Let's talk about this inflation warfare that is going around.

[rashad_steelwolf]

So I read over the questioner and read the interpretations of micro- and macro-economics of the developers. 

Before I start telling you how I feel, let us look at definitions so any one reading these can be on the same page.

The words Inflation and tax  and currency are defined as the following (from the Merriam webster dictionary as it is one of my favorites):

Inflation ( as it has to do with economics) - a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services

Tax - a charge usually of money set by authority on persons or property for public purposes

Currency - paper money in circulation

From what I understand  there is an inflation issue in the game with it's currency of credits. That to  counter this, the developers have added handy little taxes to about everything from trades, to quick travel and etc that was not there before. 

1. it is not inflation as no more money has been made  that has not always been made by players. At one time they had credit duplication bugs and etc in many games that the developers have long time fixed. As the credits was not inherent to the game, that would cause inflation.  Now there are limits to the total amount of credits  you can have or sell items for or trade.  The developers always have a hard limit. This prevents inflation becuase it prevents the prices going over the limits a player can have or store. If there is a limit then you can reduce the increase the volumes of money you are paying without the developers creating it. So the issue isn't an increase of money compared to relative goods, it is people assigning arbitrary cost to limited quantity items. The idea of them adding arbitrary cost is simple supply and demand. Items that cost more tend to be extremely rare.  Because people want more than the allocated number or are filling their piggy banks too quickly, then the developers felt the need to add taxes to nearly everything to drain the piggy banks.

2. These are not taxes they or fees or even penalties of conveniences. Taxes are collected by authority for a specific public purpose. Developers get nothing from removing our credits by the this. Thus, they are taxes. They are fees for mailing or trading. They are penalties ( in the form of a convenience fee) for wanting to quick travel out of a nest of 50 Nar Shaddaa baddies from a heroic becuase you don't want to spent 20 minutes fighting your way out of it as it all has re-spawned. Not to mention, this is onto of the legacy unlocking fees that you used to get your quick travel to work when you need it most.

The reason I specify these as penalties as they really do not affect older players. These are especially penalties to not the older players but the new players that have no idea how to get in the system to make that many credits. They are new. They may even have a smuggler or Agent or other character that has to rely on quick traveling to a specific place so they don't waist a more valuable currency than credits... time. 

3. The game is set up to now monopolize the only three forms of currency humans have in our lives. These currencies are Time, Energy, and Money. In the game you have two main monetary currencies that reference our country's currency such as the US Dollar for Americans, these is Credits and Cartel Coins. Any secondary monetization is earned through the expenditure or time and energy. So again this is hurting your newer players more than older players. So all the newbies that try your games are suddenly leaving after a few months becuase of these kinds of systems. they are justified as the game is built around maximizing your time in game earing credits or other monizations to get gear, other items, or clout in titles.  If you are already maximizing the use of our time, and energy to push us in your game longer and longer, why are you now trying to decide about how to take away our money? In any business the client picks one of time/quality (energy)/cost while the business owner picks two of the others. Example, you want to serve high dollar food. You pick the quality and price and we decide if we have the time to go there. If you try to force all three you then suddenly get people leaving.

4. How to fix this? Well there are some simple solutions. The first is to acknowledge that you can not counter player greed and players trying to screw people over.  The best way to start with it is to add a credit to cartel coin to US dollar or other country equivalent currency on the pages you go to buy cartel coins or in a infographic on the cartel market area of the main bar of the game. Better yet, add a full tab that does auto calacurtations... for them where they only have to pick an item from collection and it gives a read out of the cartel coins and approximate credit value. I already hear the people saying we do that when unlocking items in legacy or bank or etc. Well that apparently is too much to math as most don't try to figure it out on a full spread-sheet or proportion calculator app  to get a close guesstimations as those do not seem accurate.  For legendary items drops, especially for late game gear and etc, then have it in the tool tip., yea, I can see someone pointing out the issues with going back and making all the inconsistent pricing updated, All I have to say to that is that should have been done ages agfo as I started this game in the first right before Hutt Cartel (if im not wrong I believe that was the first expansion and i had a few characters in before then). I know will be hard to fine toon the programming but with a few good programmers and adding these changes you won't get those attreibary cost. Right now, you do not have a direct cartel to credit converter that is easy to find for new players so they realize if they are being screwed or not.

5. What to do about the people who are filling their piggy banks too fast and it is not emptying their piggybanks fast enough. Let me start with saying I never had that problem. I do not buy craze nice gear for credits. The most credits I sue are easily drained in crafting and leveling up crafting.  Or, I head to a vendor to get tons of companion items to level them up through prestige. I also know how to just get rid of credits going to the casino during events ro randomly donating them to people. But if you really want to impose these convenience fees make them propionate to the Legacy level or even rating. I been away a few years and mine is only 18k at level 50. What you should do is expect new players to go broke becuase they are tired and didn't get enough credits on a heroic after paying a 5k run to a terminal on Nar Shadaa becuase they don't have the energy to run and get chased by mobs.

In conclusion, I have said what i said and I welcome any feed back about what i said that is objectively wrong. I believe my thoughts are sound as a person who has helped program a few games, worked on UI/UX app feedback, and have a good understanding of customer service. I do thank for your time if you read this.

[mCion]

thanks for your opinion and viewpoint.  I think some of these ideas deserve consideration.

[GrammaJedi]

I understand inflation and the need to curb it. The GTN does need an overhaul and an increase to the amount you can buy and sell there. I understand why you want to put a tax/fee on trades, but a tax/fee on mail is going to break a lot of small guilds. Most guilds have a leaderboard and send credits to those in the top 10/15 of the leaderboard each week. Putting a fee on this is going to increase the total amount each week, some guilds will not be able to handle this. If I wanted to send1,000,000. to a brand new guildie to help with the QT costs on the first few planets it will cost me an additional 80K and if I include a speeder or crystal, cost me a lot more.

QT fees are way too high. 5K to get from one end of Couruscant to the other, when a player has maybe 3-4 K from the first planet. I rarely use it any more and will not spend more the 500-600 for QT. Either make QT a legacy item like speeder piloting 4and 5 and charge a 1 time fee of 1 Mill or 1.5 Mill or lower the QT fees to double the speeder transport fees

You can up the costs of the lower level mods, enhancements,etc from the vendors.

And please increase the number of decos one can have on some items above 10. With all the strongholds now - only having 10 of Felusia Stato is not enough anymore. And the Rishi Idol that I get in the mail for each new character is capped at 10 and I have a bunch just sitting waiting for an increase.

[Dayshadow]

The only way to deal with market inflation is for Bioware themselves to put market sell maximums on everything and force people to sell at reasonable prices. Sell maximums being determined by some combination of rarity, level, quality, etc. Most people aren't going to sit in fleet all day trying to hawk goods. It's simply impractical for anything other than highly sought, rare, expensive items. And those that do try to hawk the more common unremarkable items at the current ridiculous prices won't be able to compete with the GTN prices.

[sundancebill]

The thing about the GTN inflation is that you never actually have  to use it at all  so let the rich people sell level 10 mods to each other for a million credits all they want.

The game is entirely playable without ever  going there.