BioWare, GTN prices are insane, its time to do something

[Tsillah]

I have spent a lot of time playing this game over the years which is how I accumulated the credits I have. Should BW unilaterally reduce their value, it'd certainly motivate me to leave the game for good.

 

It is a different matter if they were to introduce optional credit sinks; I'd then still have control over how I use my money.

 

I never understood why there is no vendor for the rich to blow their credits on really expensive reskins, titles, mounts etc.

[Wolvel]

This problem will not stop, it will keep getting worse and worse as we go forward. Hypercrates are worth a bill now, in 3 months they will no longer be sold through the GTN and only be sold by hand in trade. I fail to see how that only impacts F2P and Preferred players. This credit devaluation will hurt everyone. The GTN will quickly become obsolete for most high value objects in the game. Further increasing the amount of credits in circulation instead of taking its 8% off the top. SWTOR is quickly going down a path where the in-game currency is worthless. I cant wait till people start trading in OEMs/RPMs/Embers rofl.

[eabevella]

Mostly I just find it amusing.

 

Perhaps if they turn the cartel market vendor into accepting both certificate and credits, for example, things that costs 1 certificate can also be bought with 100m credits, that might provide some money flow? I think many ppl will gladly pay 100m to buy the primary/secondary black dye.

 

It won't "solve' the problem, but at least it's something?

But on the other hand, BW might not want to do this because less ppl will buy the black and black dye from CM... capitalism.

[TrixxieTriss]

This problem will not stop, it will keep getting worse and worse as we go forward. Hypercrates are worth a bill now, in 3 months they will no longer be sold through the GTN and only be sold by hand in trade. I fail to see how that only impacts F2P and Preferred players. This credit devaluation will hurt everyone. The GTN will quickly become obsolete for most high value objects in the game. Further increasing the amount of credits in circulation instead of taking its 8% off the top. SWTOR is quickly going down a path where the in-game currency is worthless. I cant wait till people start trading in OEMs/RPMs/Embers rofl.

 

Bioware’s answer to trade outside of the GTN will be to limit how many credits can be traded in one go.

Which will mean people will need to do multiple trades and you can 100% guarantee that will lead to some people getting ripped off by sellers and buyers. And we’ll see an increase in more scammers.

I’m calling it early that if that strategy is adopted by Bioware, we will have people posting examples of that behaviour on the forums.

[TrixxieTriss]

Mostly I just find it amusing.

 

Perhaps if they turn the cartel market vendor into accepting both certificate and credits, for example, things that costs 1 certificate can also be bought with 100m credits, that might provide some money flow? I think many ppl will gladly pay 100m to buy the primary/secondary black dye.

 

It won't "solve' the problem, but at least it's something?

But on the other hand, BW might not want to do this because less ppl will buy the black and black dye from CM... capitalism.

 

Bioware could just convert the current CM certificates to credits and remove them as a requirement on those vendors. Just make everything cost a large amount of credits.

Edited September 18, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

bioware said they will introduce changes to the economy to address the inflation in the expansion

 

Where was this announced? Let me guess, theory crafters discord?

[xordevoreaux]

Bioware’s answer to trade outside of the GTN will be to limit how many credits can be traded in one go.

Which will mean people will need to do multiple trades and you can 100% guarantee that will lead to some people getting ripped off by sellers and buyers. And we’ll see an increase in more scammers.

I’m calling it early that if that strategy is adopted by Bioware, we will have people posting examples of that behaviour on the forums.

 

But Wolvel does have a point, bartering might be the game's next development in player-to-player economic exchanges. Credit devaluation will retire the utility of the GTN for all but moderate activity (some of those cartel market mounts still sell for trash amounts of credits).

 

Not too far fetched to Imagine a guild whose entire wealth stems from establishing a reliable, trusted, and consistent organically-grown barter emporium. Go to the emporium, drop off your stuff on consignment, go to the emporium, look to see what's on consignment, make a deal, the guild brokers the arrangement, takes something off the top of the stack of goods for the trade, everybody knows that, done. Trillions of worthless credits stay rotting in legacy vaults.

 

All because Bioware never worked ardently enough, consistently enough, frequently enough, to rid the game of gold sellers and avoid ways of overprinting money. Too damn late now.

Edited September 18, 2021 by xordevoreaux

[xordevoreaux]

Just make everything cost a large amount of credits.

 

Making things cost a mountain of worthless credits just gives the gold sellers more customers, subsequently exacerbating the inflationary spiral. I can't lay everything at the feet of gold sellers, but they've vastly contributed to the problem, I'll hazard as much or more so, than any other inflationary factor.

Edited September 18, 2021 by xordevoreaux

[Otowi]

There is no doubt that we have inflation in this game.

 

I mean, when standard or green quality loot drops sell for 5x the price of just vendoring it, you have an inflation problem.

 

I was shocked when I looked up the price of an ultimate cartel pack a few days ago, nearly at 1 billion credits.

When I last sold one of those it was 250 million or there abouts on DM if memeory serves.

 

And some mounts are now going for that price, wich is bonkers IMHO.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Supply and demand, I know that, but still those prices are as I said, bonkers.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Otowi

[mike_carton]

I mean, when standard or green quality loot drops sell for 5x the price of just vendoring it, you have an inflation problem.

 

This is not a valid criterion to assess the economy. Vendors offer 500 credits for a "Flagship Plan." Doesn't mean that's the value of the plan. Applies as well to SRMs, LEs, Dark Projects (6,000 credits) and a whole host of items. Prices offered by vendors are not indicative of the (perceived or real) value of items.

 

The first "Yarvok's Gratitude" costs 150,000,001 credits; vendors won't even buy it for 1 credit.

Edited September 18, 2021 by mike_carton

[mike_carton]

While speculating about a barter economy and its implications might be fun and interesting, none of that needs to come to pass. The GTN limit of 1 billion was set when it might have seemed unlikely that there would be transactions for that amount. All BW needs to do now is to raise that limit. The 1 billion figure is not tied to any limitations in the game (that we know of) related to internal representation of numbers within the program(s); we know that because the game supports a character carrying 4,294,817,295 Credits on their person.

 

BW can raise the maximum price of a GTN item to 4 billion to provide some headroom in the short and medium term.

 

A longer term solution would be the introduction of a higher valued currency (let's call it SuperCredit) that can be bought from and sold to vendors. The exchange rate could be, for example:

 

1 SuperCredit = 1,000,000 Credits (One can envision some currency exchange transaction fees.)

 

The vendors might pull Credits from or deposit Credits to the Legacy Storage which has a 100 billion Credit (soft) cap, thereby circumventing the per-character Credit limit. GTN could allow pricing in either Credits or SuperCredits.

Edited September 18, 2021 by mike_carton

[Otowi]

This is not a valid criterion to assess the economy. Vendors offer 500 credits for a "Flagship Plan." Doesn't mean that's the value of the plan. Applies as well to SRMs, LEs, Dark Projects (6,000 credits) and a whole host of items. Prices offered by vendors are not indicative of the (perceived or real) value of items.

 

The first "Yarvok's Gratitude" costs 150,000,001 credits; vendors won't even buy it for 1 credit.

Maybe a bad example then.

 

What I meant is that some items like standard or green stuff should not go for insane ammounts, as they are simply not worth it, since they are easy to get, and are plentifull of all different kinds.

 

If it's rare or not many available, for example from packs that are no longer here, I can understand high prices, but for bog standard things like armor or hilts, wich is easily available, I simply don't get it.

[FlatTax]

There's a plus side to the inflated economy:

 

All of EA's Credit walls on pay-not-to-wait transactions (Legacy and Character perks, primarily) are easier to pay down. For people with new Legacies or Alts, avoiding the intended cash-out is MUCH easier than in the past.

[Nefla]

I didn't read all 17 pages of this but introducing more good looking armors, decorations and other things into the game that can be purchased with credits from a vendor or earned through playing the game would help with both inflation and the OP's problem of looking like a scrub but that would mean NOT trying to squeeze every single penny out of the player and we're dealing with EA here. That being said, you can certainly buy from the GTN or social vendors at least SOME nice looking armor sets for less than a million credits. Make sure you look for whole sets or upper/lower/I forget what the one that has the bracers and belt is called sets because they're almost always cheaper than buying a single piece. You also sometimes have people who will list things for cheap without checking what other people are selling for.

[Nortumberland]

I believe that there is no real problem here to solve. The issue is being kept alive by players who want stuff from GTN that is NOT necessary to play the game, just cosmetic stuff. But these players don't want to spend the real-life money other players spent. They don't want to spend the real-life time playing the game - over several years - that the other players spent.

 

They want shiny stuff, they want them now, and they want them just handed to them without spending money or effort.

 

I believe that there is no real problem here to solve.

 

At least someone got the TC's point lol. It's not about the inflation, it's about F2Ps who want rare/expansive CM items for FREE. EVERY other armor/weapon can be acquired by simply playing the game w/o GTN or CM involved. Story+planetary quests alone provide a huge amount of cool-looking gear. Add craft, PvP, world drops, etc. Pretty sure Devs are aware of escrow limits and it suits their needs (make you sub) since they implement stuff like Commander's Compendium for 4.5 mil, yet sets/tacticals, for instance, are set at 1mil. Whatever you you do to the economy, CM items will always be expensive bc their amoint is limited and they are purchasable only through real cash (sub/direct donations). Cool stuff is NEVER EVER gonna be easily accessable in a F2P game.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Nortumberland

[casirabit]

Sure except gold augs are 700m. Which is only 300m off gtn credit cap. That seems normal. If you where to full augment yourself in gold augs you would need multiple times more then player credit cap. Yea that seems normal and very healthy.

 

Except for the most cases you don't need the gold augs to do anything in game. All my characters are in 306 and bonus gear and they have the old augs and they work just fine for most everything. The reason I say most everything is because I do not do pvp so am unsure if they help in pvp or not.

[Stradlin]

Except for the most cases you don't need the gold augs to do anything in game. All my characters are in 306 and bonus gear and they have the old augs and they work just fine for most everything. The reason I say most everything is because I do not do pvp so am unsure if they help in pvp or not.

 

 

You recon people would pay almost credit caps worth for them if they were pointless?

By the sounds of it, you are not involved in content where top tier augments would provide a relevant advantage. Those who are want them. Simple as that.PvP and strangely few end game ops have some uses for them.

 

 

Situation is getting quite bonkers by now. Inflation is massive. I suppose it'll slow down a bit by the time people can't ask more than 1 bil for items via GTN. Eventually, many people migfht stop accepting credits for top end items entirely. I sold a title for 1 bil few months back and kinda regretted it even then.

 

There'd be many simple solutions to this. Well, bandages rather than solutions. Increase credit cap for players and (most importantly,) GTN. That alone would go towards ensuring people might keep accepting money for top tier items at least. If there is some unlikely hard coded 1s and 0s -related reason that prevents this, then maybe introduce a new currency. That's what they did in Ultima Online. Let people transfer 1 bil credits into one "platinium credit " if they so desire. Let people turn 1 plat into 1 bil normal credits if they so desire. Let people ask 1 plat and 300 mils from an item in GTN. Problem solved and inflation may continue at peace. xD

Edited September 20, 2021 by Stradlin

[Tsillah]

You recon people would pay almost credit caps worth for them if they were pointless?

By the sounds of it, you are not involved in content where top tier augments would provide a relevant advantage. Those who are want them. Simple as that.PvP and strangely few end game ops have some uses for them.

They already made the exception for PvP in the part you quoted. Ranked PvP is the only thing in the game where you actually need them because there will be opposition that have them. And even though skill > gear, with equal skill the gear can be the determining factor of who wins or loses.

 

Now, there will be people that want them for other reasons like just to show off to your buddies that you have them or when you have dozens of billions of credits and want something to spend them on. So yeah, those people would spend money on them even if they're virtually pointless. I mean they aren't pointless because they add stats but when it comes to things such as endurance, mastery and power they are capped anyway in below 75 content so you really only should look at the tertiary stats. In Dxun and level 75 PvP of course they do work to their fullest. That's a pretty slim use and it doesn't look like they're going to up existing content to 80. So there'll be a big tier of level 70, a small one of 75 and another small one at 80 and that last one will be the one without stat capping.

 

All in all they are a superfluous upgrade. You don't need them to do any content. If you take them away, no content will be impossible since the harder content is balanced around the purple augments. In PvP, however, the mere existence of 300 rating augments creates its own need and in PvE where they can be useful, they aren't required at all.

 

Incidentally I really don't understand that people still buy them since in december they'll be obsolete, but hey, it's their money. It's also not a very good gold sink. There should've been a vendor that sells them for 500M credits and some materials and that would take a lot more credits out of the game. I really don't understand what BW is trying to do or if they are even trying to do something about inflation, but whatever, I'm just scratching my head at it and no longer really care if I'm honest.

[Toraak]

They already made the exception for PvP in the part you quoted. Ranked PvP is the only thing in the game where you actually need them because there will be opposition that have them. And even though skill > gear, with equal skill the gear can be the determining factor of who wins or loses.

 

Now, there will be people that want them for other reasons like just to show off to your buddies that you have them or when you have dozens of billions of credits and want something to spend them on. So yeah, those people would spend money on them even if they're virtually pointless. I mean they aren't pointless because they add stats but when it comes to things such as endurance, mastery and power they are capped anyway in below 75 content so you really only should look at the tertiary stats. In Dxun and level 75 PvP of course they do work to their fullest. That's a pretty slim use and it doesn't look like they're going to up existing content to 80. So there'll be a big tier of level 70, a small one of 75 and another small one at 80 and that last one will be the one without stat capping.

 

All in all they are a superfluous upgrade. You don't need them to do any content. If you take them away, no content will be impossible since the harder content is balanced around the purple augments. In PvP, however, the mere existence of 300 rating augments creates its own need and in PvE where they can be useful, they aren't required at all.

 

Incidentally I really don't understand that people still buy them since in december they'll be obsolete, but hey, it's their money. It's also not a very good gold sink. There should've been a vendor that sells them for 500M credits and some materials and that would take a lot more credits out of the game. I really don't understand what BW is trying to do or if they are even trying to do something about inflation, but whatever, I'm just scratching my head at it and no longer really care if I'm honest.

 

From my understanding it was BW's attempt to get more people to do NiM Raiding, and Ranked PvP, since the mats originally came only from those 2 types of content. Since they put the quest on fleet for tech frags it has opened them up to people who don't do either of those (or to sell mats), but as you stated I wouldn't waste that many credits on them for NiM content, since they aren't needed for it (and I don't PvP).

[Tsillah]

From my understanding it was BW's attempt to get more people to do NiM Raiding, and Ranked PvP, since the mats originally came only from those 2 types of content. Since they put the quest on fleet for tech frags it has opened them up to people who don't do either of those (or to sell mats), but as you stated I wouldn't waste that many credits on them for NiM content, since they aren't needed for it (and I don't PvP).

Well, if they wanted more people to raid and do ranked, then clearly putting in augments that cost more than most people have is not the right way surely.

[Toraak]

Well, if they wanted more people to raid and do ranked, then clearly putting in augments that cost more than most people have is not the right way surely.

 

No argument from me on that. I think they were hoping for people to farm the mats themselves, instead of buying them off of the GTN. Get a lot more participation in both area's. What they got is a small group farming the mats, and making the augments which made the prices ridiculous.

 

They probably put in the quest near Kai because they realized they weren't getting more people to actually do ranked/NiM content even with the carrot of the new Augments.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Toraak

[ShinLunaAzure]

No argument from me on that. I think they were hoping for people to farm the mats themselves, instead of buying them off of the GTN. Get a lot more participation in both area's. What they got is a small group farming the mats, and making the augments which made the prices ridiculous.

 

They probably put in the quest near Kai because they realized they weren't getting more people to actually do ranked/NiM content even with the carrot of the new Augments.

 

Real talk, the inflation problem is partly caused by bioware, not the GTN. Prices were not great before 6.0, sure, but as soon as bioware introduced new single fee credit sinks to crafting and amp rerolling, THEY devalued the credit so much that prices for everything shot up instantly as soon as 6.0 launched.

 

Before 6.0 100k was decent walking around money, then bioware decided "Oh, we raised the F2P credit cap to 1 million? Better make every armour piece we add to the game from now on start at a million" And just like that 1 million credits became the bare minimum you should be carrying before you even dare glance at the GTN.

 

Part of the problem is that bioware foolishly implemented their credit sinks as flat rate fees, while saying they wanna reduce the amount of "GTN billionaires" The problem is, a GTN seller isn't gonna think twice about dropping a few million to unlock crafting skills (A completely arbitrary credit sink that we never had to deal with before) a 1 million for a set piece part, but for a F2P or even preferred status player that amount of money is crippling. If they want to actually hit GTN players without ruining the game for casuals, they need to make their credit sinks scaling and proportional, that's not a perfect system either but it at least alleviates the heavy impact it has on casual players just trying to do the basics like level crafting skills or get the generic vendor gear (that also requires token currencies on top of credits anyway).

 

Sadly, since bioware is largely the reason inflation exploded like it did, I have little faith in them making it any better. I expect 7.0 to introduce a lot more arbitrary paywalls and ridiculous vendor prices, and the GTN will only get worse as a result.

[Toraak]

BW should never have raised the credit cap from what it was. 250k for F2P, and 350k for Preferred. That is probably one of the reason prices have gone up, but that doesn't explain why it's only had such a massive increase in prices in the last 6 months. Most prices have tripled at the very least in that time frame, while the credit caps have been the way they are for a lot longer then that.

 

I'm sure the removal of the Referral program had a lot to do with that as well. People want to get value off of the items the pay real life $ for now.

[TrixxieTriss]

BW should never have raised the credit cap from what it was. 250k for F2P, and 350k for Preferred. That is probably one of the reason prices have gone up, but that doesn't explain why it's only had such a massive increase in prices in the last 6 months. Most prices have tripled at the very least in that time frame, while the credit caps have been the way they are for a lot longer then that.

 

I'm sure the removal of the Referral program had a lot to do with that as well. People want to get value off of the items the pay real life $ for now.

 

BioWare are 100% to blame for the hyperinflation in the last 6-12 months. I’ve zero confidence they can contain it without reintroducing a revised version of referral system or adding way more CC’s to Galactic seasons. But we know they won’t / can’t do that cause it will eat into their CM income stream.

 

The introduction of augment mats for ranked pvp and master mode operations and the amounts needed to craft is / was over the top. That was a major trigger for extra inflation and made a small percentage of the player base very rich.

Then BioWare removed the pvp mats from solo ranked and made them only available for group ranked. This put more price pressures there because hardly anyone plays group ranked and the people who did it to Farm mats started to get banned for throwing ranked games for friends and Guildies. Which just increased the prices even more.

 

Then BioWare decided to remove the referral program and that was the last major trigger for the hyperinflation too because it removed a large amount of “free” available cartel items from the GTN. I predicted as much back when they announced the end of the referral system.

Don’t get me wrong, we definitely had high inflation before, but when they removed the referral program it went into high gear and it’s why we have hyperinflation now.

 

I don’t know if there is anything BioWare is willing to do that will fix inflation on the GTN. All they care about from a business perspective is making real money off the CM.

[Pricia]

Look at the bright side - with the GTN cap being 1 billion and so much stuff already priced that high, at least inflation is going to stop now.

 

You know what's causing inflation too? Those damn sets you can't buy on the CM anymore. Guaranteed to sell at 1 billion when people get one from a crate. And people will buy it because they've been waiting for it forever.