Is Tarkov’s Progression Screwed Up Forever?

(Intro)

With the introduction of Arena’s 2.0 relaunch, one of the more enticing ideas that got added was for the ability to transfer money and items to and from both Tarkov and Arena. The cross-progression in the game makes for interesting situations where you might be playing Tarkov and go on a bad streak of deaths, to the point where you want to switch over to Arena and just play a couple matches to cool off without feeling the risk of and pain that comes with any loss in the main game. And while these ideas sounded interesting on paper, in actuality what has happened sadly, is the permanent shattering of the Tarkov economy forever. To be fair, Tarkov’s economy has never been properly balanced and that is unfortunately just the nature of the game itself. If you don’t log in everyday and play the game and do well, you won’t see tens of millions of rubles in your stash. And while I have always advocated for players having less and to feel the stress of making tough decisions while having limited supplies, the cross-progression change has essentially made that idea a dream that will sadly never happen.

(The idea itself doomed us)

It’s easy to point to a single decision that has caused this problem for both games. Cross-progression and being able to send money to Tarkov is the main culprit for what is going to happen next wipe. Which is players having more money on them than ever before if they decide to go down the route of playing nothing but Arena at the beginning of a restart until the hit level fifteen and then sending all the money they’ve made over to the main game and using the flea market to have access to decent weapons, attachments and ammos. Sure, ammo with forty-two penetration or higher is still banned from being listed, but there are good ammos for the early game that can be bought for a variety of calibers. Even though BSG recently adjusted the amount of money and experience you earn for each match to be less than what it was previously, they would need to continue further down that road if they want to see enough of an impact where playing Arena isn’t free money and experience for your Tarkov account, but still want there to be cross-progression and keep the ability to send money over. This will be the second full wipe cycle for Tarkov that we have the ability to transfer money and cases around the games and because of that, players essentially now have two ways of going about their wipe.

(What to play after a wipe: Tarkov, or Arena?)

The first way is to simply play Tarkov as normal. You primarily spend your time doing the quests, raiding and earning money and experience as you have for potentially years now. If you don’t own arena, then this option is chosen for you of course. But assuming you have both modes of play either because you are an Edge of Darkness or higher owner of the game, or purchased arena separately, I’m sure some people that maybe either don’t like how arena is set up, or just maybe never gave it a chance after its disastrous launch, will just play Tarkov like it doesn’t even exist. Which is totally fine; if it isn’t broken, there is no reason to fix it. But now, there is a second way to level up and earn money. And that is to switch your focus over to Arena and just grind games on that. We don’t know if arena is also going to wipe alongside the main game when the new patch drops. That has never been clearly stated by BSG. I’m honestly not sure what a wipe for arena would even entail at this point. Maybe we need to reunlock all the weapons and items we’ve acquired so far, but that might just upset people that they can’t build their kits anymore. Either way, the option to spam arena games, and earn solid experience regardless of whether or not you win is a viable option now. You don’t own money in arena for team games unless you win, and for last hero, your placement is directly proportional to how much money you earn. Playing the game as normal is effective, but there’s also another way to quickly earn money and experience that you can do every day that you log into arena.

(Dailies and weeklies are very strong)

Similar to the main game, arena after you level up enough times will give you access to both daily and weekly challenges that can be completed for lump sums of experience and money. And again, like Tarkov, the higher your level is, after certain thresholds those values will get more and more lucrative for you to complete. However, unlike Tarkov, arena’s daily and weeklies are significantly more dumbed down. Because there is only so much you can do within arena, you will rarely see a daily where you can’t complete it after player for an hour or so. Whether it’s winning rounds as a certain class, getting a specified number of kills in a particular mode, or maybe the least enticing killing people in overtime or capturing an objective by yourself. Those last two are usually the ones I end up rerolling because they are a little too specific for how players like to engage with arena in general. Otherwise after a couple games, that’s some easy and lucrative experience and money. Not to mention reputation for the arena specific trader, Ref.

(Ref the trader is a wild card)

Ref is such a weird yet interesting vendor in Tarkov. He doesn’t necessarily break the progression flow of Tarkov (kind of but more so in the mid to late game), but more so gives you opportunities to use the currencies you’ve been earning in arena for some moderately powerful items, weapon and ammo barters. He only barters for GP coins and Lega medals, which are primarily acquired through arena. Weekly challenges are the only way to obtain Lega medals, which can be used for powerful keys in Tarkov. He also has a large questline in the main game that to this day I still haven’t fully seen. I still haven’t done his first quest where you need to hand in all the different food items found in raid. I just never saw those items. And because he is directly linked to arena, he is not available in PvE, meaning the only way to engage with this trader at all, is by playing PvP and doing his quests there. But his quests don’t matter; having Ref simply exist in either game breaks the flow of how quickly people can and will get their hands on the good stuff. Either raw rubles, GP coins for barters, or Lega medals for keys. It makes sense to have a face that oversees all the going on's of arena, but having him by the link between games means people will be sending money over to Tarkov any chance they get.

(Outro)

Tarkov’s economy has ultimately been uprooted with the introduction of cross-progression and being able to send items to and from the games. The thing is though, is that while it certainly makes the problem worse, it’s not the main culprit. The flea market is truly, at the core of why Tarkov’s economy has been so utterly broken since it was introduced. We won’t get into the weeds of whether or not it should go, that can be its own video. Personally, speaking only for myself, I played the game before the flea and it worked. In fact, it worked a little too well; with Fence being the OG pseudo flea market. If it was gone and I mean gone for good with the newest wipe, I personally wouldn’t mind. There would be an adjustment period, but overtime I think BSG could start to scale back the costs of everything in the game and make it feel like something closer to before it was added. Inflation in Tarkov is something no one talks about and it’s directly because of the flea. But now with cross-progression, I foresee this problem only getting worse. People are going to level up faster, have more money on them, and have access to the flea before we ever could previously. The next wipe is going to be an interesting one to say for sure. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to watch this video. Let me know down in the comment section below your thoughts on Ref’s mechanics in general, being able to have cross-progression between the two games and be sure to subscribe for more videos about the potentially disastrous decisions made by the developers that could ultimately ruin the economy of the game forever. I hope to see you in future ones.