4Game

Forewarning: This is going to be subjective and filled with a lot of my own opinions. Been playing since late 2017 and a lot of this is comparing my own (and friends' experiences) over the past few years/wipes.

I'm not trying to argue along the lines of 'grr tarkov is becoming too easy' – but really, looking back, we are getting more and more ways for the game's progression to become insanely easy.

Let's talk gear: The starting gear is far improved from what you used to start with. You have access to super cheap/effective level 4 armor with the potato sack at level 15 now – and level 5 armor that repairs incredibly well and cheap at level 22. There are very little missions now that you actually can get stuck with for a while now since you can craft practically every mission item you need now, meaning that unlocking trader levels is easier than ever before.

Let's talk money: Even super common 'low value' items can make you rich now. Walking out of a construction area with a bunch of bolts is equal to finding a bitcoin in raid now. Hit level 40 and you get 5+ million from the THICC weapon case. Manage to find a single ledx by farming shoreline/interchange/labs and you get 14+ million after which the entirety of the wipe becomes a joke – you can literally buy out the entire hideout and buy every non-FIR mission item you might need after that – You can skip the ENTIRE progression line by finding 1 item in raid (the ophthalmoscopes are not that rare).

And last, missions: Mission rewards are insanely out of balance now with the flea market, turning the gunsmith quests into a literal profit run. With a rare exception such as trying to buy an RSASS early on, these missions are just 'buy X from flea market, build guns, profit'. With rare exceptions such as the USB sticks, pretty much every mission item can be made now. The only challenging missions now are specific kills, or drop off/pick ups in specific areas such as dorms.

In my experience, the wipes are over faster and faster. At the moment, hitting level 22 basically means vector+korund allows you to go stomping about freely. Again, this is highly subjective, but to me it has felt like the 'wipe experience' used to last more than a month, and now it's what, two weeks tops before you're coming across level 5 armor and 'meta' guns. I still enjoy the game, and it's definitely better than it's ever been – the weapon rebalances have been really good, especially the reworked stats on attachments/etc – and some of the map reworks have been absolutely amazing. I don't want to say the game itself needs to be harder..but maybe the progression should take more effort again?