Thanks you all for the thoughtful feedback and conversation. I learned a lot and didn't know about the credit caps and some of the other issues surrounding the GTN and in game currency currency. My sub runs out and I think I'm done with SWTOR for a bit. The only reason I came back was to do this experiment and make this post. If you haven't done so already I would recommend posting on the dev post: 7.3 CREDIT ECONOMY INITIATIVE: UPDATES AND THE GTN Thanks again.

1 – Access to other players in a fair system. I don't trust the randos selling stuff for over 1 billion. 2 – Not intuitive at first. Takes a while to learn. 3 – Saved custom searches or maybe a search history. I typically look for the same stuff when Im in there. 4 – I think some of the drop downs are old and no longer relevant and end up hindering item searches. 5 – Price. Price fluctuation like houses on Zillow. An interface where I could watch the price of a particular item over time and some type of reminder if an item went on sale at or below a particular price. Other thoughts: It would be nice if the GTN was more of an auction sort of like eBay where I could set a price and folks could purchase or make a lower bid. For instance, if I asked $100k credits for an item and someone was willing to give me $75k than I would have the option to sell or try again once the 3 day timer ran out. Most of the time I don’t really know what the items I sell should cost, but this way the market would decide the true value at the moment of sale. Raise the GTN limit to 10 billion.

Couple points: 1 - You can craft and do almost any other game content: FPs, PvP, questing, and scrolling on the GTN. Once your companions come back you can send them out again no matter what you’re doing. If you’re on the GTN trying to estimate value you can't do any other activity... except craft. 2 – I get your point: You can put items on the GTN for 3 days, forget about it, and either cash in or get your money back. After I got familiar with my inventory and generally had a sense on what price to ask for that did save some time. However, prior to posting, I still had to see what other people were asking to determine my own asking price regardless of what I thought the item was worth. I made a profit overall, but also got stuck overpaying for some items. So, from my experience, as someone who didn’t have a good preconception of CM item valuation, it was a bit of a grind hr-wise recording the items to find an asking price that would sell for a profit. The experience was also time consuming in overall duration because the asking prices fluctuated throughout the 6-week period.

Why not? The currency cap isn't like the deficit cap debate in the US where it actually has adverse economic impacts. I don't understand the issue in SWTOR, my computer can count past 100 billion just fine. How do other games handle this? Interesting because as the inflation goes up the actual value goes up as well unlike the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 where houses were over valued and the crash happened. This isn't a bubble, its the true value because the market supports. WoW must have faced this problem, anyone know what they did?

Interesting dilemma. Its not a currency bubble like the 2008 housing crisis, things are valued correctly because there is enough liquid currency to support. In real currency, the Fed would tax to slow, but what do you do with this when taxing doesn't really do anything? Its only going to get worse as multi-billionaires become increasingly common.

Thanks for the encouragement and the post. What types of CM items did you find were most profitable? I started with a wide array of items, but ended up focusing on augs at the 45 and 73 levels and MK10s and 11s. The factors to keep in mind are availability of mats, speed of sale, and market price. No surprise, everyone needs augs. To get the highest quality mats you really have to play the game and I wasn't really playing the necessary end game content or conquest grinding during this time period. I focused on armor sets for CM items. Its a lot of information to try and understand each category of sale in the GTN so I got smart on armor sets. The high profit item was the Exquisite Dancer armor set. Sith badass and bikini armor were the hot categories from my experience. Can you give some further clarification on the difference in length of time between Categories 1 vs 2? When I started I used a stopwatch to answer this specific question, but then I forgot after a long session so sadly I didn't collect any data on that. What I can say is crafting is more of a background activity and the more you do it the quicker and less intrusive to other gameplay it gets. You can put the companions on gathering missions and either go to another character and put them on missions or do a PvP match, FP, or play with the new character interface, or anything else because gathering missions are about a 20 min cooldown where you do nothing. You can do it in the middle of soloing, in a FP, or capping in a warzone ... yeah I'm that guy. When your on the GTN it takes 100% focus. I had to make a log of everything I was buying and selling and keep track of costs. I have a note book full of the armor sets and what I payed and estimated value.

Summary: After returning from more than 3 years I thought that it would be interesting to see how much cash I could make in a single subscription period. I limited the duration to 6 weeks because I needed some time to put this together. The three main credit making categories I counted were normal game play get cash, crafting, and selling Cartel Market (CM) items: Which is the most effective and which is the best? I found I could make money quicker in the CM, but it is very time consuming so crafting is really the best because it is a somewhat passive activity. Playing the game actually cost credits because I wasn’t doing hardly any missions and had companions out almost constantly. Background: Initially, I thought it would be better to start with a brand-new account, but decided on using my existing account because most people who might read this have probably been playing for a while. Furthermore, it would be very difficult to compare crafting and CM item sales in this amount of time if I needed to build the crafting skills and companion ranks from scratch. Additional I started with a large assortment of crafting materials (mats) 6 Cartel Market (CM) items ready to sell and $171M in credits. It does take money to make money. Objectives: Given 6 weeks, actively pursue earning in game credits through game play, crafting, and selling CM items on GTN. Credits earned were initially broken into 4 categories: 0 – Starting Amount: This is the $171M 1 – CM Items: These are items that originate from the CM, but can be bought and sold on the GTN. 2 – Crafting: Items created from materials by companions to be sold on the GTN. 3 – Gameplay: Cash earned and spent in game for any activity. Observations: At the end of 6 weeks, I netted $1787.9M after the GTN tax. Adding category 1 and 2 I made $1858.011M, but in-game play cost me -$70.111M so the actual total number earned was $1787.9M. 1 – CM Items: $1120.93 M 2 – Crafting: $737.081 M 3 – Gameplay: -$70.111 M Category 1 – CM Items: This currency was made by selling 14 CM items obtained partially through purchase in the GTN and with old items on hand. The GTN was used for all sales and purchases. Spent a total of $559M for CM items for the expressed purpose of selling. The purchase range was from $1M – $500M, but most of the items bought were in single digits. The most profitable sale was a purchase for $9M and net sale for $305M. This range seemed to be the sweet spot for ability to both buy and sell with a markup. This activity was very time consuming. It required pen and paper to track and make good value estimates. Part of this method required building the inventory of goods to sell. Had I continued, I think I could have doubled again in the same amount of time using the 17 remaining CM items and cash on hand to continue to search for underpriced CM items to sell for a profit. Category 2 – Crafting: Unlike the research-intensive CM approach, this method was relatively easy and only required keeping companions on missions to gather and craft. After determining what was selling, I able to focus on those items and the necessary mats. Factors for consideration were the availability of the mats, how quickly the items sold, and how much they could sell for. There was a ready market to sell crafted items from each of the 6 disciplines. I ended up starting with 6 characters, but eventually paired it down to the 2 that were making the most profitable items. Category 3. While in the game environment, most of the activity was limited to crafting, sending companions on missions, and working and researching on the GTN. Placing 7 companions on gathering missions for LV11 items costs about $47k each rotation. This is how I account for the negative number. There were also thousands of mats left over; however, not calculated in this. There are two other important factors that should be mentioned: Left over CM items and crafted items that were ready to sell. Below are estimates of the income, but the sales data supports these assigned values. For this I developed categories 5 and 6 as potential currency as follows: Category 4 - CM Potential. There were 17 items still in the account purchased at below estimated costs. After looking at market value, $528M is what I think I could reasonably receive from those items. 4 – CM Potential: $528M. Category 5 – Crafting Potential. This is a collection of crafted items that are still in the account ready to be sold at fair market value. This does not take into account the materials that were gathered. 5 – Crafting Potential: $577M. Adding up categories 1-5 the total figure is $1787.9M + $1105M = $2892.9M of currency made and potential currency. Limitations: 1 - This date was collected with a notebook and excel spreadsheet and not game logs so there are probably errors in the observations. 2 – Did not collect specifics on the income earned and spend during normal gameplay. The $70M deficit was a surprise. Conclusion: Crafting defiantly required the least amount of time and focus, but did not have the rewards. Had this experiment continued, the potential was there to have an even greater gap between the amounts made from crafting vs selling CM items. Overall, there is a lot of cash to be made from either, but like everything else in this game it comes down to what you want to put your time into. Key observation is the in game economy is too inflated and the GTN’s current $1 billion credit limit is too low. Couple recommendations to fix: 1 – Raise GTN purchases to $10 billion. 2 – Develop other ways to spend cash like selling more weapons, skins, mounts stronghold items, etc. The expanded interface makes it now possible to have multiple sets of armor and stats. This will probably create some further demand for spending, but not sure if it goes far enough. 3 – Ability to keep things on the GTN for 5 days. There are pros and cons to this, but I think it will eventually keep prices down for consumers. Final Thoughts for Players: If you have a mature account where you have been collecting stuff for years it might be time to have a garage sale. When I left there was a lot of concern of a shrinking player base. I think one way to keep folks around would be to have a more robust GTN with more items, increased selection, and at reduced prices. Same is true for crafting. The more people crafting, the more availability and lower prices for stat improvement items.

Change is bad.

I understand your point, but much of this will be left to the randomness of who you q with. Winning was kind of a mix between personal contribution and luck, but underpinned somewhat by a dedication to the grind. Now that that consolation prize is gone you can only sit back and hope that the Arsenal Merc with 217 gear is on the other team.

Before, pretty much in a single session I could get daily and some progress to weeklies no matter what. This evening I went 3L and 1W. The loosing teams I was with were hopeless. The team I was with that won was OP and would have won without me. Getting stuck with new folks with poor armor didn't really bother me with challenge and rewards system, but now it feels like a waste of time. Now the game is reduced to seeing what side of the premade I will be on. I really am struggling to see the point of PvPing right now -- feels like wasted evening.

Change is bad.

Change is bad.

Add legendary embers to granked and/or ranked rewards. Accessing the hardest and most competitive gameplay is all about augs since getting 306 gear has been reduced to Hammer Station runs and you need legendary embers to make the best augs. Even if you don't craft, legendary embers are worth a fortune for those who do on the GTN so still a viable reward.

I have never been concerned with not finishing HS at any level no matter who I was with. Depending on the group, finishing BH is not a foregone conclusion especially if your pugging with a lower level toon.

This was an attempt at humor by highlighting the high ratio of HS pops when random cueing. I find it to be silly.

Yeah this. Not much of a ranked PvPer, but I did enjoy granked back in 5.xx when I was grinding for mats.

Ouch! Hope everyone made it. One good thing about HS is you don't miss much if your forced to quit early.

Friday … Hammer Station Saturday … Hammer Station Sunday … got a new alt so Hammer Station Monday … Hammer Station Tuesday … Hammer Station Wednesday … maybe something else? … nope … Hammer Station Thursday … Hammer Station Friday … do it again its Hammer Station

I like the new system. Gear just piles up and you have to choose between stat increase or ability bonus. Crafting is a bit more challenging.

I totally forgot about that. I have seen military aircraft where you had a "#1 only" funnel thing which was what that scene reminded me of.

Obviously there is no TP on the GTN because the characters are cartoons and don’t need it. If that explanation is good enough for you than read no further. However, if we immerse ourselves into an ultra-real Star Wars universe where sanitary conditions are as important as real life then I believe we will find that TP is antiquated, unsanitary, and not needed. My theory is that people and several other creatures in the Star Wars universe use an advanced bidet toilet system and therefore don’t require TP. TP is a decent upgrade from grass and leaves, but a downgrade from a bidet toilet. To illustrate: When you need to clean up a mess from a pet on the carpet, do you only use a paper napkin or do you use something with water…? I think most people would use water as well as chemicals. You could make the same argument if you were a Wookie. Or imagine the challenges a Stormtrooper might have using the bathroom if the facilities in the Star Wars universe were set up like a Walmart or Super Target. The point is, if a futuristic society can travel around the galaxy at lightspeed and develop intelligent droids, then they would have likely developed something more efficient than the TP flush method we have on Earth. On Tatooine for example, its hard (for me at least) to imagine Luke’s bathroom with a TP roll on the side of the wall. Tatooine is a desert where water and wood are typically scarce. One might ask, “… don’t bidet toilets use water too?!” the answer is yes. However, it uses a lot less. According to Scientificamerican at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-bidets/ a bidet uses 1/8 of a gallon of water per use while a standard household toilet uses up to 4 gallons. From a third party source, treehugger.com, a roll of TP can require “…37 gallons of water as well as 1.5 pounds of wood for a single roll” (1 gallon = 3.79 liters, and 1 pound = 453.6 grams for the non-Americans). 41 gallons! A highly advanced society would understand this kind of waste and move to a more efficient, sanitary, and inclusive system. I think they would have long since done away with napkin-type sanitary systems and gone to more of a bidet system. They probably would also have developed bidets with heating, drying, and UV to photodegrade otherwise unsanitary places that don’t get natural light. Stay safe everyone!

Returning back from a while and it appears that inflation keeps going up. I remember when I thought 10 mil was a lot, but now I feel broke at $100 million.

I was looking at some SWTOR doom and gloom threads all over the internet and noticed an obvious shortcoming with the aerial combat in SWTOR. The films each have major plot points centered around space combat. The Death Stars and Star Killer Base were epic space battles. Most Star Wars themed video games have some type of flying mission(s) that are central to game progression. I didn't count, but feel free to look at these titles for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_video_games. So my question is what's wrong with SWTOR's aerial combat and could it be positively impacted: or should it? So I played some Galactic Star Fighter (GSF) to see for myself. I went on the fleet and asked, "... is Starfighter Popping?" or "any GSF guilds recruiting?" Got lots of strange and humorous answers to the effect that no one plays GSF anymore. I persisted and eventually was able to complete a couple weeklies. Surprisingly, I found it a great game and really enjoyed it. The GUI and flying were intuitive and precise. The maps were truly 3 dimensional and the controls were really straightforward. I even got a dizzy flying in and around the space box shield things. So pretty good game in my opinion. On another point, no one called me out with LTP or anything like that and the atmosphere was pretty casual. So why don't more people play? I think the barrier to entry is a bit high. Unlike Warzones, you cant just take what you know from PvE and use it in PvP. For example, if you know how cooldowns work and have a well practiced rotation, you can pretty much immediately contribute in a Warzone. In GSF, there is nothing to build on. You start at the bottom skill wise and equipment wise. I contributed very little and kind of felt like apologizing after most of the matches. There is a lot of options with ships, weapons, co-pilots, engines etc. and I'll be honest I don't understand it. Its nothing like managing the 14 armor slots. To continue, I would need to watch some tutorials and grind a bit more to get the right equipment. It really is a completely different game, but a good game. One thing that comes up in various chats are incorporating the GSF with regular gameplay. Imagine doing a FP like Boarding Party where you actually had to fly and fight your way to the next ship to get to the last boss. Or imagine a Heroic like Rogue One where you had to fight your way through shields, land, dismount, than fight with light sabers and twin blasters etc. to get the end. I think combining these game aspects would be a good way to take advantage of some of the best aspects of both ground and aerial gameplay. Players could passively build "space currency" by doing these combo/crossovers and eventually purchase something close to a BiS spaceship. Mixing space and ground combat could go a long way to greatly reduce the barrier to entry on GSF. Here are some scenario suggestions: PvE should have some Heroics and FPs that involve flying your way into a place where your can enter a landing sequence and go into ground fighting. Star Wars Battlefont II Classic did this really good. If you were killed in space you respawned and jumped into another ship and took off. Once you destroyed the enemy guns, you landed, killed some mobs, than completed the objective. Replicate the battles in the films. There have been a number of games with the Hoth Battle where you fly against ground and air at the same time. Same thing on Rouge One where there was a mix of ground an aerial combat at the library. PvP could have some really cool new Warzone crossovers. For start I would have a Civil War-type scenario where you would have to capture 2 out of the 3 capitol ships (maybe bombarding a set of planet bases). Use the same game mechanics as Battlefront where your goal is to safely get out of your ship and fight through to capture and CAP. For a Voidstar-type PvP battle your could fly and fight your way through planetary shields, take out guns on the ground to land, capture end objective on foot. So in this case you could have a ship vs ship, a ship vs land, than a land vs land three stage scenario. Repeat offense and defense like Voidstar. These are just ideas. I don't think I'm saying anything creative here, I just think not having aerial combat integrated into the fabric of the game is a huge oversight and missed opportunity. A very large part of Star Wars is about the space battles and it seems like the primer Star Wars MMO has missed the mark.

I hope its the exact same story line for all classes like in the last expansions. I hate having to learn new stuff. I enjoy skipping through the same conversations, fighting the same mobs, the same maps, the same skins, time after time, after time: Its fantastic.

As long as folks keep spending 5k + CC on sparkly things in the CM BW will keep selling.