7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[Sundown]

At first: thanks a lot for openly discussing. I really like to be involved, even if results might not be the ones I'd prefer.

 

My general suggestions (as a casual user, which is also why they are what they are):

• Legacy-Sell: i want to see all my listings regardless of character
• Pricing by item or sum (if stacked) (convenience of course)
• Historical data (at least my sells, ideally all of them, though I do not now your db restrictions)
• Cap above 1B credits
• Automatically transfer not sold items to the selling char's inventory and cash. If it exceeds thresholds, park it somewhere safe
• Scrolling via list, not pages
• Better wildcard search (not an "or" of all words)
• Relist function
• Precalculate net amount for successful sale

[jedimasterjac]

2 hours ago, Glzmo said:

You need to implement a system where you can flag people as friends and trade freely with them without taxes.

Whether or not you agree with the system, it's kind of self-evident that a system where you can just flag someone as a friend and thereby avoid the tax defeats the purpose, right? Like, in that case, you'd just friend everyone before a trade and then unfriend them after. It's maybe the world's easiest tax loophole.

Not saying you have to agree with the tax, but you might as well just keep your post as "Let's not implement this," rather than, "Let's implement this but then employ an obvious work around."

2 hours ago, Glzmo said:

For example, my brother and my niece logged in the other day and wanted to go to a planet (because of your stupid changes!) to join me for roleplay, but she was stuck with no credits. My brother had just enough credits for both to travel, so he traded them to her. With your stupid tax system, he wouldn't have been able to.

They could also just do, like, two heroics? Planetary travel costs are very, very small, and it frankly takes little to no time to earn the credits necessary to fly to a planet.

2 hours ago, Glzmo said:

At the very least add a lower limit underneath which these taxes won't apply (perhaps also on the GTN, so people will be encouraged to sell things for less to combat inflation!).
It should be enough for a couple of full repairs at the highest possible item level (the ceiling should be raised as soon as new gear with higher repair costs is introduced as well!), travel, and other necessary things. For example, maybe anything above a million should be taxed, anything below that should be free of taxation. To get around people trading multipla times for below a million in a short span of time to cheat this system, add a limit of 2-3 times you can trade for free within 6 hours or so (that will dissuade strangers and ensure you only trade with friends you know).

I do think this is a pretty decent suggestion, though. Building in a limit to free trades under a certain threshold, and allowing that threshold, is a fair compromise that alleviates the issues you describe.

 

[WHTJunior]

2 hours ago, Glzmo said:

Another option would be to change the tax only for the wealthy. For example, only if you have more than say 10 million credits in your legacy bank and character combined, you get charged the transaction fees, travel fees, repair costs and other credit sinks recently introduces (as well as older ones), if you are below that there are no fees.

Also, what about Smugglers? Will they get the ability to completely avoid taxes? That's their nature, after all. Maybe implement a fun system so players can utilize smugglers to launder taxes before you actually implement such taxes?

For your first point, it can't be tied to the current amount of credits, as there is an exploit for that, called, "store hypercrates instead of credits." I agree that there should be a low end where players aren't charged as much, but it should be tied to number of credits earned, and not to the amount on hand. So, I could see tier 1 being uncharged, or low charges, for a player who hasn't yet earned1 million credits. Tier 2 could be between 1m and 10m, and full costs after 100m.

For the second point, players are not Smugglers, therefore, there is no point in implementing a loophole for players to use Smugglers to exploit the new system. Laundering money does not help remove credits from the system, so it shouldn't be allowed. There are some things in the Star Wars universe that just don't work in game, like when the story says that you are now super-rich for finding a lost treasure, or for completing high-end bounties, but then your character still has 20k credits to their name. When it comes to making credits, every character should be on even footing, so players don't have to choose a specific class in order to earn credits faster.

The rest of your post is very hyperbolic. I agree that starting players should get some perks, but to paint it as this much doom and gloom just makes it seem like you are pro-exploits, and you don't want to have to pay any of these fees. That might not be the case, but it really comes off that way.

 

  

2 hours ago, ThrillInstructor said:

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

If anything I dislike that there is not penalty to hoarding items at all. One of the more pressing problems to "people in trade" is that they simply have to move their merch. In real life stuff goes bad or becomes outdated/obsolete. You also have to pay fees for storage and handling. In this game people can hide their (sometimes ill-gotten) wealth in vast item storages. I'd like to see cartel market items lose their unbound status after a while. Maybe after six months or so those items should bind to the legacy owning them. That would really put the pressure on certain power sellers to liquidate their stocks and thus deminish their leverage on the market system.

I was thinking that CM items were either bind on purchase from GTN, and even Unique (#), so that they can't be resold over and over, and also players could only store so many. For example, [Cartel Hypercrate (Unique 2)] or Cartel Crate [Unique 60)], meaning that no one could just store hypercrates or cartel crates to compensate for credit limits or making them more rare than they should be. It would encourage opening them, which would either feed the GTN or glut hoarder storage. Also, if the GTN limit is kept at 1B, and credits are removed from the system, high-end rare prices could normalize to 1B max, and more rare items would show up, more regularly (potentially).

Edited May 2, 2023 by WHTJunior

[xordevoreaux]

21 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

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

By way of filters, a way of hiding what I already own CM-wise.

[Darcmoon]

10 hours ago, Jedi_Isaiah said:

I don't need your sarcasm; I need real valuable input. The whole point of these changes stems from players who abused the game in order to gather tons of free credits with little to no effort. When people abuse systems willingly, good things get taken away, that's just facts. On the flip side, they never said that these changes would remain forever either. This is their response and their fix to removing what players did. How are you supposed to remove all of the credits people have otherwise? A small tax is nothing to all of those players that abused the system. There have been tons of players posting on reddit their multiple accounts and characters full of credits. I stand with the devs because they are ACUTALLY taking steps to fix the inflated economy. Let them do what they need to first. If it doesn't work out after they complete their plan, then we can talk.

The sarcasm was solely about putting a fee on each use of a mount.  I was being serious about the fact that you don't need a mount.  I won't just shut up about it because they are 'trying' to fix things and only say something if it doesn't work.  That would be closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.  It doesn't work well.  People abuse the system all the time in the game.  They haven't taken away our ability to chat just because people use it to sell credits, be racist or abusive to others.  Additionally, this isn't a problem that just the players have created.  BW created it by removing credit sinks and never adding new ones as required.  They are just as, if not more, at fault for the issue.  They removed the credit reward from conquest objectives in 7.0.  That was a good move and I didn't complain.  I'm not complaining that they redid the repair costs and while I don't like the SH cost to exit now I can understand it and it was done fairly IMO.  The QT costs was done badly and in a unfair manner.  I also don't have any confidence they will remove that fee now that it is in.  Why would they remove it? I do have to ask, where on Reddit have people been posting their multiple accounts and character full of credits?  Granted I haven't been on in the last day and a half, but I wasn't seeing it in the /swtor sub-reddit?

[Immortalelf]

*Reposted from the 7.2.1 thread*

From my 25 years of experience in MMOs, I find that Player to Player trading to avoid the GTN/AH type taxes are actually a very small subset of the population. Every game I've ever played, all of the major credit farmers and the richest players unanimously use the Auction Hall/GTN system to buy and flip, trying to control the economy to their benefit. We don't need to initiate some in-depth player to player trade taxation system on the mailbox or regular trading/gifting, because as you attempt to do that, you'll also have to start taxing the Guild bank system as well. If not, people would gift or trade credits through using a guild bank deposit/withdrawal permission to by-pass that tax. It begins to encroach into so many other systems that it becomes a draconian mess. You have to also look at the broad player base of Preferred/F2P players and how badly it would affect them.

The current tax on Quick travel is too expensive and hits the wrong demographics for a credit sink. Changing this to scale with level or bank account percentage is probably a far better choice of a taxation.

Lowering the credit rewards for dailies and conquest and all of those activities is a great step in the right direction, helping stem the flow of credits into the system. They need to look over all rewards from every activity and possibly implement diminishing returns attached to player Legacy to lower additional repeats of the same things when it comes to raw credits. With the number of characters you can have per server, if you max out each character for dailies or conquest, those credits for your Legacy bank account add up real quick.

The best and most effective way to fix this problem is focusing on the GTN tax avoidance itself, which, IMO, is squarely resting on the 1b cap on prices. I'm not sure why they didn't start with that as their attempt to fix inflation, hopefully it isn't because they GTN can't be fixed, but given how the majority of people play the market, it will have the largest impact on credit removal. Like others have mentioned, I have some items I'd like to sell, but the going prices are higher than the GTN. Instead of bothering to sell things on the Fleet trade, I just hold onto them, as I'm not spending the time to sell them that way. It's easier and more intuitive to just use the GTN and go about your business. Players who like to try and corner markets are going to focus their efforts on the GTN as well, which burning credits out of the system. Raising the tax from 8% to 10% is probably a good idea too.

An additional idea that comes from the City of Heroes/Villains auction system is a scaling listing fee. CoH Homecoming uses the same AH system the game had while it was live. There, as it stands, there's a fixed credit cost on all items posted, based on "base item worth" from the game vendors. If your Listing Fee scaled to your Posting price, you're paying far more out of pocket to list your items for higher prices, cutting into your profits. In CoH/V that fee is not recouped on a sale ( I don't think anyway ), and if you de-list the item you lose it as well. It keeps postings low because few players want to eat that listing fee as it cuts into profits. Despite there being many, many ways to just farm income, in the millions at a time btw, prices there are stable and aren't inflating on the regular, because trying to raise the price just eats your profits. Something similar could be implemented here to assist in lower the exorbitant posting prices. There's nothing to discourage over-inflated postings, as the base listing fee always remains extremely low and does not scale and relisting the same crazy prices makes little to no difference at all to people using the GTN.

Another avenue for it, is as others have suggested, we need more Legacy unlock options that just eat credits. Whether that is allowing Global unlocks of CM items using high amounts of credits instead of CCs, or new perks that give benefits at high costs. Another 5% speed on mounts or Rocket boosts for 10x the current max price for example, or allowing some CM only systems to be purchased with an exorbitant number of credits. That may cut into CC sales a bit, but it would be a temporary solution for long-term stability as once the credits in game stabilize, fewer people would be willing to spend their more rare credits on something extremely expensive like that.

All in all, the current market situation will stabilize itself and begin it's deflation as more and more people have their credits burned out of the economy and fewer coming into it from normal gameplay activities. I think the fix is squarely on the GTN itself, rather than a complex system of taxation across numerous gameplay systems. Lower income, possibly add diminishing returns on legacy collections each week, and a higher GTN cap to catch the high end sales and things will start to come down.

*End Reposted*

I see some of the ideas I'm talking about here are being addressed in the next patch! I still think the fees on Quick Travel are too punishing to F2P / Preferred and "poor" players/characters, but that's something else entirely.

While I don't like the intrusive option of taxation on personal trades, as long as it's applied based on items, I suppose that's fine, it hits the taxation avoidance problems people are pointing out. - CoD taxation is fine as well, provided these two systems aren't going to cause weird bugs.

To answer the posted questions posed:
1) I like the GTN system fine, for the most part. Sorting is good, visibility is fine as well. I can't say there's a whole lot that I "like" other than it's a decent, functional system.

2) Dislikes! I hate searching for "pale blue" as a dye option, and getting a) Anything named Pale and b) Anything named Blue. That's an example anyway, if I wanted to search for everything with an individual name, I'd search it that way. It makes finding only what I want extremely annoying at times. 
I dislike waiting an hour for my sales to reach me, but that's just a personal time thing.
That, I think, is my only major concern with the GTN at this time from a systems stand point, other than the price cap of 1b, and my previously aforementioned non-scaling posting fees. Once things begin to eat credits on the regular, I think everything will be fine.

3) I would like a 'Bidding' system implemented, ala WoW's AH system, instead of Direct Buyouts only. If I could post something for 3 days at 1000 credits, with a bid option I would do that on some of my items. That way if someone only bids 1500, it will still sell, even if someone doesn't want to pay 10,000 for my buyout. Keeps my inventory from cluttering and saves me from having to re-list again later. It'll help clear out some of the things that just sit on the GTN too... and it'll help stabilize prices in the long-term I believe, as it will start showing the value others place on items, vs what the poster feels they're worth.

4) N/A

5) YES! "Last sold for X" prices listed for items, for example, the last 5 - 10 sales, both per unit and total 'bulk' price. If people are buying, say, Warzone Adrenals for 5,000/adrenal consistently, and those are flying off the GTN at that average price per unit, I'd like to know. That way, I'll wait until I see more adrenals listed closer to that price rather than someone buying all the lower-priced ones to flip at 10x that amount. People can see that "Pale Blue and Purple dye" sells regularly and often at 40k, they are less likely to splurge on that 150k listed one, because they know it'll likely stay closer to the 40k price. It'll curb flipping significantly if everyone can see those previously sold prices rather than an inflated credit grabbing listing. It'll give people more information to decide if they want to wait a bit and see if the average is posted again or not. This allows for more market transparency and helps BUYERS more than the sellers. Potentially keeping prices lower, and therefore having fewer credits being tossed around like crazy.

As it stands, I currently sort by cheapest per unit, and buy my items that way. That's really the only metric I go by, other than trying to remember what I've seen the items sell for in the past. I just want as much transparency in the market as possible, allowing me to make more informed choices on what I buy.

 

[Exocor]

vor 21 Stunden schrieb Medullah:

Any changes to GTN tax aren't going to be a big deal unless we can get the max selling price higher than a billion.  I'm guessing the reason it's stayed at 1b for years is because characters can't hold more than 4 billion due to database restrictions.  So top recommendation is -

- Raise GTN cap to at least 2-3 billion

- Allow credits in mail to go directly to Legacy cargo 

OR

- Raise the cap of credits one person can hold 

OR 

- At the very least, add a prompt "Accepting this mail will put you over the max allowed credits per character".  

 

Edit - As far as general GTN improvements, at the very minimum you guys need to do a sweep of the various options that just plain don't work and haven't in years, or even ever.  

 

There is a more simple solution: Right now, Credits are coming with the mail anyway. You can only withdraw as many credits as the cap allows from the mail. Everything else remains, until you free up your inventory (by putting it into the legacy cargo hold for example). I believe it might even work that way right now.

[microstyles]

I have been eagerly anticipating this announcement, but now that it's here I have some concerns. My biggest concern is that there is no mention of a GTN limit raise. That's the change we need the most, and without it these other changes may do more harm than good.

21 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

Secure Trade, Mail, and Collect on Deposit will now have an associated transaction fee based on the value of the transaction. The fee is aligned to the Galactic Trade Network Commission Fee at 8%.

This is a popular community suggestion, and I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority of people who disagree with it. My reasoning prior to this announcement was that it's just not necessary if the GTN cap is raised. The convenience of the GTN will keep most transactions on there regardless of this change. 

However, with the proposed tax being equal to the max progressive tax of the GTN there are some other issues. First of all, there would be no real reason to sell things for credits in an open market like trade chat is right now. For credits that is. The biggest risk of all these economy changes is that if they are too severe, people just won't trade with credits anymore. They will barter with other stuff instead.

21 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

Some items will adjust the value of a transaction when transferred via Trade, Mail, and COD and will be subject to the same fee.

As others have said, I don't really see any way this could be implemented both effectively (from an economic viewpoint) and fairly. 

21 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

When this overhaul happens we’re going to be converting the GTN Commission Fee to a Progressive Tax starting lower than our current fees but reaching a higher threshold than our current fees

This is another popular suggestion that I don't agree with, much for the same reasons as the trade tax. By taxing the highest value items more severely, you discourage people from trading them for credits. 

It also creates some weird additional issues. I often 'wholesale' large stacks of items at a discount. A progressive tax would heavily discourage people from doing this. You'd be better off splitting your stacks into better tax brackets, making the experience worse for everybody.

This is especially annoying for things that make sense to sell in stacks, like war supplies. 

The bottom line is the economy has been moving in the right direction for months now. Cartel packs are just over a third of the price from when I started in October. I think the best economy changes are ones that make our current systems more effective. Aside from raising the GTN cap, improving the features of the GTN would help. I am encouraged to see bioware looking into that at least. 

[WHTJunior]

8 minutes ago, microstyles said:

It also creates some weird additional issues. I often 'wholesale' large stacks of items at a discount. A progressive tax would heavily discourage people from doing this. You'd be better off splitting your stacks into better tax brackets, making the experience worse for everybody.

If the progressive tax was per item, this would not be possible.

[StrikePrice]

These changes will finally put an end to the game. 

[microstyles]

7 minutes ago, WHTJunior said:

If the progressive tax was per item, this would not be possible.

Yeah I didn't think of that. Hopefully they implement it that way.

[Darcmoon]

8 minutes ago, WHTJunior said:

If the progressive tax was per item, this would not be possible.

I doubt it will tax by item instead of the price of the full stack.  What I’m worried about is that BW won’t post what the brackets actually are nor the tax charged in each one.  That would leave it up to the players to find out. 

[jedimasterjac]

14 minutes ago, StrikePrice said:

These changes will finally put an end to the game. 

I've been hearing that with every change ever.

[thoughtfix]

1 hour ago, Immortalelf said:

is allowing Global unlocks of CM items using high amounts of credits instead of CCs,

I like @Immortalelf's comment here. Unlocking things in Collections for the same legacy shouldn't always have to cost cartel coins. If I had the credits for this, I would absolutely use them to unlock certain outfits and cosmetics on new characters. I would also pay plenty of credits to transition an item from "Bound" to "Legacy Bound."

Come to think of it: there are a large number of "cartel coin only" transactions that should be available for credits:

• Legacy unlocks in Collections, like above
• Character hair, eye, face, and body tuning (race would still be CC)
• Commander's Compendium (it's basically a faster way of buying hundreds of vendor gifts, which are already available for credits)
• Certain "mood" or "emotes" (why are these ALL locked in CC?)

I would never pay real money for emotes, but I'd impulse buy a few cute ones to get rid of credits. I would have to really really love a character to dump cartel coins into hair/eye/face customization, but I'd probably make a few tweaks over the life of my character if it just cost credits.  Look at the cartel market, see what nobody is buying even if it has appeal, and make it available for credits.

Dyes are another big one. Make certain expensive CC dyes available at vendors (and recipes available for crafting, but the materials include something that costs credits) because people would buy a lot more if they didn't cost exceptional amounts of real money. The top tier of these can still be CC only, but 40 CC dyes should also be available for credits.

This is way off topic for the original GTN post, so I'll stop typing now.

[klizilii]

So far something you did has been working very well on inflation!  I assume it is more back end banning of certain accounts and not the changes you've publicly told us about (there is no way the introduction of quick travel costs did so much so quickly).

I'm very excited that the team is going to tackle tax avoidance with the other "trade" mechanisms in the game.  I think this is absolutely necessary.  I would like to see an option for the trade/mail tax to be paid by either player.  I think it would be too punishing if players with low credit amounts were not able to trade items because of the tax.  So the tax still gets paid, but players can choose if they are splitting the tax or which of the two players has to pay all the tax.

 

My suggestions/wanted features for updates to the GTN (mostly) in order of importance:

1. Market history & past sales data (preferably more than 3 months of past listing data).  It gives a huge advantage to skilled players that the market has no data, but on the flip side it makes it a less enjoyable experience for the vast majority of players.
2. More options to "browse" for items without knowing exactly what you want.  I'm not sure how to implement this, but it is really frustrating trying to set enough filters to be able to browse for items when I don't have a specific "text" to search for.
3. Purchase orders.  Players can put a listing for items they want to buy and the purchase price in credits will be held in deposit. Another player with the item in their inventory can sell directly to that order for the credit amount listed.

 

What do I like about the current GTN functions:

• The way if you sell an item it remembers those settings if you keep selling more of that item
• It's better than not having a market listing place
• The shift click functionality to input an item into the search field and the right click to automatically start a "sale" listing
• Being able to sort by unit price
• If I want to sell an entire stack, people have to buy the entire stack

 

What do I dislike about the current GTN functions:

• No market data
• Hard to browse for items
• Categories for filters are confusing and often result in items not being found if applied
• Many items have no listings or those listed are there only because nobody wants to buy at that high of a price

 

How do I use the GTN:

1. I almost always sort by unit price
2. I look at how many pages of listings there are and the "number" for sale in each listing to get an idea of the volume of the item
3. I start looking at a few pages of listings (if there are multiple) to try to get a feel for price vs quantity of listings.  This should give me an idea if the lowest prices are just a "fluke" or if there enough volume at that price to justify the price.
4. I sometimes will look at other items related to this to get an idea of if the price makes sense (for cartel market items, what is the ratio of CC to credits compared to items like cartel packs), but this is not always easy or helpful.
5. Once upon a time I used to have a spreadsheet to try and track items I was regularly selling/buying and it was too time consuming and often unreliable data.

[klizilii]

1 hour ago, microstyles said:

1. This is a popular community suggestion, and I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority of people who disagree with it. My reasoning prior to this announcement was that it's just not necessary if the GTN cap is raised.
2. The biggest risk of all these economy changes is that if they are too severe, people just won't trade with credits anymore. They will barter with other stuff instead.
3. This is another popular suggestion that I don't agree with, much for the same reasons as the trade tax. By taxing the highest value items more severely, you discourage people from trading them for credits. 
4. It also creates some weird additional issues. I often 'wholesale' large stacks of items at a discount. You'd be better off splitting your stacks into better tax brackets, making the experience worse for everybody.
5. The bottom line is the economy has been moving in the right direction for months now. Cartel packs are just over a third of the price from when I started in October. I think the best economy changes are ones that make our current systems more effective. Aside from raising the GTN cap, improving the features of the GTN would help. I am encouraged to see bioware looking into that at least. 

1. I don't think raising the GTN cap is a good idea.  It only provides more room for inflation.  People still list stuff for less than it is wroth because they love convenience of the GTN vs maximizing profits.
2. Perhaps I'm assuming too much, but I read it where they are going to tax trading items based on determining some value of the item.  If they correctly assess the value of items, they will be taxed similar to the GTN and this won't be an issue.
3. As long as they properly prevent tax avoidance, people will have to pay tax to get the item, no matter how it is obtained (see point 2).
4. Interesting point.  I agree with this that the tax rate should be based on unit price of the listing.  So if you list 1k units at 1m each, the 1b is taxed at whatever rate is used for 1m credits.
5. I really doubt that the changes they've implemented so far will have a permanent lasting impact.  The reduction to cost of items was way too rapid for it to be related to adding a few extra credit sinks.  Pretty sure what we've seen so far was a result of some kind of crack down banning certain accounts and removing large amounts of credits from the game forcibly.  It's not sustainable as credit sellers and bots are already popping back up.  I'm sure a lot of the things implemented so far are to try and take away some of the efficient methods of bots farming credits and probably aren't enough yet.

[microstyles]

31 minutes ago, klizilii said:

I don't think raising the GTN cap is a good idea.  It only provides more room for inflation.  People still list stuff for less than it is wroth because they love convenience of the GTN vs maximizing profits.

This is true only for items with just above the GTN cap. Below the cap, competition drives the prices down. Above the cap there is less competition since fewer people use trade chat and it's more difficult to compare prices of those who do.

31 minutes ago, klizilii said:

Perhaps I'm assuming too much, but I read it where they are going to tax trading items based on determining some value of the item.  If they correctly assess the value of items, they will be taxed similar to the GTN and this won't be an issue.

I underlined where I see an issue. I don't see any realistic way for them to do that. 

33 minutes ago, klizilii said:

I really doubt that the changes they've implemented so far will have a permanent lasting impact.  The reduction to cost of items was way too rapid for it to be related to adding a few extra credit sinks.  Pretty sure what we've seen so far was a result of some kind of crack down banning certain accounts and removing large amounts of credits from the game forcibly.  It's not sustainable as credit sellers and bots are already popping back up.  I'm sure a lot of the things implemented so far are to try and take away some of the efficient methods of bots farming credits and probably aren't enough yet.

There's a good chance you're right about some or all of this. Credit selling is a notoriously difficult problem in these types of games. If you're right then a periodic ban-fest every few months would help, possibly more than anything else discussed here.

[Immortalelf]

If you browse any of the credit selling sites, they tell you their delivery methods in their details. Whether it is 'in person trades' or 'Mail box delivery' or what not. The proposed taxation on secure trades and mail box deliveries are a great way to curtail activities, and burn through additional credit stores for sure. 

Personally, while I approve of the changes for that, specifically, I do not approve of the way it affects normal people trading things. I've seen several people on Star Forge lately asking for help with companions, and in response several players will offer to give them credits to buy gifts from the gift vendor to rank them up. I've seen several players on the starter planets offering credits and items, for free, to new players. How will this be affected? Will they tax someone trying to trade, for free, a large stack of companion gifts? Will they need to calculate the additional cost to ensure the newbie they're helping has enough to buy the item? Will this also affect trades between guild mates? Are they going to somehow implement a tax on just giving items away to another player? There are countless other questions to be asked on how normal gameplay and interaction between two people will be impacted in an effort to hit a small subset of problems. Most of the changes to help the economy are, and should, solely rest upon the GTN and an effort to ensure people use it more often than not. 

These kinds of changes to the fundamental player-to-player trades is going to be a problem, and while I personally very, very rarely, if ever, trade/buy outside of the GTN, I am concerned others will be annoyed by this change.

Also, on StarForge specifically, there are people that have resorted to trading/dealing in Hypercrates as a currency. Unless they're taxing people on simply trading items like that, these changes won't affect them at all. If the other changes work out, these trades will stop happening, as normal credit values will once again be beneficial as an exchange medium. Bioware needs to be careful with their efforts here, because few things will drive players away faster than messing with their bank account.
 

[Alakillistyn]

I understand the need to manage certain secure trade and in-game mail transactions that are being used as loopholes around the GTN fees.  Such is, without a doubt, disruptive to the game's economy.

There should be an exception for members of the same guild.  This will help ensure the game is not inadvertently "taxing" normal, routine guild transactions.  Many guilds reward members with credits, gear, and other items for various activities.  Prizes may be mailed to guild members or provided via secure trades.  These transactions should not be subject to fees.

Another option to help manage the economy would be to add a scalable "luxury tax" on the GTN+ transaction fees.  Maintain 8% up to 250 million credits and scale up to ~20% at 1 billion credits.  This would help discourage price inflation for high-value items.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Alakillistyn

[klizilii]

2 minutes ago, microstyles said:

This is true only for items with just above the GTN cap. Below the cap, competition drives the prices down. Above the cap there is less competition since fewer people use trade chat and it's more difficult to compare prices of those who do.

The first part isn't completely true.  There are definitely people who list items worth > 1.5b on the GTN because of convenience.  As for items being on the GTN driving prices down, I don't think there is a strong case for low volume items.  Like for a long time people just bought up all the black/black dyes to keep the price inflated.  They were 40-60% more expensive than buying cartel packs (converting credits to cartel coins).  At this point it is just a guess since nobody has the data to analyze.  Plus, there is no way to even understand why prices are for items that aren't on the GTN.  People always find deals in game that are better (via trade) than what is considered market value, you just don't always hear about it.

[klizilii]

37 minutes ago, Immortalelf said:

These kinds of changes to the fundamental player-to-player trades is going to be a problem, and while I personally very, very rarely, if ever, trade/buy outside of the GTN, I am concerned others will be annoyed by this change.

I think if they implement the warframe style of taxing trades + allow for one player to pay tax for both players, that would be ideal. In warframe they assign a tax to items based on how valuable they are (it is somewhat realistic) and they tax each player based on the value they are sending (items and currency), not what they're receiving.

But, because this game has credit limits, I think they should make it so that one player can pay tax for both players.  Like if a preferred player wants to craft augments and trade them to other players for items they want, they wouldn't have enough credits for the trade if the augment was valued at 50m and taxed at 3%

[thoughtfix]

1 hour ago, klizilii said:

1. I don't think raising the GTN cap is a good idea.  It only provides more room for inflation.  People still list stuff for less than it is wroth because they love convenience of the GTN vs maximizing profits.

I keep seeing that the cap on GTN list prices needs to be maintained or reduced, but I disagree. It must be raised.

The problem Bioware is trying to address is the rampant inflation of all items brought on by the presence of ultra-wealthy players in the economy using that wealth to dominate the markets.

At the time I write this, there are five listings for Ranrt Crystals on Satele Shan for amounts ranging from 38.8k/unit to 150k/unit for a total of 2,449,994 credits for a total of 30 units. That is already expensive, but what happens after that? There are seven more listings for 50 or 100 crystals at 7 MILLION credits per unit, all by a single player, "Fosgate Rocks." I am confident that the player will log in later, buy up the lower-priced units, and re-list them at 7M per crystal. THIS is wealth-breaking the economy.

That is only one example of players using existing wealth to make more wealth and feed inflation. A character who wants to craft with that (because they did not spend cartel coins to level through or because they like the looks of that specific item) would not be welcome in this economy and would have to forage for those artifact crystals on their own.

In order to target this kind of price manipulation, we have to make it expensive to monopolize, re-list, and post overly costly listings. At the same time, we need to remove credits from the economy to shave off the advantage that ultra-wealthy users have. Other posts have mentioned credit sinks for the ultra-wealthy, so I'll focus this reply on trade and GTN.

First: All trade that transfers credits between accounts must have a delivery fee. If there are any loopholes to using the GTN, people will try to avoid paying the GTN, especially for expensive trades. It should still be cheap for players to give money to friends or guildmates (enough to play the game and buy in-game items), but it should be expensive for people to trade in the tens of millions of credits and higher.

Second: Re-listing and monopolizing needs restrictions. Items purchased from the GTN should be legacy bound for some time to avoid instant re-listing at higher prices. Monopolizing crafting materials and other non-gear items should also be looked into, but I don't have any suggestions on implementing that. Some items should probably be instantly legacy-bound when purchased from the GTN.

Third: There will always be items that people are willing to pay any number of credits to obtain, and there will always be people ready to sell those items. The solution is not to cap the GTN. It's to make sure those transactions happen on the GTN and that they come with a very high transaction tax. The sale of a 2B credit lightsaber with a 25% GTN cut would instantly remove 500,000,000 credits from the game. The seller still gets a whole lot of money, and the buyer receives the item they want. Prices will fall for those ultra-high-end items when buyers dry up, or sellers get too greedy in their pricing.

Finally: Cartel Coin, rare drops, and vendor-purchased items should have a different scale from harvested or crafted items. The only way a new or returning player can participate in the hyper-inflated economy is to spend a lot of real money on a high-demand Cartel Coin item, sell it for credits, then use those credits to buy what they need. Selling a rare but not ultra-rare reward from an Archaeology mission for 20x the cost of the mission is fine. Re-selling it for 50,000x the cost of the companion mission is obscene. Similarly, items purchased at vendors and re-listed at the GTN at inflated prices only take advantage of newer, less experienced players who do not know where to find the vendor that sells those items.

tl;dr: Raising the GTN cap and scaling the GTN cut for expensive items will not hurt regular players but will curb inflation when implemented with other solutions, like large credit sinks for wealthy players and moving some CC-only features to credits.

 

[thoughtfix]

I realized I am typing a WHOLE LOT of words here but I do not want to dominate this conversation.

For the sake of Bioware serving their community, I encourage everyone to use emoji to react to posts they like or agree with so Bioware can get a good sense of what the community wants. Otherwise, only the people who speak loudest will be heard. Likewise, I encourage Bioware to implement an emoji to where users can politely DISAGREE with posts. I'd like to know if people want to tell me I am full of BS. The closest we have to that is the "Confused" emoji.

[Lost-Savage-XIII]

Ok BW enough is enough YOU CAUSED THIS, you caused it by placing the High End crafting mats as and END GAME reward, rather than having them as rare crafting missions, what do you think all these frag runs are when every piece of gear is legacy. The get the OEM's and RPM's from 10 DF/DP runs a night and sell them for 100M and seeing as you need 10 of them people made BILLIONS. Its your stupid ass fault, Now you are taxing everything, NEW PLAYERS are getting killed. Players like me with BILLIONS just send 100m to a new toon and carry on. I have sent hundreds of millions to new players on fleet to get them started. Don't even start with CM stuff being sold in game. This is all your fault, you wanna fix it,

Step one: ONE CURRENCY for fps, wzs, ops, conq its simple to do (call them gear shards or whatever) 

Step two: DO NOT place any crafting mats as rewards for ANYTHING make them rare crafting missions.

Step three: Make all augs craftable by all skills (it takes a LONG time for a new player to grind 4 nevermind all the skills to 700)

Step four:  NO CAPS of "Gear shards" if I want to run for an hour a day or 6 a day on one character I should be able to without LOSING ANYTHING or running to fleet to spend them when I am only going to sell the stuff anyway 

Step five: For a credit sink: ANY OPS MOUNT CAN BE TURNED LEGACY buy a token and bam say a billion credits.

Step six: enjoy the game

[Toraak]

28 minutes ago, Lost-Savage-XIII said:

Ok BW enough is enough YOU CAUSED THIS, you caused it by placing the High End crafting mats as and END GAME reward, rather than having them as rare crafting missions, what do you think all these frag runs are when every piece of gear is legacy. The get the OEM's and RPM's from 10 DF/DP runs a night and sell them for 100M and seeing as you need 10 of them people made BILLIONS. Its your stupid ass fault, Now you are taxing everything, NEW PLAYERS are getting killed. Players like me with BILLIONS just send 100m to a new toon and carry on. I have sent hundreds of millions to new players on fleet to get them started. Don't even start with CM stuff being sold in game. This is all your fault, you wanna fix it,

Step one: ONE CURRENCY for fps, wzs, ops, conq its simple to do (call them gear shards or whatever) 

Step two: DO NOT place any crafting mats as rewards for ANYTHING make them rare crafting missions.

Step three: Make all augs craftable by all skills (it takes a LONG time for a new player to grind 4 nevermind all the skills to 700)

Step four:  NO CAPS of "Gear shards" if I want to run for an hour a day or 6 a day on one character I should be able to without LOSING ANYTHING or running to fleet to spend them when I am only going to sell the stuff anyway 

Step five: For a credit sink: ANY OPS MOUNT CAN BE TURNED LEGACY buy a token and bam say a billion credits.

Step six: enjoy the game

I see 1 mistake that needs to be corrected. Step 2: Do not have any rare mats from rewards or from any source. If you give crafters the rare mat, your just shifting where the wealth goes. Make all mats easy to get, so everyone can easily craft Augments for themselves. 

 

Remember not every player crafts, including new players. So making all of the mats needed for augmenting easy to get, you may make more people wish to be self sufficient.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Toraak