Credits, sales, inflation

[ivanhedgehog]

I appreciate all the comments made to this post, agree or disagree.

 

But some have asked what items I look at that are so over priced.

 

Any single hand new saber: Unstable and new cross guard sabers - 50-100 million

Satele set - Tunic and boots - 50-100 million

Havoc Squad set - 40 million

Jori Daragon - 30-100 million

Revan sets - 50-200 million

Mantellian Privateer set - 20-40 million

Any kinda of Dancer wear - 20-100 million

Sith Recluse set - 30-100 million

Reveanite Avenger set - 30- 100 million

Vectron Vertica mount 10-50 million

Mounts with flourish - 15-80 million

New Comps - 4-30 million

etc.....

 

Bottom line, items went way up in price, regardless of chance cubes supplying more old sets, weapons, emotes, toys, and so forth.

 

Even decorations are so expensive, 500k and above for one item.

 

Earn credits you say? I do what I can, but grinding and doing chores during my whole game experience isn't my idea of fun. Why do chores? Spend my whole game experience doing chores? Running non stop Planetary Heroics all day everyday isn't 'playing' a game, it's grinding and that's not fun. Hamster-wheels are for hamsters.

 

If you feel this current inflation is okay in your book, that's fine, I respect that.

 

I just find it odd that people who spend credits also have so many at the same time.

 

I firmly believe people buy credits from credit sellers and that's why they have so many. Like someone said, $0.66/per million is pretty cheap. I think this is why inflation has occurred. Bioware has failed to stop credit sellers and bots farming those credits. I also believe that last exploit they gave people a lot of credits from a GTN bug error, is another reason for inflation. Any exploits that give more credits than intended have ruined the economy. I hate exploits, but they exist and cause inflation.

 

Do we sit back and say nothing or do we voice our grievances?

 

I bought the new droid companion on harb today for 3 mill, much under what you were quoting. wait a bit, these things will not sell for what they are asking.

[ivanhedgehog]

Sith Recluse Tulak Hord and Satele Shan sets are selling at 100+ milions on TRE. Maybe the price will go down because of the chance cubes, but right now people do buy them at these prices.

 

you have to look at the rarity of them. they are both extremely rare and the chance of them dropping from a chance pack is miniscule. of course they will be expensive, there are little to none of them being brought into the game at this point. if the devs made things more common, the prices would drop. but they want your heads to the grindstone fighting over heroic mobs every week. the high prices are intentional. learn to live with them.

[karmaann]

you have to look at the rarity of them. they are both extremely rare and the chance of them dropping from a chance pack is miniscule. of course they will be expensive, there are little to none of them being brought into the game at this point. if the devs made things more common, the prices would drop. but they want your heads to the grindstone fighting over heroic mobs every week. the high prices are intentional. learn to live with them.

 

It's a non-sense, it was a time where, on JC, Satele set or Xoxaan set was 3 millions cred, stop saying BS , it's like that in all old MMos, people came around, see the old players with super mega speeder, shiny armor and so, raise the bar, there is armor on Gtn people even care off before for million of creds today^^, it's both side, you have old resident who wants to raise there creds on newbies and newbies with Cash who do the same.

i have full Vendetta set on my agent, i've paid it 300 000 cred 3 yrs ago, nowadays it's the price for the boots only , speeders the same.

 

i'm only paying fair prices only if it's crafted by someone, but still, i won't pay millions for a anything

 

So yes, i live with it, i don't buy it

[Rhyltran]

EBON HAWK - 100 million for this and 100 million for that. Anything rare, new or old, is so overpriced. Even things not rare are priced way beyond what's reasonable. The sales amount continues to go up and up as the months tick by. This tells me that people are walking around with millions upon millions of credits. How? Sure if you get lucky and get an item in a pack from a crate that's worth 100 million, you become in that circle of wealth. But, not many are that lucky. Yet, prices for everything on average have gone beyond reason. For example, if I wanted to buy the new Mando banners for a room, it would cost me 5+ million credits easy. That's nutz. I sub, I play, I buy packs, I sell on GTN, yet not making 100's of millions of credits. How are people walking around with so many credits?

 

People are buying, prices continue to go up. My question, where are all these people getting all these credits? I am not seeing a select few, or an upper crust of wealthy controlling, I see a strangely rich middle class.

 

I will say this. Credit sellers seem to be pestering a lot more, even whispering you now, not just mailing you. I think people have all these credits because they are buying them.

 

Up and UP and UP sale prices go as the months tick by.

 

Bioware? Thoughts?

 

Look how much hypercates sell for. They've always sold a ton. The people with billions of credits buy them like hotcakes. Everyday people post threads saying "I quit because I opened three hypercrates to get X item." Followed by people saying "Stop opening hypercrates to get one item. Buy a hypercarte, sell it, and get the item." The secret? Selling hypercrates. They go for 20-30 million each.

[Knorlac]

Look how much hypercates sell for. They've always sold a ton. The people with billions of credits buy them like hotcakes. Everyday people post threads saying "I quit because I opened three hypercrates to get X item." Followed by people saying "Stop opening hypercrates to get one item. Buy a hypercarte, sell it, and get the item." The secret? Selling hypercrates. They go for 20-30 million each.

 

Yeah, if ever there was a time to buy a hypercrate to get a quick credit infusion it's now. Sold one for 49mil yesterday...unfortunately, even this is not enough atm to get that blasted saber which is selling for around 55mil atm.

 

EDIT:And add another 20-25mil if you also think that the lightning tuning is essential on said saber;)

Edited June 6, 2016 by Knorlac

[ivanhedgehog]

It's a non-sense, it was a time where, on JC, Satele set or Xoxaan set was 3 millions cred, stop saying BS , it's like that in all old MMos, people came around, see the old players with super mega speeder, shiny armor and so, raise the bar, there is armor on Gtn people even care off before for million of creds today^^, it's both side, you have old resident who wants to raise there creds on newbies and newbies with Cash who do the same.

i have full Vendetta set on my agent, i've paid it 300 000 cred 3 yrs ago, nowadays it's the price for the boots only , speeders the same.

 

i'm only paying fair prices only if it's crafted by someone, but still, i won't pay millions for a anything

 

So yes, i live with it, i don't buy it

 

back then they dropped from crates that were is current production, not they only drop from chance cubes. Chance cubes have a huge pool of possible items in their drop tables, the chances of one of those items dropping is tiny, so they are effectively not being produced. every time someone buys one and uses it, the available pool shrinks. you have evidently decided what that set is worth to yourself. unfortunately, your valuation is not shared by the people that own the supply. you dont get to tell them what to sell it for

[omaan]

Someone in guild found this on another forum and linked it in game.

 

 

Now I'm not a game developer or some kind of expert. However it is probably not a good idea to be able to gain a lot of credits or do anything meaningful with just some set pattern of mouse clicks/key presses.

 

First off correct me if I'm wrong but isn't getting your companion's influence to max a part of end game? It is beyond me why there is a vendor where you can essentially bypass this part of end game for a low amount of credits. You can go the whole way to 50 on green grade 1/2 gifts without ever touching a artifact grade 6.

 

Yes, I know that you need to buy 1000s of them and use them. That is easily done by using a number of things

to send a key press over and over for hours. Lets not kid ourselves, this is what a good amount of people

have done since KoTFE launch. Every time I passed that vendor especially around launch there was always people sitting their for hours giving gifts. Is this really intended to be this way? Having grade 1/2 gifts you can buy off a vendor for credits is ok but they should only give xp up to like lvl 10.

 

Secondly being able to generate large amounts of credits with some mouse clicks does no good for the economy and puts everyone at a disadvantage who are not doing this. I'm not even thinking about about if credit sellers are taking advantage of this as I bet they are. I'm more scared of that fact that ANYBODY can easily do this with no limit at all.

 

Yes, this can be done with any crew skill. However with others you need human interaction to craft/sell on the GTN and compete with other sellers.Then there is the fact that credits aren't being created but being moved around. Therefor the gain and harm done if any is limited. Most people even running treasure hunting/slicing lockbox missions to begin with are 24/7 macro users. They get most profitable and good when ran non stop 24/7.

 

Everyone else runs missions for mats and crafts or sells them on the GTN since they gain more with limited time spent. Now an easy fix is just to remove or greatly reduce credit gains. It would be neat to see some changes instead. For example make treasure hunting live up to it's name of treasure hunting and instead of lockboxes generating credits add a chance of receiving rare items sort of like a gamble.

 

I know someone is going to come along and say "but bioware is giving out all the credits with heroics!" Sorry but it doesn't compare when this gives out far more and you don't even need to play. Not to mention all the credits claimed given out via heroics is greatly exaggerated when you are lucky if your average player runs them once a week on one toon.

 

Although maybe I'm just all wrong and macroing stuff like this is in fact ok? If so then I'm going to need to look into this right away as currently me and many others are being left in the dust.

 

yeah, this game has crap economic, there are tons of legal and illegal ways to farm millions of credits... because of it prices on gtn are growing up, normal players cant afford rare items from gtn because they have very high prices and it's all because some players buying everything on gtn for any price, because they know ways to farm billions of credits... and you know whats the most funny thing? Bioware won't do a thing to change this crap! Why would they? If everything on gtn will be so expensive players will be forced to buy things from CM for CC... everyone happy except normal players who doesn't use any cheat ways for farming credits.

 

SO its like this: players using legal and illegal fast way of farming credits---gtn prices are growing because of it (we all know why, just remember basic economy knowledge)--- bioware are happy because normal players forced to buy from CM because of gtn prices.... so it is if you use fast ways of credit farming or you will be poor as mouse....

Edited June 6, 2016 by omaan

[Rolodome]

Just something to keep in mind: If an item is rare enough, inflation doesn't necessarily have much to do with how much it gets sold for. Sometimes the price is determined by the seller, who makes a decision along the lines of, "I'm not letting this item go for less than..."

 

And they'd rather keep putting it up for sale than sell it for less. If a few sellers watch the same market and do this on repeat, you can have an item where virtually no one is buying it, but the same item keeps getting put up for sale for a ludicrous price. And if someone with multiple chars trades around and puts up multiples of the same item, you can even have the appearance of multiple sellers participating in the same market, when it's one guy... >.>

 

In other words, it's always been more of a problem of extreme rarity than inflation itself. Many people who "work" the market purposefully stock up on rare items while they're in abundance and then squeeze out profit later, when there's only a handful left floating around, unused. This is easily alleviated (somewhat) by not removing the source(s) of rare items, but marketers have made it common practice to cycle out stuff that doesn't sell amazingly well (sometimes even stuff that does sell well), so that they can bring it back later and capitalize on peoples' nostalgia and built up desire to have it.

[Theeko]

Just something to keep in mind: If an item is rare enough, inflation doesn't necessarily have much to do with how much it gets sold for. Sometimes the price is determined by the seller, who makes a decision along the lines of, "I'm not letting this item go for less than..."

 

And they'd rather keep putting it up for sale than sell it for less. If a few sellers watch the same market and do this on repeat, you can have an item where virtually no one is buying it, but the same item keeps getting put up for sale for a ludicrous price. And if someone with multiple chars trades around and puts up multiples of the same item, you can even have the appearance of multiple sellers participating in the same market, when it's one guy... >.>

 

In other words, it's always been more of a problem of extreme rarity than inflation itself. Many people who "work" the market purposefully stock up on rare items while they're in abundance and then squeeze out profit later, when there's only a handful left floating around, unused. This is easily alleviated (somewhat) by not removing the source(s) of rare items, but marketers have made it common practice to cycle out stuff that doesn't sell amazingly well (sometimes even stuff that does sell well), so that they can bring it back later and capitalize on peoples' nostalgia and built up desire to have it.

 

Unless people just find ways to cheat in credits, that causes tons of inflation illegaly

[karmaann]

back then they dropped from crates that were is current production, not they only drop from chance cubes. Chance cubes have a huge pool of possible items in their drop tables, the chances of one of those items dropping is tiny, so they are effectively not being produced. every time someone buys one and uses it, the available pool shrinks. you have evidently decided what that set is worth to yourself. unfortunately, your valuation is not shared by the people that own the supply. you dont get to tell them what to sell it for

 

ok..you get a point, but why selling garbage at those rates, there is armor or lightsabers, speeders, for 250k cred minimum on Gtn which are just good for sale to an npc ?

[Caelrie]

There aren't enough things to spend money on in the game (that doesn't just go to other players), so the amount of credits in circulation just keeps climbing and climbing.

 

It'll never get better unless BW adds things worth buying from NPCs.

[Theeko]

There aren't enough things to spend money on in the game (that doesn't just go to other players), so the amount of credits in circulation just keeps climbing and climbing.

 

It'll never get better unless BW adds things worth buying from NPCs.

 

There's plenty of stuff to buy, I'm still buying stuff even though I have capped vehicles, 278/278 and nearly capped pets

[LyraineAlei]

There aren't enough things to spend money on in the game (that doesn't just go to other players), so the amount of credits in circulation just keeps climbing and climbing.

 

It'll never get better unless BW adds things worth buying from NPCs.

 

^ I don't even buy medpacks from NPCs anymore. I just craft a ton of the 65 medpacks on my Biochemists and use whatever drop in combat due to levelsync.

 

And with cargo spaces and costume slots having a limit eventually, credit sinks aren't *** effective. And then there are the credit sinks of the Strongholds, but those have a limit eventually as well because there are only so many rooms and places to buy.

[Andryah]

Just something to keep in mind: If an item is rare enough, inflation doesn't necessarily have much to do with how much it gets sold for.

 

Exactly. People are confusing different segments of the player economy. Super rare collectors items have NEVER been priced on value... but rather priced on rarity vs demand.

 

I think people even know this for the most part.. but it is more convenient for them to role play as grand prosecutors of the free market between players in some vague hope somebody will do something about it.

 

Overall... from the three servers I play on... there is literally more price deflation then inflation. The exception is the top end super rare items (and not all are from the CM to be frank) which are a collectors market.. where inflation really does not apply. If you are wealthy, because you created your own wealth in game via your play efforts, you can play this end of the market. If you are not.. then the market is closed to you.. and always has been to be honest. Anyone can open this end of the market to their desires... but first they have to spend less then they earn, and find their niche for wealth accumulation in an MMO. Pretty much just like real life.. except in real life they can go into debt for what they crave... in an MMO.. it's credits and carry.

Edited June 6, 2016 by Andryah

[Andryah]

And then there are the credit sinks of the Strongholds, but those have a limit eventually as well because there are only so many rooms and places to buy.

 

Strongholds are great credit sinks that do not force themselves on every player. Unlike the old training costs.. which applied a fixed sink of credits to every character from level 1 onward... players can choose when to play with strongholds and how much they wish to.

[Tsetso]

There's plenty of stuff to buy, I'm still buying stuff even though I have capped vehicles, 278/278 and nearly capped pets

 

You aren't buying this from NPCs though - you're buying from GTN which leaves the credits in circulation. The post you quoted meant that there are not enough credit sinks which is true but imho that's intentional and honestly i find it quite enjoyable that way - i don't need the game to make me grind credits.

[LyraineAlei]

Strongholds are great credit sinks that do not force themselves on every player. Unlike the old training costs.. which applied a fixed sink of credits to every character from level 1 onward... players can choose when to play with strongholds and how much they wish to.

I agree that it's a great credit sink, but there's only so much credits can buy regarding the strongholds, which is the downside to that great credit sink. Maybe there could be more rooms added onto some of the strongholds, like DK and Cor could let us buy a level below the initial SH that would continue to unlock rooms, or above...

[Andryah]

I agree that it's a great credit sink, but there's only so much credits can buy regarding the strongholds, which is the downside to that great credit sink. Maybe there could be more rooms added onto some of the strongholds, like DK and Cor could let us buy a level below the initial SH that would continue to unlock rooms, or above...

 

Beyond the based costs.....since decorations are consumed... they represent the larger part of stronghold credit sinks IMO. The sky is the limit in how much someone can sink into their strongholds. If the decoration is purchased from another player.. then the credits are moved between players rather then evaporated ..... but consumption ends the movement of credits for that decoration and is a sink for the stronghold owner. Eventually.. even the Yavin stronghold gets full though.. but then again.. the avid decorator is constantly adding/consuming new decorations too.

Edited June 6, 2016 by Andryah

[LyraineAlei]

Beyond the based costs.....since decorations are consumed... they represent the larger part of stronghold credit sinks IMO. The sky is the limit in how much someone can sink into their strongholds. If the decoration is purchased from another player.. then the credits are moved between players rather then evaporated ..... but consumption ends the movement of credits for that decoration and is a sink for the stronghold owner. Eventually.. even the Yavin stronghold gets full though.. but then again.. the avid decorator is constantly adding/consuming new decorations too.

True, and most decorations are bought off the GTN, where there's the 'tax/fee/percentage' that pulls out some credits from the GTN and market pool. *shoves her own Yavin stronghold behind her back as she's saving up for the section to go outside* There are limits in where the big/all-at-once sinks are. The Nightlife event helps a lot too, until the wealthy players get bored of it.

 

To an earlier poster: While the GTN does show the inflation/extreme demand/greed in the game, it's not the cause -not completely- for the inflation/rise of prices. The GTN is likely the most used credit sink as it moved credits in exchange for 'object' from player to player for a fee.

[IanArgent]

The game could use some more end-game credit sinks; lots of small ones.

[Kyuuu]

yearly credit wipes to keep prices in check would do it, but that wont happen, people will rage quit cause they cant charge few limbs for something, which in turn cause bw/ea CS profits to go away, they make way more of CS profits then then do subs. Edited June 6, 2016 by Kyuuu

[Theeko]

yearly credit wipes to keep prices in check would do it, but that wont happen, people will rage quit cause they cant charge few limbs for something, which in turn cause bw/ea CS profits to go away, they make way more of CS profits then then do subs.

 

Or they could just have a 35% tax like BDO instead of just a 6% one, to get people not to list things for so high

[IanArgent]

yearly credit wipes to keep prices in check would do it, but that wont happen, people will rage quit cause they cant charge few limbs for something, which in turn cause bw/ea CS profits to go away, they make way more of CS profits then then do subs.

 

How about yearly wipes of character advancement, achievements, and possessions? Yeesh.

[annabethchase]

yearly credit wipes to keep prices in check would do it, but that wont happen, people will rage quit cause they cant charge few limbs for something, which in turn cause bw/ea CS profits to go away, they make way more of CS profits then then do subs.

 

That would pretty much be a yearly wipe of subscribers. That's like cutting off your head to get rid of a headache.

[Caelrie]

There's plenty of stuff to buy, I'm still buying stuff even though I have capped vehicles, 278/278 and nearly capped pets

 

You didn't read carefully enough.