Pretty simple solution we discussed in the GSF forums: Make the rewards based on accomplishments in the match. 0/0/8 gets nothing, but one game in a long weekly mission, 15/15/1 gets a lot of good stuff and 3 points in the weekly (+1 for a win). That would get rid of 90% of the people that are doing nothing in the match pretty quickly. Of course, those rewards need to be tailored for the game mode we're playing. While basing it on K/D works in Death Match, it doesn't for domination. Rewarding good play in Domination is a bit harder, even objective points don't cut it - people would just sit at one satellite with the entire team for the entire match. Here, I would increase the objective radius (not the tapping radius - just the area you need to be in in order to get objective points for attacking/defending a satellite) and reward kills in that area with objective points as well. Just encourage objective playing with objective points and then base the rewards on that. You could probably turn that mechanic over to Domination and just reward objective points for killing an enemy and doing and repairing damage. Maybe you could even base the amount of points you get from killing an enemy on their ships equipment - and your own equipment as well, so that you gain more points if the other guy is better equipped than you are. An easier option would be to just institute a vote-kick system. But that might lead to people votekicking people out they don't like for other reasons but the one stated above. Or a system that gives you penalties for going out of a game with bad stats (locked queue for several minutes for example). But I personally prefer a system that gives you positive incentives to play good.

So, for quite some time now we have been experiencing a steady inflation, pushed up one level of escalation with each new credit exploit and gradually increased by a natural influx of money from the system, with only few and limited ways to invest that money into the game again (credit sinks). History is showing us, that those problems are not exclusive in video games. Back in the 1920s, Germany suffered under hyperinflation. It wiped out debts and capital fled into property. The government printing money to combat their own mounting debt excacerbated the problem. That directly led to this kind of hyperinflation - it had a similar effect to how credit exploits let the inflation rates explode. But how was this kind of inflation combated back in the late 1920s? It's simple. The government stopped printing the old money. Instead they printed a new currency. The "Deutsche Mark" became the "Rentenmark". People were able to exchange their billions of "Deutsche Mark" into a lower figure of "Rentenmark". "Deutsche Mark" was no longer accepted as a currency anywhere. Government services and groceries had to be paid for with the new currency, while employees were being paid in the new currency as well. This didn't address inflation directly, but it addressed most of the effects. I am suggesting the same for SWTOR. Add a new currency. Add a vendor to the fleet where you can exchange the old currency into the new one - obviously not 1to1 but with a certain rate the devs are probably way better suited to determine then I am. From my point of view, a factor of 10 should already be enough to fix a lot of problems. if you want, you could go even further. At the same time, game vendors only accept the new currency - and all prices will be slashed by the same factor you used for the credit exchange, so relative buying power stays the same. However, I do recognize that many people see the billions upon billions of credits they ammased as some sort of achievement - so, if you want, you can keep them. You can still use them to trade with other players. You will be able to exchange them into the new currency whenever you want, so you don't lose relative purchasing power. You just can't use those credits at game vendors anymore. Now, you probably think: "What is this fixing? You're only striking one zero from everyone?" First of all, no, we won't steal anyone's credits. You could still keep every last one of the credits you currently own. That was the main concern some people had when reducing all credits by a certain factor was discussed. You're not losing anything. Secondly, this fixes one major problem the economy now has: The GTN is not being used for high value items, thus buying and selling items is not as frequent. This reduces the opportunity for newer and less experienced players to enter the market. And even older players like me, who have very limited knowledge of buying and selling items are often confronted with the situation of having a rare item, wanting to make credits but having no clue if an offer made by a stranger is fair, or if he's trying to get that item cheaply. The GTN provides a point of reference. Search for the item, and then put it in for 95% of that price. Thirdly, it fixes the issue of catching up. Mission rewards would gain importance as a means of obtaining credits and newer players would be able to afford rarer items by playing the game, instead of playing economy simulator or buying from a gold seller. Ultimately, this change addresses one core issue: The credits exploit from the past, that blew up the amount of credits that are in the game. And every players can submit to this process volunatarily, no one would be forced to take part.

A 200% tax on coffee would not increase it's cost by a factor of 10. The tax on coffee in my country is €2,19 per kilogram. A 200% increase would be to €6,57 per kilogram. If we assume 25g of coffee for one cup, the increase comes down to €0,11 - 11 cents more for one cup of coffee. That's a minor inconvenience and less than the amount of inflation we had, both, in the game and in the real world over the past two years. if you want to make an argument, at least get your math right. Also, please reread my comment. This measure is not one to single-handedly fix inflation. It's part of a bigger picture. The Devs even said that it is the first set of changes. It's not designed to fix inflation, it's part of a bigger plan to reduce the rate inflation is increasing by - by draining some credits out of the game without people noticing it. Yes, without people noticing. The cost for quick travels is between a few hundred credits and 5.000 credits. Do 40 minutes of content, buy one OEM or RPM for 4000 Tech Fragments, sell it for 100m in the GTN and you can afford 20.000 Quicktravels at maximum cost. That's the equivalent of increasing the tax on coffee by 1 cent for each cup. If you work a real job and are not living on the street, you won't notice it in your monthly balance. In order to afford the increased price for 20.000 cups of coffee, you have to work for two days for minimum wage. In order to pay for the increased price of 1 cent per cup of coffee, with a presumed three cups you drink every day, you will have to work for 15 seconds for minimum wage. Do you want to know what is affecting the credit economy that is not Quicktravel? The changed Repair cost formula. I've paid 500000 credits for one night of raiding yesterday. And do you know why I don't care? Because I can sell what I got in fragments from that day and will be able to afford an entire year of raiding just with one sale.

When did you do that warzone? During the last testing phase that ended two weeks ago (64-bit client) or the one before (PvP medal changes)?

This right here. The change is not about having one measure that fixes everything. It's about having a measure that contributes in stopping the drain. Or in this case increasing it a little bit. It's like saying a tax increase of 1% on tobacco isn't rescuing the governments finances. It isn't. But it helps. Now, if you're arguing that it's targeting the wrong people: You can already see rich people crying havoc and threating to quit the game over any measure that would reduce their wealth. And compared to newer players suffering from a few thousand credits quicktravel cost (use the speeders if you can't pay for QT), those players are being subscribers for the past ten years. You're not gonna mess with them.

I don't think that's entirely correct. OP is not implying that math works differently than it actually does. If we reduce all credits in the game by a specific factor and assume that it leads to prices dropping by the same factor, this is obviously correct. But that's not adding anything to this conversation. What OP is trying to go for is that people will be able to catch up to the amount of credits needed to buy a certain item faster than they do now. Right now, I don't know how to obtain, let's say, 10 billion credits in order to afford a certain item from a certain seller. But, if we completely factor out trade, I would see a doable path in farming 3 million credits by doing content. And that's the kind of economy OP is aiming for. And in this economy, where the most expensive item costs a few million credits, those that have several hundred millions would still be able to afford everything. And this is the point where the argument of time put into obtaining the credits falls apart: Credits represent a certain value. If we reduce all credits in the game by the same factor and - as you did - assume that prices stay the same relative to the credits that were deleted, the value of the credits you had before the credit-deletion is the same as the value of the credits you have afterwards. So, in fact, the time and effort you put into farming those credits would not be taken away - it would still be represented in the credits you have. The only difference would be the number on your screen. And here is another real world example: There have been many times when inflation hit a countries currency. Most notably during the Weimar Republic. What did the government do to combat inflation? They invented a new currency and phased out the old currency, with a fixed exchange rate. The people that were rich before, remained rich and the people that were poor before remained poor. But why do it? Because the poor were not able to afford anything with the money they were carrying home with a wheelbarrow the day before. We don't have that wheelbarrow problem. But we do have a problem of poor people not being able to afford anything, thus, turning to nefarios ways of obtaining credits. If game-generated activities increase in value (of credits obtained by doing them), they don't have to turn to gold-sellers anymore. As for the point I'm trying to make: I've been active in selling Operations-Achievements and Items to willing buyers before I put in a break - at the end of Patch 5.x. That's basically a service we provided against a monetary compensation. If we have fewer Credits, they would obviously not pay the high prices that are being called these days for that service. They would pay less. But we would in-turn not need as many credits to buy certain stuff from other service- or goods-providers (most notably, buying stuff in the GTN like augments or cosmetic items). So if we get less money, but need less money for our expenses, wouldn't the value of what we get for our service stay the same? The value of the service stays the same and the value of the things we buy does. Why should I care about the currency we use to interchange those things? And lastly, I have to admit that I don't really get the desire to obtain more and more money. I get that there is some kind of value behind it, but we all know that the next credit exploit is already waiting around the corner. So why should I bother with obtaining huge amounts of money, only for them to lose value anyway after some time? Isn't that, what in fact, your problem seems to be? Having the result of the time and (real world) money invested into the game being stripped away from you? Inflation is doing exactly that. Why are you not up in arms about that? I'd suggest investing my money into valuable items and storing them somewhere. Those things don't lose value relative to the economy. Credits do.

Who's ready to litigate all the issues we've discussed in the other current thread all over again? I'm sure are! TL;DR for the other thread: There are better ways to do a vote kick/non-contributing mechanic than we have right now. We've discussed a wide-range of options that, in our opinion, would all work to address different parts of the issue. The system right now punishes the wrong people for the wrong reasons, but it's still better than nothing.

Breaking News: Rich people don't like to be not as rich anymore. More news at 11. I'm considering myself modestly wealthy. Not at all in the leagues I want to be, but I have enough money earned from Sale Raids back in 5.x that it still constitutes a decent amount of credits three years later. But I know that, while this money has been acquired "officially legally", most of it originated either from Credit Exploits, washed through the GTN or from Credit Sellers - the people we sold to did not appear to be the brightest candles on the christmas tree that I don't believe that they got a lot of credits using the GTN. Credit Sellers are more likely here. So, let's try to compare the current issues with a real world example: Imagine, there was a criminal clan that was able to manufacture counterfeit money perfectly, that no one was able to discover it for a long time. It went so far, that after some time, 90% of everyone's wealth consisted of that counterfeit money. At that point, the government found a way to detect those counterfeit notes. You are now arguing, that this counterfeit money should be kept in the system, so that you can keep your wealth, because you personally didn't engage in any criminal activity? And if it is removed, you plan to move to another country? But let's be real: What will this change do? In my opinion, it would change the numbers in your credit inventory and your legacy cargo. Nothing else. Instead of 100 billion being a lot, 10 million will be a lot. Enough to afford anything. Only difference is that the steps to obtain that amount of wealth will be easier to take. People can actually do Daily Missions for Credits again (not that I would). People would kill money bosses in Operations again (maybe I would do that). And people would find creative ways to not spend credits on necessities like quick travel (I would definitely do that). The ultra-wealthy would still be ultra-wealthy. They would still be able to afford anything and everything. The proposed measures are still very fair - we're not taling about capping credits at 100million for everyone. We're talking about removing a percentage of everyone's money. So the relative difference of money-ownership between players will stay exactly the same. And even more: If you know about that in advance, you can invest all your money into items in the game. You can buy all the Cartel Items off the GTN. You can buy all the strongholds, all the extensions, you can buy guild flagships for several guilds and sell them afterwards if necessary. The proposal is one that inherently favors those that have money and gives them every opportunity to not only keep, but expand the relative difference between them and those that don't have money. You would still, effectively, be able to afford anything, dictate trade (because you have most of the item-supply and most of the money). So, what would, exactly, be changed here? Two things: 1. Credit Sellers would be less important to those that don't have money. If you can farm a million within a few days, you don't need to buy it. 2- Ingame credit-sinks (like Strongholds, Companion Gifts, Repairs...) would have more of an effect on the economy. But then again: Not on the still-ultra-wealthy. You'd still be able to afford everything easily. That makes those complaints from the ultra-wealthy actually very interesting. You're the one only losing some green numbers on black background, but none of the perks that come with it. Everyone else is losing most, if not all of the perks - but just very few of the numbers. And yet, you're the loudest voices here, threating to quit the game over nothing.

What is speeding it up is credit exploits. We got one right after the patch went live yesterday. Fortunately, it was discovered very quickly and the issue was resolved before it went out of hand. Agree with the rest of your arguments.

Pretty much this. The only times when I have been marked as non-contributing in the recent past was in very campy gunship standoff matches. Also agree with the rest of your comment. Changing the reward structure in that it rewards good pilots is basically positive reinforcement. The current kick-system is negative reinforcement. You're good, you stay, you're bad, you go. It's not really motivating people to become better - it's demotivating them to a point that they no longer queue. As stated in a previous comment, I prefer high quality matches, so both things work for me personally - but I'm sure the first option would lead to more of those high quality matches than the second option.

As i've been trying to explain: In my experience, someone, who is - according to the system - not contributing (e.g. sitting in a corner doing nothing) is often more valuable than someone who is actively feeding kills and getting a stray shot in every once in a while (in order to be counted as "contributing" according to the system). The second sort of players is, actively, cheesing the system in a way that was not intended, while the latter is just... well, we're just a man down in the team then. There are worse things. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that someone who is not doing anything is "extremely valuable". But I'd rather have people that don't have a clue sitting on the sidelines instead of making it harder for me to win the game on my own. Yes, it's a team game, but I'm perfectly fine carrying the team if the other players are willing to put their own egoistic interests of the game ending faster aside and just do as little harm to our team as they can. Because, if we win, it's a win-win scenario. This obviously only counts for Team Death Match. On Domination, everyone is valuable, even if they can't hit an enemy ship even if it's sitting directly in front of them. As the guy from my guild who told me starfighter said: Fly around the satellite as close as possible and use your defensive systems. That's better than to try to engage in a dogfight and perish without achieving anything. That said, I have no problem with people interesting in trying to learn how to fly. But you're not learning how to play GSF by picking an unequipped Scout, flying slowly towards the enemy line in Team Death Match. If you're dedicated and willing to learn, team up with more experienced players, listen to what they have to say and put effort into the whole thing. The people my tirade is going out for are those that are only queuing for the rewards, with no intention to learn GSF at all. They're ruining the game for me and everyone else who wants to play high-quality games. To get rid of those kind of players, I would like to see a vote-kick mechanic implemented. I hope I didn't hurt anybodies feelings with the last sentence? After all, you're all willing contributors to the game, aren't you? So you wouldn't be affected by what I'm suggesting? Also, one quick note to some of the other comments here: "Fighting for your life" and being marked as not contributing is a logical fallacy. You're doing something wrong here. Try shooting the enemy - I've made the experience that it's quite helpful in those kind of situations. Should also help with the "not contributing"-issue.

I didn't say it was completely useless. Only if it is being done uncoordinated. I've played matches with friends where one of us purposefully used a repair bomber to do exactly what you described. But if you're sitting in a corner, surrounded by your mines and drones, far away from anybody, you can't complain that nobody wants to die in your mines and drones or takes your repair if it takes an eternity to get there. Not saying that you did that, but that's the statement I put forward: It's lazy to do it like that. Doing damage in GSF is helping as much as doing damage in PvP: It looks decent in the statistics, but if there is enough repair, it doesn't help. I'm often using a Strike Fighter with Hydro Spanner. If someone's hitting me every once in a while, it's being repaired away very quickly. Also, do you know what shields are? So yes, a player doing damage every once in a while is contributing in terms of the kick-mechanic. But he is not actually contributing anything to the team effort to win the game. In fact, the players ending up with a 0-12 k/d is hurting his own team. That's why I'd rather have people sitting on the outside, not feeding kills to the opposing team and let those that know what to do do the dirty work. I disagree. You get bad players queuing only for rewards, kill feeding by putting up rewards for simply contributing - making it profitable for those players to simply hang around, not doing anything useful and still getting out with something. I'd prefer rewards to be more skill-based - if you contribute more to your team, you get more tech fragments for example. That would discourage those, that are only there for the rewards, but are not willing to learn how to fly to not queue - and it would lead to more high quality games overall. Probably fewer games as well, but I'd be fine with that tradeoff.

I think you've been misunderstanding something here. It is not a daily limit. It is an overall limit on how many of those you can have, at any time, as a currency at this specific character. So, if you have 0, and you earn 1, you have one. If you don't spend it all week, you're still gonna have 1 after the Tuesday reset. Now, you have a weekly limit of that currency you can earn. You started with 0. Then you earned one. This figure stays at one no matter if you spend the currency on something or not. Only after the next Tuesday reset will it go back to 0. The first number is the only one that goes down if you spend the currency. Imagine you're having a weekly money limit you can spend. Say $50 for groceries. On Monday, you withdraw $25 from your account and spend it on a moderate shopping tour. You went up $25 in your purse, but after you went shopping and paid for what you wanted to buy, you're back to $0 in your purse. At the same time, your weekly limit went down to $25. You cannot spend anymore money, without withdrawing it from your account. But by withdrawing it from your account, you're depleting your weekly limit. Now, your problem is the following: You've been withdrawing from your account for several weeks, but you don't have any more space in your purse. So you can't withdraw any more money, before spending any.

For me it's just different. I'm not jumping around on the fleet waiting for a GSF-pop. I'm queuing and then I'm doing something different - office work or even things away from the computer. Sometimes I do the dishes or make dinner while queuing. I personally prefer high quality games. Low-quality games are not fun and I'm playing a game to have fun.

So you don't think people who just fly into the enemy brainlessly, without actively contributing to the team are the problem? Those ppl are the main reason games are lost these days. I'd rather have the queue not pop as often if we can avoid those types of players. I prefer quality over quantity.

I'm a bit puzzled by all the complaints about ppl "running from the enemy until they get vote kicked for not contributing". Have you tried, you know, fighting the enemy proberly? By running, you're not really making the situation any better. Make some sharp turns, use different speeds and the maneuverability-effects those different speeds have on you to get behind the other guy and shoot. Or at least use Reflect Shield to damage the other guy - because than you're contributing. What I've noticed about many players trying to get into GSF is, that they're not shooting. They might have a somewhat decent accuracy, but they have such a low amount of shots in the game, that they're just not doing damage - at the same time I was having 3 or 4 times as many shots and, often, worse accuracy, but far more damage. So my advice: You cannot hit anyone if you don't shoot. Running away isn't gonna win you the game. Playing a bomber in Death Match is not really doing any good as a solo player either. Yes, occasionally, someone who's fighting the entire time is coming to you for some repairs and ammunition, but you're not helping an awful lot if things are not coordinated. You're contributing more by just playing a Gunship and getting an occasional shot in. I would go so far to even say, that playing a Repair-bomber in Death Match is lazy and I think it's good BW is punishing players who just want to lazily farm the rewards without actually doing the team any good. However, here is the thing: I never vote kick some one who's just sitting in the back doing nothing in Death Match. Because those players don't hurt the team as much as those that just fly into the enemy and die. I'd rather have a team mate with 0 kill, 0 assists, 0 damage and 0 deaths than one with 0 kills, 2 assists, 5000 damage and 12 deaths. I can carry most games on TH on my own if the rest of the team is not playing stupidly. So if you really want the game to be over fast, just stay away from the fight and don't feed kills to the enemy. People vote kicking those non-contributors should start using their brains. But then again, they would not have 0 kills and 12 deaths if they had a brain to speak of. So, TL;DR: Learn the game and don't complain about the system BW has put up to punish those that just want to sit around and farm rewards. And while we're here, I'd really like to have a way to check the game scores (the same you have in the end) during the game and, if I want to, vote kick someone who is, for example, only Kill-Feeding in DM to "make the game be over faster". That's the real scourge on this game mode.

It's called first blood. When the match starts and there are not enough players in both teams combined, the match ends when one team lands a kill (deathmatch) or takes a satellite (domination).

It's actually pretty simple. Do the activities you like and you'll get your gear sooner or later. Endgame Gear - that's 330 and above, optimized and augmented of course - is only needed for two things: Running harder operations (you can clear any Storymode aside from Gods, R4 and perhaps Dxun with old Gear) and PvP. If you're a PvP player, play PvP. You get currency and stuff to upgrade your stuff and your max is 336. No need to do any other activity. If you're actually interested in running harder operations, you should probably get some help from the people you want to run those operations with (e.g. your old group, guild, whatever...). We recently fast-tracked on of our guys who returned from a longer break: We pulled him through Watchdog and Kanoth VM (both 2 and 3 in R4) - those can basically be 7-manned if your group is halfway decent and got him all the purple tokens. He deconstructed two of those and then he could buy full 336 from the our Rodian friends - Hyde and Zeek in the supply area on the fleet. Obviously, that help is something that not everyone has available. Hence my comment above: If you don't run harder operations or do PvP on a high level, you don't need the equipment and can take your time to get it the regular way. However, there is also a more relaxed way of getting your gear, if you don't have friends in high places. I came back roughly six months ago after a long break - and since I had some almost-comebacks over the years, I wanted to prove to myself that I was actually motivated to come back before asking my old group to get me the newest equipment. So I did the grind, starting at nothing (or, to be more precies, at item rating 318). I grinded my way up to item rating 324 (the mods vendor was locked behind that item rating when I started) and then I had the opportunity to join a group asking for Watchdog VM. Everybody gets one blue token from that, that can be exchanged into a blue Gear piece Item Rating 332. That one, I traded in at the Rodian Vendors - Hyde and Zeek - to get access to 330 armorings. it took some time until I got a purple 330 piece - Veteran Mode Eternity Vault is really easy and every boss has a chance to drop a purple left side piece. I got a 326 Ear Piece that I was able to upgrade and then trade in with the Rodians again to get the mods. And at that point, I built an optimized and augmented 330 Gear Set from the mods I was able to buy now, while also trading in Fragments for Legendaries (those are the most important, especially for DPS!). With that set, I had no problem joining random Watchdog VM and Kanoth VM groups to obtain more pieces with 340 rating. It only took me about a week or two to get to that point - and then I asked my old group if there would be room for me and we did some equipment runs. But that's a different story. These days, you can just - as mentioned above - trade in those 340 pieces at Hyde and Zeek's and get access to 336 armorings, mods and enhancements. The difference in DPS is, at most, 2k between 336 and 340. That's sufficient to comfortably play the entire Legacy NiM content. Of course, I can understand that getting the best Gear is some sort of progress for some players. I'm of the same mind here as well - I'm still chasing that purple 340 mainhand, but whenever we're there someone else is calling dibs on the purple tokens. But as I said above: If you're not planning to do the hardest content in the game, you don't need the equipment. Just play the content you like and you'll get your stuff sooner or later. Edit: In case someone from Bioware reads this while looking for feedback: I miss the times back in 4.0 when we had token drops in all operations. Get rid of the highlight ops and just have three ratings drop in OPs: x, x+4 and x+8. Other PvE Content drops Gear from x-8 up to x depending on difficulty (MM Flashpoints being the highest), while PvP drops currency to get to X as well. x+8 Gear and x+4 Gear get an Expertise-Debuff to prevent players to enter PvP with Gear unobtainable for PvP-only players. Ideally it's bolstering people down to x or x-4, so they're not completely useless - because some players are suffering from an unwillingness to read descriptions and would join PvP with that Gear anyway.

Just a note: A completely filled up SSD tends to run slower than an empty one. New high quality SSD's run at 500-600 mb/s reading speed. I myself got a 500 GB SSD for steam only that used to be very full (games take lots of space these days) and a benchmark revealed that it only ran with ~230 MB/s. My 1 TB HDD, only 1/3s filled, runs at ~190 MB/s at the same time. I cleaned up some space on my gaming SSD and got the speed up to ~350 MB/s, but that's probably the best I'm gonna get, considering that it's almost a decade old now. So, while "SSD" sounds good, having it filled up almost completely isn't doing you any good. The difference to a regular HDD is very small. Getting a new SSD with 500 GB or even 1TB would do wonders to your gaming experience, I would assume. Back to topic: Has anyone stresstested 16man operations (Nahut comes to mind here) on PTS before it went offline? There are some 16man achievements on the menu for my group and I wonder if it's going to be worth it to wait for the 64bit version to hit the live servers before working on those.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. I would be much happer with just one resources for all content. it just needs to be well balanced and - yes - there will be content that's easier to farm than other content. In the past, it was Fractured or Red Reaper. Now it's Dread Fortress. Having Currencies disappear completely? I don't think it would be a good idea. Gear needs to be obtained by playing the content. And with the rampant inflation going on, you surely cannot want large amounts of credits as rewards for content? I would be open to the old systems of Tokens dropping directly from operations. But even then we had currencies for PvP and other PvE content. I don't want a flood of tokens either, that would become hard to comprehend very quickly. Another thing, wjere credits were spent in the past, were Augments. Back during 5.x (and to an extent 4.x due to hightlight ops), I sooner or later had Gear sets for all my DPS classes and expanded upon my knowledge and abilities by playing other classes, because I had equipment for those. I obviously also needed Augments for every set and Augments for every Implant and Relic because those were Bound on Equip as well. Right now, we still have the same Augments from late 6.x and the level 300 gold version is incredibly expensive and time-consuming to get. A new crafting level is more than overdue and would most certainly have an influence on the economy. Most people are massively overgeared anyway - and I'm seeing people failing around in full 336 in Storymode Operations, because they're driving a monster truck, while only having the license for a motorcycle. So Augments with item Rating 316, 324 and 332 would not make a difference for anybody in that regard.

What items exactly do you refer to that you get by doing planet missions? It can't be armor random drops. Each goes for what? 20.000 Credits at the vendor? You need 50.000 of those to accumulate a billion Credits.

I'm pretty sure I didn't say what you're suggesting, but you may read into my comment what you want. My point is, that I see farming Dread Fortress Storymode as "normal" playing. If you've ever done a flashpoint, queued for PvP or even did a story chapter or a star fortress, you should be able to do this operation without problems. On my server, there are groups forming on the fleet every 15 minutes in prime time, sometimes multiple at the same time. We're not talking about the best raiders in the game farming easier operations. We're talking about the "normal" player doing content and getting rewarded for it. You're pretty much arguing: "I've never had a job and I'm sitting at home on my couch doing nothing. For some reason, I don't have money." Yes, Captain Obvious. If you want more money, you should use your brain and engage in those activities that earn you a good amount of money within a reasonable amount of time. I personally don't have time to sink 8 hours a day into doing weekly missions. I'm raiding for one or two hours every other day and that's it.

Just a thought: One RPM/OEM goes for 200m on my server. It takes 20 minutes to do one Dread Fortress Story Mode. You need two to be able to afford one RPM/OEM. In order to accumulate 1bn, you need five RPM/OEM, so 10 runs. That's just over three hours. That way you can farm a billion credits in prime time every day if you really want to. And yes, everyone can do Dread Fortress SM. It's easer than a Veteran Flashpoint and usually you have a bunch of BiS-Geared people carrying you through all of it.

On the chance of being called a boomer.... Back then, in the good old days when I started playing - Patch 3.0 effectively - the economy was different. Rare Cartel Market Items sold for 100m in the GTN. Back then, credit selling bots were a thing as well. They just sold less for more. If I remember correctly, the going rate was a few dollars for ten million. But if we had noticed: The leaps forward in inflation did occur whenever there was a credit exploit. I cannot say if inflation was creeping forward slowly without an inflation, but if it did, it wasn't really noticable. What I'm trying to say is: bot-able loops and small explots don't matter that much. What matters is, when there is an exploit where you can sell an item for more than it costs to buy to the same NPC or when you can duplicate items. The gold selling websites are the first to abuse that bug and almost everybody is a benificiary. Most notably those that sell at the GTN, where those credits are being washed clean. Indirectly everyone who offers services to other players. We've organized sale raids during patch 5.0 and we made fortunes with that - pretty much the only real source of income I had, ending with roughly 5bn credits in the bank. The players we sold that stuff to were not the brightes candles on the cake, most of them either sold at the GTN or bought credits directly. So, Bioware is right in that they now come for us to get the money out of the game. I have no problem with losing some of my money if everyone else does to. It balances the economy and ultimately makes stuff more affordable for newer players. In the end, it doesn't really matter for me - if I have 20bn and have to pay 5m per Augmentation Kit or if I have 2bn and pay 500k per Augmentation Kit is all the same to me. As long as I have reasonably ways to remain in the upper middle-class in this game, when it comes to credit income, I'm good. Only thing that's important to me in all that money business is, that I can find what i need in the GTN. I don't want to go shopping in /Trade because Augmentation Kits cost >1bn. The next credit exploit is going to come at one point, so if the developers are trying to do something right now to lower the amount of credits in the game, let them.

So, the economy changes are mostly small four-digit fees on quick travel and stuff like that. I'm not opposed to that, but I'd like to compare it to real world economics. Before we start, we should keep in mind that the money we're "taxing" with those small fees are completely taken out of the economy and don't get back into it by means of government spending. The people that matter in swtor's user base are also always subscribers. We get free cartel coins and have the means to supply ourselves with more then enough credits by buying a single item from the cartel market and selling it to cover our repair costs, quick travel costs and all other funny small fees we can think about. It'll take some credits out of the game for sure, but nothing substantial. The people being hurt by that are those that don't have any. Those without a subscription. But I don't care about them, I'm upper middle class sitting on billions of credits, with items worth ten times my balance. You shouldn't care either, they don't pay anything for the games services. However, as mentioned before, that's not substantial. It's like increasing sales taxes by 1%. I see it, at first glance I don't like it, but it won't matter that much. So, what would matter? The money is concentrated in the upper-middle class and in the rich people. Those that regularly buy and sell stuff to those that bought credits from gold-sellers or got it indirectly from credit exploits. How do we get their money? Yes, a direct wealth-tax will be quite unpopular and would lead to many people quitting (or at least threatening to quit). And it will lead to a rush on rare cartel market items and prices even skyrocketing even more in the short term. Let's not do that. What we could do, is get the money at the points where we previously got it at. Selling and buying items. I agree with other comments here, that selling and buying items directly from another player - not from the GTN - should not be taxed. However, what we could and should do is accept the huge sums rare items go over the table for these days and increase the cap on GTN-sales. Right now, you can sell stuff for a maximum of 1bn credits. Up that cap to 20bn. The money we're taking out of the game with GTN-commissions would far outweigh the money we get from the quicktravel fees and the likes. Additionally, we slightly up the cost for putting items into the GTN. Right now it's a two-digit figure for an item that we're putting in for high six figures. Up that a bit, that we pay at least 10.000 for an item we want to sell for 1bn. Those two suggestions are independent from each other - and both would put the burden on those that have and make lots of credits.