4Game

Just my thoughts on the title topic. Feel free to agree or disagree.

For one thing, arbitrary price changing leads to really weird scenarios where the prices of ammos make little to no sense in comparison to each other. M995 is now significantly more expensive then 5.45 BS despite having extremely similar characteristics. It regularly sells for almost double what BS goes for in the flea market. Meanwhile, AP 6.3, a 9mm round that can barely make it through class 3 armor, is now the same price as M62, an armor-piercing round that can go through almost any armor in the game in one shot every round. It’s also more expensive than any of the good 5.7 rounds, all of which are objectively better rounds.

Now, I know these price changes are based on how in-demand certain ammos are (or, at least, that’s what it appears to be based on my own observations, I’ve never heard that officially confirmed so I don’t actually know), but that presents another inconsistency by itself. From an economics standpoint, if a good, such as ammo, is regularly selling out, the seller shouldn’t be raising the price, because theoretically that’d mean less people are willing to buy it at that price, leading to less profits. What they’d actually do, in theory, is increase supply of that good. In Tarkov, that’d mean stocking more of the high-demand ammos so that they don’t constantly just go out of stock. Think about it: any human rationally attempting to make a profit would increase their supply instead of letting it just run out and losing out on future customers because they have nothing to sell them.

I’m aware Tarkov’s economy is in no way a perfect market or directly comparable to a normal civilian market in a developed country, but I bring these things up because messing with stuff like this in a way that makes no sense from an economics point of view screws up the economy in ways that make no sense.

I’m all for making things like high-tier ammo harder to obtain, and in fact I’m profiting off the current situation because I’m level 40-something and have maxed traders across the board, so I can make millions just by flipping like literally 15 ammos every reset for 100-200 roubles profit a round on the flea market, but what’s going on right now makes sense only from a short-term point of view. It doesn’t make sense from a gameplay point of view: AP 6.3 isn’t even a really high-tier ammo; sure, it’s best in slot, but there’s objectively better calibers, even in the pistol and PDW caliber department: 4.6 has like double the pen and shreds class 5, 5.7 is a great round as well, 9×21 is a much better pistol round, PMM is almost identical but half the cost. It doesn’t make sense from an economic point of view, which I’ve already discussed above. It doesn’t make sense from a lore or world perspective either: if I was peacekeeper, I’d be doing absolutely everything in my power to get my hands on more AP 6.3 and M995/M855A1, or prapor with 7N1, SP-6, or SPP, because I’d be making a killing off selling it. I understand if they wouldn’t want to be selling top-tier gear to some newbie nobody who they’ve never seen or worked with before, or only being able to ration out a certain amount to each customer with every reset, but not even sticking enough to do the latter for every one of their customers makes no sense.

There’s my little stream of consciousness on an aspect of EfT’s economy, had a lot of time and not a lot to do on a long car ride.