7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[Darcmoon]

4 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

When we open up 7.3 content on the PTS, players will be able to see the following adjustments:

• We’re retiring the Tax Evasion Guild Perk, it will no longer be available in future rotations.
• Secure Trade, Mail, and Collect on Deposit will now have an associated transaction fee based on the value of the transaction. The fee is aligned to the Galactic Trade Network Commission Fee at 8%.
• Some items will adjust the value of a transaction when transferred via Trade, Mail, and COD and will be subject to the same fee.
• Many items will have adjusted Vendor sale values.

 

We want the Galactic Trade Network to be the premier place for trade. Given we’re exploring the GTN as a place to improve the experience and make participating in our player market more enjoyable for everyone, we'd like to get your feedback on the current state of the GTN in terms of usability.

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?
• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?
• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
• Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?

It’s important to note that the changes we’re currently planning are going to take place over multiple phases and releases so not all changes will come online at once. We look forward to sharing the current plans and taking your feedback into account!

May the Force be with you
 

Can you explain more about what the two bolded points entail?  Maybe an example of how that will work.  I'll admit to being a bit iffy on my understanding of them. 

 

One of the dislikes is how you have to be to specific at times for your search.  You can't just search for armor chest pieces or just search decorations as a whole.  

I wish there was a way to limit the search to not show items that particular character already has.  An example is mounts.  One of my characters has a number of them, I wish I could just show the ones she doesn't already know.  As an example of the mount issue, I just checked the GTN on that character and the first 23 pages are all mounts available ingame from a vendor or alliance crate.  I'd rather not have to see them.

Another thing is to be able to filter out items that are in your collection already, either as unlocked for a single character or account unlocked.  

It would also be nice if the GTN automatically opened with it listing lowest price to highest.  

Edited May 1, 2023 by Darcmoon
Additional info

[Twelfthdoctor]

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?
  • The basic function of being able to passively sell items over a period of time and the ability to search items and price listings, as well as filter results.
• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?
  • Some of the sorting and filtering has always been a little unintuitive. I would prefer to sort by lowest price per unit by default within a category, and not be required to select a sub-category for certain things like armor and decorations when trying to look through what I can afford. As others have noted, there is currently an imbalance between maximum trade price and maximum GTN listing price that should be addressed in one direction or the other.
• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
  • I would prefer options to list items for 7, 15, and 30 days, potentially with a scaling, non-refundable listing price (1, 2, and 4 percent of the listing price for 7, 15, and 30 day listings respectively, perhaps?) to discourage listing inflation. Not getting a refund would encourage players to put things up where they think they'll sell in a reasonable time-frame, not constantly re-listing everything. This would be particularly handy for players who mostly play on weekends, and may not want to cycle through alts to check GTN listings every day, and for high-value or uncommon items that might not be looked for or bought daily.
  • I would also like to be able to check what prices an item has actually sold for in the past week, to determine a fair listing price, or alternatively, whether I should wait for a better deal when buying.
•  Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
  • It might be nice to be able to filter out items in a listing, like if I am looking for chairs on the GTN, have a way to avoid seeing pages and pages of the basic vendor chairs showing up in the middle of varied price points. Something like a checkbox next to the name column. That way, I can preview the item, and if I don't want it, keep looking through without seeing that same item show up on page after page when I m doing general browsing and don't have an exact item name I want.
  • Searching for decorations by hook size and sub-category would be nice (EG: 'hook size: Medium narrow', or 'civic-banners'. Being able to uncheck categories or sub-categories from a dropdown would also be nice, though might get visually cluttered.
• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?
  • Generally, I use a cost range based on the credits I have, then sort by price per unit, and filter by category and partial name if I am browsing. Information I would like are things like median price items have sold for in the past week  as a 'suggested price' or something similar.

[Darcmoon]

1 minute ago, Jedi_Isaiah said:

I have argued against this point in faction several times. Quick Travel is not a need by any standard in this game. If you recall, mounts and taxi points still exist. No new/returning players/alts NEED to use QT. You can get around any planet just fine without the use of QT. If you're complaining about your many alts having to spend credits to get around, it's just as easy to send credits to that alt to use QT. Leave the QT fees alone.

You don't need mounts either.  Maybe they should put a tax on using them every time you mount up?  (Yes, I'm being sarcastic)  The issue with the QT cost is that they took an ability that never had a cost on it since the beginning of the game, one they have consistently made more and more friendly for casual use, and decided to charge for it.  That is the exact opposite of a QOL change.

[Toraak]

1 hour ago, Amodin said:

Wait a minute - you are now going to CHARGE people to make a trade?  Really?  So, someone nice out there who just wants to give someone a million is going to be charged almost 10% by being nice?  Are you guys seriously thinking about these changes?  There is ZERO reason to do this where GTN involvement is absent.  You're over-reaching your taxing on this.

 

Your wrong. Taxing Trades and CoD's in very important to stop people from avoiding the GTN tax. This is one of the best idea's they have taken. As well as taxing CoD's.

[supertimtaf]

Just now, Darcmoon said:

You don't need mounts either.  Maybe they should put a tax on using them every time you mount up?  (Yes, I'm being sarcastic)  The issue with the QT cost is that they took an ability that never had a cost on it since the beginning of the game, one they have consistently made more and more friendly for casual use, and decided to charge for it.  That is the exact opposite of a QOL change.

Tbh, some other mmo has a money tax on quick travel. It's just not as big as swtor's current one. Oh, and it has no cooldown too. No need for legacy perks. 

I'm fine with QT fees, if they're not too high. 5k per QT on Alderaan is a tad overkill. Just divide this value by two and you have a "good" system, that isn't hostile to new players, and also serves its "purpose".

[Valaetia]

How about you stop screwing the new players and adjust the Cartel Market prices way down so everyone can afford Cartel Items, it'll wreck the credit whales who won't be able to charge 8 billion for items? All this does is hurt new players and will chase off long term players. No other games does this. Charging to trade? Seriously?

Edited May 1, 2023 by Valaetia
*Fixed storage thing.

[thoughtfix]

You can also make it lore-friendly by axing the word "tax" and calling the GTN cut a "commission," calling the direct trade cut a "remittance fee," and calling COD/Mail cut a "bonded courier fee."

[Darcmoon]

2 minutes ago, supertimtaf said:

Tbh, some other mmo has a money tax on quick travel. It's just not as big as swtor's current one. Oh, and it has no cooldown too. No need for legacy perks. 

I'm fine with QT fees, if they're not too high. 5k per QT on Alderaan is a tad overkill. Just divide this value by two and you have a "good" system, that isn't hostile to new players, and also serves its "purpose".

If the QT fees were implemented at a more reasonable price and if they had been implemented when the game launched or soon afterwards, then I (and many others I would assume) wouldn't have as much issue with it.  After 11 years of QT not having a fee with it, the addition of one is infuriating.

[IceSavage]

 I would like to see filters added to rarity to specifically filter out anything that isnt Cartel Market Bronze or better, Silver or better and Gold items.   Also the sub-categories that are used in The Collection would be useful for mounts and pets.

Also I think that Quick Travel, if it really needs to have a cost, then it should be progressive based on level to be new player friendly.

Edited May 1, 2023 by IceSavage

[WHTJunior]

4 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?
• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?
• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
• Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?

• It's a consignment market. It's basically a place that I can list some things, and come back later to see if they sold.
• It's not that user-friendly. To check current listing comps, I have to switch between a search for that item, and my listing, to make sure that I don't accidentally list at the wrong price. It also doesn't remember any of my settings, like 3 day listings, sort smallest to largest by item, etc.
• I wish the recommended price was closer to the most recent sold price, and not 4500 for nearly everything. If you could include an undercut calculator, or auto-undercut n%, I would make great use of that. When selling random drops, I usually just double the listed price, but would appreciate if the system was a little more intuitive on what greens/blues/etc are worth. I also wish we could get a [Buying] tab, where we request an item for a price, and sellers can check there first, if they want, to sell the item to someone offering a reasonable price, especially if none of those items are listed (and maybe put a low-end price on item types, so people don't lowball and glut up the tab - could be based on recent sales as well).
• For starters, I wish there was a [Collected] / [Not Collected] filter, so that when I am looking for pets, mounts, armor sets, etc, I don't have to sort through hundreds of items that I already own. Along those lines, I wish that the search results would list each identical item in a collapsed list, with the individual listings shown upon clicking that item. I admit, it's very similar to what WoW did, and I really like it.
• I'm mostly a collector, so I'm usually just looking for the lowest price on something.

There might be more, but that's all I can think of for now.

Edited May 1, 2023 by WHTJunior

[Urthal]

3 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?

Being able to buy and sell stuff without having to use trade chat,

3 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

• Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?

I'd love for a "Usable items only" option that filters out recipes, pets and mounts I already know, as well as items I have unlocked in collections, either per character or account and decorations I'm capped on (50/50, etc.).

Would be nice if there was a toggle for the rarity filter to only show the selected rarity, instead of that rarity or better.

3 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?

Price history would be the obvious answer. Big undertaking, of course, but it would allow for informed decisions instead of having prices vary wildly. Bonus points if the GTN becomes cross server.

 

[juanmf]

What are we? Argentina? Why don't you tax me for logging out too. I have no words to explain how dumb these changes are without getting perma banned.

[Zepertix]

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?
  • remembering prices if you are selling multiple identical items
  • remembering how long to place the sale for
  • quite good, readable interface at the moment, I would hate to see that get muddied too much.
• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?
  • remove useless categories or search functions "usable by me" or certain companions feels pretty out-dated and maybe I'm just not smart enough, but I was never able to figure out how to use it correctly
  • categories could be more specific in some areas, and conversely, it would be nice to search broader, less specific sections, even if there are tons of pages.
  • unable to search by price AND name (as to not see repeats of an item across multiple pages when sorting by price)
• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
  • (the obvious) sell items over 1 billion credits in value!
  • PRICE HISTORY PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, this is my number 1 request, perhaps even more important than credit cap. Free markets are amazing, BUT, if the item has a low supply/very rare, it can be next to impossible for someone inexperienced to know the price for it. Give us a recent price history if not a 30 day average (and honestly hopefully 180 or more). A full daily tracked price history that can be looked up (Runescape has done this very well) on a separate website would be amazing, but I understand if there isn't the framework for something like that. I would be very happy with a 30 day average/most recent sale prices or averages.
  • if you are collecting more credits than you can hold, send it to escrow and let people pick them up out of escrow at a later time.
  • place sales for 7 days or longer. Some things just take a long time to sell, refreshing every 3 days gets tedious.
  • a function to directly through the gtn send mail (regardless of faction) to offer a seller either a trade/lower offer than their request, and then they can meet in person or something. 
• Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
  • filter for cartel item rarity (or lack thereof) 
  • Add a function to search by name, and then ALSO by price, and vice versa; by price, and then by item name after that
  • Add the ability to exclude words or search for very specific items; for example when searching for a regular "Advanced Purple Eviscerating Crystal" you will have to go through many pages of black-purple, purple-core, white-blue-purple, etc crystals all because techncially all those words are in those names too. It would be nice to search for verbatim item names OR remove words, for example "black, core, white, indestructible" etc when searching for purple crystals.
• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?
  • Mostly price, and time left in sale. Once again, price history would be an immensely helpful boon in trying to gauge if it's worthwhile. 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Zepertix
color to show my responses in white

[Amodin]

1 hour ago, Toraak said:

Your wrong. Taxing Trades and CoD's in very important to stop people from avoiding the GTN tax. This is one of the best idea's they have taken. As well as taxing CoD's.

No, I'm really not but whatever helps you sleep at night.  Especially not wrong when this was an option given to us for the purpose of not having to pay taxes on non-existent entities claiming a tax.

It's literally digital tyranny.  Note how I didn't have an issue with other ways to collect taxes they proposed.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Amodin

[thoughtfix]

41 minutes ago, WHTJunior said:

• I wish the recommended price was closer to the most recent sold price, and not 4500 for nearly everything.

 

I love this so much. The GTN should be smart enough to keep a rolling database of "the last 20 times this successfully sold, it was for [x]"  which can be shown as "recent going rate" or something similar. This should be visible to the seller and the buyer.

[Nee-Elder]

18 minutes ago, Amodin said:

 Especially not wrong when this was an option given to us for the purpose of not having to pay taxes on non-existent entities claiming a tax.

What if that tax went to some type of existing entity then?

Like oh i dunno.... The HUTTS !

And then maybe that 'tax pool'  of Credits could somehow be accessed by players, once per year, in some type of grand STAR WARS lore-driven ( as per SWTOR's timeline )  mega-lottery 'PAZAAK' playing situation during the *Nar Shaddaa Nightlife Event* .

Here's the catch: The winner could only convert those earnings into personal no-trade 'Cartel Chips' , which they could only use to purchase old Cartel Market packs & discontinued items. ( which would also be non-tradable  non-sellable )

C'mon  @JoeStramaglia  please ask @EricMusco to make it so!

Edited May 1, 2023 by Nee-Elder
Reason: finally BioWare could re-implement that PAZAAK table from 'The Esseles' start area!

[ThanderSnB]

5 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?
• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?
• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
• Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?

1. Like: I like having access to a lot of items with a quick search. I'm sure there's a lot more here, but I'm more interested in improving the things below.

2. Dislike: The credit cap being lower for GTN than Secure Trade doesn't make sense. They should both be the same and high enough that players can buy even the most expensive items. If the player credit cap is a concern, create a currency that can be traded to a vendor for 1 billion credits each. When players sell an expensive item, give this currency for each billion of the sale, and credits for the leftovers. So let's say the currency is called Diamonds. If a player sells an item for 5,385,849,030, the mail would have 5 Diamonds plus 385,849,030 credits. A vendor on fleet would allow trading 1 Diamond for 1 billion credits. Also add a new decoration for this vendor to add to guild ships and player strongholds.

3a. Buy Orders: Basically, indicate to others that I'm looking for a specific item that's not listed on the GTN and the price I'm willing to pay for it. When I make the order, I pay the credits upfront. If a player sells the item to me, they get the credits minus taxes. If no player sells the item within the duration, I get all the credits back in the mail.

3b. Option to set price of a stack of items by price per item. Currently, when selling a stack of items, you have to put the full amount in for the whole stack. Usually, the more important thing is the price per item. I'd like the option to set the price per item, and the game figures out the price for the whole stack automatically. This could be a radio button to select which pricing scheme. The UI would calculate on the fly the total cost for the stack and show it before you click the button to list it. For example, I could list a stack of 30 Engineering Encryption, select Sell Price (Per Item), and enter 5,000,000. The UI would display sell price 150,000,000 (30 X 5,000,000) and that's what the stack would be listed for.

3c. Auto-complete item name in search field. This would probably be hard to do, but often times I'm looking for an item but don't know the exact name. It would help if the game could fill in the name, or even have a dropdown of possible names to select from.

4a. Instead of a dropdown, have a Filters button. When clicking the button, it opens a window with categories and sub-categories listed. Sub-categories are indented for clarity. Scrollbar so the windows contents can be any size. Then next to each category and sub-category, add a checkbox. Players can check any combination of categories and sub-categories to search. I think that would simplify my searches a lot.

4b. Have the option to sort by multiple headings. So I would sort by name 1st, then sort by price per individual item 2nd. You could implement this with left click and right click. Left click the heading to set 1st priority, right click another heading to set 2nd priority. It would be nice if this could be saved, because I am usually checking the same things (name = make sure I'm buying the right item, price per item = is this the lowest price stack?).

5. I can't think of anything at the moment, but I will make another reply if I think of something.

Edited May 1, 2023 by ThanderSnB

[thoughtfix]

37 minutes ago, Amodin said:

It's literally digital tyranny.  Note how I didn't have an issue with other ways to collect taxes they proposed.

I don't know if you have been watching the economy of the last 30 years, but the ultra-wealthy will always sneak in loopholes for every tax then put all their wealth through those loopholes. Then they decry tyranny whenever someone closes a loophole. This is how massive companies like Charter, Nike, FedEx, Salesforce, AMD and others paid ZERO Federal taxes in 2020. Leaving any loophole available just means all wealth will flow through that loophole.

It's like any other political movement involving the economy: Half-measures do nothing.

In real life, most ways of transferring cash (especially large amounts) have fees. PayPal, Cash App, credit card transactions, almost everything but plain cash has some transfer fee involved. That's not tyranny. That's just commerce. If you want this to be "more like real life" and less "tyrannical" they should make physical credit chips that you can store in your inventory and you can trade as many as you can fit into a trade window. There. Solved. 

[jedimasterjac]

It wouldn’t hurt if we could easily see and access all of our listings across our legacy, too. Whenever I’m going big on GTN stuff I’m usually hopping across a lot of different characters. Might be nice to be able to access all my listings from any toon. 

[jedimasterjac]

14 minutes ago, thoughtfix said:

I don't know if you have been watching the economy of the last 30 years, but the ultra-wealthy will always sneak in loopholes for every tax then put all their wealth through those loopholes. Then they decry tyranny whenever someone closes a loophole. This is how massive companies like Charter, Nike, FedEx, Salesforce, AMD and others paid ZERO Federal taxes in 2020. Leaving any loophole available just means all wealth will flow through that loophole.

It's like any other political movement involving the economy: Half-measures do nothing.

In real life, most ways of transferring cash (especially large amounts) have fees. PayPal, Cash App, credit card transactions, almost everything but plain cash has some transfer fee involved. That's not tyranny. That's just commerce. If you want this to be "more like real life" and less "tyrannical" they should make physical credit chips that you can store in your inventory and you can trade as many as you can fit into a trade window. There. Solved. 

Digital tyranny has got to be one of the most melodramatic ways I’ve heard a small tax on a fake currency described. 

[Defel]

It might be out of scope for this initiative but having a GTN that offers the standard listings as well as an auction house that players could bid on items would be a useful feature.

Higher prices = more tax = more money taken out of the system.

[Vanechka]

A FEATURE for GTN. If no one has mentioned before, I would like to see a real Auction House option like E-bay used to have. Maybe open a new "TAB" for items starting at 1 credit (whatever the seller sets it up to it) with a timmer by hours/days, Maybe a buy it now option, and a minimum set price for it to be set by the seller if the item does not reach the minimum price acceptable, it does not get sold.

I believe someone mentioned this already. Be able to see the GTN Tax when we input the price. (We can always do the math also.

One last thing. Do NOT raise the CAP. 1 Billion is more than enough. Unless the DEV team is planning to tax 60%+ on items over a billion credits. Now THIS will create a credit sink we need to fix this problem.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Vanechka

[Drew_Braxton]

History shows that by the time you all start asking these questions, the changes are already set.  After reading the posts though, with many of them coming from broke a$$ players with no skin in the game or who have no clue on how to make credits in the game suddenly offering advise how to fix the economy, I thought I would offer my input to balance the feedback.

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?
• Ease of use/access.
• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?
• You cannot filter out unusable items (decorations, cartel items you already have, etc.
• Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
• Filter out unusable items and items a character already has. Increasing credit limit and max listing limit. Would be nice if you could offer a different price for a item (lower than listing price) that the seller could get and decide if its worth it and sell it for less than listing price.  Perhaps full bidding feature.
• Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
• See above. Would be nice to filter out certain sellers.
• What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?
• Price, whether I have the item or not, and more filters for decoration types. 

Instead of all these crazy changes why not just increase character credit limit and max gtn credit limit?  Keep the in-person trade cap to 1 billion.  This by itself would quickly pull out credits from the economy without affecting in person trades (which many of them are either donations or someone giving another player items/credits.  

Scale the gtn fee with listing price 1 billion = 8%, 2B = 9%, 3B =10%, 4B = 11%, 5B = 12%, 6B = 13%.  1,000 sales of 4B would pull out 440 billion credits.  This would be effective, over time, without nickel and diming new players while at the same time not penalizing crafters so much that crafting gets so rare that prices skyrocket.  

This seems fair.  Bioware created this inflation by not watching the shop for so long.  Your correction should be smart and targeted and then tweak the percentages if balance isn't achieved/maintained.  

I have donated hundreds of billions of credits to friends and random players who make a good case and like to post 1 credit items for holidays.  I play this game for fun though and I am not going to do crafting for nothing nor help other people if I get hassled for stupid fees.  

Hopefully, someone in your team still plays this game and does crafting or plays the gtn that can offer their input.  Consider the input and the source of the input.  

Christmas 2022

Edited May 1, 2023 by Drew_Braxton

[recalcitrantIre]

4 hours ago, Toraak said:

avoiding the GTN tax

this phrase implies the possibility that those transactions are feasible within the GTN's current limits, which they are not

this isnt going to do anything about items that have a market value well above the GTN's 1b listing limit and bioware are once again showing just how out of touch they are with the actual game

 

even the progressive tax sounds like putting a bandaid on a severed limb, the GTN has pretty much no causal effect on current inflationary trends, the game severely needs some high capacity direct credit sinks as well as the reversal of several changes that eliminated small capacity sinks

[cacophonycat]

I tried to write a detailed reply and the forum literally told me my entire message that had no ToS violating words or any words that were other than nouns like GTN, Mounts, Armor, Listings, Drop Downs, etc --- were not allowed.

My whole reply was highlighted. I'm confused. I deleted everything I just spent 20 minutes writing to post this, to give you a head's up that I guess it didn't like me copying and pasting from the op?

Edited May 2, 2023 by cacophonycat
updating