Don't add credit sinks that hurt new players

[DWho]

2 hours ago, Toraak said:

While I still believe the QT tax won't do anything for inflation.

This is the real problem. It is a "tax" aimed at players who aren't the problem and it will only affect new players (you can argue how much but the fact is they are the only ones that will be hurt). Credit farmers don't use QTs (they use bots that repeatedly sweep the same area) and high level players are generating tens of thousands of credits more than they are paying for the QT costs. Just a single off-GTN trade taxed appropriately would actually remove credits from the game (as opposed to slowing the rate of increase) more effectively than hundreds of thousands of quick travels. What is needed is a default tax (based on the theoretical value of the items traded in credits) on all trades outside the GTN which has to be paid by one of the participants before the trade can occur.

[Ardrossan]

11 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. 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.

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.

Snipping only the parts relevant to a discussion of a video game economy, I note that you keep referring to this as 'communism' when I haven't mentioned the term once. Apparently you associate any criticism of elites with communism lol. i'm pretty sure whales are largely responsible for creating this problem in the first place, not F2P as people keep blaming in this thread. 

Yeah you have random stuff in your legacy, including stacks of mats. And as many people mentioned after your comment, that's not really relevant. Back in 2.0 mats sold for under 1000 credits per one item. If you remove all the credits you can't charge millions for dialectric tendrils or whatever because people won't be able to afford that. That's the free market isn't it? people can only buy what they're willing (or able) to pay. These mats don't have real fixed costs. 

Oh, but what about all the exploits and gold sellers and all that? Well, what about them? Nuke the economy and do all the exploit stuff BW is planning to do anyway. You think they can only do one thing at a time? If they do this they can't do anything else? Doing all that stuff won't fix the billions we currently have, just like taxing QT doesn't fix the problem. We need a reset.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It'd be nice if we could all be a little honest here. I'm a whale. You're a whale. Virtually everyone in this thread is a whale. It didn't used to be that just because you subbed you automatically became one, but now that we're all sitting on billions of credits it's a different story.

This is not about 'communism' or whatever, the idea would cause you to lose all your credits, all your years of playing and slowly accumulating, poof. It's pretty clearly your self-interest, not wild speculation about mass exodus and chargebacks, that is at stake here. I'd be okay with that, you and others aren't. But you might consider that it's unlikely BW will do it despite what you or I or anyone says about it, they certainly aren't sitting there going "well eavella makes a good point but i'm persuaded by adossan. Execute Order Eat The Rich." they're not reading this at all.  

I respectfully suggest you touch grass and remind yourself that me, internet rando over here, am not the boogeyman and symbol of your family traumas, I'm just a guy who is unhappy with the status quo of the videogame economy and pointing out that for you all insulated by your wealth, it's not that big a deal. Well, it is a big deal for people just starting this game, and I know that because I hear from guildies and I see what people say in the planet chats.  

 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Ardrossan

[ceryxp]

1 hour ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

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.

Everything you list is either impossible, improbable, inefficient, or unlikely with a F2P account, so how are these F2P bots farming millions of credits when they only have one crew skill, can only send three companions max on crew missions, can only craft one item per companion at a time, can not run Ops, can not acquire tech frags in any quantity sufficient enough to trade for RPM's or OEM's, are capped at level 60, earn credits at a lower rate than subscribers (surprise, they are not getting the same amount of credits from those heroics as are you) -- and then the real noodle baking claim, sales on the GTN only transfer credits, "they don't create them," and yet somehow a F2P laundering a million credits (because that is so many credits) somehow then creates new credits with no effort.

Unlike you, clearly, I actually do play on a F2P account.  Two actually.  One that is pure F2P and one that is preferred due to a CC purchase (so still capped at level 60 with no expansions beyond SoR).  When you are talking about F2P accounts it is abundantly clear that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Now, since this has veered far off course from the topic of the thread, allow me to circle this back around.

No, adding a quick travel tax is not going to severely impact brand new players because they are going to be mostly running around. On the PTS I created a new character, a Knight, ran the first mission, and the cost to QT from the end of the cave (where Orgus does his trick) back to the Gnarls taxi was ~250 credits (I do not remember the exact amount).  Brand new players are going to run back.  Established players will have enough credits to pay it.

It also is not going to have much impact on established players.  Most of us, those of us who have been playing for some time, have built up a reserve, so this minimal tax will just be a drop in the bucket.  When you can easily make a few hundred thousand credits from doing dailies having to spend a few thousand for the convenience of quick travel is irrelevant.

Players who are new but not brand new, who maybe have completed their first story and are starting their second, those people it may cause them to pause and ask whether they want to QT or not, but that will not last.

Where I object to the quick travel tax is how it is calculated.  In almost every instanced that I checked it was cheaper to take a taxi than it was to quick travel from one taxi point to another.  I am not talking a little more.  I am talking 10 credits to take a taxi or 500 credits to QT the same distance.  The way they have calculated the travel costs are incomprehensible.  BW acknowledges that players try to avoid costs, so if it is far cheaper to take a taxi than to QT, what are they going to do?

Will this tax remove credits from the game?  Absolutely, they will get you either with the tax or the taxi.  Credits will trickle out over time, but this will not, and is not intended to, fix inflation.  This is a microstep.  Something that BW does all the time.  They take these small, almost imperscriptible steps so they can say they are doing something, so they can say they are going to move slowly, and make incremental changes, and then move so glacially slow that they never actually get to the next step before they change their mind and do something else.  How do we know?  Because BW only has two modes of action: go at a snail's pace or nuke it from orbit.  When they want to do nothing they make small, incremental changes.  When they actually want to change something they go so far overboard, so over the top, so big that it is a paradigm shift (and then often have to pull back, revamp, and redesign because they did not think it through in the first place).  This has been their standard operating procedure for years.

They say they want to do something about inflation, so they introduce these changes: new travel costs, increased repair bills, etc., and yet running Onderon dailies on the PTS, with these new travel costs and repair costs, I still earned a few hundred thousand credits.  Being charged to quick travel, being charged to travel to my stronghold (because that was, when I was on, still active on the PTS), being charged more to repair, and I still received a few hundred thousand credits for doing Onderon.

BW has no real interest in fixing inflation because in-game inflation drives people to purchase Cartel Coins and then purchase directly from the Cartel Market.  Or did someone actually believe BW when they said that they reduced the CC rewards in Season 3 because the free CC's from Season's 1 and 2 contributed to inflation.  Rubbish.  They reduced them because, and BW even stated this, people where maximizing their CC's gains by completing the seasons on multiple servers.  And that cut into Cartel Coin sales.

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, ceryxp said:

Credits will trickle out over time, but this will not, and is not intended to, fix inflation.  This is a microstep.  Something that BW does all the time.  They take these small, almost imperscriptible steps so they can say they are doing something, so they can say they are going to move slowly, and make incremental changes, and then move so glacially slow that they never actually get to the next step before they change their mind and do something else.  How do we know?  Because BW only has two modes of action: go at a snail's pace or nuke it from orbit.  When they want to do nothing they make small, incremental changes.  When they actually want to change something they go so far overboard, so over the top, so big that it is a paradigm shift (and then often have to pull back, revamp, and redesign because they did not think it through in the first place).  This has been their standard operating procedure for years.

tbh I feel like your entire post is a /thread, it sums up everything perfectly lol, far better than all my textwalls. This piece right here says it all. Yes they either do so little it might as well be nothing and then change their mind partway through, or they nuke from orbit and have to spend months picking up the pieces. 

I don't like the status quo and moving glacially slow, so I am in favor of nuking. Is nuking a good idea? lol no.  It could be if they did all those exploit removals and creating credit sinks and everything else, and modelled it on pts first and listened to feedback, but they won't. They also don't have credit sinks because they would have to design something for people to buy first, which they are apparently incapable of doing, and most of the other credit sink ideas that the forum suggests are things that cut into buying CCs, like using credits to change appearance. No dice.

And you're also 100% right that they're not going to nuke it anyway because they simply want to give the appearance that they're going to fix it, because the status quo benefits them. 

[xxSHOONYxx]

2 hours ago, ceryxp said:

Everything you list is either impossible, improbable, inefficient, or unlikely with a F2P account, so how are these F2P bots farming millions of credits when they only have one crew skill, can only send three companions max on crew missions, can only craft one item per companion at a time, can not run Ops, can not acquire tech frags in any quantity sufficient enough to trade for RPM's or OEM's, are capped at level 60, earn credits at a lower rate than subscribers (surprise, they are not getting the same amount of credits from those heroics as are you) -- and then the real noodle baking claim, sales on the GTN only transfer credits, "they don't create them," and yet somehow a F2P laundering a million credits (because that is so many credits) somehow then creates new credits with no effort.

 

You really don't seem to get it or my explanation was bad. Let me try explaining again.

Inflation in this case is created by creating credits out of thin air. Lets say, a very unprovable event, a f2p account got lucky and got from black hole a czerka create, now lets say the game as a whole has 100 quadrillion credits in circulation, the f2p lists is for 1 credit so the owner on a sub account gets it and sells it for lets say 20b credits to a person. The amount of credits in circulation is still 100 quadrillion, no credit was created it was only exchanged. Same happens with crew skills (except slicing but it was nerfed time and time again because it created too many credits), the only credits operations CREATE is the credits the mobs drop when they die which is nothing, tech fragments once again do not create credits.

The actions that create credits out of thin air are from killing mobs and doing missions. Now doing missions requires way more lines of code unless you have them following a main account. So the easier way is to have several bots that can stay at one place and kill mobs non stop like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meok80VDNEQ&ab_channel=AlexGames or other places that the mobs drop more credits. Those credits are created and then those bots go and buy junk from their owner on the gtn since its the only way for f2p to transfer credits. Same example as above, 100 quadrillion credits in circulation but this time 100 bots created by killing mobs/quests in 2 hours 1m credits each and buy junk on gtn from their owner, now the owner has a bit shy of 100m new credits and the total in circulation is 100quadrillion and 100m, but botts don't sleep, so at that rate the botter would have "created" 1.2b in a day, or 37.2 in a month and so on. If f2p cant buy stuff on gtn then the only ill gained credits method would be for botters to start using sub accounts which will cost them probably on the 3 digits monthly or by exploits.

F2P PLAYERS don't create inflation, F2P bot accounts from sellers create inflation
 

And to your point about bioware not wanting to fix inflation, you don't seem to get how far credit sellers have gotten, if you go to one of their websites and compare prices there to cartel market it will debunk your statement. If economy is to be fixed the first and most crucial step is to deal with credit sellers that calling them that is an insult to them, they are more like a true hutt cartel that sells everything

Edited March 16, 2023 by xxSHOONYxx

[ceryxp]

20 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

The actions that create credits out of thin air are from killing mobs and doing missions. Now doing missions requires way more lines of code unless you have them following a main account. So the easier way is to have several bots that can stay at one place and kill mobs non stop like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meok80VDNEQ&ab_channel=AlexGames or other places that the mobs drop more credits.

You think that is evidence of credit farming?  A seven year old video, from when F2P accounts still had a credit cap of 200,000 credits, and not one of those bots looted anything (yes, I watched the entire video).

You say the bots do not sleep and are able to generate a million credits in two hours, which means 12 million per day, which means those 100 bots are generating 1.2 billion per day, and they are moving that 1 million at a time through the GTN. 12,000,000 GTN transactions per day.  They must have a round the clock team working on this 24/7/365.

What we did see in the video was a bot operator farming experience for their, likely F2P, bots, so that they could take them to the fleet and spam their advertisements.

Your evidence is not flimsy, it is non-existent.

[xxSHOONYxx]

Just now, ceryxp said:

You think that is evidence of credit farming?  A seven year old video, from when F2P accounts still had a credit cap of 200,000 credits, and not one of those bots looted anything (yes, I watched the entire video).

You say the bots do not sleep and are able to generate a million credits in two hours, which means 12 million per day, which means those 100 bots are generating 1.2 billion per day, and they are moving that 1 million at a time through the GTN. 12,000,000 GTN transactions per day.  They must have a round the clock team working on this 24/7/365.

What we did see in the video was a bot operator farming experience for their, likely F2P, bots, so that they could take them to the fleet and spam their advertisements.

Your evidence is not flimsy, it is non-existent.

You can live on your own fantasy world that is unaware of how bots work and automate things and don't need anyone to be online 24/7 and the empire they made in swtor. Won't keep talking to someone that doesnt want to hear. Good luck to you in game 👍

[SteveTheCynic]

13 hours ago, remylion said:

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.

There's no chance that they will be able to do that remotely close to "immediately", since:

• Their credits would be "stolen"(1) just as surely as ours.
• The acquisition rate isn't as monstrously huge as you imply.
• As a consequence, there's no way they would charge the pathetically small amounts that they charge now.

[DWho]

9 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

There's no chance that they will be able to do that remotely close to "immediately", since:

• Their credits would be "stolen"(1) just as surely as ours.
• The acquisition rate isn't as monstrously huge as you imply.
• As a consequence, there's no way they would charge the pathetically small amounts that they charge now.

I think you are seriously underestimating how easy it is to store "credits" in non-credit forms that can basically be instantly converted to credits without using the GTN. With the credit limits on characters, it is unlikely credit sellers are storing their "wealth" in exclusively credit form.

[eabevella]

16 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

Snipping only the parts relevant to a discussion of a video game economy, I note that you keep referring to this as 'communism' when I haven't mentioned the term once. Apparently you associate any criticism of elites with communism lol. i'm pretty sure whales are largely responsible for creating this problem in the first place, not F2P as people keep blaming in this thread. 

Yeah you have random stuff in your legacy, including stacks of mats. And as many people mentioned after your comment, that's not really relevant. Back in 2.0 mats sold for under 1000 credits per one item. If you remove all the credits you can't charge millions for dialectric tendrils or whatever because people won't be able to afford that. That's the free market isn't it? people can only buy what they're willing (or able) to pay. These mats don't have real fixed costs. 

Oh, but what about all the exploits and gold sellers and all that? Well, what about them? Nuke the economy and do all the exploit stuff BW is planning to do anyway. You think they can only do one thing at a time? If they do this they can't do anything else? Doing all that stuff won't fix the billions we currently have, just like taxing QT doesn't fix the problem. We need a reset.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It'd be nice if we could all be a little honest here. I'm a whale. You're a whale. Virtually everyone in this thread is a whale. It didn't used to be that just because you subbed you automatically became one, but now that we're all sitting on billions of credits it's a different story.

This is not about 'communism' or whatever, the idea would cause you to lose all your credits, all your years of playing and slowly accumulating, poof. It's pretty clearly your self-interest, not wild speculation about mass exodus and chargebacks, that is at stake here. I'd be okay with that, you and others aren't. But you might consider that it's unlikely BW will do it despite what you or I or anyone says about it, they certainly aren't sitting there going "well eavella makes a good point but i'm persuaded by adossan. Execute Order Eat The Rich." they're not reading this at all.  

I respectfully suggest you touch grass and remind yourself that me, internet rando over here, am not the boogeyman and symbol of your family traumas, I'm just a guy who is unhappy with the status quo of the videogame economy and pointing out that for you all insulated by your wealth, it's not that big a deal. Well, it is a big deal for people just starting this game, and I know that because I hear from guildies and I see what people say in the planet chats.  

 

I didn't compare the game economy to communism. I compared your idea of wiping everyone's credit to communism.

The wipe everyone's money clean tactic didn't work in real life, it won't work in game, which still exists in real life and is played and run by real people. The game currency is not meaningless nor fake as some people claimed. It is as meaningful and real in the sense that it is naive to dismiss it as something that can be wiped out without real consequences. Consequences I doubt BW will survive.

And yes, I do believe people who believe in the "let's fix the economy by resetting the game" have the exact same mentality of those who believe in the practice of communism though extreme method: they think creating a clean slate will make everyone equal, but no, it won't. It just make low to upper-middle class dirt poor, and things are still controlled by the elite. But sure, it feels good to let people who have more stuffs than I do to "taste the reality" because "they deserve it (lost everything)" and I'm positive that most people will stay after BW take all their fake meaningless credits because ooooooh BW also fixes all the credit exploits, how nice of them!

[remylion]

I think most people in this thread are using "lets protect the newbies" as a guise for "lets hurt the players with the most wealth",

The quick travel costs should scale based on character level or legacy level, not just distance. But the quick travel costs are not going to drive away new players any more than the cost of flying to a new planet or using speeders to get around. I barely used quick travel when I started because I was enjoying the game. I wasn't rushing my way through the missions using quick travel to pop back and forth constantly to save time.

Maybe after the quick travel credit sink goes live and Bioware can gather metrics on how it is working, the higher cost "lets hurt the players with the most wealth" credit sinks can be designed.

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by remylion

[Ardrossan]

2 hours ago, remylion said:

I think most people in this thread are using "lets protect the newbies" as a guise for "lets hurt the players with the most wealth",

When I subbed two weeks ago I had 15 billion credits in legacy bank across two servers. After buying as much as I possibly could think to use, i've spent about a third of that. I'd say I'm pretty wealthy and a reset would hurt me too. I'm motivated by my experience as a newbie and it was thanks to the game's economy that I was able to buy what I needed to make the experience worth staying for. That is no longer possible and hasn't been for a long time. I'd like to see the game economy returned to that egalitarian era, but as other posters have pointed out, it's not in BW's interests to fix the problem. Given that, I suppose it is virtue signaling, but my idea was not intended to hurt wealth hoarders...that's simply a consequence of the reset. You can't fix the economy and keep your ginormous wealth intact.

6 hours ago, eabevella said:

And yes, I do believe people who believe in the "let's fix the economy by resetting the game" have the exact same mentality of those who believe in the practice of communism though extreme method: they think creating a clean slate will make everyone equal, but no, it won't. It just make low to upper-middle class dirt poor, and things are still controlled by the elite. But sure, it feels good to let people who have more stuffs than I do to "taste the reality" because "they deserve it (lost everything)" and I'm positive that most people will stay after BW take all their fake meaningless credits because ooooooh BW also fixes all the credit exploits, how nice of them!

I think i've tried to be relatively courteous once you noted your family background, but to be clear I am not interested in engaging with you on this topic. We believe different things. Also, this forum historically comes down hard on censoring discussion of irl politics. 

[RikuvonDrake]

the best way to combat inflation would be to say nothing but just quietly reduce the amount of credits players gain from loot, reduce the prices vendors buy for scrap items and make more grey stuff drop instead of white/green etc. and just let the economy slowly fix itself over time as the number of credits generated by the game would reduce while the same, or more, would be removed through regular credit sinks

any change the devs introduce will be frowned upon, everyone wants the economy to normalize but nobody wants the credits that they generate by daily content to get reduced, its always "someone else" that needs to have their credits fixed

Edited March 17, 2023 by RikuvonDrake

[Ardrossan]

11 minutes ago, RikuvonDrake said:

the best way to combat inflation would be to say nothing but just quietly reduce the amount of credits players gain from loot, reduce the prices vendors buy for scrap items and make more grey stuff drop instead of white/green etc. and just let the economy slowly fix itself over time as the number of credits generated by the game would reduce while the same, or more, would be removed through regular credit sinks

any change the devs introduce will be frowned upon, everyone wants the economy to normalize but nobody wants the credits that they generate by daily content to get reduced, its always "someone else" that needs to have their credits fixed

That doesn't fix the GTN problem though. 

I make most of my credits by selling crafted items and conquest loot like the flagship plans or the rpm / oem things. If they removed those from the vendor and forced you to get them through some other way, and also changed the flagship plans so that they would automatically go to your guild bank (otherwise not drop at all), that would cut into my wealth significantly. They could also make the rpm/oem's BoL. 

[DWho]

11 minutes ago, RikuvonDrake said:

the best way to combat inflation would be to say nothing but just quietly reduce the amount of credits players gain from loot, reduce the prices vendors buy for scrap items and make more grey stuff drop instead of white/green etc. and just let the economy slowly fix itself over time as the number of credits generated by the game would reduce while the same, or more, would be removed through regular credit sinks

any change the devs introduce will be frowned upon, everyone wants the economy to normalize but nobody wants the credits that they generate by daily content to get reduced, its always "someone else" that needs to have their credits fixed

They have already taken this approach over the last several years (though they weren't silent about it) and it has had no significant effect on inflation. You no longer get credit rewards for completing conquest objectives (which was a big source of credit influx), rewards from heroics have been reduced at least twice (in addition to the elimination of credit rewards from them as conquest objectives), the selling price for mats and gear at the vendors has been massively reduced (selling gear from heroic boxes was eliminated entirely), etc. Still prices rise and in many cases they have risen even faster with the reduction in credit influx.

Keeping doing the same thing over and over and hoping "this time will be the fix" is the definition of insanity. A new idea is needed. The allowing of off GTN trades between players (which totally avoids the best credit sink in the game) needs to be fixed in some manner. A single off GTN trade taxed at its value would pull thousands of times more credits from the economy than all the quick travel taxes will do in a year to say nothing of the credit sink taxing Sales Run transactions for hypercrates would draw out).

[Char_Ell]

42 minutes ago, DWho said:

They have already taken this approach over the last several years (though they weren't silent about it) and it has had no significant effect on inflation. You no longer get credit rewards for completing conquest objectives (which was a big source of credit influx), rewards from heroics have been reduced at least twice (in addition to the elimination of credit rewards from them as conquest objectives), the selling price for mats and gear at the vendors has been massively reduced (selling gear from heroic boxes was eliminated entirely), etc. Still prices rise and in many cases they have risen even faster with the reduction in credit influx.

I'm not sure you have an accurate grasp of the game's current economy.  I've seen advertised prices for hypercrates drop.    I'm seeing prices for OEM and RPM's hold steady or drop slightly.  Something has changed with the credit sellers because their rates have gone up by more than 150% in just the past week.

[remylion]

6 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

I'm not sure you have an accurate grasp of the game's current economy.  I've seen advertised prices for hypercrates drop.    I'm seeing prices for OEM and RPM's hold steady or drop slightly.  Something has changed with the credit sellers because their rates have gone up by more than 150% in just the past week.

That usually happens when they get banned and their credit supply is deleted.

As for the drop in prices, this can happen in MMOs with a smaller population right after December when the population drops and those players who aren't playing take their credits with them and demand for products is lower. Inflation will go back up when they return with their credits and those credits enter the economy again.

Edited March 17, 2023 by remylion

[DWho]

20 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

I'm not sure you have an accurate grasp of the game's current economy.  I've seen advertised prices for hypercrates drop.    I'm seeing prices for OEM and RPM's hold steady or drop slightly.  Something has changed with the credit sellers because their rates have gone up by more than 150% in just the past week.

OEMs and RPMs have dropped due to increased supply. People are completing their gearing treadmill which leaves them lots of free tech fraagments to buy the OEMs and RPMs (simple supply and demand). The same is true of most crafting mats. no demand = steady or lower prices. It has nothing to do with credits flowing into the economy. What does have an impact on the higher priced items is the ability of a small number of players to buy out the entire supply (flipping items on the GTN or other trades for a higher price each exchange), that is a credits already in the economy problem. As far as credit sellers go, they are merely preparing for an expected increase in demand when the new "credit sinks" take effect and players turn to them to "bypass" them. I personally have not seen hypercrate prices drop at all, though I don't follow them closely enough to notice small changes and those changes are very recent, if they are occurring at all (it could be a supply and demand thing as well with Sales runs now being paid for in multilpe hypercrates - could be market saturation).

Edited March 17, 2023 by DWho

[RikuvonDrake]

3 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

That doesn't fix the GTN problem though. 

I make most of my credits by selling crafted items and conquest loot like the flagship plans or the rpm / oem things. If they removed those from the vendor and forced you to get them through some other way, and also changed the flagship plans so that they would automatically go to your guild bank (otherwise not drop at all), that would cut into my wealth significantly. They could also make the rpm/oem's BoL. 

gtn isn't a problem if the credit value normalizes, you are confusing cause and effect, the gtn issues are an effect caused by the bloated amounts of credits in circulation

Edited March 17, 2023 by RikuvonDrake

[Shayddow]

Quote

It is quick travel.  I paid to have it unlocked quicker.  That was the gold sink.  Yet now its I pay for the privilege to use what I paid to unlock?

This is true. What is also true? Sometimes people HAVE to quicktravel to their strongholds to get around BUGS in the game. So now we have to pay for something because things we have bugged for ages haven't been fixed yet. Hell no.

If they really wanted to fix inflation instead of TAXING the POOR (new players and people with less than billions in their accounts), they would get to the bottom of the gold-sellers by having someone in-house go to the site, trace back the account they "buy" it from, and do a Sting operation on them & their bots. Instead of all this nonsense. 

I remember the days when we had to buy skills from the NPCs to advance. They tried to poo-poo it then as not making that big a dent, and they found out - yes it does, when people started leaving in droves and that was cited as one of the major reasons they left.  Certainly the population figures are not as big as what they used to be. 

[Stradlin]

On 3/16/2023 at 9:33 PM, xxSHOONYxx said:

The actions that create credits out of thin air are from killing mobs and doing missions. Now doing missions

Somehwere towards the beginning of 2019, they launched this quite misguided conquest do over, which made it possible for every  lvl 10+  character of anyone to reach a conquest target in 10 minutes or something. Back when rewards for dinging conq target were initially decided and balanced, it was done in an environment where it took, at the very least, one quite full evening of non stop gaming to reach conquest target on one character.  Incredibly, they left these rewards completely untouched for well over a year or something. Each character dinding conq target generated like 120k-180k new credits to the world, when we include those made-to-be-sold credit tokens and raw mission reward credits. If we assume they were also in a guild.

Mysteriously, steadily worsening inflation shifted new gear and turned into a far faster  total downward spiral soon after. :thinkingface: How much of this is because of some rampart botting thing, how much is just everybody creating much more money with much less effort and much faster  than previously? Anyone's guess I guess.

 

 

It is difficult, if not impossible to undo what has happened. At best, they slow down inflation. Undoing it is almost impossible, save for some quite..radical " let's destroy all money and all gear of all characters and go sit nude on Tython grass" type of stuff. 

Giving players tools for dealing with inflation would be much easier, surely. Main trading function of the game has turned irrelevant, when it comes to any high end items or hypercrates. That alone worsens the inflation, since none of the big trades has any of the money disappear via GTN tax. It is so strange they have not increased GTN credit limits yet. Or made some way around, assuming it is too dififcult to code.

 

 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Stradlin

[Balameb]

21 hours ago, remylion said:

I think most people in this thread are using "lets protect the newbies" as a guise for "lets hurt the players with the most wealth",

I also have wealth and still consider QT tax will bother newbies and do nothing for average+ players. People use of the word 'hurt' might have been misused/interpreted in each person. Still one can consider this cost can 'hurt' new players because at the start it will be significan compared to earned credits. 

Also, your experience is certainly far from the new player experience here. I think most new players are not MMO veterans, this is Star Wars and brings people for its theme. 

Now, the point me and others are making is that QT tax will not solve inflation, will not even help because that kind of cost can only work in an economy that is close to being balanced. This one is too far from it.

So BW is wasting resources in this stup*d tax, that is badly implemented because they are calculating in distance alone and not lvl (or area, like taxis).

 

17 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

I'm not sure you have an accurate grasp of the game's current economy.  I've seen advertised prices for hypercrates drop.    I'm seeing prices for OEM and RPM's hold steady or drop slightly.  Something has changed with the credit sellers because their rates have gone up by more than 150% in just the past week.

1- One week is certainly not a good time frame for measure at this scale. Prices fluctuate.

2- There has been no changes implemented by BW in the past weeks, so those fluctuations have other sources.

3- One highly potential source for that is that recently ended GS3. That means, less people playing, less demand. Also, current Gold agments have been implemented for a long time now. So: less people, more already augmented, even less demand.

4- Last change from BW to credit generation was actually the removal of conquest credits and diminished loot for vendors. That was in 7.0, by 7.2 less than a year latter prices more than tripled. Probably 5+ times actually because I actually left some point after 7.1 and came back mid season 3 in 7.2 and prices por packs (the easy measure in GTN) were three times. 

18 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

any change the devs introduce will be frowned upon, everyone wants the economy to normalize but nobody wants the credits that they generate by daily content to get reduced, its always "someone else" that needs to have their credits fixed

I think YOU want others to pay the price. I don't mind paying it myself if it means nuking(or at least heavily reducing) credit sellers current stock.

Quote

the best way to combat inflation would be to say nothing but just quietly reduce the amount of credits players gain from loot, reduce the prices vendors buy for scrap items and make more grey stuff drop instead of white/green etc. and just let the economy slowly fix itself over time as the number of credits generated by the game would reduce while the same, or more, would be removed through regular credit sinks

I can imagine someone new or very ignorant thinking that JUST reducing credit influx from loot/vendor price without even adding new credit sinks is a good idea. But a veteran like you? HA!

As i already pointed, BW already did that and inflation still rised, maybe even faster because it meant people needed more credit from sellers.

But you already knew that; it is know that you sell runs, ergo you are profiting from the constant inflation.

 

 

[Char_Ell]

2 hours ago, Balameb said:

I think YOU want others to pay the price. I don't mind paying it myself if it means nuking(or at least heavily reducing) credit sellers current stock.

Based on the frenzied posts vociferously complaining about BioWare's plans to start charging credits for quick travel usage and using strongholds to travel from one planet to another it's not just him.

 

3 hours ago, Balameb said:

1- One week is certainly not a good time frame for measure at this scale. Prices fluctuate.

2- There has been no changes implemented by BW in the past weeks, so those fluctuations have other sources.

3- One highly potential source for that is that recently ended GS3. That means, less people playing, less demand. Also, current Gold agments have been implemented for a long time now. So: less people, more already augmented, even less demand.

4- Last change from BW to credit generation was actually the removal of conquest credits and diminished loot for vendors. That was in 7.0, by 7.2 less than a year latter prices more than tripled. Probably 5+ times actually because I actually left some point after 7.1 and came back mid season 3 in 7.2 and prices por packs (the easy measure in GTN) were three times. 

1) I'm seeing downward or holding trends.  I know prices fluctuate.  My reference to the past week only referred to credit seller rates.

2) I didn't say anything about BioWare implementing changes so not sure why you thought it prudent to mention the changes have other sources as that is self-evident. 

3) Source for what?  Sure, all the factors you listed could be at play.  Whatever the reason I see moderation of in-game inflation.  If your point is that this is only temporary and GTN prices will return to hyperinflationary pace at the start of the next Galactic Season then we'll just have to wait and see.

4) OK.  I didn't say anything about inflation pre-7.2.  I only referred to the game's current pricing trends.  Are Ultimate Cartel Packs higher or lower now per unit than they were when 7.2 initially launched?  I'm seeing lower pricing.

 

Sure, in-game inflation is always subject to fluctuation due to a variety of factors.  If you're not seeing the current moderation of inflation then all I can do is shrug and move on. 

[Blakinik]

On 3/17/2023 at 5:32 AM, eabevella said:

The wipe everyone's money clean tactic didn't work in real life, it won't work in game, which still exists in real life and is played and run by real people. The game currency is not meaningless nor fake as some people claimed. It is as meaningful and real in the sense that it is naive to dismiss it as something that can be wiped out without real consequences. Consequences I doubt BW will survive.

I'm no way a communist (in fact likely one of the most anti-communist people in existence today) and can give 2 examples were it worked in real life.  It's called "Shock Economics".  It just is done significantly differently.  First is a transition form a command economy to a market economy and the second was due to extreme counterfeiting of the currency.

Example #1 - Poland in the 1990's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcerowicz_Plan#:~:text=The Balcerowicz Plan (Polish%3A plan,Stanisław Gomułka%2C Dr.

When the iron curtain fell and Poland broke away, they needed to transition fast.  So they did shock economics with a massive devaluation of their currency.  Effectively some people's entire life savings was gone in a matter of days.  However, the economy transitioned quite well and today is one of the significant growth markets in Central Europe.  There are a few people that wished for "the old" days, but over time, everyone realized it was needed to ensure the long term economic growth.

Example #2 - India in 2016 with the bank note demonetization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation

Where there was a "win" is that dark money dropped and a massive shift to electronic banking.  Effectively taxes went up (one of the biggest reasons) and there was massive adoption to electronic transactions from a country that pretty much was done with cash transactions.

 

Aside from a method to do a massive drain of credits from the economy (i.e. something where Bioware "sold" high value items for in-game credits) or allowed for a credit to CC conversion for a limited period, Inflation will continue to be a problem because there are no effective incentives to pull credits out of circulation.  The only way I think we could fix it fairly and equitably would be to flood the market with credits then do an unannounced devaluation of credits to the new currency (think in terms of something like 100,000 credits = 1 new credit or similar) then restored normal currency gains and credit sinks.  No one would have effectively lost money, it would simply be devalued.  Whales would still have their goods to sell, just at a significantly lower amount.

Even is either of those are not decided, they could offer an alternative like item unlocks for an account based off a credit amount.  I actually think this is the best option because:

1. It would incentivize players to pay credits to unlock items in their collections which would be a permanent credit sink.
2. It would incentivize players to spend more on cartel coins since you could buy packs and open then unlock new items with credits allowing for more items to be placed into circulation.
3. Players overall would win because it incentivizes Bioware to generate more and more CM goods to induce more CM pack purchases since you could use in-game currency to do unlocks.
4. Even if an "Account" unlock was not an option, credits for individual character unlocks would be manageable.
5. Finally - its completely optional and voluntary.  If you don't want to participate, you don't need too.

I just wanted that last one included as a potential solution as I don't remember seeing it previously as a gold sink.

Blakinik

[eabevella]

2 hours ago, Blakinik said:

I'm no way a communist (in fact likely one of the most anti-communist people in existence today) and can give 2 examples were it worked in real life.  It's called "Shock Economics".  It just is done significantly differently.  First is a transition form a command economy to a market economy and the second was due to extreme counterfeiting of the currency.

Example #1 - Poland in the 1990's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcerowicz_Plan#:~:text=The Balcerowicz Plan (Polish%3A plan,Stanisław Gomułka%2C Dr.

When the iron curtain fell and Poland broke away, they needed to transition fast.  So they did shock economics with a massive devaluation of their currency.  Effectively some people's entire life savings was gone in a matter of days.  However, the economy transitioned quite well and today is one of the significant growth markets in Central Europe.  There are a few people that wished for "the old" days, but over time, everyone realized it was needed to ensure the long term economic growth.

Example #2 - India in 2016 with the bank note demonetization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation

Where there was a "win" is that dark money dropped and a massive shift to electronic banking.  Effectively taxes went up (one of the biggest reasons) and there was massive adoption to electronic transactions from a country that pretty much was done with cash transactions.

 

Aside from a method to do a massive drain of credits from the economy (i.e. something where Bioware "sold" high value items for in-game credits) or allowed for a credit to CC conversion for a limited period, Inflation will continue to be a problem because there are no effective incentives to pull credits out of circulation.  The only way I think we could fix it fairly and equitably would be to flood the market with credits then do an unannounced devaluation of credits to the new currency (think in terms of something like 100,000 credits = 1 new credit or similar) then restored normal currency gains and credit sinks.  No one would have effectively lost money, it would simply be devalued.  Whales would still have their goods to sell, just at a significantly lower amount.

Even is either of those are not decided, they could offer an alternative like item unlocks for an account based off a credit amount.  I actually think this is the best option because:

1. It would incentivize players to pay credits to unlock items in their collections which would be a permanent credit sink.
2. It would incentivize players to spend more on cartel coins since you could buy packs and open then unlock new items with credits allowing for more items to be placed into circulation.
3. Players overall would win because it incentivizes Bioware to generate more and more CM goods to induce more CM pack purchases since you could use in-game currency to do unlocks.
4. Even if an "Account" unlock was not an option, credits for individual character unlocks would be manageable.
5. Finally - its completely optional and voluntary.  If you don't want to participate, you don't need too.

I just wanted that last one included as a potential solution as I don't remember seeing it previously as a gold sink.

Blakinik

Both shock economy and India's forced new currency don't just money from people's bank account (or vault). One  forced an open market while the other forced the circulation of currency to put it simple. Yes some people will lose everything in the process, but not everyone. Your examples only solidify my point: the idea of wiping everyone's account clean (aka: a "reset") isn't the way. Anyone who believes so is delusional.

I've said it before that an introduction of new currency could potentially work but BW has to ban all credit sellers, exploits, and tax evasion (that means handicap Trade so much that trading off GTN is impossible). Without doing so, the new currency will just suffer the inflation since day 1 of introduction. This method will probably impact the middle class players the most, but the game might survives if BW give some sort of compensation. Maybe CC for all subscribers who actively participate the process. Remember, gamers can leave a game whenever they want, unlike most people irl who have no mean of leaving their country when things go bad. SWTOR isn't big enough to piss off their player base too much.

BW also need to make consistent credit sink too in order to get rid of the credits generated in game. You can't print unlimited amount of money. Cm items are not enough since they are more of a 1 time purchase. You'll need something people will spend credits on repeatedly. The stats bonus on gears in 6.0. Changing character's feature. Personal summon ability. I don't know, maybe Night Life event but there's a 0.1% chance of getting 10CC as prize? People love gamble, let them sink their credits in the slot machines.

PS: The price of Hypercrate dropped from 12B last winter to 7B lowest now. I guess since GS3 was reaching to an end, there are less and less people online, thus less demand. Plus most people probably realized 12B for a Hypercrate pretty much means you lose >5B most of the time. It's simply not worth it.