7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[black_pyros]

78.600 credits tax to trade wz adrenal, which is sold by vendors for 1000 credits. Rakghoul Vaccine is another good example.

[recalcitrantIre]

16 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

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

moot point now that bioware have said items such as medpacs will be exempt from these moronic changes but anyway

in a choice between paying 4x the market value per item or just not giving the person in "need" what they're after, most people are going to pick the latter

and the non-participation factor is something else that Bioware seems to be completely ignoring

people will stop trading, sure, but that means people will stop gifting

people will stop acquiring the items they'd consider gifting

people will stop playing the game

people will stop paying for the game

 

they really should just scrap this entire moronic "tax" scheme and formulate some high capacity, high-cost-per-transaction direct sinks, none of this fudging around with percentile rates

I think personal decoration "donation"/duplication similar to what currently exists for guilds is a popular and widely suggested choice

[WHTJunior]

6 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

On 5/10/2023 at 3:29 AM, 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.

Technically, when you buy a gift IRL, you pay sales tax. So, yeah, you pay the tax when you gift something.

[Balameb]

6 hours ago, black_pyros said:

78.600 credits tax to trade wz adrenal, which is sold by vendors for 1000 credits. Rakghoul Vaccine is another good example.

PTS already addressed that issue. Consumables will not be taxed.

And 'for the moment' nor will be guild transactions. (they say thhey will monitor that)

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929203-pts-economic-balance-changes/?do=findComment&comment=9757765

[DawnAskham]

I'm so confused...

Is the point of the 'credit economy initiative' to actually improve the economy and overall game for players, or to keep some Bioware people busy so they can tell their boss 'Look at what I did these past few months' and justify their position?

Because I sure don't get why they are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with some sort of fee schedule for every item that could possibly be traded from player to player while at the same time, this will be the second implementation of changes that do not address the biggest potential sink - increasing the GTN price listing limit.

Anyways, I provided feedback in the PTS thread about the fees applied to items traded outside the GTN being something that should be scrapped or at least not implemented until after things like GTN limits and ongoing efforts to combat excess credit generation are implemented and given time to effect the economy.

And if Bioware are (which let's face it, they always are) hellbent on implementing their crazy convoluted ideas, the least they could do is use some basic reasonable and easy-to-understand logic in setting the fees.

Use the rolling 30-day median price for cartel packs (the individual 200 CC ones) sold on the GTN to establish a CC to credit value, use that value times the CC price of the item on CM times the transaction fee.

For any CM item without a direct CC price, assign a CC 'value' based on the price of other similar items (like for like, if platinum weapons are 2K on CM, any platinum weapon without a direct CC price should be set with a 2K CC 'value' to use for calculating the transaction fee).

For anything sold in-game by a vendor, any fee should be less than the vendor buy price.

For anything crafted or gathered, use the vendor buy price (or reasonable multiple) to set the fee.

Trying to set fees by pulling GTN price data (when many items can't even be listed due to the current limit, sell so rarely the data will be extremely noisy, and where price data can be manipulated) just seems like a really bad idea.

Just apply the GTN transaction fee to credits traded outside the GTN, increase the GTN listing limit, and keep up the focus on constraining new credit generation.

[RevBurt]

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

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.

I really doubt any "exodus" would occur.  People are more prone to rage-quit over ability/class nerfs because they are permanent and alter the way you have been playing.

All that would happen is that accounts would have less disposable credits and thus would not be able to purchase as much, thus prices will begin to fall to meet the spending ability.

Then it's back to business as usual.

This would also hit the "credit farmer" accounts hard, who are not "real" players but  rather, real-world money making business which takes away from the game. They are primarily the cause for inflation IMO.

All this micro-tax business is nonsense.  This is not a real economy where people will go without food.  It's all play money, so treat it as such.   Would save the devs a lot of BS coding time to meet the new taxes, which historically always piss people off even if in the virtual world.  

If I'm going to get taxed, I expect the potholes in Corellia to be fixed.

Edited May 11, 2023 by RevBurt

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, DawnAskham said:

I'm so confused...

Is the point of the 'credit economy initiative' to actually improve the economy and overall game for players, or to keep some Bioware people busy so they can tell their boss 'Look at what I did these past few months' and justify their position?

Because I sure don't get why they are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with some sort of fee schedule for every item that could possibly be traded from player to player while at the same time, this will be the second implementation of changes that do not address the biggest potential sink - increasing the GTN price listing limit.

Anyways, I provided feedback in the PTS thread about the fees applied to items traded outside the GTN being something that should be scrapped or at least not implemented until after things like GTN limits and ongoing efforts to combat excess credit generation are implemented and given time to effect the economy.

And if Bioware are (which let's face it, they always are) hellbent on implementing their crazy convoluted ideas, the least they could do is use some basic reasonable and easy-to-understand logic in setting the fees.

Use the rolling 30-day median price for cartel packs (the individual 200 CC ones) sold on the GTN to establish a CC to credit value, use that value times the CC price of the item on CM times the transaction fee.

For any CM item without a direct CC price, assign a CC 'value' based on the price of other similar items (like for like, if platinum weapons are 2K on CM, any platinum weapon without a direct CC price should be set with a 2K CC 'value' to use for calculating the transaction fee).

For anything sold in-game by a vendor, any fee should be less than the vendor buy price.

For anything crafted or gathered, use the vendor buy price (or reasonable multiple) to set the fee.

Trying to set fees by pulling GTN price data (when many items can't even be listed due to the current limit, sell so rarely the data will be extremely noisy, and where price data can be manipulated) just seems like a really bad idea.

Just apply the GTN transaction fee to credits traded outside the GTN, increase the GTN listing limit, and keep up the focus on constraining new credit generation.

lol I called it back in March. A lot of players seem so thrilled that the devs are finally communicating back and forth that they miss the fact that this is a well established holding pattern for them. We shouldn't have to say "that tax is nonsensical change it". Of course it's nonsensical, and of course he had an immediate small edit to make. 

It's also clear that the hidden edit will come down the road to prevent guilds from evading the tax keeps the inflation problem from being solved anyway. We all realize what a massive loophole that is, right? And others have suggested applying something like the week long conquest reset to prevent players joining guilds and taking advantage of the evasion. That seems like common sense, are they going to do it? Maybe in a few months after 'monitoring closely' so they have something they can check off instead of just getting it right the first time lmao.  

On 3/14/2023 at 8:06 AM, Ardrossan said:

 

It's been clear since at least 5.0 (maybe earlier) that much of what the devs do in these updates is busywork that gives their EA slave overseers the misleading impression that the devs have been getting a lot done when they've actually done very little that progresses the game.

Their 'fix' for the inflation problem comes from the same energy: they'll try the ridiculous scheme of taxing quick travel and when that fails they can say "oh well we tried this one thing, that didn't work (not going to revert the changes though!) so now we'll try something else!" to give them another actionable item they can use to fill up spreadsheets of completed tasks. 

When/if 8.0 churns out in a couple years, they will undoubtedly change the gearing system again to something else, maybe less convoluted, maybe more. I pvp but I see no reason to gear up beyond 326, the system is stupid and deliberate trash so they have something that they can spend months applying small fixes to in order to trick people into believing that outside of the small content updates they produce, they're hard at work 'improving' the game.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Ardrossan

[DeannaVoyager]

3 hours ago, WHTJunior said:

Technically, when you buy a gift IRL, you pay sales tax. So, yeah, you pay the tax when you gift something.

 

Yes and no.

IRL I buy something, I pay taxes - in here I buy something from GTN and pay taxes.  So that's same in game and IRL.

IRL I gift someone, I don't have to pay more taxes - in here I would have to pay tax again for something I already paid once.

 

8 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

and the non-participation factor is something else that Bioware seems to be completely ignoring

people will stop trading, sure, but that means people will stop gifting

people will stop acquiring the items they'd consider gifting

This. So much this. 

I don't understand how would the game economy get fixed if people will stop trading and buying stuff. 

I guess crafting wasn't dead enough yet either.

 

 

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, black_pyros said:

78.600 credits tax to trade wz adrenal, which is sold by vendors for 1000 credits. Rakghoul Vaccine is another good example.

This is definitely not the right way for BioWare to proceed. 

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, Balameb said:

PTS already addressed that issue. Consumables will not be taxed.

And 'for the moment' nor will be guild transactions. (they say thhey will monitor that)

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929203-pts-economic-balance-changes/?do=findComment&comment=9757765

Hopefully they will have a mechanism in place that requires people to be a member of the guild for “x” amount of time or people will just join guilds to trade & then leave straight after. 

[thoughtfix]

Honest question: As a returning player, I haven't seen the big credit sinks in the game. What is available at extreme credit prices OTHER than player-set highly inflated GTN items? What is the most expensive stronghold and vendor-purchased set you can get?

How many credits does a character need to experience every part of the game that's NOT interacting with the GTN? Strongholds, common unlocks, mounts, power-leveling crew skills on missions, and all that combined probably don't add up to 500M total, so why do we need the ability to trade more than 500M in a single transaction?

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, RevBurt said:

I really doubt any "exodus" would occur.  People are more prone to rage-quit over ability/class nerfs because they are permanent and alter the way you have been playing.

All that would happen is that accounts would have less disposable credits and thus would not be able to purchase as much, thus prices will begin to fall to meet the spending ability.

Then it's back to business as usual.

This would also hit the "credit farmer" accounts hard, who are not "real" players but  rather, real-world money making business which takes away from the game. They are primarily the cause for inflation IMO.

All this micro-tax business is nonsense.  This is not a real economy where people will go without food.  It's all play money, so treat it as such.   Would save the devs a lot of BS coding time to meet the new taxes, which historically always piss people off even if in the virtual world.  

If I'm going to get taxed, I expect the potholes in Corellia to be fixed.

You’d be surprised just how many people are already discussing in different discord channels of quitting if they overly tax player to player gifting.

And all the guilds that were discussing quitting if BioWare had gone ahead & implemented taxing guild trades. If people were ready to quit over that, there would be a lot more ready to quit if they arbitrarily took players credits. 

The people I’m mentioning are not your regular casuals either, I’m talking influencers & leaders of some of the largest guilds. From my understanding, it was probably this feed back that’s made BioWare decide not to include guild trades at this stage.

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

We all realize what a massive loophole that is, right? And others have suggested applying something like the week long conquest reset to prevent players joining guilds and taking advantage of the evasion. That seems like common sense, are they going to do it?

Yes it’s a massive loop hole that’s already being discussed by guild leaders. If BioWare don’t implement something like this at the same time as they do the other changes, they aren’t serious about closing the tax avoidance loophole. “Certain people” are already discussing setting up “trading guilds” on their Alts to take advantage of the loop hole if it goes ahead.

[blakkwiddow]

As far as this extra... STOOPID taxes are concerned...

Someone, in another thread, stated “BW has no interest in fixing inflation because in-game inflation drives Cartel Coin purchases,” and I agree with that.. It is much more reasonable to add in an end game only credit sink that doesn’t punish newbies and isn’t essentially creating a black hole that eats credits and effects everyone actively playing the game *as an economy "fix"*. 6.0’s inflated economy was far better off than 7.0’s has been from the beginning, and that is largely due to players not having anywhere to spend credits outside of GTN and trade chat. In 6.0 we all spent our disposable credits on buying armor sets and tacticals for other classes/specs & rolling for specific legendary amplifiers to get even the smallest of number bumps (*and yes, we all cried about it*). Hypercrates didn’t cost more than 1bil, and were always available on GTN – same goes for plat items. Gold augs were nearly unobtainable because most people never wanted to farm the mats for CM-1337s, and purple augs weren’t listed in the 100s of millions on GTN (granted this is also because legendary embers dropped on when deconstructing unneeded gear which made them a lot easier to get).

This GTN tax implementation *as a whole* is going to piss more people off than the QT tax did. QT is considered an essential utility, and I personally hate the tax on it - everyone does. At least with QT we still get something accomplished by getting from point A to point B 1000x faster than taking a speeder or walking would get us there... *they're having us throw credits into a black hole for it now*. What does applying the GTN tax to player-to-player trade do for anyone other than Houdini more credits from their inventory into the void? Nothing useful. 

In general, my issue with adding more arbitrary player taxing to the game has little to do with the credit loss itself. My issue is that adding this additional void tax does NOTHING for players beyond beyond annoying them. We get nothing out of paying taxes to trade crafting materials and crafted items amongst ourselves. We get nothing out of paying taxes to give gifts to friends. Guilds that give rewards for conquest get nothing out of being taxed to give a claimed reward from their guild bank to someone who has earned it. It’s an arbitrary, pointless, empty tax. If you want to rob us blind and call it taxation like the government does, at least give us something back in return. As the old saying goes, "don't piss on me and tell me it's raining."

I will admit that I think that all of these pointless “taxes” will be implemented regardless of what anyone in the player base has to say about it. I don’t believe that anyone at BW actually cares how the players feel about it.

For the feed back that was actually requested:

On 5/1/2023 at 10:44 AM, 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: It works as a trade board... as intended.

2. Dislike: Sale maximum limit of 1b credits. This needs to increase.

3. Wish i could do?: See market trends/pricing history on items.

4. Filters/Searches: Nothing useful to say that hasn't already been said.

5. Informs decision: Nothing to say that isn't obvious.

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by blakkwiddow
Clarity

[VegaMist]

4 hours ago, WHTJunior said:

Technically, when you buy a gift IRL, you pay sales tax. So, yeah, you pay the tax when you gift something.

What is proposed is taxing when you gift, not when you buy. Gifting and charity are good things and should never be discouraged or, as in this case, punished.

[WHTJunior]

1 hour ago, DeannaVoyager said:

I buy something from GTN and pay taxes.

You don't. The lister pays the tax. So, there's no sales tax in SWTOR when you buy something. It has to go somewhere, unless BW decides that you can gift for free a certain number of times per month, or something.

[TrixxieTriss]

40 minutes ago, blakkwiddow said:

This GTN tax implementation is going to piss more people off than the QT tax did

You do realise there is already an 8% GTN tax/fee 🤷🏻‍♀️

[TrixxieTriss]

38 minutes ago, WHTJunior said:

, unless BW decides that you can gift for free a certain number of times per month, or something.

I still think the easiest solution is to just make gifted items legacy or character bound. That way they can’t be re-traded as a currency or sold on the GTN. 

The only time the tax or fee should apply is when credits are involved in the transaction. Then it’s not a gift & the same tax as the GTN should be applied. 

[blakkwiddow]

25 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

You do realise there is already an 8% GTN tax/fee 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, I know there are taxes there, I'm not a complete dolt lol.

To clarify: the GTN tax fee being applied to player-to-player trade is the majority of the whole GTN tax implementation... so... This whole mess is going to piss people off more than the QT thing did. 

[TrixxieTriss]

On 5/11/2023 at 2:52 AM, DeannaVoyager said:

vaccines for rakghoul events because I knew people wouldn't have them

I used to do the same thing in PvP because people would come into PvP & splurg the rakghoul virus everywhere when you killed them. During an event I would take 20-30 with me each day & I usually ended up handing them all out.

[Bioelectricbarry]

On 5/10/2023 at 1:44 AM, recalcitrantIre said:

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

LOL right back at you!

Do you REALLY think that was why people were running 25 million credits on their account and then it went to 18 billion in less than 2 years (6 months for me)? That was a tiny drop in the bucket.

Your own statement says even this was a mistake, and needed a fix. Why? Because people were exploiting it, obviously, to bring in more credits than were intended. You call this "legitimate credits"?

Bioware made the mistake, not the players. My position in my original post still stands. EA/Bioware (and the gold sellers they are so friendly with) made the problem, they should pay for fixing it. Stop punishing the players, we didnt do it.

[jedimasterjac]

2 minutes ago, Bioelectricbarry said:

Bioware made the mistake, not the players. My position in my original post still stands. EA/Bioware (and the gold sellers they are so friendly with) made the problem, they should pay for fixing it. Stop punishing the players, we didnt do it.

But what does that look like?

Like, let’s set aside a historical account because it doesn’t even matter. We can even say it’s all BioWare’s fault!

The problems are still:

1. There is far too much currency in the economy

2. A relatively small amount of the playerbase possesses an exorbitant amount of credits

Because of these two problems, we have hyperinflation. 

No matter what, these credits have to be removed from the economy. There’s no way to fix it without, in some way, “punishing” players. 

[DeannaVoyager]

1 hour ago, jedimasterjac said:

But what does that look like?

Like, let’s set aside a historical account because it doesn’t even matter. We can even say it’s all BioWare’s fault!

The problems are still:

1. There is far too much currency in the economy

2. A relatively small amount of the playerbase possesses an exorbitant amount of credits

Because of these two problems, we have hyperinflation. 

No matter what, these credits have to be removed from the economy. There’s no way to fix it without, in some way, “punishing” players. 

 

There is no need to punish anyone to get rid of extra money. If they'd give something to buy with the credits (and there's been plenty of good suggestions), the credits would get removed and customers would be happy. The taxing plans they have now may get rid of some of the credits, it will get rid of some players too, but it will also make most customers unhappy. And on top of that people will stop buying, selling and trading - that includeds CM items, but I don't think they understand it yet.

[DawnAskham]

5 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

 

There is no need to punish anyone to get rid of extra money. If they'd give something to buy with the credits (and there's been plenty of good suggestions), the credits would get removed and customers would be happy. The taxing plans they have now may get rid of some of the credits, it will get rid of some players too, but it will also make most customers unhappy. And on top of that people will stop buying, selling and trading - that includeds CM items, but I don't think they understand it yet.

I mostly agree - I'm ok with ongoing non-voluntary sinks, but only if they are implemented rationally (unlike the idiotic QT fees that hit level 10s on Tython earning 150 credits a mission harder than level 80s on the latest planet earning tens of thousands a mission).

I think the first steps should have been to increase GTN to capture more sales while ensuring they were dealing with RMT / excess credit generation while adding more sinks for players (of the want-to-pay types like adjusting appearance for credits, unlocking in-game acquired items in collections for credits, or even just expensive cosmetics).

Only if things don't adjust, implement more controls like applying the GTN fee to person-to-person trades where credits are involved.

And if and only if everything else doesn't work, start doing the crazy stuff they are proposing like stupid fees applied to anything and everything traded / gifted between players. 

Edited May 12, 2023 by DawnAskham

[Immortalelf]

REPOST FROM THE LAST CREDIT THREAD ::

TRIXXIETRISS POSTED:

Quote

Actually all BioWare really need to do is fix the GTN tax avoidance loop holes that’s created by player to player trading outside of the GTN. 

The 8% GTN tax can take out significant amounts of Credits if applied to direct player to player trades. 

But for this to work, BioWare need to make a few fundamental system changes that will have a developmental cost for them associated with it. So it’s wether they are willing to spend that to fix the problem. 

This is process they could follow to make changes to the systems.

1. Increase the character personal credit capacity above 4 billion credits (cap yet to be discussed & rationally determined)

2. Increase the GTN sales cap higher than the current 1 billion (cap yet to be discussed, but obviously not more than a characters credit capacity)

3. Add the same GTN tax to all credits traded between players outside of the GTN. Wether it’s “gifting” credits or trading for items.

4. A change in how player to player traded items outside of the GTN are handled. If they are traded for credits & not “gifted” for free, those items are taxed at the same rate as the GTN tax

4a. Cartel Market items traded outside of the GTN would become legacy bound & may not be resold or traded.

4b. Crafted items or items picked up in the game & traded outside the GTN would not be legacy bound & may still be resold or traded.

4c. Limit the amount of credits that can be traded or “gifted” between players (cap to be discussed & rationally determined to curtail 3rd party credit selling services)

This effectively closes off the GTN tax avoidance loop holes without disturbing the market unduly. It also allows friends or guilds to still gift CM items & other things directly to others. But makes sure all credits are taxed & also stops CM items from becoming the defacto currency to circumvent the tax.

People have already shown that BioWare have addressed the issue of too many credits being produced in the game.
So closing the tax loop holes will work to slow, then halt inflation over time. And as long as BioWare are vigilant for any credit exploits or poorly designed credit rewards, then we should even see deflation over the long term. 

But if BioWare wanted to speed up the deflation process, they could potentially add a wealth tax on items sold higher than “x” amount on the GTN (wealth tax & trigger to be discussed)

Here’s some basic maths using the current 8% GTN tax

100 x 0.08 = 8 

1000 x 0.08 = 80

10,000 x 0.08 = 800

100,000 x 0.08 = 8,000

1,000,000 x 0.08 = 80,000

10,000,000 x 0.08 = 800,000

100,000,000 x 0.08 = 8,000,000

1,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 80,000,000

4,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 320,000,000

8,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 640,000,000

10,000,000,000 x 0.08 = 800,000,000

As you can see, even without a wealth tax added, closing the GTN tax loop holes & increasing the GTN cap, would remove vast sums of credits from the games economy. Over time, those high prices couldn’t be sustained if BioWare keep credit generation under control in normal game play. Eventually prices would drop again. 

This is a much better way to remove excess credits by targeting the extremely wealthy in the game instead of nickel & dimming new or less well off players with credit sinks like Quick traveling. 

Consider this : 

1. The maximum QT cost (tax) is 5,000 credits. 

2. The tax on just 1 item sold on the GTN for 1,000,000,000 credits. That’s 80,000,000 taxed credits removed from the game in 1 sale.

3. You would need to Quick Travel 16,000 times at 5,000 credits to remove 80,000,000 credits. 

4. Say you QT 10 times an hour. You would need to play 1,600 hours to remove 80,000,000 credits that 1 sale on the GTN does in minutes. 

At the end of the day. If BioWare are really serious about getting the games inflation & economy under control, they really only need to fix the GTN tax avoidance that’s happening & increase the GTN sales cap. Then keep a firm control on how many credits are being generated in the game. 

Everything else they’ve proposed or players have suggested in this thread isn’t needed. Especially some of the extremely damaging & extremes ideas I’ve read, like taking everyone’s credits & starting over. Which would cause the biggest player exodus the games ever seen since shortly after launch. So much so that it would end up shuttering the game.

It would be fantastic if BioWare could revisit this thread & explain their next steps to us & the time frame they expect it to happen. Then we can stop debating this over & over 😉

This is, by far, the best suggestion I've seen to handle this issue. It's the least intrusive and highest "bang for their buck" option to handling all of the credit issues. 

I don't like the tax idea for gifts, in this post OR from Bioware themselves. I don't really like the COD fees either, as I stated earlier, but they won't make me quit the game, but I still don't like them. Funnel players to your credit sinks, curb market manipulation on the GTN and inflation will slow and eventually reverse. We don't need to implement numerous new systems that are subject to possible flaws and bugs to be exploited, that potentially cause major issues with normal everyday players. Hit the problem at it's core and stop trying to build new systems that don't exist anywhere else in the MMO space. Give us things to spend credits on that we'd like, and most of all of this goes away.

To the issue where CM items, Hypercrates and the like, are being used as currency now Trixxie's idea of Legacy binding gifted/traded items stops that in its tracks, without the taxes issue. What good is a currency you can't trade? Don't over complicate the game, it won't retain customers.