PTS: Economic Balance Changes

[JackieKo]

Players can provide feedback on the Economic Balance Changes coming to 7.3. Be sure to read this initial post before jumping on the PTS. 

• Are there any items that are not taxed that should be?
• Are there any items that are taxed that should not be? 
• Have you run into any bugs? If so, please offer step by step details so we may be able to reproduce your experience. 
• Is there any other general feedback you would like to share about the functionality?
   

[Retneprac]

I thought of a credit sink work around that you guys might not have thought of.. Let me explain.

Player 1 has an item, let's say a Hypercrate that they want to sell for Billions of credits.

Player 1 has a personal guild, invites Player 2 to his guild. Player 2 then deposits X amount of credits into guild bank, Player 1 then removes those credits, grants player 2 access to guild bank to withdraw item. There is no penalty. Might want to fix that.

[Nee-Elder]

36 minutes ago, Retneprac said:

I thought of a credit sink work around that you guys might not have thought of.. Let me explain.

Player 1 has an item, let's say a Hypercrate that they want to sell for Billions of credits.

Player 1 has a personal guild, invites Player 2 to his guild. Player 2 then deposits X amount of credits into guild bank, Player 1 then removes those credits, grants player 2 access to guild bank to withdraw item. There is no penalty. Might want to fix that.

Yep , that ^ type of thing is sorta what i was referencing here in another related thread earlier today: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929143-73-credit-economy-initiative-updates-and-the-gtn/?do=findComment&comment=9756339

Good lookin' out  btw  @Retneprac !

[LadyAdmiral]

Hello, I loved the idea of taxing items with item-value via trade. I assumed that it would be mostly taxing items that players use in place of credits, which are mostly: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments.

Instead, I found out pretty much EVERY item is currently taxed, except for decoration. Every other item I tried was taxed, sometimes wayyyyyyyy beyond its actual value. If you go with the current values, expect the response to be similar to the quicktravel response ("i feel like my credits are being stolen") except ten-fold from long-time players. My first emotional response was "What the f***???" and my second was "I guess I'm never giving anything away ever again?" third was wondering how cranky our guild's bank master is going to be, since she gives lots of stuff away within our guild. Another was, "hot damn, Intisar is never going to give me a stim if I'm missing one again" lol. At the moment, I hate it, though I loved the initial idea, because it's clear people are trading to get around the GTN tax. For those actually trading... for example, if I have a green varactyl, and they have a pink one, I have a really hard time seeing why we should pay 120 mill each to trade. I understand it's hard because people will find ways to skirt the rules otherwise but this is.. yucky.

• PLEASE DO NOT TAX ANY MEDPACS/ADRENALS/STIMS/VACCINES/GRENADES or anything similar. These are more often traded between friends who are raiding than by people selling them.
• Everything else feels really random to be honest. I could not figure out a pattern except some are maybe to do with rarity silver/gold/platinum?
• I would skip the tax on silver and below items for cartel market. Those are often given away free.
• I personally would really only add a tax to items that players are trading in lieu of credits: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments. Otherwise I feel like you catch too many people just giving stuff to others with no intention of credits being involved.

Item	Tax
Advanced Critical Augment 74	5 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal	1 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac	1 million
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2 (reuseable) 2.7 million	2.7 million
Advanced Kyrprax Versatile Stim	1 mill
Advanced Polybiotic Medpac (not level 80)	165,000
Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenade	4 mill
Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)	192 mill
Alliance Consul's Dias (silver mount)	72 mill
Augmentation Kit MK-11	1.6 mill
Banner: Onderon	738k
Black and Black Dye Module	120 mill
Deep Pink and Deep Purple Dye Module	19 mill
Emote: Sweep	10 mill
Flagship Plans: Command Encryption	1.3 mill
Flair: Snowtacular	80 mill
Force Crystal Flair Bundle	128 mill
Frontline Gapillian (gold mount)	120 mill
Grassland Varactyl	120 mill
Hypercrate: Ultimate Cartel Pack	wasn't able to test due to bind timer
Iziz Courtyard Water Basin	0
Junkshop Decoration Bundle	129 mill
Mandalorian Pillar	0
Mission Discovery: Archaeology (Grade 5)
Nahut's Heavy Sniper Rifle	224 mill
Rakghoul Vaccine x4	300,000 Credits
Revan Holostatue	120m ill
Revan Reborn Breastplate	72 mill
Ruthless Scion's Armor Set	37.5 mil
Secondary White Dye Module	13 mill
Sensuous Dress Bottom	46 mill
Superior Critical Augment 77	52 mill
Planetary Display: Tatooine	0
Ultimate Cartel Pack x5	80 mill
Universal Prefab MK-3	900k
Warzone Adrenal x5	393,000 Credits
White and White Dye	80 mill
Warzone Adrenal x 1263	99 mill

[Retneprac]

Yeah with numbers like those, we are gonna be poor in no time. lol. I have roughly 120 billion between legacy bank and on hand credits. But with trade numbers like these... who knows... and you're right, there doesn't seem to be a real rhyme or reason to it. Each sever has a different economy, so what works for server A, might not necessarily be a good thing for server B.

[elimatorxv]

wow those are some......numbers. well i dont do any trade with any of these so doesnt matter to me

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Those numbers make less sense then the quick travel prices (which at least a logic behind them, an idiotic logic, but still logic of a sort).

300,000k for 4 rakghoul vaccine?  That would cost 10k from the vender.  There is no way I can figure out where that came from. 

1 mil for a medpack/stim?  Last time I sold those on the GTN that was pretty much the going rate.  I was selling for  900k each.  It's been a couple ofmonths, but I don't think they've gone up all that much that the tax is now more than what I was selling them for.  So where are the tax numbers coming from?

I'd like to think these are just placeholder values, but since most of what's on the PTS is exactly what ends up going LIVE ...

No more trading to give things away.

Or mailing  giveaways either, since I suspect the costs to mail will be the same as for trading.

[TepeshT]

I loved the taxing idea at first, since trading high-level items is usually used to get around using the GTN. Seeing exactly how much the taxes are, though? Yikes.

I'm a raider, so trading individual stims/adrenals/medpacs is a daily occurrence. Taxing these items will destroy that. I'm one of the people who always has less than half a billion credits (sitting at 120million right now), and I can tell you I will never give a friend stims again if I have to pay a million per. These aren't items that people are trying to make money off of -- same with grenades and other single-use combat items. If you really want, you can keep the tax on the reusable biochem items, but for the sake of everyone who tries to raid with friends, please please please remove the tax on the single-use ones.

Just... think about who these taxes hurt most. Taxing Cartel Market items makes perfect sense. But let us actually play the content (PvP or Ops) of the game without being punished.

[jedimasterjac]

I'm a very big proponent of these economic changes, but I agree that the specific taxes feel random and punitive. 

[DWho]

It would be nice if we knew a little more about why these particular levels of "taxation" were chosen. I could see making them more punitive if the goal was to force the items back onto the GTN (assuming GTN fees aren't going to end up with these same modifiers). If Bioware could share the formula they used to come up with these taxes, it would go a long way toward them being more acceptable to a larger part of the player base. The concept is fine, but like the QT costs, the implementation seems flawed.

[Isabhell]

I am trying to find the logic of taxing stims, medpacks, and even augment kits.  Consumable items in general like this are used often and often shared between guild members and raid groups.  They are necessary to playing content.  I totally understand taxing cartel market items, that makes sense, dyes also make sense, the luxury items that are NOT NECESSARY to game play should be taxed.  The NECESSARY items to game play  should be able to be freely shared / traded / mailed.  

 

I get fixing the economy, but there comes a point where you aren't fixing the economy but breaking the player.  

 

If you feel the need to continue to over tax can some of these taxes be passed to the guilds that the members belong to instead of just disappearing.  The guilds themselves often give a lot back to the community doing their own fundraising and surviving on whatever they can to make sure that their community has funds to support repairs, supplies, and now even travel costs.  I know that our guilds do alot for their community members and we often will help outside the community too giving away mounts and credits to new players to help them start out because times are hard and the cost of quick travel on a brand new player hurts.

 

[TheFiveOhFirst]

22 hours ago, LadyAdmiral said:

Hello, I loved the idea of taxing items with item-value via trade. I assumed that it would be mostly taxing items that players use in place of credits, which are mostly: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments.

Instead, I found out pretty much EVERY item is currently taxed, except for decoration. Every other item I tried was taxed, sometimes wayyyyyyyy beyond its actual value. If you go with the current values, expect the response to be similar to the quicktravel response ("i feel like my credits are being stolen") except ten-fold from long-time players. My first emotional response was "What the f***???" and my second was "I guess I'm never giving anything away ever again?" third was wondering how cranky our guild's bank master is going to be, since she gives lots of stuff away within our guild. Another was, "hot damn, Intisar is never going to give me a stim if I'm missing one again" lol. At the moment, I hate it, though I loved the initial idea, because it's clear people are trading to get around the GTN tax. For those actually trading... for example, if I have a green varactyl, and they have a pink one, I have a really hard time seeing why we should pay 120 mill each to trade. I understand it's hard because people will find ways to skirt the rules otherwise but this is.. yucky.

• PLEASE DO NOT TAX ANY MEDPACS/ADRENALS/STIMS/VACCINES/GRENADES or anything similar. These are more often traded between friends who are raiding than by people selling them.
• Everything else feels really random to be honest. I could not figure out a pattern except some are maybe to do with rarity silver/gold/platinum?
• I would skip the tax on silver and below items for cartel market. Those are often given away free.
• I personally would really only add a tax to items that players are trading in lieu of credits: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments. Otherwise I feel like you catch too many people just giving stuff to others with no intention of credits being involved.

 

Item	Tax
Advanced Critical Augment 74	5 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal	1 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac	1 million
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2 (reuseable) 2.7 million	2.7 million
Advanced Kyrprax Versatile Stim	1 mill
Advanced Polybiotic Medpac (not level 80)	165,000
Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenade	4 mill
Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)	192 mill
Alliance Consul's Dias (silver mount)	72 mill
Augmentation Kit MK-11	1.6 mill
Banner: Onderon	738k
Black and Black Dye Module	120 mill
Deep Pink and Deep Purple Dye Module	19 mill
Emote: Sweep	10 mill
Flagship Plans: Command Encryption	1.3 mill
Flair: Snowtacular	80 mill
Force Crystal Flair Bundle	128 mill
Frontline Gapillian (gold mount)	120 mill
Grassland Varactyl	120 mill
Hypercrate: Ultimate Cartel Pack	wasn't able to test due to bind timer
Iziz Courtyard Water Basin	0
Junkshop Decoration Bundle	129 mill
Mandalorian Pillar	0
Mission Discovery: Archaeology (Grade 5)
Nahut's Heavy Sniper Rifle	224 mill
Rakghoul Vaccine x4	300,000 Credits
Revan Holostatue	120m ill
Revan Reborn Breastplate	72 mill
Ruthless Scion's Armor Set	37.5 mil
Secondary White Dye Module	13 mill
Sensuous Dress Bottom	46 mill
Superior Critical Augment 77	52 mill
Planetary Display: Tatooine	0
Ultimate Cartel Pack x5	80 mill
Universal Prefab MK-3	900k
Warzone Adrenal x5	393,000 Credits
White and White Dye	80 mill
Warzone Adrenal x 1263	99 mill

This... O_O

Tone deaf is probably the nicest thing I can say about this. A brand-new toon can't quick travel anymore... they'll never make it to end game -- and you want to do this on top of that? Yikes. I mean, this will fix the economy -- but it'll torpedo the player base too.

RIP to anyone that provides the raid group with consumables before a long night of progging...

Has anyone put ANY thought into how this is going to absolutely punish guilds?  From sending out giveaways and bonuses for competitions, etc. Fundraising is already a challenge to provide benefits to the community. Now if guild officers send out credits as a prize for a contest, they have to generate even more money for the privilege to give away stuff to their members and it just goes POOF without any added benefit.

[SeaBananaMan]

I'm not necessarily against the idea but the execution is.... not good. First of all, who decides these prices for the value of an item to be taxed? Also, this is shooting generous players/guilds in the back who want to reward players with credits or items for conquest or for attending events. I have SO much stuff I've purchased over the near-decade playing this game and I like to give it to people who will use it so it isn't figuratively rotting in my cargo bay. I often buy stuff for friends or strangers using my cartel coins or credits. You're going to charge me for the privilege of giving things away to other people (or foist the cost onto them, who can't afford the thing which why it's a gift)- I have to pay YOU to spend the money I have earned to give things away? That is ABSURD. This is the most tone-deaf move I've seen you make, BioWare, and that's saying something.

This playerbase is ALWAYS offering to help people with free things (mounts, credits, armor, weapons, decos- not necessarily expensive things, just something simple to help someone in need like an 8,000 credit mount from the fleet or an armor set of the GTN that was 10 million credits) in gen chat or on reddit or in guild chat or on discord. That's one of the things so many people comment on- the community. You're really considering making people pay to help the less fortune? Unbelievable. It's obviously so people will buy cartel coins or sub to get more money out of them. You have a playerbase here that cares about helping others (a rarity and something that makes SWTOR really stand out) and you're choosing to kick it into the dust for your bottom line. You're not going to have a playerbase if you choose to do this sort of punitive action.

I understand the need to close loopholes on taxes to lower inflation and get credits out of the economy, but this is not the way. It'd be infinitely better to take whatever your value system is and say items over X amount cannot be traded or mailed and have to go on the GTN (or say that things get 1 or 2 trades in a lifetime before being permanently bound). That would cause its own problems, of course, but it'd be better. It wouldn't freaking sabotage everyone out there trying to help out others. Don't build on the backs of the generous. 

Edited May 8, 2023 by SeaBananaMan
incomplete thought

[Zaxi_Etonia]

Where are you pulling some of these taxes from? My understanding is you wish to fix the economy of the game...not punish those actually playing it and raiding and doing content. It's very common for an ops leader to hand out medpacks and adrenals for a fight...are they going to be charged to do so now? This game has never been pay to win, only pay to look good, and now you would be turning it into pay to win.

As some people have brought up...the NECESSARY items to play the game should not be taxed. Medpacs, Stimpacks, Adrenals- you need these to play. Only luxury items should be taxed, and that is where most of the inflation is anyway. If you look on the GTN...Medpacs can be bought on average for 1-1.5mill credits each. Player crafted items shouldn't be taxed, only cartel market 'cosmetic' items, if you want to retain subscribers who raid in SWTOR.

Not to mention, the tax changes would also be punishing to guilds. As it stands already, many guilds are giving away credits to brand new players as they cannot afford quick travel costs up front. Many guilds (not to mention content creators) also hold giveaways, items intended to be given FOR FREE, and now they are going to be charged for the privilege of giving away items? There has to be a better and more nuanced way of fixing inflation than slapping absurd amounts of tax on basic game functionality. Give us cosmetic items we can buy for 50mil, or 100mil. We would buy them.

 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

50 minutes ago, Isabhell said:

I am trying to find the logic of taxing stims, medpacks, and even augment kits.  Consumable items in general like this are used often and often shared between guild members and raid groups.  They are necessary to playing content.

 

The cynical part of me wants to say that you found the logic.  They are taxing things that are "necessary to playing the content".

It's the same logic behind taxing quick travel.

The only thing inflation really hit was luxury/cosmetic items, for the average new, really casual, player, none of that mattered.

Every move Bioware makes in the name of 'combating inflation' makes things more difficult for those who only casually play the game and don't metagame (I count playing the GTN and using cartel stuff to make credits as metagaming).

You can avoid luxury type taxes, but you can't avoid taxes on things you need to actually play the game.

....

except by no longer playing the game.

[Bida]

On 5/7/2023 at 6:28 PM, LadyAdmiral said:

Hello, I loved the idea of taxing items with item-value via trade. I assumed that it would be mostly taxing items that players use in place of credits, which are mostly: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments.

Instead, I found out pretty much EVERY item is currently taxed, except for decoration. Every other item I tried was taxed, sometimes wayyyyyyyy beyond its actual value. If you go with the current values, expect the response to be similar to the quicktravel response ("i feel like my credits are being stolen") except ten-fold from long-time players. My first emotional response was "What the f***???" and my second was "I guess I'm never giving anything away ever again?" third was wondering how cranky our guild's bank master is going to be, since she gives lots of stuff away within our guild. Another was, "hot damn, Intisar is never going to give me a stim if I'm missing one again" lol. At the moment, I hate it, though I loved the initial idea, because it's clear people are trading to get around the GTN tax. For those actually trading... for example, if I have a green varactyl, and they have a pink one, I have a really hard time seeing why we should pay 120 mill each to trade. I understand it's hard because people will find ways to skirt the rules otherwise but this is.. yucky.

• PLEASE DO NOT TAX ANY MEDPACS/ADRENALS/STIMS/VACCINES/GRENADES or anything similar. These are more often traded between friends who are raiding than by people selling them.
• Everything else feels really random to be honest. I could not figure out a pattern except some are maybe to do with rarity silver/gold/platinum?
• I would skip the tax on silver and below items for cartel market. Those are often given away free.
• I personally would really only add a tax to items that players are trading in lieu of credits: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments. Otherwise I feel like you catch too many people just giving stuff to others with no intention of credits being involved.

 

Item	Tax
Advanced Critical Augment 74	5 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal	1 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac	1 million
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2 (reuseable) 2.7 million	2.7 million
Advanced Kyrprax Versatile Stim	1 mill
Advanced Polybiotic Medpac (not level 80)	165,000
Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenade	4 mill
Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)	192 mill
Alliance Consul's Dias (silver mount)	72 mill
Augmentation Kit MK-11	1.6 mill
Banner: Onderon	738k
Black and Black Dye Module	120 mill
Deep Pink and Deep Purple Dye Module	19 mill
Emote: Sweep	10 mill
Flagship Plans: Command Encryption	1.3 mill
Flair: Snowtacular	80 mill
Force Crystal Flair Bundle	128 mill
Frontline Gapillian (gold mount)	120 mill
Grassland Varactyl	120 mill
Hypercrate: Ultimate Cartel Pack	wasn't able to test due to bind timer
Iziz Courtyard Water Basin	0
Junkshop Decoration Bundle	129 mill
Mandalorian Pillar	0
Mission Discovery: Archaeology (Grade 5)
Nahut's Heavy Sniper Rifle	224 mill
Rakghoul Vaccine x4	300,000 Credits
Revan Holostatue	120m ill
Revan Reborn Breastplate	72 mill
Ruthless Scion's Armor Set	37.5 mil
Secondary White Dye Module	13 mill
Sensuous Dress Bottom	46 mill
Superior Critical Augment 77	52 mill
Planetary Display: Tatooine	0
Ultimate Cartel Pack x5	80 mill
Universal Prefab MK-3	900k
Warzone Adrenal x5	393,000 Credits
White and White Dye	80 mill
Warzone Adrenal x 1263	99 mill

Your numbers don't make any sense to me.  There is no explanation for what you were doing, and how many you were doing it to.  I would be very helpful for you to tell us what the trade price was, or the vendor price or something so we can see that the tax is indeed high.  Was this the cost of mailing an item or trading it or what?  In its current form, I derive no useful information from this presentation.

 

[VegaMist]

Just WOW. Gifts should NEVER be taxed. Does it mean it will allow some people to avoid trade tax? Perhaps, but very few since very few people would trust a stranger with their credits/items unless they can see the payment/goods as part of the same trade. And it's a small price to pay if it allows gifts to stay tax-free.

They say be careful what you wish for... Most here wished for improved economy (myself included), but this current path feels not just wrong, but immoral (yeah, I know, I can't believe myself I'm saying it, but I just don't know what else to call it).

[neichan]

Ok... I understand you want to prevent tax avoiding with items trading, but you'll kill a lot of things in the game with this kind of tax on nearly every item (or as decorations are not taxed, players will use this as "money"...)

You'd better raise the selling cap of 1 billion (4 billion would be great) on GTN as it's easier to sell on the GTN (putting item on sale every 3 days max) than to be hours long on both fleet to try so sell it "live" in order to bypass the tax.

Then if after that, it's not enough to put down inflation (I think it would be, during last weeks i saw a lot of prices going down on GTN, on every server), then think about "gift taxing", please don't kill any ingame generosity (a lot of examples are given in this thread).

[Traceguy]

Gifts should not be taxed. 

If you disagree, please mail me 8% of the value of all your Birthday and Christmas gifts.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Traceguy

[mCion]

There was a good point brought up on a Discord. SentSterling does the weekly GreatGiveaway where he gives away hundreds of dollars worth of Cartel Items for free every week for over a year. Currently the system would tax that into non existence. Other approved Bioware content creators (and some generous players) also give away a lot of things.

I am in favor of trades being taxed so to not avoid the GTN, but gifts are a large part of the current community and needs to be worked our correctly.

 

Perhaps only tax when the receiving legacy sends something back to the gifting legacy would be a way to catch GTN trade avoidance.

[BladedDingo]

16 hours ago, Bida said:

Your numbers don't make any sense to me.  There is no explanation for what you were doing, and how many you were doing it to.  I would be very helpful for you to tell us what the trade price was, or the vendor price or something so we can see that the tax is indeed high.  Was this the cost of mailing an item or trading it or what?  In its current form, I derive no useful information from this presentation.

 

based on the value presented,

Bioware has set an exchange rate of 80,000 credits per 1 Cartel coin.

Ultimate Cartel Pack x5

80 mill

at 200 cartel coins per pack, that is 1000 coins, multiply that by 80,000 and you get 80 million credits.

Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)
At 2400 Cartel counts, multiply that by 80,000 and you get 129 million credits.

 

Force Crystal Flair Bundle

128 mill

This bundle is 1600 credits, at 80,000 credits per 1 cartel coin, that comes out to 128 million credits.

This means that Bioware apparently thinks that a medpack should cost 12.5 Cartel coins.

I'm not at home right now, so I don't know if there is any comparable single use consumables that cost around 12 cartel coins. I know Xp boosts bundle of 5 is 90 cartel coins, so a single XP boost would be 18 cartel counts, so it seems like that could part of the pricing logic.

[LadyAdmiral]

17 hours ago, Bida said:

Your numbers don't make any sense to me.  There is no explanation for what you were doing, and how many you were doing it to.  I would be very helpful for you to tell us what the trade price was, or the vendor price or something so we can see that the tax is indeed high.  Was this the cost of mailing an item or trading it or what?  In its current form, I derive no useful information from this presentation.

 

To be clearer: I opened the trade window with a friend. I clicked the item from my inventory. This is the cost of giving the item to them without them trading me something back. As far as I understand that's the same as mailing price.

[LadyAdmiral]

1 hour ago, BladedDingo said:

based on the value presented,

Bioware has set an exchange rate of 80,000 credits per 1 Cartel coin.

Ultimate Cartel Pack x5

80 mill

at 200 cartel coins per pack, that is 1000 coins, multiply that by 80,000 and you get 80 million credits.

Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)
At 2400 Cartel counts, multiply that by 80,000 and you get 129 million credits.

 

Force Crystal Flair Bundle

128 mill

This bundle is 1600 credits, at 80,000 credits per 1 cartel coin, that comes out to 128 million credits.

This means that Bioware apparently thinks that a medpack should cost 12.5 Cartel coins.

I'm not at home right now, so I don't know if there is any comparable single use consumables that cost around 12 cartel coins. I know Xp boosts bundle of 5 is 90 cartel coins, so a single XP boost would be 18 cartel counts, so it seems like that could part of the pricing logic.

Ah!! Thank you for figuring out some of the pattern!!! Much appreciated. That makes sense why the Grassland Varactyl is more than it even sells for on the gtn, if its based on the cartel market cost.

[casirabit]

On 5/7/2023 at 6:28 PM, LadyAdmiral said:

Hello, I loved the idea of taxing items with item-value via trade. I assumed that it would be mostly taxing items that players use in place of credits, which are mostly: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments.

Instead, I found out pretty much EVERY item is currently taxed, except for decoration. Every other item I tried was taxed, sometimes wayyyyyyyy beyond its actual value. If you go with the current values, expect the response to be similar to the quicktravel response ("i feel like my credits are being stolen") except ten-fold from long-time players. My first emotional response was "What the f***???" and my second was "I guess I'm never giving anything away ever again?" third was wondering how cranky our guild's bank master is going to be, since she gives lots of stuff away within our guild. Another was, "hot damn, Intisar is never going to give me a stim if I'm missing one again" lol. At the moment, I hate it, though I loved the initial idea, because it's clear people are trading to get around the GTN tax. For those actually trading... for example, if I have a green varactyl, and they have a pink one, I have a really hard time seeing why we should pay 120 mill each to trade. I understand it's hard because people will find ways to skirt the rules otherwise but this is.. yucky.

• PLEASE DO NOT TAX ANY MEDPACS/ADRENALS/STIMS/VACCINES/GRENADES or anything similar. These are more often traded between friends who are raiding than by people selling them.
• Everything else feels really random to be honest. I could not figure out a pattern except some are maybe to do with rarity silver/gold/platinum?
• I would skip the tax on silver and below items for cartel market. Those are often given away free.
• I personally would really only add a tax to items that players are trading in lieu of credits: Hypercrates, individual Cartel Packs, OEM, RPM, and maybe a few high-value steady items like Master's Datacron and Gold Augments. Otherwise I feel like you catch too many people just giving stuff to others with no intention of credits being involved.

 

Item	Tax
Advanced Critical Augment 74	5 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal	1 mill
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac	1 million
Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2 (reuseable) 2.7 million	2.7 million
Advanced Kyrprax Versatile Stim	1 mill
Advanced Polybiotic Medpac (not level 80)	165,000
Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenade	4 mill
Ambassador's Meditation Hoverchair (gold mount)	192 mill
Alliance Consul's Dias (silver mount)	72 mill
Augmentation Kit MK-11	1.6 mill
Banner: Onderon	738k
Black and Black Dye Module	120 mill
Deep Pink and Deep Purple Dye Module	19 mill
Emote: Sweep	10 mill
Flagship Plans: Command Encryption	1.3 mill
Flair: Snowtacular	80 mill
Force Crystal Flair Bundle	128 mill
Frontline Gapillian (gold mount)	120 mill
Grassland Varactyl	120 mill
Hypercrate: Ultimate Cartel Pack	wasn't able to test due to bind timer
Iziz Courtyard Water Basin	0
Junkshop Decoration Bundle	129 mill
Mandalorian Pillar	0
Mission Discovery: Archaeology (Grade 5)
Nahut's Heavy Sniper Rifle	224 mill
Rakghoul Vaccine x4	300,000 Credits
Revan Holostatue	120m ill
Revan Reborn Breastplate	72 mill
Ruthless Scion's Armor Set	37.5 mil
Secondary White Dye Module	13 mill
Sensuous Dress Bottom	46 mill
Superior Critical Augment 77	52 mill
Planetary Display: Tatooine	0
Ultimate Cartel Pack x5	80 mill
Universal Prefab MK-3	900k
Warzone Adrenal x5	393,000 Credits
White and White Dye	80 mill
Warzone Adrenal x 1263	99 mill

If they are going to do this, they seem to be intent on killing their game, which is fine by me, I haven't been playing much anyways, but this may cause the rest of my guild to wave bye-bye.

 

[JoeStramaglia]

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for the feedback - we will be taking action on the item tax values and I’d like to go into a bit more detail here.

Some of these values were out of sync due to some data issues and some methodology issues. Originally these were based on average GTN value and a conversion based on the Cartel Market that was applied to all relevant items even if they were severely divorced from their GTN Value. There was also an issue in regards to stackable items as it was taking the average price of the stack and applying it to a single item which is not at all intended.

To more closely match the intent, we’re changing these to be based on the median GTN value and only applying the conversion for Cartel Market items that were either not in the GTN data or traded near the cap and have a value that exceeds the cap. The conversion was also adjusted based on higher volume items that have a Cartel Coin value to more accurately represent the current economic environment in trade. This should end up looking a bit more fair as the tax won’t be as subject to the potential price volatility you see in the market and the conversion only affects the rarer items or items that have a Cartel Coin value but are low volume trades.

It is worth noting that in both cases, the previous data and the current data is limited by time frame and volume to ensure we’re not putting unnecessarily high values on items that seldom sell. That means however that there will be gaps in this iteration, less items will have a tax value. When the overhaul is put into place it will be completely GTN driven minus some exceptions like the one I am going into next.

An additional aspect that we’re going to adjust here is removing item trade/mail tax for some gameplay focused items such as Medpacs, Grenades, and so on. Please let us know if you encounter any taxes that feel out of place with this new PTS. We want to get this to a place that feels correct. We’ll be monitoring this change to ensure that this is not being abused, and may re-add the tax to some of the higher value items depending on an ongoing review on past behavior.

Guild transfers are something we will be monitoring very closely. It is possible we may impose some additional restrictions in the future, however, we would like to keep guild transfers tax free. This will allow folks who play together regularly to prepare for Operations, giving things to friends, and so on.

That all said, please continue to give us feedback on these changes. I greatly appreciate your time and opinions.