Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[WHTJunior]

7 minutes ago, Advocatis said:

Just charging players to go about base game play isn’t the way to do this.

Unless it somehow scales based on Legacy Level, character level, or something similar. Granted, not all long-standing legacies are equal in this either, as you will have some people who have been around for a long time, but don't play enough to advance their level or gain credits, and some lower-level legacies that horde billions of credits.

[OlBuzzard]

I've seen this sort of drama unfold before.  The chants of an auctioneer if you please!  The voice is all too familiar!  Quickly it rattles off the monotoned anthems awaiting the hurried replies as the speculation of heightened offerings continue to grow with leaps and bounds!  Finally!  At the last a shot!

SOLD!!!!

Momentarily the crowd was hushed!  Each looking at the other!  Who would make such an outrageous bid?  How could that happen?  
Some that watched from the sidelines laughed!  Others seemed stunned! 

By whom?  For how much?

Finally, from the back of the poorly lit amphitheatrical structure rose a dark, ominous figure.  Shrouded in darkness with the blackest of fine linens: a large, long, flowing, black hooded cloak served as final covering fear, agitation and terror were added to his appearance.  No footsteps were heard as the specter of chaos moved ever so slowly forward to lay claim to his prize!

"Why look at me in such a fashion?" he demanded!  "So many were so willing to eagerly contribute to my cause!  I am merely here to collect what is rightfully mine!"  His laugher .. cackle and coldness was felt throughout the theater! But, in the end the results were the same!

(some will get this ... and some possibly might not).  My final thoughts .... (maybe!) 😉

Edited February 13, 2023 by OlBuzzard
Aahahahahahahaha

[Traceguy]

1 hour ago, WHTJunior said:

I like this one, and also add more categories of items to Collections, to unlock: Event rewards, planetary vendor sets, ideally add every cosmetic item for stamping, all vendor mounts, pets. There are a lot of items that I would like to use, but I never seem to see them on the server I need them on.

Along with this, I saw a suggestion to allow character customization be for credits as well. Changing race could still be locked to CC, but gender, body type, complexion, hair, scars, etc could be credits. I had some characters that I wanted to get older or stronger, but because it costs CC, I just opted not to. Not worth it.

Due to the gear drop system, there are armors that you will never see again when Systech or w/e it's called starts dropping. They should just add a vendor that sells these on each planet. 200,000 credits a piece. Bind-on-pickup.

[Macwagon]

Not someone that usually replies or comments on things but, it seems to me you could have a huge credit sink if you just fixed the GTN so that cap was not 1bil for items.  If there was no limit the tax on items being sold on the GTN would take care of a lot of the additional credits while limiting the amount of spam messages being sent out in General and Trade chats.

[Zhiza]

First off, I am a subscriber.

But I am wondering how this will effect free players? Currently the free players can't even take part in the economy, it would take much more than their max savings to even get anything off the auction house, and with rising prices I wonder if it wouldn't just cement the fact that people end up being put off and abandon the game? 1mil max and suddenly the prices on npc services rise :/ 

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, DawnAskham said:

Inflation is driven by excess credits in the economy - too many credits chasing too few items. 

When discussing excess credits, one needs to consider sources of credits flowing into the game.

Credits in SWTOR are NOT created when players sell items to each other. Credits are only created when looting credits off defeated enemies, completing missions and such that reward credits, or selling items to NPC vendors for credits.

Selling items to others only moves existing credits through the economy, it does not create them.

Inflation therefore has nothing to do with how much one can sell an OPM or crafted augment or hypercrate to another player - we are all aware of how easy it is to sell random junk for millions or something a bit more desirable for billions.

And my point is that if it takes an average player several hours to generate several million new credits through gameplay while credit sellers offer nearly a billion credits for a dollar, then it seems reasonable to conclude credit sellers are not creating those credits through normal gameplay (unless they like to work for pennies an hour). 

Unless we see the rate of inflation stabilize instead of continuing to grow exponentially, it suggests there are non-normal / abusive / exploitive means of generating credits being used by credit sellers (e.g. bots and exploits). 

Thus adding some extra fees for travel or whatnot isn't going to solve the problem.

If those really are the prices credit sellers are asking, then there is a good chance they are using automated bots to accumulate the credits. One person could control multiple bots across multiple accounts 🤷🏻‍♀️.

[Aethyriel]

On 2/10/2023 at 10:39 PM, AMAirlines said:

Operations
- If you have a mount/title that drops from an operation on one character, you can pay to have the item unlocked on one other character.

Changes like these would see a lot of credits go out the game at lightning speed. I know I'd buy a couple of Kanoth wings for other chars even at the cost of billions per wings. 5k credits to quick travel though will just make me not notice it. Honestly, if these changes came live and nobody told me, I wouldn't have noticed. And the credits you gain from H2 or whatever you need ports for is so pathetic, it doesn't matter whether this generated credits or not.

The main issue is with the basic economic model - you want to earn money with CC, so you will never implement anything worthwhile for credits. For example: Dyes are one time use items with a rather low CC cost - you could sell those for credits instead and people would buy them like crazy I'd wager. But that would affect your real money income. So, you put pathetic charges on comfort stuff which I believe will drive new players away when they can't afford this stuff. I remember Wildstar died back in the day because repair costs were too high and you had to grind too much just to be able to play the game.

If you drastically reduce the credit income for stuff casuals do, then you're not combating inflation. Those people can't pay the absurd prices anyway and they're not the ones people want to sell to. You sell your stuff to the guy with 100 black&black modules on bank and credit cap on 30 characters. the game simply offers nothing you can sink credits into that is worth sinking credits into and if you make baseline comfort too expensive, then poor players suffer. Imagine doing this in the real world: increase gas prices by 50%. Who gets hurt? Billionaires or minimum wage workers? You're creating a balancing act on the backs of the poor who will struggle to stay afloat while us players with billions of credits won't care. Just calculate how many quick travels I'd need to spend 1 billion. And then consider I spend 1 billion just for the 25th or so outfit slot for some character I sometimes play.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Aethyriel

[DasDeke]

I really think this is going in the wrong direction.

Quick Travel never costed before, why now? Unless you're charging MAYBE taxi prices where they're located.

Travel to Strongholds costing? This doesn't seem to be right, we already spent quite a bit of money on the SH, now you want to charge for using it? Maybe a limiting of options where the SH can go might help. For example you can go there, but can't go back to the planet you were on (save for starter planets).

Repair Costs being higher is fine, as long as you balance that out with grey loot.

Some of these are the WRONG kind of credit sinks. You're just going to drive people from the game or limited their time to the SH (which limits interaction). How about more charge on GTN items, or more for unlocks or or SH .outfit unlocks.

[Zeloz]

9 minutes ago, DasDeke said:

I really think this is going in the wrong direction.

Quick Travel never costed before, why now? Unless you're charging MAYBE taxi prices where they're located.

Travel to Strongholds costing? This doesn't seem to be right, we already spent quite a bit of money on the SH, now you want to charge for using it? Maybe a limiting of options where the SH can go might help. For example you can go there, but can't go back to the planet you were on (save for starter planets).

Repair Costs being higher is fine, as long as you balance that out with grey loot.

Some of these are the WRONG kind of credit sinks. You're just going to drive people from the game or limited their time to the SH (which limits interaction). How about more charge on GTN items, or more for unlocks or or SH .outfit unlocks.

It seems like most of these changes only affect/annoy the average player, and farmers/bots will still be clear to screw the economy further.  Literally one armor set sold at the price of 1 billion or more could let any person pay off these fees for years and years.  The average player is not destroying the economy either with the few million that can be made through normal activities over months.  I totally agree that they should not be focusing on these types of credit sinks and should instead focus on giving the average player the ability to obtain the items they want for the time they put into the game, simple as that.  If you're here devs, the real way to make this better is to make it so people can't resell items for a higher price than the initial price sold to stop scalpers, have a sliding tax on items so the higher the selling price of the item the more gets removed from the economy, perhaps put a max value on each item, reduce the number of cartel items one can purchase in a given timespan (if the item does not get bound to your own character) so that people aren't hoarding tons of items, and let players buy cartel items with another form of currency based on the time you put into the game/activities.  If you let players get what they want, everyone will be happy.

[LordScorpios]

Now that I understand (if I read right) that the Stronghold travel cost only applies if exiting the stronghold to the planet if you were not already on that planet, then my objection to that goes away. I would not like paying credits to go to my own strongholds.
 

One easy way to create a credit sink is to make more decorations available through vendors for credits. There are a number of SH decorations I would love to have multiples of but when only 1 costs many hundreds of millions of credits on GTN I often save rather than spend.

I might spend several hundred million credits to get 10 of a certain deco when I might not for just 1.

[Jursy]

If the stronghold travel cost is ONLY if you switch planets, I'm fine with paying for that.  BUT, I'm reading that QT costs on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas are 5000 credits at the max end.  That's excessive!  If QT is that excessive, then stronghold costs will have the same 300 - 500 percent markup as well.  Right?  Bioware, are you trying to drive people away from your game?  

In addition to all that, now I have to repair more often and for more credits.  While I understand and agree with the need to fight inflation in the game, this feels like punishment to me.  I pay for games to have FUN, not to be punished for playing.  It's looking like I'll end up saving $360 a year in real money.  Thanks for that at least, Bioware.

[Toraak]

5 hours ago, Traceguy said:

Sell us LS/DS tokens. 100,000,000 per token.

Sell us Galactic seasons tokens. 100,000,000 per token.

Sell us legacy birthright kits. 1,000,000 per kit.

Sell us reputation medals. 1,000,000 each.

Sell us R4 tokens. 50,000,000 each.

Sell us tech frags. 10,000,000 per 100x.

Sell us FP-1s, OP-1s, Daily Resource Matrix, conquest commendations etc.

Sell us heroic auto-completions. 10,000,000 per quests.

Sell us conquest points. 100,000,000 for 100,000 Conquest points.

Sell us augments 500,000,000 each.

Sell us CQP boosts. 25% more CQPs for 3 hours. Etc.

 

There an infinite number of credit sinks you can add without raising repair costs, repair frequency, and travel costs.

 

These are horrible Idea's. Charging credits for many of the things on this list comes way to close to P2W.

[MadDutchman]

I feel like these changes fundamentally misunderstand the nature of markets. 

Most notably... you seem to be largely ignoring the actual market and relying on "administrative" changes (taxes) to influence the economy. 

While this can certainly be a part of it, the market is the vast, powerful engine of the economy and if handled properly, will have a vastly outsized, and far less controversial, effect on prices. 

So my suggestion is one I've made a number of times in the past, but now seems as good a time to make it again: Increase GTN Accessibility and Usage

The GTN tax is probably one of, if not the biggest, credit sinks in the game, and importantly is a tax that does not punish new players. Simply put, the more sales occur on the GTN, the more credits are drained from the economy. More importantly though, the more supply on the GTN will drive down prices, not through any tax, but based on the simple laws of supply and demand. 

So the two goals here are obvious enough: Make it easier for people to supply and make it easier for people to buy

• Increasing Supply: The idea here is to make it easier and more desirable for people to list on the GTN. As it stands now, many items are expensive/non-existent on the GTN largely because people are too lazy to list it, or don't know they can list it for a lot of money (Ex. Inspiration Vestments are very high value. How many world drops are just vendored because no one knows it's value?)
  • Show GTN pricing information on an items info panel (perhaps as an extended menu accessed via modifier key to keep down clutter). This will incentivize players to list items on the GTN rather than just vendoring them, with the higher the value, the better. 
  • Allow GTN listing at more locations, and even in the field (ex. through a legacy perk/purchase). If it's just as easy to list on the GTN rather then vendoring, they'll go for the option that has the best value
  • Quick Listing: Have preset listing prices on listing for "one click listing" to maximize ease of access (ex. a list item for 5% below current average price, current lowest price etc.) Custom pricing will still be allowed of course. 
  • Have a dedicated UI for collecting money from the GTN. Using the mail is, frankly, an awful system. 
  • Improve the listing UI for filtering and sorting listings
  • Provide a UI for providing historical sale information. If people know about hot items, supply will naturally flow to fill that demand
• Increasing Purchases: The idea here is, like above, to make it easier for users to find what they want, as well as advertise what they want. 
  • Add Buy listings. Fairly self explanatory, let players add buy listing for a specific price. If a seller doesn't want to wait for a buyer, they can sell it directly and immediately. Could automatically fulfill a buy listing when creating a sell listing as well if the list price is less than or equal to a buy listing. 
  • Smart Search: Add autocomplete to the text search, as well as text based categories (ex: adding :armor Mandalorian will search under armor for everything containing the text "Mandalorian"
  • Price Watches: Can place watches on specific items to give a notification based on pricing information, or show historical data (useful for sellers too)

A system like this should massively increase the supply on the GTN and increase the use of the GTN tax, which will both benefit inflation. It will also make interacting with the GTN a better user experience in general, so win-win. 

Some of these are obviously fairly big items, but they could be rolled out incrementally fairly easily. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by MadDutchman

[Blakinik]

On 2/11/2023 at 9:13 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

The only problem with that system is it would eat into BioWares CM cash cow. There is little hope or point suggesting a system that affects their revenue stream. They just won’t do it even if it’s the best idea out there. 

I call it shared sacrifice 😀

But you are likely right - the sales of the CM likely depend highly on the excessive credits freely floating around.  So they need too look like they are doing something even if they are not.  Without any real credit sinks - and not some "transactional" sinks, but something that you will need to do at some point - its kabuki theater with no real resolution.  Sort of like when the government said to Dow Chemical in the 1960's - 1980's that they would fine them $100 a day and it would cost them $1,000 a day or more to clean it up, so Dow simply said "who do we make the check out too?"

That is the problem, everyone with money will do what they do now and laugh at the "fees" since they would have little to no impact on their bank accounts.  In fact, in the end they will drive people to the gold sellers simply so a new player can score any chance of playing in the big leagues.  While I think both you (Trixie) and I have played since launch or before, we both likely have bank accounts that can weather most changes.  But combined with the reduced credit generation since 7.0, let's assume someone could gather 1 million credits a day.  It would still take them 1,000 days to hit a billion credits which is the amount needed to effectively be financially stable in the game.  Even if they sold off mats, Dark Projects, Invasion Forces, et al with enough frequency that they could cut it down, you are still talking months if not half a year to get it for most people.  How many are going to play that long in the equivalent of running on a hamster wheel or simply say forget it and move onto some other game?

[Blakinik]

58 minutes ago, MadDutchman said:

So my suggestion is one I've made a number of times in the past, but now seems as good a time to make it again: Increase GTN Accessibility and Usage

The GTN tax is probably one of, if not the biggest, credit sinks in the game, and importantly is a tax that does not punish new players. Simply put, the more sales occur on the GTN, the more credits are drained from the economy. More importantly though, the more supply on the GTN will drive down prices, not through any tax, but based on the simple laws of supply and demand. 

I like where you are going, but don't think it takes it all the way there.  There is also a flaw in the system - the RNG nature of the loot crates.  Want to knock this one out right at the start, but effectively by making a "rarity" aspect it perpetually drives prices higher and higher until either enough copies have entered the market in which it becomes saturated to which the only demand is future players demanding purchases, or allow for some alternative posting of items on the GTN for credits.

Effectively if they want to reduce the inflation and credits, they need to become the equivalent of the SWTOR Federal Reserve.  Instead of buying "bonds" to pump cash into the economy (in SWTOR terms - purchase of items on the GTN by some 'bot' or vendors buy items), they need to do the inverse and have a series of 'bots' posting items for sale in a competitive fashion.  every vented lightsaber (of even a Czerka Crate-o-matic or any ultra rare high value items) they sell for billions of credits immediately gets pulled from the economy and digitally destroyed.

Problem is this goes immediately against a number of whales that by all the CM packs and pump them out on the market like its candy in a children's diabetic wing at the hospital.  To counter this, the only other feasible option is to have a highly desirable credit sink of sorts - which the safest short term bet is Cartel Coins.  Furthermore if they did it, it could not be constant - it would need to be quick (like a day or two) then randomly added or pulled like what Costco does to induce panic purchases.  If they felt utterly evil they could make it where the price to get a CC requires higher and higher credits in further consecutive sale rounds.  The advantage of this too is you could use the CC to purchase more packs and thus flood the supply side with more and more items for sale.  This would again induce more sales (and more taxes) all the while causing less and less credits to be available for transactions and simply making prices go down.

Unfortunately I think the ship has sailed and truthfully the only way to fix it now is to flood the world with credits to the point that getting a billion credits is like 1 week of playing and not spending it.  Make it rain credits like it is Zimbabwe in the 1990's with monthly inflation so high where you can't print money fast enough till everyone is maxxed out in credits (like you can't save it anymore) and its worthless.  Then who cares who is a billionaire because everyone is a billionaire.  Shock Economics does work and did for Poland after the fall of the Iron Curtain!  😁

[Gibonski]

On 2/10/2023 at 9:11 PM, EricMusco said:

Hey folks,

First off, thank you all for the feedback here in the thread and especially for those who have jumped on PTS and played around with the changes. There are some great points of feedback and questions in the thread and I want to respond to some of the themes we are seeing.

These changes are not enough!
You are correct, and we know that, but it is a starting point. It is very important that we make these changes slowly and that we monitor their impacts closely. There are some excellent suggestions in this thread for further changes that are already in the works. As we said up front, you should expect to see changes that focus on the economy throughout the next few updates.

We want to start small and in targeted ways. More changes are coming in future updates.

Let me give you some specifics based on suggestions I am seeing in the thread. We know that players exchanging high value items will often trade outside of the GTN. Either because of its sale cap, or to avoid getting taxed at all on the transaction. This is likely the place you will see a number of changes coming after 7.2.1 to stop the loophole, and to start properly taxing high value trades. 

You're Not Hurting the Rich!
Well, we aren't trying to, not specifically. Inflation in its simplest form is about the amount of credits entering the economy against the amount coming out of it. Over time we have shot ourselves in the foot a bit as we have removed or minimized most regular credit sinks (removing training costs, etc).

The goal of these changes is to introduce passive, small credit removal to the game. This way we have credit removal a bit more in line with our credit generation. Removing singular batches of credits from a subset of players would not lower credit inflation (although it is an important component of it), and could not replace this type of passive removal.

We Need Credit Sinks

We hear you that it would also be great to have some more "spend a LOT of credits to get something specific" but one consideration is that many of the suggestions being made are one time purchases which do not continually reduce credits. As we have many systems that continually introduce credits, we need more things that reduce credits often and not on a one time basis. 

To help balance this, we have been steadily adding credit sinks over the past year or so. Most prominently would be the catch-up mechanic in both Galactic and PvP Seasons. The credit costs in those catch-ups can become quite substantial.

Could You Bring Back Amplifiers?
In short order, no. Our items are not built to have Amplifiers on them since we removed the system. However, the sentiment of this question is solid and is in alignment with what I said earlier, this is another example where we have removed some credit sinks.

The Stronghold Change Particularly Sucks
Yeah, let's talk about this one and our goal. As we are introducing a variety of passive costs to travel, players will inevitably look to find a way to subvert it, even if it is a small cost.

One way players could do this is to use the SH travel to a planet and then Exit Area. Our concern here isn't actually for traveling to the SH, it would be a player trying to use that as a stepping stone onto the planet itself.

With that said, we hear you on the sentiment of this one feeling especially punitive, paying to travel to something you paid for. So here is what we are going to try to change it to. We will not charge you to travel to a SH. Instead we would simply apply a travel cost to using Exit Area.

Note that this is not how it is implemented currently so it will require a bit of time to switch. If we can't make this change in time for launch we will likely do NO charges for SH travel in 7.2.1 and implement the proposed credit cost as noted above in the future.

Thanks all! Keep the feedback coming.

-eric
 

Thanks @EricMusco, I really appreciate coming out again to speak to us. clarify things. This surely is a step in the right direction, bravo!

We as a community should encourage you, the devs to come out and communicate more often, as you have nothing to fear. Or have you?

I wish the posts, clarifications and sneak peaks were always this quick right after the other. I think we are on a good trend here from Bioware, and this keeps us full of hope for the future.

With Mando, Ahsoka and possibly Skeleton Crew coming out this year, I think it could be also amazing year for our game.

It has to attone for its transgression <wink><wink> and give us something to look forward to and enjoy playing.

To comment more on the changes themselves, I still do believe they may not be as agressive as I would hope them to be, but I understand the point of view of the developers. They came under a lot of fire when they tried to implement changes fast and in a drastic manner, and I am willing to wait and see how this will come out in the long run. Moreover, they said some of the points we were making in this thread are already worked on, you cannot help but wonder which?

Just for the love of god, save the new players and make the quick travel payments from level 70 or beyond certatin story progression, because it will simple kill them newbies.

May the force be with you all

Edited February 14, 2023 by Gibonski

[Tenebreate]

Hey there Eric,

These changes are a good start, and its good to see that you reacted to some of the feedback here.

But many people suggested that we need more stuff to spend credits on. For example, there are many beautiful decorations, armors and weapons from the older days of the game that you cant get anymore because who knows why. Especially decorations are affected by this.

Why not simply make these items available for some credits at specific vendors. This wouldnt be much work and credits would disappear. 

I would be very happy to see an answer from you on this, have a great day!

 

[black_pyros]

19 hours ago, Traceguy said:

I don't think you know what you're saying. But thank you for trying.

I can assure you I know it exactly. Maybe it's just you who doesn't know, but since you didn't even bother to say what you don't understand, I can't even explain it to you but hey, nvm thank you for trying, I guess 🤷‍♂️

[dgnuff]

On 2/10/2023 at 12:11 PM, EricMusco said:

... I want to respond to some of the themes we are seeing.

These changes are not enough!
You are correct, and we know that, but it is a starting point. It is very important that we make these changes slowly and that we monitor their impacts closely.  ...

We want to start small and in targeted ways. More changes are coming in future updates.

You're Not Hurting the Rich!
Well, we aren't trying to, not specifically. Inflation in its simplest form is about the amount of credits entering the economy against the amount coming out of it. Over time we have shot ourselves in the foot a bit as we have removed or minimized most regular credit sinks (removing training costs, etc).

The goal of these changes is to introduce passive, small credit removal to the game. This way we have credit removal a bit more in line with our credit generation. Removing singular batches of credits from a subset of players would not lower credit inflation (although it is an important component of it), and could not replace this type of passive removal.

We Need Credit Sinks

We hear you that it would also be great to have some more "spend a LOT of credits to get something specific" but one consideration is that many of the suggestions being made are one time purchases which do not continually reduce credits. ...

Thanks all! Keep the feedback coming.

-eric
 

OK, I've trimmed that to the minimum set of points I want to address.

1.  "These changes are not enough."  You're correct that one thing that will be necessary in the long term to bring the game economy back under control is to try and balance credit sources vs credit sinks.  However, as has been stated over and over, you should tread with extreme caution here, because the one thing you cannot afford to do is alienate new players.

Here's a point of reference for you to consider.  I ran several starting characters on the live servers through just the initial tutorial planet: Hutta, Tython, etc.  Pretty consistently, their entire net worth on reaching fleet was in the 5k to 6k to 7k credits range.  That's both credits in hand, and the value of the gear they're wearing.  Now think in terms of a brand new fresh to the game player.  They have a few K in their pocket, and the gear they're wearing is worth a few more K.  You cannot charge them 5k for quick transit on Coruscant / DK.  First time that happens, they'll quit.

2. "You're not hurting the rich."  You shouldn't be thinking in terms of hurting anyone, you need to think in terms of offering items of value for credits and lots of them.  "You catch far more flies with honey than you do with vinegar." -- anon.  There are two separate tasks that are needed to fix the economy.  You've identified one, you're just not addressing it quite right - that's trying to balance the credit faucet feeding the economy with the credit sink that drains it.  QT costs should be no greater than the corresponding speeder cost because that way it'll keep them more in line with what players can actually afford.

3.  "We need credit sinks."  Damn right you do.  Here are a few ideas.  You'll balk at them, but getting currency out of the economy isn't going to be painless.  "You can't make an omelette without breaking a couple of eggs." -- anon. 

(A) Try a week long sale where everything in the cartel market can also be bought for credits, and use the current market value of Ultimate Cartel Packs as a rough CC to credit conversion.  Last I checked on Star Forge, they were selling for 250 million.  Yes that will hurt your USD income from the sale of CC, but there ain't no free lunches in this business.

(B) Find other high value items on the GTN and "shill" them, i.e. create them out of thin air, sell them and then throw the credits received in the bit bucket.  Plenty of options there: high end crafting materials, I've seen them well over 100K per unit.  For example as I type this, Prototype Dallorian Scraps are selling for minimum asking price 150,000 credits per unit on Star Forge.

(C) Something equivalent to WoW's subscription tokens, or PLEX in EvE Online.  Very simply, the ability for a player to pay for their subscription with raw credits.  You want big ongoing sinks?  That's a fine candidate.  Yes it'll hurt your USD income some.  To repeat what I said in (A) above TANSTAAFL.

(D) Custom dye modules and crystals.  With the limitation that we can't create something that already exists (Black / Black I'm looking at you), and these are strictly Bind-to-Legacy, allow us to pick a primary and secondary color from the palette available for dye modules, and dial up something custom for maybe 50 to 100 million credits.  Or maybe more.  Ditto custom weapon crystals.  Yellow outline / deep blue core would look uber-cool, IMHO.

One last comment, coming from one who worked on another MMO many years ago.  One of the biggest fears the dev team on that game had was what they called "sequestered" currency.  i.e. the credits held by players that have played in the past, but are currently inactive.  You know this as well as I do, you tend to get a good sized bump of returning players whenever there's a major (7.00, 8.00 etc) release.  If you do manage to sort out the economy here, just be sure it's set up to handle the return of such players.

[microstyles]

9 hours ago, MadDutchman said:

So the two goals here are obvious enough: Make it easier for people to supply and make it easier for people to buy

• Increasing Supply: The idea here is to make it easier and more desirable for people to list on the GTN. As it stands now, many items are expensive/non-existent on the GTN largely because people are too lazy to list it, or don't know they can list it for a lot of money (Ex. Inspiration Vestments are very high value. How many world drops are just vendored because no one knows it's value?)
  • Show GTN pricing information on an items info panel (perhaps as an extended menu accessed via modifier key to keep down clutter). This will incentivize players to list items on the GTN rather than just vendoring them, with the higher the value, the better. 
  • Allow GTN listing at more locations, and even in the field (ex. through a legacy perk/purchase). If it's just as easy to list on the GTN rather then vendoring, they'll go for the option that has the best value
  • Quick Listing: Have preset listing prices on listing for "one click listing" to maximize ease of access (ex. a list item for 5% below current average price, current lowest price etc.) Custom pricing will still be allowed of course. 
  • Have a dedicated UI for collecting money from the GTN. Using the mail is, frankly, an awful system. 
  • Improve the listing UI for filtering and sorting listings
  • Provide a UI for providing historical sale information. If people know about hot items, supply will naturally flow to fill that demand
• Increasing Purchases: The idea here is, like above, to make it easier for users to find what they want, as well as advertise what they want. 
  • Add Buy listings. Fairly self explanatory, let players add buy listing for a specific price. If a seller doesn't want to wait for a buyer, they can sell it directly and immediately. Could automatically fulfill a buy listing when creating a sell listing as well if the list price is less than or equal to a buy listing. 
  • Smart Search: Add autocomplete to the text search, as well as text based categories (ex: adding :armor Mandalorian will search under armor for everything containing the text "Mandalorian"
  • Price Watches: Can place watches on specific items to give a notification based on pricing information, or show historical data (useful for sellers too)

These are all great ideas. One of the major issues with the credit economy right now is that a large portion of the playerbase largely doesn't participate. Changes like these make it easier to do so.

[jahrnyn]

I think taxing new/casual players in the name of "combating inflation" is a very-very bad idea and can lead to depopulated servers very fast. Since BW nerfed credit income a lot of ppl started reselling things like no tomorrow, and this is probably the main reason of the inflation (second is greed, but that cannot be corrected). So you should up credit incomes for quests/FPs/OPS (more activity helps pop problems too), and create money sink for the rich. Like high end SH-s (costing billions to fully unlock), some nice new decos costing a lot of creds, taxing (10% or more) all trade above 1b. There is a lot of options.

[Gibonski]

18 minutes ago, jahrnyn said:

I think taxing new/casual players in the name of "combating inflation" is a very-very bad idea and can lead to depopulated servers very fast. Since BW nerfed credit income a lot of ppl started reselling things like no tomorrow, and this is probably the main reason of the inflation (second is greed, but that cannot be corrected). So you should up credit incomes for quests/FPs/OPS (more activity helps pop problems too), and create money sink for the rich. Like high end SH-s (costing billions to fully unlock), some nice new decos costing a lot of creds, taxing (10% or more) all trade above 1b. There is a lot of options.

You know what destroyed the economy? RPM prices, and the fact that you could go in 4v4 premades and win-trade it over and over and over again on your 20+toons with a guild every night, for so many months...

 

Nothing has been done to punish those players. We got the pleasure of killing them in arenas, since they were total no-hands.

 

BIOWARE BAN THOSE PLAYERS, you will have so many credits out of the system, its beyond belief. I know a guy that has trilions of credits, currently owns 300+ hypercrates. And you put a price on quick travel? Seriously?

[DWho]

Another, and better way, to control influx of credits into the game (though it would be very unpopular among players that run lots of high level alts through content) is to go back to drops on planets being consistent with the planet level instead of the character level. When the character level based rewards were implemented, it infused tons of credits into the system with high level characters farming low level content and still getting rewards in line with higher level, more "difficult", content. A lvl 80 character farming mobs on Coruscant shouldn't be getting level 80 rewards. The original reason for this was to "fill out" population on planets by getting high level characters to go back there (and get people to replay old content since there was no new content). Now that there are gearing rewards, conquest rewards, and Galactic Season rewards for doing this, I don't think the high level rewards on low level planets is needed any more.

One of the arguments made was that high level characters got nothing from helping out their low level friends under the old system of planet based rewards, but there are a lot more rewards now for doing the content on those lower level planets over (or helping out if you want to go that route).

As I said this would be very unpopular with players with lots of high level alts, but it would have a much bigger impact in cutting credit influx into the game than hitting casual players and new players with high travel costs.

[Traceguy]

14 minutes ago, DWho said:

Another, and better way, to control influx of credits into the game (though it would be very unpopular among players that run lots of high level alts through content) is to go back to drops on planets being consistent with the planet level instead of the character level. When the character level based rewards were implemented, it infused tons of credits into the system with high level characters farming low level content and still getting rewards in line with higher level, more "difficult", content. A lvl 80 character farming mobs on Coruscant shouldn't be getting level 80 rewards. The original reason for this was to "fill out" population on planets by getting high level characters to go back there (and get people to replay old content since there was no new content). Now that there are gearing rewards, conquest rewards, and Galactic Season rewards for doing this, I don't think the high level rewards on low level planets is needed any more.

One of the arguments made was that high level characters got nothing from helping out their low level friends under the old system of planet based rewards, but there are a lot more rewards now for doing the content on those lower level planets over (or helping out if you want to go that route).

As I said this would be very unpopular with players with lots of high level alts, but it would have a much bigger impact in cutting credit influx into the game than hitting casual players and new players with high travel costs.

Leave rewards alone, but change the gear drops. A level 15 will find level 15 gear when killing level 80 enemies. A level 80 will find level 80 gear when killing level 15 enemies... Level 15 gear is now unique and rare, and costs millions to buy off the GTN... Let level 80s find that unique level 15 gear to crash the economy market there.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Traceguy

[Exocor]

vor 12 Minuten schrieb DWho:

Another, and better way, to control influx of credits into the game (though it would be very unpopular among players that run lots of high level alts through content) is to go back to drops on planets being consistent with the planet level instead of the character level. When the character level based rewards were implemented, it infused tons of credits into the system with high level characters farming low level content and still getting rewards in line with higher level, more "difficult", content. A lvl 80 character farming mobs on Coruscant shouldn't be getting level 80 rewards. The original reason for this was to "fill out" population on planets by getting high level characters to go back there (and get people to replay old content since there was no new content). Now that there are gearing rewards, conquest rewards, and Galactic Season rewards for doing this, I don't think the high level rewards on low level planets is needed any more.

One of the arguments made was that high level characters got nothing from helping out their low level friends under the old system of planet based rewards, but there are a lot more rewards now for doing the content on those lower level planets over (or helping out if you want to go that route).

As I said this would be very unpopular with players with lots of high level alts, but it would have a much bigger impact in cutting credit influx into the game than hitting casual players and new players with high travel costs.

 

What items exactly do you refer to that you get by doing planet missions? It can't be armor random drops. Each goes for what? 20.000 Credits at the vendor? You need 50.000 of those to accumulate a billion Credits.