Don't add credit sinks that hurt new players

[StrikePrice]

Adding small money sinks to things like quick travel are not going to have any effect on the economy. Players have 10s of billions of credits. If you make each port 5,000 credits, I can still do 10,000 ports for pocket change. 

If you want to create money sinks, create them where they will count. Give players will billions of credits something to do with them. Some suggestions ... 

1. Mats for legendary augments 10,000,000 each (making each aug cost 400,000,000)
2. Raise the price at Hyde & Zeek to 1,000,000 per mod
3. Some unique cosmetics that cost 1,000,000,000 credits each

You need to pull billions of credits out of the economy from the top, not thousands of credits from the bottom.

Edited February 25, 2023 by StrikePrice

[Samcuu]

The biggest money sink they could put in game is removing the 1b credit maximum on the gtn and getting the sales tax. Right now gold augs, for example, go for 1.6b in trade chat and credits just switch hands but aren't eliminated. I would gladly put gold augs on sale on the gtn and take the tax hit instead of spamming trade chat on fleet trying to sell stuff. Cmon bois work smarter not harder...

 

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Samcuu

[StrikePrice]

5 hours ago, Samcuu said:

The biggest money sink they could put in game is removing the 1b credit maximum on the gtn and getting the sales tax. Right now gold augs, for example, go for 1.6b in trade chat and credits just switch hands but aren't eliminated. I would gladly put gold augs on sale on the gtn and take the tax hit instead of spamming trade chat on fleet trying to sell stuff. Cmon bois work smarter not harder...

 

 

I think you're right. I thought about the GTN tax as a way. You're definitely right. Raising the limit would definitely do a lot. People would start to avoid the GTN for very expensive items if the taxes got too high, but the current rate is pretty sustainable.  My hope is the 64-bit client will facilitate the ability to raise the trade limit. 

[Chryptyk]

the only way gtn works as a credit sink is if p2p trades are stopped.  too much money is transferred tax-free between people atm.

[SteveTheCynic]

12 hours ago, Chryptyk said:

the only way gtn works as a credit sink is if p2p trades are stopped.  too much money is transferred tax-free between people atm.

If **large** p2p trades are stopped, more specifically.  If they put a limit of, say, 100K on credits transferred per trade, that still allows generous souls to give gifts of credits to new players on starting planets, but renders p2p trading of credits for high-end items infeasible.  (At 100K max per trade, that 1B credit item would take 10K trades.  Nobody's going to do that.)

[DWho]

32 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

If **large** p2p trades are stopped, more specifically.  If they put a limit of, say, 100K on credits transferred per trade, that still allows generous souls to give gifts of credits to new players on starting planets, but renders p2p trading of credits for high-end items infeasible.  (At 100K max per trade, that 1B credit item would take 10K trades.  Nobody's going to do that.)

That hits credit sellers/buyers too if you put the same limit on non-GTN mailing of credits (and makes those transactions much more obvious in the game logs). You still need to address the "alternate currency" market of CM items (hypercrates in particular).

[DawnAskham]

Just increasing the GTN limit significantly would pick up a lot of the off-GTN sales occurring these days - most people aren't sitting around Fleet spamming trade to avoid the tax, they are doing so because the items currently sell for more than 1 billion.

But since this is such an obvious sink, and one Bioware isn't talking about or implementing right now, one has to wonder why not - is the game's core such a mess that simple things like limits cannot be implemented without major development effort?

Lastly, unless or until they also put significant effort into dealing with RMT (farmers, bots, exploiters, sellers, buyers, etc), anything they do will be an ephemeral improvement at best.

Edited February 26, 2023 by DawnAskham

[FlatTax]

Let's remember, EA wants Credits to be an impractical way to attain Cash Shop items. Here, the system is working as intended.

Making Aug mats more available from vendors would significantly demonetize them, and EA doesn't want that either.

While EA may deflate raw prices via various schemes, they're not going to up-end the push into their Cash Shop. Too much money rides on it. Once there, people buy faux cosmetics (unbound items function like any other premium currency, carrying their cash value wherever they go) for laundering into various advantages.

The answer is demonetize game mechanics (endgame gearing like Augs, etc.), and make Cash Shop 'cosmetics' cosmetic-only.

EA will never do it.

[juliushorst]

23 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

3. Some unique cosmetics that cost 1,000,000,000 credits each

This is a very good advice. I spend over a billion on catching up on PVP season because I wanted a shiny and I hate PVP. If  they allowed me to spend more to catch up all to the end I would happily do it.

[Samcuu]

1 hour ago, FlatTax said:

The answer is demonetize game mechanics (endgame gearing like Augs, etc.), and make Cash Shop 'cosmetics' cosmetic-only.

EA will never do it.

I do agree that a lot of ot hinges upon the Cartel market because without its existence swtor would have been gone long ago. However can you name me one item in the cartel market that gives you an advantage in game? No u can't because they don't exist. The cash shop is a way to turn items u buy with real money into credits in game for sure. However there are ways to make more credits in game like buying and selling oem/rpm with tech frags. And you can easily max on tech frags in a few hours just by playing the game which would net u about 500m credits or more simply by playing the game for a few hours lol. 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Samcuu

[FlatTax]

1 hour ago, Samcuu said:

However can you name me one item in the cartel market that gives you an advantage in game? No u can't because they don't exist.

Sure.

For starters, Crystals are BiS gear offered for direct sale.

Believe me, EA isn't doing us any favors, and leaks cash into all core game systems.

[Samcuu]

48 minutes ago, FlatTax said:

Sure.

For starters, Crystals are BiS gear offered for direct sale.

Believe me, EA isn't doing us any favors, and leaks cash into all core game systems.

U can get the same crystal for 20k credits on the gtn lol. Any other examples?

Edited February 26, 2023 by Samcuu

[Toraak]

1 hour ago, FlatTax said:

Sure.

For starters, Crystals are BiS gear offered for direct sale.

Believe me, EA isn't doing us any favors, and leaks cash into all core game systems.

The crystal's with the +41 stat from the CM are not anymore BiS, then the ones you can make with the Artifice crew skill. If your buying a crystal off of the CM, your buying it not for the stats on it, but for the cosmetic color it has.

[FlatTax]

45 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

U can get the same crystal for 20k credits on the gtn lol. Any other examples?

Sure.

Literally anything else worth having in the Cash Shop.

If you need 14,000,000,000+ Credits to Aug-out a character, nothing comes close to the efficiency of the Cash-to-Credits conversion.

It's the thinnest of shell games.

[DWho]

35 minutes ago, Toraak said:

The crystal's with the +41 stat from the CM are not anymore BiS, then the ones you can make with the Artifice crew skill. If your buying a crystal off of the CM, your buying it not for the stats on it, but for the cosmetic color it has.

All crystals are purely cosmetic now. They don't work at all in most synced content and are such a tiny drop in the ocean of stats at endgame, that those +41 stats are meaningless

[Desplain]

On 2/25/2023 at 7:14 PM, StrikePrice said:

 

If you want to create money sinks, create them where they will count. Give players will billions of credits something to do with them. Some suggestions ... 

1. Mats for legendary augments 10,000,000 each (making each aug cost 400,000,000)
2. Raise the price at Hyde & Zeek to 1,000,000 per mod
3. Some unique cosmetics that cost 1,000,000,000 credits each

You need to pull billions of credits out of the economy from the top, not thousands of credits from the bottom.

Don't get me wrong, but I think that will hurt new players and players who don't play that often as well.

They won't be able to afford the mods they need or want.

 

I think that maybe one way to get rid of that insane inflation is to:

1. put a limit (credit amount) on direct sales

2. put a limit on (credit amount) GTN sales

3. let rare things  like the decorations from "Secrets of the Enclave" drop more often or create a vendor for them.

   (These decorations are sold for 500 millions up to 1 billion at the moment.)

4. create a vendor for decorations which aren't sold on the cartel market anymore or put them in the collection (this could also be done with color dyes etc.).

5. let us unlock things in the collection with credits or cartel coins.

 

By the way I've tried to flood the market with cheap bis crystals to fight inflation for new players, but that ended up in billionaires buying them and selling the crystals

for high amounts.

[Samcuu]

3 hours ago, FlatTax said:

Sure.

Literally anything else worth having in the Cash Shop.

If you need 14,000,000,000+ Credits to Aug-out a character, nothing comes close to the efficiency of the Cash-to-Credits conversion.

It's the thinnest of shell games.

I've made roughly 3 sets of gold augs for my toons and a few sets for friends with just tech frags, I've never bought any or the mats to make them. Doing what ur suggesting would cost about $90 for one set lol. 

[DWho]

57 minutes ago, Desplain said:

By the way I've tried to flood the market with cheap bis crystals to fight inflation for new players, but that ended up in billionaires buying them and selling the crystals

for high amounts.

It takes persistence (and lots of mats) but it can be done. You have to keep listing to the point they feel they aren't going to ever be able to sell for what they want (don't list hundreds at once but a few at a time every day, or even several times each day, that makes them have to keep checking and keep buying you out every day - eventually they'll lose patience and give up). Which BIS crystals were you trying to sell?

[eabevella]

7 hours ago, Desplain said:

By the way I've tried to flood the market with cheap bis crystals to fight inflation for new players, but that ended up in billionaires buying them and selling the crystals

for high amounts.

Unfortunately, only GTN/Trade stonk players sit on fleet all day, buy low sell high etc.

I usually just give new players 10m credits when I'm sure they're actually new. Usually they ask help for basic things and they're almost always excited about the story.

[Stradlin]

It is very difficult to undo inflation.

It would be  much easier to give players some tools for dealing with inflation.

It is crazy to me this hasn't happened yet, and clearly isn't going to anytime soon. Instead of tinkering with travel cost, they should do what they can to make GTN useful for high end trades again.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Stradlin

[DawnAskham]

24 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

It is very difficult to undo inflation.

It would be  much easier to give players some tools for dealing with inflation.

It is crazy to me this hasn't happened yet, and clearly isn't going to anytime soon. Instead of tinkering with travel cost, they should do what they can to make GTN useful for high end trades again.

Typical Bioware, ignore the low-hanging fruit and instead do something that will most likely have negative unintended consequences while not doing anything to directly improve whatever it was they intended to improve. 

[vianiel]

I think what they've been considering is how to combat inflation without hurting their revenue. Something about the coins reward nerf this GS might have something to do with that haha. Or any decisions that makes the player's life easier, really. Happier players don't always mean happier BW/EA pockets.

[StrikePrice]

16 hours ago, Samcuu said:

I've made roughly 3 sets of gold augs for my toons and a few sets for friends with just tech frags, I've never bought any or the mats to make them. Doing what ur suggesting would cost about $90 for one set lol. 

How are you able to do this? That would be hundreds of thousands of frags

[Samcuu]

11 minutes ago, StrikePrice said:

How are you able to do this? That would be hundreds of thousands of frags

Yes and no. First off I do large yield conquest on about 12 toons per week. Plus I pvp a lot, it's my main activity in the game. So maybe about 12,000 frags a week plus maybe 6 or 8 weeklies in pvp will give ya another 12k to 16k tech frags. So yeah getting mats is a little slow. However the real gain is when u get crits in crafting. If you have the guild bonus for crafting and you are using ur level 50 comps i get a crit about half the time. So when I go to craft a CM-1337 I'll either get a crit there or I'll get a crit when I actually craft an aug and often I get a crit with both.  I had like 2 cms which turned into about 6 augs a few weeks ago with a bunch of crits I got while crafting. Will take me a few weeks to get close to a full set. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by Samcuu

[Sarova]

On 2/25/2023 at 6:14 PM, StrikePrice said:

Adding small money sinks to things like quick travel are not going to have any effect on the economy. Players have 10s of billions of credits. If you make each port 5,000 credits, I can still do 10,000 ports for pocket change. 

If you want to create money sinks, create them where they will count. Give players will billions of credits something to do with them. Some suggestions ... 

1. Mats for legendary augments 10,000,000 each (making each aug cost 400,000,000)
2. Raise the price at Hyde & Zeek to 1,000,000 per mod
3. Some unique cosmetics that cost 1,000,000,000 credits each

You need to pull billions of credits out of the economy from the top, not thousands of credits from the bottom.

I suggested something similar in my PTS feedback.  I also included making collection unlocks available for millions/billions as well as CC and the option to buy gear upgrades for a billion credits each (without the various currencies).  I'm going to assume that since the PTS is closed, all good suggestions from feedback have been binned and they are sticking with as you rightly called it: "thousands of credits from the bottom" 😑