Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[Zorrax]

Sorry to say this, but the recent changes do nothing to help the economic issues.

1> Credit sinks to quick travel:  all this does is tax new players, and basically deletes all the credits they just looted.  It does absolutely nothing to all of us who have been playing the game for awhile, who can sell 1 "cheapo" item on the auction house and get 20m credits.  You really should just remove those fees, because all it does it wears down new players.  Bad move.  Especially when you want more new players.

2> Want to make veteran players spend credits?  Give them something to buy that they actually want!

• Add vendors to sell account-bound color dyes, and other consumables
• Add more character and account unlocks that can be purchased with credits
• Add some type of credit gambling, where rewards can be account-bound items
• (edit added:) Add a way for veteran players to pay more credits to make class stories give even more XP (so we can skip planet stories we saw 6x, and focus solely on just class quests while leveling.)
• (edit added:)  Stop giving so many free XP potions, and put them on a vendor for veterans to buy (account-bound.)  Veterans will pay for them.  You give too many for free, I have 10 free potions already at level 40, and I've been consuming them nonstop while leveling.

The main point here, is that more credits need to flow into the game, not the auction house.  And I'm not saying to reduce the amount of items sold on the auction house.  There needs to be more credits spent on useful account/character-bound things in the game.

By having too many of the "good" things listed on the cartel market, you let the credit economy get like this.  Credits are controlled  almost entirely by the auction house.  There needs to be more vendors/services available to buy account-bound stuff for players.  And you really wouldn't lose much.. because every item (good items, like black color dyes, etc.) on a vendor that costs more than 1m credits, means someone had to buy a subscription to spend them.  💡 The light bulb just went on, eh? 

 

Edited April 3, 2023 by Zorrax
added more list items

[WHTJunior]

2 hours ago, Zorrax said:

Credits are controlled  almost entirely by the auction house.

GTN is only a result of inflation, not the cause, for two reasons:

1. A sale on the GTN is only a transfer of credits from one player to another
2. GTN actively removes credits from the game via GTN tax

In order to reduce overall credits in the game, they need to target the source of mass credit influx, like farming, or in-game activities that give out too much.

New players probably won't use QT as often as we are implying. Back when I only had a few million per server, I spent very frugally. Most poor players will now just hoof it, or die on purpose to travel to medcenter.

Credit sinks, like subscriber-exclusive vendors/items could indirectly help, but would not be used by anyone farming credits into the system. They would lower the overall volume of credits, but as long as the richest people still have enough to buy items for 4 - 8 billion credits, sellers will continue bypassing the GTN and its tax.

In all, that's why people suggest things like scaling the travel costs with level/legacy progress, maybe a diminishing returns on farming activities, taxing credit transfers, limiting high-cost items to GTN one-time-sale-only, raising GTN limits or preventing items from being sold over set thresholds, and banning players involved in RMT.

[Falsk]

On 2/9/2023 at 4:29 PM, JackieKo said:

Repair cost formulas have been adjusted across the entirety of the game so that repair costs increase in relation to item level.

As a Tank, this hit me the most from the update.. 3 whipes with pug in a ops is costing me 100k.

while on dps its around 45k. 

Taking a constant beating as a tank, should be cheaper  And now people think all tanks got a kink and pay to get beating.....

Edited April 4, 2023 by Falsk

[recalcitrantIre]

On 3/30/2023 at 11:33 AM, kalasur said:

Get...rid...of...all...of...them. Once someone reaches the required reputation with a faction, let them spend credits on the stuff instead of all this nonsense. I could blow a billion credits just on Cartel Market items right now if I could buy them with credits instead of needing cartel market certificates.

how do so many people not understand that a lot of the myriad of available currencies are 1) a reason to keep you playing that particular content and 2) very very very specific in their usage

even the fairly generic level 80 currencies are still directing you towards a particular content stream, ie pvp for accelerant

plus we already had the fairly significant pushback against involving direct credit transactions with gear optimization/progression regarding amplifiers in 6.x, Bioware generally stray away from repeating decisions that get overwhelmingly negative feedback from the playerbase

[Aaesith]

6 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

how do so many people not understand that a lot of the myriad of available currencies are 1) a reason to keep you playing that particular content and 2) very very very specific in their usage

even the fairly generic level 80 currencies are still directing you towards a particular content stream, ie pvp for accelerant

plus we already had the fairly significant pushback against involving direct credit transactions with gear optimization/progression regarding amplifiers in 6.x, Bioware generally stray away from repeating decisions that get overwhelmingly negative feedback from the playerbase

Personally I'm not talking about the new gear track currencies like tech fragments and the rest but all those other currencies tied to events, dark vs light, galactic seasons, etc.... The first tab can stay as long as all the others go and are replaced by credits.

They can push people to play that particular content with a reputation track, then let you buy cosmetic items from reputation vendors with credits. By the time you filled up a reputation track you are pretty much sick of that particular content anyway and very unlikely to want to replay it just for some currency that gets you some cosmetic rewards.

[myrrhbear]

These changes will especially penalise poor players and new players and make it harder for them, which seems like the exact opposite of fixing the economy.  It's like raising the tax on tomatoes causing people with low incomes to struggle even more since their basic grocery costs just went up, but millionaires couldn't care less.  The changes in swtor will also make the game more grindy, which may seem enticing as a developer because it may seem that it will result in retaining more subscriptions, but it's really SO negative to the player experience that in practice it will drive players away to other games (especially when swtor is already suffering in player retention).  Many older players who have had time to develop significant amounts of credits will still be annoyed by the idea of this change as it seems petty, but for many other wealthy players they just won't care at all, since it won't in practice really affect them.

Any attempted fix to the massive gulf between rich and poor in swtor will result in some people being upset about it.  That can't determine to course of action.  We can aim to minimise *needless* disruption, but we can't make any meaningful correction without upsetting some people.

I think the solution is relatively obvious though.  Simply impose a maximum amount you can list an item for on the GTN determined by item type and rarity (bronze, silver, gold, platinum).  For example (though these numbers aren't necessarily where they need to be) bronze mounts can't be listed for more than 100,000 credits.  Silver mounts can't be listed for more than 500,000 credits.  Gold mounts can't be listed for more than 5 million credits.  Platinum mounts can't be listed for more than 20 million credits.  The same more or less for weapons, armour sets (individual armour pieces should be 1/7 of these prices), decorations, etc.  Also crafting mats would need to have a max price imposed.  Really all items that can be listed on the GTN would need to be capped in balance with these lines.  

Of course a change like this will make those (like myself) who have a ton of credits, somewhat annoyed/angry because it will of course mean we can't keep getting richer and richer in such huge leaps and bounds anymore.  We won't lose our existing wealth but because this will prevent the escalation it's going to be perceived as a loss.  However, if the goal is to make it more fair and accessible for ALL players of this game and to stop the exponentially widening gap between rich and poor, this is the only way that makes sense to me. 

This one change will significantly impede the rich from continuing to get farther and farther ahead.  However it won't properly help the poorer and new players catch up.  It does make it so all the many cool items in the game suddenly become accessible in price to many players who previously couldn't afford a cool mount because they were priced at 500,000,000 credits on the GTN.  But the other side of correcting the issue is to help the poorer and new players be able to better earn credits.  For this I'd simply do *the exact opposite* of what was just done.  We'd need to remove or at least significantly reduce costs from repairs, travel, and other basic, common activities, while increasing the number of credits that drop from all new-player-friendly content.  For example have solo content, class quests, lower level/easy flashpoints, heroic missions, etc... all have notably higher credit rewards. 

The goal here should be to make it so that players who are new or who are relatively poor can, without needing to go through an annoying grind, naturally accrue enough credits through their normal casual game play, to bank for themselves tens of millions of credits.  Once the new and more casual player has a normal and fun means, without having to make it their focus, to build up enough credits to feel comfortable spending 20 million credits on a new mount without that costing them their entire savings, they will now find themselves able to access the economy in full and all the cool items this game has to offer.  And once they can afford some of these items, they can also then buy and sell those items to build upon their wealth. 

One thing to comfort the extremely wealthy players is that we too will be able to easily afford anything on the GTN if the prices are capped like that.  The fact that some players have billions and billions of credits in their vault will no longer have any practical negative effect on other players who only have in the tens of millions or who are only starting off, because we ALL will have access to buy the same items.  The rich won't find it as easy to keep getting absurdly even richer because they won't be able to sell an armour piece for 1 billion credits anymore, but with the highest priced items on the GTN never being above 20 millions credits the rich players will find it super affordable to buy all the cool things of interest to them, and will still remain rich... But at the same time newer players, just through casual questing, if basic costs are reduced and basic credits drops and increased, will find themselves in the normal course of things able to afford good items on the GTN and to be able to enter the buying and selling of good items market themselves too.

A loophole the rich could exploit would be making private trades directly.  To close this loophole we'd need to make it so that it's not possible to trade over 20 million credits at one time.  Players might think - I will just re-open a trade over and over to keep giving credits until I reach the amount I want, but in practice this won't actually work because players don't generally trust each other when making private trades.  The vast majority of the time people won't want to give an item in a trade that they think is worth 500 million for 20 million, trusting the other player to then open the trade window 25 more times to keep giving 20 million again and again.  The same is true in reverse - players won't feel safe to give 20 million in trade over and over again while trusting that after the many trades the other player will then give them the desired item.

Capping the listing prices on the GTN would be effective at fixing this problem and making all the cool items now available to all the players, will allow newer players to build up enough wealth to be fully part of the game, and will allow wealthy players to retain their previous wealth (even if they can't keep getting more absurdly rich).  

 

[MarvoDaMighty]

These changes are not very good, or even well thought out.  In economics, this is a regressive "upside down" approach.  The amount of money put into the system is by players that don't have billions in credits and may have a few thousand, these "changes" will not do anything much except make it hard for new players to existing in the game.   If rewards are lowered, but the costs are raised that, to me at least seems like it would make things worse.   It will cause new players to pool around on starter worlds grinding for credits just to afford the travel costs locally, making repairs to gear, and ultimately leaving the planet to find better gear at Fleet or on Capital planets and major hubs.      

This new system will only increase inequality as players already in-game for a while will have amassed a "fortune" to afford the cheaper but exotic gear and greatly outclass others trying to just play the game but are met with financial obstacles and credit sinks that won't be much of an issue for someone with 1 billion credits per Character and 4 billion in a Legacy bank and same in a guild bank.  It will be just unfair. 

Think of this new initiative as a sales and consumption tax: Spend $50 on clothes for your kid, and you’ll pay the same sales tax as anyone else in your area, regardless of income. The poorer you are, the greater the share of your resources the sales tax gobbles up.

While I can see the lowered income and other secondary changes.  Making essential services more expensive while reducing ways to earn sufficient credit is not the way this should have gone.  

 

[recalcitrantIre]

On 4/5/2023 at 12:26 AM, Aaesith said:

Personally I'm not talking about the new gear track currencies like tech fragments and the rest but all those other currencies tied to events, dark vs light, galactic seasons, etc.... The first tab can stay as long as all the others go and are replaced by credits.

They can push people to play that particular content with a reputation track, then let you buy cosmetic items from reputation vendors with credits. By the time you filled up a reputation track you are pretty much sick of that particular content anyway and very unlikely to want to replay it just for some currency that gets you some cosmetic rewards.

you seem to be completely missing the point

the event-specific currencies exist so that people who want the rewards from those events keep playing that event beyond simply maxing out the reputation associated with it

if they removed all the event currencies and swapped the vendors over to using just credits, the only people playing those events would be new players

[eloiblack]

I have not read the discussion, and very likely what I will write here has been written by many others.:

1. All measures that put in place a cost for everyone on something that was free for everyone, only make the poor poorer, with no impact on those who have a millions of credits.

2. Everyone who pays a subscription with real world money, and was told QT (and other forms of fast travel) was a free benefit for them, is basically being scammed with this added cost.

3. These costs (Quick Travel, Priority Transport Terminal, Travel to and from Strongholds) should be ZERO.

4. Outfitter Costs should not depend on character level. Stamping an outfit should be free, especially since you already charge a lot to have the slot in the first place.

 

Here are some ideas:

Make items available at the Cartel Market at reasonable costs, (that will certainly reduce prices at the GTN).

Remove the infinite amount of currencies that you have created and and just keep credits.

Create cool things for players to buy WITH credits.

The market regulates it self. If there is high demand of something that is scarce, the price of course will be high.

Eliminate scarcity of things, and the prices for those things will go down.

[Gimpeline]

On 4/8/2023 at 6:45 PM, eloiblack said:

I have not read the discussion, and very likely what I will write here has been written by many others.:

1. All measures that put in place a cost for everyone on something that was free for everyone, only make the poor poorer, with no impact on those who have a millions of credits.

2. Everyone who pays a subscription with real world money, and was told QT (and other forms of fast travel) was a free benefit for them, is basically being scammed with this added cost.

3. These costs (Quick Travel, Priority Transport Terminal, Travel to and from Strongholds) should be ZERO.

4. Outfitter Costs should not depend on character level. Stamping an outfit should be free, especially since you already charge a lot to have the slot in the first place.

 

Here are some ideas:

Make items available at the Cartel Market at reasonable costs, (that will certainly reduce prices at the GTN).

Remove the infinite amount of currencies that you have created and and just keep credits.

Create cool things for players to buy WITH credits.

The market regulates it self. If there is high demand of something that is scarce, the price of course will be high.

Eliminate scarcity of things, and the prices for those things will go down.

Sadly EA won't do any of this. They are too greedy. They make money from cartel coins, so they will charge as mush as they can.

They don't make any money from credits, so buying cool things with credits will ever happen.

They want high prices so people will buy things with cartel coins.

They have to pretend like they care by making money sinks, so the players thinks they care.

 

[Aaesith]

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

Any attempted fix to the massive gulf between rich and poor in swtor will result in some people being upset about it.  That can't determine to course of action.  We can aim to minimise *needless* disruption, but we can't make any meaningful correction without upsetting some people.

This should never even be attempted. I farm many hours every day, I should very well be a lot richer than ca casual who maybe logs in a few hours on the weekend. The goal should be to reduce the amount of credits in game, get inflation down and bring prices down to reasonable values.

 

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

I think the solution is relatively obvious though.  Simply impose a maximum amount you can list an item for on the GTN determined by item type and rarity (bronze, silver, gold, platinum).  For example (though these numbers aren't necessarily where they need to be) bronze mounts can't be listed for more than 100,000 credits.  Silver mounts can't be listed for more than 500,000 credits.  Gold mounts can't be listed for more than 5 million credits.  Platinum mounts can't be listed for more than 20 million credits.  The same more or less for weapons, armour sets (individual armour pieces should be 1/7 of these prices), decorations, etc.  Also crafting mats would need to have a max price imposed.  Really all items that can be listed on the GTN would need to be capped in balance with these lines. 

This again is a really bad idea, artificially decreasing prices never works, the only result being that rare expensive things will never be seen on the GTN, not that they are anyway nowadays since the cap in 1 Billion.

 

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

This one change will significantly impede the rich from continuing to get farther and farther ahead.  However it won't properly help the poorer and new players catch up.

Seriously, why would any "poor" player care how much credits a "rich" player has, i's not as if the game let you buy really cool stuff you cand only get with huge amounts of credits to show off. But hey that's a great idea, in real life rich people get to blow off money on yachts, jets houses, private islands and the like. What this game needs it exactly that. Let rich players spend their billions on cool looking items. Give making that 30 billion mount a try, make that 100 billion credits stronghold a reality, etc...

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

It does make it so all the many cool items in the game suddenly become accessible in price to many players who previously couldn't afford a cool mount because they were priced at 500,000,000 credits on the GTN.

If you can't afford 500 million you don't really care about that "cool" mount, 500 million is nothing you cand make that easily. Besides you can play the game without any CC items, there are loads of really cheap CC items on the GTN, like anything under 10 million that I for one rarely even bother selling and destroy outright.

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

One thing to comfort the extremely wealthy players is that we too will be able to easily afford anything on the GTN if the prices are capped like that.

This is in fact the case now with the 1 billion cap, it's not that you will see that Czerka Crate-o-matic for 1 billion on the GTN, it's that you will in fact never see it on the GTN. The GTN cap is the biggest obstacle against me spending my credits.

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

Players might think - I will just re-open a trade over and over to keep giving credits until I reach the amount I want, but in practice this won't actually work because players don't generally trust each other when making private trades.  The vast majority of the time people won't want to give an item in a trade that they think is worth 500 million for 20 million, trusting the other player to then open the trade window 25 more times to keep giving 20 million again and again.

Written by someone who never bought a Hypercrate, people do this right now and trade billions trusting that they will get the desired item in the end. Having to do that 1000 times though would discourage people . . . from ever trading again  and probably playing as well.

 

On 4/5/2023 at 9:05 AM, myrrhbear said:

Capping the listing prices on the GTN would be effective at fixing this problem and making all the cool items now available to all the players, will allow newer players to build up enough wealth to be fully part of the game, and will allow wealthy players to retain their previous wealth (even if they can't keep getting more absurdly rich).  

In conclusion capping the prices is the worst possible way to go about reducing inflation, it doesn't work in real life economies and it will not work here. Socialism is NOT the way.

The only way to solve the inflation problem definitionally is to have less credits be generated, more credits be removed from the economy (preferably through desirable vendor items). In real life the money supply is inflated generally by allowing entities to issue loans by creating money they do not actually have, whether they are banking institutions or governments. In this game the money supply is inflated by credit exploits, bot farming and mission rewards. So please try to stop releasing new credit exploits every other patch and completely remove credit and trash drops from enemies, that will make credit farmers not generate any extra credits in the economy. Only give credit rewards for missions and objectives. Remove the ability for vendors to buy all your crap for credits. Nobody playing the game will complain and it will be easier to balance the economy with missions being the only source for new credits.

Having credits be more desirable to have in the game will make more people willing to spend money on cartel market items that will then get sold for credits on the hopefully uncapped GTN, making the game better for everyone. This is in fact what makes this game desirable over some alternatives, the ability to buy cool armours and weapons by playing the game their way from people who have an excess of real world currency buying them on the cartel market 😁 Capitalism all the way baby.

[Aaesith]

Oh and the measures implemented by the developers  are in fact a step in the right direction, the only problem is scale. It is a very negligible step. Removing credit and trash drops from enemies and removing "vendoring" of items would have a much bigger, even if not immediate, impact on inflation by removing one source of new credits.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Aaesith
removed typo

[DWho]

1 minute ago, Aaesith said:

Oh and the measures implemented by the developers  are in fact a step in the right direction, the only problem is scale. It is a very negligible step. Removing credit and trash drops from enemies and removing "vendoring" of items would have a much bigger, even if not immediate, impact on inflation by removing one source of new credits.

I would add that there needs to be a transaction fee of some sort for every player to player trade (all the big ones are being processed completely tax free while anyone using the GTN is getting hit with up to an 8% tax). It should be high for CM items and low for general items.

[PsykoKiwi]

I have to agree with many others, charging money for fast travel is absurd, I have 2.8 billion EC, which isn't a lot compared to some but this does little more than make me go 'eh'. My wife, who is new, can't afford to use it at all, she got 900 EC in loot and it's immedietly wiped out because she doesn't want to walk everywhere.

If you want to get EC out of cirulcation, put some EFFORT into it. GIVE people something to buy, something to spend large amounts of EC on, a mount, armor, a new SH, custom ship skins for the player heroes. Bring back old out of circulation items for a limited time. You make it people WILL dump billions on it and then those EC are out of circulation. But they can't buy things that don't exist.

Don't harrass the people who can't afford it, this just turns them off the game. 

Be bold, put your back into it!

[Aaesith]

17 minutes ago, PsykoKiwi said:

My wife, who is new, can't afford to use it at all, she got 900 EC in loot and it's immedietly wiped out because she doesn't want to walk everywhere.

This could easily be addressed by substantially increasing story mission rewards while somewhat decreasing repeatable mission rewards. This way leveling characters don't have issues affording quick travel, legacy unlocks, etc... Just don't overdo it to the point rolling new characters to farm story missions becomes a viable way of farming credits 

Until that happens, just give your wife 100 million or so 😁 It's what I do for every new character I make.

 

[Gokkus]

I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding the intention and the options that BW realistically have. Here is the thing:

- anything they do that would simply take players money will make a lot of people angry and/or leave. That is not an option

- one time credit sinks are pretty useless and costly because they would have to keep making those till the end of times. Plus they would have to make them VERY expensive to have a real impact on the richest players and we all know how well that will go down

- this measure was obviously not meant to make rich players less rich. It was meant to limit the influx of new credits and PREVENT NEW BILLIONARES. Yeah obviously it is not enough but they have to move slowly and carefully because...well just read this thread

I am not saying they implemented this well. I hear there are quite some scaling issues. And there might be better ways still. But enough measures like this will eventually work. You can't complain about inflation and about having to pay more money for stuff at the same time. Either rewards will go down or costs will go up, thats the way to prevent more inflation.

[Sundown]

Balancing the economy obviously is a delicate matter, especially if you have a status quo as is: completely messed up.

I do agree with BW that generation of new credits vs. removing credits needs to be in balance first, else the same issue will arise regardless of what you do to the big weath, still one time huge credit sinks will also be required for the whales.

I personally dislike charging for gameplay (i.e. QT or repcost), as I would always encourage activities over GTN, it feels like punishment to me, it makes we want to avoid that cost (personality trade) with a negative impact on my "gaming experience". And no, that is not rational, I know that QT cost is merely diminishing the return of a quest finished, as usually the reward of the quest exceeds it by far.

But one thing I observed: prices are going down. I noticed a reduction of GTN-prices for Dark Projects or Flagship Plans of about 50%. Same goes for yellow crafting mats (OEM, RPM), maybe because many people have finished their legendary implants and tacticals and can now use tech frags for those, no idea. Might be coincidence, but it was a quite noticeable development as far as I am concerned.

[Balameb]

5 hours ago, Gokkus said:

I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding the intention and the options that BW realistically have. Here is the thing:

- anything they do that would simply take players money will make a lot of people angry and/or leave. That is not an option

- one time credit sinks are pretty useless and costly because they would have to keep making those till the end of times. Plus they would have to make them VERY expensive to have a real impact on the richest players and we all know how well that will go down

- this measure was obviously not meant to make rich players less rich. It was meant to limit the influx of new credits and PREVENT NEW BILLIONARES. Yeah obviously it is not enough but they have to move slowly and carefully because...well just read this thread

I am not saying they implemented this well. I hear there are quite some scaling issues. And there might be better ways still. But enough measures like this will eventually work. You can't complain about inflation and about having to pay more money for stuff at the same time. Either rewards will go down or costs will go up, thats the way to prevent more inflation.

I feel you missed that there is a bigger credit sink that needs attention ASAP: Sale Tax.

Ironically (or not) BW did not failed to see that, still decided to implement an intrusive sink (in a horrible way) that will do nothing.

And, no. We do not need many bad sinks. We need proper sinks.

Why tax evasion needed to be 'fixed' first? Because of scale.

1- Sale tax is part of the constant (as in not one time) sinks. So its purpose is to balance all the time, not when an 'unforseen' event generate a disparity.

2- Just by looking at prices in chat anyone can see the amounts that are being evaded are so big that this new sink is less than a joke compared to it.

3- While we know those amount evaded are huge, we can't (and BW neither) calculate properly exactly how much. And even if BW could (again, they likely can't because we know for facts they suck at tracking mail and p2p transactions), a small fluctuation could render other balance sinks like this QT cost to work against the intended balance target.

So, that is why starting small when you have big disparity is just stup*d.

4 hours ago, Sundown said:

Balancing the economy obviously is a delicate matter, especially if you have a status quo as is: completely messed up.

I do agree with BW that generation of new credits vs. removing credits needs to be in balance first, else the same issue will arise regardless of what you do to the big weath, still one time huge credit sinks will also be required for the whales.

I personally dislike charging for gameplay (i.e. QT or repcost), as I would always encourage activities over GTN, it feels like punishment to me, it makes we want to avoid that cost (personality trade) with a negative impact on my "gaming experience". And no, that is not rational, I know that QT cost is merely diminishing the return of a quest finished, as usually the reward of the quest exceeds it by far.

But one thing I observed: prices are going down. I noticed a reduction of GTN-prices for Dark Projects or Flagship Plans of about 50%. Same goes for yellow crafting mats (OEM, RPM), maybe because many people have finished their legendary implants and tacticals and can now use tech frags for those, no idea. Might be coincidence, but it was a quite noticeable development as far as I am concerned.

On top of many people finishing tacticals and implants, current craft meta has been around for 3 and half years. Gold augs i think more than 2 years.

[Noahtep]

Many issues that people are attributing to "inflation" is actually a Supply/Demand problem.

On Star Forge the price of Cartel Crates 2 months ago was 400m.  Today you can buy them for 180m.  This is the exact opposite of inflation.  People want to be rich - It is supply flooding demand and driving the price down.  People are posting many Crates and it is lowering the unit price.

If you can't afford a private jet, is that an inflation issue? No, you aren't rich enough. If I log 3 or 4 hours a day, every day to make credits and you don't - don't cry that you aren't the 1%.  I put in the work and you didn't.  I'm putting in a full time 40 hours a week and then some, but you are just doing a part time job.  You can't expect the same credits.

You can't buy a Gold 11 - super weapon?  You Can't afford a Super Yacht either. Again, Supply/Demand,  

Edited April 13, 2023 by Noahtep

[Balameb]

3 hours ago, Noahtep said:

Many issues that people are attributing to "inflation" is actually a Supply/Demand problem.

On Star Forge the price of Cartel Crates 2 months ago was 400m.  Today you can buy them for 180m.  This is the exact opposite of inflation.  People want to be rich - It is supply flooding demand and driving the price down.  People are posting many Crates and it is lowering the unit price.

If you can't afford a private jet, is that an inflation issue? No, you aren't rich enough. If I log 3 or 4 hours a day, every day to make credits and you don't - don't cry that you aren't the 1%.  I put in the work and you didn't.  I'm putting in a full time 40 hours a week and then some, but you are just doing a part time job.  You can't expect the same credits.

You can't buy a Gold 11 - super weapon?  You Can't afford a Super Yacht either. Again, Supply/Demand,  

While i agree that supply/demand are a big part of the issue, that does not mean it is not inflation. If the prices in general increase over a period of time, is inflation.

Also consider that Supply/Demand has two factors. I saw the prices on star forge yesterday and i doubt is people flooding market, it looks more like there is less people purchasing so the prices go down. As the crafting meta has become too old, most people are already on 7.X BIS (or close to BIS if ignoring new Operation), BW releasing less frequent and less amount of CM items, GS being too repetitive; well that can bring people to need/want less packs/augments. If BW gring a new craft meta, and knowing them instead of lowering rarity they will increase it, prices are likely to increase again.

A good portion of the problem came with BW increasing the rarity/time required of crafting way too much with 6.X than what it was in 5.X

Other good portion, was 'money for (almost)nothing' policy that fueled and allowed the first to grow uncontrollably until the ecuation of time required for casuals players (the big chunk of this game) was too different from what it used to be.

Those factors altered the average player 'purchasing power': A player doing some activities X hours managed to purchase Y amount of goods. A player doing same activities for same amount of hours can purchase only a small fraction of the same goods.

[-PLASMA-]

I say it once again, theres only one solution to this problem which is very simple:
 

Get rid of all credits from all players/accounts, make fresh restart for everyone.

Reduce credit rewards from quests and add limitations for CC items on GTN

 

We can all keep arguing about potential fixes for another 5000 posts, in the end they wont help.

I know this is the harshest decision to go, but its the only way to fix the economy.

Yet people come out of their holes crying about their wealth they accumulated over the years and dont want to lose it.

Kinda sad to see people demanding fixes yet dont want to give up something for the greater good.

Pro tip: You can get 100b credits for 18$ on third party services.

 

If I hAvE tO gIvE uP aLl My WeAlTh, I qUiT tHe GaMe. So LeT's KeEp DiScUsSiNg FoR aNoThEr 5000 PoSts!

Edited April 14, 2023 by -PLASMA-

[ReKabNad]

6 hours ago, -PLASMA- said:

Pro tip: You can get 100b credits for 18$ on third party services.

I don't believe you.  For research and data gathering purposes, I'm going to need to know the name of at least one of those services. 

I have spoken. 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

8 hours ago, -PLASMA- said:

Pro tip: You can get 100b credits for 18$ on third party services.

Pro tip: you support the gold sellers, and you are supporting the main cause for inflation in the game.

[microstyles]

I want to discuss a couple viewpoints I've been seeing stated as fact here and elsewhere:

1) There are too many credits generated currently during normal gameplay, and this is a primary driver of inflation. Comparable credit sinks are required to offset them.

2) It is not realistic to generate enough credits during normal gameplay to meaningfully participate in the economy

I don't think these can both be true. If credits generated in game were significantly contributing to inflation, you'd be able to farm them at a rate to buy whatever you wanted.

From my (somewhat limited) experience with the game #2 seems to mostly be true. I know through my play that my GTN trading has removed far more credits from the game (through the tax) than I will likely ever generate through gameplay. If #2 is true then #1 can't be, so the massive amount of credits in the economy must have come from illegitimate sources and/or legitimate sources that are no longer available.

I'm bringing this up because the two issues have different solutions. #1 needs sinks that are relative to the credit generating sources, like repair costs and maybe the new quick travel fees. #2 needs sinks that are relative to the size of the economy, like the GTN tax or the ever-increasing credit cost of buying GS levels.

I've only been playing since October though, so I could be missing something, lmk if I did.

 

[Jdast]

9 hours ago, -PLASMA- said:

Yet people come out of their holes crying about their wealth they accumulated over the years and dont want to lose it.

Kinda sad to see people demanding fixes yet dont want to give up something for the greater good.

If I hAvE tO gIvE uP aLl My WeAlTh, I qUiT tHe GaMe. So LeT's KeEp DiScUsSiNg FoR aNoThEr 5000 PoSts!

I'm not crawling out of some hole and crying.

I'm standing outside loud and proud stating with 100% certainty that if Bioware does a credit wipe / reset I will instantly quit and never look back.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for you, we won't be able to call whether I'm bluffing or not because Bioware (despite some bad decisions in the past) would not do something so monumentally and catastrophically stupid.

I am highly confident that such a decision would result in the death of the game. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I doubt I'm alone in being the only one who would instantly quit.

Dasty

Edited April 14, 2023 by Jdast
Stupid Typos!