Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[OlBuzzard]

3 minutes ago, parchedgoose said:

Back in the very beginning it used to cost credits for everything we did and even getting off the starting planet most of us were still to broke to do much of anything.    Is this where we are headed now?  If so the number of people who hit the exit door will be huge and those who try to start will realize the futility of it the same way it did back when.   Don't believe me, look back at the numbers.   Not to mention there will be a new season..  THE RISE OF THE GOLD SELLERS, Pt. II.  Even the whales will find a new outlet.   The Cartel Mkt. will most likely collapse and the Hutts will be looking at you Dev's saying, "Just wut did you do?"

I guarantee you if the CM gets hurt too bad things will pop in a hurry (If things haven't already stated down said path of darkness).

[parchedgoose]

Another thought.   Back when subscribers were fleeing SWTOR was bleeding $ so to supplement they came up with the CM which was the start.   People could buy and resell at huge profits.  Soon crafting pretty much disappeared where most of us made some of the credits needed for basic survival and the CM grew larger/charged more/ gave less in return, mostly trash due to RNG.   So, here we are yet they were the ones who created the monster than ran amok and now they blame us and want to penalize us as a response.  GO figure.

[OlBuzzard]

8 minutes ago, parchedgoose said:

Another thought.   Back when subscribers were fleeing SWTOR was bleeding $ so to supplement they came up with the CM which was the start.   People could buy and resell at huge profits.  Soon crafting pretty much disappeared where most of us made some of the credits needed for basic survival and the CM grew larger/charged more/ gave less in return, mostly trash due to RNG.   So, here we are yet they were the ones who created the monster than ran amok and now they blame us and want to penalize us as a response.  GO figure.

ROFL !!

Ain't it the ever-loving truth!!!

 

[Blakinik]

I'm going to throw out one of the most unpopular items out there BUT it would solve the problem almost overnight.

Make everything "Bind to Legacy".  Once you use it, its bound for eternity.  However if you don't use it, you can purchase a direct "Bind on Equip" which is tradeable once.  On completion of the trade, it again reverts to "Bind on Legacy" which would then require another "Bind on Equip" conversion.  Then charge whatever rate as a tax on any credit exchange.  If I send my friend 1 million credits, and the tax rate is 10% they would get 900,000 credits.  In fact, have a built in little calculation box in which tells you the amount of credits you would need to send to equal some number on the receivers side.

This would likely be highly unpopular, but if you don't sell on the GTN, you will still get hit on the trade.  The only "circumventing" would be a quasi barter system, but even then you would be paying to convert to "Bind on Equip" to make the trade.  It targets those that have high level credits, while letting those that are not playing markets and speculating on the GTN the chance to not get hit with price inflation.

[robwettengel]

There is something that all we players are missing: the dimensions of the problem. Eric, if we could get some game economy data in the thread that would be terrific. What has been the aggregate credit supply year over year and what are the yearly and monthly credit inflows and outflows? 

Let us not belittle the notion of high price, one shot credit sinks. They will help reduce the credit supply faster. My recommendation for this would be to add some gambling terminals on Nar Shadaa that would offer decos and old in-game gear from the early days (old gear, crafting schematics for old gear, Jawa junk) There could be several different chips offered to play these machines, with each higher level chip costing more credits, but offering a greater chance of scoring some sweet loot.

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, yastruyastru said:

Yes, this is working as intended. If you spend time to find a buyer for something, and meet him with in person, why should you be taxed same as someone that put the item on auction house and forgot about it for 3 days? 

I absolutely do not want this to be capped or taxed in any way.  

Its also good thing as a MMO aspect that players buy and sell items to each other instead of putting it on GTN and that should not be penalized, even more, it should be incentivized. 

Perfect example of why we need to stop people selling outside of the GTN. They are purposely avoiding the sales tax. 
It’s this sort of tax avoidance behaviour that accelerates the inflation in the game. 

Thankfully BioWare have recognised this is a major problem & will be moving to close this loop hole in the near future. 

So you better get any of your “tax avoidance trading” done ASAP because you can guarantee BioWare won’t tell you the timeline of when that change drops. The first you’ll know about it is reading it in the Patch Notes on Patch Day 😉

[TrixxieTriss]

56 minutes ago, Blakinik said:

I'm going to throw out one of the most unpopular items out there BUT it would solve the problem almost overnight.

Make everything "Bind to Legacy".  Once you use it, its bound for eternity.  However if you don't use it, you can purchase a direct "Bind on Equip" which is tradeable once.  On completion of the trade, it again reverts to "Bind on Legacy" which would then require another "Bind on Equip" conversion.  Then charge whatever rate as a tax on any credit exchange.  If I send my friend 1 million credits, and the tax rate is 10% they would get 900,000 credits.  In fact, have a built in little calculation box in which tells you the amount of credits you would need to send to equal some number on the receivers side.

This would likely be highly unpopular, but if you don't sell on the GTN, you will still get hit on the trade.  The only "circumventing" would be a quasi barter system, but even then you would be paying to convert to "Bind on Equip" to make the trade.  It targets those that have high level credits, while letting those that are not playing markets and speculating on the GTN the chance to not get hit with price inflation.

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. 

[LeMage]

Most every game I've played I've been skint.  I couldn't fly my ship from Coruscant to the next planet when the game 1st came out, I had to go back and kill more Justicars etc to farm credits so i could leave the spaceport. Eleven years later I might have 6 billion, I wasn't so bothered with amassing wealth and just mucked around having fun. Some of the player suggestions are a bit scary for me though. 1 billion for this a billion and a half for that. It seems that while 11 years ago 6 billion was loads, now it borders on skint again. Yes I would likely use Cr for somethings that are now only available with CC. But CC is oftentimes expensive when you add currency exchange and GST/VAT - 5500CC costs $39.99. For me thats $53.54 CAD + 13%GST/VAT ($6.96) = $60.50. Sure its a personal choice to buy or not, its probably more likely I'd spend my billions (all 6 of them) on something in the Cartel Market.

[Lyriel]

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

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.

 

This point, in particular, shows me that you are not actually hearing what I am saying.

The point is not that you're not hurting the rich. It's that you are hurting everyone else disproportionately. The impact is punitive on the part of your player population that can afford it least. That you shot yourself in the foot is irrefutable. That doesn't require you to in turn shoot players in increasingly vital organs the fewer credits they possess.

You can do better, and you should do better.

[sharpenedstick]

In order to actually fix the economy, you have to first establish what your goals are.

Do you want to simply reduce the peak end of what the mega-rich have? Then you need wealth taxes that hit unused credits, high ticket items like credits -> cartel coins/rewards (which EAware absolutely doesn't want to do), and/or credits for loot currencies.

Do you want to reduce the amount of credits in the game generally? Impose taxes on all credit transfers, not just GTNs. Increase outflow by the convenience costs detailed in the OP, reduce credit rewards, make more items BoP/BoL.

Do you want to punish the poor but change nothing else? Follow the ideas in the OP and nothing else.

Here's how to fix the economy:

1. Accept you're going to make some people mad. Fortunately, a lot of them are idiots who use words like "communism" with no concept of what they mean, so their opinions can be disregarded.

2. Accept as a fundamental goal that you are taking money out of the game.

3. Make any plans clear and put a definite date out publicly. People who log in after should get a splash screen explaining what's going on and giving them some time to adjust.

4. Set on each account a credit limit that is much lower than currently allowed. Let's say 1 mil just for simplicity at the moment. This 1 mil number means nothing. It's just used for math. The actual cap could be whatever, but probably shouldn't exceed the 100 mil range, and I think should be around say 25 mil.

Then, apply that cap on a pro rata basis derived from the max character and legacy levels such that having a max level character and a max level legacy on the account grants the full 1 mil cap. Then, on a 50/50 basis, reduce the cap based on the ratio of the highest character level : max level and legacy level : max legacy.

For instance, given current values, a level 40 is 50% of max level, so that would give a cap of 250k (half of 500k) and if the legacy level of the account were 25 (50% of max), that's another 250k. So that that account would be capped at 500k out of a possible 1 mil cap (subscribers maybe get a higher cap, but the proportion principle is the same).

This makes it more time consuming to create mule accounts, since they'd need a max level character and max legacy level.

5. At a pre-defined and clearly advertised date, all credits above the cap are removed from all accounts ("taxed" let's say). For each faction, titles are awarded based on taxed amount tiers, with whoever got most gets a special title.

6. Well before the tax day, give special uses for credits like BoP items.

7. Allow people to temporarily exceed credit caps, then weekly on resets (the tuesdays when everything resets), tax back down to the cap. Again, award titles based on people getting taxed.

8. Put a sales tax on all credit exchanges, regardless of whether they are GTN, trade, or COA/mail. Also, put a "frequent transfer" penalty of some amount that escalates as more non-GTN transactions are done, and that decays over time as accounts don't make such transfers. This increases the inconvenience for credit sellers.

9. Make guilds a safe haven for credits, so that they aren't taxed and have a much larger cap. But don't allow members to withdraw credits from guilds, even the GM. They're only usable by the guild and for repair/quick travel costs.

10. Increase the credit sinks, but instead of a flat linear scale as proposed in the OP, the cost for repairs and QT is multiplied based on the ratio of the character/account's credit balance to its credit cap.

In short, you need to abandon linear thinking and adopt systems that scale. You also need to think about the behaviors you're trying to incentivize with your economic system. And finally, you need to accept that you're not going to fix the economy without a hard reset.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

Here's another idea for an ongoing credit sink, if you're looking for some: make a vendor, on Odessen or the Fleet (or both), that sells Locked Supply Crates for credits. I've had a character idea for a while that I've wanted to do, but there's only one armor set I like for it and I've never been able to get it despite hundreds of those boxes opened. While I don't mind farming for them, I would blow a ton of credits in a heartbeat to try and get it.

[Ierathel]

You want credit sinks. Bring back old conquest system with craft and xp.

[Hrafnhildur]

Credit sinks? I can think of a few ! 

- appearance should be modified with credits, let only change species to cost CC

- armors unlock in collections ( stuff from Odessen crates, not CM items) should cost credits not CC

- weapons from FP ( Fira vibroblade, for example) should cost CC to unlock in collections instead of being bound at equip

- armors from cosmetic vendor should cost credits, not tech fragments

- reintroduction of old retired armor sets ( the infamous RD-31A included) at a vendor, for credits, of course

- more decorations at Ruhnuk! Clan Vizla/Ordo/Fett/Beroya/Cadera banners, sold for credits

- the rugs from Spirit of Vengeance flashpoint and the Mythosaur skull-shaped lights above the doors from the same flashpoint sold on Odessen, i would pay 5-10 m for a rug!

 

 

 

[Gibonski]

Ban all win traders. There were enough submissions to identify them all. Same with raid sellers and all people who sell credits to 3rd party sites.

But you will not, since most of them play the game. 

Cost of stronghold and heroic travel makes sense, but quick travel? Tell that to new player level 24 on naar shadaa. He will run every single time, trust me.

Make character customisation cost credits instead of cartel coins. Tons of credits, like you did with new gear.

Bring back old gear and put a big credit sum on it. Maybe get ranked pvp recolors so that pvers can have their version as well. They did all that in wow, why can't you steal those ideas? 

If they can, so can you.

I don't know who came up with quick travel but Aakurb summed it up quite nicely:

On 2/9/2023 at 8:06 PM, Aakurb said:

Poor players will become poorer, rich players won't be affected. 

 

 

 

[RayJClarke]

Tacking the rampant credit inflation in the game is a good idea. These proposed methods however are a bad idea that will likely only cause further damage. Introducing credit bleeds like increased and new costs and charges will have such a little impact on the core issue while punishing and impoverishing new and casual players.

I can already see how many pug groups and raids will fall apart from repair cost rage quitters or lowbies who are out of credits after one wipe too many in those trickier fights. Nerfed daily areas that net such a lousy return from your time invested that they are no longer worth the bother to do.  Zipping between strongholds becoming an annoyance and a turn off when you see that cost screen pop up.

My humble suggestion to rein those credit billionaires would be to give them something worthwhile to splash that cash on, something like CM quality cosmetic items / decoration bundles for absurd credit costs. Incentivise the spending of credits in game rather than slap on some taxes to basic services, you`ll start to fix the problem and have a better game for it rather than trampling down on an already tired player base.

 

[Przemo_No]

1. Get rid of all those "WZ-accelerants", "FP-whatevers", "Conquest coins", all that stuff.  You have a perfect currency in game that are CREDITS. Make gear and all items purchasable by credits. Make it more expensive as the level rises.

2. Bring back the retired armors, weapons, whatever - make it expensive in CREDITS - those who will want it will pay for them.

3. Tax heavily GTN prices above certain level.

4. Tax player-to-player trades.

5. Indeed, create something that the multi-billionariries would be tempted to buy.

 

DO NOT make the quick travel payable - you will only hurt the poorest.

 

[Sarova]

Cost for Quick Travel (QT) seems a bit harsh as does cost for going to your stronghold since a lot of effort went into earning & unlocking QT and buying/unlocking strongholds.

(Yeah, I'm back - I saw points for defending in PvP and re-subbed since that was one of my feedback things 😁)

[DawnAskham]

14 hours ago, robwettengel said:

There is something that all we players are missing: the dimensions of the problem. Eric, if we could get some game economy data in the thread that would be terrific. What has been the aggregate credit supply year over year and what are the yearly and monthly credit inflows and outflows? 

Let us not belittle the notion of high price, one shot credit sinks. They will help reduce the credit supply faster. My recommendation for this would be to add some gambling terminals on Nar Shadaa that would offer decos and old in-game gear from the early days (old gear, crafting schematics for old gear, Jawa junk) There could be several different chips offered to play these machines, with each higher level chip costing more credits, but offering a greater chance of scoring some sweet loot.

In a thread from 2018 about the abysmal state of the economy at the time, credit sellers were offering around 5-6 million credits for one US dollar. Today, it is something north of 500-600 million credits, if not closer to a billion credits, for one US dollar.

Early in 6.0, I regularly purchased Master's Datacrons (boost) off the GTN for 50-60 million. As the 6.x cycles progressed, it became harder and harder to find them for less than 100 million. Today, I'm not sure what they sell for but it is for sure over a billion credits, which is over a 2000% increase in just a couple of years.

Anyways, we don't need a report of how many credits are on balance in the game to clearly see Bioware's management of the in-game economy has been an abject failure. 

What we need are assurances, commitment, and demonstrated action on the part of Bioware to staunch what has clearly been an epic tsunami of credits into the game, and a tsunami that cannot be explained simply by players playing the game (no gameplay activities have seen payouts increase by multiples of 10X-20X+ from expansion to expansion).

[LD_Little_Dragon]

1 hour ago, Przemo_No said:

1. Get rid of all those "WZ-accelerants", "FP-whatevers", "Conquest coins", all that stuff.  You have a perfect currency in game that are CREDITS. Make gear and all items purchasable by credits. Make it more expensive as the level rises.

2. Bring back the retired armors, weapons, whatever - make it expensive in CREDITS - those who will want it will pay for them.

3. Tax heavily GTN prices above certain level.

4. Tax player-to-player trades.

5. Indeed, create something that the multi-billionariries would be tempted to buy.

 

DO NOT make the quick travel payable - you will only hurt the poorest.

 

This, yes.  So many things, especially decorations, that I would buy with credits, but they're gated behind all those special currencies.  My currency tab is ridiculously long when so many things could be just plain credits, gate them behind reputation levels if you want, but let us buy things with pure credits.

Tech frags in particular.  Don't gate cosmetics behind a currency you need for actual equipment to play the game.

[OlBuzzard]

The single biggest issue that I see with so many of these ideas (and for the most part they are GOOD IDEAS) ... is that they compete with the sacred cash cow called the CM.

And in part ... the CM has a lot to do with how we got here in the first place.  It's not from buying/selling/trading ....  it's from all of the high end stuff that can only be found on the CM ... then those really popular (and VERY expensive) CM packages are broken into smaller pieces .. and sold for more and more and more! Soooo  (once again) where did all those massive amounts of credits come from?  Selling stuff does not generate credits.  Something else does!  THEN all of those greedy credits (on their own initiative) sneak their way into the pricing structures of everything out there!

Now then ... watch out!  Here comes the barb on the end of the hook that has been ignored all along.  We got use to the idea that if you want something that's really cool (granted it's appearance) ... where do you look?

Ask yourself one question.  When was the last time you found a complete set of armor that actually carried with it the stats AND the appearance that you actually were looking to achieve.  
** Smuggler
** Dark lord
** JK 
** Empire Trooper or 
** Sniper
What I do remember (before the appearance designer changes were even thought of) ... was a host of complaints about the design concepts being .... well frankly they were looking ..well ... ummm  (tries to think of a polite way to say it).  They honestly looked disgusting in many cases!  (yeah I cleaned that up too).   IF I HAVE THIS sequence correct... that IMO was one the main reasons that MODS became so popular before the appearance designer came along.  Mods were a much needed item to have.  We could not only use stuff that LOOKED good .. but we could also tweak the specks the way we wanted.  IMO MODS are still great today as well.

The problem of horrible looks was a valid argument.  A problem was evident  ... then the solution was introduced:  the CM.  The items on the CM (weapons and armor for specific examples) were classy and to this day are among some of the best you can find in game in SWTOR!   IMO, yes that is intentional.  

Soooo...  Just how far do we think we are going to get with ideas that compete with the CM?  This is the part that frustrates me the most!  Please don't misunderstand me!  I love a lot of these ideas as a means of getting players to spend a LOT of credits!  It is without question one of the best ways to make things happen.  Make ALL of those credit spending ideas BOP ... and literally hundreds of billions will evaporate in a much shorter time span than trying squeeze it out of the average person playing SWTOR!

 

[casirabit]

19 hours ago, parchedgoose said:

Another thought.   Back when subscribers were fleeing SWTOR was bleeding $ so to supplement they came up with the CM which was the start.   People could buy and resell at huge profits.  Soon crafting pretty much disappeared where most of us made some of the credits needed for basic survival and the CM grew larger/charged more/ gave less in return, mostly trash due to RNG.   So, here we are yet they were the ones who created the monster than ran amok and now they blame us and want to penalize us as a response.  GO figure.

This takes the fun out of things; I don't mean get rid of the CM shop, but how about giving some of those items as rewards for missions?  I have been playing FFXIV for the last few weeks, and while they have a shop, it is nothing like this one.  I have been awarded dyes, pets, and other things as rewards.  If I wish, I can also do my crafting or gathering (on one character).    You can have all the classes on one character if you wish.  I am taking all my magic users on one character, but I will create others for the other types, especially my archer. (But a quick note you start at level 1 for those other than the ones you are going into from your base class--etc. Arcanist-Scholar-Summoner (that is at the level you unlock those at)

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by casirabit

[OlBuzzard]

2 minutes ago, casirabit said:

This takes the fun out of things; I don't mean get rid of the CM shop, but how about giving some of those items as rewards for missions?  I have been playing FFXIV for the last few weeks, and while they have a shop, it is nothing like this one.  I have been awarded dyes, pets, and other things as rewards.  I can also do my crafting or gathering (on one character) if I wish.   

Kind of part of what I was discussing.  I agree that there are categories of items that could be used for players to get (even in GS) and make them available for players via other means other than just the CM.

However, given the sacred value of the CM that may be a long time coming (if at all).

BTW..  please drop me a PM regarding FFIV if you would please. (Thanks in advance).

[coachVV]

New player here, started 2 months ago. Can I ask why not just crack down on illegal gold sellers? Or, in this case, credit sellers. I am told that current prices are about $1.30 per billion. So a twenty smack will get you around 15B. As far as I can see, lots of people use it. Even players who are otherwise quite careful about obeying the ToS seem to feel there is no real chance of reprisal.

Adding in credit sinks will have the exact opposite effect of shutting these illegal sellers down. More people will spend more money on them as they want to overcome the cost of playing. The taxes, as currently designed, will actually drive inflation up, not down, and push the illicit credit economy higher. 

[xordevoreaux]

55 minutes ago, coachVV said:

Can I ask why not just crack down on illegal gold sellers?

Decent question.

If you just started two months ago, we are nowhere near as inundated with gold sellers as we have been in the past. There have been sweeps in the past to clear the gold sellers, but such were few and far between, too little, too late. The gold sellers had plenty of time and freedom to inject a lot of money between exploits and botting.

[parchedgoose]

Just one more point to make.  Much like in real life, profits first and that means you have to have a greater demand which leads the wagon train full circle to the CM.  EA/Bio found a way to create their own credit sink with our real money and that cash cow will never be sacrificed on the alter of greed.   SO instead they want to penalize the player with more in game credit sinks which will once again cause more purchases from the CM which require more CC's which once again use real money to purchase.   It is after all a huge shell game and we are being played.   There is after all a player based alternative for those who are willing to try.  Don't buy from the CM unless there is a specific item at a specific discounted price that you really need or want.  As for those hyper crates they offer, I can only say one thing after opening a few and that is THEY ARE TRASH spoiled even further by RNG,  Just my humble opinion.  So for now its a wait and see.    There is so much really broken with this game so is this the hill they want to climb instead?