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

[Ardrossan]

5 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

In other words, you can't be bothered to back up your own claims and won't respond to evidence I provided.  Got it.  Your theorycrafting may make perfect sense to you but does not to me.  As I said your theory can be lumped into the same "conspiracy theory" category just as easily as the ones you place in that category.

I had a debate with Trixxie awhile back about using white acute modules to throttle XP gain outside of 2XP events. I use them on my characters for that purpose and have seen other players do it, but the WAM doesn't seem to work for Trixxie and so they wanted me to prove my claim by making a video showing the comparison. What they misunderstood, and what you're misunderstanding now, is that this isn't a debate forum. I didn't care if they believed me or not, I mentioned it so that other players, if interested, can see for themselves. We are under no obligation to prove our claims to each other, unless that other is bioware, and they are very specific when they ask for player data. 

So I don't really get the demanding tone of a lot of these posts. If you have no ability to make the desired changes, which only bioware does, then your opinion--'your' meaning every non-gold text poster on this forum--is basically irrelevant. Just like the Like emojis are irrelevant or forum reputation etc. Yet you seem to persistently believe that your role is to stand in judgement of other people's ideas.

Here's another example: I've been championing this idea of a credit purge or reset, and the general response has been extremely negative. And that's fine, because ultimately it doesn't matter to me what the players think. I don't need to prove that it would work or show that it would be popular, or do anything except express the idea, and from there bioware can take it and maybe they'll do that and maybe they won't. They certainly haven't let overwhelming disapproval stop them from implementing their ideas. But I guarantee you that Joe and Jackie are not sitting on the sidelines evaluating the logical rigour of our arguments and assigning points accordingly. 

I think it's important to touch grass occasionally because I have personally found it to be alarmingly easy to slip into the mindset of thinking that my judgment ought to have some kind of effect on anyone else, and it doesn't. And whenever this comes up, there's always someone who gets defensive and says they have a right to speak on the forum yadda yadda okay. Sure, say whatever you want. But that's all the power you've got, the ability to post. Your disapproval or my approval on @TrixxieTriss 'theorycrafting' does not matter whatsoever. 

 

 

 

 

[OlBuzzard]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

It's all about observing patterns of behaviour, although some game companies add a bit of extra sauce to the pot.  Example: Guild Wars 2 has a certain level of problems with bots farming loot using certain builds that are well-suited to it (Engineers and especially Necromancers, where turrets/minions kill foes for the player) and the account has full auto-loot activated.  The in-game staff accounts will observe these things and talk to characters that are doing it.  A lack of coherent response will eventually get the staff member to move the character to a different location (not too far away in case it really is an AFK player) and see what happens.

TYVM bud!  (Makes sense too).  

Would I also be correct in concluding that the overall impact of BOTS generating massive amounts of credits would probably be considerably less than that of credit selling.  As well ...  the availability of active players for the company to interact with said potential "BOTS" can and will directly affect the recognition and subsequent dealing with said prospective encroachment???

Additionally:
IMO in this thread there are several statements made by many different individuals ... MANY of which are correct.  The real frustrating part is watching someone fuss about who is MORE correct!  

Why not just help solve the problem and work together for a change?

(Like anybody these days wants to hear that sort of thing!!!)

[/facepalm]

[Spikanor]

the reason why we have a big inflation now is all thanks to the serie's mistake's there have make in the past and now we are paying the price from it.

 

mistake 1: buff the credit rewards from all the missions.

mistake 2 the bigst one: make skills free back in the old day's you need to pay for your skills with credits so there was a reason to spent credits to buy your skills you need for your char.

mistake 3: the tax free guild perk.

 

i have play a lot off MMORPG game's all and there have 1 thing commen with each other is that you need to pay for you skills with in the game monny from that type game use.

and the other thing there have commen is that the developers never ever have mess with there in the game money rewards by buffing it or make things free to get.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Spikanor

[xxSHOONYxx]

4 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

Would I also be correct in concluding that the overall impact of BOTS generating massive amounts of credits would probably be considerably less than that of credit selling.  As well ...  the availability of active players for the company to interact with said potential "BOTS" can and will directly affect the recognition and subsequent dealing with said prospective encroachment???

Credit sellers usually use bots. 
20 years ago i used to play an mmo called lineage 2 and used bots for the first and last time. Even on the potato pc i had since i was a minor back then i could run 10 bots at the same time and i probably could use more but was lazy to create more accounts. If it's anything like that now, a single person with today's pc could probably run hundreds of bots at the same time on the same pc. 

Then there is the other part of credit sellers, the ones that buy the credits from people quitting and sell them for more money. 
And with the middle finger the devs gave to the hardcore pvers that are among the wealthiest users in the game, if they decide to sell their credits and items wouldn't be surprised if the economy goes back to sh*t as when it was before the ban wave

Edited May 12, 2023 by xxSHOONYxx

[Aries_cz]

2 hours ago, Balameb said:

If you are going to quote me (or anyone else) just to contradict, at least have the decency read properly first.

First: In two places i comment in regards to 'supply' of credits. And i have made several post in that regards.

Second: Inflation can be defined in different ways and i have yet to find one that includes the 'increase of money supply' in it (as in 'being'). The increase of money supply can CAUSE inflation, but inflation can be caused by other things as well. Supply and Demand can cause inflation without printing a single bill/credit if it affects several goods/items. So can the velocity of money circulation.

I guess you may not want to follow a link explaining what i said. But you can make your own search and get educated.

I have read your link, and while velocity of circulation is an indicator in real world economies, game economies tend to be much more "simple" (unless we talk excel sheets pretending to be games, like EVE), so lot of monetary theories do not really apply, or tend to be very simplified, which is why I did not really talk about it.

For example, a lot of inflation definitions in real world are around the changing cost to produce things, or the general ability of economy to produce things. In games, that does not (IMO) really apply, as those remain constant, or only get easier (so should not be causing inflation)

Thus, the increase in supply of money is the most "key" factor in increasing costs, as people are sitting on more and more money units, with nothing to use them on (and thus being able to throw them around more).

 

However, here you go, some links that speak about inflation being (in simple terms) "more money chasing the same amount of goods"

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Inflation.html

Quote

In less formal terms, putting more dollars in circulation dilutes the purchasing power of each dollar; or: prices rise when there are more dollars chasing the same amount of goods.

 

https://www.stlouisfed.org/en/education/feducation-video-series/episode-1-money-and-inflation

Quote

Inflation is caused when the money supply in an economy grows at faster rate than the economy’s ability to produce goods and services.

 

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042015/how-does-money-supply-affect-inflation.asp

Quote

Inflation can happen if the money supply grows faster than the economic output under otherwise normal economic circumstances.

[OlBuzzard]

9 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Credit sellers usually use bots. 
20 years ago i used to play an mmo called lineage 2 and used bots for the first and last time. Even on the potato pc i had since i was a minor back then i could run 10 bots at the same time and i probably could use more but was lazy to create more accounts. If it's anything like that now, a single person with today's pc could probably run hundreds of bots at the same time on the same pc. 

Then there is the other part of credit sellers, the ones that buy the credits from people quitting and sell them for more credits. 
And with the middle finger the devs gave to the hardcore pvers that are among the wealthiest users in the game, if they decide to sell their credits and items wouldn't be surprised if the economy goes back to sh*t as when it was before the ban wave

hmmmm  Interesting ... very interesting!

Solutions?

(just asking)

[OlBuzzard]

9 minutes ago, Aries_cz said:

I have read your link, and while velocity of circulation is an indicator in real world economies, game economies tend to be much more "simple" (unless we talk excel sheets pretending to be games, like EVE), so lot of monetary theories do not really apply, or tend to be very simplified, which is why I did not really talk about it.

For example, a lot of inflation definitions in real world are around the changing cost to produce things, or the general ability of economy to produce things. In games, that does not (IMO) really apply, as those remain constant, or only get easier (so should not be causing inflation)

Thus, the increase in supply of money is the most "key" factor in increasing costs, as people are sitting on more and more money units, with nothing to use them on (and thus being able to throw them around more).

 

However, here you go, some links that speak about inflation being (in simple terms) "more money chasing the same amount of goods"

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Inflation.html

 

https://www.stlouisfed.org/en/education/feducation-video-series/episode-1-money-and-inflation

 

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042015/how-does-money-supply-affect-inflation.asp

QFT ...

No goods to buy (unless they are coming off of the CM) ....
Nothing really new (even the new SH is depressing in my opinion)

Many of the gear items are gated ...  or MODS (that we use to purchase in more than one place) ...  not accessible 

Just a couple of examples.  I'm quite certain that there's a LOT more that can be expounded upon.
That being said:

** Tons of credits came from somewhere!!  (It obviously wasn't from just running OPs ... or other means of playing SWTOR)
** Tons and Tons are still out there!! (a LOT of it legit ...  penalizing honest players will make things even worse.
** WAAAAAY too much of the economy is centered around the CM ... Many EXTREMELY expensive items are those that are purchased with real cash ... then deposited into the GTN (or traded in place of credits).

Bottom line:
** It took a while for us to get into this mess.  It will take a while to get out!
** Unless there is something worthwhile for players to want to spend their credits on ...  the glut will be around for a long time!

[Balameb]

24 minutes ago, Aries_cz said:

For example, a lot of inflation definitions in real world are around the changing cost to produce things, or the general ability of economy to produce things. In games, that does not (IMO) really apply, as those remain constant, or only get easier (so should not be causing inflation)

I agree that lots of real world definitions do not apply to game economics.

But I still think (IMO) that velocity of circulation does apply at least in some degree.

7 minutes ago, Aries_cz said:

Thus, the increase in supply of money is the most "key" factor in increasing costs, as people are sitting on more and more money units, with nothing to use them on (and thus being able to throw them around more).

I agree that money supply is A cause, i agree it is the MAIN cause(*), but IMO not the ONLY cause.

You can print all the credits in the galaxy several times over but if no ones do anything with them and just stock pile them then nothing will happen. As people 'throw them around more' is we see the prices increasing, so circulation is a key aspect as well.

In my opinion, Credit sellers make credits circulate even faster.

 

(*) BTW: I'm from Argentina, so i know very well what overprinting money does.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

but repeated by quite a few people (some in this thread).

Just because something is repeated, doesn’t make it true.

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, Balameb said:

i'm not saying credit sellers are the root issue. But the combat of them should be priority

This should be true in every game, wether there is inflation or not.
BioWare dropped this ball many years ago & occasionally kick along the ground instead of picking it up again. 

We have more of them now than during 6.x because credits were so easy to get for newish players in 6.x & they are more restrictive now. 

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

Would I also be correct in concluding that the overall impact of BOTS generating massive amounts of credits would probably be considerably less than that of credit selling

These days you would be correct. Running bots to farm mobs or even mats wouldn’t net credit sellers near enough credits to sustain the quantity of credits at the prices they sell. 

You can easily test this yourself by going to any planet & “only” farm mobs for a few hours (not part of conquest). You’ll see you don’t get near enough credits or enough gear/junk to sell to sustain the quantity & the price credit sellers have.

But several years ago you would often see groups of 4 man bots farming mobs on starter planets. This was before hyper inflation made doing that a waste of time. And before BioWare nerfed the credits on slicing nodes a few years ago, you would see bots farming them too. Neither of those things happen anymore.

And even if you had bots farming heroics, you don’t get enough credits & you can only do so many a day. 

Unfortunately, people keep repeating that it’s bots or exploits & it’s just not true. By people repeating it, over & over as fact, other people think this stuff that happened years ago is still happening & it’s not. Everyone stating that it is, hasn’t even bothered to go & find out themselves. They are just repeating what’s being said & perpetuating a false narrative.

Plus, anyone can check the bot thing very easily to confirm this themselves by doing as I suggest. 

And BioWare actioned the last credit exploit faster than I’ve ever seen them do & then they quarantined those credits in bank accounts even if players received the credits second hand & didn’t exploit themselves. We know this because of the forum posts people made after the exploit happened complaining that their banks weren’t working.

If you follow my logic & do a little bit of investigating yourself, both in game& on the forums, you’ll see that I’m right. Bots & credit exploits aren’t generating the credits for these sellers.

The sellers have evolved from simple bots and are using the GTN & P2P trades to collect their credits & redistribute the credits back to the player base in a perpetual cycle. For lack of a better term, let’s call it the perpetual GTN credit engine.

There are so many credits in the game that they don’t need to generate them themselves anymore. All they need is a large enough bank to be able to buy enough cartel items to control the price & flip things. We both know how easy that is. And now items are selling above 1 billion, if they appear on the GTN, they are instantly taken by them.

The GTN credit engine is the only logical explanation that makes sense based on the quantity & prices they are offering. Especially when you add the knowledge that there was a CM dupe (gave free items) that ran for at least 6 months or longer during the 6.x era. Imagine how much stuff these guys got free off the CM in that time 🤷🏻‍♀️.
 

Edited May 12, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

Tons of credits came from somewhere!!  (It obviously wasn't from just running OPs ... or other means of playing SWTOR)

Actually it was. Tonnes of credits were generated during the 5.x-6.x era. Dasty & I discussed & proved this in another thread. He also did some current testing to show it’s no longer happening from normal game play since 7.2

The problem is the credits are already in the game & 2 things happened with 7.0 that created a perfect storm & accelerated the already hyper inflation I warned everyone (including BioWare) was starting to happen during the middle of the 6.x period. 

1. Inflation had already gotten too high when 7.0 released. And as soon as items went above 1 billion, they could only be traded at market price in direct P2P transactions. This made the games biggest credit sink (GTN tax) in affective. Which slowed down the amount of credits usually being removed from the game drastically. There by devaluing the credits & accelerating the inflation more. 

2. BioWare completely dropped the amplifier credit sink with no replacement. Which also reduced the amount of credits leaving the game. 

So basically, the two biggest credit sinks stopped removing credits & those still being generated (even though BioWare reduce the amount) were still a lot more than was being removed. Add the already glut of credits in the game from 6.x, plus BioWare taking more than a year to address inflation after 7.0 & that is why there are so many credits.

You don’t need to blame credit exploits or bots when the players & BioWares own lax development are the cause. 

Edited May 12, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[xxSHOONYxx]

3 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

hmmmm  Interesting ... very interesting!

Solutions?

(just asking)

No idea,  that's for bioware to find out and deal with.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

8 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

You're probably right, but it would be very easy to find these accounts and ban them. They probably don't have any data analysis/ML people on their team, but if they did, they could solve that problem in an instant. 

You are right, they could, but, they won't.

Ya know what happens when Bioware bans subscriber accounts? They lose money.

It's a business. Businesses are about making money, not banning paying customers.

That's my take on it, at any rate. But than again, what the hell do I know? I'm not a friggen economist! 

I'm inclined to go with what the Trixxie-Baby says. She's alot smarter about this stuff than I am and she makes some good points.

Edited May 12, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[TrixxieTriss]

Just now, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

You are right, they could, but, they won't.

Ya know what happens when Bioware bans subscriber accounts? They lose money.

It's a business. Businesses are about making money, not banning paying customers.

That's my take on it, at any rate.

That’s why they never permanently banned hackers either. It’s why for a time, a certain hacker would keep popping back up every few months on different accounts that they rotated through. As soon as their account came off the ban, they would start using it again. But if they’d just permanently banned them, they would have got sick of every account being permanently banned & stopped or permanently left the game.

But I think banning credit sellers are different. They aren’t real players invested in game play & their characters. They can easily start another subscriber account the same day & be trading credits in minutes because they have lots of throw away accounts they store credits on. 

Bioware don’t lose money banning credit sellers. Because those sellers come back pretty quick because they make more money than what a simple subscription costs them.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Just now, TrixxieTriss said:

Bioware don’t lose money banning credit sellers. Because those sellers come back pretty quick because they make more money than what a simple subscription costs them.

Excellent point, Trixxie-Baby.  I been saying they won't ban credit-sellers because they need tons of subscriber accounts to ply their trade, but it really doesn't matter, because like you said, they don't care about the characters on those accounts, it's just business, and Bioware knows they're just gonna make new subscriber accounts, so they'll still make bank on the credit-sellers anyways.

Subscriber costs are just business expenses for them, price of doing business, and like you said, that's a drop in the bucket compared to what they're gonna make from credit selling anyways.

[microstyles]

22 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

The prices don’t indicate anything on their own except there are too many credits in the game. The theory is still wrong.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Credit seller prices went up. Prices on the GTN decreased drastically along a similar timeline. You're saying these facts are unrelated? That credit sellers don't affect the credit economy? 

Something caused prices to drop drastically in the past few months. We should all heavily encourage whatever that thing was. Bioware banning credit sellers is the only thing I've heard of that makes sense. If anyone has any other theories I'd love to hear them.

[eabevella]

Would be nice if Bioware comments on this topic.

They have the data, they know what action they took, if they did something at all.

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, microstyles said:

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Credit seller prices went up. Prices on the GTN decreased drastically along a similar timeline. You're saying these facts are unrelated? That credit sellers don't affect the credit economy? 

Something caused prices to drop drastically in the past few months. We should all heavily encourage whatever that thing was. Bioware banning credit sellers is the only thing I've heard of that makes sense. If anyone has any other theories I'd love to hear them.

At the same time prices dropped on the GTN, BioWare had announced changes to the GTN fees & P2P trades. Also the QT & damage credit sinks would be starting to affect credits for newer & less wealthy players. 

Im not saying credit sellers don’t influence the market. But they aren’t the only thing & they aren’t causing the inflation, they are a symptom of it.

What I’m saying is prices on the GTN reflect how many credits are in the game. If there are less credits in the market, the GTN prices drop. If there are an over abundance of credits, those prices will go up because the value of the credits will be lower. 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

17 minutes ago, eabevella said:

Would be nice if Bioware comments on this topic.

They have the data, they know what action they took, if they did something at all.

I believe it's S.O.P. that Bioware doesn't release any specific information on any bannings they conduct. The only ones I am certain of are the ones when they banned me. =p

Edited May 12, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[TrixxieTriss]

13 minutes ago, eabevella said:

Would be nice if Bioware comments on this topic.

They have the data, they know what action they took, if they did something at all.

They aren’t going to comment on credit sellers or tell us anything that would then inadvertently allow people to manipulate the market, until after they address the situation.

BioWare also don’t usually comment on exploits or dupes & often remove player posts that do.

So don’t expect them to make any comments in this thread. Honestly, I’m surprised that some of mine & other peoples posts haven’t already been removed. 

If BioWare were going to comment on anything in this thread, it would be well after they’ve implemented all their announced changes & cracked down on credit sellers more. But I doubt they’ll even bother doing that. 

[eabevella]

Just now, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I believe it's S.O.P. that Bioware doesn't release and specific information on any bannings they conduct.

I don't mean too specific like a list of banned accounts, just to confirm/clarify of the type of action they took in the background if they did.

Or just say something like "yes we did something but we can't talk more" or "no we didn't but we do have something in plan (the post of their proposed 7.3 change)"

You know, like, just say "no we don't plan on doing NiM R4" instead of silence.

[eabevella]

4 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

They aren’t going to comment on credit sellers or tell us anything that would then inadvertently allow people to manipulate the market, until after they address the situation.

BioWare also don’t usually comment on exploits or dupes & often remove player posts that do.

So don’t expect them to make any comments in this thread. Honestly, I’m surprised that some of mine & other peoples posts haven’t already been removed. 

If BioWare were going to comment on anything in this thread, it would be well after they’ve implemented all their announced changes & cracked down on credit sellers more. But I doubt they’ll even bother doing that. 

Which is imo, one of BW's biggest problem.

Not just regarding exploits but things like future plans etc.

Sometimes a simple clarification can stop a lot of distrust from their players.

PS: Of course I don't mean telling us in details of how to exploit the system, just something like "yes, there are loop holes and we're fixing/fixed them" "yes, we are banning goldsellers" "it's part of our plan to deal with inflation" (dunno why it's like a crime to say that, other games bann exploiters all the time).

[TrixxieTriss]

5 minutes ago, eabevella said:

yes, we are banning goldsellers

But we already know they are doing this.  They don’t need to publicly tell us all the time. 

[eabevella]

2 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

But we already know they are doing this.  They don’t need to publicly tell us all the time. 

I "feel" like I see gamereasy.com less frequent but that's only my "feelings"

I don't have any solid proof that BW is banning them.

There are so many threads where we are throwing out theories and observations about credit sellers and such. While no, BW don't need to tell us anything, but they rarely communicate (to be fair I do think they're trying to be better at it recently), it would be nice if they say something more often (not all the time), especially when a topic has been the popular debate for a while.