Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[Achnaattwo]

might need more legacy banks made available .and the pref player  wallet cap increased

[DawnAskham]

7 hours ago, Gibonski said:

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

 

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

 

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

RPM prices and win trading did not destroy the economy, though the ridiculous grind Bioware put in front of gold augment mats combined with cheaters willing to win trade to obtain those mats combined with credit sellers offering an easy way to skip the grind for a few dollars certainly did not help.

Which is again why I believe changes like increased travel costs are pointless and doomed to failure unless this time, after ten plus years of failing to deal with win trading and whatever botting and exploiting is creating all the credits in the first place, Bioware is actually serious about managing their game and investing the resources to keep it reasonably 'clean'.

Edited February 14, 2023 by DawnAskham

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, ronin_chi_lao said:

Your twisting my words. Not all players play the gtn with cc and WILL buy from a credit seller for way cheaper then trying to sell something nice they got from cartel. They get 2 bil for 5 dollars (of real money) from a credit seller and get the augs and whatever else you suggested they need. Then that would be pay to win. 

This is something BioWare can easily stop by restricting player to player trades that involve credits above a certain amount. 

If they restricted the player to player trading to 1 million credits at a time, those credit sellers would go out of business fast. 

[Chryptyk]

31 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is something BioWare can easily stop by restricting player to player trades that involve credits above a certain amount. 

If they restricted the player to player trading to 1 million credits at a time, those credit sellers would go out of business fast. 

i would suggest 10m since that is the cheevo amount.  otherwise, i'm on board with killing p2p trades, and forcing sales back onto the gtn.  i would also suggest killing credit withdraws from guild banks as well so you can't launder funds through there.

[TrixxieTriss]

18 minutes ago, Chryptyk said:

i would suggest 10m since that is the cheevo amount.  otherwise, i'm on board with killing p2p trades, and forcing sales back onto the gtn.  i would also suggest killing credit withdraws from guild banks as well so you can't launder funds through there.

What does the Ceevo amount matter? It’s supposed to be an achievement to hit 10 million. If people just get someone to transfer them 10 million to get it, it’s not really an achievement, is it 😉

As for guild banks. I don’t know. Honestly I don’t run a big guild, so I can’t comment on what their needs or uses might be. But I do use it to store my excess credits. So not being able to do that would be problematic for me if BioWare didn’t increase our personal cargo / legacy credit limits. 

[DarthNillard]

On 2/11/2023 at 5:06 PM, recalcitrantIre said:

because the fundamental issue within the game is the playerbase as a whole has too much money, and the individual credit is devalued massively

that's the basic definition of economic inflation

this is the other fundamental issue, Bioware are too beholden to EA's greed; why turn a desirable item into an ingame credit sink when it can be a $40 "microtransaction" instead?

even things like the reputation decoration vendors I don't think are going far enough with their credit-sinking capacity, especially when most of the decorations on offer are limited to 50 each for seemingly arbitrary reasons

Having a ton of money doesn't matter if you have nothing to spend it on.  I have 10 billion credits or so, if nothing costs more than 1 million then what am I going to do with that? Besides buy the stuff I want like anyone else.  

[Asacledhae]

Totally against having to pay for quick travel, especially for entering my Strongholds. I paid a lot to get them unlocked, and now you want to add an extra "tax" to simply enter my own "home"? That's bad policy.

Seriously though, I have a suggestion about battling inflation:

Simply put a credit cap to all Trade/GTN sales, depending on item rarity.

Green item: 50.000 credit cap

Blue item/color crystal/augmentation kit: 100.000 credit cap

Purple Item: 500.000 credit cap

Orange Item: 1.000.000 credit cap

Decorations: 200.000 credit cap

Then, significantly increase credit gain for actually playing the game (from normal story content, dailies, heroics, to Flashpoints/Operations), and add vendors to the game, where you can get unique armor sets, gear, cosmetic stuff, vanity items, and decorations ONLY for credits and not for something that can be found on the Cartel Market. That way, people can get what they want to get. And make them bound to legacy on pickup. That would give people a motivation to play more, in their own way.

If you increase rewards, and actually have things to spend credits on, (instead of making people who sell for example a pair of boots for 500 million credits happy), things will eventually return to normal, and even a free player will be happy, as they'll be able to afford stuff they now can not.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that not many will agree with my idea.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Asacledhae
Corrected some typos.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

50 minutes ago, Asacledhae said:

 

Seriously though, I have a suggestion about battling inflation:

Simply put a credit cap to all Trade/GTN sales, depending on item rarity.

Green item: 50.000 credit cap

Blue item/color crystal/augmentation kit: 100.000 credit cap

Purple Item: 500.000 credit cap

Orange Item: 1.000.000 credit cap

Decorations: 200.000 credit cap

 

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that not many will agree with my idea.

That's because you  haven't put enough thought into your idea.   Talk to a crafter, and then maybe you'll understand why capping according to item quality is a bad idea. 

Do you really think the mats and time needed for a tier 4 purple item are comparable to the mats needed for a tier 11 purple item?  Then there is the effort need to get some schematics.  A blue schematic you pick up from the trainer is not comparable to the blue schematic you have to farm from crew missions.

 

[MadDutchman]

A credit cap will not end inflation so much as end the economy as a whole. 

If people cannot get a market price for their items, they just aren't going to sell them. Sure the prices won't be inflated anymore... but then their won't be items anymore. 

The only reasonable way to artificially get prices down is to artificially increase supply (since artificially reducing demand wouldn't make sense). In RL terms this comes in the form of government grants and subsidies to specific industries or products to encourage increased production. BW fortunately has it much easier, as they can just create the items out of thin air. 

It would need to be handled genlty (and maybe even secretly so as not to annoy the whales, as someone noted earlier) but this could drain a lot of money out of the economy via the GTN

I would also support a massive expansion of the crafting system to make it more accessible, productive and more interesting (it's a boring grind as is), but this might be stretching things a bit far 

[Asacledhae]

1 hour ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

That's because you  haven't put enough thought into your idea.   Talk to a crafter, and then maybe you'll understand why capping according to item quality is a bad idea. 

Do you really think the mats and time needed for a tier 4 purple item are comparable to the mats needed for a tier 11 purple item?  Then there is the effort need to get some schematics.  A blue schematic you pick up from the trainer is not comparable to the blue schematic you have to farm from crew missions.

 

Like I said, not many would like my idea, but lately the prices are simply ridiculous to begin with. And with that unchecked, there won't be an economy left. For me, the main problem is to target the GTN crazy prices, not to punish people for playing the game.

As for crafters, I remember getting the same tier augments for 100 to 200k, instead of 2 millions a few months ago, so yeah. It's not about time, it's about greed, in this case. "If one does it, why not me?" And they know that if someone wants to get said item, they'll have to pay.

All that effort you mention, could be negated if they made crafting much more accessible and with lower costs. So if a tier 11 purple item costs around 50 to 100k credits to make, and the crafter sells it for 500k, then what's the issue? 

Edit: Sadly, no matter what we discuss or suggest, I'm pretty sure BioWare will simply do what they always do...

Edited February 15, 2023 by Asacledhae

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, Asacledhae said:

Totally against having to pay for quick travel, especially for entering my Strongholds. I paid a lot to get them unlocked, and now you want to add an extra "tax" to simply enter my own "home"? That's bad policy.

Seriously though, I have a suggestion about battling inflation:

Simply put a credit cap to all Trade/GTN sales, depending on item rarity.

Green item: 50.000 credit cap

Blue item/color crystal/augmentation kit: 100.000 credit cap

Purple Item: 500.000 credit cap

Orange Item: 1.000.000 credit cap

Decorations: 200.000 credit cap

Then, significantly increase credit gain for actually playing the game (from normal story content, dailies, heroics, to Flashpoints/Operations), and add vendors to the game, where you can get unique armor sets, gear, cosmetic stuff, vanity items, and decorations ONLY for credits and not for something that can be found on the Cartel Market. That way, people can get what they want to get. And make them bound to legacy on pickup. That would give people a motivation to play more, in their own way.

If you increase rewards, and actually have things to spend credits on, (instead of making people who sell for example a pair of boots for 500 million credits happy), things will eventually return to normal, and even a free player will be happy, as they'll be able to afford stuff they now can not.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that not many will agree with my idea.

Do you participate in crafting in swtor? 

[ZUHFB]

10 hours ago, Jdast said:

Of course credit sellers cheer when a player "sells" BiS to another via sale runs/ expensive augments, etc. But there is an important distinction...

1) For sale runs, the buyer still has to participate in the content, which is categorically different, while there are alternative paths for augments; and

2) There is undoubtedly an alpha percentage of the population that would take advantage of the 'buy on demand' aspect of the system you propose as opposed to dealing with the hassle of finding a sales run.

3) It is impossible to enforce banning sale runs or private transactions for a myriad of reasons. Your proposed solutions would destroy the trading economy for augments and do nothing about sale runs other than impose an artificial and arbitrary cap. I have no idea how you arrived at the prices you suggested. Your system works only if you consider ruining the trading economy, which I suppose is your goal. But yes, one way to curb inflation is to destroy trading altogether -- just like a good way to cure a headache is to remove the head.

/shrug

Bottom line: Third party credit sellers would rejoice under your system.

I didn't understand your last point about credits vs. CC's. I know the difference. In any case, we are at risk of derailing the thread so I'll bow out. Feel free to have the last word, but suffice it to say, we should agree to disagree. There is a reason no major Western MMORPG has the system you propose. 

Dasty

1) a buyer does not participate. Even if they wish to on some bosses they have to /stuck because its saver to just have them dead

2) finding a sales run is easy, paying for them without RMT isn't, unless you pay bioware hundreds, or 3rd party sides a third of that...

3) sales should be banned, is it enforcable? No, but having them banned decreases the ads they can do. The risk of getting banned is higher too. Sales are not bad, just the RMT aspect of them

[Asacledhae]

50 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Do you participate in crafting in swtor? 

I do, yes. Used to, that is.. Haven't crafted anything lately I must admit, as I don't like doing it anymore. That's why, as others mentioned before me, this system needs to become more user friendly, and with significantly lesser costs. And speaking about crafting, I don't remember me charging for 500 millions over 1 purple item I crafted, though. Not to worry though fellas, I bet BioWare would never even consider what I'm suggesting, so take a breather! 😁

I stand by my opinion however, that putting costs on quick travel or visiting a stronghold in order to "bleed out credits" from people, is foul play, and it will cause the game to lose more players.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Asacledhae
Corrected a typo.

[Jdast]

23 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

1) a buyer does not participate. Even if they wish to on some bosses they have to /stuck because its saver to just have them dead

2) finding a sales run is easy, paying for them without RMT isn't, unless you pay bioware hundreds, or 3rd party sides a third of that...

3) sales should be banned, is it enforcable? No, but having them banned decreases the ads they can do. The risk of getting banned is higher too. Sales are not bad, just the RMT aspect of them

How do you say Dasty is right without saying Dasty is right?

🙄

But I thank you for your support.

Dasty

[DeannaVoyager]

12 hours ago, Traceguy said:

Tell me, when a player sells a BiS to another player, how is that not making credit sellers cheer? It's not pay to win, in no way does that make you win by paying money. Did you forget we're talking about credits? Not CCs.  

 

Linking this in case you have missed it: 

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927312-sale-raids-are-bad-for-the-game-long/#comment-9743298 

[Withabix]

On 2/10/2023 at 8:58 PM, LOWTHOR said:

You are not hearing the feedback here.  The feedback is that to a new player or casual who has 1,000 credits you basically do not allow them to quick travel or visit a stronghold because it costs way too much.   Where as the people who have billions of credits do not care.  You are better finding a way to leave necessities like quick travel alone and making credit sinks elsewhere.

Unless it is your desire to gate quick travel behind a new player credit grind.  Or worse, some purchased credits.

I for one do not want to go back to the days where I struggled to travel due to lack of credits. Consider a percentage of player credits rather than a flat fee. 

[Asacledhae]

36 minutes ago, Withabix said:

I for one do not want to go back to the days where I struggled to travel due to lack of credits. Consider a percentage of player credits rather than a flat fee. 

No, a thousand times, no. I've been playing this game since it's early days, and yes, I do NOT want to return to the era where you had to run all over Tatooine or Alderaan cause you COULD NOT AFFORD a speeder.

As for a percentage of player credits... Yeah, tell the guy who has 10 million credits, that he has to pay millions each time he dares to enter his already PAID stronghold, or wishes to simply move from point A to point B without wasting his time. That would be the death of the game. 😡

They need to leave that aspect of the game alone. It'll only do more harm than good, we do not want fees on strongholds or quick travel, period.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Asacledhae

[Gibonski]

2 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

 

Linking this in case you have missed it: 

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927312-sale-raids-are-bad-for-the-game-long/#comment-9743298 

This is the topic they should start with, when looking at deleting credits from the economy. Look at all them chickens!

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Gibonski

[Heliask]

Fighting inflation starts with offering merchants with decent priced items for necessary stuff and offering big credit sinks for luxurious rewards and bonuses for those at the top. It also starts with stopping the constant credits sell on general chat and allowing people to buy top tier gear with billions instead of having XXXX currencies. The changes to repair costs and travel are simply a hardship inflicted gratuitously to the poorest with ZERO impact to the multizillion saga of the richest who will sell a cantina thingy or for 2 billions still. 

[Jursy]

7 hours ago, Asacledhae said:

I stand by my opinion however, that putting costs on quick travel or visiting a stronghold in order to "bleed out credits" from people, is foul play, and it will cause the game to lose more players.

I totally agree.  In fact, I hit the unsub button over it yesterday...for two accounts.

 

3 hours ago, Asacledhae said:

No, a thousand times, no. I've been playing this game since it's early days, and yes, I do NOT want to return to the era where you had to run all over Tatooine or Alderaan cause you COULD NOT AFFORD a speeder.

As for a percentage of player credits... Yeah, tell the guy who has 10 million credits, that he has to pay millions each time he dares to enter his already PAID stronghold, or wishes to simply move from point A to point B without wasting his time. That would be the death of the game. 😡

They need to leave that aspect of the game alone. It'll only do more harm than good, we do not want fees on strongholds or quick travel, period.

/agree  

Don't forget the added costs to gear repair.  Is it me, or are all these PENALTIES just going to drive the 'casual' (poor like me) player into the arms of the credit sellers?  How are we supposed to survive with all these new 'costs' and no payouts?  That horrid 210 gear only sells for 190 credits and anything over that is more profitable as tear down.  Seriously, where do you guys get the billions you have?  I really want to know.  All I've been able to amass as a casual player is 1 billion per account...and that's from a couple of good sells on the GTN that I split between my two accounts.

[Toraak]

4 hours ago, Heliask said:

Fighting inflation starts with offering merchants with decent priced items for necessary stuff and offering big credit sinks for luxurious rewards and bonuses for those at the top. It also starts with stopping the constant credits sell on general chat and allowing people to buy top tier gear with billions instead of having XXXX currencies. The changes to repair costs and travel are simply a hardship inflicted gratuitously to the poorest with ZERO impact to the multizillion saga of the richest who will sell a cantina thingy or for 2 billions still. 

No. This would not be wise selling any kind of gear for credits. This would just encourage people to use credit sellers even more then doing Sale runs does now. This is close to P2W if it isn't outright P2W, and BW should never do this.

[Heliask]

Then you've named the issue. Credits selling outside the game and their constant publicity.

[xxSHOONYxx]

6 hours ago, Asacledhae said:

No, a thousand times, no. I've been playing this game since it's early days, and yes, I do NOT want to return to the era where you had to run all over Tatooine or Alderaan cause you COULD NOT AFFORD a speeder.

As for a percentage of player credits... Yeah, tell the guy who has 10 million credits, that he has to pay millions each time he dares to enter his already PAID stronghold, or wishes to simply move from point A to point B without wasting his time. That would be the death of the game. 😡

They need to leave that aspect of the game alone. It'll only do more harm than good, we do not want fees on strongholds or quick travel, period.

You might not remember how the game was back then. QT credits will be nothing and taxi was not the issue. What made the credit sink back then was you had to pay to learn your skills and every level up of them. So when you reached level 50 back then,"endgame" depending on how much you did you barely could learn all the skills and had maye 10k credits left or had to play more time as level 50 to learn all the skills.

People making a big fuss over a very few credits of qt makes no sense, when those ideas will do nothing for inflation for ACTUAL players and not bots

[microstyles]

16 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is something BioWare can easily stop by restricting player to player trades that involve credits above a certain amount. 

If they restricted the player to player trading to 1 million credits at a time, those credit sellers would go out of business fast. 

Credit sellers would find a way around it. They could use mail or have the credit buyer put up 1b meat trees on the GTN.

[DWho]

9 minutes ago, microstyles said:

Credit sellers would find a way around it. They could use mail or have the credit buyer put up 1b meat trees on the GTN.

Mail is tracked and unusual GTN purchases can also be detected in the game logs. Bioware has the tools they need, they just need to prioritize it (which costs money so it takes commitment). It's easy just to slap credit sinks on the average player (which will do nothing to combat inflation unless they are very large and that will make people stop playing) and ignore the real problem.

You can't just go after the credit sellers though, that's like whack-a-mole. You need to take down the buyers as well (make it a bigger risk to buy credits).