Fix Inflation PLEASE

[septru]

2 hours ago, starbuckone said:

The only way to fix it isn't what you recommended but increased drop rates across the board for all items in cartel packs as well as lowering prices of cartel packs. When you pay real world currency out of your own pocket then you have the right to dictate pricing.

They really need to add a dislike button for garbage like this. 

[DreadtechSavant]

1 hour ago, septru said:

They really need to add a dislike button for garbage like this. 

Yes, and yours be on every one of my presses as garbage.

 

First off, no not every sub has over 1B credits as you claim, but if they did then GTN costs would be irrelevant as according to you they have the credits to buy anything anyway.

 

Secondly, yet again we have a player who thinks it's ok to dictate what happens to other players brought items from CM.  What they have paid for NOT YOU.

 

Thirdly, none of your so-called fixed economy solutions, would fix anything. all it would do is and there is no polite way of say it so I will be blunt, it will just piss people off. Other players have already said why without saying it again.

[Nee-Elder]

4 hours ago, septru said:

They really need to add a dislike button for garbage like this. 

Speaking of random "garbage" , here's my  radical idea:  Open up the Nar Shaddaa Nightlife EVENT (casino gambling)  all year round 24/7 .

Those new  uber kingpin High-Roller slot machines  would do wonders for combating  inflation, no?

( *Especially if  BioWare put  certain  rare  items into the loot-tables  )

[eabevella]

At this point I don't expect the inflation to be fixed, I just want to be able to use GTN.

• Increase GTN price per item limit to 10B or 20B since Hypercrate is 9-10B right now.

I don't really care, I just want to use it so that I have a clear list of sellers instead of trying my luck on Trade (not much options when you literally live on the other side of the earth in oppose to the USA)

• Limit Trade to 1 item + 1M per transfer.

People still can trade deco drops or give a teammate a stim in Ops, or give an actual newbie 1M, but it will greatly hinder inflated item trade through Trade and restrict the trade market to the GTN so that there's little chance to escape the 8% GTN tax. Small credit sink is still credit sink.

The two changes won't fix the inflation (I doubt there's a way to fix it at this point) but they will greatly increase the quality of trading experience of a great deal of players who simply want to have a clear, safe, and functional way to buy/sell stuffs - the GTN.

They should also be relatively simple to change on Bioware's end without being controversial or risk being sued (they would never alter/half the number of credits players have unless it's individual scam they have direct, absolute evidence. Many people gain credits through CCs that were obtained through purchase using real life currency. Touching that would be a big no).

Edited October 14, 2022 by eabevella

[DeannaVoyager]

10 hours ago, DakhathKilrathi said:

I think it's at the point that no credit sink can solve the problem without being hugely punishing to newer/poorer players. 

Fairest way to do it is a currency reset; knock 2 - 3 zeroes off of every credit balance in the game. If you have less you lose less. If you have more you lose more. It's fair and it doesn't actually change the relative value of what people already have. Balance mission rewards appropriately after that. 

It's a drastic step, but we're at the point that they need to take a drastic step. I'd be okay with losing billions if it fixed the problem permanently. 

 

In case of dropping zeros, I'd leave everyone under 1 or even 10 million credits to keep their zeros. 

 

 

[Deaconik]

15 hours ago, septru said:

Right now the credits made by credit sellers exceeds the credits lost through credit sinks. The only way to fix inflation is to cut out credit sellers. My change would do that.

This is the only solution. If they don't combat the credit sellers, any fix will only hurt the playerbase and solve literally nothing.

The. Only. Way. To. Fix. Inflation. Is. To. Cut. Out. Credit. Sellers.

 

The fact they're still around means something, think about that and then think about all the nonsense solutions.

BTW if I would lost 2 or 3 zeroes from my bank account and BW wouldn't update the rest of the game properly (e.g. repair costs) I would quit faster than you can say inflation.

[starbuckone]

7 hours ago, septru said:

They really need to add a dislike button for garbage like this. 

And how is my statement garbage son? The rarity of the items is what drove the price of CM items up because most people buy the hypercrates or cartel packs. You wanna talk to someone about lowering inflation talk to Joe Biden however in games like SWTOR it is a player controlled economy.  EA who controls the marketing aspects of the game isn't going to change their pricing for you.

[ZUHFB]

6 minutes ago, starbuckone said:

And how is my statement garbage son? The rarity of the items is what drove the price of CM items up because most people buy the hypercrates or cartel packs. You wanna talk to someone about lowering inflation talk to Joe Biden however in games like SWTOR it is a player controlled economy.  EA who controls the marketing aspects of the game isn't going to change their pricing for you.

Becausenit simply doesn't solve inflation? Like ok now the items are cheaper but people still have billions? So credits would be even more worthless...

[illgot]

1 hour ago, DeannaVoyager said:

 

In case of dropping zeros, I'd leave everyone under 1 or even 10 million credits to keep their zeros. 

 

 

you can't delete credits in an MMO to combat inflation without negatively effecting the trust players have in the cash shop.

1) anyone who bought CM items and sold them for credits might be a little upset to find they just lost 1/10th of their credits. Players who stopped playing only to come back to their credits deleted will probably leave permanently.

2) SWTOR would become known as the game that will delete player credits instead of fixing the issue of inflation. This type of reputation can have an impact on whether new players even try the game. Why would anyone trust the devs if they start deleting things a player earns because they are too lazy to fix the core issue of inflation. What other shortcuts are they going to take because they don't have the time or energy to fix the actual problem.

3) If the devs do not fix the fact that there are hundreds of billions of credits entering the economy and a tiny fraction of those credits ever leave the economy, inflation will return to our current levels in a few months. People will be buying third party credits at a rate of 1 billion credits per dollar the instant the servers go live after deleting credits from players inventory.

4) This would not effect some of the wealthiest players who have already stopped accepting credits.  Many traders have been hitting the legacy cap for months. They have been busy buying up hypercrates, name changes, datacrons, rare equipment. The players who will be hit the hardest are the honest players with mid level wealth. Credit buyers will be back at 100 billion in no time buying up everything while the legitimate players will just be broke and pissed.

Edited October 14, 2022 by illgot

[starbuckone]

19 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

Becausenit simply doesn't solve inflation? Like ok now the items are cheaper but people still have billions? So credits would be even more worthless...

However by shafting those who have billions and alienating them EA would lose the funding that is keeping the game alive. You have to realize real world money is what keeps this game going. As long as EA's investors are making money from this game don't expect anything to change. You could have billions too if you were smart enough to play the market game. I remember when things were cheap on the GTM but like everything else the price eventually rises. I fight inflation in game in my own way. I sell on the GTM for half of the lowest price and my stuff sells. The stuff that doesn't sell is usually because my low prices forced other sellers to drop their prices below mine which is a win. BTW credits in the game are worthless and have been since the game went F2P and the store was introduced to the game.

[starbuckone]

27 minutes ago, illgot said:

you can't delete credits in an MMO to combat inflation without negatively effecting the trust players have in the cash shop.

1) anyone who bought CM items and sold them for credits might be a little upset to find they just lost 1/10th of their credits. Players who stopped playing only to come back to their credits deleted will probably leave permanently.

2) SWTOR would become known as the game that will delete player credits instead of fixing the issue of inflation. This type of reputation can have an impact on whether new players even try the game. Why would anyone trust the devs if they start deleting things a player earns because they are too lazy to fix the core issue of inflation. What other shortcuts are they going to take because they don't have the time or energy to fix the actual problem.

3) If the devs do not fix the fact that there are hundreds of billions of credits entering the economy and a tiny fraction of those credits ever leave the economy, inflation will return to our current levels in a few months. People will be buying third party credits at a rate of 1 billion credits per dollar the instant the servers go live after deleting credits from players inventory.

4) This would not effect some of the wealthiest players who have already stopped accepting credits.  Many traders have been hitting the legacy cap for months. They have been busy buying up hypercrates, name changes, datacrons, rare equipment. The players who will be hit the hardest are the honest players with mid level wealth. Credit buyers will be back at 100 billion in no time buying up everything while the legitimate players will just be broke and pissed.

The real question should be why do these idiots care how many credits somebody else has? It really doesn't affect in-game shop prices only prices on the GTM are affected which has a cap of 1 billion. Just like in the real world in demand items will always be more expensive. If they cut credits or anything it just guarantees the whiners won't get the item's they want as those who have the items will just go play a game that won't screw them over to please a minority like WoW or LOTRO or even a SWG EMU. 

[Loc_n_lol]

48 minutes ago, illgot said:

People will be buying third party credits at a rate of 1 billion credits per dollar the instant the servers go live after deleting credits from players inventory.

Well no because the credit sellers will also have lost a zero on their stash of credits. Divinding the amount of credits globally doesn't really change anything for anyone as far player to player trading is involved, the number of credits involved changes, the relative value of the trade does not.

But for fixed costs such as repair bills and vendor items, then it's a net loss, unless those get slashed too. And it makes quest rewards and loot matter more too ,relatively speaking.

Once again, honestly, I don't see any magic mechanical solution to the inflation problem. If you create additional credits sinks with the goal of halting or reversing inflation, well, first it's going to take very harsh credit sinks and a very long time to have any visible effects, and secondly, the game is going to suck. Nobody actually wants to become poorer and struggle, we just want everyone else to be poorer so we can buy their stuff.

 

Also I really don't get what you mean by this : "you can't delete credits in an MMO to combat inflation without negatively effecting the trust players have in the cash shop. "

What does the cash shop have to do with credits ? If you buy items for cartel coins to sell them for credits, then it doesn't really change anything if you can get 1B credits now, or 100M neo-credits after an hypothetical change, does it ?

Edited October 14, 2022 by Loc_n_lol

[TyrFoge]

4 hours ago, eabevella said:

I just want to use it so that I have a clear list of sellers instead of trying my luck on Trade (not much options when you literally live on the other side of the earth in oppose to the USA)

• Limit Trade to 1 item + 1M per transfer.

People still can trade deco drops or give a teammate a stim in Ops, or give an actual newbie 1M, but it will greatly hinder inflated item trade through Trade and restrict the trade market to the GTN so that there's little chance to escape the 8% GTN tax. Small credit sink is still credit sink.

This would actually be a relatively good compromise to eliminating trade completely I think. It won't help as much as eliminating trade altogether but will certainly help curb it a little. Especially if there is some sort of account lock out for doing it (say 1 per server day).

It's been mentioned before but I think another point we're all completely missing here is with many trades now occuring at above character limits how long will it be before no it gets completely over run by predatory "sellers" that scam players taking billions but never actually trading the item they promised since they are "completing the transaction" over several trades? Correct me if I'm wrong (and someone will I'm sure) but there's not any real way of reporting such a thing happening that has teeth. It's sort of like an unwritten policy of: "Hey, we provided a GTN for your safety but you chose to use the Black Market instead. Do so at your own risk". If you ask me this and this alone should be enough reason/inventive to force users back onto the GTN let alone some of the other reasons expressed here in this thread. 

Edited October 14, 2022 by TyrFoge

[septru]

3 hours ago, starbuckone said:

I fight inflation in game in my own way.

You're mistaking high prices with not enough CM items. The two issues are related, but are not the same. Inflation is about the credits, not the items.

Every single time someone makes a thread about inflation, there's always one guy like you who makes the same wrong point. Here are some past threads where you can read about in detail why you are wrong: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/924631-solution-for-the-inflation/#comment-9718111, https://forums.swtor.com/topic/918863-gtn-inflation-and-inviting-new-player-friends/, https://forums.swtor.com/topic/911141-how-about-that-inflation-eh/#comment-9624917.

Edited October 14, 2022 by septru

[septru]

5 hours ago, eabevella said:

At this point I don't expect the inflation to be fixed, I just want to be able to use GTN.

• Increase GTN price per item limit to 10B or 20B since Hypercrate is 9-10B right now.

I don't really care, I just want to use it so that I have a clear list of sellers instead of trying my luck on Trade (not much options when you literally live on the other side of the earth in oppose to the USA)

• Limit Trade to 1 item + 1M per transfer.
  
  People still can trade deco drops or give a teammate a stim in Ops, or give an actual newbie 1M, but it will greatly hinder inflated item trade through Trade and restrict the trade market to the GTN so that there's little chance to escape the 8% GTN tax. Small credit sink is still credit sink.

The problem with increasing the GTN cap (besides the fact that I think someone mentioned the engine can't handle it) is that inflation will just keep growing. Today we increased the credit cap to 10b and we can sell hypercreates on the GTN again! Yay. What happens when tomorrow, hypercrates are 40b? Or 50b? 

What if we allowed trades for items, but removed the function to trade credits? Would some people be happier with that? 

[septru]

3 hours ago, illgot said:

3) If the devs do not fix the fact that there are hundreds of billions of credits entering the economy and a tiny fraction of those credits ever leave the economy, inflation will return to our current levels in a few months. People will be buying third party credits at a rate of 1 billion credits per dollar the instant the servers go live after deleting credits from players inventory.

This is a really good point. 

We need fixes that address the fact that there are hundreds of billions of credits entering the economy and a tiny fraction of those credits ever leave the economy. This is inflation. 

[Nee-Elder]

1 hour ago, septru said:

We need fixes that address the fact that there are hundreds of billions of credits entering the economy and a tiny fraction of those credits ever leave the economy.

i offered up a potential 'fix' earlier above ^^  and it was largely ignored in favor of more flaming back&forth flexing.

Here's another  POTENTIAL fix (not the end all be all , since imo  it'll have to be a collection myriad of things aka comprehensive type fix  , if it's even possible at this point of SWTOR's  umm  "development" ) :  How about adding  PLAYER-bounties?  Which would be OPT-IN, whereby  BH characters (strictly during the regularly scheduled rotating Bounty Hunter Contract event week ) could place up to 1 bil  on already opted-in participants and you could hunt them nearly anywhere in the game including within publicly accessible  phase instances.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Nee-Elder
Reason: the code already exists within 'invite into story instance' and 'dueling'

[curulz]

19 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

i offered up a potential 'fix' earlier above ^^  and it was largely ignored in favor of more flaming back&forth flexing.

Here's another  POTENTIAL fix (not the end all be all , since imo  it'll have to be a collection myriad of things aka comprehensive type fix  , if it's even possible at this point of SWTOR's  umm  "development" ) :  How about adding  PLAYER-bounties?  Which would be OPT-IN, whereby  BH characters (strictly during the regularly scheduled rotating Bounty Hunter Contract event week ) could place up to 1 bil  on already opted-in participants and you could hunt them nearly anywhere in the game including within publicly accessible  phase instances.

So lets say I put a bounty of a friend.  If you kill them, I give you 1B from my stash?  If so, how does that combat inflation?  its just moving money from me to you, its not lowering the amount of credits in the game.  wealth sharing bridges the gap, but doesn't combat inflation.  Unless its not a 1:1 and you only get say 90% of the 1B, or I have to put up say 1.1B for you to get the full 1B.  Even then you're still only reducing the credits in game by 100M.  Just seems like a lot of effort and coding and potential issues to remove a relatively minor amount.

[Nee-Elder]

35 minutes ago, curulz said:

So lets say I put a bounty of a friend.  If you kill them, I give you 1B from my stash?  If so, how does that combat inflation? 

  Just seems like a lot of effort and coding and potential issues to remove a relatively minor amount.

There would be a TAX on the bounty. ( good ole  'Bounty Broker's Association'   ) and also remember how i said it'll have to be a comprehensive  fix of multiple  solutions?   I'm here trying to offer some potential  ideas  not only to help combat inflation  , but also to maybe help  combat the stale-ness of  SWTOR  overall.

As to your 2nd sentence i quoted ^ :  if you read my  'edit reason' in my post you quoted,  i mention how the BASIC guts of the code is already  in the game.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Nee-Elder

[eabevella]

4 hours ago, septru said:

The problem with increasing the GTN cap (besides the fact that I think someone mentioned the engine can't handle it) is that inflation will just keep growing. Today we increased the credit cap to 10b and we can sell hypercreates on the GTN again! Yay. What happens when tomorrow, hypercrates are 40b? Or 50b? 

What if we allowed trades for items, but removed the function to trade credits? Would some people be happier with that? 

I proposed not removing credit Trade is because many newbies get credits from vet players. 10M means nothing to me but it helps them a lot and is a kind gesture shown in game.

The point is to stop Trade (since completely shut it down is unreasonable) and force people who want to sell expensive stuffs to go to the GTN.

Says we set the character credit cap to 40B and GTN cap to 10B, but set the Trade limit to 1M + 1 item.

It doesn't matter if someone wants to sell a single Hypercrate for 40B because no one will do 40000x 1M Trades. (It'll probably take as long as Soa has been waiting lol)

That person will be forced to go to GTN and stick to the 10B cap.

Sure they can sell a single Pack on the GTN for 10B eventually, but at least there is a limit to it, and it's on the GTN, there won't be escaping the 8% tax.

I mean, it's not like there's a way to deflate the inflation at this point, so the least Bioware can do is to set a hard ceiling of selling price in a platform that provides a safe trading space and a way for some sort of credit sink. They can even tax more for items >1B (from 8% to 16% or some number that makes sense).

TL;DR for the love of the Emperor, just handicap Trade so bad that no one want/can use it to escape the GTN.

[SteveTheCynic]

9 hours ago, illgot said:

2) SWTOR would become known as the game that will delete player credits instead of fixing the issue of inflation.

It would be known as the game that died after it stole(1) "all"(2) of its players' "gold" (yeah, I know, credits, but bear with me).

(1) Yes, I know it wouldn't have actually stolen them, even without the EULA stuff that we don't own any of that stuff anyway, but that's what people would say.

(2) Doesn't matter if it was 90% gone (delete one zero), 99% gone (delete two zeroes) or 99.9% gone (delete three zeroes) or even just 50% gone (cut it in half), it would hyperbolised as "all".

[illgot]

9 hours ago, Loc_n_lol said:

Well no because the credit sellers will also have lost a zero on their stash of credits. Divinding the amount of credits globally doesn't really change anything for anyone as far player to player trading is involved, the number of credits involved changes, the relative value of the trade does not.

But for fixed costs such as repair bills and vendor items, then it's a net loss, unless those get slashed too. And it makes quest rewards and loot matter more too ,relatively speaking.

Once again, honestly, I don't see any magic mechanical solution to the inflation problem. If you create additional credits sinks with the goal of halting or reversing inflation, well, first it's going to take very harsh credit sinks and a very long time to have any visible effects, and secondly, the game is going to suck. Nobody actually wants to become poorer and struggle, we just want everyone else to be poorer so we can buy their stuff.

 

Also I really don't get what you mean by this : "you can't delete credits in an MMO to combat inflation without negatively effecting the trust players have in the cash shop. "

What does the cash shop have to do with credits ? If you buy items for cartel coins to sell them for credits, then it doesn't really change anything if you can get 1B credits now, or 100M neo-credits after an hypothetical change, does it ?

If Bioware has not fixed how credit sellers are farming their credits, any stock they lost will quickly be replaced.

  

1 hour ago, eabevella said:

I proposed not removing credit Trade is because many newbies get credits from vet players. 10M means nothing to me but it helps them a lot and is a kind gesture shown in game.

The point is to stop Trade (since completely shut it down is unreasonable) and force people who want to sell expensive stuffs to go to the GTN.

Says we set the character credit cap to 40B and GTN cap to 10B, but set the Trade limit to 1M + 1 item.

It doesn't matter if someone wants to sell a single Hypercrate for 40B because no one will do 40000x 1M Trades. (It'll probably take as long as Soa has been waiting lol)

That person will be forced to go to GTN and stick to the 10B cap.

Sure they can sell a single Pack on the GTN for 10B eventually, but at least there is a limit to it, and it's on the GTN, there won't be escaping the 8% tax.

I mean, it's not like there's a way to deflate the inflation at this point, so the least Bioware can do is to set a hard ceiling of selling price in a platform that provides a safe trading space and a way for some sort of credit sink. They can even tax more for items >1B (from 8% to 16% or some number that makes sense).

TL;DR for the love of the Emperor, just handicap Trade so bad that no one want/can use it to escape the GTN.

tax any credits mailed, traded, or passed through a guild bank, 8%. I love the GTN but if we tax all credit transactions this would hit the credit sellers before the credits even enter our economy.

Edited October 14, 2022 by illgot

[Loc_n_lol]

34 minutes ago, illgot said:

how credit sellers are farming their credits

Now that is something I'd love to know because I find it a little hard to believe that it could just be bots doing dailies, with the amount of credits that seem to be getting into the economy. I assumed there's either massive leftovers from past exploits, waiting to be sold, or some exploit(s) still running unchecked, generating as much as players will buy.

[septru]

27 minutes ago, Loc_n_lol said:

Now that is something I'd love to know because I find it a little hard to believe that it could just be bots doing dailies, with the amount of credits that seem to be getting into the economy. I assumed there's either massive leftovers from past exploits, waiting to be sold, or some exploit(s) still running unchecked, generating as much as players will buy.

This is something I have thought a LOT about. And I'm going to throw out some crazy ideas, a lot of which are probably wrong. 

 

I mostly enjoy play ranked PvP, and have been playing for a while. BioWare used to ban wintraders in ranked PvP. They would be slow, sometimes missed some of the wintraders, sometimes banned people that didn't wintrade, but they tried. About 2 years ago, something changed. They gave up trying. I think they realized they didn't have the resources to do investigations. Now they only ban people for chat violations, which are easy to report, flag, and take action again. Even when people make youtube videos and personally send them to devs to expose really blatant wintrading, they haven't been banned. If anyone has ever gotten any infraction points or suspensions, you'll notice you are no longer directed to SWTOR's moderation team. They recently began outsourcing their moderation to BioWare's moderation team. 

 

I think BioWare took the same approach to moderating ranked PvP as they did credit sellers. They no longer have the resources to ban credit sellers, and thus have given up trying. In other words, the reason why inflation has EXPONENTIALLY increased over the last two years has been because a) we no longer have a meaningful credit sink in amplifiers b) credit sellers can inject credits into the economy with little challenge. Credit sellers might not actually have a lot of bots, or a even some exploit that we don't know about. There's just literally 0 moderation being taken against them. 

This is based on complete guesses. I have no evidence, other than my personal experience from the ranked PvP moderation. 

[septru]

1 hour ago, illgot said:

tax any credits mailed, traded, or passed through a guild bank, 8%. I love the GTN but if we tax all credit transactions this would hit the credit sellers before the credits even enter our economy.

i really like this idea, even better than my initial idea. 

 

I just think we need a higher tax than 8%. Maybe 20%.