7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[TahliahCOH]

On 7/7/2023 at 9:54 PM, AbsolutGrndZero said:

Yea, I tested and if I want to be nice and go to Tython and give a new player a sweet orange crystal, it would cost me 8000 credits.  Totally free, but it wants me to pay 8000 credits. 

See, this is ridiculous. If I'm using my mats, creds, and time to craft something as blah as a craftable crystal, I should not be charged for giving it away. I can delete them for free. Dump them out of my inventory for free. Why can't I dump them into another player's inventory for free? (Ugh, maybe I shouldn't give them ideas!)

My new thought is that I'm going to start putting crystals and mounts on the GTN for a credit (or whatever the lowest amount we can charge), and then go announce on DK or Cor that I've done that. Sure, some people will buy them and turn around and sell them for 50k (or whatever they go for these days), but MAYBE at least one will get into the hands of a new player who can actually use it. Or maybe when I see someone asking about crystals or mounts, I'll just send them private message to look for one on the GTN for x amount).  I'm certainly not giving them away for 8k (and who knows what it costs to give away a crap "custom made" mount I craft in five mins for next to nothing in terms of mats). That's insane.

Edited July 11, 2023 by TahliahCOH

[microstyles]

So I'm of the opinion that the trade fees were largely unnecessary, and raising the GTN limit was the most important thing they could have done.

Having said that, I'll offer a compromise solution since many seem to be in favor of these trade fees:

1) Keep all of the current fees on credit transactions (including gifts, sadly)

2) Shorten the list of items that incur a fee to only ones that could realistically be used as an alternate currency. Packs, crates, OEM/RPM, (maybe others, lmk)

This change I think would maintain almost all of the benefits of the trade fees but frustrate way fewer players.

I'll list some benefits:

A) All credit transactions are still taxed. If that's our goal then we have to include gifts as well otherwise we introduce a very obvious loophole. I don't think taxing gifted credits is a disaster since you can just give a little less and still be out the same credits.

B) No more fees on giving away random items

C) No more brutal double tax that exists currently for most off-GTN transactions.

D) It allows straight up barter trades for no fees, but I think that's fine. I don't see that type of trade replacing transactions involving credits or alternate-currency type items.

E) Preferred players can at least barter with something. I have no idea how they participate in the economy right now.

F) Since the alternate-currency type items still have fees, people will still have need for credits. This was the biggest risk of the original trade fees, and one I think the devs way over-solved by taxing a giant list of things.

LMK if this seems like it would be a reasonable compromise, or if I missed some important consequence of this change.

[TrixxieTriss]

Are crafted consumables (like health packs & stims) still being taxed when traded or has that been fixed now? 

Edited July 13, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[merovejec]

On 7/6/2023 at 4:02 AM, Nenluen said:

Hello Everyone,

New(ish) player here, 28 Trooper.  While playing with my partner (23 Scoundrel), I went to trade her a level 24 pistol I had crafted and was rather shocked to see that the game was asking that I fork over 27,000 credits to make the transfer.

 

 

Just for info, you are fine with the stuff you get from missions and dont really need to craft stuff for you to performe good in the game.

[codydmaan]

On 6/13/2023 at 4:15 PM, xordevoreaux said:

I'm sure my guilds aren't the only ones in this game than span 12 time zones.

For 30 days, the guild leader, and only the guild leader, can stay up at all hours waiting to receive guild contributions from people all over.

I would call that onerous.

This system doesn't work for the general player.

 

The reason tax was so high for some items (now reduced) was done intentionally. To get rid of credits in the economy asap. 😕 The guild bank ban is directly targeting credit sellers and raid sellers not the general public. Which is fine to a point. It's a imperfect system that their trying to band aid temporarily. 

 

And the player base is suffering for their mistakes.

[Xina_LA]

• What do you like about how the GTN currently functions?

I like that I can sort by item price or individual item price (when multiple items are for sale).   I also like being able to filter for category and subcategory.

• What do you dislike about how the GTN currently functions?

Most of the drop-down filters don't work or have become irrelevant.

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

I want to leave things on the market for a week.

I want to be able to drag-drop items in and have them automatically price at 1% lower than the lowest current price.

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

I want to filter out any items my character, or my legacy, already has unlocked.  Please make it easier to find pets, titles, emotes, mounts and other such things that I don't already have on the current toon, or on any toon in my Legacy.

For decorations, just like other things, I'd like to be able to filter for ones where I have none unlocked.

I want to filter out items I cannot use for any reason (level, class, reputation, etc.).

• 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 want to know if it is unlocked for toon or unlocked for Legacy.

[fabsus]

accuracy stim 2.239.999cr: 
https://imgur.com/a/LrjKoQy

medpack 2.219.999cr:
https://imgur.com/LuPLPQW

crit adrenal 1.999.999cr:
https://imgur.com/V2hUdBI

AP adrenal 3.200.000cr:
https://imgur.com/HiNiNeJ

i mean it's kinda stupid, that they cost the same,
but come with different price tags.
 

of course these are the golden ones, you can share and
use them again. that's why they are more expensive to craft.
i ran in 5 different raidgroups. each raidgroup had about
12-20 people in it. around 15% of the players are also in
more than one of these groups. 100% of all players in these
groups are using biochem 700 on their main raid characters.
if they have to switch roles, they change the toons to biochem.
so if someone forgot their stims, they get the golden one,
because they can use them. 

raids are subscriber only content. 
but no need to hurry up. about 60% of these players already
left the game, or will when subscription runs out. the most
just leave, without any comment. 

 

the first change reduced the costs by 1 credit.
the latest change increased the costs by 10.000 credits.

Edited July 13, 2023 by fabsus

[TrixxieTriss]

49 minutes ago, fabsus said:

accuracy stim 2.239.999cr: 
https://imgur.com/a/LrjKoQy

medpack 2.219.999cr:
https://imgur.com/LuPLPQW

crit adrenal 1.999.999cr:
https://imgur.com/V2hUdBI

AP adrenal 3.200.000cr:
https://imgur.com/HiNiNeJ

i mean it's kinda stupid, that they cost the same,
but come with different price tags.
 

of course these are the golden ones, you can share and
use them again. that's why they are more expensive to craft.
i ran in 5 different raidgroups. each raidgroup had about
12-20 people in it. around 15% of the players are also in
more than one of these groups. 100% of all players in these
groups are using biochem 700 on their main raid characters.
if they have to switch roles, they change the toons to biochem.
so if someone forgot their stims, they get the golden one,
because they can use them. 

raids are subscriber only content. 
but no need to hurry up. about 60% of these players already
left the game, or will when subscription runs out. the most
just leave, without any comment. 

 

the first change reduced the costs by 1 credit.
the latest change increased the costs by 10.000 credits.

I thought these sorts of things were supposed to be exempt from the tax & that BW were supposed to have already patched it up. 
@JoeStramaglia Im really disappointed to find out that still hasn’t happened. 
Can we please get a time frame on when you expect this to be implemented? 

[JoeStramaglia]

Hey there!

These are correct in this instance. We left the tax on these items as they are non-consumable, high value items and thus function differently in both the economy and gameplay. I realize that what is and isn’t taxed is sort of hard to tell right now. My plan is to make a list of items that will be purposefully not taxed when we start sharing about 7.3.1 to remove some of that mystery.

As always, we’re open to your feedback on this! As for why they have different values, that is completely due to the market for these items.

[JakRoanin]

Is there an ETA on when this clarification will be presented?

[AndMusicForAll]

Please stop punishing me for transferring items to wife while we play the game together. I don't care what you do to the market or the fees for quick travel or anything else. Handing over a piece of loot or something I bought from your bloated, over-priced store for Actual Earth Currency should not then be 'taxed' and every day it pushes us further away for no apparent reason. 

There is such a thing as collateral damage and maybe not everything currently implemented is the best idea. Trading items is a fundamental aspect of every mmorpg from the dawn of the industry and this overreaction needs to stop, please. Trying to break the people who might be abusing something doesn't mean you need to break my back in the process. You do understand the majority of people aren't out there trying to manipulate markets, right?

• Allow people to customize their character with credits, big credit sink.
• Run events like Nightlife that have big credit sink incentives.
• Stop implementing new token currencies and allow people to use credits. Revert some to credits.
• Give some method of exchanging big credits into the tokens that we have to keep around for some reason.
• Actually bring crafting to level 80 and give people something worthwhile to craft and buy for credits.
• Offer some of the Cartel Market items for big credits instead of tokens.
• Allow an option for Collection items to account unlock for big credits.
• Tax only trades where items/credits are exchanged from both sides.
• Exempt subscribers from the person-to-person trade tax if your bottom line is more important than breaking the economy's inflation but you still don't want to push away monthly subscription fees.

Edited July 14, 2023 by AndMusicForAll

[Rubmon]

Hey Joe and all:

Instead of penalizing the good corporate citizen, who are trying to do a good dead, by giving items to new players. Would you ever consider taxing trades. Based on item trade for credits?

People will always find loops to avoid paying taxes. Oh boy, this thing more and more reminds me of RL Main reason I play online games to break away from the madness 😏

 

Am I criticizing you for your poor judgment in this matter?..... you bet ya 😾

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Rubmon

[Balameb]

2 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

Hey there!

These are correct in this instance. We left the tax on these items as they are non-consumable, high value items and thus function differently in both the economy and gameplay. I realize that what is and isn’t taxed is sort of hard to tell right now. My plan is to make a list of items that will be purposefully not taxed when we start sharing about 7.3.1 to remove some of that mystery.

As always, we’re open to your feedback on this! As for why they have different values, that is completely due to the market for these items.

I'm confused. What is 'non-consumable' about medpacks, adrenals and stims? 

 

Edit: nervermind, i failed to see the 'gold' part on the original quote. Sorry.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Balameb

[MerlinPotter]

28 minutes ago, Balameb said:

I'm confused. What is 'non-consumable' about medpacks, adrenals and stims? 

the legendary stims, medpacs and adrenals are not one use items. They have in contrast to the other tiers infinite uses and on that base should be treated differently then one use tiers of medpacs, ect.

[LadyAdmiral]

2 hours ago, AndMusicForAll said:

Please stop punishing me for transferring items to wife while we play the game together. I don't care what you do to the market or the fees for quick travel or anything else. Handing over a piece of loot or something I bought from your bloated, over-priced store for Actual Earth Currency should not then be 'taxed' and every day it pushes us further away for no apparent reason. 

There is such a thing as collateral damage and maybe not everything currently implemented is the best idea. Trading items is a fundamental aspect of every mmorpg from the dawn of the industry and this overreaction needs to stop, please. Trying to break the people who might be abusing something doesn't mean you need to break my back in the process. You do understand the majority of people aren't out there trying to manipulate markets, right?

• Allow people to customize their character with credits, big credit sink.
• Run events like Nightlife that have big credit sink incentives.
• Stop implementing new token currencies and allow people to use credits. Revert some to credits.
• Give some method of exchanging big credits into the tokens that we have to keep around for some reason.
• Actually bring crafting to level 80 and give people something worthwhile to craft and buy for credits.
• Offer some of the Cartel Market items for big credits instead of tokens.
• Allow an option for Collection items to account unlock for big credits.
• Tax only trades where items/credits are exchanged from both sides.
• Exempt subscribers from the person-to-person trade tax if your bottom line is more important than breaking the economy's inflation but you still don't want to push away monthly subscription fees.

Hi would you guys be a good use-case for having a guild together and sharing items through the guild banks? I'm not sure exactly how that works but I *think* it's not taxed there? You'd need two players to help you set it up, but then just have a guild for you and your wife.

[hillerbees]

2 hours ago, AndMusicForAll said:

Please stop punishing me for transferring items to wife while we play the game together. I don't care what you do to the market or the fees for quick travel or anything else. Handing over a piece of loot or something I bought from your bloated, over-priced store for Actual Earth Currency should not then be 'taxed' and every day it pushes us further away for no apparent reason. 

 

Its not the real world where transfers between spouses are non taxable.  You are not married for the purpose of this game!!

[Balameb]

1 hour ago, MerlinPotter said:

the legendary stims, medpacs and adrenals are not one use items. They have in contrast to the other tiers infinite uses and on that base should be treated differently then one use tiers of medpacs, ect.

Did not see the 'gold' part on the original quote. I stand corrected. Thank you.

[AndMusicForAll]

1 hour ago, LadyAdmiral said:

Hi would you guys be a good use-case for having a guild together and sharing items through the guild banks? I'm not sure exactly how that works but I *think* it's not taxed there? You'd need two players to help you set it up, but then just have a guild for you and your wife.

I'm pretty sure you're right on that (for now, at least) but really, I'd prefer people not have to jump through so many hoops to just do a basic thing that everyone expects to be able to do everywhere. The root cause should be addressed and it is this ridiculous middleman fee on person-to-person trades.

1 hour ago, hillerbees said:

Its not the real world where transfers between spouses are non taxable.  You are not married for the purpose of this game!!

Sounds like a hall pass, woooo! 😀 Take a Broadsword to your marriage certificates.

But yeah...imagine someone literally shoving their body between you and a friend when you try to give them a birthday present, demanding $20 before they'll move. Really makes for a non-hostile sort of environment, right? The kind you want to stick around and enjoy.

[dinowoman]

1 hour ago, LadyAdmiral said:

Hi would you guys be a good use-case for having a guild together and sharing items through the guild banks? I'm not sure exactly how that works but I *think* it's not taxed there? You'd need two players to help you set it up, but then just have a guild for you and your wife.

I was just musing about the guild thing. They'd have to be in their private guild for a month before they could access the guild bank, but in the long-term, if nothing gets changed, that might be worthwhile. But one thing that occurred to me is that this new restriction on members accessing the gb before they've been in a guild for a month is presumably to stop traders getting their customers to join a guild just for trading and then leave again. If that's the case, couldn't the same system be applied to trading items between guild members? Members who have been in a guild for over a month could be exempt from the tax when giving gifts to their fellow members, so long as no credits are exchanged. That would be a big help to guilds like ours that do rewards and giveaways, and would also enable guildies to be kind to fellow members, especially pref and f2p, who can't access guild banks.

For that matter, is there any need to tax trades at all where no credits are exchanged? There has been talk of traders bartering to avoid using credits but, even if they're given a valuable item in exchange for the one they're 'selling', it can't generate any money until someone sells it for credits, at which point they'd get taxed. So I can't see why trading goods without credits would have any negative effect on the economy.

[fabsus]

5 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

Hey there!

These are correct in this instance. We left the tax on these items as they are non-consumable, high value items and thus function differently in both the economy and gameplay. I realize that what is and isn’t taxed is sort of hard to tell right now. My plan is to make a list of items that will be purposefully not taxed when we start sharing about 7.3.1 to remove some of that mystery.

As always, we’re open to your feedback on this! As for why they have different values, that is completely due to the market for these items.

to be honest, your answer just tells me, that it is not worth my time to explain,
why it doesn't makes sense at all. at the end, it just would be a QOL change,
if you cancel the fees. it still has no impact on the market at all, because they
are just sold in the gtn. 
no big deal, so not worth the time. 
have fun. 

[lr-wrenching]

I do agree that this is very insane with this tax, not to mention it is a tax why in the heck is that tax so high especially for those who buy an item from the GTN and give them to our children's accounts and you want to charge me  24 mil credits to mail it to them, guys doing stuff like this will make you loose your subscribers accounts because a lot of subscribers feel that they are paying a monthly fee to get ripped off playing the game, Outrageous tax on this, I'm seriously debating on letting my sub accounts go back to ftp, 12 years of playing this game and for you to just send the tax for quick travel up to 5k cr. and if you don't want to pay this tax, you have to fight into areas and fight to get back out again. Not fair to my children's ftp accounts, they only get a bit than less the full amount of credits & xp as it stands and but you feel that it is in your best interest to apply suck an outrageous tax on these areas. I'm not sure who's idea it was for the amounts of these, and for you all to not even take into consideration some of the variables that might drive people away from the game! 

In short I'm just saying that you should look into this a bit more before it's too late. another example how silly this tax is,: It cost more to travel across planets than it does to travel across the galaxy( does that really sound like it makes since?) 

[Stellarcrusade]

This credit tax is just another example of the devs doing everything they can to benefit the rich guilds and bankrupt the small/medium ones.  I'll have to close both my guilds because I cannot send prizes to winners of guild contests anymore.  Great job.  Can you think of any other change that has ever went into any game in history that was more hated by nearly 100% of a player base before?  OMG.  They couldn't have done a worse job, impossible.

 

Solving the issues with credits is so simple and will not hurt everyone, but only affect the economy and those who have too many credits.  Simply make it so that you can only transfer 200 million a day from your legacy.  BOOM! Done. Almost all problems solved.  All things on the market would have a 200m ceiling, there would be no way to go around the market,  you can still trade items of any value - that's not just fine that's great!  Inflation would stop in its tracks.  Gold sellers would be out of business.  A player with 700 trillion credits would have basically the same buying power as someone with 700 million credits.  Such a simple fix that would only make 1% of the playerbase mad, not 99% like right now.  I'll be closing my guilds if this doesn't change very fast!

Edited July 15, 2023 by Stellarcrusade

[lr-wrenching]

6 hours ago, lr-wrenching said:

I do agree that this is very insane with this tax, not to mention it is a tax why in the heck is that tax so high especially for those who buy an item from the GTN and give them to our children's accounts and you want to charge me  24 mil credits to mail it to them, guys doing stuff like this will make you loose your subscribers accounts because a lot of subscribers feel that they are paying a monthly fee to get ripped off playing the game, Outrageous tax on this, I'm seriously debating on letting my sub accounts go back to ftp, 12 years of playing this game and for you to just send the tax for quick travel up to 5k cr. and if you don't want to pay this tax, you have to fight into areas and fight to get back out again. Not fair to my children's ftp accounts, they only get a bit than less the full amount of credits & xp as it stands and but you feel that it is in your best interest to apply suck an outrageous tax on these areas. I'm not sure who's idea it was for the amounts of these, and for you all to not even take into consideration some of the variables that might drive people away from the game! 

In short I'm just saying that you should look into this a bit more before it's too late. another example how silly this tax is,: It cost more to travel across planets than it does to travel across the galaxy( does that really sound like it makes since?) 

I'd just like to know, why is it that swtor have a Galactic Trade Market? and why would you enforce trade market prices on the mail system? Swtor if I understand this right? you are saying you want us to buy, craft and collect items and is we want to mail them and/or trade these items, the trader have to pay more to do so, and in a lot of cases pay more to trade or mail that the amount we got the item for? I see this as trying to make people go play other games. that's just dumb making people pay that much twice for for these transactions. I will say that this is the worst thing that you devs have done to this game in the 12 years I have played the game and it really makes me feel you don't care especially when it seems like you are putting ftp/preferred in a position to where they can't get anything, because it is too expensive to mail thing to them and with a 1 million credit cap for them in their inventory. they are in a worse  position than they were before, Why don't you just eliminate free to play and Preferred altogether? Seems to be the way you are making things now anyway. if a ftp/preferred goes 1 credit over 1 million credits it goes into an escrow, so how do you explain these accounts paying these taxes at the ridiculous amounts you have them at( and with stupidity like this, there is absolutely no way I'm going to pay for 4 subscriber accounts and support your methods at this point.) 

I doubt if you even read this and even reply to it, and that's ok, it just shows where this game has gone in the 12 years I been around and it might be a sign that it's time to move on to other interests in my life.

[TrixxieTriss]

23 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

We left the tax on these items as they are non-consumable

Thanks Joe for clearing that up. But sorry to be obtuse, are all stims, medpacks & adrenals taxed or just the legendary ones? 

One last question, have you guys got a plan yet to allow gifting items to other players without fees? Ie, making gifted items legacy bound? If so, can you provide a time frame of when that might be implemented? 
 

Edited July 15, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

20 hours ago, LadyAdmiral said:

Hi would you guys be a good use-case for having a guild together and sharing items through the guild banks? I'm not sure exactly how that works but I *think* it's not taxed there? You'd need two players to help you set it up, but then just have a guild for you and your wife.

@AndMusicForAll That’s exactly how my wife and I are setup. But not originally for this situation. It was just easier to park all our Alts together & share everything without us both needing to be logged on at the same time.