My personal observation is the longer the event has gone the longer matchmaking takes and the emptier servers are. A second observation is I'm still getting killed by meta bullets like 7.62 BP and SNB, among others.
This leads me to the conclusion that players treat Tarkov like poker. I'll explain.
As the wipe progresses, the ante keeps getting raised. You can win with an MP5 in week 1 but you need a mutant to win in month 4. We're in month 5 so the ante is pretty high now.
Many assumed the event would deplete stashes and lower the ante with lesser gear becoming viable again. I don't think that happened. I think the best meta players accumulated more meta ammo and gear from PVP like a poker player winning chips. Meanwhile, those who lost their meta gear simply stopped playing Tarkov, they lost their chips and left the table.
The result is simply that you're just as likely to fight meta gear in day 5 of the event as you were before the event, because the only people playing PMC are the ones with enough chips in their stash to meet the late-game ante.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/ugxv4a/an_observation_tarkov_as_poker/
