Arguments against credit sinks are short sighted.

[Diamaht]

1 hour ago, CarpeSangrea said:

Again with the false equivalencies.  Nobody has once asked for free gtn stuff.  I actually advocated for raising the cap on gtn sales so it would take out more money.  But you don't care about having an actual debate with anyone, you just want to argue for the sake of arguing.

Edit to my post.  I meant to say Cartel Market.  The carrot.

I misspoke

[Ardrossan]

29 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

Edit to my post.  I meant to say Cartel Market.  The carrot.

I misspoke

It still makes no sense. I said carrot, not that poster. And I didn't say "free stuff", you are once again making a strawman, reductionist argument to suit your pov. I and many others have said we want stuff to buy with our credits, not to be nickle and dimed. 

If you're seeing emotion in this thread it's because people are frustrated that we--unlike yourself--have been making this feedback for so long and this is all bioware has come up with. It's performative. You and others here calling people out for being 'emotional' does not make them less emotional, nor is it any of your business to police people's emotions, or how they choose to express themselves in this forum, quite frankly. You are not a mod, and there is no point in trying to 'win' an argument here, we simply go around and around because it's a disagreement that no one except the devs have the power to answer. 

If you like the game, play it. Don't antagonize other players who are here to vent and give their opinions which differ from yours. If anyone is telling you that you are not free to offer a positive review based on your experience--I have not seen that happen in this update, but it's happened before--they are just as wrong. 

Edited March 31, 2023 by Ardrossan

[eabevella]

We are arguing whether QT fees is a credit sink.

The fleet Trade whales are selling shinyrareCMitems for 25B TAX FREE on Trade.

We are not the same lol

 

[Diamaht]

Again I'm not the one getting emotional, you are.  I feel just fine.

The fact that everyone is going crazy over small transport fees in such numbers proves that it hit everyone, which is perfect.  Hitting everyone by small amounts is a great way to extract money out of the economy and cool it off.

Plenty of games do this, and always have.  FFXIV does it right now, they increased their prices about a year ago (apx?) and everyone went crazy.  After about 3 months everyone forgot they did it lol,  but it continues to do its job as a good credit sink.

Sorry guys, there is a luxury tax on QT, which is in fact a luxury, and the game is better for it.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Diamaht

[Char_Ell]

6 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

I would like to know how you determined the quick travel cost credit sink is ineffective when BioWare's stated intent is "The goal of these changes is to introduce passive, small credit removal to the game. This way we have credit removal a bit more in line with our credit generation." 

@Ardrossan I see you've made a couple more posts since I asked this question and it looks to me like you're only interested in engaging with Diamaht.

[TahliahCOH]

There are so many missed opportunities for good-sized, if one-off, credit sinks. I already had all the regular SHs unlocked, so I was super excited to get the Fleet ones thinking that I would have more rooms to unlock (for conquest points). Wouldn't mind tossing millions at it, but no, it was already unlocked. If everyone who got these had to unlock three or four or five rooms for millions, that's a serious chunk of credits swept out of the economy every few months (with each season).

Likewise, seasons that are already over should have all the rewards available for credits not for season tokens. Locking stuff people buy behind currencies they can't spend credits to acquire just makes no sense at all if your goal is to deplete creds in the game. Same with most of the stuff for sale on the fleet. Why not have a credit option in addition to the tech frag/whatever other currency option? People will always be buying a lot of stuff, gold aug crafting mats that go for 4k tech frags, for example. Not a one-time buy, but something people would buy all the time for their alts, etc.

If they have to have all these crazy and redundant currencies, why not make it so we can buy them credits instead of with OTHER non-cred currencies? Let us buy Daily Resource, FP, OP, etc. currencies for some amount of credits. They've pretty much leveled the playing field on gear, anyway, so why not go all the way?

These threads are chock full of ideas for ongoing credit sinks that don't take away quality of life perks that we already spent millions on and sub to use (exiting your SH on its planet, for example, can't be done if you don't sub, but now it also costs extra on top of both buying and unlocking the SH plus the real world cash to sub). Likewise, we already pay to unlock Quick Travel, then to upgrade it twice, and now we have to pay to use it?  That's just wrong-headed, which is why the costs were removed in the first place, right? They should have been replaced with some other credit sink at that time.

There are plenty of ways to create credit sinks that don't inconvenience the middle, cripple the poor, and have no effect at all on the uber-rich who don't seem to ever leave the fleet or their SH anyway.

 

[Ardrossan]

8 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

@Ardrossan I see you've made a couple more posts since I asked this question and it looks to me like you're only interested in engaging with Diamaht.

Oh I assumed your comment was rhetorical, as you don't need to tell you that just because bioware says something doesn't make it true or a good idea--you have plenty of people in this thread and many threads saying exactly the same thing. 

Again, it makes no difference who 'wins' this argument, if I persuade you or vice versa, because only bioware can make changes and they probably won't. Given past changes, I think we're stuck with the QT tax just like we're stuck with the redesigned map and that popup that takes up 20% of the screen and has to be collapsed every login for every toon smh. In fact, the most likely thing that they would change is to increase the travel cost further to try to make it more of a sink, while ignoring why people are so annoyed by it in the first place.  

So, my goal here is more to remind the two of you that people wanna vent about the changes and express their frustration and that is perfectly okay. You are not mods and it is not your place to insist that players not be emotional or that we have to argue in a way that makes sense to you. You may think you are being helpful, that bioware will more likely respond to well-reasoned, rational arguments, but I would suggest that you lack the experience that many veterans on this forum have with bioware's communication strategies and willingness to listen to any feedback that isn't just purely uncritical praise.  

[DawnAskham]

My $.03

Ongoing sinks are necessary, and I'm not opposed to sinks tied to recurring and necessary functions like travel and repair (every sink cannot be optional).

I am, however, not supportive of slapdash development where a sink is applied to travel in a way that disproportionately affects newer and lower-level players, do not seem to have any internal logic (e.g. some taxis are cheaper than QT, cheaper to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other than traversing a small portion of a single planet), and which did not come with other sinks which would be much more balanced and effective (e.g. increasing GTN limits).

I also believe based on the current RL$ to credit costs versus the historical costs that a major issue is credit inflows, and more specifically, inflows driven by credit sellers who may or may not use exploits, but certainly use automation (bots), and nothing I see shows Bioware taking action against sellers (the price of credits to RL$ continue to fall) or increasing their Q&A to eliminate exploits (the very patch that came with travel costs came with a new credit exploit).

Lastly, I will call out Bioware for being a bit disingenuous and self-serving when they say the economy is an issue, yet refuse to make simple changes such as allowing more use of credits in-game over CC or other alternative currencies. They caused the mess, yet do not appear willing to share in the costs required to clean it up.

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by DawnAskham

[Char_Ell]

42 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

Oh I assumed your comment was rhetorical, as you don't need to tell you that just because bioware says something doesn't make it true or a good idea--you have plenty of people in this thread and many threads saying exactly the same thing. 

Again, it makes no difference who 'wins' this argument, if I persuade you or vice versa, because only bioware can make changes and they probably won't. Given past changes, I think we're stuck with the QT tax just like we're stuck with the redesigned map and that popup that takes up 20% of the screen and has to be collapsed every login for every toon smh. In fact, the most likely thing that they would change is to increase the travel cost further to try to make it more of a sink, while ignoring why people are so annoyed by it in the first place.  

So, my goal here is more to remind the two of you that people wanna vent about the changes and express their frustration and that is perfectly okay. You are not mods and it is not your place to insist that players not be emotional or that we have to argue in a way that makes sense to you. You may think you are being helpful, that bioware will more likely respond to well-reasoned, rational arguments, but I would suggest that you lack the experience that many veterans on this forum have with bioware's communication strategies and willingness to listen to any feedback that isn't just purely uncritical praise.  

Not sure why you went off on this lengthy exposition that did not answer my question.  I get the sense you simply dismiss anyone that does not support your viewpoints.  I haven't attempted to take on the role of moderator so no idea where you came up with that idea.  I thought you might be someone who could debate on substance but apparently I was mistaken.

[tritiya]

19 hours ago, DWho said:

I'm fine with them when applied properly, which I don't think the QT ones are. They are way out of line with other travel costs, which was the most common thing mentioned during the PTS testing. It is insane to have QT on Coruscant cost 5K point to point when players using them are getting maybe a couple hundred per completed mission (costs on a lot of the higher level planets are lower because they are smaller so it is impacting low level players more than the high level players who have the creds to spare).

Their pure distance formula is what I disagree with most. The jump back from the Forge to the Jedi Temple in the JK story is over 1000 credits when at that point you maybe have a bank of 5K or so, that's way too much. A formula based on the combined cost of using the taxis plus a small "convenience" fee would be the right way to go (A to C should cost about the same whether it is QT or two taxis).

Totally agree it hurts the brand new players most. A new player who gets a few hundret credits as a reward when completing a mission and saving this precious money to unlock an inventory (I think first level was 5000 credits) got stuck... They don't know an unstuck command exists and they are free-to-play (maybe) so can't chat often. Decides to unstuck themselves by using "Quick travel" skill. For brand new players it has a cooldown too. And "bam" all of their hard earned money for the inventory unlock must be spent on quick travel just to untuck themselves or even avoid a band of dangerous mobs (I have used it that way when I was new). Not a fun-to-play game... And the rich players won't care one bit they will have to pay 5000 credits when quick travelling on Coruscant... Not to mention a basic speeder (mount) costs 8000 credits (10k for f2p) which is a lot when rewards are ~450 per mission... Repair credits sinks are fine. Higher gear rating pays more and gets higher rewards, this way it's a nice change to siphon some credits away from the iconomy...

[GrammaJedi]

Instead of charging for QT, why not make it a Legacy perk that you buy to unlock for each char. 1-2 mill.

Also you can double the price for mods, enhancements and barrels from the mods vendors -they are actually pretty cheap - could even triple the cost for the 40+ levels of the mods and would still be a decent price.

Let people post for items over 1B on the GTN- make it 5B or 10B and raise the tax for items over 1B.

Over 400 coins for QT on the beginning planet for a new toon is way too much to pay,

[TahliahCOH]

5 hours ago, GrammaJedi said:

Instead of charging for QT, why not make it a Legacy perk that you buy to unlock for each char. 1-2 mill.

This would be good. Having it be legacy-wide unlock and then charging for using it makes no sense. People who can afford it would rather dish out a one-time 1-2 million than be nickel and dimed to death.  Well, this people would, anyway. 😛

[Ardrossan]

7 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

Not sure why you went off on this lengthy exposition that did not answer my question.  I get the sense you simply dismiss anyone that does not support your viewpoints.  I haven't attempted to take on the role of moderator so no idea where you came up with that idea.  I thought you might be someone who could debate on substance but apparently I was mistaken.

The answer is that you, like that other poster, argue in bad faith. You don't discuss to understand or share your views, but to 'win' a debate and police arguments for substance. I don't owe you a debate, go fight someone else.

[Rezdol]

Bioware made a very stupid decision with QT, as did I when I renewed my subscription. Come on, it's a GS4, hooray, what could go wrong, I thought.
QT cost MUST be based on planet level, do they really not understand that?
Players offer so many reasonable options, but this is not for Bioware, no. They definitely know better how people would like to play.
This whole situation sucks.

[ivanhedgehog]

On 3/30/2023 at 5:10 PM, Diamaht said:

But the QT tax isn't really a tax on new players.  Which by the way I just leveled a knight from 1 to 80, I haven't done the expansions yet and the game has already given me over 7 million credits.  It's more than enough credits to pay for travel and any other credit sink while leveling, but I shouldn't have that much money just for leveling only half the game. 

Newer players don't have the legacy perks that we do.  I can fast travel at will, by the time their cool-downs expire, the game has given them enough to pay for it and then some.  Or they just use speeders and the space ports like normal.  Its a luxury tax that is coming out of my pocket and yours.

 

So you made 7 million going from 1-80 on a character with all of the buffs of a long term player. .7% of one of the quite common sale prices going on every so often on the GTN. .35% of the cost of a single dye pack being sold.  7 million isnt even a drop in the bucket of what they have to try and fix and you think this is a solid step on the road to fixing the problem? It is nothing more than a smokescreen, one that abuses their newer subscribers. And you bought into it hook line and sinker.

[remylion]

4 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

So you made 7 million going from 1-80 on a character with all of the buffs of a long term player. .7% of one of the quite common sale prices going on every so often on the GTN. .35% of the cost of a single dye pack being sold.  7 million isnt even a drop in the bucket of what they have to try and fix and you think this is a solid step on the road to fixing the problem? It is nothing more than a smokescreen, one that abuses their newer subscribers. And you bought into it hook line and sinker.

in less than one month I have nearly 5 billion credits from selling items on the GTN without buying a single item off the Cartel Market. This game needs credit sinks and the quick travel credit sink is a good start. It works on a feature that already exists, they have years of metrics showing how often people use quick travel, now Bioware has to test the prices and see how well they function and update prices in areas that can use changes.

The quick travel fee is not a "smokescreen". According to Bioware this is the first of many credit sinks being designed and released to help lower inflation.

Edited April 2, 2023 by remylion

[Diamaht]

6 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

So you made 7 million going from 1-80 on a character with all of the buffs of a long term player. .7% of one of the quite common sale prices going on every so often on the GTN. .35% of the cost of a single dye pack being sold.  7 million isnt even a drop in the bucket of what they have to try and fix and you think this is a solid step on the road to fixing the problem? It is nothing more than a smokescreen, one that abuses their newer subscribers. And you bought into it hook line and sinker.

You are arguing that newer characters cannot afford this change.  The point I'm making is that they easily can.  I didn't take money from anywhere else and several million credits is more than enough to do the original lvl 1 to 50 story which is all i have completed so far.  And remember, that is just the money that was left over after I impulse buy vendor garbage along the way.  The game will start giving me a lot more once I start the expansions.  The game also gives me all the gear I need as I level, so I literally need the GTN for nothing while building up a character. 

If the cost was too much (which its not) you can still just use the speeders or your mount to travel.

What you psychos are spending on stuff you can just get from the game, I couldn't care less about. 

The game gives you everything you need so new players are not hindered.  You said it yourself, they could never afford anything off the market anyway.  So again, good credit sink that prevents too much new money from entering the economy.

None of you care about new players anyway so stop being so disingenuous.  You are just annoyed that you have to pay for travel and you are using them, and their supposed victimization, as an excuse to reverse it.

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by Diamaht

[DWho]

Just now, Diamaht said:

So again, good credit sink that prevents too much new money from entering the economy.

The problem is credits already in the game not credits entering the game. You could turn off all credits going into the game from missions and it would be years before the prices drop (and they would only drop because the people who have all the credits get tired of trading them back and forth with each other and everyone else has quit the game). The approach Bioware has taken with this "travel tax" is backwards of what needed to be done. You need to get the overall economy under control before you try to fine tune it or else you are just wasting your, and everyone else's time.

[Diamaht]

6 minutes ago, DWho said:

The problem is credits already in the game not credits entering the game. You could turn off all credits going into the game from missions and it would be years before the prices drop (and they would only drop because the people who have all the credits get tired of trading them back and forth with each other and everyone else has quit the game). The approach Bioware has taken with this "travel tax" is backwards of what needed to be done. You need to get the overall economy under control before you try to fine tune it or else you are just wasting your, and everyone else's time.

So we agree that credit sinks slow down the rate that new printed money enters the game, that at least is good.

But you do acknowledge that those credits already in the game, had to have somehow entered the game right?  And does it not make sense that the issue will continue or get worse if you don't plug the holes in the ship?

These types of changes (and there will likely be more since they said this is start) should cool off the economy and create the healthy conditions that will prevent history repeating itself after they do other things to bleed out the excess money.

[DWho]

4 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

So we agree that credit sinks slow down the rate that new printed money enters the game, that at least is good.

But you do acknowledge that those credits already in the game, had to have somehow entered the game right?  And does it not make sense that the issue will continue or get worse if you don't plug the holes in the ship?

These types of changes (and there will likely be more since they said this is start) should cool off the economy and create the healthy conditions that will prevent history repeating itself after they do other things to bleed out the excess money.

There is no difference between credit sinks and lowering rewards as far as having less credits enter the game. If you had reduced rewards by 1% no one would have noticed and you would have accomplished much more (because people farming credits using heroic transports and other workarounds would have been "taxed" too, instead of just those running the storylines). Bioware has reduced mission credit rewards by at least 50% over the last two years and there has been no significant reduction in the rate at which GTN prices (and off-GTN prices) have risen, so there is no evidence whatsoever that the QT costs (which are extremely minor compared to the rewards reductions they have done in the past) will have any impact at all other than irritating the player-base (whether they can easily afford the fees or not)

The issue with the implementation of the QT costs is that they will not have a significant effect on "cooling" the economy. Something like a hard coded transaction fee for all off GTN trades would both remove credits from the game and reduce the desirability of the items, thus lowering their cost.

Just because Bioware says there are "more changes to come" does not mean they will actually happen. They have an extremely poor track record on following up on promises.

[Rezdol]

2 hours ago, Diamaht said:

None of you care about new players anyway so stop being so disingenuous.  You are just annoyed that you have to pay for travel and you are using them, and their supposed victimization, as an excuse to reverse it.

I care about myself.

Yeah, i'm casual player, not selling items on the GTN, not farming credits, just playing in comfort way, mostly story and soloFP.

My main (80lvl, almost finished LoS) reach 10M credits, now got 5M, wow so much credits. Alt that just finish origins has near 100-150k credits and for them new cost painfull. None of them got speederV yet.

For players that already got Billions new cost is NOTHING, they probably never feel it.

But poor players will become poorer.

Bioware could made it right, so players with billions feel it and start losing credits. But they don't, it's an illusion of working, it made only worse.

[ivanhedgehog]

7 hours ago, remylion said:

in less than one month I have nearly 5 billion credits from selling items on the GTN without buying a single item off the Cartel Market. This game needs credit sinks and the quick travel credit sink is a good start. It works on a feature that already exists, they have years of metrics showing how often people use quick travel, now Bioware has to test the prices and see how well they function and update prices in areas that can use changes.

The quick travel fee is not a "smokescreen". According to Bioware this is the first of many credit sinks being designed and released to help lower inflation.

No, it is not a good start, any more than trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teacup is a good start. It is a futile move that wasnt worth the time spent defending it. You say this is the first of "many" credit sinks.... how many decades does BW have to do this? BW has years of proving they cant read metric to save their lives. This is doing nothing of value to solve the problem. The amount of credit needed to be removed by this sort of credit sink(travel) would necessitate costs that would tank the game. Whats next, a login tax of 50% of every characters total worth? Logging in is a feature that already exists.

[ivanhedgehog]

4 hours ago, Diamaht said:

So we agree that credit sinks slow down the rate that new printed money enters the game, that at least is good.

But you do acknowledge that those credits already in the game, had to have somehow entered the game right?  And does it not make sense that the issue will continue or get worse if you don't plug the holes in the ship?

These types of changes (and there will likely be more since they said this is start) should cool off the economy and create the healthy conditions that will prevent history repeating itself after they do other things to bleed out the excess money.

They entered by bots making and selling stacks of chairs(and other exploits). and you are admitting they are doing nothing about the actual problem.

[remylion]

10 hours ago, Rezdol said:

I care about myself.

Yeah, i'm casual player, not selling items on the GTN, not farming credits, just playing in comfort way, mostly story and soloFP.

My main (80lvl, almost finished LoS) reach 10M credits, now got 5M, wow so much credits. Alt that just finish origins has near 100-150k credits and for them new cost painfull. None of them got speederV yet.

For players that already got Billions new cost is NOTHING, they probably never feel it.

But poor players will become poorer.

Bioware could made it right, so players with billions feel it and start losing credits. But they don't, it's an illusion of working, it made only worse.

You need to sell some of the crafting materials you find in game on the GTN. If all you do is sell items to a vendor and let your tech frag count sit at 11,000 without turning them into RPMs or OEMs to sell, that's fully on you.

I started this game a month ago and have almost 5 billion because I sold things I found in game on the GTN.

[ivanhedgehog]

5 hours ago, remylion said:

You need to sell some of the crafting materials you find in game on the GTN. If all you do is sell items to a vendor and let your tech frag count sit at 11,000 without turning them into RPMs or OEMs to sell, that's fully on you.

I started this game a month ago and have almost 5 billion because I sold things I found in game on the GTN.

were you selling things you found on korriban or Tython? didnt think so. New players dont get tech frags until they do end game activities. It costs more to QT on coruscant than it does on Ossus.