Don't add credit sinks that hurt new players

[casirabit]

9 hours ago, denavin said:

This would not qualify as a disputed charge thus a charge back would be fraud and punishable by law....

https://www.creditkarma.com/credit-cards/i/what-is-a-chargeback

Nuking a virtual economy will have no effect on reality. The only people it will effect are the fools that spent $400 on Virtual Pixels of light ....

If you lose all your credits it does not bother me as I have NEVER been so stupid as to spend mass amounts of money for virtual items. All I spend money on is my subscription I have NEVER bought anything off of the Cartel Market.... It's just not worth it whether I can afford it or not makes no difference.

Sound like your personal problem not mine...

 

Fools and their money are soon parted....

Some people have money that it doesn't hurt them to spend that much, and therefore you are judging them to be stupid, sounds like sour grapes to me.  While that is not me, I would never judge someone to be stupid, especially if they have that kind of money to spend.   It is no different in them spending money on things in real life, such as clothing, alcohol, or even cars, but instead of spending it on stuff like that, they spend it on something that makes the game better for them. It is your choice not to purchase things off the cartel market just like it is theirs to purchase things that for them make them enjoy the game more.  

[DWho]

I'm starting to wonder if the Cartel Market sales are collapsing under the weight of the huge numbers of credits needed to buy just about any high end items. So few people have enough credits to buy anything with what they earn in game (and prices are reaching the point where 1 transaction maxes out the credit limit on a character) that the sales of the high end stuff may be dipping on the CM. That would explain the pin-prick approach Bioware seems to be taking (draw out just enough credits to stabilize the market but don't fix it - keep CM prices in credits high to encourage people to spend real world money on them with the hopes of cashing in on one big sale).

[Ardrossan]

11 hours ago, eabevella said:

Literally nuking the economy is so childish if you actually think that's a viable option I don't even know what to say.

Introducing a new currency could potentially work only if they fix the root of the inflation - which is how it's done irl. Don't tell me you are so naive to believe the introduction of a new currency will magically fix all the problems that caused the inflation in the first place -  otherwise the new currency will just ride the inflation train at day 1 and everything will go back to the same 3 months later.

PS: I've said it before, but I feel like I need to emphasize once again: fixing the inflation will "hurt" the "rich" because it means loopholes, exploits, and tax evasion will be fixed. But hurting the rich doesn't mean to literally nuking the rich like what the communists did irl.

Apparently it's 'childish' because 'it's communism', you've said nothing else that explains it. New currency is also 'naive', again no explanation why. 

I see a lot of whales in this thread who've been subbed for a decade upset by the possibility that they could lose everything. Go ahead, be upset. The elite players on this forum, who act like they've been holding up the game by themselves, could use a taste of reality, particularly one that reflects real life events where it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank if the economy explodes and those banks aren't worth anything anymore.

We need a drastic change to turn the game economy around. It sure isn't going to be fixed by taxing quick travel or plugging exploits. That just preserves the status quo, again a reflection of real-life 'solutions' to economic collapse.

1 hour ago, Stradlin said:

...I am certain nobody in dev team for one second considers some strange nuking of the entire economy, lol. What on earth  here is the problem so severe that folks here seriously think it needs such a  massively radical and unheard of  fix? Cure shouldn't be more brutal than the disease. That's like mending a headache by cutting the head off.

At the high end, having billions of credits and not being able to spend it, GTN maxing out at 1B so players doing p2p trades (which exacerbates the problem) because our credits aren't worth anything. At the low end, new players who have no credits and having to pay millions just for basic crafting resources. I see the whales in the thread scoffing that it's so easy to make money when they already know how to do it and have been accumulating it for years on multiple toons. 

We need to get back to 2.0 numbers when the credit economy was more egalitarian and even a F2Per--like me--could theoretically buy account and species unlocks using combination of escrow and credit limits. In fact, I bought most of those unlocks before escrow existed, when the game was much more punitive to F2P than it is now, because the player economy didn't require billions (or even millions) of credits just to function. No way F2P can do that now, nor could they for many years now. 

Again, it's 'brutal', 'worse than the disease', 'cutting off the head' and various other hyperboles...for the elites, who are already insulated from most of the problems caused by the economy. It's a bit different on the low end.

Now, I doubt BioWare cares any more about the plight of newbies than any of you do, but I do think that they've shown enough of a casual disregard for what the playerbase thinks that they might do this idea because they know, like I know, that y'all will rage on here but otherwise not do anything about it, protestations notwithstanding. And I think that would probably be the case among those who don't use the forum, but y'know...even if people do quit, I'd be willing to risk it, as long as the newbies benefit from it.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Stradlin]

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

 

Again, it's 'brutal', 'worse than the disease', 'cutting off the head' and various other hyperboles...for the elites, who are already insulated from most of the problems caused by the economy. It's a bit different on the low end.

Now, I doubt BioWare cares any more about the plight of newbies than any of you do, but I do think that they've shown enough of a casual disregard for what the playerbase thinks that they might do this idea because they know, like I know, that y'all will rage on here but otherwise not do anything about it, protestations notwithstanding. And I think that would probably be the case among those who don't use the forum, but y'know...even if people do quit, I'd be willing to risk it, as long as the newbies benefit from it.

 

 

"Elite" here is pretty much anyone who has been playing the game for a month or more, assuming they've participated in player to player economy via material selling or anything like that. Elite here is any new player who've bought a single hypercrate to earn cash.  

 

When it comes to blight of newbies..  TOR client has never adjusted to inflation, and isn't really going to in some meaningful way ig. Stronghold that used to cost 7 million 7 years back still costs 7 million today. For a new player, It was quite expensive back then and is  almost nothing now.  Significant credit sinks that were once meant to be major goals  have turned into something completely trivial. For new players, too.  And ofc, new players are  the ones still unlocking this stuff.

Most of player to player economy is all about space barbie and other vanity things. Meanwhile, some of the  things you pay to client for have pretty big effects in game. Various legacy unlocks, SH unlocks and so on. Many of these costs were meant to be significant and difficult to cover once the price tags were defined. Thanks to inflation, they've turned utterly trivial for any new player by the time they're done with 2nd or 3rd planet, assuming they participate in player to player economy. So if anything, inflation has made life of a new player much easier. It gets difficult only once we start talking about vanity stuff.

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Stradlin

[Ardrossan]

6 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

When it comes to blight of newbies..  TOR client has never adjusted to inflation, and isn't really going to in some meaningful way ig. AH that used to cost 7 million 7 years back still costs 7 million today.  Significant credit sinks that were once meant to be major goals  have turned into something completely trivial. For new players, too.  And ofc, new players are  the ones still unlocking this stuff.

Most of player to player economy is all about space barbie and other vanity things. Meanwhile, some of the  things you pay to client for have pretty big effects in game. Various legacy unlocks, SH unlocks and so on. Many of these costs were meant to be significant and difficult to cover once the price tags were defined. Thanks to inflation, they've turned utterly trivial for any new player by the time they're done with 2nd or 3rd planet, assuming they participate in player to player economy. So if anything, inflation has made life of a new player much easier. It gets difficult only once we start talking about vanity stuff.

Literally everything I mentioned, unlocks for species and account unlocks, cost hundreds of millions of credits or more, which is not what it was seven years ago, so your first paragraph makes no sense. I use 'elite' very precisely here to refer to players, like yourself, who seem to be completely out of touch with the player economy because you're used to plunking down 1B without blinking. You clearly never had to buy these unlocks and don't get how much players charge for them now. They are not things you can buy from the CM without paying a lot of CCs. 

"space barbie", "vanity stuff". I love how dismissive people on this forum always are of this part of the game as if it isn't a huge reason most of us still play. Stradlin, If you really wanted a space sim, there's half a dozen better ones than GSF that pop faster and update more than one time ever lol. Space barbie, including dress-up, SHs and decos, is important to this game so yes I expect new players want to not look like Darth Marr clones using the basic greens that haven't been updated since 2015. 

[Stradlin]

19 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

Literally everything I mentioned, unlocks for species and account unlocks, cost hundreds of millions of credits or more, which is not what it was seven years ago, so your first paragraph makes no sense. I use 'elite' very precisely here to refer to players, like yourself, who seem to be completely out of touch with the player economy because you're used to plunking down 1B without blinking. You clearly never had to buy these unlocks and don't get how much players charge for them now. They are not things you can buy from the CM without paying a lot of CCs. 

"space barbie", "vanity stuff". I love how dismissive people on this forum always are of this part of the game as if it isn't a huge reason most of us still play. Stradlin, If you really wanted a space sim, there's half a dozen better ones than GSF that pop faster and update more than one time ever lol. Space barbie, including dress-up, SHs and decos, is important to this game so yes I expect new players want to not look like Darth Marr clones using the basic greens that haven't been updated since 2015. 

 

Stuff that has been initially bought for cc and is then being  sold for credits costs hundreds of millions now. Stuff you buy from client(legacy unlocks such as Improved experience, Strongholds, travel locations,field repair, rocket boost etc etc etc) is bought via credits from the client. Generally speaking, many of the  legacy unlocks are all about the QOL while most things bought for cc is all about vanity. So a new player has much easier access to QOL than they used to back in 3.0 or something. 

Various unlocks that are there to make life of F2P less restricted  being an exception. I'm pretty sure BW doesn't want F2P to have an easy access to player to player economy and the unlocks improving their life. They want F2P to either buy and spend cc for it..or they want F2P to make a great plan: "Darn it. I shall beat the system by collecting lots of money to escrow, then I sub for ONE MONTH and buy all the unlocks I ever need!"  Ie they want to make F2P to spend money on TOR..which is the whole idea of every F2P system ever.

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Stradlin

[Ardrossan]

22 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

 

Stuff that has been initially bought for cc and is then being  sold for credits costs hundreds of millions now. Stuff you buy from client(legacy unlocks such as Improved experience, Strongholds, travel locations,field repair, rocket boost etc etc etc) is bought via credits from the client. Generally speaking, many of the  legacy unlocks are all about the QOL while most things bought for cc is all about vanity. So a new player has much easier access to QOL than they used to back in 3.0 or something. 

Various unlocks that are there to make life of F2P less restricted  being an exception. I'm pretty sure BW doesn't want F2P to have an easy access to player to player economy and the unlocks improving their life. They want F2P to either buy and spend cc for it..or they want F2P to make a great plan: "Darn it. I shall beat the system by collecting lots of money to escrow, then I sub for ONE MONTH and buy all the unlocks I ever need!"  Ie they want to make F2P to spend money on TOR..which is the whole idea of every F2P system ever.

 

Rocket boots cost more credits than F2P credit limits, now or in the past. Escrow costs have always been out of reach of F2Pers, again both now and in the past--I recently paid 700M for a 600k escrow. I can afford that; they can't. Assume the player doesn't have easy access to a credit card or can afford to spend real money on a game and your thinking about the economy might shift (inb4 whales snarking that the poors shouldn't be playing games then).

I'm pretty sure BW doesn't require you to play devil's advocate for them. It would be very easy for them way back when to codify that all unlocks available while subbed, including story, will be locked if they drop sub, and they didn't, or that the GTN could only be used by continuous subs, or various other dystopian corporate fantasies.

I am only here, in fact, to take advantage of the end of GS--I subbed for a month and collected all rewards, including CCs, using credit catch-up for any I missed. They have made it very clear, and have done so on repeated occasions in fact, that they really don't care about you continuous subs at all, and operate on a model of players subbing for a bit and leaving. That would make someone like me the ideal demographic BW is catering to. So yes I think they should make it easier for F2P to actually enjoy their gameplay experience by being able to afford what they want to buy.

To that end, I support either the neo-currency Balemb suggested or a complete nuking of the economy. 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Stradlin]

^^ I think we have to decide if we are speaking about " plight of the new players", as you originally suggested,  or about F2P restrictions and how you feel more of them should be removed or eased or made more accessible. I assume inflation and many of its various sympthoms are kinda chaotic and unintentional. F2P having very hard time buying any major unlocks for in game credits is almost certainly by design.

 

"Ooh, I know! I beat the system by collecting tons of money to Escrow and sub for a month and unlock everything!"

"Ooh, I know! I beat the system by finishing the season,. THEN subbing for a little bit  and collecting all the rewards!"

"Ooh, i know! I beat the system by subscribing for a month to get all the expansions for free!"

"heh, as Sub I get 600cc just like that..basically stealing money from EA!! Imma do just that and buy that cool unlock to sell in GTN.." 

There's a good amount of such lures  here and  there, making sure you chew  one now, and some another one later is idd the whole point.

 

"Hah, cool. If I play it smart, I can actually slowly but steadily get all these cool useful unlocks without paying them anything!" is something they prolly don't want you to be able to think.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Stradlin

[Ardrossan]

Just now, Stradlin said:

^^ I think we have to decide if we are speaking about " plight of the new players", as you originally suggested,  or about F2P restrictions and how you feel more of them should be removed or eased or made more accessible. I assume inflation and many of its various sympthoms are kinda chaotic and unintentional. F2P having very hard time buying any major unlocks for in game credits is almost certainly by design.

Again, I paid in-game credits for those unlocks back in the day. F2Pers can't do that now. It's not 'by design' that the player economy is broken and stuff costs hundreds of millions when it used to cost hundreds of thousands. 

I'm referring to the economy, which includes unlocks or 'vanity' items. I'm talking about unlocks solely because you seem to think that F2P don't deserve to customize their appearance. To me the freedom to buy what they want is all one and the same. I could buy many armor shells back in the day, and i could also save and buy the account unlocks. Try buying anything for under a million credits nowadays. 

And Stradlin--as I said, BW does not require you to invent arguments why their nickle and dime-ing was a brilliant strategy. I have had these conversations many times before on this forum and each time, the white knights seem unaware that BioWare is not in agreement with their conservative logic about how F2P games are supposed to work, and had rolled back many of the restrictions I put up with when I was a F2P. The problems now are because of the economy and the inability to apply a real fix. 

 

[Stradlin]

6 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

Again, I paid in-game credits for those unlocks back in the day. F2Pers can't do that now. It's not 'by design' that the player economy is broken and stuff costs hundreds of millions when it used to cost hundreds of thousands. 

I

 

Yes,I remember those times well. For a while, CC came very cheap, when it comes to cc->credits. Not just cheap as in inflation adjusted, but you really didn't have to do all that much then, for amount of credits you needed to get pretty powerful cc-bought unlocks from GTN. Game  was still quite new, and F2P was brand new back then, and BW and players alike were still kinda figuring out the pricetags for things. I am almost certain BW did not like how much F2P can unlock with their own credits, without paying RL money. Like it or hate it, I bet they simply don't want it to happen. Inflation or no inflation. All the F2P -relevant unlocks costing so much cc that there is no way you ever see any sold for less than 100s of millions is no oversight. Back when inflation was still somewhat in check, like 2019 or something, these things were already well out of F2Ps reach.

Without aid of some subscribing friend that is.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Stradlin

[Ramahar]

13 hours ago, Jdast said:

But you are 100% correct that BW has absolute ownership / property rights over everything in the game so no credit card company would or should issue a chargeback.

They have absolute ownership of everything in the game but if they turned around and took back the value of what a player paid for in cash at the online store then a chargeback would be warranted by law and a legal action could be taken. 

[Jdast]

47 minutes ago, Ramahar said:

They have absolute ownership of everything in the game but if they turned around and took back the value of what a player paid for in cash at the online store then a chargeback would be warranted by law and a legal action could be taken. 

This is flatly incorrect under any theory of the law (at least in the U.S.) for a simple reason: You still have access to the item and can utilize it. The fact it is no longer as valuable or you can no longer sell it at your desired price is immaterial.

The EULA is crystal clear: EA / Bioware can do whatever they want with game mechanics, including currency manipulation. If you as a customer don't like it, you are free to leave.

This legal action you propose would be dismissed by summary motion and would never see the light of day.

EA's lawyers aren't stupid and the EULA is ironclad.

Dasty

[xxSHOONYxx]

2 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

Literally everything I mentioned, unlocks for species and account unlocks, cost hundreds of millions of credits or more, which is not what it was seven years ago, so your first paragraph makes no sense. I use 'elite' very precisely here to refer to players, like yourself, who seem to be completely out of touch with the player economy because you're used to plunking down 1B without blinking. You clearly never had to buy these unlocks and don't get how much players charge for them now. They are not things you can buy from the CM without paying a lot of CCs. 

"space barbie", "vanity stuff". I love how dismissive people on this forum always are of this part of the game as if it isn't a huge reason most of us still play. Stradlin, If you really wanted a space sim, there's half a dozen better ones than GSF that pop faster and update more than one time ever lol. Space barbie, including dress-up, SHs and decos, is important to this game so yes I expect new players want to not look like Darth Marr clones using the basic greens that haven't been updated since 2015. 

F2P should have no access to gtn at all. That would be a good way to start combating inflation if they are unable to keep track of credit sellers and bot. Anything that is given to f2p is something that can be used by credit sellers and bots to take advantage of. 

And Bioware at the same time could very well (if they dont want to check logs) go to one of those credit sellers wepages and buy credits and then the account that is used to deliver the credits be banned and traced to see where it got those credits from and ban subsequent bot accounts or banks. Trillion of credits will leave the game in seconds.

[casirabit]

2 hours ago, Ramahar said:

They have absolute ownership of everything in the game but if they turned around and took back the value of what a player paid for in cash at the online store then a chargeback would be warranted by law and a legal action could be taken. 

You forget the EUALA and etc that you initial at the beginning before you started playing.  It states that things can be changed if the company deems it necessary and therefore there with that agreement, most attorneys (at least the ones I know) would not even try to take it to Court.

[remylion]

18 hours ago, denavin said:

I would not be so stupid as spend $400 to buy Virtual Items made up from Pixels of Light

If you spend $400 on the Cartel Market (which would be stupid) just to sell it for 100 billion in Virtual ( as in Not Real) Currency then you deserve to loose it all if they reset the economy.

Charge-backs would not happen since they are illegal

A chargeback is a form of credit card fraud that can be punished under the law.

In case you have not figured it out... You Do Not Own the Currency in game, BW does and they can do what ever they want with it. It may upset people but BW has been upsetting players for years. This would be just one more time they did.

As for you quitting.... Nobody would notice. It would be like trying to drain the ocean by removing a teaspoon of water.

 

 

With out the "stupid" people spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on the Cartel Market this game would not exist. That is a simple fact for all MMOs in todays market. No MMO survives on subscriptions alone.

Edited March 15, 2023 by remylion

[ceryxp]

2 hours ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

F2P should have no access to gtn at all. That would be a good way to start combating inflation if they are unable to keep track of credit sellers and bot. Anything that is given to f2p is something that can be used by credit sellers and bots to take advantage of.

I see the trend of blaming F2P and preferred players for the actions of credit sellers when those actions are things that are impossible for F2P and preferred players is still in vogue.

[FlameYOL]

On 3/14/2023 at 1:08 PM, Stradlin said:

 

Well..there's always two economies really. Player-Client trades and player-player. Inflation effects both. IG most drastic effect being that game turns much easier. Or rather, long term credit sink goals game has given to players turn short term goals for anyone who, say, sells materials in GTN for example. New player doing any sort of player to player trading has everything client has to offer turn into trivial matter to laugh at. Legascy unlocks? SHs?   "Oh you want this nice huge Alderaan SH kiddo? It'll cost you TEN MILLION DOLLARS!" Like..oh no! How long it takes  a completely new player to make that much once they're on 3rd or 4th planet or something? Ding conquest target., sell some mats you gathered, sell the encryption, you're done.

On the flipside, you're not gonna be able to afford decorating  that thing  like.ever. In fact, any new player who loves decoing is best off making one man guild and deco the guild SH, thanks to /copy being so powerful. Its a weird state of matters really.

 

 

Inflation would matter much less if BW gave players tools for coping with it. For some reason or another, they've chosen not to do so. It is insane they've not done anything to help keep GTN relevant. No high end items get sold there anymore.

They could balance credit costs of certain strongholds and legacy perks to the post credit sink economy, but the point there is no way to fix inflation unless something extreme is done. Do I think Bioware will do something extreme? No, so I accept inflation is going to remain as it is. 

[eabevella]

11 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

Apparently it's 'childish' because 'it's communism', you've said nothing else that explains it. New currency is also 'naive', again no explanation why. 

I see a lot of whales in this thread who've been subbed for a decade upset by the possibility that they could lose everything. Go ahead, be upset. The elite players on this forum, who act like they've been holding up the game by themselves, could use a taste of reality, particularly one that reflects real life events where it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank if the economy explodes and those banks aren't worth anything anymore.

Thinking nuking the economy can fix inflation IS childish.

Communism is NOT childish because people had twisted and used the ideal to fool uneducated farmers into believing that nuking the economy (killing all the "rich") would make their lives better. I'm not some white people who yell "communists bad" without actually knowing what it is: a powerful political movement that killed tens of millions of people. My whole family on both parental sides were killed during Cultural Revolution because of people who believed "nuking the economy" was the way to go.

Guess what? it's not. The country who did this still has the filthiest rich and powerful people, even back when most of their population can't feed themselves. Why? Because they didn't fix the root of why the economy/society was bad, they simply got rid of the old rich and powerful and replaced with a new batch of rich and powerful. It changed nothing. At least none of the "problems" they claimed will be fixed.

If you wipe everyone's credits in the game, if somehow this game doesn't got shut down immediately due to players rage quitting, guess what? The whales (I can name a few) will just get their hundreds of billions back in a matter of weeks because they have cargo bays after cargo bays of valuable CM items. Heck, even I have a few billions worth of random stuffs in my legacy hold, and my main income is selling rpm/oem, nothing compared to the actual whales. What will your great Cultural Revolution Kill The Rich movement achieve? Kill the game, the average players, and give EV/BW a terrible reputation. Congratulations! If that's what you're after.

You know why thinking the introduction of a New Currency ALONE will fix the inflation is naive?

Because there's no magical 1 step fix to any economy problem.

My country had huge inflation problem after WWII. They did fix it by introducing a new currency. But it's not just "oh we'll print a new money with a new name". The government somehow backed the new currency up with enough gold. They also realized they can't simply print money like it's free (part of the reason why the inflation went out of control in the first place). Other countries also want a semi-stable government at that area so they backed it up. The government also forced an old-new currency exchange of 40k to 1, which pissed off a lot of people, especially families with fortunes, to the point that they still resent the party till this day, while the poor people suffered because they ended up having significantly less numbers at hand (same things happened when Euro was first introduced but I guess not that extreme). The actual process is way more complicate but the point is, it's not a magic fix and has its consequences. Anyone is naive to think otherwise, even if we are talking about game economy.

If you simply force a New Credits. Guess what? If enough players stay (they are not like the poor bastards who can't leave their country when the government f-up big time), whales will simply list CM items and flip the price like before. It doesn't matter if they can only list a Hypercrate at 1M right now. They'll list it at 1.1M next week, 1.3M the next, and viola, we'll be back to everything >1B in what? A year? If we're lucky to have a 12 year anniversary. The system is still broken. Credit sellers are still there. Tax evasion is still good. And god know what sort of exploits people do. It changes absolutely nothing and any economy, games or otherwise, can't afford the "government/game company" pulling the new currency trick on a regular basis. People will riot. Governments will collapse, and games will die. Simple as that.

[Toraak]

I have a serious question here for the people claiming that the QT tax will hurt new players. Have you actually played on a new account recently? 

 

If you have and have no legacy, then you'd realize the QT tax won't affect new players much at all. 

1) New players tend not to QT all over the map like Vets do.

2) More importantly, new players have a CD on QT. 6 Min CD on QT, so new players won't be spamming this. Not to mention even if they got the Legacy unlock for (Legacy Travel 1) at Legacy level 2 it's still a 4 min CD.

 

This won't hurt new players anywhere near as much as people are claiming it will. They are just using new players as a bad example why this QT Tax shouldn't be implemented. 

 

While I don't think the QT tax will work to fix inflation, I also don't believe it will really hurt any of the playerbase at all.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Toraak

[SteveTheCynic]

2 hours ago, eabevella said:

If you wipe everyone's credits in the game, if somehow this game doesn't got shut down immediately due to players rage quitting, guess what? The whales (I can name a few) will just get their hundreds of billions back in a matter of weeks because they have cargo bays after cargo bays of valuable CM items.

Probably not as quickly as you make it out to be, since nobody will have any credits to buy those items, and it will take a little while (longer than "in a matter of weeks" would normally suggest) for the economy of a server to get back up to a *total* of one billion across all the players, much less billions each.

[eabevella]

2 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Probably not as quickly as you make it out to be, since nobody will have any credits to buy those items, and it will take a little while (longer than "in a matter of weeks" would normally suggest) for the economy of a server to get back up to a *total* of one billion across all the players, much less billions each.

Weeks, months it doesn't matter. Bots will grind credits and sell them. There will be bots spamming xxxxeasy.com 24/7 within a week and people will buy from them and we'll be back to the old inflation disaster if the game doesn't collapse first. Maybe weeks is an exaggeration, but how's months or even a year better?

[remylion]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Probably not as quickly as you make it out to be, since nobody will have any credits to buy those items, and it will take a little while (longer than "in a matter of weeks" would normally suggest) for the economy of a server to get back up to a *total* of one billion across all the players, much less billions each.

Maybe. How are companies farming credits to sell to players? If credit farming companies can still produce and sell credits at around 1 billion for 1.3 dollars, it won't take long for people to become billionaires again.

[remylion]

2 hours ago, Toraak said:

I have a serious question here for the people claiming that the QT tax will hurt new players. Have you actually played on a new account recently? 

 

If you have and have no legacy, then you'd realize the QT tax won't affect new players much at all. 

1) New players tend not to QT all over the map like Vets do.

2) More importantly, new players have a CD on QT. 6 Min CD on QT, so new players won't be spamming this. Not to mention even if they got the Legacy unlock for (Legacy Travel 1) at Legacy level 2 it's still a 4 min CD.

 

This won't hurt new players anywhere near as much as people are claiming it will. They are just using new players as a bad example why this QT Tax shouldn't be implemented. 

 

While I don't think the QT tax will work to fix inflation, I also don't believe it will really hurt any of the playerbase at all.

I think I used quick travel once when I first started and it was free. I kept forgetting about it because I was running everywhere killing everything I could find. I wasn't rushing through the starter worlds like they were a job, I was exploring and having fun.

Edited March 16, 2023 by remylion

[Toraak]

3 hours ago, remylion said:

I think I used quick travel once when I first started and it was free. I kept forgetting about it because I was running everywhere killing everything I could find. I wasn't rushing through the starter worlds like they were a job, I was exploring and having fun.

I wasn't much different at launch. I ran everywhere, and used QT at most when I finished a bunch of quests and the they were all to be handed in at the same place. While I still believe the QT tax won't do anything for inflation. The QT cooldown, and the fact newer players will take time going through the story, and questing to even use QT as often as any Veteran player will, they won't be hurt by this tax as much as some here are claiming.

[xxSHOONYxx]

14 hours ago, ceryxp said:

I see the trend of blaming F2P and preferred players for the actions of credit sellers when those actions are things that are impossible for F2P and preferred players is still in vogue.

How do you think new credits are made, considering there is no exploit (if/when there are all of this gets thrown out of the window)? By people killing mobs and doing quests/heroics. When you craft and sell, when you obtain a deco from and op, when you exchange tech fragments for opm or rpm and sell them, when you buy cc to buy an item and sell it. All those interactions are a transaction of credits, they don't create them and if sold by gtn they actually take some credits off circulation.

Then there are f2p bot accounts that create credits all the time, f2p can't transfer directly player to player but can buy 1 credit crap for 1m credits on the gtn, and lo and behold, now credit sellers have a way to create new credits with no effort.