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What it might look like to purchase a patch from Ragman
TL;DR: Add cosmetic patches as a way of recognizing significant accomplishments: completing certain quests or attaining certain milestones.
I don't know about you- but Mechanic's Shooter Born in Heaven Quest is quite the toughie, and next to The Stylish One, is regarded by many to be the hardest quest in Tarkov. What kind of sucks, is that aside from the laughable reward of 100,000 roubles and a semi-decent amount of XP, you don't "get" much from the quest. There is absolutely a sense of accomplishment when you finally get that last headshot, but wouldn't it be nice to get some recognition for that? I guarantee you that if there wasn't a tracksuit at the end of The Stylish One, absolutely no one would grind that quest. Practically the only reason most people grind the Shooter quest is to get the Kappa Container later down the road, and most people's reaction after completing the quest is just "One step closer to Kappa." In my opinion, there should be more quests in Tarkov where the motivation to complete the quest isn't simply "this is just a stepping stone."
Some patch examples for non-quest related tasks
If you put more emphasis on the respect that comes with completing a quest, and not just progression to a final goal like the Kappa Container, a lot of the very grindy and soul-crushingly difficult quests become that much more bearable. Think about it, people are willing to bear hours upon hours of endless grinding for a Tracksuit which doesn't even lead to anything else. This speaks to the viability of having a tangible cosmetic reward for quests, instead of just fungible rewards like currency or XP. Wearing a patch on your character as a constant reminder of what you accomplished is a pretty good feeling, and its why patches are a pretty popular method of showcasing accomplishments in many different games. Doesn't feel as good as wearing the tracksuit, but hey, that tracksuit is supposed to feel better because it's a more significant piece of clothing and what it represents is much greater than the completion of the average quest.
Of course Patches aren't the only way to do this, but I think patches are a happy medium between getting nothing at all, and having to add in a whole new item of clothing in for each difficult quest you want recognition for. Patches are a lot less work to make than entire pieces of clothing, and it also provides a relatively simple reward for tasks that are hard enough to deserve respect for, but not hard enough to warrant an entirely new piece of clothing.
Maybe you can even have patches that aren't associated with quests at all and just require certain levels, like fancier BEAR/USEC patches for your character.
There are also many clothing items in game which seem to be compatible with a "Patch" system. I'm not saying that implementing Patches at first would be trivial, however once implemented, adding new patches and new pieces of clothing compatible with patches would be easier. Not only that, but it's a great return on investment, as for each patch added/piece of clothing compatible with a patch added, it exponentially increases the combinations of clothing you can put on your PMC and therefore the uniqueness of each PMC's outfit.
There are already many In-Game items which are begging to have patches placed on them.
I'm not saying that every single quest in Tarkov should award you a patch, because I think that kind of defeats the purpose of the patches meaning something. I just think that it's a balanced way for the average Tarkov player to achieve meaningful cosmetic rewards without having to grind for hundreds of hours for the Tracksuit.
I'd love to hear what you guys think about this suggestion- but imo I think it's definitely a nice detailed feature they could add to the game which could not only enhance character customization, but quests overall.
EDIT: Moved pictures toward the top b/c people like pretty pictures ;)
EDIT 2: Added Chad and Rat patches
EDIT 3: Added a lot more potential patches, fancied up the marksman patch a bit more
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