Has The GTN Gone Silent Lately?

[Zolcor]

I was wondering if the GTN has gone silent lately because players have been unsubscribing in impossible numbers. and can no longer afford items above 1 million credits. I'm hoping this isn't the case, even if 7.0 is flawed.

[HectorCasan]

I was wondering if the GTN has gone silent lately because players have been unsubscribing in impossible numbers. and can no longer afford items above 1 million credits. I'm hoping this isn't the case, even if 7.0 is flawed.

 

flawed?, thats the understatement of the year ....

[Darev]

a lot of higher end items, such as hypercrates, aren't even being listed on the GTN since they are now selling / "worth" more than a billion credits, and the max amount of credits you can sell anything on the GTN is a single billion credits.

[Zolcor]

So It's people cheating the system then?

[Darev]

So It's people cheating the system then?

 

No, I wouldn't say that.

At least not any more than normal.

 

Of course I view "cheating" as "hacking" or otherwise glitching the game to get things that normal gameplay can't give.

Others here have a wider definition.

 

It's more 10 years of credit generation and accumulation and long time players being able to afford the rare items, which means the people who buy credits from 3rd party sites can sell them for more credits...

it's an unending cycle as long as those sites are allowed to operate.

 

Some of the changes with 7.0 and conquest were stated as an effort to try to reduce overall credit generation in game.

However, I don't think those specific methods are enough of a big deal to have the desired effect.

[SteveTheCynic]

So It's people cheating the system then?

"Cheating" is the wrong word. "Obstructed by" is a better way of putting it.

 

And quite frankly, it's gotten so bad that I don't think there's any sane way of fixing it. And before anyone says it, no, deleting one or two or three (etc.) zeroes from everyone's credit balance is not a sane way of fixing it, unless you think that giving the game the unenviable reputation of being the one that stole 90 or 99 or 99.9 percent of its players' gold(1) is a sane idea.

 

I'd love to hear people's **sane** ways of fixing it, however.

 

(1) That would actually be *worse* than the reputation that Allods Online acquired during its outside-Russia betas, where there was a form of Death Penalty (performance debuff caused by dying) and the only way to rid yourself of it remotely quickly was a cash shop item.

[Darev]

"Cheating" is the wrong word. "Obstructed by" is a better way of putting it.

 

And quite frankly, it's gotten so bad that I don't think there's any sane way of fixing it. And before anyone says it, no, deleting one or two or three (etc.) zeroes from everyone's credit balance is not a sane way of fixing it, unless you think that giving the game the unenviable reputation of being the one that stole 90 or 99 or 99.9 percent of its players' gold(1) is a sane idea.

 

I'd love to hear people's **sane** ways of fixing it, however.

 

(1) That would actually be *worse* than the reputation that Allods Online acquired during its outside-Russia betas, where there was a form of Death Penalty (performance debuff caused by dying) and the only way to rid yourself of it remotely quickly was a cash shop item.

 

Totally agree.

Not sure there is a "good" or "sane" way to fix it.

[Sarova]

I was wondering if the GTN has gone silent lately because players have been unsubscribing in impossible numbers. and can no longer afford items above 1 million credits. I'm hoping this isn't the case, even if 7.0 is flawed.

Maybe. It's probably pointless trying to sell CM weapons at the moment, so anyone who bought them cheap in the sales I'm guessing got really pissed off looking at their inventory tab full of worthless weapons until they fix the outfitter (or, more likely, re-add mods for weapons only). Lots of other things are selling though - dyes, augments, augment kits, stims, med pacs & the mats to make them.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Sarova

[Raansu]

Totally agree.

Not sure there is a "good" or "sane" way to fix it.

 

The biggest mistake they made was not regulating the cartel market items. I think its cool that you can sell them to players for in game currency, but items from the CM should have had a price controlled by BioWare kind of like how WoW tokens price are controlled by Blizzard.

 

It wouldn't fix or solve everything, but it definitely would have kept inflation on the GTN somewhat under control. The other problem was they always failed to remove illegitimate credits from the numerous exploits over the years.

[ThanderSnB]

The biggest mistake they made was not regulating the cartel market items. I think its cool that you can sell them to players for in game currency, but items from the CM should have had a price controlled by BioWare kind of like how WoW tokens price are controlled by Blizzard.

 

It wouldn't fix or solve everything, but it definitely would have kept inflation on the GTN somewhat under control. The other problem was they always failed to remove illegitimate credits from the numerous exploits over the years.

 

The CM items don't cause inflation because they don't create credits. They might move credits from one player to another but they don't create them. I don't know what caused the inflation but it can't be CM items. If they capped the price of CM items, people would just stop selling them on GTN and only use in-person trade.

 

Maybe it's illegal botting, hacked accounts, or exploits, but there was a huge increase in credits in just a few years. Prices went up 5x or more in just 2 years, from 200m for the expensive items at the start of Onslaught to over a billion at the start of Legecy of the Sith. There's always been inflation in the game but never at this high rate. Unfortunately, I don't think Bioware has the data to know what's causing it because SWTOR has a really old engine that was made when this type of data collection wasn't a thing. All they can do is create models based on known information like how much credits each mission/objective gives and hope their model matches the actual in-game economy.

[Raansu]

The CM items don't cause inflation because they don't create credits. They might move credits from one player to another but they don't create them. I don't know what caused the inflation but it can't be CM items. If they capped the price of CM items, people would just stop selling them on GTN and only use in-person trade.

 

Maybe it's illegal botting, hacked accounts, or exploits, but there was a huge increase in credits in just a few years. Prices went up 5x or more in just 2 years, from 200m for the expensive items at the start of Onslaught to over a billion at the start of Legecy of the Sith. There's always been inflation in the game but never at this high rate. Unfortunately, I don't think Bioware has the data to know what's causing it because SWTOR has a really old engine that was made when this type of data collection wasn't a thing. All they can do is create models based on known information like how much credits each mission/objective gives and hope their model matches the actual in-game economy.

 

You wouldn't be able to trade them just like you can't trade a WoW token. GTN would be your only option. And the regulation is more so to control costs to keep GTN prices reasonable. Items from CM that used to be only 500k are in the hundreds of millions now.

 

The big influx of credits is mostly BioWares fault. There were several exploits a few years back from operations that BW never dealt with so those credits never got removed. Then they changed the heroic system and when the new system first came into play people would just group up and do the bonus missions and what not and get insane payouts from the heroics.

[DragonSire]

No the biggest mistake was not hard capping credits.

If they had limited how much you can have on an account / toon. Then credit sinks become more affective.

People push back on limiting, because they are usually the ones amassing billions.

[Totemdancer]

So It's people cheating the system then?

 

More like Circumventing the system because inflation was out of control and BioWares promise to fix it equated too nerfing conquest credits which did F All to stop inflation or put downwards pressure on it.

For months last year the players debated different ways to fix it. Some were over the top and others not enough. But all would have been 1000% better than BioWares lacklustre response which has done nothing.

So inflation exceeded the GTN limits and now people get more credits circumventing it and trading directly with other players. No one is cheating the system. They are working with the broken arse system BioWare doesn’t give a **** about.

[juliushorst]

Augments sell like crazy. Even blue 73s. I had a quite bountiful harvest on GTN recently and with limited access to SRMs, OEMs and RMPs which I wisely saved for later I expect it to get even better.

[Zolcor]

Most of the items I was trying to sell on the GTN were actually single Doonium pieces I was attempting to sell at a matched low price to be fair with others, but still make some profit. Other items included some Imperial decoration I threw a wild number of 5 mil because there were no others being sold, and 2 Premium Duranium Arms thingies. Guess the market isn't interested in such items atm. Also I read some of the above comments about players trading in the open and canceling out the GTN altogether like an exploit of some kind. I have zero patience for that type of behavior from players who do that and ruin other players gaming. Edited February 21, 2022 by Zolcor

[JimDiamond]

Most of the items I was trying to sell on the GTN were actually single Doonium pieces I was attempting to sell at a matched low price to be fair with others, but still make some profit. Other items included some Imperial decoration I threw a wild number of 5 mil because there were no others being sold, and 2 Premium Duranium Arms thingies. Guess the market isn't interested in such items atm. Also I read some of the above comments about players trading in the open and canceling out the GTN altogether like an exploit of some kind. I have zero patience for that type of behavior from players who do that and ruin other players gaming.

 

How is trading outside the GTN like an exploit of some kind?

[Sarova]

Also I read some of the above comments about players trading in the open and canceling out the GTN altogether like an exploit of some kind. I have zero patience for that type of behavior from players who do that and ruin other players gaming.

This is NOT an exploit. There’s even a Trade channel in-game to support this kind of selling for goodness sake 😆

[illgot]

The only way to fix inflation without SWTOR losing the trust of players is to create credit sinks people will use voluntarily.

 

After removing Amplifiers and Mods, the best credit sinks in the game is currently the GTN which taxes 8% but is limited to 1 billion credit sales. As inflation increases and more items exceed the 1 billion credit value, fewer items will be sold on the GTN which means less taxes will be taken out. The less the GTN is being used, the faster inflation increases.

 

A quick fix, compared to other possible changes, would be increasing the 1 billion credit cap on the GTN and increasing the credit cap players can hold.

 

My suggestion is to increase the GTN and player cap to 100 billion credits. This will give the developers enough time to create new credit sinks and give those credit sinks enough time to notably reduce inflation in the game.

 

 

 

1. Increase the GTN cap to 100 billion credits
   
2. Increase the amount players can hold to 100 billion credits
   
3. Credits exceeding the new player caps will be mailed back to the players or deposited in the legacy bank instead of being deleted as they currently are
   
4. Remove the 'Tax Evasion' guild buff until inflation is greatly reduced
   

 

 

Raising the GTN limit will have a few additional effects on trade.

 

Players who buy on the Cartel Market and sell to players on the GTN will no longer be restricted to items worth 1 billion credits or less. They can buy and sell anything on the Cartel Market if the GTN has a higher limit without having to waste hours standing on fleet spamming the trade channel. This will also increase sales on the Cartel Market because players will be more apt to buy from the Cartel Market than third party websites if they need credits.

 

Players who buy items on the GTN will have a larger variety of items to choose from because players who are spending real life cash on the Cartel Market will be able to sell any item they wish on the GTN and receive a fair value.

 

Lastly prices for items exceeding 1 billion credits will have their values stabilized and lowered because there will be visible competitors on the GTN trying to out sell each other.

 

The GTN limit of 1 billion credits needs to be raised. It has already greatly limited what players are able to find in game and will eventually have a negative impact on Cartel Market sales if it hasn't already.

Edited February 21, 2022 by illgot

[illgot]

The big influx of credits is mostly BioWares fault. There were several exploits a few years back from operations that BW never dealt with so those credits never got removed. Then they changed the heroic system and when the new system first came into play people would just group up and do the bonus missions and what not and get insane payouts from the heroics.

 

Bioware came out recently and told us there have been no credit exploits in years. The credit exploits from the past increased inflation temporarily but always went back down and stabilized after the exploited credits were spread out into the economy.

 

The current increase in inflation, which started less than a year ago, is because players are buying credits from third party websites. Thanks to easy conquests, thousands of bots were able to farm quick conquests 24/7.

 

Think about it logically. The most credits an account can hold is about 964 billion credits. That is only if a player has unlocked 100 characters, those characters each hold 4.3 billion (credit cap), each of those characters has their own guild and each of those 100 guilds banks are holding 4.3 billion (credit cap), and the player stored 104 billion in their legacy bank (credit cap). No player has done this. At most they exploited the legacy cap of 104 billion credits and those players were probably the few who were caught.

 

Hitting the 104 billion credit cap isn't unheard of today. There is no way previous credit exploits are the reason why inflation has increased so rapidly in the last year.

 

The exploit from years ago was a small bump in inflation, the current massive leap we have now is from third party websites farming conquest and players buying credits from those websites.

Edited February 21, 2022 by illgot

[Darev]

Bioware came out recently and told us there have been no credit exploits in years. The credit exploits from the past increased inflation temporarily but always went back down and stabilized after the exploited credits were spread out into the economy.

 

The current increase in inflation, which started less than a year ago, is because players are buying credits from third party websites. Thanks to easy conquests, thousands of bots were able to farm quick conquests 24/7.

 

Think about it logically. The most credits an account can hold is about 964 billion credits. That is only if a player has unlocked 100 characters, those characters each hold 4.3 billion (credit cap), each of those characters has their own guild and each of those 100 guilds banks are holding 4.3 billion (credit cap), and the player stored 104 billion in their legacy bank (credit cap). No player has done this. At most they exploited the legacy cap of 104 billion credits and those players were probably the few who were caught.

 

Hitting the 104 billion credit cap isn't unheard of today. There is no way previous credit exploits are the reason why inflation has increased so rapidly in the last year.

 

The exploit from years ago was a small bump in inflation, the current massive leap we have now is from third party websites farming conquest and players buying credits from those websites.

 

I'm not seeing these big financial gains from conquest.

Every toon I did conquest on got between 200k and 300k credits for doing the objectives and the credit reward when the mission is complete.

 

Log into toon, accept reward from last week's conquest.

do this week's conquest

accept the personal conquest reward

turn in the credit "sticks" (triangle things...I forget what they're called in game)

Transfer credits to legacy bank in 100k increments.

 

99% of the time I transfer in 200k.

 

Now, I don't sell the flagship encryptions or the solid resource mats... so if you're talking about credits from selling those...great..but it isn't coming from the actual credit generation from conquest...unless you can explain what I've been missing all this time.

[illgot]

I'm not seeing these big financial gains from conquest.

Every toon I did conquest on got between 200k and 300k credits for doing the objectives and the credit reward when the mission is complete.

 

Log into toon, accept reward from last week's conquest.

do this week's conquest

accept the personal conquest reward

turn in the credit "sticks" (triangle things...I forget what they're called in game)

Transfer credits to legacy bank in 100k increments.

 

99% of the time I transfer in 200k.

 

Now, I don't sell the flagship encryptions or the solid resource mats... so if you're talking about credits from selling those...great..but it isn't coming from the actual credit generation from conquest...unless you can explain what I've been missing all this time.

 

legitimate players were never getting billions from conquest rewards even if they sold their rewards to players. Thousands of bot accounts all running simple conquests 24/7 and combing the credits they were making billions.

 

Make a hundred thousand credits directly from conquests multiply by thousands of accounts with 100 characters on each account and you have billions you can sell to players. Completely automate this process and you will have hundreds of billions every week.

Edited February 21, 2022 by illgot

[Balameb]

I'm not seeing these big financial gains from conquest.

Every toon I did conquest on got between 200k and 300k credits for doing the objectives and the credit reward when the mission is complete.

 

Log into toon, accept reward from last week's conquest.

do this week's conquest

accept the personal conquest reward

turn in the credit "sticks" (triangle things...I forget what they're called in game)

Transfer credits to legacy bank in 100k increments.

 

99% of the time I transfer in 200k.

 

Now, I don't sell the flagship encryptions or the solid resource mats... so if you're talking about credits from selling those...great..but it isn't coming from the actual credit generation from conquest...unless you can explain what I've been missing all this time.

 

I think it was close to double of that.

 

Conquest rewarded credits and credit certificates for personal, credits and credit certificates for guild, credits for each objective and credits on loot for whatever you were doing (not counting dumb objectives like taking a taxi or decorator /facepalm). The credit certificates alone was up to 250k new credits for large planet (4x25k+3x50k) + 60k direct reward for personal and guild and you had 310k+ new credits as a starting point without counting each individual completed objective and loot from whatever activity was done. So thinking an average of 400k (maybe even 500k) new credits per toon doing conquest was probably closer to what it actually was. Considering the little time required to get to that, i think it was just too much even for real players but like already said, with conquest being too easy it was probably also easy to automate and use bots.

 

And let's not forget the extra gear, some people are lazy and once they got to the point they wanted, having more tech fragments or jawa scrap to exchange is not something they appreciate because profiting from that requires a little bit of time. They would just vendor every piece they get instead of disintegration....so more new credits into the game.

 

 

"Cheating" is the wrong word. "Obstructed by" is a better way of putting it.

 

And quite frankly, it's gotten so bad that I don't think there's any sane way of fixing it. And before anyone says it, no, deleting one or two or three (etc.) zeroes from everyone's credit balance is not a sane way of fixing it, unless you think that giving the game the unenviable reputation of being the one that stole 90 or 99 or 99.9 percent of its players' gold(1) is a sane idea.

 

I'd love to hear people's **sane** ways of fixing it, however.

 

Most people will ask for my head for even saying this, but there is a saneISH way to lower the amount of 'gold'.

Treat it like most other currencies disapearing from the game: convert it to another currency with a horrible conversion rate and even limited to X amount of credits. BUT, there needs to be some ground rules in other to not completely screw most of the people that earned their credits fair and square:

 

* Give a SIGNIFICANT heads up that current credits will be converted to Neo Credits (just to give it a name).

* Be CLEAR with limits and exchange rates in ADVANCE; not close to the date and just saying 'it will be bad', say how bad.

* Provide valuable things for investing the excess of credits before the conversion happens:

- We already know people will invest in companion gift, but let's think bigger.

- A new very expensive SH in X luxury planet.

- Several cosmetics costing huge amounts of credits. A single mount at 50 Mill does not do much, one armor set that cost close to 100mill a piece is more like it. And don't make it part of collections, let it be BoL but if people want more than one copy that they need to buy them.

- Collection Unlocks with credits. A voluntary, high value and natural credit sink.

- I was not here for GS1, but i think i read something about credits to unlock levels faster, that could be something too.

 

Now, if the game will shutdown in less than 2 years because of not renewing the IP contract, then there is not much of a point. But if they manage to keep it running, then i will say that samething like this is a must.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Balameb

[Yojadi]

I was wondering if the GTN has gone silent lately because players have been unsubscribing in impossible numbers. and can no longer afford items above 1 million credits. I'm hoping this isn't the case, even if 7.0 is flawed.

 

Can't afford items above 1million? is that a joke? anything of worth or note is almost 1 billion. The GTN is a disaster, the economy is tanked

[Deamandred]

I think it was close to double of that.

 

Conquest rewarded credits and credit certificates for personal, credits and credit certificates for guild, credits for each objective and credits on loot for whatever you were doing (not counting dumb objectives like taking a taxi or decorator /facepalm). The credit certificates alone was up to 250k new credits for large planet (4x25k+3x50k) + 60k direct reward for personal and guild and you had 310k+ new credits as a starting point without counting each individual completed objective and loot from whatever activity was done. So thinking an average of 400k (maybe even 500k) new credits per toon doing conquest was probably closer to what it actually was. Considering the little time required to get to that, i think it was just too much even for real players but like already said, with conquest being too easy it was probably also easy to automate and use bots.

 

And let's not forget the extra gear, some people are lazy and once they got to the point they wanted, having more tech fragments or jawa scrap to exchange is not something they appreciate because profiting from that requires a little bit of time. They would just vendor every piece they get instead of disintegration....so more new credits into the game.

 

 

 

 

Most people will ask for my head for even saying this, but there is a saneISH way to lower the amount of 'gold'.

Treat it like most other currencies disapearing from the game: convert it to another currency with a horrible conversion rate and even limited to X amount of credits. BUT, there needs to be some ground rules in other to not completely screw most of the people that earned their credits fair and square:

 

* Give a SIGNIFICANT heads up that current credits will be converted to Neo Credits (just to give it a name).

* Be CLEAR with limits and exchange rates in ADVANCE; not close to the date and just saying 'it will be bad', say how bad.

* Provide valuable things for investing the excess of credits before the conversion happens:

- We already know people will invest in companion gift, but let's think bigger.

- A new very expensive SH in X luxury planet.

- Several cosmetics costing huge amounts of credits. A single mount at 50 Mill does not do much, one armor set that cost close to 100mill a piece is more like it. And don't make it part of collections, let it be BoL but if people want more than one copy that they need to buy them.

- Collection Unlocks with credits. A voluntary, high value and natural credit sink.

- I was not here for GS1, but i think i read something about credits to unlock levels faster, that could be something too.

 

Now, if the game will shutdown in less than 2 years because of not renewing the IP contract, then there is not much of a point. But if they manage to keep it running, then i will say that samething like this is a must.

 

hell why not add yearly flat income tax with a scalable rate based on your wealth 10% for the players with little creds upto 40% for the mega billionaires.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Deamandred

[Deamandred]

hell why not add yearly flat income tax with a scalable rate based on your wealth 10% for the players with little creds upto 40% for the mega billionaires.

 

you could also add price caps to the GTN, The price cap would be based on the Level or tier of the item.

 

Or easier still just lower the maximum amount you can list an item for from 1 billion down to 100 million

Edited February 24, 2022 by Deamandred