This is a 100% right! Making a lot of credits should always be tied to harder more complex things that cannot be automated especially with something as easy as a mouse macro. If you make it so that bots and cheaters have no way to get decent amounts of credits then it wipes them out. At that point even if there was some way for them to make a little amount of credits it has minimal impact on the game.

Ok 500,000 regular players is high lol. Especially when with how the game is now, a good amount only play a few days/week on new chapter release. However lets say 1% of that are macro farming... 5000 x 10,000,000 x 7 days = 350,000,000,000 billion credits. Obliviously doesn't make as much as the entire player base. However you have 35% more credits being put into the economy and they are being put in by a low number of cheaters. Now what happens as time goes on and more people start macro farming? What if a public macro is released that anyone could easily download and use? What if this starts to become common knowledge/spreads and a lot of people are using it? Basically this is a recipe for disaster and has no benefit to not make a change so that cheaters cannot easily macro farm this or if they do macro farm they make no where near what they get now. One final thing, a few months ago when they buffed slicing nodes by mistake or who knows. They eventually changed them back to were they were. Now why do that and not do anything about this when it is way worse? People couldn't macro farm slicing nods and a very limited number of people could farm an area. This however ANYONE can easily macro and there is NO LIMIT on how many can do it.

They were blips?!? You can't be serious. It doesn't matter if the accounts that did them were eventually banned. All the credits while doing it ended up in the economy via buying on the GTN or credit sellers. They don't comb through the game and remove everything lol. I don't know how you can call TH utterly insignificant when you don't know exactly how many are doing it and how many credits are being generated. I'm sure tons of credit sellers are running it and how many regular players are using it or will use it in the future we will never know. I'm not sure where you are getting your 10 trillion credits figure from. Surely you don't mean 10 trillion generated daily by heroics. People really over estimate the amount of credits heroics generate. As if they think everyone does them every week on 10 alts while grouped with 3 others. We already know that most players play solo and I'd be willing to bet the average player might do heroics on one toon a week. They also didn't lower heroic's payout simply because generating too much/inflation. They said on stream they wanted to lower so it would be worth doing other things in game. You are right a certain amount of inflation is intended but shouldn't be at the point it currently is.

Actually the main source of inflation has been the 2 dupe exploits that were in game since the expansion launched. However the situation with macroing things like treasure hunting/slicing has a big impact on inflation, especially in the long term. Not really sure how you are coming up with the nerfed heroics being better than macroing crew skills. Treasure hunting for example nets anywhere from 5-30 mil a day. while you are afk doing something else. You mean like how they used their asinine "metrics" to see the dupes LOL? The first one was in for 6 weeks and was only fixed after people started posting about something strange going on then someone posted a video of it. Same thing happened with the 2nd dupe, only fixed after everyone was posting on the forums about the GTN being completely bought out. I believe swtor_miner or someone else figured it out and told bioware how to do it. On the topic they really should do a fix. Easiest thing to do would be to put a daily limit on crew missions per account. Set the limit so that it doesn't effect regular players but hurts people macro farming. Also the credits put out via treasure hunting is double of how much slicing puts out and that makes no sense. They should give about the same. Tbh though treasure hunting shouldn't even be about getting credits, it should be about what it is actually called "treasure hunting" aka finding treasure. I also would rather see crew missions become more complex and more mechanics added. For example certain companions being better depending on mission, and sending multiple companions on a single mission.

Servers seemed most active and alive during Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Back in the good old days when the focus was on various content with replay value. Now the focus is on story and dumbing down. It appears to be working very well lol. Maybe it is working just as well financial wise but people only logging in a day or 2 a month to do the chapter doesn't work that well overall lol.

This sounds like a great idea! I would love to log in to 100 million credits in my mailbox.

It is kind of hard to nerf something that wasn't intended in the first place. It really looks like somebody forgot something when they were doing all the new gathering/crafting changes. There was no reason to "buff" slicing nodes and no mention of it in patch notes. Not to mention the fact that you only get rare quality lockboxes now. I would be shocked if this actually is intended. People that think slicing is fine now are so wrong it is not even funny. For example security chests on high level planets gave 10k-20k credits with a limited number of spawns. They were more spread out and had a respawn of 5-30 mins. Slicing nodes how they are currently put the chests to shame. In the end they removed the credits from chests because it was just bots teleport hacking and getting them. Personally I'd like to see slicing nodes give materials instead of credits. Main reason being is that slicing nodes is the last thing left in the game where bots can easily get lots of credits(especially with how they are now). Sure there might be bots farming mobs or materials but they are getting peanuts compared to a bot getting slicing nodes(especially if teleport hacking). I think it is best for the game in the long term as bots would be generating way less credits and keeps inflation as minimal as possible.

Video? Are you serious? Just log in and do it yourself instead of being a drama queen on the forums. Should have no problem doing stuff you did pre patch especially the weeklies. If you are then you are doing something very wrong like running into a group and just spamming aoe while watching tv.

I did not run all the heroics, I did some on the highest level planets which would be the hardest. Do I really need to run all the noob ones which are the easiest to confirm my findings? As for heroic Star Fortress it feels about the same as pre patch. Before patch as a squishy Sorcerer with no Star Fortress buffs I had to kite/use cooldowns to defeat the hardest hitting bosses paladins/exarch and it is the same now. Completing while not using any buffs on the other hand is intended for geared/skilled people looking for a challenge so it shouldn't be easy. People using the console/other buffs should still be able to solo it. If there is specific mob or something else that is giving people too much trouble Bioware can always tweak it.

Tried with a rank 1 companion with no other boosts and you can still easily solo everything that is intended to be solo'd. Only difference is now combat is engaging and you are not invincible. My health actually goes down instead of sitting at 100%, it is possible to die! It is now worth using all abilities like defensive ones instead of mashing a dps button while watching tv. I actually feel like I'm playing a game again. EDIT: I did not run all the heroics, I did some on the highest level planets which would be the hardest. Do I really need to run all the noob ones which are the easiest to confirm my findings? As for heroic Star Fortress it feels about the same as pre patch. Before patch as a squishy Sorcerer with no Star Fortress buffs I had to kite/use cooldowns to defeat the hardest hitting bosses paladins/exarch and it is the same now. Completing while not using any buffs on the other hand is intended for geared/skilled people looking for a challenge so it shouldn't be easy. People using the console/other buffs should still be able to solo it. If there is specific mob or something else that is giving people too much trouble Bioware can always tweak it.