The Flea market, despite the FIR changes, continues to fuel the cheater/hacker community. I would venture to say the majority of cheaters are doing so for the money they can make off of real world trading. The Flea market presents an easy and convenient way to convert items to roubles – despite the FIR change. These roubles are then converted to real $.
It seems to be that Tarkov is stuck in a cycle of new waves of cheaters – ban wave – Pax Romana times – New wave of cheats – bans etc. The bans do not truly discourage hackers – they are making more money from RMT than it costs them to buy a new account. It would seem that BSG has an impossible task of banning fast enough that the game becomes unprofitable to hack. Unless the a genius breakthrough is made, this is going to continue ad nauseum.
BSG plans to be adding an in game report system, but this did not work well enough for another game that is still infected by hackers – PUBG. To note in addition that PUBG experienced a significant increase in hackers when items became tradable on the steam market. The Flea market is essentially this with extra steps.
I would also like to note the toxic impact cheaters have on game integrity – instead of simply assuming they are outplayed and attempt to improve, many players come to assume their killer was cheating. Many deaths come to be treated with suspicion rather than a sportsman like 'GG'.
Now, if flea market was to be removed, trader inventories and sell prices would need tweaking; to some extent the quest system as well. But I do not think the current inventories would be to far off from what would be needed in a post flea market tarkov world. In other words a major overhaul would not be needed.
In addition, wouldn't it be nice for maps like labs, reserve, and interchange to become more playable? They are very rough during cheater waves due to the high quantity of valuable loot. Many players do not venture to labs due to the fear of hackers that the map has come to have a reputation for. Further, players would be encouraged to play different maps to accomplish different goals. Need AESA for hideout? To reserve. Need top tier Armour? To labs for spawns or raiders. Need fuel? To interchange. Player map diversity would increase rather than simply maining one map. It would encourage the RPG element that has been stated is a goal.
Gear diversity would become more apparent, instead of just having another kit to be lost (eventually) your gear would matter to you like it does in early wipe. Armour & ammo would be more valuable as it AP rounds would be more scarce and difficult to acquire – rather than a simple jaunt to flea market to pay 1k rouble or less for a pen everything round that has a virtually limitless supply (IE igolnik, BS, SNB etc).
All in all the benefits of flea market removal vastly outweigh the cons. Flea market removal will not totally stop RMT trading but will make it greatly more difficult and thus discouraged.
