What are the new travel cost changed supposed to do?

[AbsolutGrndZero]

So, I just read on Swtorista's twitter about the upcoming changes to travel costs.  Quick travel will now cost based on distance, and traveling to a stronghold will also.   Thing is, why?   Supposedly its' supposed to combat inflation as a credit sink, but... no. 

I have 2.5 billion credits and those travel costs will be a drop in the bucket for me, much less those sitting on the credit cap on multiple characters.

So, all this will do is screw over the players who are NOT sitting on billions while those of us with billions keep our billions.

Like... I'm not going to say what I'm thinking further, because it's against the forum rules, but...

[Nee-Elder]

30 minutes ago, AbsolutGrndZero said:

Like... I'm not going to say what I'm thinking further, because it's against the forum rules, ...

Say what you think, appropriately & reasonably ( without breaking rules ) and say it over here:  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927608-credit-economy-initiative-beginning-with-721/page/7/#comment-9742533  ...where it'll have  a greater chance of being read.

[TalLura]

While travel costs at first may feel rough, i dont think it will be as bad as people think it will in practice. the rate credits are currently earned in game will easily make those back quickly. , and as much as i hate to say it, taxi and speeders wont kill us. 

i for one while dont like having to part with any credits (even on gtn) i understand why these steps are needed

before they can tackle the massive amounts of credits people have they need to first passively remove credits from game. 

right now new credits are generated from drops, missions you name it. and very few credits are removed. 

for example lets say in 5 hours of playing you manage to earn 3mill credits just from running around killing enemies and doing missions. in that same time you repair your gear and some other things and only spend 200k.   

now do this on large scale.   if 500mill new credits enter the game in 5 hours but only 3-5mill credits are removed from the game then economy will only get worse.

what the passive sinks are are meant to be ways to help remove more credits from game so rate of new credits to passive removal is closer to even. 

 

even if its for every 500mill created 150-300mill removed it brings down new credits in game.  once they can sort that they can tackle the bigger issue of people having billions and driving up prices. 

 

bailing out a boat is good an all, but does not help if you dont make an effort to plug the leak in first place.

Edited February 12, 2023 by TalLura

[akdonkey]

Drive Away new players. This Dev Team is clueless. They must face facts; they need high end costs. They need to sell High end companion gifts, for instant 50 or maybe gifts like on the season's vender. They need to sell cartel items in game for credits. Not to mention they need to sell top tier armors for credits. Those will pull out massive amounts of credits from the game.

[DWho]

16 hours ago, TalLura said:

bailing out a boat is good an all, but does not help if you dont make an effort to plug the leak in first place.

except these changes are more like patching up the finger sized holes in the boat while ignoring the basketball sized one a foot away.

[TalLura]

6 hours ago, DWho said:

except these changes are more like patching up the finger sized holes in the boat while ignoring the basketball sized one a foot away.

Once they deal with issue of new credits generated outpacing credits removed they can attempt to do more. 

 

If the devs had said they would revalue the credit and basically wipe millions off its value as a way to deal with inflation people would equally be mad. 

They have to start small and work way up before they can sn tackle the billions people have 

 

 

We should just be glad they are doing anything to try at all. Even 

[DWho]

2 hours ago, TalLura said:

Once they deal with issue of new credits generated outpacing credits removed they can attempt to do more. 

There are too many credits already in the game for this to be an effective approach. Credits already in the game are what are causing the high prices not "inflation". Only rare items are skyrocketing, more mundane stuff (like general crafting mats and blue and green companion gifts) is only increasing slowly or not being sold at all because they aren't worth the effort of listing. What they will end up doing is reducing the impact of other credit sinks in the game. With these extra travel costs for quick travel, fewer people will be spending the credits to unlock the reduced cooldowns (if your not going to use QT then why pay for the unlock). The same goes for the other Legacy based Quick travels (why pay millions for something you'll never use). These changes are clearly targeted at slowing down play by making travel slower and more tedious rather than fixing inflation. To effectively drain credits from the game, you need to target the largest pools of credits (not by wiping them out but by targeting the sinks to the larger values - If everything was forced back onto the GTN and the 8% tax was applied to every trade, you wouldn't have to worry about the measly few million players get by playing the game).

[dark-jehts]

So you take 10 000 players

You remove 5000 credits a day for their quick travel needs every day for each of them

Now there are 50m less credits in circulation that there would otherwise be, without affecting them as individuals. that won't fix anything by itself but it's needed for long term

There's a reason every game in the history of online gaming has this method of slowly removing credits from the game, and most don't even have means to quick travel as easily as we do in swtor

[Enundr]

On 2/12/2023 at 10:10 PM, TalLura said:

Once they deal with issue of new credits generated outpacing credits removed they can attempt to do more. 

 

If the devs had said they would revalue the credit and basically wipe millions off its value as a way to deal with inflation people would equally be mad. 

They have to start small and work way up before they can sn tackle the billions people have 

 

 

We should just be glad they are doing anything to try at all. Even 

this doesnt even do that for players who already have a metric F ton of credits , its literally NOTHING to them , it only hurts new players and players who didnt have much credits to begin with , so no it is not starting small at all , they are just harming the players who arent the ones who are loaded. 

[Enundr]

22 hours ago, DWho said:

There are too many credits already in the game for this to be an effective approach. Credits already in the game are what are causing the high prices not "inflation". Only rare items are skyrocketing, more mundane stuff (like general crafting mats and blue and green companion gifts) is only increasing slowly or not being sold at all because they aren't worth the effort of listing. What they will end up doing is reducing the impact of other credit sinks in the game. With these extra travel costs for quick travel, fewer people will be spending the credits to unlock the reduced cooldowns (if your not going to use QT then why pay for the unlock). The same goes for the other Legacy based Quick travels (why pay millions for something you'll never use). These changes are clearly targeted at slowing down play by making travel slower and more tedious rather than fixing inflation. To effectively drain credits from the game, you need to target the largest pools of credits (not by wiping them out but by targeting the sinks to the larger values - If everything was forced back onto the GTN and the 8% tax was applied to every trade, you wouldn't have to worry about the measly few million players get by playing the game).

and ive made a suggestion for dealing with this , as for those who have atleast played through KOTE you know you lose your ship initially , and eventually get it back , but  beyond simply travling to different worlds outside of the scripted story shuttle  , its more or less lost its use. my suggestion of course was a new type of stronghold sinkhold , basically buying a new starship that isnt cheap at all. make it customizable and such , and of course let us keep buying another one and so forth with all the different ship designs out there.

[Enriquezarmy]

Another dumb, out-of-touch, Bioware exec made this decision. This does nothing for the screwed up economy and just angers the player base. Especially since we paid in our legacy already to unlock the convenience of moving around quick and free. This is why they circumvented space ports on planets because players were tired of the inconvenience!

[dgnuff]

On 2/10/2023 at 12:47 PM, AbsolutGrndZero said:

I have 2.5 billion credits and those travel costs will be a drop in the bucket for me, much less those sitting on the credit cap on multiple characters.

These costs aren't intended to make a dent in your 2.5 billion credits.  They never were.

Stop thinking about your own personal credit balance, and try looking at the larger picture of the entire game economy.  If you were to add up the entire balance of credits on every player on (e.g.) Star Forge you'd arrive at a value somewhere in the trillions, if not quadrillions of credits.  That overall figure is the visible sign of the inflation, and is the reason that GTN and private trade prices are out completely of control.

The long term desire is to reduce that number, and for the sake of this argument, I'm going to pull something out of thin air, and work with one quadrillion credits on Star Forge.  That's ten thousand accounts with 100 billion each - seems reasonable to me.  Let's divide 1 quadrillion by 5,000 and we get two hundred billion.  This means that it would take something like a hundred billion maximum cost quick travel trips to make a serious dent in the overall balance.  Now do you see why this change isn't intended to fix the huge amount of currency in the game.

But it does serve a purpose.  On a daily basis, people kill mobs, do quests, get credit rewards etc etc etc.  All of this adds up to a daily increase in that 1 quadrillion figure.   This is the credit flow into the game.  Before trying to reduce that 1 quadrillion figure, the devs first need to dramatically slow the rate at which it's growing.  And this is where the increased GTN taxes, taxes on private trades, increased repair costs, QT costs, reduced value of good sold, etc . etc. etc. etc. all come into play.  By increasing expenses across the board, and at the same time decreasing income, that is expected to slow down the influx of credits.  I'd guess it'll take a few more iterations before we finally get there, this is not something that should be rushed.

Only then, once the income/expense numbers are balanced, will it make sense to actually attack the big quadrillion monster.  That'll take time as well.  There are a lot of hidden problems.  e.g. what I would describe as "sequestered" credits, i.e. the credits on accounts that are not active at the current time, but that still exist.  Those can only be removed from the game if the accounts that have them start subbing again.  And extracting credits from the economy without breaking the game isn't as easy as it sounds.

The devs have stated over and over, this is a long term plan.  We are not going to get a magical overnight fix, I can see this extending well towards the end of 2023, and into 2024.  But the basic plan is sound, even if there are a few flaws in the current implementation.

 

 

[Traceguy]

The QT fees were added without any thought. Probably a dumb idea by an intern at Bioware who is hopefully fired by now.

The QT fee makes it impossible to QT as a new player.

I can go to Ossus with basically no credits in my inventory, just enough to QT 1 time. I finish the dailies with over 400k credits. Bioware may have won 10k from me in total QT fees, but that 10k will not be missed with 400k+ made in quests.

A new player on tython gets like 10 credits for completing 1 mission, and is then asked to pay 1k to QT.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Traceguy