Treasure Hunting Lockboxes are causing massive inflation and a proposed solution.

[IanArgent]

rofl credit sellers are making a fortune right now. as long as you use treasure boxes you're gauranteed lots of pure credits. it doesn't matter if it sells for 60 cents/million or 30 cents/million when you can generate tens of millions of credits easily. plus how many people buy cartel coins with prices for credits this cheap. definitely big profits for credit sellers right now.

 

To do so they have to engage in behavior that will show quite obviously in a number of different metrics. Which will enable BW to trace the network and shut down not only the sellers but the buyers in one swell foop. Remember, kinds, it's against the TOS to buy credits from anyone but BW.

[Akostt]

whatever, the important thing is that this is not an exploit and it is working as intended and it's good for the game to have an easy flow of credits. what people do with credits after they get them is their business. Edited June 7, 2016 by Akostt

[Stilgaard]

whatever, the important thing is that this is not an exploit and it is working as intended

 

 

Wait.. macro'ing AFK for weeks on end is now not an exploit?

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3061390#post3061390

[Knorlac]

Wait.. macro'ing AFK for weeks on end is now not an exploit?

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3061390#post3061390

 

Of course not, haven't you heard? Credit sellers are not the annoying scum you always made them out to be. They're actually good for the game and a "company" who's entire business model is based on breaking the ToS of an online game is totally trustworhy.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Knorlac

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I run heroics, solo as I can't be arsed waiting around in groups. I have also written down which ones are instanced so I don't have to compete for drops/kills. Then I wiffle through those ones at a cracking pace, alt after alt. I do a complete set of heroics probably once or twice each week too but I don't sweat over it. That gives me more than enough to buy what I want within a few weeks. And if you keep doing it even when you don't want to buy something then you'll be in the enviable position of being able to buy it straight away when something does appear.

 

What is more than enough? How much are we talking here? Let's endeavour to be more specific - how much time spent yields you how much credits? At least then there is a base to work off in comparing the amount of work required to get some of the inflated items.

 

See I have no idea, I make millions from the GTN itself without spending real money - I have no intention of grinding for credits so I am curious if the inflation on the rare gold items actually affects anyone or if indeed you can make credits that much faster now that it has offset the inflation.

 

The primary reason prices have gone up is people are sitting on big piles of cash. People can leap frog the earning process by buying a hypercrate and selling it or its contents, rinse and repeat until you reach your goal. That process tends to take money from people who have been hatching an enormous pile of dosh and gives it to those who might otherwise buy from RMTs. This has shut the RMT's out of the cycle to a large extent.

 

It's a possible reason but then the question is where did all those credits they are sitting on come from. Bottings and exploits have generated an insane amount of credits since 4.0 and I would bet not all of it goes to RMT to resell - many people probably sit on hordes of ill gotten credits for their own "non selling" purposes.

 

Of course people also gained hordes of credits legitimately and sat on those piles over time but that's always been the case. It doesn't seem to me it's going to be a sudden cause of increase inflation.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

More importantly, at least to the thing I actually said, why should 4 people doing a Heroic together get more credits (as in, each of them, individually, getting more credits) than if they did the Heroic solo?

 

They shouldn't. It's either a bug or misguided thinking on Bioware's behalf to encourage grouping.

 

I think completing the heroics quicker and easier alone is reward enough for grouping.

[IanArgent]

I dunno about him, but solo I managed to turn about 1 mil a day, per character, without pushing it too hard. I didn't run all the heroics by any means, either

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Honestly.. I think this was deliberate on the part of the studio.

 

It achieves two things:

 

2) it appears to have pretty well has gutted the RMT market, as they appear to be falling all over themselves to practically give away credits these days. It also in turn, guts the seller side of the RMT broker model as there is little incentive for players to sell their credits to brokers given the likely prices being offered.

 

We can't tell that though - for all we know more people than ever are buying up credits from RMTs and less buying from the CM. $40 USD for a hypercrate you can get 30-40 mill from currently on harb which would cost you $15-20 USD from RMTs ... that's 100% more credits from RMT.

I also don't really heed the whole "oh but they hax0r you if you buy" because if that were the case they wouldn't have existed for such a long time as no one would buy from them.

 

The only downside I see to it is that it pushes up the average conversion rates for CCs-2-Credits. By this I mean that items bought with CCs and sold on the GTN demand higher credit prices as a result. Which is fine, IMO. I really don't see much in the way of inflation in game for common CM items..... only for select unlocks and of course the always pricey and speculator driven super rare collectors market (which is not inflation per se... as it does not track the rest of the GTN market spreads). We very much have a glut of silver pack items in the GTNs selling at incredibly low prices .. and that means great opportunity for people working the low end of the market (like me) for a buy/hold/resell later model. There is a lot of profit to be made specializing in clearing the markets of surplus and then reselling them at reasonable market driven prices later on. It requires volume, rather then speculation on rarity, and a good eye for what will sell later at a profit (not everything will, or does).

 

That downside is about to become a whole lot more "down" with the new pack change coming. It will take time to happen and they may address it before it gets out of hand but all embargoed goods are about to start going up in price as supply drops off.

How much and how quickly is really determined by how many bronze items go into a new pack - for example if it's 5 then you have a 1 in 6 shot of a cube where as it was 1 in 1 before on a bronze roll.

 

Good time to be saving up those cubes for a rainy day since they should easily double in value as supply dries up.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

To do so they have to engage in behavior that will show quite obviously in a number of different metrics. Which will enable BW to trace the network and shut down not only the sellers but the buyers in one swell foop. Remember, kinds, it's against the TOS to buy credits from anyone but BW.

 

^ This ... but .... why don't they then?

 

I mean they may very well do so but I would think if you were perm banning buyers you would at least make regular posts about it ( without naming names ) stating that X players were banned for purchasing credits this month ...

It would be a HUGE deterent to the RMT market if buyers actively saw bans taking place.

 

Right now I imagine people think there is no punishment attached as Bioware don't care about buying ( heck - one wonders if they do anything about selling ).

 

There is a site you can go to and view sales movements for RMT transactions - its like the ebay of RMTs.

 

Anyway you can see feedback and the amounts traded so just now I've checked one user with quite prolific positive feedback and since June the 1st they have sold 3.5 BILLION SWToR credits.

 

Now I remember doing something similar when we were having a slicing box debate and that figure I had then was more like 500 million in a week - that tells me activity have increased in RMT buying, not decreased.

 

This ONE user has made over $1700 USD in a week from this game ...

 

Now people can choose to bury their heads in the sand and pretend like this isn't happening but it is ... the thing is everyone needs to decide does it actually affect them and based on the discussion on what we actually need credits for in this game ... who cares who buys sells credits then? It doesn't affect most people unless you are affected by inflation.

 

One hope Bioware wins out because more credits in the game means more people not willing to go to RMTs buy hypercrates to sell to the buyers of credits from RMTs and we get this nice "everyone wins" circle.

 

Probably why MMOs don't go too out of their way to hunt down and stop gold selling

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I dunno about him, but solo I managed to turn about 1 mil a day, per character, without pushing it too hard. I didn't run all the heroics by any means, either

 

How many hours is that though? Just trying to connect a time value ( which is the real world commodity in the game if you aren't spending cash, not credits ) to saying buying that vented saber for 45 mill.

[IanArgent]

True enough - if they're taking enforcement action against buyers, where's the PR? Even if they're only temp-banning and removing the purchased Credits, they ought to be publicizing this.

 

It's not like people don't know there's such a thing as RMTs, or the sites to buy off of.

[IanArgent]

How many hours is that though? Just trying to connect a time value ( which is the real world commodity in the game if you aren't spending cash, not credits ) to saying buying that vented saber for 45 mill.

 

Hard to say - I wasn't playing straight through, I was doing a heroic or two, getting up and doing some housework, coming back, lather rinse repeat.

[evinced]

Treasure hunting "exploit" aside which is what started this thread in the first place. For select groups of people earning credits has never been a problem. Since launch/early-access players have constantly been playing the in-game economy to make credits.

 

As others have stated there is a hardcore GTN contingent that take the time to play the market and buy low and sell high. When SOR launched I knew multiple people sitting on multiple hundreds of thousands of credits by playing the market. Most of them were not spend-thrifts either so even though they spent some creds they always had creds to spare. Take a player who has played from launch, been a miser and now 4 some-odd years later they are billionaires and can pick and choose the rare items they "need" and buy when the time is right. Sure this may lead to inflation in the rare items market but the reality is that there are no real credit sinks and with longevity you can't help but have credits assuming you are not credit capped.

 

Add to that, prior to 4.0, those running ops since launch were able to get an excess of high-end craftable gear that you can RE. Get into market early with a barrel or hilt that is a notch below the best MH you can get from NIM ops and people will spend creds to get it. Leverage a guild and ops mats, trade complete items for mats, get a crit here and there and you will make bank. Do this for a period of years and you have hundreds of millions of creds easy. Since 4.0 and the re-hashing of old ops has made this less lucrative but there is still a market of people with creds and alts that want better gear that can make this profitable.

 

Then you introduce the Cartel Market and the ability to buy items with real cash that you can sell for creds and you have even more wealth introduced into the game. Sure someone has to spend creds to buy your cartel item but it does redistribute the wealth.

 

All 3 situations listed above are normal in game behaviors that do not involve exploits and over time will lead to some players having a lot of credits compared to the average player. As stated in numerous previous posts, the rare item market does not properly reflect true inflation since collectors with the means will pay large sums of credits to get what they want if it is deemed important enough to them.

 

None of the above requires RMTs using third parties. Having played this game since beta I can only say that every aspect of this game has gotten easier over time. Making creds is easy if you choose to grind heroics or use one of the other tried and true credit generating activities. I know I have worked the market here and there, bought more than my share of cartel packs over the years and run heroics, fps and ops more times that I can count and I am regularly sitting on a few hundred thousands creds.

 

While it may be true that if some extreme case of some botter running 6 50 affection comps on multiple alts on multiple accounts may generate a tidy sum I find it hard to believe that this is much more than a drop-in the bucket in the overall economy. Is this why credit seller pricing has gone down? Is it the fact that it is so easy to earn it on your own creds that they have to drop pricing so low that you might be tempted? Is it the fact that rare items are so much more expensive? I honestly don't know the answer to that but I do know that there is always someone who wants to ruin the fun for other players who they perceive as getting over on them. Like the slicing nerf after launch and again more recently, the slot machine nerf after crafter cried about the mat market bottoming out and now the exploit-ability of Treasure Hunting in a serious edge case scenario, but hey what hell punish some more players who had the mis-fortune of choosing TH.

 

Times change in every MMO. EQ at launch was nothing like it was years later. Item were top dollar when first introduced years later and level cap increases later those items were obsolete and worth very little. Get in early and get rich. Same with WOW and most other MMOs. Timing can be everything.

 

Anyway good gaming to all and this is my 2 creds.

[starbuckone]

but the problem with the treasure hunting lockboxes is that it can be easily exploited by bots 24 hours a day

So I guess you're a bot? After all you say you exploited it. BTW there are several ways to make millions an hour and not just the treasure hunting profession. That's why they put in new forms of currency.

[CrazyCT]

So I guess you're a bot? After all you say you exploited it. BTW there are several ways to make millions an hour and not just the treasure hunting profession. That's why they put in new forms of currency.

 

You won't get a reply from him - he only made the account to try to get the lockboxes nerfed, the same as he did with another account with slicing. His posting record with this account lasts exactly a month.

[Rantank]

Yesterday I tried this treasure hunting lockbox malarkey. I cycled through all my chars, starting with the TH ones, then going through the rest to run missions for companion gifts. Rinse and repeat for a couple of hours. I ended up making over a million credits and got a buttload of gifts out of it. So it is not terrible as far as results go, but what an awful way to play the game. Had I spent those couple of hours doing heroics non-stop I would have ended up with more credit-wise. Although the companion gifts can't be sneezed at, those are expensive otherwise.

 

So while I'm sure bots would do well out of this, for players, there are limits to how much of this you can take. The problem is bots, not the crafting itself. It seems stupid to carve out bits of the game because of bots when all that will happen is they move onto something else. Meanwhile the game is gradually getting gutted.

Edited June 8, 2016 by Rantank

[Max_Killjoy]

You won't get a reply from him - he only made the account to try to get the lockboxes nerfed, the same as he did with another account with slicing. His posting record with this account lasts exactly a month.

 

I'm 99% sure he's posting as a third account now, on this thread.

[CrazyCT]

I'm 99% sure he's posting as a third account now, on this thread.

 

Only the third?

[Tsetso]

I'm 99% sure he's posting as a third account now, on this thread.

 

Supposedly he has 200 accounts running TH missions on them 24/7 and making billions credits a day

[Akostt]

Supposedly he has 200 accounts running TH missions on them 24/7 and making billions credits a day

 

even if someone is doing that, they are paying subs and adding much needed credits to the economy. normal players benefit because eventually those credits are spent on the gtn and allow people to sell items for high prices. as others say before, this is not an exploit. this is working as intended. this game needs more fast ways to get credits and not less. i wish people would stop asking for nerfs.

Edited June 8, 2016 by Akostt

[jedilensol]

Yesterday I tried this treasure hunting lockbox malarkey. I cycled through all my chars, starting with the TH ones, then going through the rest to run missions for companion gifts. Rinse and repeat for a couple of hours. I ended up making over a million credits and got a buttload of gifts out of it. So it is not terrible as far as results go, but what an awful way to play the game. Had I spent those couple of hours doing heroics non-stop I would have ended up with more credit-wise. Although the companion gifts can't be sneezed at, those are expensive otherwise.

 

So while I'm sure bots would do well out of this, for players, there are limits to how much of this you can take. The problem is bots, not the crafting itself. It seems stupid to carve out bits of the game because of bots when all that will happen is they move onto something else. Meanwhile the game is gradually getting gutted.

 

since doing treasure hunting lockbox missions over and over again is so boring it's safe to say that most of those missions are being run by bots. it really adds no fun to the game, it's mostly just credit generation for bots.

[IanArgent]

since doing treasure hunting lockbox missions over and over again is so boring it's safe to say that most of those missions are being run by bots. it really adds no fun to the game, it's mostly just credit generation for bots.

 

If you think heroics can't be botted (at least the instanced ones), you'd be sadly mistaken. It'd take a little more effort up front to develop the scripts, but that's a write-once task.

 

At any rate, as any number of people have noted, the RMTs are moving to being brokers for credits, not botting themselves.

[merovejec]

Supposedly he has 200 accounts running TH missions on them 24/7 and making billions credits a day

 

Overall he doesnt need so many accounts, i mostly depends on how good you are on the macroing. For example i see the video on youtube where you do this and the missions take some time meaning but during this time he was just clicking in empty space, however what you can do is to send companions on missions and then logout and loganother toon. Then again send comps out on missions and i think you can macro around 3 toons for this, since then the first toon will be finished with missions already.

 

So with only one account you are able to macro maybe 3-4 toons, depending on your loading times.

[jedilensol]

Overall he doesnt need so many accounts, i mostly depends on how good you are on the macroing. For example i see the video on youtube where you do this and the missions take some time meaning but during this time he was just clicking in empty space, however what you can do is to send companions on missions and then logout and loganother toon. Then again send comps out on missions and i think you can macro around 3 toons for this, since then the first toon will be finished with missions already.

 

So with only one account you are able to macro maybe 3-4 toons, depending on your loading times.

 

so 3 times what has been speculated. probably 50+ million per day.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

If you think heroics can't be botted (at least the instanced ones), you'd be sadly mistaken. It'd take a little more effort up front to develop the scripts, but that's a write-once task.

 

At any rate, as any number of people have noted, the RMTs are moving to being brokers for credits, not botting themselves.

 

This is what people "guessed". I've seen nothing to support this view what so ever.

 

Considering how easy it is to make credits in the game now plus automate said measures and the exploited generation of credits previously I imagine any market for RMTs to buy credits and on sell them has well and truly dried up from the amount of sellers who generated their own credits via various means and make the full cash return from those credits thus having much more room to undercut.