Been surfing through the forums a lot since the EGA started, and I've seen a lot of people complaining about the cost of various things in the game (i.e abilities, crew skills, mount training). Naturally people are discouraged when they build up an accumulation of money and have to blow it all just to get a mount, but I want to look more at the grand scheme of things.
The problem with MMOs in general is that there is a huge amount of currency (credits) entering into the player economy-be it mission rewards pvp rewards or good old fashion farming- but not enough credits leaving the economy. If currency leaving the economy is bottle-necked then a surplus begins to build up. More and more people have more and more credits, therefore those credits become devalued. Once this happens it becomes a snow ball effect.
Look at WoW, for a good part of vanilla 1k gold was considered wealthy; now people are running around with 50k gold and it is normal.
The problem is that once people realize how much money is flying around the economy and how little is needed to actually play the game, the currency becomes obsolete.
Look at Diablo 2. People realized the in game currency was useless, and had to resort to trading item for item. Eventually the players made their own currency in SoJs. This too went obsolete, because they were about as useful as my pinewood derby trophies.
This brings me to my overall point. For a player economy to be successful, the game has to force the player to not only attain but maintain. This is not like a real life economy, and there is no government to watch inflation. The game needs to have ways to let air out of the bubble before it bursts. I'm a firm supporter of the high cost of leveling right now. I have not hit 50 yet, but I hope there are just as many ways for us to spend our credits back into the system as there is ways to get credits out.
I'll conclude with some of my recommendations for maintaining this balance.
High repair costs(at least high in comparison to wow)
Higher cost of travel to planets/cheaper cost of travel to space missions
Taxi fees-tbh not sure if the taxis charge or not
Include some level of credit requirement with things purchased with commendations
Guild dues to cover expenses of guild perks that will be added later im sure i.e guild bank
These are just a few of my ideas. I hope the general idea got through. Flame On!