Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[Stellarcrusade]

Credit sinks will never work, they never have in any game.  If they really want to go this method then they need to invent credit sinks that ONLY affect the people with tons of credits.  Like a vendor that sells never been seen before stuff or stuff people would die for like:

1.) items which remove bound from an item

2.) +XP bound to legacy gear

3.) Vaylin companion with romance story

4.) perhaps buying romance stories with popular companions who don't have one

These kind of things, creativity and people would spend tons.  I'm not rich compared to most people, but I'd pay billions for those items.

Alternatively a better approach is to leave all costs of things alone, and yes even the hillarious prizes of 1k credits, and just remove all credits from the game.  Give players a month notice to buy stuff, and then remove it all.  Sure rich players will have a nice stash of stuff to sell when we all start with 0 credits to go earn them like the game intended, but those items worth 1B yesterday would now sell for 5k credits.  So who cares.

With this method, for the first time in years doing quests and getting a laughable 1k credits would feel rewarding.  Crafting would be back, the economy would be fun to participate in again.

 

[go_rogue]

  

2 hours ago, Estelindis said:

Instead, please add a range of cool and desirable cosmetic items that can only be purchased for extremely large amounts of credits.  These would function as genuine credit sinks targeting the upper echelons in the SWTOR economy.  I appreciate that it may upset some people to have some content dangled out of their reach.  Personally, I am imagining things sufficiently expensive that I probably wouldn't be able to afford many, if any, with all the credits in my legacy, so I expect to be among those missing out.  However, I think that the overall effect on the in-game economy of this step would be much more positive for the whole game.  If large amounts of credits leave circulation, prices on lots of things on the GTN will go down, and this will actually make many things more affordable for beginners (vs. the opposite effect, which I expect to happen based on what you're currently planning).

This suggestion is one I see over and over, and one I agree with (above is from the PTS thread on this topic). The devs made the stuff from the PvP vendor and the Galactic Seasons vendor expensive and only able to buy so much per season. This should be done for something of a cosmetic nature for a vendor (or vendors). For example, there are speeders that cost 1 million credits that are tied to achievements. It took me a while to save up for it and able to justify getting it. Why? Because I wanted it but still wanted credits for other things, mostly for items off the GTN. I'm all for adding more things like this, and if you tie achievements to them, it's a dual-purpose credit sink: credits get spent for something someone wants, and they work their way to certain achievements.

As for the quick travel and stronghold travel costs? The way they're being implemented is very poor. I'm going to take two approaches on why this is poor: one from the new player and one from the established player and suggestions on a better implementation.

First the new player: The new player is hit with the 30-minute quick travel cooldown already (or whatever it is, I think 30 minutes?). It will take them time to save up for the legacy unlocks for quick travel cooldowns. Not only are they trying to save up for this unlock, they're having to pay for each quick travel. Solution: quick travel is free up to X level (say, level 30) if no perks have been unlocked. At level 30, start charging for the quick travel but only the same amount that taking the taxi would be already. If the player is able to purchase the unlocks, the amount paid for quick travelling could start at an earlier level depending on the unlock until all unlock levels are present, then quick travel could be charged from the get go (or starting at level 10 since toons start out with 0 credits). For strongholds, they're going to pour every single credit they have just to purchase a stronghold, and then they have to save up even more if they want to use it a ton (especially with more credits going in to buy decos from vendors alone, let alone the GTN). Solution: Simply don't implement stronghold travel costs. It's already annoying having to pay to smuggle myself to a stronghold that is strictly for the other faction, especially if said toon is a saboteur toon, aka double agent, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The new player isn't going to have the funds easily accessible to constantly be travelling back and forth from stronghold to wherever.

For the established player: Most if not all of us have the legacy perk for instant quick travel with no cooldown. But at level 1, we have no credits. Solution: No quicktravel cost until a player hits level 10. For strongholds: Many of us like to play space Barbie from the moment we create our toons. Said same toons come with 0 credits to their name which means it is impossible to get to a stronghold to access the legacy bay for credits in order to apply Cartel Market items to the outfitter. Before anyone suggests just equipping it as gear, I'm going to put this caveat in immediately to discourage that line of thought. Cartel Market gear provides virtually no stats (armor but nothing else) which means that even white gear from starter planets is still better on many occasions, and by the time a player might have 300 credits to apply their outfit permanently, they've gone up levels which means that it now costs more than it did at level 1. We can easily mail ourselves credits to create our perfect outfit right away with exception of the trooper who is stuck in the walker until the cut scene is complete unless they have a friend or guildmate who shares one of the Ord Mantell heroics with them so they can get out. But if a player runs without a guild, they can't even do this workaround.

General QT: The cost of the quick travel point should be no greater than the cost it to take the speeder to said point. If there's no speeder point, the cost should be somewhere between the cost of the two speeder points. Not sure how I feel about paying the Rakata for use of their transport tech on Belsavis, but that's theiri business on how they can even spend credits.

General stronghold suggestions: We don't pay to enter our own homes in real life; why should we pay to enter our own homes in SWTOR? Put it simply, please don't implement this at all. As one other player put it, there are times we go back and forth from Fleet to stronghold (or any given planet to stronghold), for many various reasons. I only go to Fleet to take care of whatever business I have and head back to stronghold. Sometimes, I realize I forgot something and go back. Am I going to notice it all that much? Probably not, but I have a lot of credits. If there's to be some sort of transport fee because fuel and ship wear and tear, track if a player used their stronghold to go from say Fleet to Alderaan or Nar Shaddaa and implement the cost of what it would normally cost to travel by ship. I don't know how annoying it would be to code that properly and not have it break something else, so I'm very leery of this idea at all.

There are many other ways to provide good credits sinks. The re-useable credit sink for instant levelling a companion to 50 has been a really good credit sink, and one I use a ton. A one-off set of cosmetic gear needs a lot more work to implement properly. My suggestion on this is to make said gear bind on pickup, not bind to legacy. If a player wants that gear or that weapon on multiple toons, they're going to have to pay for it each time. And continually add new items. Recycle gear from older content, much like the gear that's available as legacy gear with tech fragments that previously dropped from command crates which was previously from base game gear in one form or another. Rotate the available items on a weekly basis like the Galactic Seasons and PvP vendors do. And tie new achievements to getting this gear as an added incentive, even if someone may only purchase that one item once because they don't like the way it looks but want the achievement for it. I'm beyond guilty of buying a speeder I hated just to get achievements. Same with the cosmetic gear from the various vendors. Some of the vendors that can stand getting updated items are the Cartel Bazaar vendors. In my opinion, those would probably be the best set of vendors to use for this. Some of them already carry items that are only available there. Make a new speeder cost 20 million. That shiny pistol? 10 million. That absolutely exquisite armor set? 50 million. If the economy does flatten itself out where these prices could be untenable for whatever reason, revisit the costs of them. Is that particular item not selling well? Look into the why. Do people know that they can spend credits there? If not, provide a mission that leads them to talk to the vendors that automatically pops up as soon as the player arrives on Fleet (or if an established toon, as soon as they log in). Have it some sort of news announcement mission like Rakghoul. Honestly, bring in some of your marketing people to bounce ideas off of. The point is to get people's attention that this is there. I don't know how many people have no clue about the Cartel Bazaar vendors and what they offer because they've been there forever and had stuff that couldn't be obtained for forever until the various reputation tracks got merged.

The long and short of it: QT costs are okay as a concept but need a great deal of refinement to be feasible. Strongholds already cost an arm and a leg and sometimes our firstborn and secondborn child (*stares intently at the cost of Yavin IV, Rishi, and Alderaan and how long it took to save up the funds for them*), and we shouldn't be charged to enter what is basically our own homes or places of business. Appropriate credit sinks that over the long haul that will actually entice players to buy items from them (achievements, appearance, bind on pickup not to legacy) even if the items are not able to be purchased by newer players for a while but give them something to save up for it they like it or want it while providing established players something they want to buy with their credits are a must.

From a personal side of someone who has billions, I'm all for the credit sink. I look at stuff on the GTN that I want, see precious few of a particular deco, and the lowest cost is 800 million. I don't even sell my frameworks for that amount most weeks. And I remember when frameworks were maybe 50 mil on the GTN. I'm very much open to a discussion on how we as players view it, being sympathetic to the devs' perspective on it, and finding something that will work in the long run without upsetting the player base.

[Lord_of_Stone]

Combat inflation with the same techniques that are used in the real world. One solution which would work thematically in game and remove a ton of credits from the game would be War bonds. Items you can trade for credits which are valued more over time, or just increase your rep with "Faction Fleet" or whatever. Add interesting ways to spend credits on things in exchange for grinding or stuff. 

 

People who dont partake in ToS breaking trading or high end sales raiding have an enormously hard time making credits, relying almost entirely on selling mats or craftables that have prices directly tied to inflation. These are the people who would be hurt most by the proposed changes. You need to add scaling credit sinks for tangible rewards, not flat costs on every day activities. They wont affect the people with billions and they'll only hurt the people with nothing. 

[DWho]

Want to get inflation under control. Start with Cartel Market items

1: Make them tradeable (whether player to player, guild to player, or via GTN) only once, after that they are bound to legacy. Then if you want to sell a hypercrate, you have to open it and sell the items inside (once again tradeable only once). This will drive down the value of hypercrates (since they can't be hoarded effectively or used as an alternate currency) as well as driving down the price of the items they contain because of increased supply.

2: Block all trades of cartel market items from player to player trades (between legacies, leave trades within the legacy). Allow donation to other characters by allowing player to player trades where one of the two players puts nothing into the trade window with the same limitation as above (item becomes bound to legacy when traded)

3: with the blocking of Cartel Market item trades, increase the GTN cap to 4 billion credits so they can be sold on the GTN.

4: Add additional levels of tax (luxury tax) to items sold for more than 1 billion credits on the GTN.

Nickle and diming the average player isn't going to do anything when a lot of the people sitting on all those credits aren't playing the game anyway (and thus would not be impacted at all by these changes). The only thing this system will guarantee is that no one will ever be able to attain the level of credits needed to buy the high ticket items (those will remain the domain of the super rich who will keep trading them back and forth with each other to launder credits).

Edit: One other thing about the QT/Stronghold costs. There are a number of missions, particularly in the later expansions, that are broken and you need to use quick travel or travel to A stronghold to "fix" them since they have not had their code fixed (ie Ruins of Null and the Manaan droid mission). You are charging people for using the workarounds you suggested for these missions. That seems blatantly unfair (not to mention the instant kill bugs that will cost you repair costs because of the broken code)

Edited February 10, 2023 by DWho

[Nee-Elder]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

seeing as I’ve already unsubbed because you guys won’t even discuss the pvp premade issues with players ,

You don't like me but you MIGHT like this--> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927605-content-from-game-update-721-on-the-pts/

*Specifcally, the part about  "Matchmaking has been adjusted to make it more likely that large groups are matched up against each other. " 

---------

Anyways, back on-topic....

3 hours ago, Falensawino said:

Sounds like you're punishing the players who still enjoy your game's gameplay  but leaving the fat cats who sit on fleet in front of a gtn terminal and mailbox all day unaffected.

imho , they (BioWare) should think more bold & radical,  like say for example opening up the *Nar Shaddaa Nightlife EVENT* to be all year-round 24/7...but only on the weekends ( so that during the week, the "poor" players could be more motivated to play SWTOR regular Conquest/Seasons type stuff  to build up their credits in order to "gamble" on the weekends ) AND by finally adding 'Pazaak Tables' into the event.

Hopefully, with upcoming 64-bit conversion, the GTN credit-limit will increase significantly.   Also, i like the idea of allowing  Cartel Market items to be purchased with only credits, so the "rich" players might have more incentive to splurge their coffers on some *Flash Sale*   old Pack or rare weapon/armor set  they've been waiting for to finish a collection or whatever.

Go bold & radical , BioWare.  Because i mean, things can't get any worse, can they?

[Sorronn]

4 hours ago, Diamaht said:

I like the changes.  Sinks need to be in the game, no one likes them, but they need to be there.  Not sure I agree with a lot of the feedback so far.

1)  This will not effect newer players as much as claimed by some.  When I'm leveling up as a new player in an MMO, I'm not zooming all over the place with quick travel and speed running it.  I'm focusing on the content around me and by the time the cool-down for quick travel runs it's course I've made up the credits with loot.  As a player leveling alts, or doing dailies/weeklies on the other hand I'm warping all over the place to get to end game or to tackle tasks quickly.  I also have little or no cool-down on my travel abilities so I'm using them constantly.  In this way it's not a new player sink, it's an old player sink.

2)  Opening up one time purchases as a sink does absolutely nothing.  Once the purchase is completed once, the credits are then almost immediately restored by regualar content and you are back to square one.  The idea is to get things that work constantly to remove currency from circulation since the game constantly prints more. 

3)  Billionaires will start to feel the pinch a bit over time.  Saying it won't be noticed is thinking about it in terms of one time payments.  You won't notice one transaction but you will notice how 1000 transactions slows down the growth of your coffers thereby slowing down the rise of prices.  Its not meant to make you poor its meant as a luxury tax on the rich, you will still be wealthy but your wealth accumulation will happen at a slower pace allowing others to catch up to you faster.

Horse Manure!

It's stupid nickel and dime crap that won't dent large credit hordes. I know because I have billions (tens of billions) of credits.

Let's take Quick Travel at max price - 5000 credits. If I QT 20 times per day (absurd), I'll spend 100,000 credits per day. That means I would burn 36,500,000 credits per year.

For me to burn up 1,000,000 credits would take almost 28 years and that's to burn up just 1 billion credits. To burn up my entire wealth pool would take 1,400 years.

Meanwhile, that 100,000 credits per day for a new player or a credit capped player is going to make them think about quitting. 
  
So like I said, it's stupid and it taxes poorer players without touching rich players. (JFC... it sounds like a Republican tax plan).)

Travel fees do nothing except hurt poorer players. Can you even do math?

Edited February 10, 2023 by Sorronn

[TrixxieTriss]

3 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

You don't like me but you MIGHT like this--> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927605-content-from-game-update-721-on-the-pts/

*Specifcally, the part about  "Matchmaking has been adjusted to make it more likely that large groups are matched up against each other. " 

I don’t want to derail this thread, but thanks for the link. Sadly, their proposed “fix” is not even enough of a Band-Aid to make any difference to premades.
If you want to discuss this more, suggest you post it in a relevant pvp thread so this thread can stay on the inflation topic.

[Nee-Elder]

8 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I don’t want to derail this thread, but thanks for the link.

No problem.   As young Obi-Wan might say: Providing links is one of my specialties.

8 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Sadly, their proposed “fix” is not even enough of a Band-Aid to make any difference to premades.
If you want to discuss this more, suggest you post it in a relevant pvp thread

Already did yep-->  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927276-pvp-map-and-medals-feedback/?do=findComment&comment=9742135  ...but it seems like everyone is just posting instead in the newer sticky PVP thread:  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927609-update-to-pvp-medals-coming-in-721/

Edited February 10, 2023 by Nee-Elder
Reason: why are these forums being so SLOWWWW tonite?!!?

[Diamaht]

11 minutes ago, Sorronn said:

Horse Manure!

It's stupid nickel and dime crap that won't dent large credit hordes. I know because I have billions (tens of billions) of credits.

Let's take Quick Travel at max price - 5000 credits. If I QT 20 times per day (absurd), I'll spend 100,000 credits per day. That means I would burn 36,500,000 credits per year.

For me to burn up 1,000,000 credits would take almost 28 years and that's to burn up just 1 billion credits. To burn up my entire wealth pool would take 1,400 years.

Meanwhile, that 100,000 credits per day for a new player or a credit capped player is going to make them think about quitting. 
  
So like I said, it's stupid and it taxes poorer players without touching rich players. (JFC... it sounds like a Republican tax plan).)

Travel fees do nothing except hurt poorer players. Can you even do math?

And for them to put something in game that would burn up tens of billions of credits quickly would destroy your wealth and the games economy and you would be posting bloody fury about getting ripped off by the devs after all your years accumulating credits. 

Also offering up cosmetic items to players for exorbitant amounts of credits would be unfair to the newer players you all seem to care so deeply about.

It seems like their goal here is to create a healthy system first.  They can't fix current issues if the economy itself doesn't function correctly.  There are not enough sinks in this game and it causes inflation.  They are now fixing that.

I think many more steps will have to be taken, and I get the impression that they implied that with their post, but it seems to me this is a good initial step towards balancing the games economy and it will be followed by others. 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 minute ago, Sorronn said:

Horse Manure!

It's stupid nickel and dime crap that won't dent large credit hordes. I know because I have billions (tens of billions) of credits.

Let's take Quick Travel at max price - 5000 credits. If I QT 20 times per day (absurd), I'll spend 100,000 credits per day. That means I would burn 36,500,000 credits per year.

For me to burn up 1,000,000 credits would take almost 28 years and that's to burn up just 1 billion credits. To burn up my entire wealth pool would take 1,400 years.

Meanwhile, that 100,000 credits per day for a new player or a credit capped player is going to make them think about quitting. 
  
So like I said, it's stupid and it taxes poorer players without touching rich players. (JFC... it sounds like a Republican tax plan).)

Travel fees do nothing except hurt poorer players. Can you even do math?

Totally agree. This will have zero affect on players who’ve already amassed billions of credits. 

All these changes do is affect newer players who’ve not accumulated any wealth in the game yet. If that’s BioWare aim, then these steps will certainly work toward doing that. 

But if BioWare actually want to target the wealthy players who actually contribute the most to inflation, they need to close the tax avoidance loopholes that are already in the game, not add new taxes that only affect new or less wealthy players.

And the biggest tax avoidance loop hole used by the wealthy is trading CM items & credits outside of the GTN. 

The GTN taxes all sales at 8% which is a significant amount of credits when you start talking about Billions being traded for CM items.
For every sale that’s a Billion, it’s 80 million credits tax. You would have to Quick Travel 16,000 times at 5,000 credits a go to hit 80 million credits.

Bioware, how long does someone need to play the game to Quick Travel 16,000 times in normal game play to remove 80 million credits? Seriously, look at your own data, I’m sure you’ve got it. 

Looking at the situation this way, it should be easier to understand now why closing the GTN tax avoidance loophole is going to have a bigger impact on combating inflation than charging players to Quick Travel or visiting their SH.

Nickel & dime schemes will only affect new players & do little to nothing to the players with all the wealth who are driving the inflation problems.

Close the GTN tax avoidance loopholes & then see how that goes. If you still think too many credits are being generated, then reduce the amount of rewards. Then look at adding some cosmetic Credit Sinks that target the wealthy. 

Bioware if you’re serious about combating inflation, start with systems that target the top of the wealth pyramid & work you’re way down, not the bottom up. 

[TrixxieTriss]

2 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

And for them to put something in game that would burn up tens of billions of credits quickly would destroy your wealth and the games economy and you would be posting bloody fury about getting ripped off by the devs after all your years accumulating credits. 

Also offering up cosmetic items to players for exorbitant amounts of credits would be unfair to the newer players you all seem to care so deeply about.

It seems like their goal here is to create a healthy system first.  They can't fix current issues if the economy itself doesn't function correctly.  There are not enough sinks in this game and it causes inflation.  They are now fixing that.

I think many more steps will have to be taken, and I get the impression that they implied that with their post, but it seems to me this is a good initial step towards balancing the games economy and it will be followed by others. 

They literally don’t need to add anything like that. All they need to do close the GTN tax avoidance loophole. 

The mechanism for taxing credits from the wealthy is already in the game. It’s always been there. 

The problem is BioWare pumped too many credits into the game without enough other viable credit sinks, at the same time they removed the amplifier credit sink without reducing credit rewards. They’ve also allowed credit exploits to continue for too long when they occur & not tracked down & banned exploiters enough.

The solution to removing the large sums of credits already in the game is to make people use the GTN to trade. Then 8% of credits from every trade is removed from the game.

The only way they can do that is to close the player to player trade loophole for CM items (only). All CM items should only be traded through the GTN or they should have an 8% credit tax applied to them if traded outside of it. 

But BioWare should have done this 2 years ago before items ever went over  the 1 billion GTN cap. So now if they want to fix this, they’ll need to increase the GTN sales cap to well above 1 billion & increase the amount individual characters can hold at a time.

And while you would probably see a spike up in prices on the GTN, with less credits being pumped into the game now, eventually those prices would drop again.

Bioware could even speed that process up by adding an extra wealth tax to GTN trades above 1 billion.
For every Billion above the first, the tax increases by 2% & is capped at 20%. Which means the GTN trade cap would be 7 Billion credits at 20% tax for sales. That puts downward pressure on listed prices & means BioWare should never need to increase the GTN sale cap ever again.

[OlBuzzard]

If there is a serious problem with too many credits hurting the average player:
** Find out where the source of those credits is coming from and fix it!  Kind of like a ship with a serious leak ...FIX THE STUPID LEAK!!  You don't punish everyone by handing them a teaspoon and tell them to work faster to get rid of the water!!  FIX the stupid leak ...  Please! (???) That's for openers!  That should not be that hard to understand.  Otherwise all of the efforts and the good suggestions, sound reasoning (or anything else that's positive for that matter) won't be worth the bandwidth it takes to publish this entire thread!
** Playing the game:  Items such as gear:  Don't gate it!  That just compounds the problems.  That goes for Mods / (amplifiers if they were returned) and AUGMENTS!  If players are able to EARN them then the GTN doesn't become the only hopeful source for everyone to find them in the first place.  Granted the GTN is often a place of convenience.  That aspect will probably never change in ANY game!
** Sales outside of the GTN MUST be dealt with.  Surely someone on the team can figure out a fair means of resolving this issue.
** Charging players to access their own SH???  REALLY???  [/Facepalm]  Does anyone really need to explain just how bad an idea this is???  Quick travel from one GS goal / mission to another???  Good luck with that too!  Everyone will get charged more and more credits to play that as well! NOT GOOD !!!!!!
** Bottom line is that what I have read for the PTS really is not necessary to figure out where this is headed!  Sure .. players will have less and less to spend!  That is ... at least those who refuse to spend more and more at the CM and resale on the GTN for more and more credits just to survive!
** I had hoped that a solution that was released would actually address ... well... you know... the actual source of the problem.  From what I just read (again) that is posted for testing in the PTS:  That AINT it!  
 

EDIT ....  there's some good stuff being pointed out by several people!  Best of luck to ya on this one!  

Edited February 10, 2023 by OlBuzzard

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Nee-Elder said:

No problem.   As young Obi-Wan might say: Providing links is one of my specialties.

Already did yep-->  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927276-pvp-map-and-medals-feedback/?do=findComment&comment=9742135  ...but it seems like everyone is just posting instead in the newer sticky PVP thread:  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927609-update-to-pvp-medals-coming-in-721/

There’s an actual dedicated pvp feed back thread that would be a better place 

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927607-pvp-medals-and-matchmaking-feedback-thread/#comment-9742333

[Gwena]

The new travel credit sinks will cost roughly the same for players of all wealth levels, from poorer players to the extremely rich. I believe this is what they call in economics a "regressive tax" (well, not a tax here, but similar concept), meaning that the richer you are the less of a burden it is. In real life, an example of this would be sales tax on food: everybody eats, and though a person who makes $20 million a year may spend more on food than a person who makes $20K a year, it is nowhere near 1000x as much. Thus, the poor person pays a larger percentage of their income towards food tax than a rich person does. Of course, it isn't a perfect comparison, but I think you get the idea.

The ability to freely pop from my Stronghold, to Fleet, to my ship, or back where I was has been a fantastic QoL enhancement for me and has made the game more enjoyable by reducing much of the tedium of travel. To add a fee to this, and to make newer players especially think twice about using this wonderful feature, is a terrible idea IMHO. 

Credit sinks are definitely needed, but please consider doing so via (what will be perceived as) REWARDS rather than PUNISHMENTS. This thread has some great ideas, and I would reiterate:

1. Vendors with shiny expensive things. Mount recolors, crystals, whatever. Remember back in 1.1.5 how you guys added a vendor with rare and SUPER expensive (at the time) color crystals? I was a fairly "middle class" player at the time and could barely scrape together the credits for one item, and they were selling like hotcakes. THAT is how you do a credit sink!

2. Raise the GTN cap so people can list their super expensive stuff on it, and get taxed. Seriously, there are so many things you just . . . can't get on the GTN anymore, because they are too expensive. Probably need to do something about such pricey items being traded outside the GTN to avoid tax, as well.

Edited February 10, 2023 by Gwena

[RyvickTheFirst]

This is yet another 'Bantha Poodoo' situation where the Devs on the Left hand don't know what the Devs on the right hand are doing.

Increasing costs for players in areas where they cannot avoid costs (especially at low level) while also later reducing credit gains just winds up with dirt poor new players and still bloated endgame players.

The sum total of the changes will ONLY drive away new players and not solve ANY problems at all.

Step 1 SHOULD have been reduce credits flowing in PERIOD.

Step 2 COULD have been delete all credits.

Step 3 WOULD have been everything starts afresh and we see how it goes from there.

 

Would everyone have been pissed? Sure but we WOULD get over it.

[microstyles]

4 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

1. Put a cap on player to player trades that limit how many credits can be passed between players. At the same time limit the type of CM items & how many can be traded in an hour/day/week/month

I don't think this is a good idea. Limiting how frequent people can trade CM items will just make them rarer and more expensive. Limiting the amount of credits will just make people do even more multi-transactional trades than they do now, or in the worst case scenario give up on credits entirely and use packs or whatever.

4 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

2. Add a credit trading tax for player to player trades that is the same as the GTN tax (8%). But also add a cap on the type & number of CM items being traded between players outside of the GTN.

Player trade tax would be fine, but see my below response for a caveat. I won't reiterate my concerns about limiting CM item trades.

4 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

3. Ban or severely limit all CM trades outside of the GTN. But at the same time increase the GTN price cap up much higher & make the character credit cap = 2x the GTN price cap & make the Legacy & Guild credit cap = 20x the GTN price cap (** Please note, these increase numbers are examples only to explain the setup).

Raising the GTN limit would be the single most impactful thing they could do. I honestly don't think you'd need to limit or tax trades in any way, people will happily eat the GTN tax for the convenience (I know I would).

[JaeOnasi]

These proposed changes in the first post do nothing to stop those folks who've amassed billions. What's 800 credits to someone with 100 billion? Nothing. What's 800 credits to a new player? A LOT. The quick travel costs will hurt new folks and have zero effect on billionaires.

This stronghold/guild ship travel costs punish roleplaying and travel costs, especially for new players. My guild roleplays 4 times a week with some players doing side roleplay on the guild ship and strongholds. If you institute costs for travel to strongholds, some of our new players aren't going to be able to travel unless someone gives them credits.

Things you can do that won't disproportionately affect newer players or those with few credits:

1. Be more aggressive on banning RMT. You can't control the economy while RMTers are pouring credits into the economy. You may as well pee into the wind if you don't enact any changes without dealing with the gold sellers.

2. Raise the credit cap on the GTN. People are selling outside of the GTN because those items currently exceed the allowed GTN amount.

3. You need to find a way to incentivize high-credit purchases and put in high credit sinks. You could start by doing what Guild Wars 2 does by allowing credits to be exchanged for cartel coins. Make the credit cost high, but put it there. Add in a lot more dyes, cosmetic items, different armors, mounts, weapons, crystals, decorations, hairstyles, hair colors, facial styles, etc that can be bought with credits. Fashion is the true end game for many, and players will spend a LOT for it, if it's anything like I've seen playing Guild Wars 1 and 2 and Final Fantasy 14.

4. Perhaps re-institute amplifiers, but don't build the amplifier numbers into NIM/Master Mode content to the extent that those become required. These don't have to be high percentages, but the min-maxxers like me will love the extra couple of percent so long as you make it so it's not required to clear content for newer raiders/PvPers. And yes, I know a bunch of us will gripe about the cost, but it certainly was a huge credit sink for me.

5. Allow us to buy more gear mod/left size max items. I'd pay a lot of credits to gear out a bunch of my alts just so I wouldn't have to stick my one set of min-max gear into legacy bay to transfer it to another toon all the time. I could live with needing to have to turn in the first item I acquire in order to unlock it for the rest of my alts. Maybe you have to have a certain item level in order to talk to the vendor, or put more items for sale with Zeek and Frik (or whatever their names are) for the current 336 armor mods.

6. Increase the amounts of grade 11 mats for augments, stims, and medpacs gathered from nodes, and put out more nodes. Increase the supply and the demand goes down.

7. Make crafting relevant. Let the crafters make items that are close to equivalent to end game gear. Allow them to make cool-looking outfits, dyes, weapons, tunings, and crystals that are crafter-only.

8. Allow us to dye weapons in addition to gear, or offer more color skins to current weapons.

9. Sell some of the Grade 11 mats for credits in addition to scraps--make those mats bind-on-pickup so they can't be resold for more on the GTN. People will pay for the convenience.

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by JaeOnasi

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

The changes really don't do much of anything to address the actual problems right now, they just disproportionately hit newer players who don't already have a ton of credits built up. I hope that by making clear this is an ongoing initiative that you have a plan for how to actually tackle the real problem too, but opening with these changes and absolutely nothing to address the actual problem makes this look so much worse. You should have saved this until you had something that actually addresses the current problem. Some ideas on how to do that:

 

Increase the GTN max price so less people will be encouraged to try and bypass the taxes. If that means overhauling so subs can have more than 4b credits, figure it out and do it. That's a huge portion of credits being kept in the economy that's solely limited to the extremely rich players, why you're not opening this initiative with a way to deal with that is beyond me.

 

Here's another one that's more a pet peeve of mine since you guys added this, ignored all feedback on it and then promptly never touched it again: maybe, as you were told repeatedly when this was announced, adding a 3500 Tech Fragment cost to the armors on this vendor wasn't a smart idea. To make this more generalized: we need more appealing credit sinks. This would have been a good one, and when it was announced I was excited since I had so many armors from this list that I'd have bought, but with the 3500 TF cost per piece I quickly dropped any interest in buying anything off this vendor. In fact, when combat styles first dropped, I again thought of this vendor and would have thoughtlessly blew some credits on a few weapons that I may not have ended up using, but I had to use my TF to replace my tactical (and eventually again when you added my old one back in a rebalanced form, fun times) so I immediately dismissed the idea. You see my point, I'm sure. You kneecapped the effectiveness of this potential credit sink by adding another currency as cost when that currency is needed for other things and is less abundant than credits.

 

You need to find more ways to give players that have a ton of credits incentive to spend those credits, and don't kneecap that credit sink right out of the gate by putting the anchor of another currency cost around its neck. The planetary vendors was a start, but this vendor on the fleet should be your next target, and then you should be looking at other things you could sell for credits.

 

Anything like this would been a nice start to this "initiative". Hitting new players almost exclusively instead? Not so nice of a start.

[Diamaht]

3 hours ago, eabevella said:

I'm sorry, but do you have some kind of brain problem?

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.
• Repair cost formulas have been adjusted across the entirety of the game so that repair costs increase in relation to item level.
• Durability of equipment should now be lost at a LOWER rate on death, but a slightly HIGHER rate in normal gameplay.

Instead of fixing the GTN and Trade, THIS Trash is what you think that'll "improve" the economy?

You think people playing the GTN and Trade, the one that seeks exploits and manipulate the market would care this brain not-alive "fees"?

Congratulation, the only "result" you'll see is the life new players and solo players who only want to enjoy the game become MORE DIFFICULT while the top .1% feels nothing at all (except the potential annoying pop up charging window whenever we want to use qt or whatever).

It's like saying "now we charge 600% tax for coffee" and says that'll fix the economy. You think *lon M*sk would care if his coffee now costs $50 instead of $8? You'll only make the life of low-mid level more difficult than it was

This is beyond incompetence. I don't know who in their right mind would even think this as an idea at all. But oh well, if you want to loose subscribers, hey, that's your choice.

Take your insults elsewhere child. 

The point is they can't worry about managing too much money in the system until the system is fixed.  Raising the cap and taxing billionaire traders may very well help bleed out some of the excess money.  It also might help mitigate prices. 

However, it also might drive up market prices on existing items since their prices will naturally be compared to the new multi billion dollar prices that were introduced to the market with that limit increase.  If someone is putting something up for sale they will look at existing prices to see what they need to compete with.  If the threshold goes up then ALL prices will gradually rise to meet that new threshold since everyone charges as much as they can get away with. 

They can test this out if they like.  Raise the cap by 300 million.  If you see over the course of a month all prices gradually increase to meet that new max you will know that is not a good idea.

The point is, there is no single perfect action that they can take to manage an entire game economy.  This change is a nice base level change that limits the amount of money going into the system right from the start.  Edit:  And it will likely need to be combined with quite a few other core changes, in order to prevent the issue from persisting.

But by all means continue to bath the devs, and anyone else who disagrees with you, with insults.  That usually gets people to do exactly what you want them to do.  It's worked for you so far.

Edited February 10, 2023 by Diamaht

[Ramahar]

So basically what Bioware's plan is too charge the Players, who can't afford items being traded because of inflation, inflated game taxes that will make sure they can continue not being able to afford buying anything via Trade.
 

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, microstyles said:

I don't think this is a good idea. Limiting how frequent people can trade CM items will just make them rarer and more expensive. Limiting the amount of credits will just make people do even more multi-transactional trades than they do now, or in the worst case scenario give up on credits entirely and use packs or whatever.

Player trade tax would be fine, but see my below response for a caveat. I won't reiterate my concerns about limiting CM item trades.

Raising the GTN limit would be the single most impactful thing they could do. I honestly don't think you'd need to limit or tax trades in any way, people will happily eat the GTN tax for the convenience (I know I would).

You need to limit people trading CM items outside of the GTN so that they have more of incentive to use the GTN. 
That is the only reason to limit them so that they can’t circumvent the GTN tax.
Im not suggesting limiting how many items people can trade on the GTN or how often they can trade them. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[PerKIA]

My solution is quite simple, since im from Sweden, it is... Taxation! Taxtation, taxation, taxation.
A progressive scale in a type of inverted richter-scale.

An account with 500 billions vill be hit by a 98% tax. Tha will leave the account with 9 billions
An account with 100 billions will be hit with a, lets say, 92% tax. 
An account with 20 millions will be hit with a 2% tax. 
An account with 50 million will be hit with 2,5% tax
There has got to be a person with good math skills in the dev team that can come upp with a 
functioning "algorithm", or whatever its called that can do this.
This will erase a vast amount of credits, and a lot of peole will be... upset about it.

But the thing is, prices will go down on GTN, a lot. No one is going to buy black/black dye for 2-3 billions, the credits will simply not be there. 
The rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor, but the gap is not so huge
and these ridiculous prices will be gone.

If need be, ther is always credit sinks for the rich, like amplifiers 
(I myself spent 600-700 millons on those) 

And also, like some people already suggested, do what needs to be done in 
order to stop sales outside the GTN.

The number of players that are going to be upset about this are numerous, 
a few might even quit. But i think the dust will settle rather quickly, it always does.

 

PS: The numbers are of course just examples.

Edited February 10, 2023 by PerKIA

[TrixxieTriss]

6 minutes ago, PerKIA said:

My solution is quite simple, since im from Sweden, it is... Taxation! Taxtation, taxation, taxation.
A progressive scale in a type of inverted richter-scale.

An account with 500 billions vill be hit by a 98% tax. Tha will leave the account with 9 billions
An account with 100 billions will be hit with a, lets say, 92% tax. 
An account with 20 millions will be hit with a 2% tax. 
An account with 50 million will be hit with 2,5% tax
There has got to be a person with good math skills in the dev team that can come upp with a 
functioning "algorithm", or whatever its called that can do this.
This will erase a vast amount of credits, and a lot of peole will be... upset about it.

But the thing is, prices will go down on GTN, a lot. No one is going to buy black/black dye for 2-3 billions, the credits will simply not be there. 
The rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor, but the gap is not so huge
and these ridiculous prices will be gone.

If need be, ther is always credit sinks for the rich, like amplifiers 
(I myself spent 600-700 millons on those) 

And also, like some people already suggested, do what needs to be done in 
order to stop sales outside the GTN.

The number of players that are going to be upset about this are numerous, 
a few might even quit. But i think the dust will settle rather quickly, it always does.

 

PS: The numbers are of course just examples.

The amount of people who would quit the game if they did that would shutter the game. 

[DeannaVoyager]

17 hours ago, JackieKo said:

Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.

 

So, I create a new character who doesn't have credits. I have some in my legacy cargo, but I have no way to get to my SH -  because I don't have credits to get there. As a new character I want to get there to get credits to be able to unlock some character perks suchs as XP boosts, maybe get some other stuff such as medpacks and whatnot as well. 

 

Sounds to me you didn't think this through. 😒

 

There's been plenty of good suggestions on credits sinks so I'm not going to repeat them. Just gonna say that punishing new players with QT and SH travel costs is a bad idea. Someone who starts with zero credits needs every credit they can get. If they are being ripped off of their credits every time they need to QT, they're not gonna stick around for long. 

 

 

[Lashowz]

As years go by, it's clear that developers have no clue how economics work. They need to hire an actual economist to deal with this, because we have some Zimbabwe level inflation 

But hey, as long as they keep pumping galactic seasons out with CC rewards, I'm fine with getting what I want from CM with free coins,  credits have become useless and GTN is worthless now.