Just so you won't say it wasn't predictable ...

[StrikePrice]

The economy is already experiencing rapid deflation due to proposed 7.3 changes. P2P selling is basically dead as everyone is hording credits in anticipation of further draconian measures by BW to "fix" something that is not broken. The result is that people who buy things from the CM to sell for credits are unable to sell their current inventory and thus will stop buying from the CM. Mark my words, all these economy "fixes" will be rolled back once BW sees the affect on the bottom line. 

Edited May 9, 2023 by StrikePrice

[xxSHOONYxx]

Prices went down a lot recently because of bot/credit sellers ban wave. Credit sellers are the biggest cause of inflation. Some might be hesitant about 7.3 changes too, idk

[jedimasterjac]

I'd imagine the temporary pause/decline in premium currency participation is anticipated. Obviously players will stop buying as currency constricts and prices fall. We'll hit an equilibrium point and players'll start buying again.

I'd also imagine a serious chunk of CM sells are done by players who have no intention of participating in the player economy anyway and who merely want to play Space Barbie.

[StrikePrice]

33 minutes ago, jedimasterjac said:

I'd imagine the temporary pause/decline in premium currency participation is anticipated. Obviously players will stop buying as currency constricts and prices fall. We'll hit an equilibrium point and players'll start buying again.

I'd also imagine a serious chunk of CM sells are done by players who have no intention of participating in the player economy anyway and who merely want to play Space Barbie.

Definitely true. Space Barbie sales will not be impacted.

As for reaching an equilibrium point, that's true too. But, the balance might be at a point of lower CM sales. 

[DawnAskham]

Ever-increasing inflation also has the potential to affect CM sales negatively - as does the lack of / slow pace of content releases as well as all the idiotic changes they make that drive players away. 

1 hour ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Prices went down a lot recently because of bot/credit sellers ban wave. Credit sellers are the biggest cause of inflation. Some might be hesitant about 7.3 changes too, idk

I believe this is the most likely driver of the recent economic contraction.

RMT (farmers / botters / exploiters / brokers / sellers) is the real scourge of the economy and has driven the majority of inflation. Only time will tell if Bioware is serious about combating RMT on a continual basis or if the recent ban waves were a once and done for a few years event.

Edited May 9, 2023 by DawnAskham

[xxSHOONYxx]

9 minutes ago, DawnAskham said:

Ever-increasing inflation also has the potential to affect CM sales negatively - as does the lack of / slow pace of content releases as well as all the idiotic changes they make that drive players away. 

I believe this is the most likely driver of the recent economic contraction.

RMT (farmers / botters / exploiters / brokers / sellers) is the real scourge of the economy and has driven the majority of inflation. Only time will tell if Bioware is serious about combating RMT on a continual basis or if the recent ban waves were a once and done for a few years event.

According to another user the ban was not permanent for all and some that were banned were already unbanned. If true it's very LOL on bioware

[TrixxieTriss]

12 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

measures by BW to "fix" something that is not broken.

How can you say it’s not broken 😂🤣

[TrixxieTriss]

11 hours ago, DawnAskham said:

RMT (farmers / botters / exploiters / brokers / sellers) is the real scourge of the economy and has driven the majority of inflation

They don’t cause inflation 🤦‍♀️

[MotherCrusher]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

They don’t cause inflation 🤦‍♀️

How exactly do bots and exploiters not cause inflation by adding billions and billions of credits into the economy?

[eabevella]

Whatever causes the deflation, it's definitely not due to the quick travel fees lol

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, MotherCrusher said:

How exactly do bots and exploiters not cause inflation by adding billions and billions of credits into the economy?

Bots don’t & can’t farm RMT’s. That was my point.

Its also been proven & explained by many people here on the forums that inflation isn’t caused by people exploiting or bottling. 

Repeating misinformation as fact doesn’t make it true. 

Edited May 10, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[MotherCrusher]

18 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Bots don’t & can’t farm RMT’s. That was my point.

Its also been proven & explained by many people here on the forums that inflation isn’t caused by people exploiting or bottling. 

Repeating misinformation as fact doesn’t make it true. 

Let me tell you a story

Once on zakuul, ages ago, someone popped out of a wall, took a slicing node, then disappeared back into the wall. It was a random nonsensical name without a legacy, the same you'd see selling on the fleet.

How do you think it is that the people providing credits for real money gain their credits? they sure as hell don't gain it trough legitimate means.

As such, let me ask you again, how do people literally printing infinite money into the economy and then selling it for real money not cause inflation?

[TrixxieTriss]

37 minutes ago, MotherCrusher said:

Let me tell you a story

Once on zakuul, ages ago, someone popped out of a wall, took a slicing node, then disappeared back into the wall. It was a random nonsensical name without a legacy, the same you'd see selling on the fleet.

How do you think it is that the people providing credits for real money gain their credits? they sure as hell don't gain it trough legitimate means.

As such, let me ask you again, how do people literally printing infinite money into the economy and then selling it for real money not cause inflation?

Sigh, you don’t understand how inflation works. It’s based on how many credits the game generates. 

Selling those gathered crafting items on the GTN does not cause inflation because they don’t generate credits. And BioWare nerfed the credits you got from slicing nodes years ago.

If they were just farming crafting mats & selling them at a vendor for credits, that also would create credits.

But the amount of mats sold at a vendor that would be required to actually influence inflation would be more than the game generates. 

They would get more credits by farming / killing mobs on a starter planet & selling the junk at a vendor, than farming mats & selling at a vendor.

Edited May 10, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

15 hours ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

According to another user the ban was not permanent for all and some that were banned were already unbanned. If true it's very LOL on bioware

I don't really know why people have such a hard time understanding this.

They will never ever ever, ban credit sellers. They would be hurting themselves if they did. The credit sellers need tons of subscriber accounts to hold and trade the amounts of in game credits they have. They have trillions of credits, and a subscriber account can only hold a rather small proportion of the amount of credits they have to sell and be able to move around. 

Bioware makes 1000's (if not tens of thousands) of dollars a month in subscriber fees from the various credit seller rings that exist.

From a business point of view, Bioware would be idiots to ban credit sellers. I don't even hold it against them.

This is why you find credit/gold sellers in most MMOs. They make the mmo companies tons of money.

At the end of the day, like it or not, credit sellers are paying customers, and they don't hurt Bioware, they help Bioware.

I'm not aware of any banning of the credit sellers having taken place other than what I'm reading here. But even if that is the case, this was clearly nothing more than a token gesture, and is why they were unbanned so quickly.

Even if they did ever choose to ban them permanently, which, they never will, they would just make new subscriber accounts. They're not interested in the characters those subscriber accounts have, they don't play them, they don't care about them, they are for botting and moving credits around.

Gotta be realistic here. Credit sellers aren't going anywhere. And if that means they effect the make believe money and the make believe economy, Bioware will sacrifice the make believe economy in favor of the real life economy that credit sellers effect in their favor.

[recalcitrantIre]

3 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

They will never ever ever, ban credit sellers.

and yet the most overt credit seller rates, the ones with bot spammers on fleet, have jumped up to $8 per billion from a fairly recent $1 per billion

to say that absolutely nothing has happened to the most verminous users of SWTOR is utterly delusional

 

and the "deflation" is already reverting because guess what, exploits only have short-term influence and the recent duping bug clearly wasn't widespread enough to keep prices low for long

[Aries_cz]

7 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Its also been proven & explained by many people here on the forums that inflation isn’t caused by people exploiting or bottling.

I am reasonably sure the video posted of something like 10 character (very clearly bots) standing on Ord Mantel and farming Savrips (and collecting the dropped credits) is pretty clear example of bots generating credits the sellers then sell to people. Where do you think the sellers selling billions of credits for ludicrously cheap prices generate them? They certainly are not playing the game "as it should be"

Unless you meant something completely different

[DawnAskham]

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Sigh, you don’t understand how inflation works. It’s based on how many credits the game generates. 

Selling those gathered crafting items on the GTN does not cause inflation because they don’t generate credits. And BioWare nerfed the credits you got from slicing nodes years ago.

If they were just farming crafting mats & selling them at a vendor for credits, that also would create credits.

But the amount of mats sold at a vendor that would be required to actually influence inflation would be more than the game generates. 

They would get more credits by farming / killing mobs on a starter planet & selling the junk at a vendor, than farming mats & selling at a vendor.

Wherever the credits come from, which varies over time based on changes made by Bioware, bots and exploitive behaviors generate the majority of credits sold by sellers which add way more in credits to the economy than players just playing the game.

Any gameplay loop players can repeat to earn credits, bots can and will do the same, except 24 / 7 / 365 on multiple accounts all running at the same time. And this is on top of outright exploits that continue to pop up from time to time that inject trillions of extra credits into the game. 

So yeah, most of the inflation driven by excess credits came from illegitimate means such as exploits and bots - not from some random player running heroics each day.

As others have pointed out, no one is spending hours in-game to generate a billion raw credits when a billion credits sold for just over a dollar (before the last ban wave - prices have increased recently).

Edited May 10, 2023 by DawnAskham

[TrixxieTriss]

42 minutes ago, DawnAskham said:

yeah, most of the inflation driven by excess credits came from illegitimate means such as exploits and bots - not from some random player running heroics each day.

This is just false. Please stop spreading conspiracy theories. 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Aries_cz said:

I am reasonably sure the video posted of something like 10 character (very clearly bots) standing on Ord Mantel and farming Savrips (and collecting the dropped credits) is pretty clear example of bots generating credits the sellers then sell to people. Where do you think the sellers selling billions of credits for ludicrously cheap prices generate them? They certainly are not playing the game "as it should be"

Unless you meant something completely different

Please link said video

[DawnAskham]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is just false. Please stop spreading conspiracy theories. 

Again - please explain how sellers are able to offer a billion credits for a dollar by using normal gameplay means to obtain credits?

Is there some third-world country with SWTOR credit farmers earning a nickel a day for playing the game for credits?

[Char_Ell]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is just false. Please stop spreading conspiracy theories. 

As far as I'm concerned this theory has just as much credibility as any you've offered.  What the in-game credit economy debate has lacked is good data.  We know BioWare has the data but of course does not share it with players.  Here are the credit selling prices I observed and recorded from February thru April.  I did not see any credit sellers advertising from mid-March until April 9.  I concluded that credit sellers must have lost a bunch of their credits and so increased their sale rate.  What is your explanation for why the cost of credits has increased so much since mid March?  Why does it seem like a conspiracy theory to think that because credit sellers have increased the cost of credits that players that buy from credit sellers have not been buying as much, reducing credit supply and thus without as many credits in the economy we've seen a corresponding drop in prices of the trade economy?

Date	Server	Dollars	Credits
2/8/2023	Satele Shan	$1.60	1,000,000,000
2/12/2023	Satele Shan	$1.60	1,000,000,000
2/15/2023	Star Forge	$1.30	1,000,000,000
2/16/2023	Satele Shan	$1.30	1,000,000,000
2/19/2023	Satele Shan	$1.30	1,000,000,000
3/4/2023	Satele Shan	$1.30	1,000,000,000
3/8/2023	Satele Shan	$1.30	1,000,000,000
3/14/2023	Satele Shan	$2.29	1,000,000,000
3/16/2023	Satele Shan	$3.49	1,000,000,000
4/9/2023	Satele Shan	$9.90	1,000,000,000
4/24/2023	Star Forge	$7.99	1,000,000,000
4/25/2023	Satele Shan	$7.99	1,000,000,000
4/27/2023	Satele Shan	$7.99	1,000,000,000

[microstyles]

23 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

Why does it seem like a conspiracy theory to think that because credit sellers have increased the cost of credits that players that buy from credit sellers have not been buying as much, reducing credit supply and thus without as many credits in the economy we've seen a corresponding drop in prices of the trade economy?

Your chart corresponds with the price drops I've seen pretty well. Definitely the best theory I've heard for what's happening currently in the credit economy.

The prices on most of the things I monitor are like 1/3 of what they were a few months ago. If that's the effect of banning credit sellers regularly, then bioware should just do that and scrap all these fees against legitimate players.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

8 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

and yet the most overt credit seller rates, the ones with bot spammers on fleet, have jumped up to $8 per billion from a fairly recent $1 per billion

That's a matter of degrees, not a refutation of their presence. 

[OlBuzzard]

Buying and selling legitimate items on the CM does not cause inflation.  Excessive generation of credits (and nothing still out there to spend them on) ... this adds to inflation.

IMO there are two primary issues that are directly responsible for the insane inflation we have right now:
** Bots  (and other similar exploits)
** Credit sellers

Both of these can generate insane amounts of credits through means other than normal game play... which INCLUDES CREDIT FARMING.   Credit farming is no different than crafting mat farming.  It requires an investment of NORMAL playing the game.  BOTS are not acceptable!  If BOTS are used in the process of farming ... then once again this is a problem.

Regardless of what is done .. IF these two areas are not addressed then the situation will continue as it is now!  (Although there is an apparent attempt to demonstrate a concern and a somewhat limited exercise on the behalf of the team to stop a part of the impact!)

Again ... credit farming does not achieve the massive amount of credits we have seen in recent years...  Neither does buying (cheap) and selling for a nice tidy profit.  These exercises do NOT add (or flood the market) with credits into the game!!

Now then ...  the real question(s):
** Does BW have the means to stop the credit sellers??  (Particularly if these people are from China for example).  If not ??  Then what??  BTW... it should be noted that I get pelted with the same issues playing WoW! 😲
** Just how recognizable is the usage of BOTS???  (Sorry this is beyond my paygrade... someone like @SteveTheCynic will have to respond to that).  But I think this gets my point across!

There has to be a more appropriate response to this matter since it has obviously hurt the game almost as much as the ..... 

(hmmm  maybe I'd better not go there...  at least not now!!)

😇

[juliushorst]

2 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

IMO there are two primary issues that are directly responsible for the insane inflation we have right now:
** Bots  (and other similar exploits)
** Credit sellers

Let's not forget several exploits that happened over the years and added insane amounts of credits to the economy.