Really, Oh master, what is the source of "inflation" then

The biggest source of "inflation" is flipping items on the GTN (and through player trades). When someone has enough credits to buy up every item of a type, they can charge whatever they want (and there is always someone willing to pay whatever that "ourageous" amount is). If you made it so any item bought off the GTN or traded to a player became bound to legacy, that would end flipping. What effect it would have on Bioware sales would determine the likelihood it was implemented. I suspect BW would not want to go this route because Cartel Market sales are likely what is keeping the doors open at this point. As far as credits gained from leveling, that is an insignificant input into the credit totals in the game. If you level and do every mission, you will end up with several million credits and that's it (if it were so easy to get credits that way few "new" players wouldn't complain since all they would have to do to get rich is level their characters). You would have to level dozens to get more than a couple hundred million (take it from someone who has played from launch and leveled about 100 characters who doesn't have even a Billion across their entire legacy - and that includes doing quite a bit of repeatable content). Repeatable content is the only "in game" source that has the potential for an unlimited amount of credits to be earned (and is what credit sellers use to amass their credits - along with buying them from unscrupulous players.)

Well, I'd prefer not to get two emails telling me I had declined a guild invite like you get messages when you're logged in. Ideally, they could implement something that I can select that gets rid of those messages too. I find it especially annoying when I receive more than one invite from the same "offender" in quick succession then followed by an whisper asking me if I knew I had my preferences set to decline guild invites. Whispered guild invites are annoying too, and I don't think there is any way to block those unless it is the same person every time and your legacy ignore is not full (though I'm not sure whispers are covered by the ignore list)

They would need to put in some sort of system to block those invites like the "autodecline guild invites" you have when you are online so they don't even show up. I already get dozens of unwanted guild invites every time I am logged into a non-guilded character (I have plenty of characters in guilds and don't want any more). I can't even begin to imagine how bad it would be if they allowed guild invites when you're not online. Perhaps a system where you "apply" for guild membership and the guild officers decide to accept, though this could become just as bad as unwanted invites are now.

The comment was about their general performance, not just crafting. In combat there is almost no difference between the performance of an influence 50 companion and an influence 30 one. Crafting is about the only place those levels make any difference at all and it isn't 2 for 1 every time. It's more like 5 for 3 or 5 for 4. +1 on something you need to make 5 of is a decent bonus for the expenditure on raising the companion's influence to 50.

Not having all of the items crafted for the multi-craft items count for GS is fine but the expensive ones like Dark Projects, War Supplies, and Invasion Forces should count for 2 crafted items rather than 1 for GS. Those items are horrifically expensive to craft (both in materials and time) and getting a high enough level companion to get a reasonable chance for a critical is also expensive. Right now there is zero benefit to investing in an influence 50 companion. Their performance is no better than a level 25 or 30 companion and the bonuses for critical have been effectively removed. Making level 50 companions more useful might draw out some excess credits at the same time.

I could support a "project" like this but the resources needed would all but assure we wouldn't see any new story content for years (what we have gotten is already pretty pathetic, being mostly content intended for a group "dumbed down" for solo play with some extra cut-scenes or extremely linear "daily" areas). It's essentially a whole new game. The debuff would effectively be different versions of level sync (which affects both companions and characters). Defense is the biggest influencer of difficulty in that it is pure damage prevention (which gives both more time to take down the opponent as well as allowing the companion to do more damage instead of healing).

The best solution is probably a voluntary debuff that lowers your abilities further than level sync does. Something like what is done with the White Acute module with XP. The Baras and Emperor fights would need to be moved to their own synched instance because they take place on "starter" planets. A level 50 Coruscant and Drommund Kass area on the same planet might do the trick (this is something that exists for the bonus series on several planets, where the bonus area is higher level than the base planet, so it is potentially doable). What often makes the end chapter boss fights "too easy" is overlevelling and overgearing. Short of BW taking away abilities you shouldn't have for the fight (which would cause a huge backlash) you're pretty much on your own to do that to make the fight tougher.

How so. As I recall, there were several sets that were locked behind certain content. Everyone could get iRating 306 gear but it was not all equivalent. The most difficult raids still had exclusives (outside of an almost negligible chance of getting them from a random vendor one piece at a time) that performed better than the gear a typical "casual" player could obtain. Just like in 7.0 people are fixated on the iRating. In 7.0 there are people complaining that raid gear iRating isn't far enough above what others can get but the purple gear they get (with the same iRating as the blue and green stuff) is far superior to the green gear (or even the blue gear) in performance. Green gear is heavily loaded with the worthless Endurance stat (which is effectively double synced with the stat being synced and the Health from it synced further making increasing Endurance pointless) while blue and purple gear moves those points into more useful abilities. With level sync working on a sliding scale system now instead of a hard cap (for most abilities anyway) having more points in non-Endurance abilities makes the gear perform better.

Making them tradable only once would do the trick. If you get them anywhere but directly from the Cartel Market, they are bound to legacy. Doesn't stop people buying them for themselves but does completely end the relisting market.

That's really no different than putting the companion on the vendor. My thought was to have to complete at least some number of levels of a current Season to "earn" the companion separate from those you could purchase. It could be a choice at some level a GS token or a token for an old Seasons companion.

Doubtful as all it takes is one subbed account fed by hundreds of FTP accounts for each 4 billion+.

I think an interesting thing to do with previous seasons companions is to offer a token at some point in the completion of the current season (50 levels, 75 levels, 100 levels, or whatever) that gives you access to one of the previous season companions you don't have instead of offering them for sale on a vendor. That encourages people who don't have a previous companion to play the current season while still letting them "catch-up" on companions from previous seasons.

It has been discussed in the forums and the main issue involves open world opponents. When you can have a level 80 and a level 1 in the same area, mob difficulty can't be adjusted and the abilities that the high level character has trivializes the low level content. Level sync tries to make that adjustment but without taking away inappropriate abilities for the planet (a change that would cause universal uproar), balance is difficult to achieve. Throw in the bonuses that veteran players have for datacrons and legacy and the situation becomes more complicated as you have to balance experienced and novice gameplay at the same time. I have found that if you keep your gear at the planet's level (using only the mission dropped gear sets), keeping the appropriate companion (with the appropriate skill set) for the story at an appropriate level of influence, and using the white acute module to cut xp gains, you can somewhat simulate what the game used to play like (high level AOE attacks against low level foes really break things). If you limit yourself to the abilities you should have on the planet in question, it becomes truer to the original play. Adding the ability to play a different advanced class in the story completely breaks any balance that might have been since the stories were based around the abilities of the original class at the time they got to a specific planet.

Sarcasm would imply he didn't mean it. I've seen nothing in his other posts (more than just those about PVP) that indicates that is the case. I've seen several ideas about combating inflation that are good. They are the ones that take the approach that inflation built up over time and it will take time to reign it in. The ones that try to "eliminate" credits are universally bad ones. A credit sink, to be effective, has to be something that is used by everyone, not just the handful of players with billions of credits. It should affect the billionaires more but will not make any difference at all if it affects just them (or even worse, if it is a one shot approach). A zero tolerance to credit buyers and sellers would also help.

Sounds more like sour grapes than an actual solution. There have been many good ideas posted to ease inflation. None will fix it instantly and your suggestion would shut down the game, though perhaps that is what you want since you can't play the game the way you want to, and if you can't play the way you want, no one should be able to play. Lots of other people have had portions of the game removed (or drastically changed) that they were fond of, some left but most stayed. Stay or go, the choice is yours but posting nonsense posts just makes you look bad.

Personally, I'd prefer not to see a thousand Luke Skywalkers and Revans running around regardless of what "hidden" identifier would keep them distinct. It's already bad enough with the use of special characters in the names.

A while back they changed it so that all planets had defeat enemies 1 and 2 (for about 20K total with 150% bonus) instead of a single defeat enemies not tied to a planet. Prior to that, Tython and Coruscant had no CQ rewards other than their heroics (and heroics only counted for a couple of planets each week not all planets). They also added CQ points for gaining a level and gaining 5 levels to balance out the advantage group play had at the time. They did cut the CQ point rewards significantly after a lot of complaining by a very persistent GSF player and removed the ability to get 5K per heroic and limited it to 1 per planet per day along with destroying crafting as a viable way to get to your conquest goal. They also eliminated all rewards for completing Conquest objectives (credits, xp, etc). All in all, Conquest is very different now than it was even a couple years ago.

I disagree. It takes hundreds of those currencies to upgrade just 1 piece and you have to have an upgradeable piece to start with (which comes from the content in question) so it doesn't defeat the purpose at all. In addition, the sheer number of those currencies you would need to buy would drain a significant number of credits compared to what there is now and it would only affect those that want to rush the process instead of crippling the players that aren't swimming in credits like most of the other suggestions that have been made to combat the credit excess (like reducing rewards even further which hasn't worked at all)

As a somewhat unrelated thought, what about allowing the various "currencies" to be exchanged for in game credits to drain some of the credits from the game. Edit: Buying the currencies with credits that is

True, in any case, content shouldn't be built around speed running. It would seem to be a better idea for those that want to spacebar conversations to put together groups in chat (or in a guild) specifically to do that. That way there is no question what is going to happen. Group Finder was not added to the game to encourage speed runs, but rather to bring together inexperienced players wanting to do the group content.

Or drop FP gear in the story flashpoints, then those people wouldn't need to run Veteran and Master modes. Even dropping 1 piece per flashpoint would be enough to draw quite a few of those "noobs" out of the harder content.

KotET and KotFE were created and balanced for much more powerful characters and companions and they were never updated with the character and companion nerfs (character damage was nerfed and NPC damage was not). Most areas are fine if you are overleveled and overgeared but some areas are very difficult with low influence companions and on-level gear. Your best approach is to be max level and have a companion of at least influence 30 and be in 320+ gear (or go with a class with heavy defense abilities like trooper/bounty hunter).

Fleet is by far the biggest problem area and is the most crowded. Fixing that would be a big step forward. It also involves only small areas with pretty well defined edges, so it should be less intrusive than open areas where the edge might be less obvious

Also noting a decrease in healing amount, healing rate, and healing initiation time. It's back to what it was in 7.0 when it was severely broken.