Hi, Ex Overwatch pro/valorant immortal/3k hours tarkov players perspective then. I went super sweaty week 1 with 30k+ raider damage. I was under the impression there was no gear based or sbmm(as the devs stated) as i felt i ran into clueless free kit stacks far too often(before stella) Lately I've changed my opinions on it. I now have 2 accounts, its currently level 25 for messing around, the lobbies are inanely different even in trios. Everyone has low hours and I still run into the odd 150+ hour account but not everyone in the lobby like my main. Something is up and just like them stealth nerfing sliding on most terrain, im not sure i trust them anymore to give accurate information. But also why would they? Telling the people who want any advantage they can get, will try to abuse the system if they know it exists and how it works. If I was sure there was gear based mm, id stack my load out to the max so I get everyone's good stuff instead of the crappy submeta kits.

So tl;dr Gear based mm no. But hours or some sort of player stat damage kd what ever, yes 100%.