When calculating GTN prices, you're calculating based on completed sales and not listed prices, right? If there are 20 Baby Grogu toys on eBay for $1M each, it doesn't mean they're worth $1M if nobody's buying them. If you look at Completed eBay items and see they actually sell for $50 or you can buy one at a store for $60, that's the value that should be calculated.

Honest question: As a returning player, I haven't seen the big credit sinks in the game. What is available at extreme credit prices OTHER than player-set highly inflated GTN items? What is the most expensive stronghold and vendor-purchased set you can get? How many credits does a character need to experience every part of the game that's NOT interacting with the GTN? Strongholds, common unlocks, mounts, power-leveling crew skills on missions, and all that combined probably don't add up to 500M total, so why do we need the ability to trade more than 500M in a single transaction?

Like you and @Ardrossan, I am also for price control for GTN items. Any items that can just be bought by characters (reputation vendors, Collector Edition vendors, preorder vendors or Cartel Coins) should have caps that are a relation to their vendor or cartel coin price. Current out-of-rotation Cartel Coin items (I think the Revanite Vindicator set?) can have higher buyout value, but anything that can just be outright purchased with credits or real money should have an in-game trade cap. 1M is a bit low for platinum, but 500M+ posts should be a thing of the past.

I'm telling you, Bioware. I'm an experienced major incident commander for large-scale SaaS services. Get me in here, and I'll help! For those of us waiting: Why not walk over to the thread about the economic changes coming in 7.3? That'll keep us busy.

"Will develop auto-failover, load shedding, circuit breakers, and safe deployments for cartel coins"

I am a cloud site reliability engineer and suffering from the tech layoffs here in the San Francisco Bay. I could log in and help out. What do you say, Bioware?

Cached, maybe? Or the status page flips on and off? Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/2oxvs9n

It's officially down: https://www.swtor.com/server-status

You're not alone. SWTOR is kicking me out "for inactivity" just as soon as I try to select the server Satele Shan. Here's a video. https://youtu.be/5d2JovAtxXo Tried relaunching, rebooting, no luck. Star Forge works so it's not my account or software. It's the server.

Adding new fees, specifically on high-value trades, will remove credits from the economy and reduce the profitability of market-destroying predatory practices. Predatory trading hurts the market by making it difficult for non-billionaires to participate in the player economy. It should hopefully reduce how often it happens by making those practices less lucrative. Hopefully. I agree that other credit sinks should be available in the game, and I think low-cartel-coin non-tradeable (like character face/body customization or bind-on-pickup dyes) should be available for high credit costs. However, multimillion-credit listings for items (like Collector's Edition vendor dyes, which cannot be purchased by any player who signed up in the last decade) should be far less profitable for the seller.

For your benefit and for those who do not understand the benefits of fees and taxes, here's a 5-minute TedEd on why governments don't print unlimited money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFTKKyYSCKs It relates to SWTOR because the game is constantly printing money. Quest rewards, vendor trash, and just plain drops will increase the currency supply in the economy. It doesn't stop, either. The more people play, the more currency is printed. Over many years of gaming, there will always be some inflation. The game needs a way to remove currency from circulation to prevent runaway inflation.

I think I mentioned this one in another thread among a list of other ideas, but I'm going to pop it out to a separate single post: Create a vendor in the game who is so Force-attuned that she is able to extend bonds from players to family. She charges a ton of credits and allows certain "bound" items to transition to "Legacy bound." It's a credit sink. It doesn't add new items to the game. It doesn't interfere with player-to-player trade. It just allows one player to use an item they already have but on an alt. You can even transition it to a kind of "Bind on equip + Legacy bound" that makes it bind to the next character (who can only be of the same legacy) on use. Name her "Liberare" (It's Latin)

That's the opposite I've seen. Items available from vendors are usually posted on the GTN for 10-500% more than vendor prices because they're preying on people who don't know which vendor to find the item. How about this: Making certain vendor-provided crafting mats expensive and recipes hard to get, but allowing items on the GTN (especially dyes and certain gear) to be crafted. That way, GTN dyes (and certain other cosmetics) are available in-game for enough work and still can be sold. This will curb the "pay to win at the economy" so people don't feel like they have to pay real money to sell things on the GTN just to have enough money to participate in the game economy. It's not directly removing the possible revenue from Bioware (people can still skip all the work in leveling professions and collecting materials). Still, those who contribute to the game and invest in their characters can get GTN recipes and craft previously GTN-only items. Alternately, items can cycle in and out of the GTN with a surprise on which items will go into the GTN and when. Sale prices should be unpredictable too. That way, the developers can discourage people from speculating and price manipulation by making speculative buying less predictable and profitable. GTN sales should be frequent, more interesting, and less predictable anyway. Those items don't need to leave the GTN entirely.

Why? I believe the goals should be a balance of "make the game fun and accessible to everyone, regardless of time played" and "keep inflation under control." Small credit sinks that cost the same for a lvl 5 character returning to the Jedi Temple as for a lvl 80 multi-billionaire are not equal. That lvl 5 character will be fast-traveling a lot more on any given planet to run quests and turn them in. The lvl 80 multi-billionaire... how often do they fast-travel per play session? When you run analytics of the fast travel money collection, make sure you do a comparison of "credits collected compared to credits earned." What you won't get from this is the analytics of how often users choose to skip quick travel when they otherwise would have. Those users are spending more time on speeders and taxis, reducing the amount of time they can spend enjoying the game. 5k for a trip across Nar Shaddaa is silly for the lvl 20 characters who will spend the most time on that planet. It only serves to delay how long it takes for them to participate in the player-driven economy. If you must keep small credit sinks, at least scale it to the character's progress. Think of this: it's possible for a city to increase revenue by increasing fuel tax. Wealthy people will grumble, but pay it. People with less wealth will have to choose between paying it, taking the bus (and a dramatically less enjoyable or convenient and more time consuming part of their day) or choosing between driving or a high quality meal later in the week. Now who are the biggest contributors of inflation?

Let me restate it in simpler words. I was replying to this bit in which you expressed anger for new "taxes" because taxes are for government protection, infrastructure, etc. Cash transfers, mail delivery, commerce, and the like are commercial enterprises, not governments. Those don't have taxes. They have service fees. In that context, identifying them as a "tax" is inappropriate, and this quote does not match the situation: