Credit Economy Initiative beginning with 7.2.1

[rpaine]

 Why not do something similar to the WoW token system. Allow folks to spend in game currency for playing time? Folks with large amounts of in game $ would jump at the chance to trade that for sub time I think. I don't often agree with Blizzard's tactics but I feel this one would be helpful.

[ShadowyKai]

2 hours ago, kalasur said:

I am a subscriber, and I only have 4 available slots. Are you claiming that you can actively use more than 4 without having to deactivate one first? Because I don't have that ability and I have been a subscriber since Vanilla.

I seem to recall that, a while back, there was a person on the forums talking about how he couldn't get access to more than four Strongholds at a time.

For him, like you, that should not have been the case, so everybody knew something was wrong.

It turned out that this person simply never realized that the Strongholds menu is organized in pages. He simply never noticed that, at the bottom of the Strongholds menu, there is an arrow button that will take you to the other pages, where you can see the rest of the Strongholds ...

I'm not trying to insult you here, I swear ... but are you sure that you can't access more than four Strongholds at a time? Did you ever click on the arrow button at the bottom of the Strongholds menu to get to the others?

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, peterschlossersw said:

If this problem was caused, or even started by credit exploits, then BW has access to the data, to the logging, to show who did what.  Those accounts could be sanctioned, directly.  If BW does NOT have the data gathering and logging in place, I urge they change that.  If this problem ever gets fixed, future credit exploits may cause it anew.  The logging is essential to hold people accountable.

Experienced players have already explained in detail where the hyper inflation started & explained the mechanisms behind it. And it wasn’t exploits.

[DWho]

6 hours ago, peterschlossersw said:

If this problem was caused, or even started by credit exploits, then BW has access to the data, to the logging, to show who did what. 

The problem is that at this point, those credits have been "laundered" so many times, figuring out where they all went would be impossible. The logs only work if they act immediately, years later there is no way to track those credits down to punish the original offender (who may not even be in the game anymore - having passed on their "wealth" to someone else)

[Sappharan]

7 hours ago, peterschlossersw said:

Come on you guys, give 'em a break.  Governments all over the (our real-life) world struggle to keep free markets running well, and inflation in check.  They've struggled for 100 years and still can get things right.

BW is taking action.  Misguided or not, and I'm guessing they anticipated all this flack, they did it anyway.  This makes it seem the issue is important to them.

If this problem was caused, or even started by credit exploits, then BW has access to the data, to the logging, to show who did what.  Those accounts could be sanctioned, directly.  If BW does NOT have the data gathering and logging in place, I urge they change that.  If this problem ever gets fixed, future credit exploits may cause it anew.  The logging is essential to hold people accountable.

Fair enough.  Problem is that, from what I have read, they have had numerous recommendations...but they went another way.  More's the pity.

[Yarol]

7 hours ago, kalasur said:

Repair costs are unnoticed because the guild pays it, not me. Guildmaster isn't complaining so non-issue.

Travel costs are arbitrary and make no sense. Not to mention they are punishing new players who don't have resources. They are an annoyance to me, with billions of credits, but not going to really do anything to my billions of credits. But...

I already paid credits to unlock quick travel on all my toons. Now I'm paying more credits on top of it. And the quick travel costs don't align with the taxi travel costs. 

What the quick travel costs may impact is how much I play and what content I play. Particularly quests that have multiple phases that require planet-jumping or jumping all over the map. You've created a situation where in many cases, the cost to complete a quest will be higher than the reward for completing the quest. That's like spending $500 to commute to work to be paid $300 in wages. How long is someone going to go to that job.

The easiest thing in the world to fix the economy: get rid of the thousand and twenty different currencies and let us buy things with credits. Seriously, I'm looking at my character right now and:

 

 

Totally agree with you. I'm just curious what really comes around. One could introduce for the GTN the transaction fees stagger after height of the price, so that at the end high prices are not worthwhile. The fees would have to be paid by the GTN advertiser. Staggering could start at 10% and end at 80%. So that extra high prices are not worth it. But no, one raises fast travel costs. That I do not laugh. The prices go therefore still far not down, because one raises costs for traveling. Instead of fighting inflation, the inflation is driven forward in that you create costs for the player that are unnecessary and no reality reference to a fight against inflation. Charges/interest for the GTN are the way to go in my opinion.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Yarol

[lordnortamos]

Will we receive a response to this thread?  There seems to be a lot of opinions here.  Then again EA is terrible at communicating with their customers.....

[_Re_V_aN_]

Why bw don't remove dye module from cartel market and put in into bazar vendor?
People still need buy pack from cm for certificat, so bw don't lose much. Also ppl get another credit slik in smugler machine, where we can spend credits for get certifcate? 

[TrixxieTriss]

38 minutes ago, lordnortamos said:

Will we receive a response to this thread?  There seems to be a lot of opinions here.  Then again EA is terrible at communicating with their customers.....

Don’t expect a response until or if BioWare are ready to implement more steps to curb inflation. I believe they’ve moved on from this thread/Topic since they’ve rolled out their plan. For better or worse, I doubt they’ll make anymore posts in this thread. I would even go as far as saying they’ll probably unpin it in a few weeks or a month because 7.2.1 has now been released. 

[Traceguy]

16 hours ago, kalasur said:

I am a subscriber, and I only have 4 available slots. Are you claiming that you can actively use more than 4 without having to deactivate one first? Because I don't have that ability and I have been a subscriber since Vanilla.

I am a sub. And have been playing since before SHs even existed. You're living in the past. Right now, you can have and own every SH in the game, and have each and every one of them decorated and active at the same time.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Traceguy

[vanonipro]

23 hours ago, rpaine said:

 Why not do something similar to the WoW token system. Allow folks to spend in game currency for playing time? Folks with large amounts of in game $ would jump at the chance to trade that for sub time I think. I don't often agree with Blizzard's tactics but I feel this one would be helpful.

It would not affect the inflation in any way. Credits in this system are transferred between players and don't get Printed or Burned. 

[peterschlossersw]

i vote direct trades be taxed same as GTN. at a minimum same rate 8%. maybe even a higher tax rate when transferring credits-only, to quell the credit sellers.

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by peterschlossersw

[TahliahCOH]

So death taxis are going to be the best way to get around, I guess. Guilds will foot the bill for repair costs, so it's now best to jump off a cliff or let yourself be killed so you can medvac out. Good grief is this messed up.

[TahliahCOH]

On 3/29/2023 at 4:00 PM, chroler said:

Precisely the plan!

I'd be interested in hearing how it goes, tbh. I might even start a toon on a new server just to see what happens with these new costs. I don't think QT will be on my list of things to unlock now. Maybe ever. On my current server, it's fine because I'm not broke (not rich, either). But yeah, I would just not get QT at all if I were to start over with the current way it is (pay to unlock, pay twice to upgrade, pay bizarrely high prices to use it--it costs more to travel across the galaxy to another planet than it does across Voss or even Coruscant. Makes no sense at all.).

[LtBabyLucien]

It's a little frustrating to have QT costs added this late in the game. Furthermore: why have these costs when it already costs credits to unlock the cooldowns? If you want it to be a credit sink, then increase the price to have the cooldowns. ADHD brain uses QT a lot to get across the map once travel points are unlocked.

Also: ADHD brain doesn't look at these forums/suggestions until stuff like this happens. Bit unfortunate, that.

I'm not as bothered at being charged to go to strongholds, as it already cost credits to go to an Empire stronghold when on a Republic toon. It has always been a bit odd to get charged to travel to planets once the private starship is acquired, but I chalked that up to "fictional fuel costs".

[Aaesith]

10 hours ago, vanonipro said:

It would not affect the inflation in any way. Credits in this system are transferred between players and don't get Printed or Burned. 

True, however developers could generate these themselves  and auction them directly to players until enough credits are out of the economy.
They could also do something similar to the black market auction house in that other game and auction to players random CM items or hard to get drop items every day.

As for keeping inflation in line, that is hard in every MMO because a feature of these games is that money is printed with every credit drop from kills, with every credit cost reward, etc... Eventually players have no more vendor items to spend these credits on and you get an inevitable increase in overall credits circulating in the economy.

If you eliminate this source of new credits, then you get deflation with some people hoarding credits and accounts with positive credit balances going inactive and that's equally bad if not worse. Credit exploits act as a huge multiplier for this issue. 

So balancing a game's economy is very difficult. Even in that one more established MMO previously discussed, inflation has gone rampant over the years going form 100 gold for your epic mount being hard to get in vanilla to selling things for millions of gold in the latest expansions. 

This is why more and more credit sinks need to be introduced all the time.

However the developers need to understand that once you give someone access to anything for free, there will always be huge pushback if you then start to charge for it later. This is the case with the quick travel fees and it will prove be nothing more than a small annoyance for new players on the starter planets and a principle based grievance for established players, that's it.

Everyone stating they will quit over this are silly, there are far greater issues to put you off the game than this one and any decision to quit is probably backed by many more other factors. I for one don't even mind the inflation, what I do mind is the GTN cap that forces me to hang around on the fleet in order to trade higher value items. At least they could make the trade channel global to the server and accessible from everywhere. If your money making activities do not focus on credit rewards, inflation is meaningless because the credits you make from selling your items (crafted items or crafting materials) go up with inflation anyway. And yes this applies to normal gameplay, if you gather stuff as you do whatever content you feel like doing, that stuff or whatever you craft with it will increase in price with inflation, so no problems there. Making billions in the game is not hard, unless you try to make them from mission rewards 😁 It's spending those billions that gets annoying with the 1 billion GTN cap.

[Darcmoon]

On 3/28/2023 at 9:11 PM, kalasur said:

 Heck, let me unlock ALL the strongholds instead of being limited to only having 4 active. 

Im confused by this.  I have all of the strongholds and all of them are active.  Have you tried buying more and it told you something different?

[Aaesith]

On 3/30/2023 at 1:35 AM, kalasur said:

I will. If I can have all my strongholds active at once, I'd burn through credits faster than a drunk gambling addict at the Star Cluster Casino!

Even if you were going to unlock everything and decorate them fully with vendor purchased decorations that would barely push the 1 billion mark. It's the player purchased decorations that can really break your bank and those do not burn credits out of the economy, it just gets transferred around to other players.

Still strongholds are one of the most impactful credit sinks currently in the game as there are very few vendor sold gameplay or cosmetic items purchasable solely with credits.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

8 hours ago, TahliahCOH said:

So death taxis are going to be the best way to get around, I guess. Guilds will foot the bill for repair costs, so it's now best to jump off a cliff or let yourself be killed so you can medvac out. Good grief is this messed up.

🤣 I remember doing that way back when the cd on quicktravel was one hour.  Don't feel like slogging back through that dungeon and killing the respawned mbos again?  It's dying time!  Get all the heroics so you have instant travels available !  Never, never log out in a stronghold since travel back to a planet puts you in the freaking spaceport !

Maybe the dev's are nostelgic for the good old days before all the QOL changes were introduced.

 

[microstyles]

5 hours ago, Aaesith said:

It's the player purchased decorations that can really break your bank and those do not burn credits out of the economy, it just gets transferred around to other players.

They burn credits just fine if you buy the decos from the GTN. The vast majority of them are available there as far as I can tell.

[peterschlossersw]

On 3/31/2023 at 11:06 AM, microstyles said:

They burn credits just fine if you buy the decos from the GTN. The vast majority of them are available there as far as I can tell.

The poster is saying a transfer of credits (to the GTN seller) does NOT remove the majority those credits from circulation, unlike a fee (credits eaten by the game).

Edited April 2, 2023 by peterschlossersw

[RemenCreed]

To be honest, there is only one fix and that would be to completely create a new galactic currency. This galactic currency reset would purge all the credits that gold farmers have introduced into the economy and start fresh. As it stands, this current change only affects beginning players. 

[peterschlossersw]

14 minutes ago, RemenCreed said:

This galactic currency reset would purge all the credits that gold farmers have introduced into the economy and start fresh. 

It took me a many, many hours of game play to accrue my credit wealth. 

Any change that abruptly wipes that out, and starts me over, and puts me on an equal footing with most other players, will just kill my desire to continue investing my time in the game.

That said, if over time, a new currency was phased in, where the older one stopped dropping, but the both could be used for most purchases for some (at least a year) length of time, this idea could have greater merit.

Edited March 31, 2023 by peterschlossersw

[microstyles]

4 hours ago, peterschlossersw said:

The poster is saying a transfer of credits (to the GTN seller) does NOT remove those credits from circulation, unlike a fee (credits eaten by the game).

The GTN has a fee. It almost certainly removes more credits from circulation than any other mechanic in the game.

[Jestercrash]

After reading this I'm asking myself: Why did I resub?