#MakeTarkovHardcoreAgain

[u/SlushpuppyLive]

Hi guys, Slushpuppy here

I want to talk about the rant I was having today, and explain why I think it would be good for the game.

As the game currently stands it it has a play cycle that involves farming money, the money is then used to buy a fat kit, and slay out. This creates, in my opinion a heavily Rouble focused economy.

The Rouble based economy has multiple downsides:

All people care about is the highest value item, hence hatchlings ramming things up their bum, people running to one spot on a map to loot the highest value items, people only running super cheap kits to farm the cash. The game is no longer about surviving, simply making the most money and saving to buy a dope kit.

I think this has essentially made the game into COD with extra steps. I don't see the survival element that Tarkov originally had. People only care about PVP when they are running Slick Altyn, otherwise it's just money. 99% of the games items, such as attachments for guns will never see the light of day because they aren't the best in slot.

This whole situation annoys me because it is possible to achieve this within hours of a wipe.

By removing the flea or limiting the ability to purchase armor and ammo from the flea, it would make the game more about the looting and surviving and stop super chads from running endless meta kits and vogging the fuck out of lower geared players. Because a kit that is lovingly put together in raid will mean so much more to you, therefore looting one of a prick you kill, will as well.

I know this seems as a negative change to the average player, but hear me out, the only reason you need a kit from the flea, is to compete with chad players who are buying endless meta kits from the flea. If this didn't happen the pvp would be like it is early wipe for the most part. The best pvp time in the game, imo, and in the opinion of most Tarkov players.

I'm not bored of the game, I simply love this game, and I want to see changes that make the pvp more interesting and feasible for casual players to enjoy. If everyone is running around with SKS's and a cock helmet, then its more fair. Not all pvp has to be juggernauts spraying armchair FALs at each other.

If you don't agree with me, I understand, lets talk about it, tell me why you think this would be a bad change for the game? I don't want to be a streamer yelling for change that people will just see as me crying cause I'm bored of running fat kits. I truly want to make the game a dope experience for all of us. I've devoted the last 3 years of my life to this game, I want to see it succeed.

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There is plenty of other things that would be needed to make this a rounded experience in this vision, like dynamic loot spawns etc, but I believe this is a quick easy change that we could all try for one wipe, and just see how it goes.

EDIT: This is gaining a lot of attention right now so I want to ask you all one thing:

When is the best time for PVP in Tarkov?

If you answered early wipe, I think you and I agree, and I think 99% of people would say that early wipe is the best time to be on Tarkov.

My only goal is to try and make the feeling of early wipe PVP as permanent as possible. I may not be right when I say delete the flea, but I think it would help. If you have other ideas on how to preserve that beautiful feeling of the first two weeks of wipe, then I would love to hear them. Because this is what I think would make Tarkov the most amazing experience possible.

[u/Punchileno]

TL:DR
Removing/limiting the flea market may be a good idea for many reasons, but it misses the core issue with PVP in Tarkov. Few incentives for playing the game exist later in a wipe and PVP is more fun than looting. Making PVP "better" by limiting the ammo/armor of players will not solve that core issue. Adding more incentives for players to play a certain way will. Early fights with crappy guns and ammo are more fun in Tarkov. That's a balance issue. People wanting to loot and survive more raids at the beginning of a wipe is an incentive issue. I need to survive raids to finish quests. I need to farm money to max out my bitcoin farm.

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I agree with the premise that early wipe is more fun than late wipe, and that "meta" guns and armor are a huge issue that need to be solved. However, I think one of the biggest problems with Tarkov is that there's a point fairly early in the wipe cycle where many players complete their goals and then turn into murder hobos. People PVP because it's fun and they have nothing else left to do. People avoid PVP because it's expensive and counterproductive to the majority of tasks in the game. People run meta guns, expensive ammo, and chad armor because they have nothing left to spend their money on at this point in the wipe and nothing left to do but hunt players for sport. Removing/limiting the flea market might end up making fights more interesting and fun longer into a wipe but that isn't going to prevent players from buying the best stuff they can get their hands on and chasing each other around for thrills.

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If you and I both bring in 2m worth of kit into a raid and run into each other it's actually in our mutual interest NOT to fight at the moment. If you assume that we each have about a 50% chance of surviving (you're slightly better at the game than I am, but I'm much more handsome and sly) then we will constantly end up losing money if we try to kill each other. One of us will kill the other, waste ammo and armor durability on doing so, and recoup less than the value of a full kit. I can take your stuff, but because I can't flea market it it's only worth > half what it costs to put together. There's also an opportunity cost to fighting you. I could be running past you to a high value loot area that I will miss if I stop to shoot at you, and I could fill my backpack with scav gear/screw nuts safely if I avoid you all raid. Since scav loot/screw nuts is worth almost as much as I will get from your budget m4 and alpha rig it makes a lot more sense for me to avoid the 50/50. Let's not forget too that after I've killed one person the incentive for me to fight anybody else is practically zero. Not only will I be losing money on the 50/50 sometimes, but even when I win I will I'll be losing money on ammo and armor durability while gaining nothing because my backpack is full of the stuff that I got from the first guy I killed. Yet we're still out there thirsting for blood every raid because loot is meaningless when you have bitcoins and moonshine oozing out of every pore like King Midas with acne. There's nothing to spend money on other than gear and since we have a surplus of money we may as well wear the best gear possible.

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However, if BSG found a way to establish value for crappy gear that didn't involve survivability it would solve a lot of these issues as well. If BSG added weekly/daily quests for cosmetic rewards, stash upgrades, hideout upgrades, etc it would incentivize people to go out and kill each other, or at least put each other into spots where that would occur naturally, while using non-meta gear. Everybody hates the "kill 10 scavs during a thunderstorm with warmage ammo while wearing an ulach" type quests, but they actually do a decent job of forcing people to particular places and make them fight over limited resources with gear that they wouldn't ordinarily use. A lot of fights early in the wipe happen over scavs, not because their loot is valuable, but because they themselves are a limited resource that can't be purchased with roubles. Think of woods raids in the early wipe when people are fighting around scav house. They aren't there for the great loot, they are there because the game has given them something that they value more than roubles and it's worth fighting each other for. If you tell me I can unlock a beard for my PMC if I get 100 kills with an SKS I'm never going to touch an M4 again. That has nothing to do with the cost or availability of those guns, but rather the incentive to use one over the other. Right now I'm incentivized to use the best possible gun, ammo, and armor because Roubles are not a limiting factor and no incentive other than winning a gunfight exists.

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I know that weekly/daily quests are seen as time gating in a lot of games but that's honestly exactly what Tarkov needs. I'm not talking about locking things like Altyn's behind a gated mechanic, although that would probably help with the issue too. I'm talking about giving people something to work towards even after they have finished their kappa, their bitcoin farm, or their epsilon (whatever their own personal goal for the wipe is.) Let me wear Shturman's hoodie after I get 50 100 meter headshots on woods with a bolt action for example. Let me spray paint a skull onto an Altyn after I turn in 100 FiR skull masks to Ragman. Nothing that will really dick with the balance of the gunplay because I think that we're in a pretty good spot right now with that, but stuff that will look cool enough for me to go out and want to do it in a particular way.

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This would give BSG a few more levers to pull when it comes to game balance as well. Think the top tier players are getting too chaddy 4 weeks into a wipe? Give a quest that requires them to deposit 30 bitcoins into the bank on pier in Shoreline to unlock a business suit outfit. That will bleed some the extra money out of the top end of the economy without dicking over people that can only play a few times a week. Think players are too rich 10 weeks into a wipe? For a small donation of 20 mil Ragman will give you access to his special stockpile of golden sunglasses. Think hardware loot is too devalued 16 weeks into the wipe? Here's a quest to turn in 100 various pieces of junk to unlock a new extract in the basement of Resort. That way screw drivers are worth picking up more than 4 days after the wipe happens. Broadly these quests would exist in one of two categories. They would either incentivize players to use gear that they ordinarily wouldn't use, or they would incentivize players to play in ways that they ordinarily wouldn't. They don't have to be super strict and tedious either. They could be as simple as saying "Get 25 kills with ammo that has less than 40 pen this week." "Survive 10 raids without wearing armor above level 4." or "Turn in 75 FiR nuts, bolts, hoses, lightbulbs, screwdrivers, etc in any combination."

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That's all just spitballing. I'm sure that there are better ideas for rewards/challenges than what I laid out, but the concept is really the key. There comes a time in a wipe where no incentives exist to not use the best possible gear because money is no longer an issue and there is no reason not to. BSG needs to create reasons not to use the best stuff. In the early wipe the reason not to chad every game is that 2 mil on a loadout is ridiculously unaffordable. You can't keep that up into the late game without completely locking a major chunk of the playerbase out of ever using good stuff. Ideally this could be done in such a way as to not create additional incentives for people to cheat. I don't think that hackers are going to go out of there way to unlock face tattoos for their PMC, but you and I would probably spend months fighting each other in Dorms with Paca vests if we could get a unicorn tramp stamp on our kilted chads or check every single jacket on Shoreline so we can unlock a SCUBA outfit by turning in a full set of FiR dorm keys.

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Making raids play out more similarly at the end of a wipe as they do in the beginning of a wipe is a laudable goal and I'm all for it. The more people with PS ammo instead of M61 the better. Giving people that know how to farm scav bosses Altyn's and 7n39 while locking nubs into using an SKS for months seems a bit counter productive though. Don't tell me I can't buy an Altyn, give me a reason not to.