What is generating all these credits the last two years, Let's help the devs fix it

[Stradlin]

Dude, there is no credit exploit at the moment.

 

Pretty sure none of us is in any position to do much besides wild guesses in this regard.

 

I personally believe normal players playing in a perfectly normal way has been more than enough to turn gradual steadily creeping inflation into hyper inflation over the last 5 months or so.

 

When they turned conquest target into something character(s) can achieve in 15 mins, they also made it possible for each char of each player to generate 300k credits/week/ with 15 mins of work, if in high yield guilds. This from the two conquest missions alone. It sums up into a massive increase of new credits players create to the game world via perfectly common gameplay.

 

Ever since the /s- -> wonderful, carefully thought out and totally balanced < - - /s conquest patch of last spring,

it has been a very..urgent and good idea to turn any larger pile of credits into cartel stuff instead. Assuming one cares about actual value their wealth has I mean. I've been turning all of my credits into hypercrates and whatnot for a while now. I got that part down to a T.. Unfortunately I keep..accidentally.. opening those damn crates all the time, lol.

 

...Which seems like a great way to completely destroy their value, really. Get 1-2 rare enough items and you make the value back right there. Its just that the amount of truly desirable cartel junk is so low now, crates are more and more like lottery tickets. It kinda feels like a "pretty nice item from cartel market" is much less valuable now than it used to be. Like..mid tier gold armor sets and weapons etc. You can never make that current 200-240 mils back if you are moderately lucky or something. . But I guess thats a topic for another thread.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Stradlin

[gelper]

Dude, there is no credit exploit at the moment.

 

The evidence suggests otherwise. At what point would you be convinced that there is an exploit? I hear the spammers sell 1 billion credits for like 30 dollars. Would it be proof if it were 15 dollars for a billion? 10 dollars? lol

 

The devs should just do a sting operation on them, find out how they are generating these massive amounts, fix whatever it is they are exploiting and then ban them.

[DawnAskham]

The evidence suggests otherwise. At what point would you be convinced that there is an exploit? I hear the spammers sell 1 billion credits for like 30 dollars. Would it be proof if it were 15 dollars for a billion? 10 dollars? lol

 

The devs should just do a sting operation on them, find out how they are generating these massive amounts, fix whatever it is they are exploiting and then ban them.

 

I'm not sure the price point is evidence of an exploit, though it certainly suggests methods to generate substantial credits with minimal effort most likely exist (probably through some sort of botting).

 

I certainly have no idea what it is, most everything I do in game pays out beans in raw credits - sometimes a decent amount of beans, but still no where near levels where my raw credit income is close to 100 million, much less a billion.

[TrixxieTriss]

The evidence suggests otherwise. At what point would you be convinced that there is an exploit? I hear the spammers sell 1 billion credits for like 30 dollars. Would it be proof if it were 15 dollars for a billion? 10 dollars? lol

 

The devs should just do a sting operation on them, find out how they are generating these massive amounts, fix whatever it is they are exploiting and then ban them.

 

Define an exploit?

 

For me it’s using a mechanic to cheat the system. Which isn’t what’s happening here.

[DarkTergon]

The evidence suggests otherwise. At what point would you be convinced that there is an exploit? I hear the spammers sell 1 billion credits for like 30 dollars. Would it be proof if it were 15 dollars for a billion? 10 dollars? lol

 

The devs should just do a sting operation on them, find out how they are generating these massive amounts, fix whatever it is they are exploiting and then ban them.

 

If the goldsellers are reducing their price, it's not because of an exploit, or more credits available, it's because there are more than one goldseller, and they are trying to out do each other, not to mention the guys on ebay (who are probably goldsellers too)

[waylance]

If the goldsellers are reducing their price, it's not because of an exploit, or more credits available, it's because there are more than one goldseller, and they are trying to out do each other, not to mention the guys on ebay (who are probably goldsellers too)

 

That is true but it depends on the scale of the price. The value of any currency will always go down over time from normal inflation. What has happened in the past 4 months is not normal inflation. The value of credits went from $150+ for 1 billion down to as low as $30 now. That big of a swing is a crash and the same exact thing has happened in the past for every previous dupe/exploit. Besides a dupe/exploit the only thing I can see causing this is if everyone was quitting SWTOR and the game was about to close. We already know that is not the case and the game just launched on steam bringing in a lot of new people.

[gelper]

Define an exploit?

 

For me it’s using a mechanic to cheat the system. Which isn’t what’s happening here.

 

An exploit or exloiting something has lots of definitions, let's not argue over that. I think it's most likely something that generates pure credits or items that can be vendored for credits and there are tons of accounts automating it. While it may not match your definition of an exploit if it causes massive inflation it's something that needs to be fixed.

 

But we don't know what it is, but the devs could find out through their internal information and by doing a sting operation on the sellers, finding out how they are doing it, fixing it and banning them.

Edited September 19, 2020 by gelper

[Drew_Braxton]

The evidence suggests otherwise. At what point would you be convinced that there is an exploit? I hear the spammers sell 1 billion credits for like 30 dollars. Would it be proof if it were 15 dollars for a billion? 10 dollars? lol

 

The devs should just do a sting operation on them, find out how they are generating these massive amounts, fix whatever it is they are exploiting and then ban them.

 

Is that the same source as the "I hear windmills cause cancer"?

 

Proof would be bioware saying something on the topic. Everything else is conjecture and conspiracy theories.

 

The only way to create new currency is from mission/conquest rewards and selling stuff to a vendor. Everything else already exists and is just being transferred around. Someone with a lot of credits who decides to spend it all, could cause short term inflationary effects, but highly unlikely that it would extend further than a few items so would likely not have a macro effect. It is easier to make credits from mission/conquest rewards than it used to be so there is more new credits than their used to be. This would explain why it would seem that there is more credits now than in prior years.

 

Each artifact tempersteel sells for 55 credits at a vendor. All the grade 11 scavenging/arch mats appear to sell for this. I harvested 10 nods on Meksha and averaged 55 per node. That is 3,025 credits per node (avg) and 330,578 nodes needed to reach a billion credits. I was able to do 14 nodes in one 4 minute trip through one area on meksha. That is 42,350 credits for 4 minutes worth of work. That is definitely not an efficient way of generating new credits. If, as someone said, automated methods were being employed then that could be 15,246,000 credits per toon per day assuming they maintain 14 nodes every 4 minutes. So, with lots of toons doing this and selling to vendors it is possible to generate billions in new credits, but I would think so much volume appear on biowares radar.

 

Now for a player doing the same thing as the above, but listing on the gtn for 1,000 credits each would make 770,000 credits for the 770 mats obtained every 4 minutes. Now that seems like something feasible to make some players some decent money. But again, since they are selling to other players it would just be transferring existing money around (minus gtn fee) so would not add to inflation server wide.

 

Edit: Another source of new credits to a server could also be through transfer from another server. Given you can only transfer around 4.2 billion per character and it costs $10 for a character transfer it does not seem like a very logical method.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Drew_Braxton

[TrixxieTriss]

An exploit or exloiting something has lots of definitions, let's not argue over that. I think it's most likely something that generates pure credits or items that can be vendored for credits and there are tons of accounts automating it. While it may not match your definition of an exploit if it causes massive inflation it's something that needs to be fixed.

 

But we don't know what it is, but the devs could find out through their internal information and by doing a sting operation on the sellers, finding out how they are doing it, fixing it and banning them.

 

If it’s a game mechanic and playable by everyone and it’s not a broken mechanic, but intended, then it’s not an exploit,

 

Now if someone is running a bot 24/7 to farm that mechanic, it’s still not an exploit. Yes it’s cheating, but it’s a completely different category.

 

Currently, I can’t think of any activity that can be automated using just a bot that can dole out enough credits to cause inflation. Just about every junk item or dropped item has had their value nerfed well before 6.0. That includes highend stuff that a bot wouldn’t be able to complete.

 

The problem is many people came back to the game when steam launched and they all had credits or CM items sitting in their storage that they sold.

You also have long term players like myself who’ve accumulated a huge amount of wealth from just playing the GTN and the game. The more credits you have, the easier it is to generate more for yourself on the GTN.

The more credits you have, the less you care about buying something expensive on the GTN and so people will list things higher as well.

I make a few hundred million a week or more from doing nothing except GTN trading. I’m not even buying stuff off the CM to sell. I’m buying things people sell too cheap and relist. That includes crafted items.

 

You also have jawa junk that you get from deconstruction, slicing missions and treasure hunting missions, conquest and other drop boxes.

Not everyone crafts. So what do you think people are doing with the junk? The smart ones look on the GTN and see the highest priced mats and convert jawa junk into those and list.

 

There is no exploit. It’s people playing the game. The reason for the inflation is people are stupid and buy stuff when it’s listed too high. If they didn’t buy it, the prices would come down (supply and demand). But people are buying items at inflated prices and while ever that happens, people will keep listing them higher.

[Tsillah]

He has a fair point - inflation reduces the value of money, since over time it buys progressively less stuff if there's inflation around. He then combines this with a comment on the (observable) fact that inflation is highly non-uniform. Some prices go up and up and up, while others are pretty static, and most prices from NPCs don't change ever. That speeder that was 8K from the vendor in 2013 is *still* 8K in 2020.

I call the fixed prices the cost of playing the game.

 

However in 6.0 they added something new into the mix and that's how amplifiers work. So there the cost is variable depending on your luck and the way you play (if you do a lot of group content you'll get more gear to try things on for example). And they made changes to crafting that makes crafting a lot more expensive. So that's a one-time increase but it does increase the cost of playing the game as I call it.

 

The prices that go up and up tend to be cartel market items. I would find that acceptable if it wasn't for the fact that more than 90% of cosmetics comes from the cartel market. So that means they've effectively taken cosmetics out of the game and started charging separately for that aspect.

 

The market would be easier to control if cartel market items were BoL for example. The reason I say that is because now there is a reason for being for the credit farmers and sellers. A lot of players want the cosmetics but don't have the money for cartel market items. They are ridiculously overpriced after all. I mean some lightsaber skins are 35 Euros/Dollars. And that's why it creates a market for gold sellers/farmers.

 

The game has reliable ways of making credits and the farmers maximize this. So they sell the credits they gain for a lot less than the cartel market items would cost on the GTN or the CM itself. So this is what creates an opportunity for gold sellers/farmers to step in.

 

There may have been exploits in the game or even still today and some people may have benefitted from them and not gotten banned, however, I think that the credit farmers are responsible for most of the credits generated in game. And when you see those 100 million credit or more prices on the GTN for CM stuff, that's where they come in. It's at a risk of course but for many people it's the only way to beat the enormous grind to get the stuff they want. Because it's not just one item a person would want but multiple. And when you have to earn 500 million credits in the game by playing the game, that takes a long time still.

 

And sure, some may argue that there's power trading and selling mats or crafted stuff that anyone could do, but here's the issue with that: anyone can do it, but not everyone. Because there is a point where supply exceeds the demand and then it's not a viable solution anymore. The GTN being flooded with stuff also affects power trading by the way.

 

So the only way I see to take the market away from credit sellers/farmers is to take the cartel market out of the game market by making items untradeable. I doubt very much that this will happen though and BioWare are thus keeping the gold seller/farmer market alive and well. They are aware of this too. If they say otherwise they're taking liberties with the truth. That's why their post on credit sellers rings rather hollow to me. It's not honest if you know what you have to do to stop it and don't do it because of profit margins.

 

TI;DR: Credits for the cost of playing the game (travel costs, repair costs, legacy perks etc.) would be fine but since it also is linked to the cartel market (because you can sell stuff from the CM on the GTN) it's gotten crazy and keeps the credit sellers/farmers in business. In my view they are the main reason for the inflation and rise of the prices of CM items on the GTN. As long as BW keep this as it is, all their calls for not using credit sellers are hollow. They effectively created a market for them with this.

[gelper]

That is true but it depends on the scale of the price. The value of any currency will always go down over time from normal inflation. What has happened in the past 4 months is not normal inflation. The value of credits went from $150+ for 1 billion down to as low as $30 now. That big of a swing is a crash and the same exact thing has happened in the past for every previous dupe/exploit. Besides a dupe/exploit the only thing I can see causing this is if everyone was quitting SWTOR and the game was about to close. We already know that is not the case and the game just launched on steam bringing in a lot of new people.

 

I found a site that tracks prices for credits and I can confirm that this person said is true. I didn't know the price dropped that fast, From 150 dollars per billion credits to 30 dollars per billion credits in 6 months. Definitely an expoit of some kind or they are very efficiently exploiting/taking advantage of a game mechanic with tons of accounts.

 

A big problem with this is that their prices are so low you can get multiple times the amounts of credits from these spammers than from buying cartel items and selling them on the GTN. This is just more evidence for something being terribly wrong and it must be costing the developers lots of income as some choose to buy from these expoiters since the price is so low.

[DarkTergon]

I found a site that tracks prices for credits and I can confirm that this person said is true. I didn't know the price dropped that fast, From 150 dollars per billion credits to 30 dollars per billion credits in 6 months. Definitely an expoit of some kind or they are very efficiently exploiting/taking advantage of a game mechanic with tons of accounts.

 

A big problem with this is that their prices are so low you can get multiple times the amounts of credits from these spammers than from buying cartel items and selling them on the GTN. This is just more evidence for something being terribly wrong and it must be costing the developers lots of income as some choose to buy from these expoiters since the price is so low.

 

Think the site was wrong, you could always get 1 billion on ebay for about (normal) 80, it never went as high as (normally) 150, unless they were people trying their arm. It has come down a little, but I notice most of the ones selling now are marked as china, whereas before they were England, Germany and the US, not sure if the credit sellers have hit ebay since they can't advertise in game properly or not though.

[BellumEstBellum]

Here's my thought on that: I seriously don't believe gold sellers are participating in the game in a meaningful way as one would expect players to.

 

Time=money, and the money for their time is in cleaning out compromised player accounts, not fussing with game content.

 

There were a few investigative articles, and a documentary about WoW gold sellers, and the norm was for rather Mafia like 'companies' to hire actual players to farm for them, then those players would sometimes trade them to another middle man in the company who would then trade a portion to someone else who would then deliver them and so on. Which made investigations time consuming, and almost impossible to prove that the gold was bought. There are people who give a lot of gold to say a friend new to the game to get them started, or sometimes people do get tricked into buying dumb items for lots of gold etc. In some cases, large investigations would be more expensive for a company, than whatever the gold selling does to a fake market. According to articles like this one from NPR, there are Chinese workers, who spend 12 hours a day farming gold. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10165824 So it's a lot worse than simply hackers taking over accounts and stealing gold, items and whatever. People have actually been killed over fake monies... IMO considering the reasons why someone might buy gold, the only way to really cut down on gold selling is to take certain items off the market completely. Making vanity items only obtainable from game play, and without having to grind weeks of rep, would be a good first step in doing so, also eliminating loot boxes completely. But that's just my opinion.

[gelper]

Any chance this huge overhaul to conquest has something to do with fixing the inflation problems? I thought that system mostly generated items.

 

 

I notice the price of credits is continuing to drop.

[DarkTergon]

Any chance this huge overhaul to conquest has something to do with fixing the inflation problems? I thought that system mostly generated items.

 

 

I notice the price of credits is continuing to drop.

 

I doubt it, nothing is really targeting the credits, just reducing some of the CQ points (which may or may not cause some people to do less CQ), raising others, and bringing in a possible credit sink with the augs (although I'm not sure how much of a sink that'll be), but only time will tell

[Stradlin]

Any chance this huge overhaul to conquest has something to do with fixing the inflation problems? I thought that system mostly generated items.

 

 

I notice the price of credits is continuing to drop.

 

Yep, was pointing this out earlier as well. I think you def onto something.

 

Put it this way.. If you have a character in a high yield guild, you earn 300.000 credits in 15 mins. This through the two conq mission dings -alone-. (raw credits+selling the certificates)

 

Honest question: Can anyone reading this come up with an activity that generates that many new credits to the game even remotely as fast? I've no clue how much some bots or whatnot exploit this. I'm quite sure perfectly normal players doing perfectly normal gameplay generate much more credits to the world than they used to tho.

 

 

I talked about price of hypercrates here 10 days back it seems..I remember checking the price then,was 250 mils.

Cheapest are 290 mils today.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Stradlin

[Loadsamonie]

How exactly do people make so much money in a day that DOESN'T involve playing the market or buying/selling Cartel items? I do several hours a days worth of GSF, Warzones, Heroics and Space Missions and I don't even get 1mil a day.

[Stradlin]

How exactly do people make so much money in a day that DOESN'T involve playing the market or buying/selling Cartel items? I do several hours a days worth of GSF, Warzones, Heroics and Space Missions and I don't even get 1mil a day.

Join a guild that does conquest. Pref a high yield guild. Then start selling everything you get as conquest reward via GTN for one thing! Also consider starting to bringing multiple characters to target each week. People can reach even 30-40 with some ease. Something like 7-10 chars a week is very doable, even causal friendly.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Stradlin

[Loadsamonie]

Start selling everything you get as conquest reward via GTN for one thing! Also consider starting to bringing multiple characters to target each week. People can reach even 30-40 with some ease. Something like 7-10 chars a week is very doable, even causal friendly.

 

Selling what, exactly? I always use the decorations, and the Solid Matrix's are only about 200k each, not even a sneeze near what CMT's and Superior Matrix's used to sell for.

[Stradlin]

Selling what, exactly? I always use the decorations, and the Solid Matrix's are only about 200k each, not even a sneeze near what CMT's and Superior Matrix's used to sell for.

 

Encryptions. Last I checked, they 600-800k each. Pick/Sell Command or Engineering.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Stradlin

[Loadsamonie]

Encryptions. Last I checked, they 600-80k each.

 

Mmm...I'll have to look into those later, see how many I have, if any.

[DarkTergon]

Selling what, exactly? I always use the decorations, and the Solid Matrix's are only about 200k each, not even a sneeze near what CMT's and Superior Matrix's used to sell for.

 

That's because they've come down in price, but 200k per, isn't too bad, join a guild that does the high yield, and you get 6 or 8, if you get cq, per char, it can add up. You can also gather resources, especially the ones used in crafting CQ items, they are going quite well now.

[Loadsamonie]

That's because they've come down in price, but 200k per, isn't too bad, join a guild that does the high yield, and you get 6 or 8, if you get cq, per char, it can add up. You can also gather resources, especially the ones used in crafting CQ items, they are going quite well now.

 

Where should I go if I want to make money off of Bioanalysis, in that case?

[Stradlin]

Mmm...I'll have to look into those later, see how many I have, if any.

 

They are pretty devious and hide in your legacy crafting inventory.

[DarkTergon]

Where should I go if I want to make money off of Bioanalysis, in that case?

 

check the gtn, see which resource from BIO is selling at the highest, then gather as much of that as you can.

sell it in bundles of 500-1000, no more, as people avoid the bigger lots. If you the flagship plans, wait till tomoorow or so to list them, as they go up slightly at the weekend, same with the mats (SRM)