Inflation Fix

[SuperGrunt]

The inflation issue in game is horrible, and needs to be addressed.

An easy way to explain inflation is too much currency chasing too few goods. The ways to combat inflation are to take currency out of the market, or to increase the number of goods in the market, or the natural selection method of crashing the market causing a recession and or depression. In game the easiest way to do this would be to create better credit sinks, which would prevent the need to crash the market. Let's be honest here, if the real world market worked like the in game one, then it would have crashed quite a while ago. I would say that it might actually have been considered to crash before BioWare increased the credit caps on F2P and Preferred and the GTN.

To combat this BioWare tried to put charges on Quick Travel, which is a good idea, but it was poorly implemented. It seems like it's a static amount based on how far you are traveling, and either doesn't scale to be less impactful on lower level characters, or it's not yet scaling for my new character. This should be scaled such that it's almost free for the starting planets, and low cost for the first few planets. Maybe even raising the cost based on the level of the characters. Further raise the price of speeders. A smart player would currently QT to the closest speeder and then use that to wherever they want/need to go to and avoid the increased credit sink of the QT costs.

Also increase the costs of repairs. This already scales, but make it so that at max level it is a better credit sink. Preferred to leave it close to as is at lower levels as we don't want to drive new players away from the game.

*EDIT #1* Revert the change that removed the cost of abilities. While this won't affect the people who have been playing the game long term unless BioWare removes all abilities from all characters. It will take some of the credits that are coming into the economy out of the economy before they can be added to the huge pile of credits that everyone is using to get goods and services off the GTN. No changes to the amounts from what they where, just return the costs to what they used to be. Also DON'T REMOVE EVERYONE'S ABILITIES. Level increases in the future should help, but removing every existing character's abilities to make them rebuy them will alienate the entire player base, and lose the game players.

Now to prevent inflation from getting out of control, we really need to combat all the sources of inflation in the game. 

This includes using all levels of heroics as a credit and gear source which increases the amount of credits in the game from the direct credit payouts, and also from someone who doesn't need the gear that they get selling the gear that they do get from the quest rewards, and loot. This seems like a great idea because it allows players to just spam heroics to get better gear and get closer to doing Heroic FPs, and Operations. It is that, but it also has an inflationary effect. This should be limited to a certain number of them that scale, or eliminate the scaling either permanently or for a period of time.

Additionally the sale of Cartel Market items on the GTN. This was implemented to allow people to sell items to F2P players and also Preferred players such that they would be able to earn the things in game. This has spiraled out of control though, and needs to be addressed. I like the idea of players being able to buy the unlocks on the GTN so that they can earn the QoL items in game, but the current costs of those exceed the amount of money that F2P and Preferred players can get entirely, or are so high that it's unreasonable to assume that anyone would actually get them. I don't want to remove the ability to buy/sell/trade those items. Either by way of the GTN or guilds giving them away to players as a perk. However the rest of the items from the Cartel Market, the cosmetic items, those need to go. They are often sold at the GTN credit cap, or are sold off the GTN at prices over the GTN cap. Quite honestly these are not needed at all. Cosmetic items should not be tradable at all, and should be bound as soon as they are claimed from the Cartel Market.  

*EDIT #2* Limit in game mail to 1m credits, except for from the GTN. Delay the receipt of in game mail by 1 hour from all sources outside of the same account and guild. This should seem like it's not needed. Why would someone within a guild need to mail credits or items to another player in the same guild? I kind of agree, with the exception of F2P/Preferred players I don't see a need for that as anyone else should be able to use the guild bank. Why should anyone even want to pay the mail tax instead of just using their Legacy Bank. Again I agree, even though mail is possibly easier, and not very cost prohibitive, Legacy Bank in your stronghold should mean that you don't even care about this. 

Everything I am suggesting is to combat inflation, credit sales on external websites, and have minimal impact on as many players as is possible. I realize that credit sinks will impact every player, but to a small amount immediately and a large amount over time, and it should hopefully help the players in the long run by reducing the cost of goods on the GTN. *END EDIT 2*

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by SuperGrunt
Missed a couple of things.

[MortenJessen]

11 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

An easy way to explain inflation is too much currency chasing too few goods

Absolutely not. Inflation is when too much currency in circulation has too little value, causes prices on goods to rise, in order to pay for rising prices for services. There are in other words enough goods, they just cost entire wheelbarrows full of useless paper money with extremely high numbers printet on them. 

The result of that is in the long run, less and less goods, but SWTOR is Absolutely not there yet, since goods are abundantly.

11 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

Now to prevent inflation from getting out of control, we really need to combat all the sources of inflation in the game.

Too late. The only options that remains for BW is to either hit the brakes hard and injure the passengers, or let the deroute continue over the edge. 

 

11 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

Cosmetic items should not be tradable at all, and should be bound as soon as they are claimed from the Cartel Market.  

The only useful thing in this post, so I will highlight it.

Edited April 30, 2023 by MortenJessen

[MortenJessen]

 

On 2/10/2023 at 12:26 PM, MortenJessen said:

I will take my chance here, and quote my self from here: Fix Inflation PLEASE - Page 6 - General Discussion - SWTOR | Forums

 There are only so many ways inflation can be dealt with. And contrary to what people are let to believe, rising prices are not inflation. Inflation is the influxes of more money into circulation, meaning they will have less and less value the more money that are being printed and put into circulation. Rising prices are just a result of this inflation. Because the purchasing power is lowered at X rate over Y time, inflation leads to lower demand-pull, leading sellers to demand ever higher prices, making savings even less worth, rinse repeat.

In a game like SWTOR, most real world tools like regulating interests on savings will not work. Making regulations on demand-pull or selling bonds to high-rollers to get them to send much needed money into government pockets that can be used to generate needed boosts in production (public spending, infrastructure, hospitals, you name it) or lowering the taxes on the worst hit segments of the population, giving them more buying power can not be done for obvious reasons. In the real world, that would (ideally) create a state of stagnation in the economy. The first step to get inflation under control.

But those options are not possible in SWTOR, for reasons.

To get a segment economy like this inside SWTOR under control (note that I try to use real world options and ideas) one would need 5 or 6 steps, and most of them would make the players hate BW.

1)      Demand for money sinks. Return costs for training of skills and change of abilities. Make unlocks cost small amounts of credits not cartel coins (and I mean small amounts, to also allow f2p and new players to have those options). And I DON’T mean unlocks of costumes, weapons, pets, mounts or the like from collections, I mean game mechanisms. See 6.

2)      Slow down the leveling rate (e.g. cut exp gains with a factor 10 or 12 (back to the good old 1.0 to 4.0 days)). And return the credit gain from completing missions to same level. Why? To make credits come at a slow natural way through effort. This also happens to give players a reason to play the entire game and all missions, so win/win for BW. Players, who make credits this way, tend to be more selective on how and on what they spend them. That’s actually good for the economy.

3)      Tax. Most of the ideas I have read in this thread is downright useless when it comes to taxing, and just shows that the players are more interested in not cutting into their own income. Really? The tax on GTN needs to be divided into 3 levels, depending on the amount of money an item is put up for. Level 1 = 30 % for less than 100 million. Level 2 = 40% for between 100 million and 500 million. Level 3 = 50% for above 500 million. Those tax levels are about the only way to combat the pricing of valueless pixels so high that even real world central banks would sweat. An added benefit of this is that those who plays the GTN will not be able to do so with out losing money. Thats good for economy, cutting down speculation.

4)      Remove the option to trade player to player, and the option of mailing credits, it has the added benefit of killing off gold sellers. That happens to both benefit BW and the in-game economy. 

5)      Make crafting a thing again. And put real credit value on ALL special crafting mats, and stop gating them behind content. That way, value can be calculated. Good for economy.

6)      And lastly. FIX EXCHANGE RATES. Make fixed values of items, services (like GTN slots) conveniences (like character slots, species, and more)  and cosmetics that can be unlocked, either after being bought directly from CM or GTN, have a related credit value that rises automatically depending on the amount of credits you have in total on your legacy.  

I KNOW much of this will be frowned upon, but that is about what realistically can be done. And I know it will be painful. But the game is running low on options with any lasting effect. And this will have a lasting effect, not just push larger problems ahead into the future.

Especially the problem of cartel coins floating around is a sensitive matter, because most players has developed the idea that free coins are a human right. Fun fact; you dont even have the right to those 600 coins you get each month for subbing. Thats NOT free, it is a token from BW saying thanks for your money. NOT FREE. Aside from those 600 coins each month, the real deal that would help a lot on the economy is to cut the amount of coins players can get with out having to spend real money to the bare minimum. Period. 

Edited April 30, 2023 by MortenJessen

[Darcmoon]

32 minutes ago, MortenJessen said:

 

The only useful thing in this post, so I will highlight it.

It won’t happen though.   BW wants people to buy items off the CM and then sell them to others.   Making the items BOP would mean they make less money overall. 

[SuperGrunt]

31 minutes ago, MortenJessen said:

Absolutely not. Inflation is when too much currency in circulation has too little value, causes prices on goods to rise, in order to pay for rising prices for services. There are in other words enough goods, they just cost entire wheelbarrows full of useless paper money with extremely high numbers printet on them. 

The result of that is in the long run, less and less goods, but SWTOR is Absolutely not there yet, since goods are abundantly.

Too late. The only options that remains for BW is to either hit the brakes hard and injure the passengers, or let the deroute continue over the edge. 

 

1. That is exactly what you are saying, I just said it in a different way. One that is understandable. The number of goods isn't the important thing, it is how much currency there are in the economy, and how much currency it costs to purchase those goods and services.

2. In a digital economy such as in a game, there wouldn't necessarily be that less and less goods available. Probably wouldn't unless there actually was a hard crash such as the idea you have of BioWare purposefully causing one. Which my idea would prevent the need of, and would slowly heal the economy. I mentioned a hard crash of the economy in my OP.

3. It's not too late, it would just take time to heal the economy. This would be a smarter way of doing that.

[SuperGrunt]

4 minutes ago, Darcmoon said:

It won’t happen though.   BW wants people to buy items off the CM and then sell them to others.   Making the items BOP would mean they make less money overall. 

Maybe it won't happen. The way that the economy in game is going though is driving off new players, and they could actually see more Cartel Market purchases in the long run if they implemented my suggestions, as more people would come in to play the game, and not be driven off by the sad state of the economy before they get to the point of purchasing a subscription, and/or Cartel Coins.

[Darcmoon]

12 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

Maybe it won't happen. The way that the economy in game is going though is driving off new players, and they could actually see more Cartel Market purchases in the long run if they implemented my suggestions, as more people would come in to play the game, and not be driven off by the sad state of the economy before they get to the point of purchasing a subscription, and/or Cartel Coins.

But could they afford the loss of sales in the short term?   We don’t know how much they would loose short term nor how much they would gain long term, unfortunately.  

[SuperGrunt]

3 minutes ago, Darcmoon said:

But could they afford the loss of sales in the short term?   We don’t know how much they would loose short term nor how much they would gain long term, unfortunately.  

The real question isn't if they can afford the short term losses. For one we don't even know that there would be short term losses. If done with enough warning the players could shift their purchases to make it such that there would actually be no short term losses. Additionally worrying about short term losses when the player base is getting smaller and smaller is only going to lead to the game eventually closing down. This is just one thing that needs to be fixed in the game to get the game to a healthier state. They should also fix the end game so that people will stay playing the game long term, instead of just hoping players will enjoy the questing stories so much that they try playing the rest of the game.

[Darcmoon]

Just now, SuperGrunt said:

The real question isn't if they can afford the short term losses. For one we don't even know that there would be short term losses. If done with enough warning the players could shift their purchases to make it such that there would actually be no short term losses. Additionally worrying about short term losses when the player base is getting smaller and smaller is only going to lead to the game eventually closing down. This is just one thing that needs to be fixed in the game to get the game to a healthier state. They should also fix the end game so that people will stay playing the game long term, instead of just hoping players will enjoy the questing stories so much that they try playing the rest of the game.

Even with warning, that may not help.  Mainly because a lot of players buy items or packs so they can sell them to other players.  And a number of players also do not buy packs and want to get the items using credits.   If enough people stop buying those packs then they may lose enough income and have to shut down.  I don’t think that they would have enough players start buying items or packs to make up for those that don’t.  And while I agree we don’t know what the short term losses would be we also don’t know what, if any, the long term gains would be. 

[SuperGrunt]

1 minute ago, Darcmoon said:

Even with warning, that may not help.  Mainly because a lot of players buy items or packs so they can sell them to other players.  And a number of players also do not buy packs and want to get the items using credits.   If enough people stop buying those packs then they may lose enough income and have to shut down.  I don’t think that they would have enough players start buying items or packs to make up for those that don’t.  And while I agree we don’t know what the short term losses would be we also don’t know what, if any, the long term gains would be. 

The long term gain would be the game continuing to be available. As is the game is loosing players. They closed servers down while I was away. To the point of there only being 2 NA servers. With changes nothing is set in stone, but without changes the end seems to at least be written in pencil if not in pen.

[Darcmoon]

Just now, SuperGrunt said:

The long term gain would be the game continuing to be available. As is the game is loosing players. They closed servers down while I was away. To the point of there only being 2 NA servers. With changes nothing is set in stone, but without changes the end seems to at least be written in pencil if not in pen.

And yet with the changes you’ve suggested it could cause the shutdown to happen quicker.  The thing is, we don’t know either way.   

[MortenJessen]

  

39 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

That is exactly what you are saying, I just said it in a different way.

No. Because you said:

1 hour ago, SuperGrunt said:

An easy way to explain inflation is too much currency chasing too few goods.

There are so many problems with this, that it would require a Ph.D to really explain it. So by stating: 

 

39 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

One that is understandable.

Is directly missleading because it is a long term symptom, not the disease. One does not have covid 19 just because one coughs.

The real issue is the value of the currency combined with the volume in circulation. Certain push-pull mechanisms would have to be explained here, but I dont wont to waste my time on it, but I will say that the "too few goods" part of it really, just, remove it and we can agree, to a degree, on the too much currency part.

[SuperGrunt]

Just now, Darcmoon said:

And yet with the changes you’ve suggested it could cause the shutdown to happen quicker.  The thing is, we don’t know either way.   

You assume that they changes I suggest could cause the shutdown to happen sooner. The thing is that we do know that without change the game while not currently in "Maintence Mode" it seems to be headed down that path.

[SuperGrunt]

5 minutes ago, MortenJessen said:

  

No. Because you said:

There are so many problems with this, that it would require a Ph.D to really explain it. So by stating: 

 

Is directly missleading because it is a long term symptom, not the disease. One does not have covid 19 just because one coughs.

The real issue is the value of the currency combined with the volume in circulation. Certain push-pull mechanisms would have to be explained here, but I dont wont to waste my time on it, but I will say that the "too few goods" part of it really, just, remove it and we can agree, to a degree, on the too much currency part.

Too much money chasing too few goods is a simplification of inflation that allows the laymen to understand it. If you are too focused on the intricate details of inflation maybe you are too smart to understand the need for everyone to be able to understand the impact of it instead of just the smartest people in the rooms.

*EDIT* By the way, here is a direct quote to prove myself correct.

“Inflation is caused by too much money chasing after too few goods.”

― Milton Friedman

Edited April 30, 2023 by SuperGrunt
Added quote by Milton Friedman.

[Darcmoon]

18 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

You assume that they changes I suggest could cause the shutdown to happen sooner. The thing is that we do know that without change the game while not currently in "Maintence Mode" it seems to be headed down that path.

I know we don’t know.  I even stayed that.  You opinion is that your changes would help and I’m of the opinion that they would cause too many issues in the short term to either get to the long term or be worth the long term benefits.  

[Ominovin]

1 hour ago, SuperGrunt said:

The inflation issue in game is horrible, and needs to be addressed.

An easy way to explain inflation is too much currency chasing too few goods. The ways to combat inflation are to take currency out of the market, or to increase the number of goods in the market, or the natural selection method of crashing the market causing a recession and or depression. In game the easiest way to do this would be to create better credit sinks, which would prevent the need to crash the market. Let's be honest here, if the real world market worked like the in game one, then it would have crashed quite a while ago. I would say that it might actually have been considered to crash before BioWare increased the credit caps on F2P and Preferred and the GTN.

...

Now to prevent inflation from getting out of control, we really need to combat all the sources of inflation in the game. 

...

Additionally the sale of Cartel Market items on the GTN. This was implemented to allow people to sell items to F2P players and also Preferred players such that they would be able to earn the things in game. This has spiraled out of control though, and needs to be addressed. I like the idea of players being able to buy the unlocks on the GTN so that they can earn the QoL items in game, but the current costs of those exceed the amount of money that F2P and Preferred players can get entirely, or are so high that it's unreasonable to assume that anyone would actually get them. I don't want to remove the ability to buy/sell/trade those items. Either by way of the GTN or guilds giving them away to players as a perk. However the rest of the items from the Cartel Market, the cosmetic items, those need to go. They are often sold at the GTN credit cap, or are sold off the GTN at prices over the GTN cap. Quite honestly these are not needed at all. Cosmetic items should not be tradable at all, and should be bound as soon as they are claimed from the Cartel Market.  

 

How exactly does the sale of Cartel Market items for credits increase inflation?  This transaction neither creates nor destroys credits (unless sold thru the GTN, in which case it actually removes 5-8% of the sale price from the economy) so it's pretty much inflation neutral:  While one player is richer and another is poorer than they were before the sale, the overall game economy is the same or (very) slightly smaller.

[MortenJessen]

Causes of Inflation | Explainer | Education | RBA

BTW, dully note that Milton Friedman had an agenda... He tried to re-define inflation to fit into a society where physical money would become more and more rare.

As an aside, no one follows Friedmans ideas because they only work in money-less societies. In the real world, just take a look at Zimbabwe. or pre-WW2 Germany. Evidence enough. Friedmans policies on inflation is generally out of use because they are, well, useless (they worked in the 70¨s because weirdly enough there was a world wide stagflation because of the oil crises, but they dont work any more because the worlds economical system has changed alot since), while his ideas on fiscal policy is very much in use. And they cause problems. Just look at England. So meh on him.

Edited April 30, 2023 by MortenJessen

[MortenJessen]

8 minutes ago, Ominovin said:

How exactly does the sale of Cartel Market items for credits increase inflation?

It does because the sums the items sells for is so high. And they cause players to use gold sellers. 

  

8 minutes ago, Ominovin said:

the overall game economy is the same or (very) slightly smaller.

No, because quite a lot of credits from various ill intended sources (although they all originally come from ingame sources in some way, even exploits, hacks, hard play, ect.) float the game and changes hands. And the higher the prices rises, the higher the demand for those sources. It is not a sigh of health.

Edited April 30, 2023 by MortenJessen

[xxSHOONYxx]

55 minutes ago, SuperGrunt said:

You assume that they changes I suggest could cause the shutdown to happen sooner. The thing is that we do know that without change the game while not currently in "Maintence Mode" it seems to be headed down that path.

Game as it is right now by steam charts is at the highest population it has been for the last year with the release of 64bit galactic seasons and pvp seasons. And it is easy to assume the tendency would be the same with people that don't use steam.

2 hours ago, SuperGrunt said:

The inflation issue in game is horrible, and needs to be addressed.

And one of the best changes that was not listed on the patch notes is that bioware banned a bunch of credit sellers. That's why prices went down and now if you want to buy credits from those sources is 7 to 10 times more expensive than it was before the ban wave. 
No credit sink will work if bots and credit sellers go rampant. Credit sinks are still needed for the normal players though.

[mCion]

I do not want to get too involved in this topic, but I do think it is important to note that MorternJessen's comments, while acceptable as personal opinions, do not accurately portray how the system works, even though he/she is attempting to "correct" almost everyone on this thread. Everyone can give their opinions and viewpoints, but wrongfully "correcting" everyone else leads to more confusion.

[DWho]

1 hour ago, Ominovin said:

How exactly does the sale of Cartel Market items for credits increase inflation? 

It encourages the use of gold sellers which brings credits that are currently out of the economy (being held by gold sellers to sell for cash) back into the active economy. Also with the high credit prices for Cartel Market items, it encourages the use of off-GTN sales/exchanges which bypass the only true credit sink in the game. Both of these things lead to inflation because they do not remove credits from the economy which is a vital aspect of a properly functioning economy.

[DWho]

30 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

And one of the best changes that was not listed on the patch notes is that bioware banned a bunch of credit sellers.

Are we sure this happened or is it that credit sellers have changed the way they ply their trade and do not advertise in game anymore (or at least to a lesser degree) because that is how they get caught.

[xxSHOONYxx]

2 minutes ago, DWho said:

Are we sure this happened or is it that credit sellers have changed the way they ply their trade and do not advertise in game anymore (or at least to a lesser degree) because that is how they get caught.

I can't show any evidence of it since what i know is by what i read on several discord servers that there was a big ban wave. And their prices did went up by a lot to what they used to be, could be a coincidence... but think the ban wave was a reality

[MortenJessen]

44 minutes ago, mCion said:

I do not want to get too involved in this topic, but I do think it is important to note that MorternJessen's comments, while acceptable as personal opinions, do not accurately portray how the system works, even though he/she is attempting to "correct" almost everyone on this thread. Everyone can give their opinions and viewpoints, but wrongfully "correcting" everyone else leads to more confusion.

Do tell please. Note that I try to use opinion as little as possible and stick to facts here. Including the economy part.

44 minutes ago, mCion said:

do not accurately portray how the system works

What system? The real world? Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is all around you, you cant escape it.

The game?? Well, THAT is a matter of opinion... Because the game economy actually (not by design btw) runs by a Friedman system, exept that BW dont follow his advice to pump more credits into circulation to make the players spend more. In the real world that was tried in many contries during this last crisis.... It only resulted in peoples savings getting bigger, not them spending more. There is a reason this kind of system Friedman advocates only works in economical systems where the economical reserve is not controlled by politicians.

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by MortenJessen

[DWho]

2 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

I can't show any evidence of it since what i know is by what i read on several discord servers that there was a big ban wave. And their prices did went up by a lot to what they used to be, could be a coincidence... but think the ban wave was a reality

Thanks. I asked because they seem to be operating in all the usual places more or less the same as they always have been. Reporting them has not seemed to reduce that at all, but perhaps it is just a matter of them being able to quickly set up new accounts when one gets banned. Bioware really needs to go after the people selling them the credits too, I'm pretty sure that is how the credit sellers get the majority of their credits now (from both players and guilds sitting at the credit caps)