Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[DWho]

15 minutes ago, -PLASMA- said:

Classic "fu ck logic" answer.

They aint the reason for inflation, they simply deliver a third party service. The reason for the inflation are the dozens of credit exploits in the past 10 years as well as the massive credit rewards for quests. Whether those gold sellers used these exploits or not no one can answer. 1 year ago you paid 100$, now you pay 18$.

Credit sellers are most certainly a large part of the problem. They used exploits (no question at all here), farmed mats incessantly (until bioware nerfed that after years of it going on), bought up credits that would otherwise have passed out of the game when people left, currently buy credits from guilds and people at the credit caps (which were designed to keep credit totals in check), etc. Without credit sellers there would be far less credits in the economy.

Notably, that third party service is against the Terms of Service everyone "signs" when they install the game. Buyers and seller should both be punished harshly.

[Toraak]

7 minutes ago, Jdast said:

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 myself, of course, but I doubt I'm alone in being the only one who would instantly quit.

Dasty

I would also leave, and I've been a sub since launch. I played the 1st day of early access and if they wiped my credits I've earned throughout my gameplay I would have no issues walking away. 

 

As someone that doesn't care about CM items or cosmetics, I don't see much of an issue with the economy anyway. If I need something in game I will craft it myself, and farm the materials by hand. Which I did for the gold Augments. 

 

Like Dasty says however BW wouldn't be that silly to wipe out all of the credits regardless.

[Balameb]

46 minutes ago, microstyles said:

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.

 

1 and 2(ish) 'can' be true at the same time. That is how constant inflation works: you generate a lot of credits and that drives inflation, problem is by the time you acumulated enough credits to purchase one item, price increased and you need to keep saving more time, then it happens again. Eventually you may catch up to your target item, but it took longer than expected.

Quote

 

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.

 

Up to just before 7.0 started, the game was indeed in #1. For 5+ years at least, the economy acumulated more credits that we can imagine.

BW did implemented two good things with 7.0 to combat generation:

* They removed the credits rewards that each conquest objective.

* They heavily reduced the amount of (high vendor value) loot.

Sadly they did also a couple things wrong:

* They did not increase repair costs (now they are trying to correct that one)

* They removed amplifiers that was a credit sink. While amplifiers were not a successful system, it was mostly because it was poorly implemented. A couple changes (like the removal of RNG) would have been better than a complete removal.

* The inflation was so high that a lot of transactions needs to be done outside GTN, avoiding the tax. P2P transactions to avoid a tax was always a thing, but now is required for a lot of items.

 

That is why, while economy problem was mostly like #1 (+ a couple exploits), it was for such a long time that the solution needs to be in the line for #2: Big sinks, both as one times and constant (fix tax evasion loophole). 

[microstyles]

4 hours ago, Balameb said:

That is why, while economy problem was mostly like #1 (+ a couple exploits), it was for such a long time that the solution needs to be in the line for #2: Big sinks, both as one times and constant (fix tax evasion loophole).

Yeah that makes sense. Prices seem to be going in the right direction for the moment at least. Ultimate pack prices are less than half what they were when I started.

[DWho]

39 minutes ago, microstyles said:

Ultimate pack prices are less than half what they were when I started.

There is a huge glut of them now that they are part of GS rewards. You can't trade the packs from GS directly but they do drive down the demand for unopened Ultimate Packs (and thus their price). The same is happening with OEMs and RPMs as people have a lot more tech frags to spare to buy them and sell them increasing the supply (which lowers prices)

[hillerbees]

Calls to reset all players credits to zero might be extreme - though what would be wrong if they reduced everyone's credits to 10% - its all relative - even if you are holding stock of armors and other non credit items the buying power of those items would fall in the same way.  At least the economy could get back on the GTN instead of being through direct trades.

The current nickel and diming charges on quick travel will take forever to capture my billions - if it took me most of 10 years to accumulate this when I was playing almost every day and now I'm only inspired to play a couple of days in the week at best, its going to be some job getting me and others to spend them away.

[Gokkus]

8 hours ago, hillerbees said:

Calls to reset all players credits to zero might be extreme - though what would be wrong if they reduced everyone's credits to 10% - its all relative - even if you are holding stock of armors and other non credit items the buying power of those items would fall in the same way.  At least the economy could get back on the GTN instead of being through direct trades.

The current nickel and diming charges on quick travel will take forever to capture my billions - if it took me most of 10 years to accumulate this when I was playing almost every day and now I'm only inspired to play a couple of days in the week at best, its going to be some job getting me and others to spend them away.

You are on the right track here if you really want to combat both inflation and the money gap between rich and poor. 

A more elegant solution though would be to 'tax' people 10% of all their money every month. That will eventually fix the economy issues.

Plus it will only make half the players quit instead of all of them in the event they remove all credits from everyone

Edited April 17, 2023 by Gokkus

[Jdast]

50 minutes ago, Gokkus said:

You are on the right track here if you really want to combat both inflation and the money gap between rich and poor. 

A more elegant solution though would be to 'tax' people 10% of all their money every month. That will eventually fix the economy issues.

Plus it will only make half the players quit instead of all of them in the event they remove all credits from everyone

Count me in the category that would insta-quit. I hope you were being facetious with your last sentence. If you think SWTOR can afford to lose half its player base, well, suffice it to say we should just agree to disagree. 

Fortunately, we'll never know because Bioware will never implement such a draconian solution, largely because SWTOR would lose far more than 50% of its population. I am highly confident the game would die. 

I have zero sympathy for brand new players who start an MMORPG and think they should be able to afford the best cosmetic items. Last year, I started playing FFXIV (subsequently left b/c I didn't like the combat and the music grated on my nerves, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.)  I could level just fine but my outfits were pretty ridiculous. Welcome to MMORPGs. By definition, they are an investment in time and character development.

I understand players have gotten credits through nefarious means; e.g. third party credit sales and exploits. That's on Bioware. I have earned every credit of mine through legitimate means. Your proposed tax would disincentivize me to the point I would play ESO 100% of the time as opposed to just 70% of the time.

Sadly, for you, we'll never know because BW will never go this route. They can tax Player to Player trades, which I support (though there are some pretty obvious ways to avoid this), but if it's an auto 10% reduction every month -- I'm gone.

Dasty

Edited April 17, 2023 by Jdast
Stupid Typos!

[Traceguy]

On 4/14/2023 at 2:51 AM, -PLASMA- said:

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!

Taking money away from unlazy people won't make lazy people like yourself any richer. I can make 1b credits a week. Take my credits away and in 1 week, you'll still be wasting time crying about how others have more money than you

Edited April 17, 2023 by Traceguy

[ceryxp]

21 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

I can make 1b credits a week.

This needs clarification.  Do you actually generate one billion credits per week or do you transfer one billion credits that are already in the game from other players to yourself?

If it is the former, that you generate one billion credits per week, then the source of inflation is clear -- too many credits are being put into circulation and not enough are being removed.  If it is the latter then your ability to transfer one billion credits per week would disappear if all credits were wiped.

Edit -- and to be clear, I am not an advocate for wiping all credits from the game.  That is a nuclear option that would not actually resolve the issue.

Edited April 17, 2023 by ceryxp

[Traceguy]

1 minute ago, ceryxp said:

This needs clarification.  Do you actually generate one billion credits per week or do you transfer one billion credits that are already in the game from other players to yourself?

Irrelevant. Take the money from from everyone in the game and I'll still be doing both.

Earning through generation, and earning it through hand-to-hand.

[DWho]

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

Irrelevant. Take the money from from everyone in the game and I'll still be doing both.

Earning through generation, and earning it through hand-to-hand.

Technically it's not irrelevant because they have to be dealt with in different ways. Player to Player transfers of credits need transaction taxes while actually generating the credits requires reductions in rewards and credit sinks. Credit sinks do virtually nothing to player to player transactions and taxes do little to nothing in terms of credit generation as they are currently configured.

Both need to be looked at to bring the economy under control but the untaxed player to player transactions are the elephant in the room that will keep any credit sink from working in any meaningful way.

[Traceguy]

2 hours ago, DWho said:

Technically it's not irrelevant because they have to be dealt with in different ways. Player to Player transfers of credits need transaction taxes while actually generating the credits requires reductions in rewards and credit sinks. Credit sinks do virtually nothing to player to player transactions and taxes do little to nothing in terms of credit generation as they are currently configured.

Both need to be looked at to bring the economy under control but the untaxed player to player transactions are the elephant in the room that will keep any credit sink from working in any meaningful way.

You can look at it and adjust it until the end of time. There will always be 2 kinds of players.

1. Those who earn the credits.

2. Those who waste time that could be spent earning credits crying that "group 1" has more credits than them.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Traceguy

[Gokkus]

15 hours ago, Jdast said:

Count me in the category that would insta-quit. I hope you were being facetious with your last sentence. If you think SWTOR can afford to lose half its player base, well, suffice it to say we should just agree to disagree. 

Fortunately, we'll never know because Bioware will never implement such a draconian solution, largely because SWTOR would lose far more than 50% of its population. I am highly confident the game would die. 

I have zero sympathy for brand new players who start an MMORPG and think they should be able to afford the best cosmetic items. Last year, I started playing FFXIV (subsequently left b/c I didn't like the combat and the music grated on my nerves, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.)  I could level just fine but my outfits were pretty ridiculous. Welcome to MMORPGs. By definition, they are an investment in time and character development.

I understand players have gotten credits through nefarious means; e.g. third party credit sales and exploits. That's on Bioware. I have earned every credit of mine through legitimate means. Your proposed tax would disincentivize me to the point I would play ESO 100% of the time as opposed to just 70% of the time.

Sadly, for you, we'll never know because BW will never go this route. They can tax Player to Player trades, which I support (though there are some pretty obvious ways to avoid this), but if it's an auto 10% reduction every month -- I'm gone.

Dasty

Oh you are right, realistically it would be a very bad move. I just meant that it would be a better idea than the more rediculous 'remove all credits' suggestions because that would kill the game almost instantly. 

So it would be a better solution, though still a bad one and it would bum me out a lot. So I am not seriously advocating it, though it would not make me quit either.

[TrixxieTriss]

On 4/15/2023 at 2:52 AM, Jdast said:

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

As usual Dasty is right.

So many players would quite the game in disgust, the game would collapse & be shuttered so fast it would give those remaining, whip lash 😎

[hillerbees]

Its interesting that folks have commented that players would quit the game if credits were wiped.  Bioware are basically ignoring credits for the most part at the moment and people are not leaving....well not leaving specifically for this reason.

The rare crafting mats that we need to gear up are the new currencies now. 

It doesn't matter if you have 100 billion credits or 1 million credits if their purchasing power is the same.  Back near the start of the game I bought the Revan helmet for about 8 million and now I'm guessing its worth multiples of that...but the amount of credits in game have multiplied in tandem....so is it more expensive now, less expensive or the same?

Anyway, the main currency in the game should have a meaningful and realistic value but charging people for quick travel is going to take years to have any real effect I fear and also rub players up the wrong way.

[Jdast]

36 minutes ago, hillerbees said:

Its interesting that folks have commented that players would quit the game if credits were wiped.  Bioware are basically ignoring credits for the most part at the moment and people are not leaving....well not leaving specifically for this reason.

The rare crafting mats that we need to gear up are the new currencies now. 

It doesn't matter if you have 100 billion credits or 1 million credits if their purchasing power is the same.  Back near the start of the game I bought the Revan helmet for about 8 million and now I'm guessing its worth multiples of that...but the amount of credits in game have multiplied in tandem....so is it more expensive now, less expensive or the same?

Anyway, the main currency in the game should have a meaningful and realistic value but charging people for quick travel is going to take years to have any real effect I fear and also rub players up the wrong way.

This is fundamentally incorrect for a very basic reason: You are ignoring the time invested not only in terms of character development but in catch-up time mechanics for credits.

For example, let's assume Bioware does a 90% baseline credit wipe for all players.

Player A has 100 million credits, so it would go down to 10 million. Player B has 1 million credits so it goes to 100k credits. 

Player A has now wasted 90 million credits of time playing the game either through playing the GTN, questing, etc. Player B loses only 900k worth credits. Guess which one took longer to accrue?

It is a lot easier for Player B to get to get back to that 1 million credit mark than it is for Player A to get back up to 100 million mark.

You assume, quite incorrectly, that the only variable that matters is relative purchasing power. You are forgetting the time it takes to gather credits, develop characters, etc.

Every single proposed solution I've seen for some form of credit wipes, whether it is a complete reset or even a percent reduction, would cause me to quit because it would completely disincentivize my desire to play. Fortunately, I like ESO as much as SWTOR and would just spend 100% of my time there.

But no worries on my part because Bioware is not going to do this. If they do, as Trixxie noted, the game would die so fast the remaining players would get whiplash. Your solution would level the playing field, but only because it would level the game like a natural disaster hit, utterly destroying it.

Dasty

Edited April 18, 2023 by Jdast
Stupid Typos!

[DWho]

You could accomplish the same thing as a partial credit wipe, the reduction of credits in game, with big taxes on big trades or more specifically making sure every player to player transaction actually removes credits from the game proportionate to the value of the items traded. It doesn't need to be perfect, but simply having categories (bronze, silver, gold, platinum for CM items or green, blue, purple, gold for gear) with a set tax applied to complete the transaction, a transaction fee per se. There would still be the people that don't want the economy fixed (because it devalues their stockpiles) to complain but a lot of the people threatening to quit would likely be alright with a "tax" approach as opposed to a "deletion" approach.

[hillerbees]

44 minutes ago, Jdast said:

This is fundamentally incorrect for a very basic reason: You are ignoring the time invested not only in terms of character development but in catch-up time mechanics for credits.

For example, let's assume Bioware does a 90% baseline credit wipe for all players.

Player A has 100 million credits, so it would go down to 10 million. Player B has 1 million credits so it goes to 100k credits. 

Player A has now wasted 90 million credits of time playing the game either through playing the GTN, questing, etc. Player B loses only 900k worth credits. Guess which one took longer to accrue?

It is a lot easier for Player B to get to get back to that 1 million credit mark than it is for Player A to get back up to 100 million mark.

You assume, quite incorrectly, that the only variable that matters is relative purchasing power. You are forgetting the time it takes to gather credits, develop characters, etc.

Every single proposed solution I've seen for some form of credit wipes, whether it is a complete reset or even a percent reduction, would cause me to quit because it would completely disincentivize my desire to play. Fortunately, I like ESO as much as SWTOR and would just spend 100% of my time there.

But no worries on my part because Bioware is not going to do this. If they do, as Trixxie noted, the game would die so fast the remaining players would get whiplash. Your solution would level the playing field, but only because it would level the game like a natural disaster hit, utterly destroying it.

Dasty

The purchasing power of credits is all that matters.  If you have a pile of credits and never use them for anything what good are they?!  Wiping a percentage would of course have a bigger hit on richer players - I mean if one player is brand new and has no credits they lose nothing.  But the purpose is for the betterment of the game, not to knock a rich player off his/her throne. 

If you had the most credits of all players in the game and everyone lost 90% ...you are still the richest player in the game after the wipe.

I hear what you are saying about the amount of time spent earning the credits but once again you are ignoring the fact that everyone else will have had the same rule applied to them....you are not being singled out.

Bioware have removed crafting materials in the past and given a pittance of compensation after a short time to use them up and even if you had a big store of them it went ahead regardless....same for amps and set bonuses however applied....gear is often devalued despite the time and effort finessing it.

I am sympathetic to your views as it took me forever to earn my stash too but its no fun sitting in an environment where the gtn cannot handle trades or people have to suck up the fact that they cannot afford reasonable items because wealthy players can re-list and jack up the prices for even basic things because they have been around for years.

There is a lot that needs fixing in this game - crafting especially and a better cadence of one off events - the content is stale and the economy is not something that should hamstring newer players.  I'd rather they deal with this fast and get busy producing vibrant content.

[ceryxp]

1 hour ago, Jdast said:

Fortunately, I like ESO as much as SWTOR and would just spend 100% of my time there.

I just bought ESO with all of the expansions on Steam for ~$30, and I hear it is as solo-friendly an MMO as is SWTOR.  Now I just need to get it downloaded (130 Gb, wheeze).

[ImmortalLowlife]

Imo if they really wanna make a dent in the amount of credits floating around, then they need to be taxing direct player to player sales. These are typically the upper echelon "rich" players selling stuff to each other. Tax those sales, and tax them a considerably higher rate than the gtn tax (ie a 30-40% tax). 

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, ImmortalLowlife said:

Imo if they really wanna make a dent in the amount of credits floating around, then they need to be taxing direct player to player sales. These are typically the upper echelon "rich" players selling stuff to each other. Tax those sales, and tax them a considerably higher rate than the gtn tax (ie a 30-40% tax). 

Actually all BioWare really need to do is fix the GTN tax avoidance loop holes that’s created by player to player trading outside of the GTN. 

The 8% GTN tax can take out significant amounts of Credits if applied to direct player to player trades. 

But for this to work, BioWare need to make a few fundamental system changes that will have a developmental cost for them associated with it. So it’s wether they are willing to spend that to fix the problem. 

This is process they could follow to make changes to the systems.

1. Increase the character personal credit capacity above 4 billion credits (cap yet to be discussed & rationally determined)

2. Increase the GTN sales cap higher than the current 1 billion (cap yet to be discussed, but obviously not more than a characters credit capacity)

3. Add the same GTN tax to all credits traded between players outside of the GTN. Wether it’s “gifting” credits or trading for items.

4. A change in how player to player traded items outside of the GTN are handled. If they are traded for credits & not “gifted” for free, those items are taxed at the same rate as the GTN tax

4a. Cartel Market items traded outside of the GTN would become legacy bound & may not be resold or traded.

4b. Crafted items or items picked up in the game & traded outside the GTN would not be legacy bound & may still be resold or traded.

4c. Limit the amount of credits that can be traded or “gifted” between players (cap to be discussed & rationally determined to curtail 3rd party credit selling services)

This effectively closes off the GTN tax avoidance loop holes without disturbing the market unduly. It also allows friends or guilds to still gift CM items & other things directly to others. But makes sure all credits are taxed & also stops CM items from becoming the defacto currency to circumvent the tax.

People have already shown that BioWare have addressed the issue of too many credits being produced in the game.
So closing the tax loop holes will work to slow, then halt inflation over time. And as long as BioWare are vigilant for any credit exploits or poorly designed credit rewards, then we should even see deflation over the long term. 

But if BioWare wanted to speed up the deflation process, they could potentially add a wealth tax on items sold higher than “x” amount on the GTN (wealth tax & trigger to be discussed)

Here’s some basic maths using the current 8% GTN tax

100 x 0.08 = 8 

1000 x 0.08 = 80

10,000 x 0.08 = 800

100,000 x 0.08 = 8,000

1,000,000 x 0.08 = 80,000

10,000,000 x 0.08 = 800,000

100,000,000 x 0.08 = 8,000,000

1,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 80,000,000

4,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 320,000,000

8,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 640,000,000

10,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 800,000,000

As you can see, even without a wealth tax added, closing the GTN tax loop holes & increasing the GTN cap, would remove vast sums of credits from the games economy. Over time, those high prices couldn’t be sustained if BioWare keep credit generation under control in normal game play. Eventually prices would drop again. 

This is a much better way to remove excess credits by targeting the extremely wealthy in the game instead of nickel & dimming new or less well off players with credit sinks like Quick traveling. 

Consider this : 

1. The maximum QT cost (tax) is 5,000 credits. 

2. The tax on just 1 item sold on the GTN for 1,000,000,000 credits. That’s 80,000,000 taxed credits removed from the game in 1 sale.

3. You would need to Quick Travel 16,000 times at 5,000 credits to remove 80,000,000 credits. 

4. Say you QT 10 times an hour. You would need to play 1,600 hours to remove 80,000,000 credits that 1 sale on the GTN does in minutes. 

At the end of the day. If BioWare are really serious about getting the games inflation & economy under control, they really only need to fix the GTN tax avoidance that’s happening & increase the GTN sales cap. Then keep a firm control on how many credits are being generated in the game. 

Everything else they’ve proposed or players have suggested in this thread isn’t needed. Especially some of the extremely damaging & extremes ideas I’ve read, like taking everyone’s credits & starting over. Which would cause the biggest player exodus the games ever seen since shortly after launch. So much so that it would end up shuttering the game.

It would be fantastic if BioWare could revisit this thread & explain their next steps to us & the time frame they expect it to happen. Then we can stop debating this over & over 😉
 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[fabsus]

I think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. Your demand for over-regulation is more likely to lead to more problems than it solves. We are still talking about software here. 

Inflation is exacerbated by a shortage of products as demand increases. The increased demand results, for example, from the disastrous reward strategy from patch 6.x. The parallel decrease in supply due to the loss of many players caused prices to rise sharply and steadily until we exceeded the GTN cap. This caused a massive collapse in the supply quantity and the prices exploded. 

This development can be seen very well in the prices for hyper crates. 

Since prices are now in the billions, former suppliers sell their goods only very sparsely, if at all. After all, it has to be actively offered in the trade channel. For me, for example, that's about 10-20min. a week. So that's between 0.1 and 0.2% of the previous time. 

Simply increasing the GTN cap to the player's credit cap would result in considerably more offers, but they would be made via the GTN and thus taxed. More supply also results in price competition and prices fall again. 

If, at the same time, we get a grip on the fact that absurd amounts of credits are not generated and thus a strongly increased demand arises, the problem will solve itself. Your list of tax sums shows well how quickly sums are removed from the system. However, for a better calculation in my head, since many people have a problem with this, I would also want to raise the tax to 10%. 

Perhaps as a small example. There was a small bidding race between just 3 sellers for the same item. This item started at an offer price of 5 billion. By the end of the week, the asking price was only 1.6 billion. And there were only 3 active sellers in the channel. 

Just raising the GTN limit to the level of the player credit cap should bring about a significant improvement and long-term reduction.  Without over-regulation with potential programming errors.

 

You can see that this system would work, for example, by the fact that there are numerous other cartel market items on all servers, with a higher drop chance, which are sold at very low prices. For example, copper and silver ranged weapons. There is a wide range, with less demand, and prices are often well below 100,000 Cr. And we are just talking about the rare items. 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by fabsus

[TrixxieTriss]

49 minutes ago, fabsus said:

I think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. Your demand for over-regulation is more likely to lead to more problems than it solves. We are still talking about software here. 

Inflation is exacerbated by a shortage of products as demand increases. The increased demand results, for example, from the disastrous reward strategy from patch 6.x. The parallel decrease in supply due to the loss of many players caused prices to rise sharply and steadily until we exceeded the GTN cap. This caused a massive collapse in the supply quantity and the prices exploded. 

This development can be seen very well in the prices for hyper crates. 

Since prices are now in the billions, former suppliers sell their goods only very sparsely, if at all. After all, it has to be actively offered in the trade channel. For me, for example, that's about 10-20min. a week. So that's between 0.1 and 0.2% of the previous time. 

Simply increasing the GTN cap to the player's credit cap would result in considerably more offers, but they would be made via the GTN and thus taxed. More supply also results in price competition and prices fall again. 

If, at the same time, we get a grip on the fact that absurd amounts of credits are not generated and thus a strongly increased demand arises, the problem will solve itself. Your list of tax sums shows well how quickly sums are removed from the system. However, for a better calculation in my head, since many people have a problem with this, I would also want to raise the tax to 10%. 

Perhaps as a small example. There was a small bidding race between just 3 sellers for the same item. This item started at an offer price of 5 billion. By the end of the week, the asking price was only 1.6 billion. And there were only 3 active sellers in the channel. 

Just raising the GTN limit to the level of the player credit cap should bring about a significant improvement and long-term reduction.  Without over-regulation with potential programming errors.

 

You can see that this system would work, for example, by the fact that there are numerous other cartel market items on all servers, with a higher drop chance, which are sold at very low prices. For example, copper and silver ranged weapons. There is a wide range, with less demand, and prices are often well below 100,000 Cr. And we are just talking about the rare items. 

 

The cynic in me says it sounds like you want to keep the tax loop holes open to keep exploiting them. 

Otherwise, why would you be for increasing the GTN sales cap, but against closing the Tax loopholes 🤷🏻‍♀️

Its the tax loopholes that have accelerated the inflation. BioWare themselves actually understand this. Which is why they have acknowledged that GTN tax avoidance is part of the problem. 

And if you’re only worried about coding bugs, you should also be against them increasing the GTN sales cap & player credit limits. Which are just as likely to cause as many or more bugs as closing the tax loopholes coding would.

[fabsus]

44 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

[...]
Its the tax loopholes that have accelerated the inflation. BioWare themselves actually understand this. Which is why they have acknowledged that GTN tax avoidance is part of the problem. [...]

And if you’re only worried about coding bugs, you should also be against them increasing the GTN sales cap & player credit limits. Which are just as likely to cause as many or more bugs as closing the tax loopholes coding would.

Your insinuation is quite impertinent and also inappropriate. However, based on your forum history, it's easy to see that you try to personally defame other commentators at the slightest hint of criticism, without any basis whatsoever. 

Perhaps you should advise the cynic in you to keep his fingers still.

I also think that I have explained in the simplest possible terms how inflation is developing and that it is still very easy to follow its course using various objects. We are not talking about some rocket science that is difficult to understand, but about the basics of the market economy. 

Your interpretation of any findings is also quite distorted. The evasion of the tax is actually not the problem/cause, but merely a consequence. I have already described that, too, as well as why inflation increases exponentially as a result. According to your statements here, inflation would then have to apply uniformly to all items. However, a look at the GTN disproves this. 
quod erat demonstrandum

Perhaps you should question the effort behind your demands and how many systems you want to intervene in. This alone makes the rights system much more complicated and inevitably leads to an increased moderation effort.

Furthermore, the assertion that merely raising existing values will lead to more problems than the complete restructuring of the rights and trading system is rather a case for stories from the fairytale forest. Less for a problem oriented discussion.