7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[mCion]

Yes please be careful with "Buy Orders" as it could lead to bots and predatory market players.

 

Separately, Please consider implementing a reasonable limit to how many GTN postings you can cancel in a given time. I remember a predatory seller that would have hundreds of materials postings, and whenever any other player would post the materials at a slightly lower price, this person would take the time and change all their dozes or hundreds of postings to undercut the new seller, and would do so multiple times a day. By doing this so frequently, aggressively, and at such scale I saw this aggressive seller push many new sellers out of the market. After these new sellers were pushed out, this aggressive person would drastically hike up prices again. Eventually this player started sending taunting and aggressive mails to players. 
While it is important to be able remove a posting from the GTN be able to repost at a lower price for everyone, (many valid reasons to cancel a posting like posting a wrong price, changing your mind, reposting at different price, etc) doing it on such a large scale multiple times a day was unhealthy for others who I saw would try to participate in the GTN and gave up.

(I think the abuser was eventually banned because they disappeared, but the unlimited cancellation and reposting of so many items so frequently is still there and can be abused by others as well)

[commanderwar]

Thank for working on the game, and these changes are good.

I do want to say I do think travel cost tax is terrible for new players.  It doesn't effect economy or people with the rich, just new players. One of the reasons swtor is great is because it's easy to get around, to just play. Because of the tax if you get stuck on Tython and your /stuck doesn't work and is on cooldown, when then nothing else you can do then be stuck. I do think it should be removed.

At the very least can you change the credit tax to fit planet level, like tython 1-50 credits. They should be same price as using a speeder imo. Because new players have zero credits at the start. Also at least get rid of fleet QT tax. why does it cost a 5000 credits to get from main fleet to ziost capital ship? If you decide to keep it, it needs a lot of work, imo it is a big change, and right now it causes so many problems for new players.

I don't think it's worth it when there is a ton of other ways to add constant credit sync.

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

I like the categories, and the fact I can list dozens of items at once.

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

For one Dyes are under CM category, while, color crystal are under "Item modification" when it would make more sense for Dyes to be under "Item modification"

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

Buy orders

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

raity (gold, silver), armor packs

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

If there any way to get what I want cheaper.

Edited May 5, 2023 by commanderwar

[fire-breath]

This will STINK for giving out guild rewards .....

As mentioned in other posts, this will affect guilds a lot. (please read AdsAillard's post) (https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929143-73-credit-economy-initiative-updates-and-the-gtn/?do=findComment&comment=9756295)

 

@Joe: You say you don't want to create exceptions. But what if you could trade with white guild members for free? (white, as in, not gray members. As in, members who have been in the guild for a week-ish).

Yes, this will still create a loophole, as you could send the money/items to a mule who is in both guilds. But it would be a hassle and would require a middle-man.
Alternatively, you could make it so that guild officers can send credits and items to their guildies without incurring the fee. This would reduce the risk of a loophole even further.
If you want to take it even further, you could create a 24h window for guild officers to send items or credits for free. I would heavily argue against this 24h window though. Firstly, it will create annoyed players who send after 25h. Secondly, I would assume this 24h window is easy to accidentally break in a new patch.

 

Anyways. Please think of guild rewards and have them exempt from fees please
Thx

[fire-breath]

Just a note to people fretting about orders.

I am 100% sure that BioWare has noticed a certain small-time game company doing the same thing.
While it might not get copied 1-on-1, I assume they have looked how their work order system works. While I don't have massive XP on work orders, I do know that it's not that bot friendly

[dinowoman]

1 hour ago, 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.

 

While I am fully in favour of taxes based on credit transaction, and I understand that there might be a risk of players trying to avoid them by bartering, taxing items directly, where no credits are involved sounds like it is going to penalise a lot of people who use trade perfectly innocently for non-commercial purposes. I personally have on a number of occasions gifted items to friends who are new players. Currently I am not short of credits (largely due to regularly capping out on tech frags and using them to buy and then sell rpms, if you want an example of something that may be contributing to people's wealth and thus inflation - and I realise saying that may make me unpopular), but many others who want to help out friends may themselves not have a great deal of money.

It also penalises guilds. Our guild rewards top conquest scorers, holds regular social events with prizes, and does weekly giveaways. Now the guild will be taxed every week on conquest prizes and giveaways, and on every prize and giveaway in events, on top of the cost of providing all these things in the first place. Additionally, since f2p members can't access the guild bank, officers may sometimes take items out of the bank on their behalf and trade them to them, again incurring costs for the guild. This feels very much like a tax on incentives to to encourage players to be sociable.

[CrazyScruffy]

1 hour ago, Balameb said:

I'm sure there could be some exceptions in place that could not be abused that much. I mean, for example if you make it so anything below 5M credits (or item value) does not pays fees in P2P/Mail then i don't see much room for abuse. The amount of time required to make so many small transactions.

 

There have already been people talking about this and trying to find a way to get around it. So there is absolutely groups of people who would abuse this. It's much better just to cover everything

[JakRoanin]

I love crafting but there is simply not enough things in the crafting specialties people want. We need to make the GTN good for crafters not just a CM REDUX.

[Vineuse]

Quote

Trade/Mail Fees - who pays?

The party responsible for all fees is the one who is sending the credits or taxed items. If an exchange is occurring that has taxed items or credits on both sides, then both parties would be paying a fee depending on the value of their side of the exchange.

So if I am sending you a mail with credits, the amount you enter is the amount the receiver will get, but the amount you will pay to send it will be that amount + 8% (plus the normal postage fee). This does mean that if you were to gift someone credits they will receive the amount you are intending to give them, but it will cost you that amount plus the associated fee.

If you are sending items or mail between your own characters there will not be any additional assessed fees currently. Receivers of items and credits will not pay a fee.

So I have a question about this. I have 200M (give or take) on my legacy. I recently managed to snag a Je'daii Warrior pack from the Galactic Seasons armour pack. The price on GTN on SS as of writing is 700M at the lowest and 850M at the highest. The character I have the item on has 3M of the approximate 200M I have.  

If I'm reading this correctly, then if I decide that I don't like this item, but want to gift it to someone who is looking for it, I have to pay a tax of 56 000 000 (8% of 700M) + whatever the postage fee is (if my math is good). 

Is the game going to stop me from giving this item away until my main has 60M on hand? 

Having only finished 1 class story and still working on the others, the majority of my credits are used for the unlocks (exp/exploration/repair droid etc.) as I get to the other classes, and I'm only legacy level 25 so some unlocks are still not available to me. Not to mention the fact that you need at least 100k to unlock all of the inventory slots when creating a new character... 

I know someone who has half a billion or more and has finished all class stories, complaining about a 60M gift fee is nothing, but this is 28% of my 'wealth' gone with one gift. 

Granted, this is hypothetical 'cause I unlocked the set in question for my new warrior, but there are other sets that I have had/have that I'd rather gift than sell on GTN, and this 'gift tax' would also wipe out my hard-earned savings.

Essentially this change means that I might be better off selling things on GTN than gifting it to someone else? I'm still not 100% sure about the fees for this, but given how things usually are when selling something, I can pay a deposit of 1000 credits on an item I'm selling for 5M... so I'd assume selling the Je'daii set would be in my best interest rather than generosity. Is that what the devs are trying to do with these changes? 

For the rich people reading this - I know. I can sell items now and make bank before the proposed changes are live/start doing crew skills/run more FP/OPs/whatever. As much as I want credits, I also like gifting the occasional item to someone else. I play to enjoy the story, not the dog fight. If I want pretty items, I'll work hard to get them. It makes me feel accomplished. What I don't like is my one good deed of the decade costing me an arm and a leg. 

 

P.S. Please excuse any forum mistakes since this is my first post here ^^; 

[Nee-Elder]

10 minutes ago, fire-breath said:

This will STINK for giving out guild rewards .....

@JoeStramaglia You say you don't want to create exceptions. But what if you could trade with white guild members for free? (white, as in, not gray members. As in, members who have been in the guild for a week-ish).

Yes, this will still create a loophole, as you could send the money/items to a mule who is in both guilds. But it would be a hassle and would require a middle-man.
Alternatively, you could make it so that guild officers can send credits and items to their guildies without incurring the fee. This would reduce the risk of a loophole even further.
If you want to take it even further, you could create a 24h window for guild officers to send items or credits for free. I would heavily argue against this 24h window though.

None of that ^ is needed though, since as GM's we can simply  just create a separate tab  on guild-Bank  strictly for trade transactions w/ permissions.   Which would technically be "free" , no ?  ( or would that also be part of the "Collect on Deposit"  tax mentioned in Joe's OP ? )

Edited May 5, 2023 by Nee-Elder
Reasons: players will always be 1 or 2 steps ahead of Developers, when it comes to exploits & loopholes

[fire-breath]

1 minute ago, CrazyScruffy said:

There have already been people talking about this and trying to find a way to get around it. So there is absolutely groups of people who would abuse this. It's much better just to cover everything

Even when it means that guilds will be backstabbed when it comes to offering rewards to their members?

I know this is your 666'th post. But no need to make it an evil one 😛

[fire-breath]

4 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

None of that ^ is needed though, since as GM's we can simply  just create a separate tab on guild-Bank  strictly for trade transactions.   Which would technically be "free" , no ?  ( or would that also be part of the "Collect on Deposit"  tax mentioned in Joe's OP ? )

You could do so, yes. And it will be a backup plan.

But surely you realize how much of an ache this will be to administer prizes like that?

Some guilds give out rewards to 50-100 or even more players. Doing this via a guildbank vault will be ..... messy at best.

 

EDIT: Messy as in:
Making sure that people don't take out too much (accidentally or purposefully).
Making sure that all people have collected their rewards.
Having to temporarily change guild ranks so that people can remove credits from the guild vault.

And on top of all this .... a not so nice logging system that can't be exported to Excel. (hint hint nudge nudge)

Edited May 5, 2023 by fire-breath

[Nee-Elder]

1 minute ago, fire-breath said:

But surely you realize how much of an ache this will be to administer prizes like that?

No more of an "ache"  ( your word ) than it is to send multiple MAIL and/or  take time to click into multiple trades.

Regardless, i certainly hope BioWare  is thinking thru all of this and the myriad of possible scenarios & repercussions ( long term ) .

Just like in RL , the top 1% ( aka the mega guilds here ) are already discussing their plans/methods to circumvent this upcoming TAX.

[dinowoman]

40 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

None of that ^ is needed though, since as GM's we can simply  just create a separate tab  on guild-Bank  strictly for trade transactions w/ permissions.   Which would technically be "free" , no ?  ( or would that also be part of the "Collect on Deposit"  tax mentioned in Joe's OP ? )

I see two major issues with this suggestion (on top of the more minor ones that fire-breath has mentioned above).

1) F2p members can't access the guild bank.

2) In our guild at least, all available tabs have already been unlocked and are in use and fairly full. Trying to empty one for members to help themselves to rewards would be near impossible without selling or giving away a lot of the contents.

 

How much of a dent in the credit sink would it make if trades between guild members were exempt from this tax? I don't know how things are in general but, in our guild, it's not uncommon for members to either donate items to each other or sell them at reduced cost, just in order to help each other out, rather than to make money for themselves.

Edited May 5, 2023 by dinowoman

[CrazyScruffy]

39 minutes ago, fire-breath said:

Even when it means that guilds will be backstabbed when it comes to offering rewards to their members?

I know this is your 666'th post. But no need to make it an evil one 😛

LOL well that wasn't how it was planned.

 

hopefully they'll figure something out for Guilds. But i could see a case where new guilds are made just to circumvent any Fees

[microstyles]

2 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

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.

Hmmm I suppose something like this is necessary if you're adding additional fees to every other part of trade. There are some potential pitfalls though:

-Potential for abuse. Since it's based off the GTN, players could coordinate to manipulate the fee.

-Double fees. For trades involving these items for credits or these items on both sides, both players would get the fees. This hugely discourages this type of trade.

-Impossible for F2P. I assume the items in question will be high-credit items. The fees on any high credit item will likely exceed the 1m credit cap.

[Nee-Elder]

3 minutes ago, dinowoman said:

1) F2p members can't access the guild bank.

First off, there's no such thing as a "Free-2-Play" in this game tbqh , since it's a just a mirage due to existence of Cartel Market.  ( Free-2-PAY  would be a more apt term ) .  But anyways... While i agree those players should be considered, i don't believe they should be catered toward.  And frankly, it doesn't seem like BioWare does either.

7 minutes ago, dinowoman said:

2) In our guild at least, all available tabs have already been unlocked and are in use and fairly full.

Once we got the 'materials tab' in sub-intentory , it became much easier to empty out a couple our guild-Bank tabs.

Again though:  the larger mega-guilds  (who have more volume) will certainly go through more hassle....potentially.

[RadarOMalley]

2 hours ago, 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.

TBH, I've resigned myself to the QT costs and it hasn't changed how I play all that much. That said, the 5K to scoot around the Fleet really grinds my gears. Even traveling from the main Fleet QT point to the Cartel Bazaar is 2K credits. It costs zero to use the Interfleet Transport, which is the equivalent of a taxi. Perhaps a solution would be to analyze what the taxi cost is and then scale from there, with a max of 5K? Transport around the Fleet, in any form, shouldn't break the bank. I understand the need for small sinks, but Fleet costs are not to scale as currently implemented. Thanks. 

[Char_Ell]

2 hours ago, 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.

This is disappointing news to me though I'm somewhat hopeful that "some items" means cartel market items only.  I do not understand what threat barter-only trades present to the Credit Economy Initiative for the credit economy since there are no credits being exchanged.  By their very nature barter-only trades are more time consuming and difficult to set up and complete.  Barter-only trades cannot be made by the GTN, unless item-for-item trading will be functionality added to GTN in the future.  Maybe somebody can explain why they think adding credit fee for barter-only transactions makes sense.

P.S.  I really enjoyed Joe Stramaglia's presentation in the 7.3 livestream.  His extensive use of his hands during his presentation made me feel like he has a lot of passion about the work he is doing on SWTOR's credit economy.

[LLlaxmep]

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.

[Sanchpanza]

2 hours ago, Balameb said:

Please, be careful with that feature.

As much as i would love purchase orders as i'm a crafter who spends time searching and has patience to find cheap mats, it has its disadvantages:
a-Could benefit most to bots and credit seller farmers.

This is an incredibly important think to take note of I think. For as long as I can remember I've seen activity on the GTN that seems to be botting, and I'm convinced it all ties back into the credit sellers.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

34 minutes ago, 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.

 

QT fees would be fine if they scaled by the player's level or, if that's too difficult, by planet like Taxis do. Taxi fees were never complained about because they scale throughout the game naturally, so when you don't have a lot of credits, they don't cost a lot of credits, and when you level up and have more credits, they start costing more. QT being more expensive than taxis makes sense, but QT being 46x the taxi cost at times makes less sense (On Tython, from the Gnarls to the Elarian Trail costs 20 credits on Taxi and 954 for QT, a 4670% increase).

 

Part of the problem here is you went with distance as the only scaling factor and seemingly forgot that a lot of the early game planets, where players generally have less credits and are rewarded with less credits, are very large compared to later game planets. Coruscant is a great example. Going from pretty much anywhere (minus maybe the first area) back to the Senate tower, a common occurrence during the class stories that take place there and a prime use case for QT, is 5k credits, because the planet is large, by design. Nar Shaddaa is a very similar situation. These are two of the earliest planets in the game, with QT fees higher than what you'd see on the most recent planet released (Ruhnuk, where taxis are actually more expensive than QT, because they take more than distance into consideration during scaling and Ruhnuk is a small planet).

 

You (Bioware, not Joe specifically) have said repeatedly that you're listening and that this whole initiative is intended to be taken in phases so you can monitor and adjust accordingly, so prove it. I don't have an issue with QT fees existing, but time should have been taken to actually balance them appropriately. We shouldn't have to do this testing for you.

[DWho]

51 minutes ago, dinowoman said:

How much of a dent in the credit sink would it make if trades between guild members were exempt from this tax? I don't know how things are in general but, in our guild, it's not uncommon for members to either donate items to each other or sell them at reduced cost, just in order to help each other out, rather than to make money for themselves.

It would undercut the whole concept. It would be minutes or hours after the change dropped and new "tax free" guilds would be set up to avoid the tax (invite a player to make the trade then they quit afterwards). Unfortunately, the exception would become the rule. There's not an easy way to tax other trades while leaving those in guilds alone that won't undercut the whole initiative.

[thoughtfix]

6 hours ago, Lost-Savage-XIII said:

It doesn't matter what you call them, they are TAXES, if not you can not charge the mail because the HUTTS do not own that! It's also funny to me that they talk about lore when it suits them and when players bring it up they say well its just a game, or we didn't take it that seriously.

Let me restate it in simpler words. I was replying to this bit in which you expressed anger for new "taxes" because taxes are for government protection, infrastructure, etc. Cash transfers, mail delivery, commerce, and the like are commercial enterprises, not governments. Those don't have taxes. They have service fees. In that context, identifying them as a "tax" is inappropriate, and this quote does not match the situation:

On 5/4/2023 at 7:06 AM, Lost-Savage-XIII said:

Taxes when originally set up on ANY LEVEL, thru out history, a citizen would pay taxes for PROTECTION! Lords would force people to fight for them to stay on their land, then gov't started using them to FUND THE GOV"T.

[MasterRikku]

As stated in https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929143-73-credit-economy-initiative-updates-and-the-gtn/?do=findComment&comment=9756295 post this will badly effect guilds all levels
And you said 

5 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:

Exceptions to Trades Under a Certain Value

Unfortunately, any exceptions leave room for abuse. Even if most folks would use it for altruistic means such as gifts, it creates a loophole for those looking to dodge the system. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how folks behave under this system with the existing exceptions to see if we need to make further changes.

But for this one line you stated. You will kill most guilds and the Paying player base will leave. The people that do send out the credit and items out to the top players in guild for there top conquest players are your subscribers that pay for the game and in a way pay for your pay check (the thing that you use to live on, to pay for things) and that keep the lights on for the game 
 

Quote

So the Only Exception to the Tax/Fee 8% to send/trade credits/items

Needs to be between guild members white names not grey names.


The other things that took your formal/current coworkers 10+years to figure out about the inflation in this game are not good. But you need to listen to your Player base and explicitly to your paying Subscribers that pay for you to work (SWTOR Service) not like other times that JackieKo have shut out/muted/deleted the feedback from us on the forms

[jedimasterjac]

5 minutes ago, MasterRikku said:

Needs to be between guild members white names not grey names.

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.