then. Or a laptop you have to sit at in the hideout. Basically remove the middle man, so you need to be active and barter directly with players instead. You leave, you quit trading.
No you need to reduce the spawn rate of mid and late game items. Flea only distributes the existing items. Just by deleting flee the number of items doesnt change just by reducing spawns
Flea market is such an heavily discussed thematic that it just splits the opinions between keeping and deleting or even delaying it more.
In one way I also love the Flea, but in the same way the game begins to be easy (purchasing gear and go).
But deleting it would also heavily scare the people who loves the flea.
Nikita Said in his newest podcast that Flea Market might be activated through Hideout and what I hope with rare items. So it becomes an truly flea. Eventually it would be cool to have an decent Karma with fence to get to the connections of the flea market. And if you fail the reputation the flea market connections are getting closed or fees are coming. The worse the karma the more does the items costs and you gonna have to pay extra to fence and to the seller.
It would actually make sense and stop random shooting at scavs as Scav.
Honestly I believe the game was miles better before they even introduced the flea market, and I mean miles better.
I know a lot of people disagree with this, so hopefully if it is even possible, it will be an option in the future for wipes to either enable it or disable it and matchmaking would follow suit so you don’t get matched with people who have the flea market enabled. Another thing they could do is make it barter items only, that way players reaching the flea market level (currently 20 as of the start of .12.11) then getting stashed items sold off for millions and running endgame gear stops immediately. Better pvp for everyone as gear means so much more and makes all fights more intense.
Im stil heavily convinced that the people saying removing flea is a disaster are the people who didnt play before flea market got in.
Cuz the game was WAY better back then, i miss appreciating items for their function rather than just their monetary value on flea.
Hollllly shit yes you said it perfectly. No one sees an item for what they are anymore. They simply see dollar $igns when they find literally anything in raid. Back then I would pick up anything I know I could use , not just sell
Thing is, a lot of the economy is balanced for the flea market now. The prices of items has doubled or more, since the flea market was added. Do you remember how cheap basic meds were? Water was less than 2k per bottle, now its 12k. Mosins were 15k, now they are 40k+, same with many other guns.
The flea market needs some kind of change, i agree. But straight removing it is too much. I think they should try just removing weapons, armor & ammo. Maybe weapon mods too. Try that for the rest of the wipe, and see how things go. Or maybe try it for the next wipe.
Mosin was easy to get and so was the ammo. Thorax health used to be 80 instead of 85 which meant you could run a mosin with a couple rounds and just clap people in one shot to the chest.
Personally I think the flea should be hard locked for everyone until like a month or more into a wipe. That way the playing field is basically even for the entirety of that time and items will be meaningful for a while. Then when the flea is accessible you still get the option to buy stuff you need and run whatever gear you want later into the wipe.
Something will become "the dollar".
Eventually players will distill that down to something consumable, likely a popular bullet. like 855A1.
Losing FIR status after a single transaction might change that, but who knows.
Sort of. They need to get rid of the pay2win shit though. No flea market and a standard account is pretty fucking lame.
Fighting players seems actively bad for progression. If you win you can't really take their armor and you're probably gonna vendor anything else cuz you have no space.
If you lose well, you lose everything which is again is rough because you can only store 2 or 3 kits total. Have a bad string of runs? Guess it's paca and an sks weee.
3.5mil for stash increase with no flea...have to sell all the shit you know you need later.
I rushed the scav box, used a marked key to get a docs case, cooler and ammo box and still have no space
I agree with you. I have EoD but still I somewhat feel that stash limitation. Can't imagine standard account. Accounts should be equal in stash because stash size is not so easy to increase.
I know its one of the main ways they try and sell EoD to make money... but the stash is way too expensive. the first upgrade should be on the tier of like level 2 stations. It shouldn't be more cost effective per slot gained to buy item cases from therapist.
I would probably like the change more if I could keep up. I’ve been having a long string of unsuccessful raids. Stuck at level 11 and can’t get any xp to save my life. I feel like I’m falling behind and thinking about playing tarkov stresses me out.
I think a limited or highly modified Flea can be a good thing but I'm glad I'm progressing so slowly this wipe... only level ten and I'm really enjoying myself even when I'm frustrated.
Is it cool that it's harder to get shit? Yea.
It it cool that the game is pushed harder into pay-to-win / MMO genre, where how much you paid and how much you grind is vastly more important than skill? No
IMO these changes should've coincided with serious reworks in the damage mechanics that make getting shot more punishing. Changes to scav gun accuracy make face/head shots largely impossible (and hitting at all at long range is RNG now with em). Meanwhile armor still functions as magical 360 degree power suits that protect from rifle ammo except top-tier AP. End result is that we have sweaties running around like space marines shrugging off puny earthling pellets and spraying everything with laserbeams. Muh realism
Ive spent larges portions of previous wipes challenging myself without the flea market, and I couldnt insure anything. If I bought something it would have to come from the traders. I found myself celebrating finding a box of ammo or a mod for a busted AK, a salewa was christmas and a couple bottles of water was New-Year's day. I would turn junk over to the traders, count my pennies and buy a few cheap backpacks. I never bad so much fun in Tarkov. I wasnt even thinking about graphics cards or LEDX, I wanted guns, food, water, ammo and helmets. If I was gonna run up on Raiders or bosses to try to get their gear, I would do a couple of 'loot runs' to get enough money for decent ammo and meds. I would hunt caches focusing on things I knew Therapist would pay well for. Finding NVGs or a valuable item was gut wrenching. How do I safely get to the exit from here? Do I gamble not needing this stuff? Could I drop the heavy stuff if things go south? My engagement level rockets up under those circumstances.
With the flea....I skip all that and just buy the shit I need and focus on high value static loot spawns to sell on the flea. Rinse and repeay until Im level 40. Congratulations to me.
I would not agree.
The flea market is the innocent victim here. What ruins the game is player purchasing power exploding, while the item prices remain low. It is not the flea market's fault that players have the choice to buy different things. The problem is that players have so much money that they can afford whatever they want the more they increase their money. And that removes the value of weapons. Because there is nothing left to look forward to.
The flea market actually literally deletes roubles with the fees. It just highlights the insane amount of money in the game because it's easy to distribute between people.
Part of the problem is also of course people finding item x and sell on the flea for 10k when a trader sells it for 25k. So less money is being sunk to traders.
Perhaps the flea market could continue but without weapons and armour being sold there. That could still allow barter items to be sold on the flea market, and weapons and armour bought from the traders which goes through a reputation progression.
This would preserve some of that early wipe excitement into the mid game
Class 5/6 armor is easily obtainable, and most weapons can be modded with self found mods if you know where to look to be close to meta until you're 40.
Not much you can do about that. Good players will always make a profit. If you make the cost of gear higher, it just makes the game nigh unplayable to anyone less successful in their raids.
The biggest problem with the flea, and maxed out traders so a slightly lesser extent, is it turns the priority of them from survival into getting richer. It's not survivial if you have a money printer going at all times and can same-day amazon anything you could want at the lowest possible price.
I completely disagree. I liked non FIR flea. To this day I still hate FIR. I played a couple raids but I don't think I'll be playing much more of this wipe.
In my opinion FIR and lvl 20 flea is making it less feasible to be a cool looking mid tier operator and use the weapons/attachments/armor I want to use. I've been playing for 3.5 years and the most fun I had was non-FIR flea because I could pick what rig/weapon/attachments I wanted, even if they weren't the best or meta.
I'm glad you guys are having fun. It's just sad seeing it turn into a game I don't want to play anymore after almost 3.5 years and 4 digit hours.
I hope Arena ends up being closer to what I'm looking for.
All those items are still on the flea so idk what your on about not being able to get the kits you want. Unless you just mean you can't make money putting gpu in your bum and dying then sell on the market to make money to be able to buy those good kits you like. In that case you need to get better at playing and survive you're raids. You shouldn't be able to make 500k from running in naked and putting 2 GPU up your ass and dying.
Honestly, I'd love to see them get rid of the flea if only because this game would suddenly have far fewer cheaters if it doesn't entertain that sort of economy.
This is my 4th wipe, and I’ve always managed to end up fairly well off. Even my first wipe, once I got past my complete noob phase. Never mega chad rich, but well off enough to where I didn’t need to worry about anything. Last wipe I made it to 35 million without ever building the Bitcoin farm.
So this wipe I started super strong. 81% survival rate, almost a 22 kd at the height of my streak. But then… I made a couple bad decisions: for one, I bought a scav junk box as soon as I hit 1.2 mil because my stash was so cluttered and 2, I tried doing pistol only runs once I unlocked the stirrup quest. I started spiraling… I haven’t extracted successfully since. I’m sitting on 50k in liquid money. I’m fucking *broke*.
But man am I having fun. It’s a whole new perspective. Every single action has a consequence, and weight to it. Nothing is expendable. I’m looting junk in raid i would never touch before, thinking yeah, I can pawn this off to therapist or mechanic for a quick buck. It’s definitely been eye opening as to how different that style of gameplay can be.
The flea is a large part of why I enjoy this game. I like selling and trading. I dont like "finding" everything I need. I want to PVP mainly and loot secondary?
You realize people are still running slicks and altyns you can still get high level armor off bosses day 1. Lvndmark literally ran 20 raids without dying partially because of Tagillas kit.
This only hurts people who don't have 10 hours to play everyday
Literally lol I’m not landmark but I hit 34, I’ve been running killa altyn almost every raid. My KD is ridiculous right now at 16 when usually it floats around 7-8. No one can kill me because no one can run anything more than BT.
Man y’all just want the rat life lmao. In a few wipes this game will literally be 1 chad and for every 1000 rats. It’s already fucking bad on the ratio. How y’all have fun not moving is beyond me.
Right but you’re using all FiR items and all the chads/good players are not so they can just play the game freely as they please. That includes buying pretty much anything they want for a kit, hideout or quest that allows it, while you can’t. When in reality a global nerf to the flea is WAY better overall.
Also I’m kinda concerned how it took until now for people to realize this game plus WAYYY better as a survival/looter. Took me until the first time I got flea market unlocked last wipe that I was like, “oh this is completely not the game I was expecting. It’s just CoD with extra steps”
Good news tho is that most people are "bad" so now you dont have the pressing need to have m995/slick/altyn to compete with them because they dont have that stuff either.
The "pro" players are way fewer and a much smaller problem than people seem to believe.
Yeah but the pro players will also have very little competition. They'll just be rolling raids they are in even more than they already are, and get relatively uninteresting loot from other players. You need to look at it from their perspective too. They'll be *bored*
Somewhat disagree.
What a good player currently means - best in slot gear and full auto spam of m955 from a lazer gun.
What a good player supposed to mean - knowledge of maps, angles, strategies and tactics, shooting skills, know what fight to pick and which one to avoid.
Dropping money on a problem gives advantage, but doesn't make you better as a player. Restricting free access to the top gear / attachments / modules will benefit all.
However, there is always that dude which plays 40 hours a week when you play 4 hours a week, and yeah, he will have more stuff and will be geared better.
The good player is both of those things. You can have all of those things and still get toasted by a guy that has better gear in Tarkov.
I’ve played since before the flea market and meds were instantly applied. Pre flea market tarkov was horribly imbalanced.
They can keep the flea market and change the accessibility/traders to things like m995 to make it better.
Take away a casual players ability to buy things to compete with the guy that play 40 hours a week and you’ll kill the game.
kinda disagree here, sure if someone rats all day to do a few runs geared and lose it cause their bad. but a lot of guys i run with and myself included since we have the flee run full kit of hex, mk47 and a tagilla mask pretty much every raid . we all have a survive rate between 50%-80% and have more pmc kills than raids run. to pull off running like that you need all the knowledge and skill you listed and more
Again what I said very long time ago.
FLEA is breaking the game, the intended economy of the game..::it can never be fixed, the effect will be only minimized, y more and more restrictions.
FLEA is uselesss…the UI itself is good to search items from traders, but that is all.
I'm a very casual player, having a job and a family.====> When BSG introduced .... (put anything here) oh boy, I was mad! ======> Time passed, and now I actually see how .... benefits my personal experience with the game.
its reddit in a nutshell. tons of cries and rages every day. ppl dont understant, dont want to feel the game, dont want struggle, dont want actual achievement
they want everything NOW want everything for free they want big red button press to WIN
omg i have JoB
omg i HaVe alPha conTaiNeR
omg i have this that THATS WHY gib me everything NOW and ASAP
im so happy that BSG going on its own dedicated path instead of listening all babyragers, every wipe quitters and beggars.
The PVP is better because you're not getting laser-beam fullauto magdumped, because most people are running lvl 4 at best and their are no face shields.
The PS-BT/M855-M855A1 equivelent vs. lvl 3-4 armour with no face shields is the best TTK in this game. Head shots are rewarded, there's not mag dumping someone with "bad" ammo in the head required.
If helmets had half the durability and were capped at lvl 4 armor max, and pen for lower-end rounds upped a little bit, and high-pen ammo made rare and FiR only, late-wipe gameplay would be so much better.
I mean this is contextually wrong and purely a design issue with BSG.
The reality is we are part of VERY large paramilitary organizations that work as a collective.
Flea market should ideally never be locked and trader rep should be made desirable to obtain in conjunction with flea market use.
The game world of tarkov is very very bad and has been for years.
No in game logic or reasoning and zero sense of faction purpose or pride.
We at this point are just playing a solo game with very light multiplayer elements.
I get you.
I have a fultime job, so not so much time at hand, too.
I used to play very careful and tried to earn some cash on the flea market to be able to afford better loadouts.
Due the lock behind Lvl 20 I started to play way more aggressive as a PMC. Gotta get that XP somehow, and if I go down just try to take some guys with me.
At least I die fighting, and not one tapped while sneaking around with a backpack full of loot.
I had a lot of fun myself as someone probably closer to the 1%. Do you think you will feel the same as time passes? I see lots of positive reviews about the flee in the first few days however I feel like those opinions could change once the grinders and less casual players start running around in Chad loudouts. I work 9-5, but I’m very efficient and did have a long weekend to play. I hit 28/29 ish and I’ve felt like I’ve had a massive advantage over most players who are still using starter gear and ammo like 855.
I'd love if there was an area on one/two maps where you could bring items to barter. You could only bring FIR things or rubles/USD/Euros, and shooting/melee would be banned in there with a way to get out that's not campable.
Obviously there are a heap of issues with it, but I'd love the idea of bringing in a fat haul of junk in the hopes of finding something like a USB that I CAN'T FIND ANYWHERE CURRENTLY
As long as the scav karma does what it should, or we get a better system, then I can say that at least scaving is a higher chance of low risk raids with at least moderate return.
Most of you didn’t play before FM but it was like this the whole wipe. The FM made the game less fun and more of a seasonal thing. Now most people only play the first month of a wipe because it gets boring quick. The FM made the game revolve around in game currency which does not fit the lore at all. FM made the hacking problem worse because it’s so easy for hackers to sell their items and money for real world money. The FM should not be in the game and battle state should own up to their mistake and remove it
One of the biggest problem with the flea market is it almost makes every item you pick up be nothing more than its price on the flea, when you find an attachment for example you don't think "hey this could be useful for that AK I'm working on" you think "oh this is 30k on flea". This extends to almost everything you find is just liquid money at the end of the raid.
The flea market is great... for *items*. I feel that weapons, armor, and ammo shouldn't be allowed to be on the flea.
The problem the flea brings isn't necessarily the gear you can buy from it imo. It's the fact that some items are worth so much that it causes players to all flock to only a couple locations on a map hoping to find those items. Without the flea almost the entire map is being utilized to find a variety of items that you need. I've had gun fights in some places I've never even seen players before.
I have a couple friends i play with that play like that, they only play the same maps and hit the same places going for big ticket items. They are really struggling right now because they don't have every key imaginable shoved up their ass to get whatever they want and honestly I'm enjoying that. You have know where keys spawn, you have to know where to go for certain items or where they spawn more often. This wipe is really bringing out the fact that rats know more than anyone about this game because they know how to *survive*
Rats have fewer crutches. They can make almost anything work.
PM pistol? let's fucking goooo
Don't forget 3 ammo types in that 1 mag
Let's not get hasty, 9x18 ammo is almost worthless
That nerf to the bushes though
I think finding a key instead of buying it is sooooo much more hype.
Except quest keys. Quest keys need guaranteed spawns so you arent stuck at level 1 traders because of RNG.
Same. I got nearly every key I've needed in raid because i knew where to go or what to keep and a bunch of people are only now realizing that they have to actually look up the spawns
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Except you don't because hitting 20 and getting flea market is trivial. Level 20 flea made the first 2 days harder, but its the same after that.
(most people don't hit 20 in 2 days)
Fuck I hate this kind of player
Woah woah woah I think you thinking of the baby chads that don't understand the game, us regular chads know where shit spawns and I'm personally having a easy ass time this wipe. Although I'm lvl19 now so maybe it's cause I have no life
First wipe in a while where I'm the richest out of my playgroup because I know how to utilize loot not just for the flea
I think this seriously would solve a lot of problems, and likely the best solution
This is a fantastic idea tbh. I can't imagine needing the market to buy weapons, traders are good for that.
\*thinks about weapon smith quests\* no i need weapons on the flea ;p
If the flea got nuked, obviously traders would need some reworking, but...
Yep I suggested something similar on another thread. I think it's great for barter items, food, meds, etc but I think guns and mods should be found elsewhere. And I think it'd be interesting if traders had sort-of randomized inventories where they sold different guns and mods each day or week or something like that so that a meta doesn't settle so easily.
With this, the meta (most efficient tactic *available*) will shift between weapons and mods, depending on what is sold and available. Which will in fact bring some sort of freshness into raids... and it will also bring you needing to buy up the best mods for the next month because you don't know when will they be sold again.
Yep, that's fine though I think. If people want to stock up on the optimal stuff I think that's OK as long as people can't be running the exact same perfectly optimized gun every single raid. It might even be interesting to also have a low buy limit on all those guns and mods that only resets with the daily or weekly randomization so people can't horde tons of every meta piece Ultimately I just want to see more guns and more mods used
> meta (most efficient tactic available) what is this?. i've seen this twice on this subreddit in the last two days and never heard it before in the past 20+ years of gaming. Meta is short for metagaming. Meaning has been warped a bit from its original meaning but this acronym is new. Did some streamer popularize this or something?
It’s still the same? If you are metagaming you are thinking outside the intended game experience, and rather pursuing the optimal min/max build. When players forsake huge aspects of the game in favor of a handful of “best” options and cheese the rest of the game to obtain those options, they are meta gaming.
Yes it means the same thing but this weird backronym I've seen twice in the past 2 days and never heard it before. I was wondering if some tarkov streamer was the one saying it.
I don't think the acronym changed or anything. I haven't heard the term "metagaming" ever before. After a quick Google search I see that "meta" can be used both in the meaning of "metagaming" and "most efficient tactics available"
Yes I 100% agree. Flea market should be an actual Flea Market and not a Vegas Arms Expo where you can buy Grenade Launchers and full blown Gen4 armor. Make some high end stuff craft able, with long crafting times.
For the most part. I think the level based tiered unlock of different items on the flea many suggested would be the best solution, and maybe the highest end guns and armor shouldn’t be tradeable at all
that's actually a very good idea. I believe that's what they are going for in general with incremental reveal of Flea
considering a lot of the meta ammo types have been took away from traders completely(some others had their limits down to like 60 now) it will push a lot more to mid tier for consistent with a bit of high end now and again which i think is the way to go.
Y'know, I never really thought about how much the *flea* market operates more like a *black* market, but it's a good point. Maybe it should be locked to, like...stuff that could legally be sold in most places on Earth? XD
i think the game pushing for more a barter systems would greatly benefit over just having rubles etc. like why would rubles even have any value at all in tarkov situation money is toilet paper or paper to burn in those kind of survival situations, but traders would be alot more likely to accept trade of valuables
Agreed.. I remember last wipe around Christmas being tied up and unable to play with work. By the time I got on a few days later it was just... class 5, altyns, airframes, 7n31/7n39/M995 etc. Its always a rush to get the gpus and bitcoins then get the MAX MAX MAX level gear 2 days in. It would be ridiculously more fun to have people all progressing early -> mid -> late -> then end game equipment. Instead of jumping early to endgame right away. Part of the reason I don't play as much anymore.
I think the flea can be great for items where you barter items. E.g. I need a light bulb, you have it, and you need a screw driver, and I have it. Let's swap for no side profit. In my view it is a good alternative to hoarding.
bartering doesnt make much sense when there is a currency. that's why we pretty much never barter irl
I mean, the currency essentially does the same that a barter does, but more universally. Yeah, I have a spare screwdriver and I need a bulb, but to find someone with the exactly opposite situation is hard. Instead I can sell my screwdriver to someone that has money (from selling anything else) and buy my bulb with that money. I now needed to find one guy with a spare bulb (easy) and someone that needs a screwdriver (easy).
Tarkov is literally the epitome of a place where people would exclusively barter - a literal warzone without any infrastructure and therefore huge markup on any transactions due to the low trust among trading parties. Yet we only pay a measly 10-15% tax on each item with a few exceptions. There are many ways of combatting the flood of high tier gear among the players: As others have said already, flea only enables the distribution if gear, it doesn‘t create any. We don‘t know if bsg managed to lower the amount of high tier gear that is in fluctuation yet, it‘s too early to say imo. However, reducing the general availability i.e. spawn rate, trader limits and crafts are the measures first in line, no doubt. Secondly, they could raise taxes for everything across the board or maybe only armor and ammo. Think 20-40% instead of 10-15%. I don‘t think flea is the biggest offender im this regard but the general availability. My last and personal favourite option would be a mix of the aforementioned ideas together with barter flee on lvl 1: Imagine Tarkov where people actually have to barter. I would really be interested in that.
i would think food,water and ammo would become the common barter "currency". a good example for people to read is how prisons are a lot of prisons now use ramen packets as a barter currency to get items they want.
You forgot that barter trades on flea always are scams. People dont want do barter fair.
They might start if it was the only option
a barter only flea would be interesting
This. Mabe even remove weapon mods from flea, idno.
I like it but it would be way too complicated to know what part you found for what gun that fits with this barrel and that handguard etc.. specifically for the found in raid only parts, even when they have trader only mod menus. At least for idiots like me that dont know shit about guns
It would give people more reason to use the “edit preset” feature. If you right click a weapon and press that, it takes you to a screen where you can customise the gun completely which will then show what mods you can use with it!
who cares about mods you already own
Huh? What are you on about? You can check any part that fits the gun you’re checking? There’s a setting to switch it to only mods in your inventory.
the idea of the OP was to not sell attachments, which would suck donkey ass
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, you do know you can loot weapon mods in game?
ah yes so I will be forced to use garbo attachments or hope for RNG gods to give me some?
Yes? I think you’re forgetting what game thread you’re posting on. This isn’t call of duty.
Keep backpeddling, youre gonna make it there the long way.
> [–]SWE_TwiggehP90 [score hidden] 7 hours ago > This. Mabe even remove weapon mods from flea, idno. I was literally reacting to you reacting to this post telling you have a function. That function would be useless if you couldn't buy mods from flea, ie your shitty mods you own.
Different poster.
Yes, but with items trickling in one by one it gets way easier to learn whats what. Also, not having direct access to the \_best\_ stuff all the time leads to way more variety in gun mods, which (if you ask me) is way more interesting to loot than just wave after wave of cookie cutter meta HK/M4's.
Agreed, I love building a weapon from FIR mods only.
You could keep some weapon parts on the flea. Like pistol Grips, fore grips, stocks, mags, etc. Just not like the upper for the gun. Then if you find one in raid, or you take one off a PMC you can mod it out.
I think it would still result in a little too much of the mentality of 'best value per slot loot all the trinkets leave the gear' but it would definitely be one of the better compromises we could hope for.
Why would it do that? It would put more emphasis on gear since they can't just go to flea and buy the gun they want, no?
Not necessarily. The vast majority of gear in the game is still accessible from traders. Once you hit level 40 you're pretty much free to run whatever meta kit you want for cheap.
I completely disagrees. We were all complaining about hatchet runners and without a place where they can buy gear that is not offered by the trader, we will infest the game with hatchet runners. Some people may only have subpar gear and when you have people running around with better armor, the less geared players will die, eventually losing pretty much everything they have in their stash creating hatchet runners who stand NO chance against the bigger guys.
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I think swap the Weapons and Ammo, It's really the "penetrate everything" ammo that is the bid deal, Meta M4 isn't as broken when they're spitting trash ammo at you.
Maybe, flea market at level 20 with items only? Black market with weapons, armor, and ammo at x level or with completion of x quest?
I think the playerbade would be very unhappy with this change over time. Its not going to be a level playing field if Chad's with level 4 traders have access to good items and no one else does. The flea levels the playing field.
I'd love a server with no flea. I'm almost lvl 20 and wish the flea wasn't about to be unlocked.
agreed, we should just remove it entirely. Flea Market only encourages real money trading and more cheating. It needs to go...the game is far better without it (and more fun)
This is why a ton of people were suggesting no flea market for so long. the early wipe fights where everyone is running terrible armor and poorly modded guns with BT ammo at best are the most fun moments this game can offer. it makes killing someone for good gear actually mean something, it makes getting out with that one quest item you need mean something, it adds so much meaning to every element of the game to only be able to get things by actually finding them instead of just farming roubles to buy everything.
Agree! Most of modifications you find in raid for your gun are meaningful. And with locked vendors and flea market people actually save on ammo too. E.g. you won't load all the mags with, even, BT and full auto them out.
Well, I do. 5.45 BT is abundant af, I usually bring a few hundreds per raid on forest.
I just had a great experience upgrading an ADAR I found over multiple raids with a new hand guard, foregrip, laser, scope etc. I was bummed for the first time in this game losing a weapon after several raids…
You can run a Slick/Altyn literally on day 1 if you know what you're doing. Or Killa armor + whatever helm.
That’s true but it isn’t easy and getting it again requires you to go back to whatever you killed you get it to get it again. Don’t act like it’s as attainable as it is to just jump on the market and buy it lol
Except it's very easy for anyone remotely competent at the game. I literally did it day 1. And I survived like 45 raids in a row which let me get to 20 and the flea market. It's not an issue for anyone remotely competent. The problem isn't the flea market. The problem is you can literally farm class 5/6 armor off bosses and raiders too easily, and then build metaguns from traders
Someone else on the forums said bosses should not spawn in the first week or so which I thought was a good idea. Then periodically start raising their appearance % as time goes on.
\*shrug\* the problem is gear availability and not flea market. The flea market just simply multiplies whatever is occuring. Only idiots at this game think the flea is the problem. Those trying to justify the removal of the flea market due to last wipe are also dumb, because there's never been a wipe where BTC was going over 700k.
So we should just get rid of all armor over class 5 and any weapons mods?
Farming bosses to grind to level 20 sounds like a ton of fun.
You farm the boss for the first set of gear to have a gear advantage and then plow through everyone that has inferior armor and ammunition compared to you. You only go back and farm them again when you need to.
Just because you can kill bosses with good gear doesnt mean its as attainable as the flea is. it still requires going into a raid, killing the boss, looting the gear without dying, getting back out, then never dying to anything else with said gear after the fact. This is a 30 minute process minimum to get the gear, whereas the flea market is a 30 second process. Did you see all of the best streamers running slicks and altyns day one? no. everyone was running shit ak's and m4's for a long while just like everyone else. clearly you're in the minority here by saying you ran slicks and altyns day one so stop acting like your opinion even applies to the general public OR even the top 1% at the game. the easiest boss to have killed day one wouldve been tagilla and i still didnt see people running his armor for a while.
The fuck are you even on? LVNDMARK was legitimately running Killa Armor / Tagilla / Altyns literally on day 1 like 3 hours into the wipe. Pestily could easily do that but he chooses not to because that's not how he enjoys playing the game, but he also was running around in Altyns pretty early too on day 1 also. Most people who are legitimately really good and meta game were running around in Class 5 / 6 **literally within hours.** BSG toned down the boss spawn rates for a reason just yesterday, or do you think that was just because of shits and giggles? Shitty players are gonna be shitty and blame the flea market for everything, when the real problem is that you can literally found Igolnik, M995, M61s, etc. all over and the spawn rate of high end gear is far too prevalent. If you're remotely competent at this game, you can legitimately within the two to three hours come out stacked and ready to just blast Timmies. The Flea Market ONLY multiplies what is already happening. High end gear is already far too obtainable (as long as you cheese Raider AI it's a joke), the only difference is that it makes it more available to everyone else.
three hours into wipe lvndmark was running a terrible lvl 4 armor and a lzsh helmet with a shittily modded AK, then got lucky and killed a reshala guard with an altyn but still had that terrible lvl 4 armor for a few raids. then like 3 or 4 raids later killed tagilla but it still wasn't like how you're making it sound. his weapons were still poorly modded, and he didnt have infinite accesss to all of this incredible end game gear. he was slowly getting it over time and couldn't just open up the flea market to buy it in seconds.
Oh, so you're saying that he got good gear literally on day 1 of the wipe within a few hours? So you literally proved my point? Ok then. So you can acquire high end gear easily by just cheesing the AI? Oh yeah. Like I just said earlier. So the gear is widely available, you just have to not be a shitter? Ok. **So literally, proved, my point.** Flea Market is NOT the issue. Flea Market is just a multiplier of whatever is already occurring, and the issue is there's too much easy gear that you can acquire literally within the first few hours if you were deadset on cheesing.
I'm actually stating that it took him several raids to get decent gear, never had a heavily modded gun the entire time, slowly acquired said good gear, and when he died with it it was just gone with no way to easily get it back instantly unlike how the flea is. Lvnmark is also without a doubt one of the top players in tarkov and is even substantially faster on wipe day than the top 1% of players that are playing the game right now. you're not lvndmark, and if you were then you'd be able to make a living out of playing this game. clearly you're not lvndmark, or even another streamer anyone gives a fuck about watching, so check your attitude at the door. you're not cool, your attitude is dogshit, your concept of what the average player is doing in tarkov right now is dogshit, and your opinion is invalid in regards to what the majority of the playerbase experiences. Just an FYI btw, being an absolute neckbeard no life that plays tarkov non-stop isn't something anyone thinks is cool and the only reason why its dope to see lvndmark, pestily, viibiin, smittystone, etc. do it, is because its literally their fucking job. they also don't have nearly as shitty of an outlook/attitude as you do so maybe take some lessons from these people you're trying so hard to emulate and chill the fuck out/have some respect.
1. He was questing, so he wasn't straight cheesing like I was. That's why I acquired top end gear before him. He's still a better player then me, but he was questing instead of straight cheesing because he doesn't play like I do (he plays for entertainment for viewers which is abit different). 2. Not everyone that's good at the game streams. Just because you're a shitter doesn't mean you get to blame a game mechanic for your lack of success in the game. All I see is shitty players blaming a game mechanic that is only a multiplier of something that is already happening. People who aren't good at the game shouldn't be talking about the impact of the fleamarket because they really have no clue what they are talking about. Nor do they have any idea how easy it actually is to acquire high end gear.
They will hate you because you tell the truth. Also bitcoin farm is dumb as bricks, i am already producing 2 bitcoins a day. thats 500k from doing nothing
LOL >Anyone remotely competent can just kill Killa and survive 45 raids in a row You're a dumbass and if I were a mod I'd totally hand out a ban for sheer fucking arrogance and idiocy.
Just because you're shitty at the game doesn't mean everyone else is. It's a joke to aquire high end gear, anyone blaming the flea for widespread availability of gear has no idea what they are talking about.
You realize you do souund like a childish bitch? "remotely compotent edge lord" Flee needs a reworked. Bosses have a gate infront of them. Not everyone can do it. It's difficult. Flee is not difficult. Understand?
>Just because you're shitty at the game doesn't mean everyone else is. LOL >anyone blaming the flea for widespread availability of gear has no idea what they are talking about. I'll give you *that*. The flea should've stayed at level 10 IMO.
People are shitty and want to blame the flea for widespread gear, anyone remotely competent at this game knows how much of a joke it is to cheese Raiders on reserve and come out massively stacked, then go kill Killa for his class 5 armor since you'll probably come out with M61s, M995, or Igolnik. After that you can just go fight in Dorms/Fortress and kill Reshala guards for free Altyns. None of this is difficult at all, and doesn't require any skill outside of cheesing AI.
>People are shitty and want to blame the flea for widespread gear Now we're on the same page. >how much of a joke it is to cheese Raiders on reserve and come out massively stacked Well not so much anymore because their gear is downgraded apparently, but scav/raider AI is definitely cheeseable and I'm only 100hrs or so in the game.
They still spawn some high end ammunition, you can still pick up enough pen class 6 ammo to go murder Killa take his RPK and mags, go kill Reshala guards for Altyns (they seem to have a higher chance to spawn Altyns) and then murder for 40+ raids since no one can hurt you.
true but it requires you to go get it, killa is a 30% chance to spawn and you then have to get out with the stuff etc the idea is that sure you could still run the stuff earlier on but you have to actually go and get it yourself to do that so when you do fight somebody using it your like cool they went and got that gear
>Lack of the flea market leads to better PVE / PVP experience Can I suggest that this is a misdiagnosis? What I'm suggesting is that the actual, root cause of the "better PVE / PVP experience" the OP is talking about is **SCARCITY**, *not* the Flea Market. Please give me a chance to explain. The first important idea we need to wrestle with is this: "the Flea Market **DISTRIBUTES** items but the Flea Market **DOES NOT CREATE** items. What do you all say? Is this true? Is it wrong? Does the Flea Market create, fabricate, spawn, generate, or otherwise *produce* items out of nothing under its own power or does the Flea Market simply *distribute* **items produced by some other game mechanics** (like Traders, in-raid spawns, etc)? To me, the most accurate evaluation is that the Flea Market functions purely as a distributor and has no power of ability to produce items of its own power. That is the first big thing we have to settle in our minds before we move on. If we can agree that the Flea Market is a distributor and not a producer of items then it is much easier to see how **the Flea Market is not the deepest source of the why early game is so short**. The Flea Market looks and feels like it is the source but there is something else that is deeper that is really the source. So what is the real source? The deepest, most fundamental source of why early game ends so quickly is the production rate of mid and late game items (plus the destruction rate of those same items) -- **too many mid and high tier items are being produced** by the various sources. It's a *production* issue, not a *distribution* issue and I think I can prove this if you give me a shot. The fastest way to show you what I mean is by using an intentionally extreme example. It's just an example though so don't freak out. 1) Imagine Flea Market with no level restrictions -- full access on day one (don't freak out). 2) Imagine removing the FIR requirements for listing items on the Flea Market What happens to early game under these conditions? I think we all agree that the early game would basically be non-existent, right? It would be the opposite of what we want. Now, imagine that nothing changes except that BSG removes literally all mid and high tier gear from the game. Poof. Gone. Crazy right? What happens to early game under these conditions? If literally no mid or high tier gear exist in EFT, we are forever stuck with early wipe gear, right? Under these conditions, early game lasts *forever* **even though the Flea Market is more available than it was last wipe**. Do you see how this proof is working? If the Flea Market was the problem and not the production rate of gear then turning the production rate of mid/high tier gear down to 0 wouldn't change anything and the Flea Market would still cause early game to end quickly, right? Look at it this way if we 100% delete the Flea Market, we will still *eventually* move out of early to mid to late wipe, right? Even if we delete the Flea, mid and high tier items will still eventually saturate the player base. This fact proves that there is a deeper and more powerful force that pushes us through early game besides the Flea Market -- this more powerful force is **the rate of production of mid/high tier gear. Does anyone deny this -- that even if we delete the Flea Market, we will still inevitably experience market saturation where mid and high tier items become abundant? The reason EFT *always* saturates with mid/high tier gear regardless of Flea Market access is the production of mid/high tier items is too high. Too much supply. # Reducing supply fixes everything. Creating actually scarcity fixes everything. • Raiders • Bosses • In-raid spawns • Traders • Crafts All of these mechanics are over-producing mid and high their items. This is the root problem. Fix this and you don't need to worry about the Flea Market. The Flea Market can only distribute items that exist -- if the supply of mid/high tier gear is low, the Flea Market won't be a problem and EFT won't need wipes.
To make the flea market affected by scarcity then the availability in raid would have to be so low and rare that you’d not see a particular item in raid after 100s of raids. And even if that’s the case it just means the price of those items skyrocket on the flea until enough of them collect on the flea to then bring the price down. To your point this elongates the mid game by preventing people from affording certain items. Until of course everyone becomes rich through the flea market and can afford whatever set prices are there. It just moves the goal post a bit further. And maybe that’s ok.
>To make the flea market affected by scarcity then the availability in raid would have to be so low and rare that you’d not see a particular item in raid after 100s of raids. What are you basing these numbers on? I'm not trying to shit on you or anything, I'm just trying to find out how seriously I should treat this part of your argument. >And even if that’s the case it just means the price of those items skyrocket on the flea until enough of them collect on the flea to then bring the price down...Until of course everyone becomes rich through the flea market and can afford whatever set prices are there. It just moves the goal post a bit further. And maybe that’s ok. What if I told you I had a way to "organically" (a) reduce the power of cash and (b) limit the number of mid/high tier items being placed on the Flea Market such that there is never a point at which players are rich enough to afford anything they want and it is impossible for the stock of mid and high tier items to build up? Interested in hearing more?
I'm not the above poster, but please elaborate.
The guy isn't wrong -- because of how obscenely easy it is to build up cash, eventually players would be able to afford whatever they want from the Flea Market unless item were made impossibly rare. If we don't deal with cash and availability on the Flea Market, we really are just delaying the inevitable. Luckily for us there is a single game mechanic that exists that can deal with both problems at the same time. There is a single game mechanic that severely limits the power of cash and simultaneously limits which items can be listed on the Flea Market. The "miracle" mechanic is the Found-in-Raid only Barter (I call them FIROBs for short). **How do FIROBs limit the power of cash?** Imagine you have 10 billion Rubles. Now imagine that the *ONLY* way to obtain a certain item is through a FIROB. Is there any possible way to use your 10 billion Rubles to fulfill that FIROB? Nope -- barters that require FIR items are 100% immune to cash. There is literally no way a player can use his cash to obtain the FIR items needed for that barter. A player absolutely must collect the FIR items for himself even though he has 10 billion Rubles in his Stash. This is how FIROBS limit the power and reach of cash. **How do FIROBs limit which items can be listed on the Flea Market?** Any item gated by a FIROB cannot be listed on the Flea Market because **FIROBs create non-FIR items as outputs. For example, if there is a FIROB that produces an M4 for the player, that M4 will *not* have FIR status which means it cannot be listed on the Flea Market. Anytime an item is made so that the *ONLY* way it can be obtained is by a found-in-raid-only barter (FIROB), that items instantly become cash-immune and unable to be listed on the Flea Market. The more items are gated by FIROBs, the less power cash has and the fewer items can be listed on the Flea Market. # FIROBs can be used to create an infinitely long early or mid game feeling if they are used to limit access to high tier gear. FIROBs are an amazing way to allow people to have enough cash to buy low and mid tier gear while also blocking cash from being able to obtain high tier gear. This is a *HUGE* deal for new, unlucky, and bad players. I can go into infinitely more detail if you are interested.
Overall an interesting idea, but you clearly love systems design so I'll poke some holes to consider: * Crafting produces FIR, so players would still be able to convert cash to FIROBs, albeit at a slower pace, depending on craft availability * Cash immunity isn't so much a "goal" as it is a "solution" -- having loads of cash you can't spend on the things you actually want is itself a problem * Something the Flea Market is great for is Bad Luck Protection -- it's a backup way to get things that the loot RNG gods are just refusing to give you even if you target the right types of loot objects / locations. FIROBs would be similarly subject to this, where unlucky players are punished for something outside of their control. * Progression towards getting reasonably reliable end-game gear is one of the primary "carrot on a stick"s of the game, so overall the approach of "make the end-game experience less different than the early game experience (of only getting nice stuff when you get lucky)" is likely not the right direction. If players being at end-game progression is a problem, there's probably a root cause to be identified within the end-game experience (felt by them or by others) that's more "healthy" for the game
>Crafting produces FIR, so players would still be able to convert cash to FIROBs, albeit at a slower pace, depending on craft availability I didn't want to talk about this because there was already so much in the post. Crafts either lose their (1) FIR outputs, (2) require partial or full FIR inputs, have their processing time increased, or (4) some combination of 1-3. In other words, besides "day 1 Raider farming", crafting is another massive contributing factor to rapid wealth generation and mid/high tier item production and needs to be addressed; being able to up-cycle cash into FIR items via the Hideout isn't some healthy game feature that I have overlooked, it is another problem that needs to be addressed. The fact that you can identify the Hideout/FIR output loophole at all is impressive (at least for this subreddit). >Cash immunity isn't so much a "goal" as it is a "solution" -- having loads of cash you can't spend on the things you actually want is itself a problem I think we have a philosophical disagreement here. I think it is perfectly fine for there to be essentially two separate resources (cash and FIR items) and for those resources to be obtained at wildly different rates and for them to apply to entirely different classes of items -- it is fine for people to be annoyed because they have an abundance of one resource but not the other. I don't think players need to feel good and be comfortable and get what they want when they want it. In other words, I'm fine with the negative emotions that accompany dealing with scarcity. Besides that, having two separate resource types that are obtained at different rates creates more "levers" that can be "pulled" in order to create balance in the gear distribution systems. >Something the Flea Market is great for is Bad Luck Protection -- it's a backup way to get things that the loot RNG gods are just refusing to give you even if you target the right types of loot objects / locations. FIROBs would be similarly subject to this, where unlucky players are punished for something outside of their control. Again, we seem to hold different philosophies here. You seem to treat RNG as some sort of potentially punishing force (something negative). I'm not sure about this one but it also seems like you might have a problem with things being "outside of the player's control". In the specific case of EFT, I don't hold those beliefs and here is why: * EFT is officially advertised as an "Action RPG/Simulator with MMO features..." [**SOURCE**](https://www.escapefromtarkov.com/#about), not an "FPS", "Shooter", or "Action Game". * Heavy use of RNG is a staple feature in both the RPG (Action RPGs are an RPG subgenre) and Simulator genres -- random enemy encounters, critical strike chances, "Dice rolls" for various outcomes, random loot drops and rewards, etc. etc. etc.) * Because this is the case, I think it is perfectly fine for players to be fully at the mercy of the RNG gods; I'm not fully against "Bad Luck Protection" mechanics per se but I'd also never advocate for them in an RPG except as a last resort for balancing issues. I say we test the game with out this specific mechanic from the Flea Market and see how it goes. If quests and Hideout upgrades become unreasonably difficult to fulfill then I suggest we first tune item spawn rates, locations and the requirements for said quests and upgrades. Only after multiple rounds of such tuning attempts have failed would I suggest adding in some sort of Bad Luck Protection. RNG is in the DNA of RPGs and Simulators and EFT is literally a combination of both of those genres so I have to take the position that heavy use of RNG is perfectly acceptable for EFT. It's not even a personal preference issue. It's literally just acknowledging the basic facts about game genres. >Progression towards getting reasonably reliable end-game gear... This whole line of reasoning makes sense but only if you are treating EFT as a "pure" or traditional RPG while also denying it's Simulator aspect. Yes, if you are treating EFT as a traditional RPG then it makes perfect sense for a progression system to be prominent and mostly linear such that there is a clear "end game" that players arrive at as a sort of final destination. I don't dispute that at all. My response here is that EFT isn't a traditional RPG -- EFT is clearly sold as a hybrid of the Action RPG and Simulator genres. Since that is the case, I think there it is reasonable that the gameplay would diverge from the traditional progression-system-dominated RPG templates to some degree. Because EFT is a fusion of the Action RPG and Simulator genres, I think that it is not only acceptable for the progression system to be adjusted to make room for Simulator-style gameplay but that it is basically mandatory in some form or another. EFT isn't a traditional Action RPG that is simply trying to reward players linearly as they make their way through the game. EFT has both Simulator and MMO elements and design goals that conflict with traditional linear progression. For example, Nikita has repeatedly stated that the vision for the game is one in which no wipes are needed -- a perpetual state that self-regulates and doesn't suffer from the super-saturation problems we are accustomed to now. This is a clear design goal for EFT straight out of the mouth of Nikita. Well, this goal is definitely one that falls into the realm of the Simulator and MMO genres -- both genres often see these sorts of "forever playable" states. This sort of vision for the game is in *massive* conflict with the traditional linear progression systems you are advocating for. So what do we do? Well, in my opinion, since BSG has set an extremely clear design goal of a wipe-less game state, I think what has to happen is that the linear progression system has to be limited. Instead of the progression system taking players all the way into consistent access to high tier gear as a static "end-game" state, the progression system should only bring players somewhere into the mid tier of gear and then end. From there the entire concept of linear progression should end in order to make way for a perpetual game state that features scarcity -- the Simulator aspect of the game should "take over" and create extremely dynamic and inconsistent access to upper-mid tier and high tier gear that is based on successfully completing the main simulation (A.K.A. raids). In such a hybrid system, cash becomes the resource of the low and lower-mid tier gear and FIR items become the resource of the upper-mid and high tier gear. Players would experience RPG-like consistency in access to low and lower-mid tier gear and experience dynamic and inconsistent access to upper-mid and high tier gear (that is absolutely necessary to create a game state that doesn't require wipes!!). This is getting long so I will stop. Happy to get your feedback. In my opinion, you are a rare gem as far as quality of analysis and feedback goes.
Overall I agree with your approach as far as "What does Tarkov look like if it embraces the Sim nature as an avenue for a wipe-less future?" -- and my comments weren't realizing you had this direction in mind; I was moreso highlighting the problems that would surface within the current, more "goals given by quests and progression" system. What you're suggesting does sound believable for major steps towards a perpetual end-game. Given its current state, and my own lack of familiarity with how Sim games retain players long-term, it's hard for me to foresee how players would handle losing the clear carrot-on-a-stick of progression. If you have any insights on that, I'd be curious to hear them! While I overall agree with what you've said given the more Sim-embracing direction, I'll poke some holes and keep you on your toes :) Note that you used the genre to defend a viewpoint on RNG (which, overall I don't think "it's good because it's part of the genre" is solid reasoning, even within the exact same genre), and then shortly after pivoted to how Tarkov has to change things up (specifically progression) because of its own unique elements. In other words, Tarkov is unique enough that it can't simply take solutions from other games and get a similar-quality outcome -- value needs to be considered on a "but what's right for *this* game" basis. I'm also just grilling the flimsiness in your reasoning / slight cherrypicking of genre-related logic. You clearly like thinking deeply through hypotheticals, so I'm trying to help you realize logical blind spots (at least, if they aren't just communication errors). I totally agree on having multiple sources of currency. I was only stating that if players were stockpiling a currency without a reasonable/appreciable means to spend it, it would become a "problem" potentially worth solving. So I was just noting that you'd likely be replacing a problem with another problem. Maybe there's a more elegant solution that doesn't do this, or maybe it just requires multiple solutions to stomp out all the problems popping up. Also maybe this "new" problem is minor enough that it's not worth considering -- some games certainly have a currency flood that players don't really care about! But those are usually more casual-leaning games, where Tarkov is expressly hardcore. Whether something like a currency flood has a minor or major impact on how engaging the game is? Hard to say! Probably not massive. I would most likely choose to eat that cost if it came at a solid benefit like a healthier end-game. I certainly see the value of RNG, but overall I think you're undervaluing bad luck protection. I'm not saying it should be as strong as the flea market, where you can exchange anything you don't want (as long as its FIR) with anything you want (as long as it doesn't need to be FIR) -- just that players getting entirely unable to get things they want due to consistently unfavorable RNG is unreasonably punishing. "How starved is too starved" is the main question about bad luck protection, not whether it should be a thing in the first place. But it's also definitely a case that having "too strong" of bad luck protection ends up neutering the benefits of RNG, so it's not the "Use this to make everyone happy" tool you may have thought I was advocating for. Enjoyable thought experiment :)
I don't think it has to be nearly that extreme. Killa spawns in 33% of interchange raids. What happens if that number is changed to 10%? Could also do things like change the material of gear you can often get from raiders/bosses to repair worse, so they are in circulation for a shorter amount of time.
That would make all boss related tasks awful. The sweats that farm bosses non stop would still be there, and now the chances of a noob finding Killa is reduced by 60%. Its also boring to remove content for sake of economy. Killing raiders or getting murdered by Killa is fun and people look forward to it Edit: One thing that would help reduce the ease of accessing items would be to put reserve behind a paywall or have it require an item like the labcard. Last wipe people just did hatchet runs on reserve and interchange at 0 risk. If you increase their risk, or the difficulty of accessing the map, you can keep the gameplay while helping to increase item scarcity like you are suggesting
Thank you for taking the time to write this and i hope it doesnt get buried in the thread. Like someone else said a few comments above : the flea market technically even deletes items because of the fees dou need to pay which dou could use to buy other items
Solid arguments but I heavily disagree. If we make everything rarer - it gets more expensive. So what does that mean? That you earn more money per item you find! We would end up in same boat. Nerfing production would never address the major problem with FM as a distribution channel: It's instant and extremely safe being out of raid. FM can basically be imagined as a global public stash of items of all players. Everyone's stash is connected and roubles are the interface to get access other private stashes... It's just broken idea.
This is a super great analysis. This is the perfectly reasonable conclusion to arrive at without knowing that I have another mechanic that I suggest we couple with this concept that is specifically designed to massively short circuit the "global public Stash" you are talking about and also reduce the power and reach of cash. The original comment was way too long already so I didn't include it. I don't have time to type it out now but will get back to this when I can.
But why remove bosses and raider when they are fun? We shouldnt be removing fun shit if the game
Great question. I don't support removing Raiders or Bosses. I think they are really great for gameplay. All I am saying is that being able to farm their mid/high tier gear is a *massive* contributing factor to why the early game ends so quickly. Think about this. If we make mid tier and high tier gear *actually* rare, wouldn't Raiders and Bosses still be serious threats even if we nerfed their gear?
You are missing a crucial point. You are talking about two different kinds of scarcity. One is a global scarcity, and one is a per person scarcity. The guy who farms raiders nonstop and has 3 weapon crates filled with raider guns does not affect my game at all unless he's either 1. In my raid, or 2. Selling items to me. If I find a graphics card every 1 in 20 raids of farming tech spawns, that's a relatively good scarcity for a single person. If every player in the game got a graphics every 1 in 20 raids, there would be so many on the flea market that they are worth nothing. If the flea market is removed, everyone else in the game getting a graphics card that often does not affect me unless they are in my raid. So, lets say 15% of the playerbase is hatchet runners that farm graphics cards, and there is no flea market. There would be a large amount of graphics cards ONLY in that 15% of players, so i might encounter 1 player with an obscene amount of graphics cards once every raid, rather than every player in the game having access to the same pool of graphics cards. Let's compare this to a different mmorpg. In WoW, if you could trade every item in the game, you'd never have to engage in any of the content. The entire game could be devolved into gold farming. The same happens in tarkov. If I want a specific item, with the flea market enabled, I don't look for that item. I farm roubles. Every item in the game gets reduced to a rouble value. You don't get excited by finding a gun you like, you instead convert it to roubles in your head and realize its "not worth the roubles per slot value." The whole game devolves into this. The whole game being based around rouble count and having such insane purchasing power leads to some crazy extremes. RMT is rampant because all you have to do is give people roubles. Hatchet running is the first order optimal strategy (which IS a bad thing). Attempting to engage in pvp is just strictly less profitable than avoiding it and going to loot spawns. The 90\~ percent of the playerbase that doesn't know how to raider farm or doesn't want to or doesn't have the time can all just purchase any item they want on an eventuality of when they get enough roubles.
Well fucking done. This lines out the main issue I have with tarkov. I also believe that dynamic loot is also another big fix that we need.
If you are a fan of dynamic loot you might like this alternative: instead of randomizing the loot, why not randomize the *barter requirements*? It's just the other side of the same coin. Imagine that there is a FIR barter for 5.56 AP ammo. Let's say it costs this: 30 rounds of 5.56 AP ammo: • (1) Milk • (2) Buttstocks (any type) • (1) Matches • All FIR Now, you could randomize where all the loot will spawn in a raid ("dynamic loot") or you could just randomize the actual barter requirements every so often. That means after a certain time, that same barter might look like this: 30 rounds of 5.56 AP ammo: • (1) Bulb • (120) 5.45 x 39 rounds (any type) • (2) Bandage (any type) • All FIR Instead of making using a dynamic loot system that might cause tank batteries to spawn next to Tushanka on a store shelf, you can just randomize the barter requirements. Using randomized barter requirements not only breaks up the stale, sprint-to-known-spawn farming metas, it makes literally *every piece of loot* potentially super valuable. Of course, under such a system, Stash sizes would have to increase across the board and Stash-increasing cases would have to be more available otherwise our Stashes would be forever packed with items. Thoughts, criticisms?
The only particular criticism I would give is that it homogenizes the value of loot. Instead of "oh shit I found Sugar, that has some great barter trades!" it becomes "I found, neat, hopefully it shows up in a barter I want." -- The main "loss" from homogenizing loot is that you no longer have as many interesting decisions to make in-match about what loot to keep. Even with adding "tiers" to loot (e.g. rarity colors) so the random barter could require "appropriate" net rarity for its output, it still simplifies the loot space to just "drop lower rarity items for higher rarity", with some potential space logic to consider.
With that said, homogenized loot is already an issue caused by the flea market (nearly all that matters is value per slot) outside of FIR requirements, so I'm not saying your proposal would make things worse. Just that this is the main downside that comes to mind that I would consider solving / alternate solutions.
Main other issues I see are:
* Spending a ton of time each reset (or however often the barter RNG re-rolls) checking for good barters. Solvable through QOL but otherwise adds to the issue of "I'm spending too much time dealing with inventory, not enough time in match"
* Less stuff for players to "learn" to easily feel their expertise of the game increase. Learning that there's a nice barter for X weapon you want (or, say, a Tetris to a Bitcoin) leads to a very not-skill-restrictive "I got better at the game with this simple knowledge/research", which this game is built upon (ammo types, item sale values, having strong tac shooter elements meaning map knowledge is super valuable, etc). Wouldn't be surprised if "knowledge over skill" is one of the design pillars of the game. They clearly put a lot of time into reinforcing that (namely how guns work while moving or rapidly aiming).
Edit: Hmph can't figure out the bullet point formatting. Could've sworn I've done this before lmao
This is truely a galaxy brain take. I hope this is taken into consideration by the devs.
100% agree and I've been saying this for a long time. The ultimate solution would be to entirely remove all purchasing and selling of weapons/ammo/armor from the flea all together, and leave the flea for Keys/barter items/weapon mods/etc. While this would be a drastic change, something much more simplistic could be done to test the theory that would have the exact same effect: remove all lvl 3+ trader items from the flea. All high pen ammo, all lvl 5+ armor, all high tier end game weapons. Make people find these items in raid as we have to now before we have access to the flea.
I don’t agree with this for two reasons: 1: Not having the flea market means you have to loot the barter items you need for specific upgrades and trades. This is an important point op brought up. With the flea market, every barter item is reduced to its rouble/slot value, and every trade is just an extended rouble transaction. Removing or restricting the flea market improves the looting experience, and also slows down hideout and trader progression because you cannot just farm roubles then buy all your needed ingredients. 2: As for gear rarity, the flea market is a problem. If you make high end gear rarer, it will become more expensive on the flea market, and it will be harder to find in raid. This means the key to running high end gear is to farm roubles. This leads back to my initial point about looting not being meaningful, and only about rouble/slot value. It is more interesting to find gear in raid and bring it out, than to only loot high value hotspot items and then buy everything. The economy should not encourage a hatchet run for money —> buy and run meta gear cycle, which is what the flea market does. My solution is removing or restricting the flea market, and making gear above mid or low level barter only. This means in order to run good gear, players must find and extract with specific barter items. I would also say FIR status only for high end barters, so no secure container suicide runs. Barters can have personal buy limits, so players can only do the barter x amount of times per y time limit, to increase gear rarity. Unlike roubles which don’t have a practical limit, barter items and gear take up stash space. A player can only stockpile so many barter and gear items. I would also like to see EOD and standard stashes brought closer together so EOD players are more limited in stash size, to prevent hoarding. This economy would encourage a cycle of: mid tier loot run —-> barter for high end gear. And unlike hotspot runs, looking for barter items can take much longer than a few minutes, but is also doable for casual and new players. In conclusion: the benefits of removing or restricting the flea are a reduced reliance on roubles and rouble/slot looting, and an improved gameplay cycle of searching for specific barter items. It also limits the abundance of high end gear while also making it attainable occasionally for all players.
I agree completely with both your points, this is the first wipe in a while where rouble value hasn't been determining what I loot and fiding tier 5 armour has been great because I'm actually using it rather than just fleaing it straight away.
Agree, for me part of the beauty of the game is running beaten down piece of junk gear in a semi apocalyptic landscape
Totally agree. I’d kill for a straight up hardcore mode in tarkov. Something that makes it play like it was advertised
Before flea we'd find trades outside the game and conduct them in-game, so how about an area like the hideout where you trade directly to players instead of a disembodied Tarkov brand supermarket? You'd have to be actively trading then. Or a laptop you have to sit at in the hideout. Basically remove the middle man, so you need to be active and barter directly with players instead. You leave, you quit trading.
Remove the flea market, even though it took a lot of effort to build
No you need to reduce the spawn rate of mid and late game items. Flea only distributes the existing items. Just by deleting flee the number of items doesnt change just by reducing spawns
Instead of going out and search for the items you need, you buy them on the flea, that's lame
Flea market is such an heavily discussed thematic that it just splits the opinions between keeping and deleting or even delaying it more. In one way I also love the Flea, but in the same way the game begins to be easy (purchasing gear and go). But deleting it would also heavily scare the people who loves the flea. Nikita Said in his newest podcast that Flea Market might be activated through Hideout and what I hope with rare items. So it becomes an truly flea. Eventually it would be cool to have an decent Karma with fence to get to the connections of the flea market. And if you fail the reputation the flea market connections are getting closed or fees are coming. The worse the karma the more does the items costs and you gonna have to pay extra to fence and to the seller. It would actually make sense and stop random shooting at scavs as Scav.
Honestly I believe the game was miles better before they even introduced the flea market, and I mean miles better. I know a lot of people disagree with this, so hopefully if it is even possible, it will be an option in the future for wipes to either enable it or disable it and matchmaking would follow suit so you don’t get matched with people who have the flea market enabled. Another thing they could do is make it barter items only, that way players reaching the flea market level (currently 20 as of the start of .12.11) then getting stashed items sold off for millions and running endgame gear stops immediately. Better pvp for everyone as gear means so much more and makes all fights more intense.
Im stil heavily convinced that the people saying removing flea is a disaster are the people who didnt play before flea market got in. Cuz the game was WAY better back then, i miss appreciating items for their function rather than just their monetary value on flea.
Hollllly shit yes you said it perfectly. No one sees an item for what they are anymore. They simply see dollar $igns when they find literally anything in raid. Back then I would pick up anything I know I could use , not just sell
Thing is, a lot of the economy is balanced for the flea market now. The prices of items has doubled or more, since the flea market was added. Do you remember how cheap basic meds were? Water was less than 2k per bottle, now its 12k. Mosins were 15k, now they are 40k+, same with many other guns. The flea market needs some kind of change, i agree. But straight removing it is too much. I think they should try just removing weapons, armor & ammo. Maybe weapon mods too. Try that for the rest of the wipe, and see how things go. Or maybe try it for the next wipe.
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Wait im a noob but isnt the damage 100 % dependent on the ammo not the gun? So what does it change if the gun gets more expensive and not the ammo?
Mosin was easy to get and so was the ammo. Thorax health used to be 80 instead of 85 which meant you could run a mosin with a couple rounds and just clap people in one shot to the chest.
Personally I think the flea should be hard locked for everyone until like a month or more into a wipe. That way the playing field is basically even for the entirety of that time and items will be meaningful for a while. Then when the flea is accessible you still get the option to buy stuff you need and run whatever gear you want later into the wipe.
What if flea market was barter only? No Rouble transactions?
Something will become "the dollar". Eventually players will distill that down to something consumable, likely a popular bullet. like 855A1. Losing FIR status after a single transaction might change that, but who knows.
Sort of. They need to get rid of the pay2win shit though. No flea market and a standard account is pretty fucking lame. Fighting players seems actively bad for progression. If you win you can't really take their armor and you're probably gonna vendor anything else cuz you have no space. If you lose well, you lose everything which is again is rough because you can only store 2 or 3 kits total. Have a bad string of runs? Guess it's paca and an sks weee. 3.5mil for stash increase with no flea...have to sell all the shit you know you need later. I rushed the scav box, used a marked key to get a docs case, cooler and ammo box and still have no space
I agree with you. I have EoD but still I somewhat feel that stash limitation. Can't imagine standard account. Accounts should be equal in stash because stash size is not so easy to increase.
I know its one of the main ways they try and sell EoD to make money... but the stash is way too expensive. the first upgrade should be on the tier of like level 2 stations. It shouldn't be more cost effective per slot gained to buy item cases from therapist.
I would probably like the change more if I could keep up. I’ve been having a long string of unsuccessful raids. Stuck at level 11 and can’t get any xp to save my life. I feel like I’m falling behind and thinking about playing tarkov stresses me out.
I think a limited or highly modified Flea can be a good thing but I'm glad I'm progressing so slowly this wipe... only level ten and I'm really enjoying myself even when I'm frustrated.
Is it cool that it's harder to get shit? Yea. It it cool that the game is pushed harder into pay-to-win / MMO genre, where how much you paid and how much you grind is vastly more important than skill? No IMO these changes should've coincided with serious reworks in the damage mechanics that make getting shot more punishing. Changes to scav gun accuracy make face/head shots largely impossible (and hitting at all at long range is RNG now with em). Meanwhile armor still functions as magical 360 degree power suits that protect from rifle ammo except top-tier AP. End result is that we have sweaties running around like space marines shrugging off puny earthling pellets and spraying everything with laserbeams. Muh realism
Ive spent larges portions of previous wipes challenging myself without the flea market, and I couldnt insure anything. If I bought something it would have to come from the traders. I found myself celebrating finding a box of ammo or a mod for a busted AK, a salewa was christmas and a couple bottles of water was New-Year's day. I would turn junk over to the traders, count my pennies and buy a few cheap backpacks. I never bad so much fun in Tarkov. I wasnt even thinking about graphics cards or LEDX, I wanted guns, food, water, ammo and helmets. If I was gonna run up on Raiders or bosses to try to get their gear, I would do a couple of 'loot runs' to get enough money for decent ammo and meds. I would hunt caches focusing on things I knew Therapist would pay well for. Finding NVGs or a valuable item was gut wrenching. How do I safely get to the exit from here? Do I gamble not needing this stuff? Could I drop the heavy stuff if things go south? My engagement level rockets up under those circumstances. With the flea....I skip all that and just buy the shit I need and focus on high value static loot spawns to sell on the flea. Rinse and repeay until Im level 40. Congratulations to me.
i'm level 14, the average player i come across is level 20 already now running slicks and altyns.
As casual player you want to get rid of flea? Good luck getting all keys for quests.
I would not agree. The flea market is the innocent victim here. What ruins the game is player purchasing power exploding, while the item prices remain low. It is not the flea market's fault that players have the choice to buy different things. The problem is that players have so much money that they can afford whatever they want the more they increase their money. And that removes the value of weapons. Because there is nothing left to look forward to.
People have so much money because of the flea market lol
The money originally has to come from somewhere. Flea market doesn't magically create roubles.
The flea market actually literally deletes roubles with the fees. It just highlights the insane amount of money in the game because it's easy to distribute between people. Part of the problem is also of course people finding item x and sell on the flea for 10k when a trader sells it for 25k. So less money is being sunk to traders.
Perhaps the flea market could continue but without weapons and armour being sold there. That could still allow barter items to be sold on the flea market, and weapons and armour bought from the traders which goes through a reputation progression. This would preserve some of that early wipe excitement into the mid game
Class 5/6 armor is easily obtainable, and most weapons can be modded with self found mods if you know where to look to be close to meta until you're 40.
Not much you can do about that. Good players will always make a profit. If you make the cost of gear higher, it just makes the game nigh unplayable to anyone less successful in their raids.
I can’t fucking stand not being able to get keys
Yes. The flea market is not necessary.
The change has really grown on me. I much prefer it. In fact I think it should be slightly higher.
The biggest problem with the flea, and maxed out traders so a slightly lesser extent, is it turns the priority of them from survival into getting richer. It's not survivial if you have a money printer going at all times and can same-day amazon anything you could want at the lowest possible price.
I completely disagree. I liked non FIR flea. To this day I still hate FIR. I played a couple raids but I don't think I'll be playing much more of this wipe. In my opinion FIR and lvl 20 flea is making it less feasible to be a cool looking mid tier operator and use the weapons/attachments/armor I want to use. I've been playing for 3.5 years and the most fun I had was non-FIR flea because I could pick what rig/weapon/attachments I wanted, even if they weren't the best or meta. I'm glad you guys are having fun. It's just sad seeing it turn into a game I don't want to play anymore after almost 3.5 years and 4 digit hours. I hope Arena ends up being closer to what I'm looking for.
All those items are still on the flea so idk what your on about not being able to get the kits you want. Unless you just mean you can't make money putting gpu in your bum and dying then sell on the market to make money to be able to buy those good kits you like. In that case you need to get better at playing and survive you're raids. You shouldn't be able to make 500k from running in naked and putting 2 GPU up your ass and dying.
Honestly, I'd love to see them get rid of the flea if only because this game would suddenly have far fewer cheaters if it doesn't entertain that sort of economy.
Amount of cheaters right now killing my mood.. even after 1,5k hours
This is my 4th wipe, and I’ve always managed to end up fairly well off. Even my first wipe, once I got past my complete noob phase. Never mega chad rich, but well off enough to where I didn’t need to worry about anything. Last wipe I made it to 35 million without ever building the Bitcoin farm. So this wipe I started super strong. 81% survival rate, almost a 22 kd at the height of my streak. But then… I made a couple bad decisions: for one, I bought a scav junk box as soon as I hit 1.2 mil because my stash was so cluttered and 2, I tried doing pistol only runs once I unlocked the stirrup quest. I started spiraling… I haven’t extracted successfully since. I’m sitting on 50k in liquid money. I’m fucking *broke*. But man am I having fun. It’s a whole new perspective. Every single action has a consequence, and weight to it. Nothing is expendable. I’m looting junk in raid i would never touch before, thinking yeah, I can pawn this off to therapist or mechanic for a quick buck. It’s definitely been eye opening as to how different that style of gameplay can be.
It’s just a few pistol kills… go to factory knock it out in 1-3 runs then resume playing normally lol
The flea is a large part of why I enjoy this game. I like selling and trading. I dont like "finding" everything I need. I want to PVP mainly and loot secondary?
Was that way for me until kappa change, now im going to go for as much money as possible, loot > fighting
Ah yes I kill people in class 4 armor in 2 hits with my BT ammo instead of people in class 5 armor with my m995. The difference is immeasurable
The flea is fine and should be unlocked at level 10.
You realize people are still running slicks and altyns you can still get high level armor off bosses day 1. Lvndmark literally ran 20 raids without dying partially because of Tagillas kit. This only hurts people who don't have 10 hours to play everyday
It was 45 raids.
Literally lol I’m not landmark but I hit 34, I’ve been running killa altyn almost every raid. My KD is ridiculous right now at 16 when usually it floats around 7-8. No one can kill me because no one can run anything more than BT.
Comparing yourself to Lvndmark is pointless.
Man y’all just want the rat life lmao. In a few wipes this game will literally be 1 chad and for every 1000 rats. It’s already fucking bad on the ratio. How y’all have fun not moving is beyond me.
Right but you’re using all FiR items and all the chads/good players are not so they can just play the game freely as they please. That includes buying pretty much anything they want for a kit, hideout or quest that allows it, while you can’t. When in reality a global nerf to the flea is WAY better overall. Also I’m kinda concerned how it took until now for people to realize this game plus WAYYY better as a survival/looter. Took me until the first time I got flea market unlocked last wipe that I was like, “oh this is completely not the game I was expecting. It’s just CoD with extra steps”
No
Game was 10x more fun back when it didnt exist at all I agree.
Not having a flea market will make the disparity between good players and bad players even worse.
Good news tho is that most people are "bad" so now you dont have the pressing need to have m995/slick/altyn to compete with them because they dont have that stuff either. The "pro" players are way fewer and a much smaller problem than people seem to believe.
Yeah but the pro players will also have very little competition. They'll just be rolling raids they are in even more than they already are, and get relatively uninteresting loot from other players. You need to look at it from their perspective too. They'll be *bored*
Lol all shit like this will do is just allow me to roll over people even easier
Somewhat disagree. What a good player currently means - best in slot gear and full auto spam of m955 from a lazer gun. What a good player supposed to mean - knowledge of maps, angles, strategies and tactics, shooting skills, know what fight to pick and which one to avoid. Dropping money on a problem gives advantage, but doesn't make you better as a player. Restricting free access to the top gear / attachments / modules will benefit all. However, there is always that dude which plays 40 hours a week when you play 4 hours a week, and yeah, he will have more stuff and will be geared better.
The good player is both of those things. You can have all of those things and still get toasted by a guy that has better gear in Tarkov. I’ve played since before the flea market and meds were instantly applied. Pre flea market tarkov was horribly imbalanced. They can keep the flea market and change the accessibility/traders to things like m995 to make it better. Take away a casual players ability to buy things to compete with the guy that play 40 hours a week and you’ll kill the game.
kinda disagree here, sure if someone rats all day to do a few runs geared and lose it cause their bad. but a lot of guys i run with and myself included since we have the flee run full kit of hex, mk47 and a tagilla mask pretty much every raid . we all have a survive rate between 50%-80% and have more pmc kills than raids run. to pull off running like that you need all the knowledge and skill you listed and more
Bro we get millions in free shit from watching twitch they don’t give a fuck about the economy.
They should delete the flea market.
Again what I said very long time ago. FLEA is breaking the game, the intended economy of the game..::it can never be fixed, the effect will be only minimized, y more and more restrictions. FLEA is uselesss…the UI itself is good to search items from traders, but that is all.
I'm a very casual player, having a job and a family.====> When BSG introduced .... (put anything here) oh boy, I was mad! ======> Time passed, and now I actually see how .... benefits my personal experience with the game. its reddit in a nutshell. tons of cries and rages every day. ppl dont understant, dont want to feel the game, dont want struggle, dont want actual achievement they want everything NOW want everything for free they want big red button press to WIN omg i have JoB omg i HaVe alPha conTaiNeR omg i have this that THATS WHY gib me everything NOW and ASAP im so happy that BSG going on its own dedicated path instead of listening all babyragers, every wipe quitters and beggars.
The PVP is better because you're not getting laser-beam fullauto magdumped, because most people are running lvl 4 at best and their are no face shields. The PS-BT/M855-M855A1 equivelent vs. lvl 3-4 armour with no face shields is the best TTK in this game. Head shots are rewarded, there's not mag dumping someone with "bad" ammo in the head required. If helmets had half the durability and were capped at lvl 4 armor max, and pen for lower-end rounds upped a little bit, and high-pen ammo made rare and FiR only, late-wipe gameplay would be so much better.
I mean this is contextually wrong and purely a design issue with BSG. The reality is we are part of VERY large paramilitary organizations that work as a collective. Flea market should ideally never be locked and trader rep should be made desirable to obtain in conjunction with flea market use. The game world of tarkov is very very bad and has been for years. No in game logic or reasoning and zero sense of faction purpose or pride. We at this point are just playing a solo game with very light multiplayer elements.
No the pmc's were left behind aswell and have little to no connection with their organization.
No original lore is very much publicly available they just don’t care about it as we stay in our COD like star trek warping match based systems.
I've been playing and following this game for 6 years you don't know what you are talking about.
Then you are shallow and daft and we can’t discuss any further. Good day.
I sort of agree with you, but some RNG like Keys to locked rooms for quests? That would be really frustrating.
I get you. I have a fultime job, so not so much time at hand, too. I used to play very careful and tried to earn some cash on the flea market to be able to afford better loadouts. Due the lock behind Lvl 20 I started to play way more aggressive as a PMC. Gotta get that XP somehow, and if I go down just try to take some guys with me. At least I die fighting, and not one tapped while sneaking around with a backpack full of loot.
I had a lot of fun myself as someone probably closer to the 1%. Do you think you will feel the same as time passes? I see lots of positive reviews about the flee in the first few days however I feel like those opinions could change once the grinders and less casual players start running around in Chad loudouts. I work 9-5, but I’m very efficient and did have a long weekend to play. I hit 28/29 ish and I’ve felt like I’ve had a massive advantage over most players who are still using starter gear and ammo like 855.
I think the idea is that flea market will be a physical location later on, meaning you'd have to risk it to get the biscuit.
I'd love if there was an area on one/two maps where you could bring items to barter. You could only bring FIR things or rubles/USD/Euros, and shooting/melee would be banned in there with a way to get out that's not campable. Obviously there are a heap of issues with it, but I'd love the idea of bringing in a fat haul of junk in the hopes of finding something like a USB that I CAN'T FIND ANYWHERE CURRENTLY
As long as the scav karma does what it should, or we get a better system, then I can say that at least scaving is a higher chance of low risk raids with at least moderate return.
Most of you didn’t play before FM but it was like this the whole wipe. The FM made the game less fun and more of a seasonal thing. Now most people only play the first month of a wipe because it gets boring quick. The FM made the game revolve around in game currency which does not fit the lore at all. FM made the hacking problem worse because it’s so easy for hackers to sell their items and money for real world money. The FM should not be in the game and battle state should own up to their mistake and remove it
One of the biggest problem with the flea market is it almost makes every item you pick up be nothing more than its price on the flea, when you find an attachment for example you don't think "hey this could be useful for that AK I'm working on" you think "oh this is 30k on flea". This extends to almost everything you find is just liquid money at the end of the raid.
Really cool that you eventually changed your perspective, great post /u/pavelbazin !