Hellsdevil wrote:
What are your thoughts on the current Tarkov economy? What do you think the devs should do and what can they do to combat the current situation midwipe?
Welcome to my overly long TED Talk about Tarkov's overall economy and the balancing issues within itself.
First, before I continue with the analysis of Tarkovs economy, let me throw some definitions your way, as understanding these things is very important to understanding what i'm about to explain.
FAUCETS
Faucets are feature or design decision that puts value into an economy.
SINKS
Sinks are features or design decisions that take away value from an economy.
NETS.
Not sure if this is an actual definition, but a Net is something that blocks value from falling into a sink. It's not a faucet, but it acts like one.
LOOT ECONOMY
The loot economy is essentially the 'FIR Economy'. It encompasses every piece of loot found in raid, even loot taken off of players bodies that doesn't have the FIR tag.
THE PLAYER-DRIVEN ECONOMY
The player driven economy is essentially the Flea Market.
Now it's important to understand what makes an economy sustainable. A stable economy would have to have tons of sinks for players to put their money into, while providing faucets for players to take money from. EFT's faucets include...
-FIR LOOT from PMC RUNS
-LOOT Gets Vendored
-LOOT Gets Sold on Flea (Requires Level 15)
-LOOT Gets Crafted Into FIR Items (Requires Hideout)
-CRAFTED LOOT Gets Vendored
-CRAFTED LOOT Gets Sold on FLEA (Requires Level 15)
-CRAFTED LOOT Gets Used
-PvP LOOT from PMC RUNS
-LOOT Gets Vendored
-LOOT Gets Used
-FIR LOOT from SCAV RUNS
-LOOT Gets Vendored
-LOOT Gets Sold on Flea (Requires Level 15)
-LOOT Gets Crafted Into FIR Items (Requires Hideout)
-CRAFTED LOOT Gets Vendored
-CRAFTED LOOT Gets Sold on FLEA (Requires Level 15)
-CRAFTED LOOT Gets Used
-PvP LOOT from SCAV RUNS
-LOOT Gets Vendored
-LOOT Gets Used
-BITCOIN FARM (Requires Hideout)
-And i'm sure many more than i'm missing
An economy also needs to have a lot of sinks to keep an economy flowing and stop players from amassing massive hordes of wealth. EFT's sinks include...
-Lost Gear from PMC RUNS (Recycles back into the 'PvP LOOT from PMC and SCAV RUNS' Faucets. But for another player.)
-Flea Market Taxes
-Medical Costs (Optional)
-Food Costs (Optional and Minor Sink)
-Hideout Upgrade Costs (Temporary Sink, Eventually turns into Faucet.)
-Scav Case Losses (Gambling)
-and a probably a few more that have slipped my mind.
Maybe you can already start to see some issues, and I haven't even started yet.
EFT's economy also has Nets, EFT's nets include
-Insurance
-Armor and Weapon Repairs
-Items in Secure Container (Maybe that would be counted here?)
EFT's economy is not sustainable. In order for an economy like EFT's to continue, they would need far more sinks to create a sense of scarcity. Veterans say that money is far too easy to make, but that's not the issue, money is far too hard to lose.
Ever wonder why you see a lot of squads using meta gear? Its because they all get their insurance back whenever they die, as it only takes 1 surviving member of a 5-man team, to secure his dead squadmates gear, and chuck it in a bush. Eliminating most of a squads expenses.
Solo players on the other hand, don't have this luxury, and will use a lot of low-end to mid-tier gear, expecting to lose it, and get it back in insurance, because it's not worth picking up.
BSG needs to incorporate more sinks and adjust their nets in a way that fixes it, otherwise the game will forever rely on wipes, and there will never be proper scarcity in the economy.
I want everyone to try and remember what it was like when you first booted up the game, had no fucking idea what you were doing, and how i'm sure many of you were scared shitless about losing your last P226 or Grach, and elated about finding a rifle, probably not knowing it shot dog-shit .366 rounds.
Now, i've spoken to a lot of new players, and a lot them have this sense of overwhelming anxiety about playing the game once they realise that death has consequences. This anxiety also helps tremendously with selling the games atmosphere, but as people get more experienced and more wealthy, that anxiety goes away, and so does the games atmosphere.
Its not possible to put us all back into the shoes of a new player, as a lot of the anxiety is caused by not knowing what the hell is going on or that you have an infinite source of income to the left of your PMC. But it is possible to bring back *SOME* of that anxiety by introducing gear scarcity into the Loot Economy.
There is almost no gear scarcity in the Loot Economy for a few reasons.
1. The flea-market allows people to buy whatever they want, whenever they want.
-There's a few ways to change this, removing it IS NOT the answer.
2. Playing in a squad tremendously increases your chances of getting your gear back in insurance.
3. Trader prices for Meta gear are far too low and Meta gear is far to easily obtained from raiders, bosses, and players wearing this gear; because it's so easy to obtain.
Now these things COULD be fixed, but if you did it would make a lot of gear useless. Because there are more issues.
Ammo and armor balance is scuffed.
Let me just give a few examples.
Everyone wants 7n31. It's a hot new ammo that everyone wants to try out, yet its sold out every trader reset. To counter this, BSG adds it as a craftable in the hideout. Now, it's all over the flea market, but very expensive, at the time of writing this it's 1700 RUB around. Pricey.
Now 7n31 coupled with the rate of fire of most of the guns that shoot it, goes through level 4 and 5 like butter, and even level 6 pretty well. But this is where we start to run into issues.
By increasing the supply of 7n31 and many other AP ammos, you've essentially massively decreased the effectiveness of many Higher-End armors.
"Oh well, that's fine, now newer and rats players have a chance of getting through all these chad armors."
Except that's not what happens.
Let me use a better example.
M62 is $5 a bullet. It completely ignores level 5 and goes through level 6 like butter. It is widely available, and very cheap.
Why would you use Level 5 and 6 when going up against this ammo?
There is no reason, Level 5 and 6 only slows you down when your up against AP Ammo.
That's fine though, this rare and exotic ammo should be able to go through armor like its nothing, that's why I pay exorbitant amounts of money and grind to obtain this ammo.
Except its not rare and exotic, its extremely common, with very little work to obtain, and this goes for a lot of the bullets in the game. Most Meta ammos are reasonably affordable and put down level 5 and 6 easily, which begs the question, why would I use Level 5 and 6? Why would I spend 800k on a slick, when someone can spend $5 to ignore it.
This goes into another issue that I see a lot of people talking about, the TTK (Time To Kill) The TTK isn't going to be fixed by adding 5 more health to the thorax, it will be fixed when armor actually does something. The only thing 5 more health on the Thorax does is make it more expensive to run AP ammo against unarmored players, and make bolt actions useless compared to DMRs.
TTK also effects the New Player experience, a lot of new player will simply spam their little makarov at big bad Altyn man and wonder why it did nothing. That's because armor isn't hard to get either, its harder to get than the ammo that pens it sure, but it's still very easy to get if you know how to get it. Meanwhile that new player is wondering why everyone is going through their cool new level 4 ceramic armor, and they're bullets aren't doing anything.
Now if they fixed the the Loot Economy and made armor, ammo and other gear harder to find, it would do nothing, because the traders sell ammo extremely cheap and armor extremely expensive compared to the ammo. Which means armor is going to get burnt, found, repaired and used until that person dies and the armor gets picked up again or scrapped at fence.
Now the traders, from what I understand, are supposed to eventually have extremely limited stock and options. However, seemingly, the community hates the idea of sold out traders.
I have an aneurysm everytime I see a post complaining about super high-pen ammo being sold out, and then immediately see the supply go up the next day, like what just happened with 7n31.
Because you're making. The problem. Worse.
Now, I want to believe that BSG will continue with their plans to make an economy based on scarcity, but this community has an issue with crying about a lot of dumb shit. Which, don't get me wrong, if the vast majority agrees that something needs to change, it probably should. We play the game more than the devs, we know what is fun.
But when you guys complain about something as sophisticated as tarkov's economy, and you have no idea what you're talking about, thats bad.
I wouldn't be making this section of the post, if I thought that BSG would ignore the complaints. But they have this habit of caving in to the community's crys. Please BSG, do not do this.
TL;DR: In order to have a good scarcity based economy, BSG needs to have more sinks in the economy to take money out of the hands of wealthy players, and they need to make ammo more expensive compared to the price of armor. The TTK issue is solved by making ammo more rare than armor, community needs to stop crying about stuff they don't understand.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
DarkRP 1 
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