7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[TahliahCOH]

On 5/5/2023 at 9:42 AM, JoeStramaglia said:

Can We Remove the Quick Travel Costs?

We do need small sinks in the game just like large ones. I know this one is a bit divisive, and it's something we’re monitoring closely. I can say that we’re open to making adjustments to it, but do not have plans to remove it at this time.

It's really annoying to have to pay these costs to use a power we purchased and upgraded. Add another upgrade for 5million creds (or whatever), and I would gladly pay it up front . . . and probably not use that up for a couple years being dinged with these per-use costs. It's not paying for it that I mind, it's paying for it, upgrading it, and then still having to pay just to use it. This is just wrong on every level.

[TahliahCOH]

On 5/5/2023 at 4:41 PM, LLlaxmep said:

this tax should only apply to transactions during which credits change hands. in what fracked up world, even an imagined one,  people are not able to give stuff to others for free? when one's giving around medpacks and stims to their ops members they should NOT be taxed for that. period.

How can they attach a value to an item we want to give away for free, let alone tax it? I thought this was about taxing cred trades, no? If I'm giving some poor new player who can't get off a planet now some creds, I'll happily pay the tax. If I am gifting them some roche speeder I have ten of, so what? How is a value attached to that junk speeder (to me) but enormous boon to a new player who is running everywhere (and can't afford to use Quick Travel)?  I just don't see how they can tax item trades if the cred buy is zero (i.e. a gift of some item).

[TziganeNZ]

1 hour ago, TahliahCOH said:

It's really annoying to have to pay these costs to use a power we purchased and upgraded. Add another upgrade for 5million creds (or whatever), and I would gladly pay it up front . . . and probably not use that up for a couple years being dinged with these per-use costs. It's not paying for it that I mind, it's paying for it, upgrading it, and then still having to pay just to use it. This is just wrong on every level.

Bit confused about this - are you saying you paid to initially access Quick Travel?  I ask because Quick Travel is a default ability that EVERY character gets. The only thing that you pay for through legacy perks is to shorten the cool-down period.

IIRC, QT had a 60 minute cool down at launch. They reduced this to 6 minutes (thank the Force) and gave us the option under the Global Unlocks/Other/Convenience section to reduce the cool down even further, paying either by credits or CC.  I have never paid to access the ability.

[krackcommando]

On 5/5/2023 at 2:02 PM, LLlaxmep said:

so, i skimmed through the messages here, and, forgive me if i'm missing something, but will i have to pay a bloody tax when i give away the augs i crafted for my guildmates now? i never ever charged any of them for any of that crap, and i'm sure as hell not going to start, even if the answer to my question is "yes", but that would just be fooking ridiculous.

i doubt you need to pay a fee to deposit them in your gbank.

[microstyles]

1 hour ago, TahliahCOH said:

How can they attach a value to an item we want to give away for free, let alone tax it? I thought this was about taxing cred trades, no? If I'm giving some poor new player who can't get off a planet now some creds, I'll happily pay the tax. If I am gifting them some roche speeder I have ten of, so what? How is a value attached to that junk speeder (to me) but enormous boon to a new player who is running everywhere (and can't afford to use Quick Travel)?  I just don't see how they can tax item trades if the cred buy is zero (i.e. a gift of some item).

I quoted the Dev explanation and rationale below. We don't know what items it will apply to, but I suspect it will only be items that have very high trade volume. I doubt that list includes the types of items your taking about but we won't know for sure until they tell us.

On 5/5/2023 at 10:42 AM, JoeStramaglia said:

How do Item Transaction Fees work?

Some items initially will have a value associated with them, this is based on their average value on the GTN and some other conversions based on the current economy. Eventually, this will be completely driven by the GTN.

The primary reason we need to have items that have fees is to limit tax avoidance through the use of barter-only trades and prevent folks from moving off of credits entirely to facilitate transactions.

 

[Darcmoon]

1 hour ago, TziganeNZ said:

Bit confused about this - are you saying you paid to initially access Quick Travel?  I ask because Quick Travel is a default ability that EVERY character gets. The only thing that you pay for through legacy perks is to shorten the cool-down period.

IIRC, QT had a 60 minute cool down at launch. They reduced this to 6 minutes (thank the Force) and gave us the option under the Global Unlocks/Other/Convenience section to reduce the cool down even further, paying either by credits or CC.  I have never paid to access the ability.

Originally, QT had a 30 minute cooldown.  I don't know if F2P had a longer cooldown when they implemented it.  If I remember correctly, when the legacy system was first introduced the cooldown unlocks didn't get it to 0 but to a much shorter cooldown.  I believe he is talking about the cooldown perks though.  I'll admit I agree with him that with the changes they have made to QT since the game launched, the QT fees do make it seem like the perks aren't as worth it now.

[TziganeNZ]

3 minutes ago, Darcmoon said:

Originally, QT had a 30 minute cooldown.  I don't know if F2P had a longer cooldown when they implemented it.  If I remember correctly, when the legacy system was first introduced the cooldown unlocks didn't get it to 0 but to a much shorter cooldown.  I believe he is talking about the cooldown perks though.  I'll admit I agree with him that with the changes they have made to QT since the game launched, the QT fees do make it seem like the perks aren't as worth it now.

Thanks - I knew it was a long time (maybe confused with fleet travel pass - I think that may have been 60 minutes).

Ossus is the only place I've found where it is cheaper to QT around rather than take a taxi.  For everywhere else, I just QT to the nearest taxi point and go from there.  It's cheap enough (remembering when I had to borrow the credits to fly to the first planet after getting my starship on my first character....).

[TrixxieTriss]

On 5/6/2023 at 12:42 AM, JoeStramaglia said:

Adjusting the Buyout Price Limit

This is the cap on prices in the GTN. We’re looking to increase this so that most items except potentially the rarest can be sold easily but details will come later when we unveil the overhaul.

Thanks Joe for staying active in this discussion. It’s really appreciated & something we keep asking BioWare to do ☺️

I really hope that all items will be able to be sold on the GTN, even the most rare. This ease of use to both sellers and buyers on the GTN will help keep certain items from being overpriced.

On 5/6/2023 at 12:49 AM, JoeStramaglia said:

The GTN Changes will be in a later patch, 7.3 contains only the updates mentioned in the original post. Stay tuned for more information - I'll definitely be posting about it as we get closer to release. 🙂

I know development times are a guarded secret & I dont expect you be to be able to divulge an actual date.
But are you able to give us a time frame? Are we looking at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months or longer? 
I’m mainly asking because BioWare have often said they’re going to do “x” and unfortunately it turns out to be years away. I’m just trying to adjust my expectations and temper my excitement that this might happen in 3-6 months 😉

[TrixxieTriss]

On 5/6/2023 at 6:47 AM, MasterRikku said:

To become a White name guild member you must be in the guild before the weekly CQ reset. Example you join the guild Friday you will need to stay in the guild tell Tuedays CQ reset to become a white name to fall into my example tax exempt. Your defense is just join a guild trade the high item the quit. (Join guild today, trade today, leave today) You still have the 8% tax as a grey named member. Its a lot of effort to just join a random guild (to become a white guild member) and wait a day or up to 7 days to just do a trade for a high price item.

 

On 5/6/2023 at 7:04 AM, CrazyScruffy said:

But people will absolutely abuse this system. It is not a lot of effort especially if you just have a toon made for trades (and doesn't effect any of your main ones). Their solution is probably the best one they have. And hopefully the amount of tax paid will decrease as prices go down. Or you'll just need to limit how many items/prizes you give out

Both of you make good points. 

I agree, that there should be a mechanism that allows guilds to share resources & for guild leaders to gift members with rewards. 

But I also agree that without some sort of safe guard, this will be abused to avoid the fees/taxes. 

Maybe the solution is to extend the time required to be a “full member” of the guild to avoid the fees/taxes associated with gifting or sharing resources. 

Obviously there are pit falls for making it too short or too long. So maybe we should turn this part of the conversation towards the ideal time frame required to be a member of the guild before the guild members or GM need to pay taxes on gifts or resources? 

Is one week really a long enough period before the member is a “full guild member”. What about two weeks or even a month 🤷🏻‍♀️

There is also an alternative to take some of the pressure off the GM needing to pay the full amount of fees/taxes before the “full guild membership” requirement.

What if the gift recipient paid the fees or they were split 50/50? This way the fees/taxes are still paid and it’s up to the discretion of the GM & guild member to decide who pays the fees/taxes before “full guild membership” is achieved. 

Anyway, just some food for thought 😉

[microstyles]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I really hope that all items will be able to be sold on the GTN, even the most rare. This ease of use to both sellers and buyers on the GTN will help keep certain items from being overpriced.

This is a little speculative, but his wording makes me think they're going to increase it to character cap. It would be the easiest change to make, and I think even hypercrates are under that at the moment. That would just leave ultra rare stuff like Crate-o-matics or Gamorrean axes or whatever. 

[AdsAillard]

23 hours ago, Darcmoon said:

There actually is a taxi between the city and swamp areas.  It is just to the side of where you zone in from when you go to Zakuul from the galaxy map.

Oh, my bad - I couldn't find a path from city to swamp... Still, more expensive moving inside a planet than across the galaxy to a planet makes no sense and it's immersion breaking.
 

23 hours ago, jedimasterjac said:

I guess I just have a hard time feeling that crush.

I mean, if we’re talking about desirable cosmetics, sure. 

But when it comes to taxis? I remember having to buy abilities with every level, having to buy sprint, basically going broke to get a speeder (on Tatooine, at level 25!) and I have a hard time feeling like the cost of a taxi on Coruscant is too much in that context. 

Well, not only desirable cosmetics as well - being unable to use outfitter, for example. Again, as I mentioned, being unable to unlock XP perks/getting speeders/jet boost... 

Is it as bad as when I rolled my first toon? Gods, no. But it's still a lower quality playing experience, and that would last even longer if I were F2P - and while catering to F2P needs may not be where we want to go, most new players will be F2P for at very least Prologue planets; we want to allow them to fall in love with the game and stay... Not to feel the need to stop their playing to grind money.

 

8 hours ago, Darcmoon said:

Originally, QT had a 30 minute cooldown.  I don't know if F2P had a longer cooldown when they implemented it.  If I remember correctly, when the legacy system was first introduced the cooldown unlocks didn't get it to 0 but to a much shorter cooldown.  I believe he is talking about the cooldown perks though.  I'll admit I agree with him that with the changes they have made to QT since the game launched, the QT fees do make it seem like the perks aren't as worth it now.

I think F2P had 2:30 h to fleet and 30m to QT, pre-perks? So it would go to 1:30/22 min post perks, for F2P? But I may be wrong.

[fire-breath]

On 5/5/2023 at 10:15 PM, jedimasterjac said:

Completely defeats the point of the tax. Now if you want to do a high value trade, you just join the same guild, do the trade, and then /gquit. It's a very obviously easy system to violate.

Your tone is insane and abrasive and you need to take a deep breath, man.

Read the post again. It specified white names. As in, people who have been in the guild before the weekly reset happened.

While you still can violate the system, it's more of a hassle as you got to wait for the weekly reset to be able to buy/sell. Especially for the large volume sellers, this is a no-go.

Alternatively, you could make it so that people will remain grey for a fixed 7 days (+ optionally whatever time till the weekly reset).
This would create even more hassle. And it will be much effective at guild hopping for conquest.

[LordScorpios]

Hello,

I realize that my opinions are probably in the small minority here but some thoughts.

1st - What is the actual purpose of having GTN fees or a progressive tax or whatever? What does it do other than take credits away? Unless I missed something, it does absolutely nothing. Unlike real world taxes that are used to create services and benefits, credit fees, GTN tax or whatever is not used for anything. Another game I play, Star Trek Online, does not have this. When I post something on their version of the GTN, I get out of it the full amount I post it for. Otherwise, when I post something for sale on the TOR GTN, I have to factor what I will lose in pointless fees into the price so that I am actually selling the item for more than I may actually want to sell it for simply so I actually get what I want out of it after fees/taxes are taken.

Please eliminate GTN fees period. They serve no purpose.

2nd - if the goal is to remove credits from the game to combat inflation then instead of taxes and caps how about making more things available for credits that players want. Its simple supply and demand economics. If there is a lot of something on the market, the prices are competitive. Less of something on the market, prices will spike.

3rd - going along with number two, maybe make it so large amounts of credits can be exchanged for other types of currency. For instance, maybe 10 million credits can get you a couple hundred FP-1 stabilizers or 1000 tech fragments or conquest commendations (not suggesting those actual rates, just an example).

 

4th - The cartel market is a big elephant in the room. I know this will be extremely unpopular with those who run the game because their goal is to make money (they need to make a real world living after all, so I am not saying its a bad thing at all) but the priciest things on the GTN are the items people are selling that they bought with cartel coins. Lower cartel coin prices on things like deco packs, mounts, armor sets, etc and (at least this is true for me) I might buy more of them and be willing to sell them for less credits on the GTN. Since my purpose in buying things with cartel coins (if I am not going to use the item myself) is to sell them to get credits to buy things on the GTN unavailable to me elsewhere, and if it costs less credits to get what I want, then I will be willing to sell for less credits the things others may want that I have.

5th - I know not all players are the same, but for me, a big market I sink credits into is SH deco. If far more deco items were available from vendors throughout the in-game galaxy for purchase with credits, I think you would see a substantial reduction in the amount of credits just sitting around. Also, if many of the decos that have hybrid prices (credits plus some other currency) had their credit price increased, or the special currency replaced with higher credit costs instead, might also have this effect.

Anyway, I know none of this is likely to happen and not too many will be thinking this way, but there are my thoughts.

[Kromgar]

Late to the overall conversation, but here goes...

The GTN and the "economy" is fine as it is right now. Yep, I said it and yes I'll be flamed out, but here's why. There is not a single item on the GTN that ANYONE in the game needs. Not a single item.

So this discussion should really separate out Need from Want.

If you need something, every single one of us has the ability to gather the resources and craft the item that we actually need: stims, med packs, adrenals, augments... etc. 

If you want something, the GTN is only there to facilitate exchanges of items that players are selling to other players that do not wish to make or earn items themselves. Can't afford it, tough. Go earn credits if you want to buy something. Still can't afford it, tough. Maybe spend $50 on some Cartel Coins and then buy it straight from BioWare. Can't afford that, tough.

As such, the "economy" and inflation that everyone is worried about is in a closed system (the GTN) and therefore false. Last time I looked, people could buy items from vendors for the same price as they did last year. My costs for purchasing Veda Cloth hasn't skyrocketed. The Revan vendors haven't jacked their prices up. Still buying OEM and RPM's with tech frags and making my own augments....

The economy is fine. People just don't want to earn and spend the billion or so credits to buy an armor set or a new crystal for a billion or so credits - tough. 

Edited May 7, 2023 by Kromgar

[thoughtfix]

3 hours ago, LordScorpios said:

What is the actual purpose of having GTN fees or a progressive tax or whatever? What does it do other than take credits away?

For your benefit and for those who do not understand the benefits of fees and taxes, here's a 5-minute TedEd on why governments don't print unlimited money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFTKKyYSCKs

It relates to SWTOR because the game is constantly printing money. Quest rewards, vendor trash, and just plain drops will increase the currency supply in the economy. It doesn't stop, either. The more people play, the more currency is printed. Over many years of gaming, there will always be some inflation. The game needs a way to remove currency from circulation to prevent runaway inflation.

[LordScorpios]

34 minutes ago, thoughtfix said:

For your benefit and for those who do not understand the benefits of fees and taxes, here's a 5-minute TedEd on why governments don't print unlimited money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFTKKyYSCKs

It relates to SWTOR because the game is constantly printing money. Quest rewards, vendor trash, and just plain drops will increase the currency supply in the economy. It doesn't stop, either. The more people play, the more currency is printed. Over many years of gaming, there will always be some inflation. The game needs a way to remove currency from circulation to prevent runaway inflation.

And the best solution is to increase the variety and supply of items people are willing to pay credits back to a game vendor for. I do not mind removing currency from the game to curb inflation, but at least it could be in ways where we get something for those extra credits instead of mechanisms that simply take credits away for nothing in return. Speaking for myself the tens or even hundreds of millions of credits I have lost to things like GTN fees over the years I might have preferred using on things that would still remove them from the system but maybe I have some more decos or whatever out of it.

[thoughtfix]

1 hour ago, LordScorpios said:

but at least it could be in ways where we get something for those extra credits instead of mechanisms that simply take credits away for nothing in return

Adding new fees, specifically on high-value trades, will remove credits from the economy and reduce the profitability of market-destroying predatory practices. Predatory trading hurts the market by making it difficult for non-billionaires to participate in the player economy. It should hopefully reduce how often it happens by making those practices less lucrative. Hopefully.

I agree that other credit sinks should be available in the game, and I think low-cartel-coin non-tradeable (like character face/body customization or bind-on-pickup dyes) should be available for high credit costs. However, multimillion-credit listings for items (like Collector's Edition vendor dyes, which cannot be purchased by any player who signed up in the last decade) should be far less profitable for the seller.

[Nee-Elder]

4 hours ago, thoughtfix said:

 The game needs a way to remove currency from circulation to prevent runaway inflation.

..... Very difficult to prevent something that's already been running away for years.

3 hours ago, LordScorpios said:

And the best solution is to increase the variety and supply of items people are willing to pay credits back to a game vendor for.

......see link below.....

2 hours ago, thoughtfix said:

Adding new fees, specifically on high-value trades, will remove credits from the economy and reduce the profitability of market-destroying predatory practices.

While i agree with BioWare's efforts & intent, so far their method seems haphazard--> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929203-pts-economic-balance-changes/#comment-9756738

( i personally believe a better---or rather, an additional--way would be to encourage a more player CRAFTED player created/looted type economy, as opposed to the domination of Cartel Market coins to credit conversion system )

Edited May 8, 2023 by Nee-Elder

[TrixxieTriss]

20 hours ago, microstyles said:

This is a little speculative, but his wording makes me think they're going to increase it to character cap

I’m hoping they are going to raise the character cap too.

A 4 Billion character cap would be too restrictive if you’re also selling items on the GTN for 4 Billion too.

There needs to be a buffer amount like there is now between what you can sell for & hold. 

Currently the buffer is 4 times the GTN sell cap. So if they were to raise the GTN sell cap to 4 Billion, they should also raise the character cap to 12 Billion. 

If they don’t account for a buffer, players will be crying foul on the forums the first time they sell an item at the GTN cap & lose part of their credits  because they didn’t have an empty character wallet when opening the mail.

[TrixxieTriss]

44 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

i personally believe a better---or rather, an additional--way would be to encourage a more player CRAFTED player created/looted type economy, as opposed to the domination of Cartel Market coins to credit conversion system

I think we all agree with that. The issue for BioWare is it would eat into their business model profits. This is unfortunately the only way the game makes money because they continually drive their loyal subscribers away.

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, thoughtfix said:

However, multimillion-credit listings for items (like Collector's Edition vendor dyes, which cannot be purchased by any player who signed up in the last decade) should be far less profitable for the seller.

Yeah, that’s been an issue for years. Plus I couldn’t even buy the collectors edition of in Australia (even though I really wanted it). But I will admit that I’ve  often purchased all these dyes on the GTN cheap & then flipped them for much higher to make a massive profit. 
Honestly, after 11 years, items like these should be opened up for everyone to buy from the vendor. 

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, Kromgar said:

Late to the overall conversation, but here goes...

The GTN and the "economy" is fine as it is right now. Yep, I said it and yes I'll be flamed out, but here's why. There is not a single item on the GTN that ANYONE in the game needs. Not a single item.

So this discussion should really separate out Need from Want.

If you need something, every single one of us has the ability to gather the resources and craft the item that we actually need: stims, med packs, adrenals, augments... etc. 

If you want something, the GTN is only there to facilitate exchanges of items that players are selling to other players that do not wish to make or earn items themselves. Can't afford it, tough. Go earn credits if you want to buy something. Still can't afford it, tough. Maybe spend $50 on some Cartel Coins and then buy it straight from BioWare. Can't afford that, tough.

As such, the "economy" and inflation that everyone is worried about is in a closed system (the GTN) and therefore false. Last time I looked, people could buy items from vendors for the same price as they did last year. My costs for purchasing Veda Cloth hasn't skyrocketed. The Revan vendors haven't jacked their prices up. Still buying OEM and RPM's with tech frags and making my own augments....

The economy is fine. People just don't want to earn and spend the billion or so credits to buy an armor set or a new crystal for a billion or so credits - tough. 

And what about all the items that you can’t buy on the GTN now because prices have gone above the GTN credit limit 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Surely increasing the GTN sales limit would make it easier for you to sell or buy items when you want too instead of having sit in fleet chat trying to do it 😉

[Sundown]

Not sure about all side-effects, but I guess a logically easy but technically possibly challenging solution was to allow for every unbound item to only be vendored once.

Means: people buying off CM, looting, crafting or using whatever other means of obtaining an item initially can benefit from vendoring it, but there will be no "wholesale" market. This gives everyone the opportunity to take part in the market, but erases the possibility of dominating it.

As a consequence each item will need to come in two flavours (if not bound): free to vendor and vendored (for crafting mats for example), every transaction outside of your legacy will be considered a "sale".

[Balameb]

9 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

If they don’t account for a buffer, players will be crying foul on the forums the first time they sell an item at the GTN cap & lose part of their credits  because they didn’t have an empty character wallet when opening the mail.

I think they 'fixed' that in latest patch were you are mailed the exess credits you can't hold.

I have not testes but i asume it works similar as when you are crafting too many things and don't have space in inventory; used to happen to me a lot when i crafted dyes in bulk.

[TrixxieTriss]

32 minutes ago, Balameb said:

I think they 'fixed' that in latest patch were you are mailed the exess credits you can't hold.

I have not testes but i asume it works similar as when you are crafting too many things and don't have space in inventory; used to happen to me a lot when i crafted dyes in bulk.

You maybe right. But I don’t like to assume anything with BioWare.