Well, I already hate 7.3...

[Mubark]

Since this game launched I've ran "contests" in-game to help members of our gaming community earn money in this game.

I'd sell things on the GTN and take those winnings and "payout" for conquest points earned in-game to members of our guild(s).

We just finished a huge 10 week contest where the "prize" was 1,000,000,000 credits.

We also pay out 1st, 2nd and 3rd place credit prizes for conquest points. @ 40, 20, and 10 mil each.

I paid out the 1 billion prize today + an additional 80 million tax.

I paid out the 40 million award, plus an additional 3,200,000 tax. x2

I paid out the 20 million award, plus an additional 1,600,000 tax. x2

I paid out the 10 million award, plus an additional 800,000 tax. x2

So that's a total of 91,200,000 tax....

8% is WAY TOO HIGH!

And that's only involving payouts. Not even doing anything on the GTN.

 

ALSO...

This will not help the economy because people trying to sell items on the GTN will calculate the tax and raise their prices as high as possible to compensate for them or they will sell them another way to avoid this high tax....

There's another issue with this:

If I put an item up for sale on the GTN is that also set up with an 8% tax on the sale?

Then, if it is and I do a contest to give away the credits, my tax rate was charged to me twice. So, I'd be losing 16% on every item I sell technically.

What I'm wondering is this...

How many times in the game will I have to pay 8% tax on the credits I earn or make in the GTN?

Right now, it's twice.

I sell an item on the GTN, I get charged a high tax. Then, if I run a contest and someone wins that contest and I give them credits as a prize, then I get charged a 2nd tax to pay them.

Is there a tax for purchasing an item on the GTN or just to sell it?

I suggested a far better solution to fix the economy awhile back and it was ignored.

I suggested the DEVs place vendors in the game with special items and charge a huge credits amount to purchase them. That would create a nice "credit sink" for the game and wouldn't "disrupt" our play style. They could even set up a vendor in the game that would sell cartel coins for in-game credits, like a credit exchange vendor. 100 mil credits for one cartel coin? Something like that.

But instead, they decided to murder the game....

Edited June 14, 2023 by Mubark

[Whykara]

7 hours ago, Mubark said:

I sell an item on the GTN, I get charged a high tax. Then, if I run a contest and someone wins that contest and I give them credits as a prize, then I get charged a 2nd tax to pay them.

To be fair, that's a very specific problem. But I get your point. They introduced direct trade tax to patch the tax loop hole. But I don't think it was that big of a loop hole, most trades happen on the GTN anyway. Why do people use direct trade? Because most often they want to trade things above 1 billion creds. The simplest solution would just have been to increase the GTN limit. The need for direct trade would have been reduced and the tax revenue increased, without changing anyone's playstyle.

[captainbladejk]

Whoever thought this "tax" was a good idea shouldn't be allowed near the game anymore because it doesn't address why things were as expensive as they were to start with. Over in my own thread I gave some numbers about how inconsistent the "value" tax is treated. The examples below for you guys here. 

Twisted Fang Lightsaber (single hilt) - 212.8m. - platinium

Elegant Duelists Armor - 1.3m - gold

Tempted Apprentice Shoto - 4.6m - silver

Antique Socorro Saberstaff Besh - 40k - bronze

Now those items are just 4 particular items I could pull out of my legacy bank and slap in a window with a guildy to test things. I can see some higher rarity items having a higher tax value, but in what universe should the higher rarity item be going for LESS than a lower rarity item? Also as I said in my own thread, 212.8m for that twisted fang lightsaber. I've done some further calculations this morning and it's rather ridiculous as the tax rate can potentially go even higher than the 8% or lower. 

 

So that tax above on that Twisted Fang Saber assumes that I intend to sell the item for 2,662,500,000 credits to get that 8% number above. I tried having a guildy flop some credits in the window just to see what would happen and there was no change in the associated fee. So I can only assume one of two things, either it just doesn't change and sticks with whatever "value" the devs think it has, or my guildy didn't flop enough credits into the window to change the potential fee. So assuming this is a static tax based on the "value" the devs have assigned it we've got a problem as the tax rate could got ALOT higher than the 8% easily enough. Let's suppose hypothetically I did want to sell the saber for that 2.6b price tag calculated as the saber's value. If said guildy wished to buy the saber for above that price, I am now paying less than the 8% tax. If I wanted to cut dude a break and sell it to him for a flat 2b cutting him a 600m credit break, that 212.8m credit tax would mean I'm now paying a tax rate of 10.65% on that item, which is well above what the devs advertised. Even then lets say I got tired of it sitting in my bank and not being used and wanted to just give it to said guildy, I'm still paying a 212.8m "tax" on a gift which is straight ridiculous and pure theft. The other day I gave a new guy a Marka Ragnos set, a Ziost Guardian hilt, a crystal, an xp booster, and some credits to get him started out. Based on these ridiculous tax rates I shudder to think how much would've been stolen from me, I mean "taxed." Even just handing a new guy 100k credits to cover a repair bill would mean i'm being charged an additional 8k credits on top of it which is just foolishness. 

 

If they really wanted to give us credit sinks, they should've given us stuff people want to buy into, such as decos, duplicating a certain amount of decos like we can for guild donations, or my personal favorite I never saw anyone bring up, let us pay an amount of credits to insta craft certain things. Such as 25k to insta craft some adrenals. Doesn't have to be exactly 25k but that's just the starter number I threw out. These taxes also ignore why things got so expensive to start with, no viable credit sinks, and no taxes and fast travel "fees" don't count. They had those fees before but removed them because they added no value and lowered repair bill costs for those same reasons. It punished new people. So now with these ridiculous tax rates all they've done is punish people like me who actually might help someone. I've been here since the start of the game and beta as a founder and there's nothing I need in game. From time to time I might actually throw something to someone else if I'm out and about in game, but this pretty well squishes incentive to do that as I'm not paying millions of credits on top of that. 

[Noahtep]

Devs aren't economists and neither are players - they do not understand the difference between "inflation" and supply VS demand. 

[jedimasterjac]

Looks like the taxes are working as intended. That’s an extra hundred million no longer in the economy. Good sign to me. 

[Toraak]

that is the point of the tax. To remove excess credits from the game completely.

 

Working as intended. After awhile the prices will start to drop as more and more credits are removed.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

"Do something about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

"How dare you do what you did about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

Lose/Lose.

For once they actually listened to what the playerbase was saying and did something about it. Castigating them over it isn't a good way to engender them to listen in the future.

It's all make believe money anyways.

If you can afford to give away a billion credits, you can afford the tax.

 

[jedimasterjac]

6 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

"Do something about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

"How dare you do what you did about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

Lose/Lose.

For once they actually listened to what the playerbase was saying and did something about it. Castigating them over it isn't a good way to engender them to listen in the future.

It's all make believe money anyways.

If you can afford to give away a billion credits, you can afford the tax.

 

I know, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for the players who have billions to give away. crocodile tears and whatnot. 
 

“Credits are so worthless that I can give away billions but please don’t take away an extra hundred million :(“

Edited June 14, 2023 by jedimasterjac

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

2 minutes ago, jedimasterjac said:

I know, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for the players who have billions to give away. crocodile tears and whatnot. 

heheh Ikr.

I agree with what you were saying. Taking big chunks of creds out of circulation like that means they won't just be recycled. They are effectively gone from the game.

The less credits in circulation, the less credits people have available, the less they'll be willing to spend them haphazardly. People will start lowering their prices for what they are selling because less people will be buying because they have less credits to spend.

It's like they want them to do something about it, they just don't want it to effect them, just everyone else.

[TheStainRemains]

My issue is that my buddy and I who run together can't just give each other items we make via trading. It costs a mil just to give 6 adrenals away that you were giving for free. That's ridiculous. 

[Balameb]

15 hours ago, Mubark said:

Since this game launched I've ran "contests" in-game to help members of our gaming community earn money in this game.

I'd sell things on the GTN and take those winnings and "payout" for conquest points earned in-game to members of our guild(s).

We just finished a huge 10 week contest where the "prize" was 1,000,000,000 credits.

We also pay out 1st, 2nd and 3rd place credit prizes for conquest points. @ 40, 20, and 10 mil each.

I paid out the 1 billion prize today + an additional 80 million tax.

I paid out the 40 million award, plus an additional 3,200,000 tax. x2

I paid out the 20 million award, plus an additional 1,600,000 tax. x2

I paid out the 10 million award, plus an additional 800,000 tax. x2

So that's a total of 91,200,000 tax....

8% is WAY TOO HIGH!

I disagree.

15 hours ago, Mubark said:

I sell an item on the GTN, I get charged a high tax. Then, if I run a contest and someone wins that contest and I give them credits as a prize, then I get charged a 2nd tax to pay them.

Now this is a real thing. Sadly, i think is the side effect we need to deal with because everyone was to confortable during 6.X party. And no, i don't feel bad for new players that missed it (i actually skipped most of it). Even now, this game lets new players be billionares before hiting max level if you just put a little effeort. Tested on new legacies i made to farm Seasons.

 

4 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

Twisted Fang Lightsaber (single hilt) - 212.8m. - platinium

Elegant Duelists Armor - 1.3m - gold

Tempted Apprentice Shoto - 4.6m - silver

Antique Socorro Saberstaff Besh - 40k - bronze

I think that whatever formula they used to set initial fee values must have some holes in it. They said first value would be a media of GTN completed sale values from all servers; then it would update from each server. Now, i think there could be a problem when some servers had no reference value. Twisted fang was around 1 bill on SF a couple weeks ago, but if other servers had no value and the formula just inputs a high one like 4 like 5 bill by default; then it could mess the average/media values.

[Toraak]

9 minutes ago, TheStainRemains said:

My issue is that my buddy and I who run together can't just give each other items we make via trading. It costs a mil just to give 6 adrenals away that you were giving for free. That's ridiculous. 

Medpacs, stims, and adrenals were not supposed to be taxed at all from what BW said, so if they are report it as a bug.

[GeneralGyro]

they need to lower the tax for bundle items i was selling 100 dark projects for 400m and my tax was 170m credits cause the tax per project is 1m+

 

like cmon

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

3 hours ago, Toraak said:

Medpacs, stims, and adrenals were not supposed to be taxed at all from what BW said, so if they are report it as a bug.

Those things not being taxed makes sense.

I've said it quite a few times on the forums with regard to inflation and the prices of things that the only things you need to play this game to the absolute fullest, do all content, is medpacs, stims, and adrenals (and their PVP equivalents).

Everything else is bling, and you don't need bling. You may want bling, but you don't need it.

No one really bytches that diamonds are expensive.

[OlBuzzard]

4 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

"Do something about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

"How dare you do what you did about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

Lose/Lose.

For once they actually listened to what the playerbase was saying and did something about it. Castigating them over it isn't a good way to engender them to listen in the future.

It's all make believe money anyways.

If you can afford to give away a billion credits, you can afford the tax.

 

Nailed it .. AND (as predicted) .. some are STILL complaining!!

[/facepalm]

Good post BTW.

[SithLikeTraps]

9 hours ago, jedimasterjac said:

Looks like the taxes are working as intended. That’s an extra hundred million no longer in the economy. Good sign to me. 

May I ask how did you come to this conclusion? If I have to pay a hundred million to give a gift it simply means that I won't give it, period. The credits still stay in the economy, and both parties are now frustrated with the game and are wondering whether they should keep paying the sub for this kind of service.

[Quantum]

9 hours ago, Noahtep said:

Devs aren't economists and neither are players - they do not understand the difference between "inflation" and supply VS demand. 

Of course they aren't but you also can't apply real world economic theory directly into the game on an apples to apples basis.  They can't control how many credits are in circulation like a real world nation can,  otherwise you'd see even worse problems (imagine if mobs didn't have credits as loot because of players hording).  They're doing the only thing they can do to try and stabilize the game economy by trying to pull credits out at a rate help offset the rate they are being introduced in.  Before this the only controls were the much more limited sinks in place, and credits being held on inactive accounts.

It will cause a market flux but eventually it with either stabilize, or they will have to adjust things again.  It is simply how it has to happen in games like this or the game economy will get beyond the point of being brought under control.

[Khoxion]

21 hours ago, Mubark said:

Since this game launched I've ran "contests" in-game to help members of our gaming community earn money in this game.

From my experience, it seems to be super easy to make money in this game. I came back about a month ago and started with roughly 1 mil, but i also bought some legacy unlocks at the beginning so realistically it was far less (100k iirc). Most of my characters are low level and didn't have well developed crafting skills.
After one month, i have made roughly 2.5 billion, mostly via crafting. I also have everything augmented with purple 74 augments, solely through crafting. I never bought anything on the GTN except grade 11 missions when they were sold cheap.
I didn't stress anything but i guess if i had, i could have made more credits.

(i also traded my stuff entirely over the GTN)

Edited June 14, 2023 by Khoxion

[jedimasterjac]

19 minutes ago, SithLikeTraps said:

May I ask how did you come to this conclusion? If I have to pay a hundred million to give a gift it simply means that I won't give it, period. The credits still stay in the economy, and both parties are now frustrated with the game and are wondering whether they should keep paying the sub for this kind of service.

The intent of the tax is to reduce off-GTN trade and drive prices down (at least to the GTN cap). 

[SithLikeTraps]

13 minutes ago, jedimasterjac said:

The intent of the tax is to reduce off-GTN trade and drive prices down (at least to the GTN cap).

No objections to the trades being taxed, in the ideal world all trades would go through the GTN and everyone would be happy. But the current "solution" isn't solving that problem. Those who want to dodge the tax can still do it, join the same guild, wait 30 days, and voila you can trade via the guild bank with no tax. What they did instead is they have broken any kind of charity and helping the other players.
A much better solution would be to raise the GTN cap, most of the traders would go there because it's simply easier to find what you want to buy there instead of sitting in the trade chat spamming "WTB whatever" every 10 seconds.

Edited June 14, 2023 by SithLikeTraps
fixed mistype, "doge" -> "dodge"

[Ardrossan]

6 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

"Do something about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

"How dare you do what you did about the inflation in the game economy, it's terrible!"

Lose/Lose.

For once they actually listened to what the playerbase was saying and did something about it. 

Oh dear @WayOfTheWarriorx , I'm afraid you've walked into a dark alley with this post 

Yes, we want them to do something about the economy, but not in ways that significantly affect quality of life and don't actually fix the problem, like taxing QT. Taxing securetrade may be a better idea, but there are probably lots of other ideas that would do more while being less visibly annoying to players. As far as 'listening' goes, I don't recall too many posts about taxing securetrade. I did see it suggested as needed to close a loophole for player-to-player trading and credit selling, but the main focus in most of the player-driven ideas was higher taxes on the GTN, higher max credit limit on the GTN, and viable credit sinks. So I don't see that they listened to players whatsoever.

Quote

Castigating them over it isn't a good way to engender them to listen in the future.

You know, a lot of these changes get tested on PTS first. I don't care enough to test, but I check the forums occasionally, and what I usually see is very polite, information-heavy reports on various issues that need to be reworked, quite different from what we see in general discussion threads. And unfortunately, even though that is the forum where it would be most likely that someone would listen to feedback, it makes no difference. So when we get to this point, post-PTS, and the thing has already been implemented into the game...Well, why should we be nice? What does that get us? 

It's not a rhetorical question. The claim we hear all the time is that castigating the devs is a short sighted strategy. What has your "be nice, they're people too" strategy gotten any of us in this game in terms of greater communication, aside from the usual performative virtue signaling?

Quote

It's all make believe money anyways.

If you can afford to give away a billion credits, you can afford the tax.

Translation: I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS TOPIC AND AM ARGUING MERELY TO INFURIATE YOU. If you don't care about the economy, if it's all make believe to you, why are you posting? Yes, billionaires can afford the tax, it's everyone else that is the frustrating part. 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Ardrossan

[jedimasterjac]

1 hour ago, SithLikeTraps said:

Those who want to dodge the tax can still do it, join the same guild, wait 30 days, and voila you can trade via the guild bank with no tax.

No one’s going to join a guild for an entire month to make a trade. 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

Oh dear @WayOfTheWarriorx , I'm afraid you've walked into a dark alley with this post.

Yes, I'm rather good at that it seems. Story of my life. =p

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

Yes, we want them to do something about the economy, but not in ways that significantly affect quality of life and don't actually fix the problem, like taxing QT. Taxing securetrade may be a better idea, but there are probably lots of other ideas that would do more while being less visibly annoying to players.

I failed economics the first time I took it in college. Never much had a mind for such things so I certainly may be missing some important nuisances when it comes to economies.

I did think taxing QT was rather stupid. Can't hope to really effect the economy in any meaningful way and it doesn't do anything to people who have a lot of credits, it does effect those who don't though. I'm certainly not in favor of that and think they should reverse that.

I am one of those 'billionares' so it's a non-issue to me, but I can respect the fact that it hurts newer player and those with less means.

I am in favor of taxing trade sales. Those are the peeps who have 100's of billions, they can afford it and its a lot of credits getting thrown around that venue. I'm not one of those Billionares, I earned about 50-60- billion over the last 8 months about. Most of that went to gold augs which was the reason I started making a concerned effort to earn the necessary credits. I sell stuff I craft with Biochem and sell decos I get from deco hunting. I sell exclusively on the GTN and I low ball everything, usually by millions cheaper.  I've got about 8 billion in the bank presently.

As far as other ideas, I really don't have the head for that. I've seen a lot of people propose a lot of ideas, but I lack the requite knowledge to know just how much those ideas might effect the game economy, so I leave that to better minds than my own.

I suppose there should be some consideration given to just giving something as opposed to  selling something. I do however think that they should tax trades that are specifically for sales. Not when someone wants to give a guildie or a friend some stuff. But as far as trade sales, I do think that's a reasonable thing to try. Perhaps I'm missing something though, as like I said, I don't have a good mind for those kinds of things.

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

It's not a rhetorical question. The claim we hear all the time is that castigating the devs is a short sighted strategy. What has your "be nice, they're people too" strategy gotten any of us in this game in terms of greater communication, aside from the usual performative virtue signaling?

I believe in calling a spade a spade. If the devs do something good, they should get praise. When the devs do something bad, they should get bashed for it.

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

Translation: I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS TOPIC AND AM ARGUING MERELY TO INFURIATE YOU. If you don't care about the economy, if it's all make believe to you, why are you posting? Yes, billionaires can afford the tax, it's everyone else that is the frustrating part. 

Well, in a way, you are kinda right about this, at least the first part.

I don't care about the economy and I have said as much multiple times on the forums in the last few months. I'm more of less fine with it. I put alot of time and effort in making creds. I don't use CCs to get things to than sell. I don't use credit sellers. I don't use exploits.  Collecting resources and crafting things to sell takes a lot of time and going deco-hunting to get decos to sell takes an even longer amount of time and its rather mind numbing after a while just doing the same content over and over again because that's the content that gets you the most decos to sell.

But, the upside of that is, I was able to afford all the Gold Augs I needed, and I even got full gold augs for 2 of my brother's characters because he's a little slow (in the head). Took about 9 months to get my character and the 2 of my brothers characters the full gold augs.

So I guess the point is that I found a way to earn everything I needed to do that and I didn't find the economy prohibitive and it's certainly workable if your willing to put the time and effort into it. So in that sense, you're right, I don't really care about the economy and if they wanted to just leave it that way I would be okay with that.

BUT

Big but...

It isn't just about me.

And I care enough about other players to recognize that to many players it is an issue and I'm not selfish enough to not care about other player's experiences. I am certainly not taking any stance to infuriate anyone. I want the player base to be as happy as possible because that effects the game. It can effect the longevity of the game. Happy customers keep businesses going and I don't want to see the game end.

I'm a little surprised that I could be mistaken to come across as being argumentative for the sole purpose of infuriating other players. Very surprised in fact.

Edited June 14, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[LJ_Gibbs]

On 6/14/2023 at 10:44 AM, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

It's all make believe money anyways.

 

And it's all going to go away when the new Devs put the game into maintenance mode.

[OlBuzzard]

@WayOfTheWarriorx : While it is true that it's only "play" or make believe credits / currency ...etc..  It's the one thing that players are needing on a daily basis in order to conduct business on a wide variety of activities.  Having additional currencies in SWTOR (stuff earned in game in addition to credits) that also used to purchase in game items IMO helps to stop inflation  (at least on certain in game items).

This is no longer about the cat out of the bag (so-to-speak) ... but the acceptance of what many on this forum board demanded!  Unfortunately IMO it won't make that much difference as to what steps are taken you will find some that make it their business to attempt everything short of an open forum flame war in order to demonstrate their lack of enthusiasm for whatever decision is made.

Things didn't get this way over night.  All of us can point fingers all day long and scream at the darkness.  (BTW... it should be noted that screaming the darkness is ridiculously simple.)  Taking the initiative to actually solve the problem and ignite a fire to dispel the darkness .. IMO that is a lot tougher job than it appears to be on the surface.  I applaud the efforts of the team.  Please note that I don't think that we are even close to getting this resolved.  Additional changes need to be made.  If something doesn't work ... THEN change it and fix the problem.  (it's not always that simple.  BUT it is necessary).

Another part of the problem stems from listening to each other.  And to be perfectly candid ...  (as much as it pains me to say it) .. this is the one point of contention that IMO has brought down SWTOR to it's current state of total distrust (in just about everything).  That vote of no confidence overshadow so much now.  GS and the "Feedback" thread ... pretty much spelled things out for me personally. 

WHY that thread?  

The numbers were up with the release of Showdown on Ruhnuk.  A lot of people felt it was definitely a GOOD release (myself included) ... When  the thread was released by a specific member of the team ...  ("This seems promising" I thought to myself ... Maybe things are turning around after all) ...  Then once again unto the breach (or in this case RETURN of the HAMSTER CAGE) !!!  Here we go AGAIN!

This sort of debates can go on indefinitely.  IN short we are not looking at an isolated incident but rather a HISTORY of nearly mind numbing brick wall after brick wall.

As for the overall economic outlook (credits in SWTOR)...  IMO things are improving.  NO we are not there yet!  YES some additional changes will and MUST take place to get the inflation cycle under control.  How much longer do we have before the other shoe drops with moving SWTOR forward (to whatever that may be) ???  I wish I could answer that.  I simply have no idea  (And aside from one or two inside of the team ... I doubt that anyone else does either)

I need to get back to it.  A lot of work to do today (still trying to finish painting the inside of the garage).

Yeah ...  I know ...I've probably upset someone else again today!