Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[csilvajonas]

8 minutes ago, sandstroller said:

Put things in vendors for people to BUY WITH CREDITS.  You have invented 8 zillion currencies to the point we have a full tab of currencies and complain we have amassed credits.  It's such a joke.  STOP MAKING NEW CURRENCIES and allow us to actually spend credits for things we need.  

Start selling things for credits vs just annoying everyone with "fees"  People want to buy things. 

 

 

This. And making things you can unlock with tons of credits make sense if they're things only old players (who are most likely rich) care about. Like, 100% experience boost on a character for 1B credits, so it won't change much for new players, but when we make a new character just for raiding for example and we need to lvl it up, 1B credits and a nice experience boost. Or speed mount boost. But target endgame/old players, do not aim it at new players. I'd love to see for example a full black lightsaber crystal going for idk, 2B? That's the kind of stuff that can actually help credit sink imo

Edited February 9, 2023 by csilvajonas

[TUXs]

8 minutes ago, sandstroller said:

This is so ridiculous.  I paid MILLIONS for every single SH I have and now you want to charge me to go there?  These proposed changes won't do a thing to reduce how many credits people have but it will annoy all of us til we quit.  DO SOMETHING REAL vs annoy people. 

Stongholds are a prime example on how to reduce credits in circulation...they cost a ton to buy and open.  RELEASE MORE OF THEM!  They costs to decorate both in CCs and GTN purchases to decorate.  The decos have always cost millions and millions to decorate.  Put back in the need to have fully decorated SHs for CQ bonus......far more effective than charging players to actually travel to them.

Put things in vendors for people to BUY WITH CREDITS.  You have invented 8 zillion currencies to the point we have a full tab of currencies and complain we have amassed credits.  It's such a joke.  STOP MAKING NEW CURRENCIES and allow us to actually spend credits for things we need.  

Start selling things for credits vs just annoying everyone with "fees"  People want to buy things. 

 

 

Perfectly stated!!! There's nothing besides resources and decos to buy any longer, and those credits only go to other players, never removing anything from the game.  

[Sorronn]

2 hours ago, Aakurb said:

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

This is exactly right.

Charging for Quick Travel is a mistake, a very bad mistake. Don't do it! For someone with multiple level 80s and some billions of credits like myself 5000 credits is a mere annoyance. For a new player, you may be stopping them from getting to where they need to go. Do you understand how annoying that is? And most new players start as F2P or Preferred from what I can see so they're also credit capped (another terrible idea).

Some suggestions:

• Hold weekly auctions for super rare items like the Czerka Crate O Matic. Set the bottom bid line at some billions of credits then let players bid to get it.
• Have a vendor with a small rotating selection of items that are no longer sold in the Cash Shop.
• With a 64 bit client, you can add optional hook expansions to SHs for credits.
• Add an NPC who can give you a multi-hour buff to give you a little more edge in operations. Not something you have to have to beat, say, NiM ops, but which would make it easier just a bit.
• Allow players to change their personal starship for a credit cost (a large cost). As a Jedi, maybe I want to fly a Fury Interceptor!

You need to remove billions of credits from the economy, yet you are just proposing to punish new players while not touching massive accumulations of credits. Why? There are all sorts of things you can put out there that would be optional but could cost millions to even billions of credits.  That is where you need to focus, not on punishing poor players! Because seriously, players like myself won't give a damn about your QT costs while QT costs may encourage a new player to find another game.

[ChrisKazugal]

Congratulations, you've somehow managed to drag US Tax policies into the Star Wars universe by making sure the poor stay poor, and the ones who have spent X amount of time building up their coffers shrug and move on. 

The changes to Quick Travel, Priority Transport, and Strongholds seem lackluster due to the fact that some people have spent hundreds of thousands of credits on those Legacy abilities. Does this mean you plan on reimbursing us for having spent the credits to have that ability? 

Increasing Repair costs is completely fair, for higher level things, but punishing me for playing better and staying alive with extra durability damage? Hmm.

Introduce a genuine credit dump back into the game that benefits players as opposed to "Well some people have more money than others, therefore everyone gets to pay" scheme helps no one and fixes nothing. 

Something like old cosmetics that can no longer be acquired but maybe recolored for high credit costs. More mounts that require credits. 

There is a far better way of fixing the inflation that what these changes bring. 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by ChrisKazugal

[meddani]

2 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

these are great changes

- you on every change ever in this game, it's ridiculous lol.

[Sir-steve]

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.

 

Seriously.....adding 'cab fare' for something we already had to pay to unlock?  This will NOT "Use these changes as opportunities to improve the experience while also reducing credits". 

Consider, a billion credits isn't considered much these days but lets say we want to remove 1B on average per player.  Even at the maximum amount of 5k per trip, taking 100 trips per day, playing 365 days a year, it would take over 5 and a half years to get to the 1B mark.  And what would the player get in return for that 1B?  Nothing.  Zip, zero.....something they already have for free.  Wait, maybe they have resentment which is not what you're shooting for.

This game needs to stop inventing new event currencies and let them spend CREDITS on in-game items so those credits are pulled out of the economy.  I'm not suggesting credits be tradeable for Cartel Coins, or used to purchase things on the CM (since that's a sacred cash cow).....nor am I suggesting we gate content behind credits because that just leads to more credit farming. 

 

We need fun/shiny/desirable/cosmetic things (new or old) to SPEND our credits on so we get something in return.....not have them 'taxed' away to use something we already paid for.

[Starcloud]

okay, what the hell. Quick travel is there to cut down on the incredibly long travel times that were introduced in the beginning of the game in order to force players to not rush through content. This is not a 'convenience' it is a necessity, eleven years later with several expansions of content. This hurts beginning players and free to play players the most; do not implement this in Live.

Travel to strongholds, again, I understand why you're doing it; to prevent people from travelling to their strongholds and using the legacy vault terminal in order to load up on credits when they have started a new character with no money. But all it does is annoy the hell out of people early in the game, it does not actually do anything to drain credits from the overheated economy.

Repairing equipment; seriously, wth? Equipment shouldn't ever be destroyed in the first place.

Your problem with the economy is that you allowed credit dupes and exploits to persist for too long. The solution to that is not to punish 95% of players, especially considering that would include 100% of free to play and new players. If you want to bring the credit economy under control, you're going to have to do something other than make the game worse to play.

[casirabit]

Copying my reply from the other forum since they only want people that go to the test server to respond, even though everyone knows how this could or would affect them without testing it.

 

Some changes and repair changes are acceptable, but the cost of priority, stronghold, and quick travel seems an overreach for me. Still, I seriously doubt you will listen to anyone; it has been proven in the past.  If you are trying to drive people away, keep on with these changes, and you will succeed.  I always log off in my stronghold, but now you are forcing people not to if they do not want to pay a stupid tax to travel to their stronghold.   You are giving me more reasons to quit playing altogether.  I have already been playing another game but have tried to be here, but why I don't know anymore. 

You know you could take the decorations off the cartel shop (I know you won't) and place them on vendors and guess what? People who want some decorations would use their credits, but you cannot do that. You must be arbitrary and tax those with strongholds, those that use quick travel or priority travel as a quick fix; well, it is not a quick fix.  

[SeaBananaMan]

32 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

I'm not sure that 25 million would make more than a slight dimple in the problem, maybe less, but yes.  I'd like a mount that can go as fast as Petey.

I mean, that was an approximate price. It can be higher of course, I just kinda spitballed a number. On people with many toons, it will add up.

[SeaBananaMan]

On the stronghold front, you could also give people the opportunity to have an extra stronghold or two of the same type for RP purposes (that doesn't count towards CQ bonus if you're concerned about people not buying the more expensive ones) to give people more decorating options. You could also add a way to copy decos for personal strongholds (add a CC cost as well if you're concerned about losing CC revenue from buying from the CM).

[Sir-steve]

• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.

Aside from my earlier post re: travel costs in general, I have to say I rather disagree with this one because, to the best of my knowledge, we have no other means to get to our stronghold.  If we don't want to QT we can take a taxi, walk or ride our speeder.  For fleet or planetary travel we can use shuttled or our ship once unlocked.  But, unless I'm missing something, there's no other way to actually get to your stronghold so you're forced to pay. 

Am I missing something?  Is there a door or terminal on the related planet we can use to transit to our SH?

[lythinae]

7 hours ago, JackieKo said:

 

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.

IME, these will hurt new/casual/poorer players more than anyone else, since they won't have the cushion of credits the rest of us do.  It's frustrating to see the few credits you have early on be spent on traveling around, and I can see that getting worse when it applies to everything.

Like has been mentioned already, Strongholds have a considerable (for many, it definitely was when I was unlocking all of mine) cost attached.  Including a travel cost will only make people feel resentful, and could decrease the amount of people willing to fulling unlock them.  Suggestion - make free SH travel a perk of having fully unlocked ones.  

I'm at the stage where none of these changes will have any impact on how I play - I've got more than enough credits, have unlocked all the SHs, and QoL things.   Outside of everyday things like repairs, the only real thing I spend large amounts on now are cosmetics (more cute cosmetics/pets/mounts/decos/schematics that can be brought with credits would be nice.  I usually max out on all the reputation vender stuff, so could new things be added to the old ones).  But there are plenty of players who don't have that, and will be hit by these changes, while it still doesn't touch on why the economy got so busted. 

Edited February 9, 2023 by lythinae

[Cleev]

• Invest into detecting and punishing credits sellers and buyers
• Make damn sure every game update that there are no vendors selling stuff for 0 credits that you can sell back for some credits
• Ruthlessly wipe credits from exploit users

The changes you propose are just bandages.

[xordevoreaux]

I sold a single cartel market item on the GTN a week or so ago for 900 million credits. That's just one sale. Travel fees don't begin to touch that and won't hurt people with billions in the bank. I can't even SEE 5000 credits.

The people travel fees will hurt are those just starting out in the game who've next to no resources nor have plumbed the depths of the game to understand how money can be readily made (or, even, when first starting raw in the game, the need).

Consider not harming people starting out with these fees. Then the question becomes when does "starting out" end?

I'd say after 50 hours of game play for a single account across all toons on that account. That's plenty of time to get acclimated and some money in one's pocket before travel mechanics yank it out again.

[MaximusRex]

6 hours ago, JackieKo said:

With the 7.2.1 PTS opening soon, players will be able to see the following adjustments:

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.
• Repair cost formulas have been adjusted across the entirety of the game so that repair costs increase in relation to item level.
• Durability of equipment should now be lost at a LOWER rate on death, but a slightly HIGHER rate in normal gameplay. 

I am giving feedback here because I am not getting on PTS to try out costs that I know won't be enough to do anything about inflation at this point.

Travel to Stronghold should be free, no MMO I have ever played has charged us to access our home.  If we decide to use it to travel then the Exit To is where the cost should be added.

If Quick Travel costs for daily/weekly areas are too high vs credit intake that will do more to discourage gameplay than it will to remove credits, potentially causing players to quit because they feel their effort isn't being rewarded.

The rewards you are trying to drown us in, tokens and terrible gear, are not worth enough to compensate for lost credits.  Active players quickly grow out of them and then have to spend way too much time dealing with it as a chore, I am concerned that you are going to throw more of this garbage at us later if credit reward reduction negatively impacts players playing content.

I have no issue with adjustment of gear repair costs, I am concerned that you are going to make repairing another tedious unfun enterprise, just like you have done to inventory management.  Having to stop playing the game to do chores is not fun, was never fun, and will never be fun.  MMO Devs need to learn some new tricks.

What isn't being addressed is the Resource Scarcity you brought to the game with Rank 11 crafting, until that is addressed these credit sinks are only going to make resource scarcity worse.

While a move in the right direction, these changes are like trying to use a thimble to bail out the Titantic.  I have over 4 Billion credits and am on the poor side compared to many long term players.  I don't buy stuff off the GTN for the most part, which just shifts Credits around anyhow.  You need to introduce vendors that sell desirable cosmetic items for Millions, Tens of Millions, Hundreds of Millions, and Billions of Credits to target all players of wealth and drain the credits out of the economy.  Making me pay 5000 credits for every quick travel won't even make a dent in what I have.

[xordevoreaux]

Just now, MaximusRex said:

Travel to Stronghold should be free, no MMO I have ever played has charged us to access our home. 

Everquest 2 has weekly rent on your house. If you don't pay the rent, you don't get in until you do. If you want not to pay the fee every week, you buy a house off their equivalent of the cartel market for real money.

[MaximusRex]

1 minute ago, xordevoreaux said:

Everquest 2 has weekly rent on your house. If you don't pay the rent, you don't get in until you do. If you want not to pay the fee every week, you buy a house off their equivalent of the cartel market for real money.

That isn't a travel cost which is what I was talking about.  LOTRO also has upkeep to pay, but traveling to the house is free.

[xordevoreaux]

Just now, MaximusRex said:

That isn't a travel cost which is what I was talking about.  LOTRO also has upkeep to pay, but traveling to the house is free.

Someone has already complained on the regular forums about traveling to one's own home costing a fee, and I must agree, that's absurd. Kind of like when Bank of America years ago intended to charge a fee for you to withdraw your own money from the bank. People raised holy hell over that, and when it hit the news that credit unions were seeing 500,000+ new sign-ups in a WEEK for people fleeing Bank of America, BoA backed off that toxic idea real quick.

[DarthMcClain]

These changes feel like nickeling and diming players instead of addressing the real issue.  As many have said, established players won't notice the costs, but they will really hurt new players.  Paying to enter SHs feels especially silly.

 

 

In addition, if you are going to go through with these changes, please have players port in to Oricon where you pick up the dailies and heroics when using the "Daily Area: Oricon" option in the Solo activities tab instead of the bridge for DF/DP.  Having to immediately QT after getting to Oricon feels really bad.

Edited February 9, 2023 by DarthMcClain
Oricon clarification

[Balameb]

3 hours ago, Aakurb said:

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

 

6 hours ago, JackieKo said:

Hi everyone, 

This is a follow up to the information we released in the Game Update 7.2.1 PTS blog post. ICYMI, 7.2.1 will be introducing initiatives to combat the inflation that is present in the game. We’ve seen conversations surrounding this topic, and we share similar sentiment to the concerns about the game’s economy. This will be an ongoing initiative that will be rolled out over several updates as we want to slowly introduce these new changes and give players time to adjust and also provide opportunities to give us feedback. 

We understand that there is demand to fix things now, but we are taking special care to introduce these measures over time as correcting the economy is not something that can be done overnight. Immediate implementation can have the opposite effect and potentially crash the economy instead. 

We have been identifying key areas where improvements and changes can be made, and weighing how these will impact both the player experience and the economy. Our general economic balancing goals are as follows: 

• Reduce tax/credit cost avoidance
• Reintroduce credit sinks as some were removed in the past
• Adjust inflow in certain repeatable content
• Use these changes as opportunities to improve the experience while also reducing credits
• Monitor how these changes impact the economy over time and adjust accordingly if needed

With the 7.2.1 PTS opening soon, players will be able to see the following adjustments:

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.
• Repair cost formulas have been adjusted across the entirety of the game so that repair costs increase in relation to item level.
• Durability of equipment should now be lost at a LOWER rate on death, but a slightly HIGHER rate in normal gameplay. 

 

Those kind of adjustments (but not those values) could had worked maybe 6+ years ago were people not crafting would make their money from game basic activities (like conquest/heroics), then small sinks could had worked to keep some of that credit creation at bay.

Now you have de average casual player already with BILLIONS!!!!

* What would those cost do to them? Nothing!

* What would those cost do to actual whales? Make them laugh! (they are probably having a blast joking with their credit seller friends of your first choice of action in combat current inflation.)

* What would those cost do to new players that still don't know how the economy works? Be a royal PITA!!!!! 

And you even ask to test that in PTS? People are responding in the feedback thread (even without playing PTS)  because you haven't asked first if it was a good idea in the first place. Why waste time seeing if the price/distance is working as intended? it should not be there!!!!!

Place your efforts in thinking solutions to the CURRENT massive amount of credits:

Of your pointed goals, your first one to be implemented should have been: "Reduce tax/credit cost avoidance".

BUT, the actual first thing you should do is implement a proper transaction tracking system with a couple a trained analists to work that data and send credit sellers (with their stash) to kingdom come!!!!!!

 

 

[Aethyriel]

Re-reading my previous comment on the actual feedback thread that was deleted and there just isn't any 'profanity' in it for you to warrant issuing warnings. Then again, I see over half the replies have been deleted in that thread anyway - mostly negative ones I'd wager. So, apparently you again don't want solutions, you just want the illusion of a discourse. Your changes are bad though. They hurt infinitely more people than they help the economy - because they don't fix anything. The credits exploits you try to pretend never happened cannot be undone. we have super billionaires just inflating everything because why would I sell a mats for thousands if I can get millions? Now you increase the cost for convenience and playing the game (repairs) and guess what? I'll increase my prices to get the money back as most people will. But you'll implement them 100% as they are now because you don't care. 

[Diamaht]

7 hours ago, JackieKo said:

Hi everyone, 

This is a follow up to the information we released in the Game Update 7.2.1 PTS blog post. ICYMI, 7.2.1 will be introducing initiatives to combat the inflation that is present in the game. We’ve seen conversations surrounding this topic, and we share similar sentiment to the concerns about the game’s economy. This will be an ongoing initiative that will be rolled out over several updates as we want to slowly introduce these new changes and give players time to adjust and also provide opportunities to give us feedback. 

We understand that there is demand to fix things now, but we are taking special care to introduce these measures over time as correcting the economy is not something that can be done overnight. Immediate implementation can have the opposite effect and potentially crash the economy instead. 

We have been identifying key areas where improvements and changes can be made, and weighing how these will impact both the player experience and the economy. Our general economic balancing goals are as follows: 

• Reduce tax/credit cost avoidance
• Reintroduce credit sinks as some were removed in the past
• Adjust inflow in certain repeatable content
• Use these changes as opportunities to improve the experience while also reducing credits
• Monitor how these changes impact the economy over time and adjust accordingly if needed

With the 7.2.1 PTS opening soon, players will be able to see the following adjustments:

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.
• Repair cost formulas have been adjusted across the entirety of the game so that repair costs increase in relation to item level.
• Durability of equipment should now be lost at a LOWER rate on death, but a slightly HIGHER rate in normal gameplay. 

We ask that players submit their feedback here. 

While we cannot give a definitive timeline on when the future changes will be deployed, you should expect to continue seeing more changes in future game updates. As always, we will communicate the finer details, the timeline in which these changes can be tested, and when they will go live. 

Thanks all! 

I like the changes.  Sinks need to be in the game, no one likes them, but they need to be there.  Not sure I agree with a lot of the feedback so far.

1)  This will not effect newer players as much as claimed by some.  When I'm leveling up as a new player in an MMO, I'm not zooming all over the place with quick travel and speed running it.  I'm focusing on the content around me and by the time the cool-down for quick travel runs it's course I've made up the credits with loot.  As a player leveling alts, or doing dailies/weeklies on the other hand I'm warping all over the place to get to end game or to tackle tasks quickly.  I also have little or no cool-down on my travel abilities so I'm using them constantly.  In this way it's not a new player sink, it's an old player sink.

2)  Opening up one time purchases as a sink does absolutely nothing.  Once the purchase is completed once, the credits are then almost immediately restored by regualar content and you are back to square one.  The idea is to get things that work constantly to remove currency from circulation since the game constantly prints more. 

3)  Billionaires will start to feel the pinch a bit over time.  Saying it won't be noticed is thinking about it in terms of one time payments.  You won't notice one transaction but you will notice how 1000 transactions slows down the growth of your coffers thereby slowing down the rise of prices.  Its not meant to make you poor its meant as a luxury tax on the rich, you will still be wealthy but your wealth accumulation will happen at a slower pace allowing others to catch up to you faster.

[MSE-Droid]

This comment will get drowned out but, patch the bug that allows for client sided editing of credit values. 

[RebelJedaii]

I bought expensive strongholds and go there on NEWE CHARACTERS with no credits to get  credits from Legacy storage and buy things from GTN to wear.  I paid a fortune in credits to unlock rooms.   I pay a fortune in credits to unlock for decorations. I had expected to keep doing so and to make more characters.

I have been more or less behind you and backing you for years. But I cannot and will not back you on PAYING TO GO TO MY OWN STRONGHOLD. oR PRIORITY transport that I had ALREADY PAID FOR.   This is WRONG. You will LOSE players over this. And how will that save the game economy?

This is not a good thing to do to subscriber who've hung in and it'll scare off new comers.  My initial plan to make more characters is nearly blown away by this.  There has GOT to be another way you can sink credits than making us pay for stuff  I already paid for!   

Edited February 9, 2023 by RebelJedaii

[microstyles]

9 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

This will not effect newer players as much as claimed by some.

This is probably true. But it will affect them more than established players.

9 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

In this way it's not a new player sink, it's an old player sink.

It is, but not in any way that will meaningfully affect established players' funds or the overall economy.

10 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

You won't notice one transaction but you will notice how 1000 transactions slows down the growth of your coffers thereby slowing down the rise of prices.

The most expensive thing proposed that has a number attached to it is the 5k charge for max distance fast travel. I can pretty much promise I won't notice 5m gone over the course of 1000 max distance fast travels.