7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, JamieKirby said:

I would back this, IF the players are realistic in their prices, nothing ticks me off more than players that charge 50% more than what it costs to get the materials...it is totally taking the Pee.

The issue with that isn’t how much the mats cost, because 85% of all mats are free if you farm them in the game. The issue is how much is someone’s time worth to them to farm those mat & craft for you while youre off enjoying normal game play. 

If you find crafted items too expensive to buy on the GTN, then make them yourself. Otherwise, who are you to decide how much another players time is worth to make stuff for you 🤷🏻‍♀️. There is nothing stopping you from crafting your own. If you choose not to craft, then you pay the higher price, that’s on you, not the crafter who is providing you a service. 

And what you think is too expensive, obviously isn’t if other players are willing to pay it. That’s how capitalism & free market economies work. If the price was too high, the crafter wouldn’t sell them & they’d be forced to lower their price. But while ever they are selling at that price & people are willing to pay those prices, a smart seller will keep those prices at the sweet spot that makes the most amount of credits for the least amount of time it takes to craft them. That way they can spend more time playing the normal part of the game.

At the end of the day, you aren’t just paying for the mats + crafting, you’re paying for a service & the players time to make the items. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from crafting your own stuff.

If more people crafted their own things, prices on all those items would drop because the demand would drop & there would be an over abundance of supply. 
 

Edited May 10, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, VegaMist said:

The gifts should not be taxed. Ever.

On crafted consumable items, I totally agree.

For cartel market items, I think they should be taxed at the same price as the GTN or they should become legacy bound if gifted so they can’t be resold. 

[VegaMist]

5 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

On crafted consumable items, I totally agree.

For cartel market items, I think they should be taxed at the same price as the GTN or they should become legacy bound if gifted so they can’t be resold. 

So, by this logic, if you handcraft a birthday gift for a friend - you can gift it tax-free. But if you bought it at a store, you'd be willing to fill out a tax form for the privilege of gifting it? This is wrong on so many levels. Taxing trades is one things. But taxing gifts and charity is a no go.

[recalcitrantIre]

22 hours ago, Bioelectricbarry said:

there wasnt any massive flooding of credits until just recently

lol

lmao

Bioware themselves admitted that the conquest revamp brought in far more legitimate credits than they'd ever anticipated which is why goal rewards were entirely removed and the completion reward was trimmed down to a single 25k certificate

On 5/9/2023 at 6:31 PM, Ardrossan said:

My solution would have kept the game more or less unchanged

and thats why it isnt actually a solution

[RevBurt]

Has the question of how and why there was such sudden inflation addressed? Maybe there lies the problem. Instead of making things more expensive for all as a solution, perhaps eliminate the problem altogether....if you can isolate it.

[Ardrossan]

5 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

lol

lmao

Bioware themselves admitted that the conquest revamp brought in far more legitimate credits than they'd ever anticipated which is why goal rewards were entirely removed and the completion reward was trimmed down to a single 25k certificate

and thats why it isnt actually a solution

lol ok hope you like paying 5 million to trade someone a medpac.  

[ThordinRedWolf]

I can understand the taxing on the GTN, but charging for quick travel which many pay for the lower downtime all the way to no cool down period is the same as double charging them. Not only that, but new players may not have the funds yet to use it, so charging for them makes no sense. I do have some trouble seeing as why so many things have a cost anyway as there's no "real" value to the credits. Cartel coins are bought with "real" money, but not in world credits. I can accept a cost to GTN, and hope a leveling value would work, but other things shouldn't charge for it. I myself use what credits I get on the extremely high price of crafting supplies. Perhaps there is a way to cap those costs?

[Balameb]

37 minutes ago, RevBurt said:

Has the question of how and why there was such sudden inflation addressed?

Yes, and someone just one post before you pointed to one the main culprits.

In 6.X there was a massive influx of legitimate NEW credits generated by providing too much credit rewards.

Other culprit was also on 6.X that provided a horrendus amount of loot with high vendor value.

BW already address those two. but that only helps to not make things worst. The damage was done, and it was so big that 1+ years after changes, prices were still rising.

Prices went so high that it forced transactions to be out of GTN, avoiding the main credit sink of this game. That is why 7.3 changes aim to remove credits from the game by targeting the tax/fee avoidance loophole.

[DWho]

7 minutes ago, Balameb said:

Yes, and someone just one post before you pointed to one the main culprits.

In 6.X there was a massive influx of legitimate NEW credits generated by providing too much credit rewards.

Other culprit was also on 6.X that provided a horrendus amount of loot with high vendor value.

BW already address those two. but that only helps to not make things worst. The damage was done, and it was so big that 1+ years after changes, prices were still rising.

Prices went so high that it forced transactions to be out of GTN, avoiding the main credit sink of this game. That is why 7.3 changes aim to remove credits from the game by targeting the tax/fee avoidance loophole.

One more was the mailbox credit exploit that came with the latest update (that was supposed to help curb inflation). That combined with all of the big transactions being off the GTN (eliminating the only substantial credit sink in the game) resulted in credits not flowing out of the game as intended (supply of credits drives up prices). Together, the exploits and off-GTN trading have ballooned the number of credits in game ("inflation" has gotten worse as more things moved to off-GTN trade even while influx of credits into the game has been cut massively). Now Bioware has to spend time that could be spent dealing with other things tracking down the exploiters (which if they catch 10% of the people who used it is a big success leaving hundreds of billions of new credits in the game from the exploit).

The QT tax was more likely designed to change the way people played since it has no effect whatsoever on credit generation (the amount it draws out compared to what goes into the game every day is insignificant). The most effective credit generators don't even use QT. It is aimed at people playing through the RPG content to slow them down so they aren't asking for new content.

[DeannaVoyager]

On 5/9/2023 at 3:16 AM, TahliahCOH said:

Um, can't you just buy these for like 5k? Why on earth would anyone pay this to gift them when every single vendor has them for a fraction of that?

 

Not every single vendor. The medical droid vendor sells them, but the most used vendor Revan holo doesn't. I used to bring a lot of vaccines for rakghoul events because I knew people wouldn't have them and I didn't want to wait til they get thet so I traded a pile of vaccines for everyone who needed. Guess I won't be doing that anymore. 

 

But another topic within this topic, or more like a question. If it's been answered already I missed it:

How does this trading tax go with donating to guild bank? Let's say, if I open a bunch of cartel packs and want to put some items to guild bank, do I have to pay taxes for it? Because if that's the case, I don't see the point of opening cartel packs anymore, even if I'd get them for free (they take up less space unopened, in one clean stack). Their content is random, I will probably have some of what's in it already, and I don't want to lose my cartel coins AND my credits to get rid of the stuff I don't need. Giving gifts to other players will end from my part with the prices listed earlier, but I want to know if I can still put them to guild bank or is destroying the only option. 

 

 

[Ahndri]

On 5/8/2023 at 4:32 PM, commanderwar said:

For anyone who wants to know what the tax will be when just trading items (no credits involved) here it is by swtorista/ Lady Admiral found, from testing some items (not trading credits) individually on pts and seeing the taxing cost. So if you want to give players advance augment 74, you better have 5 million on hand.

These taxes seem egregious. My husband and I play together occasionally, though mostly we just do our own thing solo. This tax situation means we can't even pass materials or other things back and forth to help each other out without incurring ridiculous fees. Heck, I mailed him some credits when he started playing so that he could max out his stronghold for the conquest bonus, and I think I'd have had to pay taxes on that with this new system, right? How asinine this all is. There has to be a better way to fix this inflation issue that doesn't penalize the average player just trying to play the game normally with a friend or two.

[casirabit]

On 5/8/2023 at 4:32 PM, commanderwar said:

For anyone who wants to know what the tax will be when just trading items (no credits involved) here it is by swtorista/ Lady Admiral found, from testing some items (not trading credits) individually on pts and seeing the taxing cost. So if you want to give players advance augment 74, you better have 5 million on hand.

Item	Tax
Advanced Critical Augment 74	5 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal	1 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac	1 million
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2 (reuseable) 2.7 million	2.7 million
Advanced Kyrprax Versatile Stim	1 mill
Advanced Polybiotic Medpac (not level 80)	165,000
Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenade	4 mill
Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)	192 mill
Alliance Consul's Dias (silver mount)	72 mill
Augmentation Kit MK-11	1.6 mill
Banner: Onderon	738k
Black and Black Dye Module	120 mill
Deep Pink and Deep Purple Dye Module	19 mill
Emote: Sweep	10 mill
Flagship Plans: Command Encryption	1.3 mill
Flair: Snowtacular	80 mill
Force Crystal Flair Bundle	128 mill
Frontline Gapillian (gold mount)	120 mill
Grassland Varactyl	120 mill
Hypercrate: Ultimate Cartel Pack	wasn't able to test due to bind timer
Iziz Courtyard Water Basin	0
Junkshop Decoration Bundle	129 mill
Mandalorian Pillar	0
Mission Discovery: Archaeology (Grade 5)
Nahut's Heavy Sniper Rifle	224 mill
Rakghoul Vaccine x4	300,000 Credits
Revan Holostatue	120m ill
Revan Reborn Breastplate	72 mill
Ruthless Scion's Armor Set	37.5 mil
Secondary White Dye Module	13 mill
Sensuous Dress Bottom	46 mill
Superior Critical Augment 77	52 mill
Planetary Display: Tatooine	0
Ultimate Cartel Pack x5	80 mill
Universal Prefab MK-3	900k
Warzone Adrenal x5	393,000 Credits
White and White Dye	80 mill
Warzone Adrenal x 1263	99 mill

 

 

This is stupid but no one ever said BW was smart.   I haven't been playing much in the last few months anyways but this may cause the rest of my guild to leave as well.

[vanonipro]

I use GTN daily more than any other aspect of the game with volume of my trades reaching 100bn+ per month. Here's my feedback:

• The main thing: Add listing multiple stacks in one click, so I could list 20 stacks of 100 particular crafting items in one click, not 20.
• Make GTN remember your previous listing price for an item
• Add a button to automatically list an item for a market (or -1% of the current market) price, so we don't have to look the price up and set it manually
• Add an average recent (7 days) price % column when browsing items, so players would know if the particular item is now listed for 50% of it's usual price (averaged of the last 7 days) or 999%
• Add sorting by Cartel items rarity: Bronze, Gold etc.
• Add ability to increase selling slots above 100. It is very limiting now and I have to use 7 characters to do all my listings, which is very annoying.
• Add current/recent GTN price info in a tooltip of every item in an invenory!
• Increase the price limit above 1bn
• Add some GTN trading achievements to Legacy
• Add sorting by 2 parameters at the same time (name AND price for example)
• Probably impossible, but I'll still ask: add orders, so I could place an order for an item if it's not on the market right now and players could see it and fulfil it.

Just sketched these up in 10 minutes, maybe will come up with some more ideas a bit later. Good luck!

[Ardrossan]

A lot of posters here mention extending the time limit items stay on the GTN from three days to longer periods like a week. I've only ever had items able to stay up for 24 hours before getting mailed back to me, Doesn't matter whether I'm subbing or not, it's always been that way. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

[Nee-Elder]

29 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

. I've only ever had items able to stay up for 24 hours before getting mailed back to me, Doesn't matter whether I'm subbing or not, it's always been that way.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Within the 'sell' tab of your GTN  ui , there is a dropdown menu option on leftside about 'Duration'

3 days is the current max

Edited May 10, 2023 by Nee-Elder

[PallyHk]

For a radical solution, what about setting a MAXIMUM price for items?

Make account to account trade have a CD to prevent multiple payouts.

Make items taken from the GTN bind for a few days and un-relistable.

So you could cap all items at a 500.000 million maximum price.

 

As for quick travel, it is really good for new players and players who have jobs and can't really spend half their time speedering.

You want your game convenient, or the new player will just try out another mmo.

Either starting planets to level 30 or accounts with less playtime than lets say 3 months should get it free at least, to let them have credits. Maybe the cost should activate past a legacy level.

[MasterAntwonobi]

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

I think the GTN needs to be formatted to have a cap on all items depending on tier (bronze, silver, etc.) and the abundance (rarity) of like items for sale. For instance, if a platinum-tier item is for sale, it should come with a maximum value. Let's say 1M. No one can sell a platinum-tier item for any more than 1M credits. As more people post the same item, the price would naturally decrease as people want to be the better bargain. The approach could be that certain price tags have allotments. So, let's that platinum item being sold for 1M is the only one of that specific item that can be sold for 1M. After that, players have to lower their prices as the GTN will reject the post. Alternatively, the GTN could automatically be set to lower the price at programmed integers. There would be a cap at how low the prices can go in order to prevent items from being sold for free. So, the platinum-tier item is found 50 times and as 1M is the highest it can be sold for, the lowest could be 100K. That would mean that the next best tier (gold) would be at a cap of 100K. The hierarchy would continue one through silver and bronze.

I'm sure this is very complicated, but much of the playerbase can agree that many have ungodly high prices that make it virtually impossible for anyone to buy them. It would take people buying credits from 3rd party entities which then adds to the inflation problem.

[Ardrossan]

56 minutes ago, MasterAntwonobi 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?

I think the GTN needs to be formatted to have a cap on all items depending on tier (bronze, silver, etc.) and the abundance (rarity) of like items for sale. For instance, if a platinum-tier item is for sale, it should come with a maximum value. Let's say 1M. No one can sell a platinum-tier item for any more than 1M credits. As more people post the same item, the price would naturally decrease as people want to be the better bargain. The approach could be that certain price tags have allotments. So, let's that platinum item being sold for 1M is the only one of that specific item that can be sold for 1M. After that, players have to lower their prices as the GTN will reject the post. Alternatively, the GTN could automatically be set to lower the price at programmed integers. There would be a cap at how low the prices can go in order to prevent items from being sold for free. So, the platinum-tier item is found 50 times and as 1M is the highest it can be sold for, the lowest could be 100K. That would mean that the next best tier (gold) would be at a cap of 100K. The hierarchy would continue one through silver and bronze.

I'm sure this is very complicated, but much of the playerbase can agree that many have ungodly high prices that make it virtually impossible for anyone to buy them. It would take people buying credits from 3rd party entities which then adds to the inflation problem.

Price controls! I'm down for this. Partly because I think it's a good idea, partly because it will make people who already think the taxes are communism to go absolutely frothing at the mouth berserk 

[thoughtfix]

2 hours ago, MasterAntwonobi said:

I think the GTN needs to be formatted to have a cap on all items depending on tier (bronze, silver, etc.) and the abundance (rarity) of like items for sale.

Like you and @Ardrossan, I am also for price control for GTN items. Any items that can just be bought by characters (reputation vendors, Collector Edition vendors, preorder vendors or Cartel Coins) should have caps that are a relation to their vendor or cartel coin price. Current out-of-rotation Cartel Coin items (I think the Revanite Vindicator set?) can have higher buyout value, but anything that can just be outright purchased with credits or real money should have an in-game trade cap.

1M is a bit low for platinum, but 500M+ posts should be a thing of the past.

Edited May 11, 2023 by thoughtfix
Added last sentence

[RevBurt]

The easiest but  the most  unpopular fix for this:

Deduct once 25-50% of credits from all accounts, including guild banks instead of Taxing people to death.  Remember, this is play money.

It's a quick fix and requires no new coding.

[Sundown]

One convenience thing comes to mind with respect to GTN (or did I miss it?):

allow the result list (not a paged list, a real list please with scrolling) for easy filtering and/or condensation of results. Example: there are people who like to flood the lists with lots of entries for the same item at the same price. This could be condensed into one line of "x times item a at price b", or by allowing a simple filter (do not show seller x) - this to avoid that people start changing the price to minimally differ to avoid condensation).

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

Price controls! I'm down for this. Partly because I think it's a good idea, partly because it will make people who already think the taxes are communism to go absolutely frothing at the mouth berserk 

Why do you need price controls when the taxes will do that anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

[TrixxieTriss]

21 hours ago, VegaMist said:

So, by this logic, if you handcraft a birthday gift for a friend - you can gift it tax-free. But if you bought it at a store, you'd be willing to fill out a tax form for the privilege of gifting it? This is wrong on so many levels. Taxing trades is one things. But taxing gifts and charity is a no go.

They are trying to stop people from using CM items as a defacto trading currency. That’s why they decided to go down this  path of taxing gifts.

It’s not the way I would have done it & I don’t think it’s needed in the current situation. Its overkill & I think it will detrimentally affect the game & make some people stop playing all together.

The easiest solution & fairest solution is making any CM item become legacy or character bound if it’s gifted outside of the GTN. And they could do that for crafted items or mats as well. But gifted credits should still be taxed.

It would also be much less development work than what they are proposing for trades outside of the GTN. Which would actually be cheaper for them to implement & we’d have less chance of game bugs.

Edited May 11, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Ardrossan]

4 hours ago, RevBurt said:

The easiest but  the most  unpopular fix for this:

Deduct once 25-50% of credits from all accounts, including guild banks instead of Taxing people to death.  Remember, this is play money.

It's a quick fix and requires no new coding.

This is the correct answer. I would go higher but yeah 25-50 is fine. A lot of people here think this idea is dumb and to that i would say that there are probably lots of much better ideas but they take either a delicate hand, or one with the funding to create viable credit sinks in addition to pumping out content at least once a year. In my experience bioware is neither of things. The new tax on consumables is a pretty good example of a heavy handed approach, which, unlike mine if it doesn't work, at least we aren't stuck with permanently like this tax. 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 minute ago, Ardrossan said:

This is the correct answer. I would go higher but yeah 25-50 is fine. A lot of people here think this idea is dumb and to that i would say that there are probably lots of much better ideas but they take either a delicate hand, or one with the funding to create viable credit sinks in addition to pumping out content at least once a year. In my experience bioware is neither of things. The new tax on consumables is a pretty good example of a heavy handed approach, which, unlike mine if it doesn't work, at least we aren't stuck with permanently like this tax. 

If they did this, there would be the biggest exodus of players since not long after launch. It would be the biggest mistake BioWare ever made with this game & it would shutter it within months.