Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[phenla]

As a returning player, thank God I signed up VIP for only a month.  I will never, ever sub again with travel so crushing my alts and returning characters.  I will simply play something else until this is REVERSED.  Not "fixed".  It only serves as a waste of time, forcing a bad choice.  What an awful idea that fails completely in it's goals, AND serve to drive new and returning players away.  Sheesh, you would think I am talking about NFT's..............

"These are not the results you are looking for.  Move along."

[Darcmoon]

Doing the dailies on Makeb, when standing next to the taxi droid it costs 5000 credits to QT and 100 to take the taxi.  How is that sensible or useful.

[peterschlossersw]

Any change BW makes will be unpopular with some.  Attempting to control (any) economy is going to be a challenge.  But are we not to blame?  If enough of us whine about something, I'm guessing BW will listen and make an effort to resolve concerns.  Kudos for their effort to take action, regardless the result and backlash.  The last thing we want is for them to  do is remove the GTN and/or the ability to make trades between players.  

[suabensss]

1 hour ago, phenla said:

As a returning player, thank God I signed up VIP for only a month.  I will never, ever sub again with travel so crushing my alts and returning characters.  I will simply play something else until this is REVERSED.  Not "fixed".  It only serves as a waste of time, forcing a bad choice.  What an awful idea that fails completely in it's goals, AND serve to drive new and returning players away.  Sheesh, you would think I am talking about NFT's..............

"These are not the results you are looking for.  Move along."

Mimimi

[Supersomething]

I am curious to know if BioWare did any internal simulations regarding best practices for addressing this or just chose what sounded like it might work without any research into it.

On it's face I agree posters stating that this will do nothing for those well established. For someone returning like myself who hasn't really played since around 2015 I don't really view this as a great idea. New players might as well consider Quick Travel as a nonexistent feature, or just not have money.

I think credit sinks would help, but they need to be smart credit sinks. The current ones are certainly not that.

[lordnortamos]

This should be removed for subscribers.  I pay a monthly fee for this game and this should be removed by default.  

In all seriousness though this is horrible for alts and players that aren't rich.  Credit sinks should only happen for the highest level content as that's when players make the most money.  The poor stay poor, the rich stay rich with these kind of "convenience" money sinks.  

Edited March 28, 2023 by lordnortamos

[anonyhm]

1 hour ago, Glzmo said:

- Add more strongholds to the game (Tython, Korriban, Ilum, etc.).
- Add the ability for guilds to have more guild strongholds than one. This alone will take lots of credits out of circulation, especially from richer people/guilds.

I love this suggestion (not the only one to make this suggestion on this forum)! Along this line, I made a suggestion on a different forum about adding personal capital ships, something to be not as big as guild flagships but bigger than the personal starship everyone gets, to basically be a mobile stronghold, complete with all of the stronghold features (imagine the space vistas you could get from that, or the types of ship designs, features and color schemes you could come up with -- think Booster Terrik and the Errant Venture [look it up]), and it really isn't my suggestion alone: this has been a topic in many game chats while I have been on that other players have been excited about! Imagine owning a fleet as well as a penthouse on every world....!!!

[Psychkat]

In my opinion, these changes are mostly going to hurt the people that are actually playing the game. It punishes those that are exploring and questing. The changes won't have an impact on the "players" that are focused on trading and gold-farming, since most of them do not leave the fleet.

[ReKabNad]

My initial thoughts, after reading numerous posts by other players, are as follows:  Those that "Sell Credits" to players are likely to see a massive upswing in their business due to this, as players like myself that struggle to have enough money on their characters are just going to end up feeling that they have no other choice.

I have spoken. 

[Soulsilvery]

These changes will not really modify inflation. For example, about strongholds change... Strongholds are not cheap, neither the decorations. Forcing people to even pay more for just traveling to them, only has 1 single effect, annoy everyone.

I've been on this game for several years and the main issue I've seen with inflation is the absurdly high cost of getting good stuff. Prices on the GTN get higher every year. For example, some armor sets or decorations which some years ago cost less than 400.000 credits, nowadays cost millions.

And there is not really a balance between the income you can earn in a short - medium timeframe of play and the item's cost . This extends to armor sets, packs, decorations, weapons... and almost every item that requires a purchase through Cartel Market, Cartel Market Tokens or some time of old good farming (farming is okay and even fun but in some measure).

I get how a market works and I know the "Law of Supply and Demand". If someone is willing to pay millions for something, why not set such price? I also know that Cartel Market is a way of keeping this game up (in economic real life terms).

Still, I truly believe that If there was an alternative way to get "exclusive" items or others that requires tons of farming, or maybe if there was another way to get cartel coins (apart from some small amount from achievements and security key), inflation would be much lower. Or perhaps, that could be solved by reducing certain "exclusive" items base cost or improving the quallity and variety of quests/reputation items/rewards. If people can get really good stuff from alternative affordable ways, GTN would be less frequented and inflation won't be as crazy as It is.

[DrannarUK]

6 minutes ago, ReKabNad said:

My initial thoughts, after reading numerous posts by other players, are as follows:  Those that "Sell Credits" to players are likely to see a massive upswing in their business due to this, as players like myself that struggle to have enough money on their characters are just going to end up feeling that they have no other choice.

I have spoken. 

My mind boggles at responses like this. What are you doing in the game that you are spending so much time and credits zooming around a planet using QT?

You do know that you have a thing called a mount that allows you to do the same thing, just means spending a slightly bit more time to get from A to B. Hell you even have the cheaper option of using the speeder transports network that you can use.

Im still laughing at everyone that says this will put off new players (because you know all new players spend all the time using QT instead of the speeder network), yet they are forgeting the fact that most new players will want to spend the time in game exploring and running around the maps rather than going from A to B as effiecently as possible so they can space bar the cutscene's to get the reward.... or you know they just play the game for fun.

So far from todays playthrough, it was a subtle effect on my fianances (im not rich in the slightest) spent maybe 30k hoping around planets to get some quests sorted, but then decided to make up the short fall i would run some heroics whilst about thost planets. First planet netted my close to 65k credits alone after finishing all the heroics on the planet, which still nettweed me a profit, if i really wanted i could have just used my mount to run about, but thats the choice you have to make.

For me, the QT whinging is weird, but if its really getting people's knickers in a twist, why not link the transport increase to levels so that lets say for example a lv 10 pays between 100 to 500 creds where as a Lv 80 gets the full hit of up to 5000 creds

I can not be the only one thats more interesting in the changes to the repairs than i am for the QT inconvenience?

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

I didnt get a chance to repair today from the Voss WB deaths due to the servers coming down, but i would love to know how much repair costs have gone up, specially once you start running around with 336+ gear.

Will this have a larger impact on my credits than not spamming QT all time?

 

[Skolops]

The QT change is already having an extremely negative effect. There are already a lot of new players complaining that it is really putting them off from the game. On reddit, for instance, there have been a lot of posts from new players recently and now since the update went live there are already many posts from new players questioning whether they'll continue.

What so much of the discussion misses is that it's really not at all about whether a new player can afford the fees. It's not about whether a new player can just take the taxi instead. Sure, they can perhaps do these things - but it still puts them off and more importantly all of this results in their playing the game in a less fun way. It's not fun to wait for the taxi to fly around for 60 seconds, for example. It's not fun to have to get through a bunch of mobs when you're ready to go turn quests in after you have already done them once just to use the taxi. Etc.

One player - 2 weeks in, if I recall - described it by saying this change has made the game - which he was having fun with before - a slog. Find some way to charge me, as a longtime player, millions. Fine. But these added fees on low level players (repair costs, too) are literally going to kill the game. 

In the dev posts today Jackie said that they can't wait to show us the new content that's in development - but honestly this one change may be enough to make sure they don't get to. It's easily one of the worst decisions that's been made in the history of the game.

[Skolops]

2 minutes ago, DrannarUK said:

My mind boggles at responses like this. What are you doing in the game that you are spending so much time and credits zooming around a planet using QT?

You do know that you have a thing called a mount that allows you to do the same thing, just means spending a slightly bit more time to get from A to B. Hell you even have the cheaper option of using the speeder transports network that you can use.

Im still laughing at everyone that says this will put off new players (because you know all new players spend all the time using QT instead of the speeder network), yet they are forgeting the fact that most new players will want to spend the time in game exploring and running around the maps rather than going from A to B as effiecently as possible so they can space bar the cutscene's to get the reward.... or you know they just play the game for fun.

So far from todays playthrough, it was a subtle effect on my fianances (im not rich in the slightest) spent maybe 30k hoping around planets to get some quests sorted, but then decided to make up the short fall i would run some heroics whilst about thost planets. First planet netted my close to 65k credits alone after finishing all the heroics on the planet, which still nettweed me a profit, if i really wanted i could have just used my mount to run about, but thats the choice you have to make.

For me, the QT whinging is weird, but if its really getting people's knickers in a twist, why not link the transport increase to levels so that lets say for example a lv 10 pays between 100 to 500 creds where as a Lv 80 gets the full hit of up to 5000 creds

I can not be the only one thats more interesting in the changes to the repairs than i am for the QT inconvenience?

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

I didnt get a chance to repair today from the Voss WB deaths due to the servers coming down, but i would love to know how much repair costs have gone up, specially once you start running around with 336+ gear.

Will this have a larger impact on my credits than not spamming QT all time?

 

A level based increase like you propose is absolutely the way they should have gone in the first place. It seems so obvious and would alleviate all of these problems. 

As for your "read" on how new players will take it, read some of the replies on reddit and other places since the patch went live. There are already new players saying they are considering dropping the game because it has made the whole thing significantly more tedious. 

[DrannarUK]

 

1 minute ago, Skolops said:

A level based increase like you propose is absolutely the way they should have gone in the first place. It seems so obvious and would alleviate all of these problems. 

As for your "read" on how new players will take it, read some of the replies on reddit and other places since the patch went live. There are already new players saying they are considering dropping the game because it has made the whole thing significantly more tedious. 

I saw your post and was just reading through those posts on reddit. ALSO It is nothing about "My read", im also a new player..... and have gone through all the times of deciding if and when i should spend credits on something because those Legacy perks are usefual and not cheap for a new char. 3 months in, i have a level 80 char and have had to really watch my credits to let me buy the things i wanted.

As for the reddit post's they pretty much they "read" as, i dont want to take the cheaper taxi because i want to use my QT, and then explains that they dont want to waste credits on it when it was free yesterday.

So lets get this straight, you want to save towards something/keep your credits  and so shouldnt need to spend credits and yet wont take the cheaper option to travel? Hah, why not just take away the need for repairing gear from everyone but level 80 raiders cause you know its a waste of my credits and shouldnt affect me OR what about why do dungeons have mobs???? it should just be 3 rooms each with a boss in that i fight, so that i dont waste my time playing this game.

QT is a convenience in any MMO, always has been. You have to make that decision on if you want to save towards something, or take the quick travel option now.

Like i said however, level linking the price increase would help alot of these new player gripes.

[ivanhedgehog]

9 hours ago, WHTJunior said:

Again, we need to remember two things about this:

1. The inflation that is being addressed, is the introduction of credits into the system.
2. These are only the first steps towards addressing the inflation. There are more initiatives to come.

Credit farmers do not care about credit sinks. Any credit reduction initiative that targets normal gameplay will not affect those activities. The only way these credit sinks work to lower GTN prices, because the overall bank of player credits is reduced, leading to the lowering of GTN prices for high-end rare items.

GTN sales and credit transfers are not introducing credits into the system, but trades could be taxed in a way to remove some credits on each transaction, the same way the GTN sales are.

That being said, they can hopefully find a way to flag accounts that introduce large amounts of credits into the system, and figure out how to limit that activity, for those accounts.

The only thing this change will do(other than run off new players) is give the appearance that the devs are doing something. It will however, protect their love child, the Cartel Market. They will NEVER do anything to hurt that which will guarantee they never solve the problem.

[phenla]

Honestly, it is the principle.  Plain and simple.

Why would I give them a single IRL nickle if this is the type of direction they are going?  That this is a good idea?  What is next?

It will certainly ensure I will not sub or buy a single thing in the CM.   Nope, I will not support this path. 

Ever.

[sentientomega]

4 hours ago, DewyMossEmpire said:

This is a poor tax. You are now going to be punished for being poor, while the rich get richer.

It's just like real life!

Honestly, the forums are completely inundated with criticism AGAINST these new "economy fixes", and yet the trigger was arbitrarily pulled on it anyway.

The only thing Quick Travel fees are going to do is harm new players, but the game needs new players. It doesn't need more rich veteran players, who will not be affected by this change whatsoever. I recently got back into the game after a many-years hiatus and I was shocked to see the state of the economy and the GTN. All I had to do was sell a few old CM items I had saved in my Cargo Bays and I am well over 2b in Credits, and apparently this amounts to "barely anything" these days. The last time I played, reaching 1b was absolutely unheard of. Only the biggest and hardest of core Guilds were able to get their Guild Banks to such levels, and now it's just completely out of control. However, my girlfriend who recently started playing with me again, would have been absolutely screwed over if she wanted to purchase anything. Even as a Subscriber she would have no chance as a brand new player to get into the market, and now you are adding travel fees on top of it? The only reason she's going to survive is beccause I have a stupid amount of Credits that will never be affected by these changes, and I can simply give her millions to get started.

Honestly, at this point, it the economy is beyond repair or salvation.

Unpopular hot take, but unless they are simply going to drain everyone's credits across all servers and put a hard cap of (for a random example) 10 million credits for all players, they may as well just leave it alone. There is no going back, they allowed it to get to the point of no return. Either leave it be or make a completely drastic change.

Quick Travel fees is not the change we need, not by a long shot.

This, honestly this.

I agree with your "unpopular" hot take, and I think we need to add something more, perhaps. A much, much higher GTN tax, a supertax even of 50-75%, GTN price controls, mail credit taxes for transactions outside of your legacy and account, same with trading between characters, who are presumably also belonging to different accounts, this would help generate more of a demand for credits. Neither I, nor anyone else, should need to resort to just the GTN to make any credits, but as it is, we do. I like seeing how much I make from daily runs and general missioning, this should be the rewarding part, the GTN should just be gravy. Yes, I could live with a 20 million cap across my two legacies (10m per legacy), they should seriously consider that. I wonder what sort of GTN price ceilings they should go for though? Perhaps a million per stack/item?

[BrianDax]

This strategy is silly. It's essentially a regressive tax, which means it will only impact the poor. Those of use with billions of credits, simply won't care at all. The free to play people who make up a large percentage of the player base will be harshly impacted due to the one million credit cap. This is a ploy to force those free players to purchase escrow transfers to make money on the cartel market for BioWare. It will have zero impact on the economy. 

If BioWare wants to deal with inflation, use a strategy that will actually work.

1) Tax all player to player trades where credits are exchanged.

2) Raise the tax all GTN sales.

3) Lower the limit on the amount of credits that a player can hold on them to a reasonable amount, such as ten million credits. 

Moves that direct impact the transfer of credits from one player to another will have the greatest impact on inflation.

Part 2: Limit the amount of money that the game hands out as awards or for selling to vendors. Make these amount tiny and the new credits pumped into the game will drastically decrease. Basically stop printing more money when you need a wheel barrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. Yes, I am referring to one of the reasons WWII started for those of you who actually stayed awake in history class. 

These changes will not be popular, but they will not harshly impact new players and punish free to play. Unlike BioWare's changes, my suggestions will actually work. They have worked for years in real world economies. Duh, imagine that you can learn from real life examples.

[phenla]

13 minutes ago, peterschlossersw said:

Don't forget to write.

Wow, what a brilliant, helpful reply.  Your sparkling intellect is dizzying to behold.  I can see just how fully engaged and how powerful your insight must be.  It is people like you that make the direction this game is going in now make sense.   It is clear this game path was made for players just like you.

Thank you for crystalizing my point for me. 

[kalasur]

How to fix the economy:

Stop focusing on microtransactions and give me actual COOL STUFF to buy with credits. Let me buy outfits, mounts, more furnishing choices. Heck, let me unlock ALL the strongholds instead of being limited to only having 4 active. I'm sitting on billions in credits and nothing to do with it. The changes are going to hurt new players and won't really do anything to those of us sitting on tons of credits with nothing to do with it. 

There are too many different currencies for too many different things, and meanwhile the primary currency, credits, has no meaningful in-game value because there is next to nothing in game to do with credits.

[Skolops]

28 minutes ago, BrianDax said:

This strategy is silly. It's essentially a regressive tax, which means it will only impact the poor. Those of use with billions of credits, simply won't care at all. The free to play people who make up a large percentage of the player base will be harshly impacted due to the one million credit cap. This is a ploy to force those free players to purchase escrow transfers to make money on the cartel market for BioWare. It will have zero impact on the economy. 

If BioWare wants to deal with inflation, use a strategy that will actually work.

1) Tax all player to player trades where credits are exchanged.

2) Raise the tax all GTN sales.

3) Lower the limit on the amount of credits that a player can hold on them to a reasonable amount, such as ten million credits. 

Moves that direct impact the transfer of credits from one player to another will have the greatest impact on inflation.

Part 2: Limit the amount of money that the game hands out as awards or for selling to vendors. Make these amount tiny and the new credits pumped into the game will drastically decrease. Basically stop printing more money when you need a wheel barrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. Yes, I am referring to one of the reasons WWII started for those of you who actually stayed awake in history class. 

These changes will not be popular, but they will not harshly impact new players and punish free to play. Unlike BioWare's changes, my suggestions will actually work. They have worked for years in real world economies. Duh, imagine that you can learn from real life examples.

I don't think any of this is necessary. All that is required is to remove money from the economy. In a real economy, that's extremely difficult because all economics amounts to an exchange of money. In a video game economy, it's easy because any vendor removes them. For example, Hyde and Zeek is actually a pretty good option for removing credits from the economy. It takes out millions at a time. 

All that is required is some expensive credit sinks. That's literally all. Add an extremely luxurious stronghold that costs a billion credits. Add a non-tradeable, desirable armor set that costs millions per piece. Add some nice legacy perks that can only be unlocked by spending tens of millions. Someone on reddit had one of the best ideas I've ever heard: allow people to get, for extremely high costs, some of the characters from the story as a companion. For instance Darth Baras or Master Caden or Skavic, etc. Anyone! Build the dialog from the lines that were already recorded so you don't have to spend much money on development costs, even, then charge people tens or hundreds of millions to have these luxury companions. 

This sort of stuff doesn't do anything "extreme" that is going to really upset people - if you think the QT costs are upsetting people, imagine if they put a 50% tax on the GTN as suggested - but will remove billions and billions and hundreds and thousands of billions from the economy overnight. 

[VegaMist]

1 hour ago, kalasur said:

How to fix the economy:

Stop focusing on microtransactions and give me actual COOL STUFF to buy with credits. Let me buy outfits, mounts, more furnishing choices. Heck, let me unlock ALL the strongholds instead of being limited to only having 4 active. I'm sitting on billions in credits and nothing to do with it. The changes are going to hurt new players and won't really do anything to those of us sitting on tons of credits with nothing to do with it. 

There are too many different currencies for too many different things, and meanwhile the primary currency, credits, has no meaningful in-game value because there is next to nothing in game to do with credits.

I don't believe subscribers are limited to only 4 active strongholds. I literally have one of each (except for the newest one) and they are all active. Guilds are limited to only 1 (which I think should be expanded), but not the subscribers.

[ElricGrey]

There's no sense in getting upset. Everyone should already know that they have no plans to fix the economy anymore than governments do in real life. To really do so they'd have to have a plan that brings the poorest more in line with the richest, but that would aggravate the richest (CM whales), their largest source of revenue. It's just smoke and mirrors. Why it's a downright bad idea instead of just useless one, I couldn't say (maybe a bad effort looks more convincing than no effort? Or just an opportunity to try and turn more people to the CM by taking their credits, and just saying it is the opposite of what it is), but there will never be a legitimate plan to make things more affordable. That would affect the bottom line.

Edited March 29, 2023 by ElricGrey

[TrixxieTriss]

It’s sad that a lot of this thread reads like some underground conspiracy site. People are out right ignoring the real causes for the inflation & looking for a boogie man where there is none. 

Experienced players have already explained in detail where the hyper inflation started & explained the mechanisms behind it. They’ve even offered logical solutions that will actually impact inflation that aren’t extreme measures.

But people either aren’t reading the thread properly or are so caught up in looking for the most illogical boogie man reasons, that they derail the thread with nonsense. 

Simply put, the hyper inflation was caused by excess credits being generated through normal game play mechanisms. It wasn’t caused by crafting, it wasn’t gold sellers, it wasn’t people exploiting bugs & it’s not people selling things on the GTN. 

BioWare has addressed a lot of the excess credits that were being generated already. They may need to tweak it here or there, but that’s mostly been done. 

The problem now is all those excess credits that caused the hyperinflation are already in the game & they wont be going anywhere fast with these changes because those credits haven’t been targeted (yet). 

BioWare assures us these are just first steps & have acknowledged that other measures are being discussed to close the GTN tax loophole & player to player tax avoidance trades. Wether they do anything & when is the question. 

Once they close those tax avoidance loopholes, large sums of credits will naturally be removed from the game through the GTN. This will be the most effective thing they can do to combat inflation. 

When they have done that, they can look at other measures if they see inflation isn’t decreasing enough. Things like credit sinks that target players with the highest wealth are tricky. But adding highly desirable items at vendors for exorbitant amounts of credits is one option. So is making crafting properly relevant again for all player lvls & not just augments.

 

[phenla]

3 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

It’s sad that a lot of this thread reads like some underground conspiracy site. People are out right ignoring the real causes for the inflation & looking for a boogie man where there is none. 

Experienced players have already explained in detail where the hyper inflation started & explained the mechanisms behind it. They’ve even offered logical solutions that will actually impact inflation that aren’t extreme measures.

But people either aren’t reading the thread properly or are so caught up in looking for the most illogical boogie man reasons, that they derail the thread with nonsense. 

Simply put, the hyper inflation was caused by excess credits being generated through normal game play mechanisms. It wasn’t caused by crafting, it wasn’t gold sellers, it wasn’t people exploiting bugs & it’s not people selling things on the GTN. 

BioWare has addressed a lot of the excess credits that were being generated already. They may need to tweak it here or there, but that’s mostly been done. 

The problem now is all those excess credits that caused the hyperinflation are already in the game & they wont be going anywhere fast with these changes because those credits haven’t been targeted (yet). 

BioWare assures us these are just first steps & have acknowledged that other measures are being discussed to close the GTN tax loophole & player to player tax avoidance trades. Wether they do anything & when is the question. 

Once they close those tax avoidance loopholes, large sums of credits will naturally be removed from the game through the GTN. This will be the most effective thing they can do to combat inflation. 

When they have done that, they can look at other measures if they see inflation isn’t decreasing enough. Things like credit sinks that target players with the highest wealth are tricky. But adding highly desirable items at vendors for exorbitant amounts of credits is one option. So is making crafting properly relevant again for all player lvls & not just augments.

 

Maybe, but the concern is that new and returning players, that do not have billions, are impacted now, in a real, game breaking way.  Believe it or don't, but it certainly applies to me.   There is no other issue or excuse anyone can use to explain away what is actually happening.  In game.  Now.  To a game we love.