Part III of my whining about stuff that needs to change: This time it's the economy and a much better way to fix "inflation" in game than ludicrous pretend taxes on pretend money.

[wombatjake]

So, re introduce stuff that is now rare. It's pretty much the only to fix the inflation issue. Supply and demand baby!

Hear me out. Tons of players have quit in 12 years and their items will forever remain in a binary oblivion (don't know if the binary thing is true lol); but seriously, we won't get those items back in rotation. People also rage delete their stuff when quitting. People accidentally delete their stuff too. People like me have tons and tons of rare expensive items. Ive been around on and off since early acces. But guess what? I like those items lol. They are bound now. So they can't be sold. 
And of course, all the "retired" items that have been in rotation in game and in the cartel in the past. 

I have no idea what kind of knob would approve the pricing on the weapons in the Cartel Market, but wow. What the hell is that about? Essentially 30 dollars or more for many weapons in there. That is laughable. Been that way since it was first introduced im pretty sure. Absurd. If we want more of those items in the GTN, stop selling things like weapons for twice, some times 3x as much as an entire outfit for a character or mount, and even services offered by EA BW. 600 cartel coins for the final race i had locked (squidheads). 4800 divided by 6 is 8. So that means it is 8x more expensive to unlock an entire race and all the work that came with making that race in development, than it is to buy like a lightsaber that doesn't even have a cool animation or something unique about it. Yall are trippin. I cant possibly be the only person who thinks this way, and Im a whale. Any SWTOR employee on the forums with the company's permission can check to see that Im, frankly, a ridiculous whale. You bring out a new outfit, ill likely buy it lol. Ahem. Aaaaany who, we all want the GTN to even out. Taxing people wont fix that.

And, despite  there being raids and all kinds of other events and things to do and stuff to run in SWTOR. But so many people ignore flashpoints, raiding, etc. so there is a lack of stuff on the GTN.

And as I said in whining number 2 post that I made, it isn't detering "gold" (credits in SWTOR obviously) farmers/buyers. And scammers are making pure profit off their ill gotten gains, so even if you went nuts and had a 55 percent tax on player transactions through mail, GTN or in person trade, it still doesnt hurt the scammer. Just hurts the rest of us. Not cool. Oh and new people. Did EA:BW even think about that? Arbitrary taxation and a weird hub to do all transactions. Oh im sure that won't deter new players at all. Especially not ones from games that may have taxes, but didn't decide to do whatever non sense yall are talking about doing.

Easy fix. Reintroduce stuff or be tyrants and put a TEMPORARY! cap on what you can charge for an item, until stuff in the GTN steadies. Because if there is ONE complaint i see multiple times, LITERALLY every single day, is accessibility of cool armors and weaponry etc. because items that once cost 5 mill on the GTN now cost 448 billion. Yes. BILLION!
Ok sorry for the long post. Toodles. May the force be with you or something.





 

Edited May 9, 2023 by wombatjake
I suppose i was a little harsh saying dbag.

[eabevella]

What costs 448B?

Don't think you can even pay 448B. People won't even asking for 448B if anything does "worth" that much. They'd ask ppl to pay in 100 hypercrate or something.

 

[Ardrossan]

I love threads like this. They really make me stop and think and re-evaluate my opinions. For example, a common criticism on the forum is that there is no problem with inflation, it's just players annoyed that they can't get x item in the CM for a price they can afford. I've always felt that my reasoning wasn't so superficial, that inflation affects mats and consumables and other QoL stuff that many newer players without a lot of credits 'need'. But then I see threads like this and think, maybe it's the same thing? Maybe it really is just players wanting cheaper cosmetic items on the CM. Wow, have I been wrong this whole time? Gotta ponder that 😵 

[Balameb]

10 hours ago, wombatjake said:

So, re introduce stuff that is now rare. It's pretty much the only to fix the inflation issue. Supply and demand baby!

Supply and demand is certainly not the ONLY thing needed to fix inflation, specially not as a long term solution.

Particularly not when you(BW) have printed too much credits. Mission rewards still provide a lot of credits, and while loot is not as massive (nor gold) as it was up to 6.X is still good enough to vendor. Supply and demand can temporary work like it is doing now because current crafting meta is just old and most people are already happy with their gear levels. So extra stock of crit gold augs, increased amount of gold mats, price lowers. But if people have too many credits (and you continue printing a lot more than is sinked), then everything is just waiting for the next new thing. And that moment will arrive, it always does and all market hell will brake loose again.

So, the game needs to destroy credits without making it impossible (or too hard) for newbies to earn new.

A couple years ago hypercrates and most of plat quality CM items surpassed the GTN cap price. That was followed by gold augments. While before that some transactions of high value items were made outside GTN, it was minor. Then it was forced to be outside, bypassing the 8% credit sink. 'Tax' is a lore term, it is a credit sink and unlike the st*p*d QT cost, being a percentage that only reduce earning is not disruptive.

The main issue with credit inflation, is not that prices are now more than years ago. Earning X amount of credits for item Y is doable, but problem comes when you reach X and Y suddenly cost 2 times X. Low amounts of inflation can be handled, high numbers becomes a huge problem, particularly for newer people that have to previous 'savings' or are less experienced in how to work these kind of markets.

Don't get me wrong. I do think the proposed fix with 'taxing' direct transactions needs A LOT of work before going live. And since i was in 6.0 PTS, i know for a fact that if they take our feedback the same (even the fantastic job by sworista), it will change only little before going live. That would be very sad, but people need to be prepared because that is how BW works most of the time.

9 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

I love threads like this. They really make me stop and think and re-evaluate my opinions. For example, a common criticism on the forum is that there is no problem with inflation, it's just players annoyed that they can't get x item in the CM for a price they can afford. I've always felt that my reasoning wasn't so superficial, that inflation affects mats and consumables and other QoL stuff that many newer players without a lot of credits 'need'. But then I see threads like this and think, maybe it's the same thing? Maybe it really is just players wanting cheaper cosmetic items on the CM. Wow, have I been wrong this whole time? Gotta ponder that 😵

If my memory serves me well (it might, it might not); the first one to rise alarms about inflation was Trixxie. She did it many (MANY) years ago, way before people could not see shinies in GTN. And since i have been here several years, i do know she is not someone that just want cheap shinies with little effort; she craft and sells and decided to rise alarms when her earning went up, not down.

And inflation does affect other stuff besides shinies. Mats were affected, QoL were affected: just like cosmetics CM also offer other stuff like new character slots and unlocks. Gear is affected; i know you can complete most story content (and more) without requiring a single augment; but crafting metas change.

Sure, in all the people complaining about QT travel cost and inflation there are some that just want everything without doing anything. White nights and trolls (and let me be clear i'm not saying this OP is either) use them to attack everyone as we were just lazy 'entitled' players while we just want a more stable economy.

Because that is what we need, the economy to be more stable. So people can target things, calculate effort required and reach it in their expected timeframe.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Balameb

[supertimtaf]

4 hours ago, Balameb said:

Because that is what we need, the economy to be more stable. So people can target things, calculate effort required and reach it in their expected timeframe.

how dare you suggest that some players actually sell items at a stupid high price for no reason !

And tbh, if you want to fix inflation, there are a few things that you could do that'll have an impact and stabilize the economy *instantly*. Sadly, because they'll probably lower Bioware's incomes for a month or two, they will never make these changes, even if its the right thing to do. Again, the issue and reason why these changes are also making so many peoples angry, is that they're just half-assed measures about an issue that has been rampant since at least six years. Because anything more "serious" than that would impact their biggest and most direct means of revenue : the cash shop.

 

Most of us are proposing *really* good fixes for inflation, and these fix *need* to be drastic in how they're implemented because let's face it, no one in the game that plays actively should have more than 2B max in his credit bank. The fact that some players are saying that this is "normal" for a cash shop item to sell above 1b is insane. Said items were worth 50M at the time of initial release *when the ability to buy a set off the CM directly wasn't even a thing, making them even more rare*. Why are the prices of these items increasing if their real money value didn't ? (It lowered, in fact !)

 

Anyway, to get back on track and lower inflation instantly you could :

• Make appearance changes (apart from race) be credit-based.

• Add a credit tax to trades above 1Mil (yay they are doing that)

• Add the ability to use credits to unlock items from your collection
• Add the ability for a month to convert credits into Cartel Coins (this is what I meant by lowering their revenue)
• Add the ability to duplicate a decoration using credits (a bit like the guild system, except for individual players) -> 
• Add the ability to buy rare dyes for credits instead of real money (again, black/black dye costing 15€ is absurd. It's free in every other mmo with a dye system, so at least make it buyable with credits instead of CCs)
• Add mounts and cosmetics *as good as the CM ones* that sell for 50Mil each. This is one of the things FFXIV used to fight inflation for example, by releasing each patch a new "good looking" mount for 50Mil to make this money disappear.
• Increase GTN taxes when selling a cash shop item, to reduce the ability to convert real money into credits.
• In the same vein as the above, ban definitely gold sellers account and get rid of their credits, make them disappear. No reason why BW banned them for a week *and allowed them to keep their money*

This is everything that I could find that would help tremendously in fixing this economy, but is also everything that will not happen because Bioware is too afraid to lose some revenues out of it. If only they could think with long terms revenue instead of short terms incomes, this game would be in a much better place... :') 

[TrixxieTriss]

20 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

For example, a common criticism on the forum is that there is no problem with inflation

I wouldn’t say it’s a common criticism. There are maybe a handful of people at most that post there isn’t an inflation problem. The overwhelming number of people recognise there’s a problem.

Those that say there isn’t an issue are likely the one’s taking advantage of the tax avoidance to make easy credits or they’re “gold sellers” & don’t want anything to change or impede their business model. 

[TrixxieTriss]

11 hours ago, Balameb said:

And inflation does affect other stuff besides shinies

This is 100% correct.

I took off 12 months away from the game. Before I left, I spent 10 lots of time crafting dyes & I would make 100’s a week too sell. 

The most expensive crafted dyes back then were around 600k & only because they were new. The ones I called my bread & butter dyes, the high volume sellers weren’t much more than 100k. Now they are closer to 1 million. 

When you can make that many credits off a single item you can craft in less than 5 mins, you try not to waste your time farming mats. Instead you buy them off the GTN. And because the dyes are so expensive now, so are the mats that sell on the GTN. 

Inflation may have started on the CM items, but it has spread to affect most items on the GTN because credits lose their value as inflation goes up. So people gradually increase the price for everything they list to try and claw back their wealth.

[supertimtaf]

9 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is 100% correct.

I took off 12 months away from the game. Before I left, I spent 10 lots of time crafting dyes & I would make 100’s a week too sell. 

The most expensive crafted dyes back then were around 600k & only because they were new. The ones I called my bread & butter dyes, the high volume sellers weren’t much more than 100k. Now they are closer to 1 million. 

When you can make that many credits off a single item you can craft in less than 5 mins, you try not to waste your time farming mats. Instead you buy them off the GTN. And because the dyes are so expensive now, so are the mats that sell on the GTN. 

Inflation may have started on the CM items, but it has spread to affect most items on the GTN because credits lose their value as inflation goes up. So people gradually increase the price for everything they list to try and claw back their wealth.

Hey there, long time no see Trixxie

Absolutely agree on the stupid price of dye, you can also expand this to pretty much anything, being augments, stims, any kind of consumables or actual need for endgame is getting sold at ludicrous prices.

Though I believe Bioware may be the one to blame with this, by inducing a "false" rarity on these items in making them absurdly complex to craft. Like why should I need 5 conquest rewards to craft a single augment, mandatory on every piece of gear for endgame content. This is just not helping making the prices go down...

[KoriVash]

On 5/9/2023 at 6:02 AM, Ardrossan said:

I love threads like this. They really make me stop and think and re-evaluate my opinions. For example, a common criticism on the forum is that there is no problem with inflation, it's just players annoyed that they can't get x item in the CM for a price they can afford. I've always felt that my reasoning wasn't so superficial, that inflation affects mats and consumables and other QoL stuff that many newer players without a lot of credits 'need'. But then I see threads like this and think, maybe it's the same thing? Maybe it really is just players wanting cheaper cosmetic items on the CM. Wow, have I been wrong this whole time? Gotta ponder that 😵 

I think more of us agree that there is an issue then players who don't Certainly here of the official forums anyway. Remember that over all the players who post are relatively small overall compared to that actually play the game.

 

The issue is when players think that they have the only solution and BW must do as they say.

 

Never true, I don't think I have ever read any thread where even 50% of the player base agrees that actually post.

 

As such these threads are what my grandfather used to call 10 a penny threads. As in pointless & worthless. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by KoriVash