Lately, the Flea Market discussion has been brought up again, and with the patch notes mentioning bringing up the minimum level to access the Flea, many players (specially new ones) aren't very happy.
I have recently come across u/GuerrillaOPS recently criticizing the new changes and offering a solution to the problem: making the Flea Market found in raid only. In this post, I will adress some of his major points and make some of my own.
Impact on newer players
It is known that as of now newer players don't have many options on both ammunition and equipment from the traders until they reach at least level 22~. The major example of this is the lack of ammo that has more than 35 penetration (which is what I'd consider usable early-on) for different callibers.
The Flea Market (and thus the reselling that happens on it) is the major way that newer players have access to good ammunition and equipment, and limiting it is going to have a major impact on newers players and the reason for it is..
Supply and Demand
This aspect of Tarkov's economy is mentioned u/GuerrillaOPS' post, and it would be undeniably harmful for anyone trying to use the Flea Market. First, we have to address that every item that a players brings in raid isn't counted as found-in-raid, regardless of where you acquired it. The sheer amount of items in the game would make it so that many items would have their supply massively *reduced*, since you can't resell them anymore. That means that bots or players would either buy them all, leaving no stock or they'd be sold for ridiculously high prices. For the implementation of the FIR only Flea Market I only see 2 possible options:
- They change the mechanic and make it so that everyone's items are found-in-raid when you kill them
That would cause it's own set of problems, as it would be theoretically possible to cheese quests with friends if you queue up on the same raid, and even with that change, the supply on many items would still be low, as a lot of gun attachments and other items don't even have in-world spawns.
- They keep it as it is now
As I said before, prices would go up and stock would go down, and those who only have a few hours per week to play wouldn't be able to properly progress at all.
Vendors x Flea Market
We all know that many items that players bring in-raid are very valuable and can net you some good money if you sell them to the market. Right now, it is very rare for traders to pay you nearly the amount of money you'd get from selling an item on the market, ranging from gun parts to most helmets. With the "money sinks" that have been added recently to the game (hideout, clothing, out of raid healing) a change like this would impact directly on the money that goes into your bank. And yes, I'm aware that a good chunk of the valuables are the ones you find in-raid, however, it would still limit your playstyle to that of a rat, hampering those who want to enjoy the game on their own terms.
Possible Solutions and Misc
My proposal is to simply remove the global limit on the traders and make it only player-based. The reselling would still happen and it would keep newer and less commited players competitive, but the prices on the market would be very similar to those of the traders, since a lot of people can only buy a handful of them and they must keep the prices on track with the competition. We can already see this on items that have basically no global limit (cheaper ammo, meds and other stuff).
Regarding the change to make the market accesible only on level 15, it looks like BSG wants to make it harder to setup a bot account from scratch. I suggest that players should be able to buy items since level 5, but only sell them from level 10 or 15. That would allign the interests of both the players and BSG.
Thanks for reading until now, I really want to hear your thoughts in the comments.
