4Game

Currently, only a handful of guns are great. And BSGs approach to balance is around money. Locking powerful guns and attachments behind high expense. This really only locks out the more casual players to powerful guns and armor but hard-core players get a huge advantage. And that's fine. A reward for being a dedicated player. But to see a plethora of different guns, armor, and ammo types, there needs to be a reason to use them.

Guns:
Why do people use some guns over others? Well it typically comes down to recoil and ergonomics. Price is not that much of a deterrent for the hard-core players. And most players are going to pick recoil advantage over ergo. Especially now that recoil is all over the place even for the lowest recoil guns. But to really make guns diverse, they need to reliably kill targets quickly, and have a reason to be used over something else. Which is where another important Stat needs to come in and make a difference. Here I think weight needs to be done in a way to become more of a deciding factor for people. That's my suggestion but anything can really become another reason for choice. But gun usability is honestly more locked behind ammo.

Ammo:
I think tarkov's main balance problems are around the ammo. For every caliber, the question is basically do you want penetration or flesh damage and aim for the legs? Most people pick penetration and for good reason. Always just use the most penetrative round, unless it's not found on the black market. Then use the second most. You can try leg meta and do okay but I think there really needs to be a reason to pick the middle tier rounds outside of price or availability because the Chads will just use the biggest pen. Again a 3rd Stat that puts into consideration. And I think armor damage is that Stat. It'll need a mini-rework, but this will allow these rounds to rip apart armor, then do some decent flesh damage. Penetration basically says "i want to have the best chance to do the lowest damage." Flesh rounds are "I don't damage armor, but I don't care because I'm just trying to hit your skin." And armor damage is "I'm trying to remove your armor, then do decent flesh damage." But the time to kill between these 3 should be about the same over a large enough sample size. Sure pen can 2 tap you if it high rolls. But if it doesn't it shouldn't damage your armor much. It's the random chance round. While the others take less random chance but maybe more time.

Armor:
I don't have much to say here. Weight needs to be a good factor. But I think the main thing here is already happening a bit. People picking armor because of weight and preference. Which is good. I just want the actual durability to be more apparent for newer players.

In conclusion, I think if everything was a better there wouldn't be such obvious metas. Because when everything is super, nothing is.