I'm writing this post as someone who has played the game since the end of Alpha and has loved it for all of that time, but at the moment I've reached a point of frustration with the state of the game. I love Nikita's vision for the game, but I feel that over the years many bandaid fixes have been applied to numerous issues in well meaning but poorly contemplated attempts to solve them. "Anti-RMT" measures have been a prime example of this. However, despite all of these measures, I have in this wipe seen an unprecedented amount of cheaters in my raids and in the raids of others and it's reached the point where the game has just become unenjoyable to play purely because of this. I will add that I am in the Oceanic region, which I suspect, although do not have the numbers to confirm, is likely one of the regions most heavily affected by the cheating scourge aside from, well, the one we all immediately think of first. (I also notice that this coincides with the raising of the ping lock and I wonder if this is coincidental or correlated). This scourge of cheating destroying the game experince, to me, is a clear demonstration that the measures that have been implaced are ineffective and should be heavily adjusted and/or removed. Below I will list just the particular issues that came to mind to me (I'm sure there are others that I had forgotten or not considered that others will point out).
Flaws in the flea market:
1 – The listing fee system is currently set to where if the "value" of one side of the offer is disproportionately swayed to one end or the other of a "fair deal", then the listing fee is astronomical. This was made in an attempt to prevent RMTers from making easy transactions with their customers through the flea market, so that they need not even enter a raid to complete their deal. I say fair play to BSG, as this was a logical change to make, and it is effective to SOME degree. However, it is flawed in that the "value" of an item is based off of what the traders consider the value to be. The simplest example of this is the sale of a customs marked key. Therapist will pay you 21,217 roubles for it, at which point I'm sure most of us would tell her where to jam it. Players on the other hand, the truly intellectual beings we are understand that it's value is far greater than this and will pay upwards of a few million roubles for it. The fact the perceived value of the key is roughly 1000x times that of the trader value causes an issue with the listing fee, as such, you will no longer ever see this key listed for a cash offer. Instead, you get what I'm currently looking at on the market. 77 listings of marked keys (some in packs (because we all legitimately find many of these at once, right?)), every single one of these listing is for other rare keys, of which the keys they request are far greater in value than the marked key, ie. green, red keycard, etc). I'd be interested to see the expiry rate of offers for these rare keys because I'd wager it's very high and the ones that don't expire are usually sold due to the buyer not paying enough attention due to being in a hurry on the flea. The nail in the coffin is about 1/2 of the names of the sellers of these items look like barcodes. I believe to solve this issue a new dynamic system would be required to set the "value" of the item for the listing fee calculation. This dynamic system would weigh the rarity and demand of items, as well as their comparitive value against other items.
2 – Capture verification: For a couple of years now we have had frankly frustrating capture checks on the flea market as an attempt to stop bots from buying out items on the market to manipulate the market and make profit for their owners. These checks are honestly excessive and somewhat ineffective. If you want to buy an item that is in extremely high demand on the market it's very common to get the "item already sold" message many times before you can even buy one, despite you spamming your mouse click and Y to snatch one up first. If you're not sure what I mean (do you even play the game?) go attempt to buy some screw nuts, bolts or wires on the flea and see how many "already sold" errors you get presented with before you snatch up as many of these items as you need for your barter/craft/hideout. As a side note, I will add big props to BSG for removing the need to press "OK" after receiving this error as it made this frustrating buying process less frustrating than it was. However, due to this "rapid" attempt to buy an item that keeps getting sold before you get it, you get hit with numerous capture verifications before you even buy one of the item, as the system thinks you're suspect, but no, shit just sells out quickly. I'd propose a frequency limitation be implemented with capture checks. I'm not against them as an idea, but why does it need to check if I'm a bot literally 10 seconds after it has just done this check. It's just excessive and frustrating.
Outdated Global traders limits: Global trader stock limits were initially implemented to traders when the flea market was first introduced as it was possible to re-sell purchased items on the flea for a large profit. RMT bots went to town on this as it was basically printing money for them. Then BSG implemented global trader limits so once all the bots and a few players had bought out all the high demand items, such as high tier ammo, everyone else got told to suck a lemon. Then BSG implemented personal limits on ammo. A great idea, this means that bots can no long print money like they could. However, players still have trouble getting supply of popular items, particularly start of wipe (go look at MP5 sight rails and 6B5-16 Uley rigs at the start of wipe and you'll just what the effects of super high demand do). Player demand for items change though as people level at difference paces and people come and go from the game. So some things even out, while others get worse later into the wipe, again, particularly high tier ammo. I understand that BSG would like to try to implement a system where supply is not consistent and available as this potentially simulates a "real life Tarkov". This is a reasonable point, however, the flaw with it is that it is predicated on other aspects of the games being a simulation of reality, when they just aren't. I'm sure if Tarkov were a real event people in the region wouldn't be completely ignoring that M855 ball ammo in favour of AP rounds, since in reality armour is not a foolproof shell of protection (perhaps the planned armour plate hitboxes will help with this). As such, I believe ALL global limits of items should be scratched, as they do not create the simulated reality that they are intended for and just provide frustration to players who aren't willing to sit at the traders or set alarms to buy items in the first few seconds/minutes before they sell out.
Leading on from this point, I believe the goods traders sell should be re-stocked in a far more random, intermittent and gradual fashion rather than the system of "WE NOW HAVE EVERYTHING AGAIN" which currently exists. I propose that should BSG insist on global limits for goods then each item in the store that has a limit should be continually restocked over time with a random (but limited) modifier for time and quantity of restock. This would better represent a real life trader and in reality it would be more like "oh we had a shipment of M855A1, M80 and Luger CCI come in today, with some Fast MTs and Osprey rigs" (you imagine the scenario and extrapolate), rather than "Guess what fuckers, our entire storeroom is overflowing with shit and I'm pretty sure Skynet are in here stealing shit to sell to children paying with their parents credit cards, you better come get some before it's all gone… never mind we're out. Catch you again in 3 hours"…. All jokes aside, I'll add that this system would only work if the global stock limits of items are constantly adjusted in proportion to the concurrent playerbase, so we don't have situations like the start of wipe where things like MP5 rails are unicorn farts past 10 seconds after trader reset.
These above are the major points of issue created by RMT limitations. I'll now add a few others that I still believe are detrimental to the game and unnecssary, but to a smaller extent.
Non-stacking of backpacks and the illogical, arbitrary ruling of this. The stacking of many types of backpacks inside each other in raid (and out of raid for some) was prevented a while ago. As I understand it, the reason for this change was after players were no longer allowed to take cases into raid with them, cheaters began using stacked backpacks as their own little RMTing version of Hermione Granger's handbag. Essentially, backpacks like the Blackjack, which have a larger interior capacity than exterior size gave cheaters the ability to create infinite amounts of room inside a backpack so they can jam the whole raid of loot in there if they want to. I think fair enough that BSG wanted to restrict this, however the manner in which is was implemented makes absolutely no sense in so many cases. An example of this is the Trizip backpack, one of the most used backpacks in the game, particularly later in wipe. This bag carries the exact same amount of space as it takes up, thus it can not be used to create endless pits of inventory space. But this backpack is currently limited to you being able to only carry one in a raid. You take one in with you, well you have to insurance fraud it if you want to loot one from your kill. What's that? Both of the players you killed have one, well tough titties, you only get one… Now as dumb as this scenario is, I could accept it if it werent for the fact that the logic is completely flipped again with backpacks that are basically the EXACT SAME BAG. The F5 switchblade again carries and occupies the exact same amount of space as the Trizip, but I can stack as many of these babies as I want in raid. "Go to town champion, that's not a No-no bag". The obvious fix to this issue is one that's been suggested countless times before and I'm surprised it has yet to be implemented: the rolling up of backpacks in the same manner that guns are folded. The code has already been written and used for this. I'm not a programmer, but shit, give it a bit of copy/paste, have the 3d modelling team create images for the folded bags and you've got yourself a far more realistic, immersive and most importantly less frustrating system.
In the same vein as backpack stacking comes the recently added limitations on items being brought into raids. I can get behind this for some items, (like who needs their friend to bring in 20 graphics cards into a raid). However some items don't make much sense to me honestly. Stims are a good example for this. Being someone who loves the game, I play it a lot, more than my friends, as such I end up being a bit further ahead than them in terms of progress. To me, it seems a core part of multiplayer gaming to help your friends out with things they may not be able to access or afford yet due to their prograss or lackthereof. As such I think it fair that, for example, I should be able to drop a M.U.L.E stim for each of my friends when we want to extract out of raid together with big hauls of loot after a fun raid getting stonks (cries in memory of the days cheaters didn't chase us down for this loot on our way to extract). I know Nikita has stated he considers this "boosting" but I honestly don't believe it is. The restrictions are too extreme for the most part. In my eyes, boosting is me dropping my friends several million roubles and going "have fun champion, go buy as much overpriced ammo on the flea that you can afford". This one is a little more subjective, but personally, given that I am currently seeing the worst wave of cheaters in 4-5 years of playing the game, I feel like this change has done nothing to cheaters, except possibly cause them to be more blatant and intrusive to the legitimate player experience where instead of avoiding legit players and farming items under the radar (no pun intended) they are now cheating their balls off with accounts to fill them with loot, gear, levels and experience, and then selling these accounts off to their moronic RMT customers who then likely cop the ban for the cheating on the account, thus meaning the moronic customer gets cut (good job, honestly, that's what you get for funding cheaters), but then the cheater gets off free with a fistful of some idiots money and they move onto the next account.
Finally and likely the most minor point is the nerfing of high tier loot areas on maps to slow down the profit rate of cheaters. Marked rooms are the prime example of this. Previously marked rooms were great rooms that created dynamic PVP circumstances where players would fight for the goodies they contained. You'd get large containers like weapon cases and items cases that were not possible to be put into a secure container so it meant the winner of the fight got the loot (yes docs cases, and smaller containers were a thing too). It was really exciting getting these large cases because you HAD to extract out of the raid and survive with it. There was no putting a weapon case up your prison pocket (no matter how much you've tried with other large weapons 😉 ). These days are now gone and most of the marked rooms are overlooked with a "meh" aside from customs marked since it still hands out the odd ammo box or injector case with the occasional gun or 2. So this "great" key that is currently going on the flea market for the average price of "give me a green keycard, ya prick" is now lack lustre and only provides loot that legit players and cheaters can both put up their prison wallets, (the cheaters can still get there first and take it anyway, thus the problem wasn't even remotely solved). The exciting PVP fights and heart thumping stress and panic extracting of the raid with this dank loot is now gone, and we're left nothing but opened doors and buttholed loot.
I realise this post was ridiculously long, and more than I intended it to be originally, but I feel like something has to be done about this particular issue, because I'm seeing the game I've loved for half a decade ruined by cheaters, losers with their parents credits cards, and, I love you BSG, but, a stubborn Dev team that has an entrenced habit of never retracting changes made to the game that overall have ended up detrimenting it, despite best intentions. I hope at least some of you got a bit of a kick out of this post too, I tried my best to keep a somewhat dry topic a bit more amusing.
TLDR; Many RMT changes have been ineffective and have ultimately detrimented the game, and these outdated attempts to solve the issue need to be retracted for the benefit of the game.
PS: I know it's probably narcissistic of me to say, but I've put a lot of thought into this topic, so if anyone has the ability to make it so, I'd love to see this reach the eyes of BSG in a meaningful manner (I'll also be uploading this as a bug report since I hear BSG are willing to take suggestion through this method too).
EDIT – Grammar and phrasing.
