4Game

First, I think it is a mistake in the game design to have the primary source of loot to be from the Traders and Flea Market. Grinding rep to unlock new purchase options to advance to the next tier of equipment is bad, because whether you have the rep or not, you're going into the same raids as players who do have them. If raids were segregated between teams vs solos, or over level 30 vs under level 30, my opinion might be different. Having those rep-locked items available for sale and resale onto the Flea Market does make the items available to lower-rep players, but it enriches the higher-rep players. It's a profit source that skews the economy completely divorced from the actual gameplay and is net-inflationary, in a game where the gameplay and tone are poverty and desperation.

In my opinion, three things need to change:

• the role of traders needs to change, from the source of all gear to the source for niche gear. Most players ought to be able to loot most of the gear and ammo they need from raids. Thermal Scopes (as an example of outliers) and attachments that provide marginal improvements to stats (foregrip with +11 ergo instead of +9) ought to be sourced from traders.

EDIT for clarification: everything up to extremely rare ought to be found in-raid, and fairly reliably. I'm not saying Gen4 armor sets for days, but outside of looting it off a raider, can a Zhuk-6 even be found in-raid? Are some items even in the loot tables? What % of raids are generated that even have armor inside a loot crate? These and other common trader-purchased items should be found in raid.

• the bag-space footprint of large items needs to be readjusted. A chest armor item can consume more than half of the player's total carrying capacity, assuming a modest loadout (triton gear rig, Scav Backpack), when frankly having chest armor is as much a "need" as going into a raid with a rifle. Stacking containers inside of containers is fine as a strategy, but for players looting in anticipation of future raids, those items need to be collapsible. There should be no reason why I couldn't wad up four empty Scav BP's inside of another Scav BP, or a trio of armor vests.
• items in general need to be much more prevalent in raids. A 1 slot ammo box, where the ammo is neatly arranged and stored somehow stacks less efficiently than the bullets loose in your pocket. Players need to be able to find not just the common ammo, but also the premium ammo in raids, and in quantities sufficient to supply two to three future raids.

Case in point, on Interchange, in the loading dock section behind Goshan, there are numerous weapon crates, ammo boxes, and grenade boxes. It's really a thicker arsenal than you can find in Kiba. But if in all those weapon crates and ammo boxes, if I can find enough bullets to fill even one 30 round mag, it's a miracle. There is no way for a player to raid off only what they find in raids. Couple that with a sub-50% survival rate that probably most players have, and it's a recipe for living entirely off the Flea Market.

The Flea Market receives a lot of attention and criticism because it is currently the nexus for everything outside of raids. That criticism is deserved.

I think removing the common items from trader inventories, increasing the bounty of loot in existing loot sources, and making the most consumable items (like ammo) far more plentiful in loot-tables, would resolve Flea Market issues.