half of the asking price as a fee to trade my item?

[Samcuu]

7 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

If you don't want to see the advertisements you can ignore them. Whether or not they can sell on the GTN or not is irrelevant to the fact they have a right use the trade channels to try to sell. Is it quicker to use GTN, potentially yes. However 8% should be 8% regardless of where it's at. If it goes beyond that 8% then that's not what they advertised at all. In trying to sell to that friend, the game is essentially telling him to put it on the GTN or get punished with an additional 20%+ tax. 

As he showed u it was never advertised as 8% for trades only for credits. I read it once and I read that the tax will scale depending on the item ur trying to trade. 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

"The transfer of some high value items through mail or direct trade is subject to a credit fee based on its value, paid by the sender."

[GeneralGyro]

6 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

"The transfer of some high value items through mail or direct trade is subject to a credit fee based on its value, paid by the sender."

the stupid part of the entire thing. remove it entirely and have 8% tax rate

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Just now, GeneralGyro said:

the stupid part of the entire thing. remove it entirely and have 8% tax rate

Well you can argue whether it's stupid or not, point was that it was advertised that way.

[GeneralGyro]

12 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Well you can argue whether it's stupid or not, point was that it was advertised that way.

im not the one saying it wasnt advertised. the hutt icons are confusing, i know

 

 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Just now, GeneralGyro said:

im not the one saying it wasnt advertised. the hutt icons are confusing, i know

Ohh my bad. Yeah, I musta just thought it was the same person because of the same icon. Sorry about that.

[jedimasterjac]

8 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

If it goes beyond that 8% then that's not what they advertised at all

Are you just going to keep saying this, even though I quoted the patch notes that say the exact opposite of what you claim?

[jedimasterjac]

8 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

In trying to sell to that friend, the game is essentially telling him to put it on the GTN or get punished with an additional 20%+ tax. 

This is exactly what’s intended by the way.

Like, that’s the point. 
 

They’re trying to stop off-GTN trades, because those trades are often well behind the GTN cap. The idea is that this will drive prices down. 
 

You can disagree with that goal, but I find it really funny that both of you Hutt guys keep inadvertently proving that the goal’s working. 
 

Edited June 15, 2023 by jedimasterjac

[captainbladejk]

23 hours ago, Samcuu said:

As he showed u it was never advertised as 8% for trades only for credits. I read it once and I read that the tax will scale depending on the item ur trying to trade. 

You people can quote that line all you want, but it's not what they advertised at all. Either 8% means 8% or it doesn't. In my own thread I posted some calculations for various items I tested the scaling on. One item is a Twisted Fang Lightsaber (Single hilt). The trade wanted 212.8m credits as a fee regardless of how much the sale itself actually would have gone for. 

Now doing the math this meant the item was "valued" at roughly 2.7b credits (2.66). which would make the tax of 8% 212.8m credits. If I am selling for that price then that value makes sense. However should I for example choose to sell lower than that such as selling for a flat 2b to cut someone break, the tax should be 160m. And to further drive the point home if I sold for 426m just to get rid of the thing, then the tax should be 34m, not 212.8m as that's a tax rate of 50% and them basically telling me to either sell it for what they think it should go for or be punished. In other words, sell it for higher or eat a higher tax rate. That is not going to help the economy and encourages higher prices, which is the exact opposite of what they claim they want to do and is NOT what they advertised. 

As for the "value" of an item, it's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If I sell for 426m then the value for that sale is 426m. The 2.6b is irrelevant unless I actually sell for that price.

15 hours ago, jedimasterjac said:

This is exactly what’s intended by the way.

Like, that’s the point. 
 

They’re trying to stop off-GTN trades, because those trades are often well behind the GTN cap. The idea is that this will drive prices down. 
 

You can disagree with that goal, but I find it really funny that both of you Hutt guys keep inadvertently proving that the goal’s working. 
 

So its intended for them to lie about a tax and do the exact opposite of what they claim they want now? Good to know. 
If they want to stop off-GTN trades then they need to remove the ability to do personal trades period. Creating a feature then getting mad at players for using a feature you gave them is just foolishness. The goal isn't lowering prices at all, but punishing people who would dare sell lower than what they value it at with a higher tax rate. The fact that you also believe "the goal is working" shows me you have no idea why those off GTN trades happened to start with and why things got to the point they did. 

Off GTN trades started more frequently because there was nothing to remove excess credits from the game, thus their value diminished. Since the price of certain items crept up to and well beyond the GTN cap, off GTN trades occurred because folks didn't want to leave billions of credits on the table. If they really wanted to bring sales back onto the GTN, then the simplest solution was to raise the GTN cap from 1b to say 10b to keep it simple on numbers. Increasing the GTN cap simply means people can ask for more, but doesn't mean they will get it. Raising the GTN cap would have meant all those sales that used to occur in off-GTN channels could now return to the GTN, and it would've given people a better picture of the market. If someone can simply list it on the GTN and come back later without having to spam trade chat, generally people would do that because most folks take the path of least resistance. 

The next thing they needed were actual viable sinks people WANT to invest in. People hoarded credits because there was nothing of value to spend them on. They could've given us more credit purchased decos, the ability to duplicate certain decos in our strongholds, or they could've done one better and gave us the ability to make certain crafting projects insta crafts for a certain amount of credits. Such as "you can wait 6 minutes for those 4 adrenals, or you can pay 25k credits to get them now." Personally I would buy the daylights out of that one. But again they didn't do that. Instead they chose to dig their heels in, blame the players for a problem they created and allowed to fester, and punish everyone else for the crime of daring to have credits they themselves gave to everyone through one form or another. If they want to decrease prices, they need to give people things they want to invest in. Because they can't force players to do something they don't want to do. All they're going to do by trying to force people to play specific ways is cause people to leave, then eventually the game shutters and nothing matters. 

To put this into perspective, let's say you're developing content for a game such as a map and you want people to visit a certain part of the map. The question you as the developer have to answer is "why would I ever go there?". In other words, what is the motivation of the player to visit that part of the map? Is there some kind of powerup there, is there a quest objective there, an item they can pick up, or what have you. If you as the developer who's making the map can't give people a reason to go there, you can't expect the players to have a reason to go there either. Likewise if they want people to spend credits they have to answer the question "why would I spend credits on (insert thing here)?". The problem right now is they want people to spend credits and remove some of the excess credits from the game, yet they're not answering the question of why people should be spending credits to start with. Kind of like a retail store whining about people not buying anything, but having nothing for them to buy. If they want to get people spending credits, give us something to spend them on. Stealing them through "taxes" doesn't make people want to sell items or spend credits, it makes people want to quit the game. 

Also they used to have quick travel "fees" way back years ago, but removed them because they added nothing of value to the game, yet here they are trying the same stuff yet again having learned nothing. If they want to drain excess credits, they need to give viable sinks to invest in, not try to shake people down who did nothing wrong. Basic economics 101

[Samcuu]

1 hour ago, captainbladejk said:

You people can quote that line all you want, but it's not what they advertised at all. Either 8% means 8% or it doesn't. In my own thread I posted some calculations for various items I tested the scaling on. One item is a Twisted Fang Lightsaber (Single hilt). The trade wanted 212.8m credits as a fee regardless of how much the sale itself actually would have gone for. 

Now doing the math this meant the item was "valued" at roughly 2.7b credits (2.66). which would make the tax of 8% 212.8m credits. If I am selling for that price then that value makes sense. However should I for example choose to sell lower than that such as selling for a flat 2b to cut someone break, the tax should be 160m. And to further drive the point home if I sold for 426m just to get rid of the thing, then the tax should be 34m, not 212.8m as that's a tax rate of 50% and them basically telling me to either sell it for what they think it should go for or be punished. In other words, sell it for higher or eat a higher tax rate. That is not going to help the economy and encourages higher prices, which is the exact opposite of what they claim they want to do and is NOT what they advertised. 

As for the "value" of an item, it's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If I sell for 426m then the value for that sale is 426m. The 2.6b is irrelevant unless I actually sell for that price.

Go back to 6.0 and ur lightsaber is worth less than 1b. Why? Cuz inflation. All of these changes are to fight inflation a lightsaber shouldn't cost more than like 500m credits. They want to push trade to the gtn where the cap is 1b, no item in game should sell for more than that tbh. 

[Tiffanitte]

Yeah, I traded something to someone yesterday and wowzers the tax was steep. I won't be trading to other players ever again. 

Just OUCH.

[Xedry]

2 hours ago, Tiffanitte said:

Yeah, I traded something to someone yesterday and wowzers the tax was steep. I won't be trading to other players ever again. 

Just OUCH.

I traded a cartel market armor I got from seasons I already owned too my gf, it cost 170k to gift it to her I feel your pain.

 

But at the same time to the Hutt guy not samcu but the general. The fee is for what the avg value it goes for. The only reason stuff goes so high is cause of all the credits that came out of nowhere. People lost there minds and started going higher and higher with prices.

Nothing in the game should cost more than 500 mill and even that is steep. As the credits disappear everything will go down in price to reasonable demands. 

I do lament the trading fee but at the same time when I can buy darth revans armor for my gf at around 500 mill or less I'll know it worked.

[eabevella]

39 minutes ago, Xedry said:

I traded a cartel market armor I got from seasons I already owned too my gf, it cost 170k to gift it to her I feel your pain.

 

But at the same time to the Hutt guy not samcu but the general. The fee is for what the avg value it goes for. The only reason stuff goes so high is cause of all the credits that came out of nowhere. People lost there minds and started going higher and higher with prices.

Nothing in the game should cost more than 500 mill and even that is steep. As the credits disappear everything will go down in price to reasonable demands. 

I do lament the trading fee but at the same time when I can buy darth revans armor for my gf at around 500 mill or less I'll know it worked.

I did see a few Darth Revan Armor Set on the GTN for <1B yesterday. Forgot whether it's on SS or on SF though...

There are some 1-1.5B items back on the GTN too. As long as most things can go back there, I don't care about Trade tax.

I do think they should raise the GTN cap to 4b. It's been 10 years. Let the inflation reflect in the GTN cap.

[jedimasterjac]

8 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

You people can quote that line all you want, but it's not what they advertised at all.

Advertised WHERE, man?

Every dev post I’m aware of acknowledged that non-GTN trades would have higher fees than the flat 8% tax. The patch notes themselves say this.

Unless you pull out a quote, you can’t just keep insisting that things were falsely advertised.

Edited June 16, 2023 by jedimasterjac

[Darcmoon]

5 hours ago, jedimasterjac said:

Advertised WHERE, man?

Every dev post I’m aware of acknowledged that non-GTN trades would have higher fees than the flat 8% tax. The patch notes themselves say this.

Unless you pull out a quote, you can’t just keep insisting that things were falsely advertised.

They said that the cost would be the same fee, aka 8%. 
 

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929143-73-credit-economy-initiative-updates-and-the-gtn/

The bullet points are where it is said.  Later in the post they say that further down the road they are looking at GTN going to a progressive tax and when that changes the secure trade, COD and mail will be updated also.  So right now the ‘tax’ on traded items is supposed to be 8%. 

[DawnAskham]

Anyone defending this nonsense is either shilling or just doesn't care about its effects on others.

Anyone could see such a cumbersome and clunky system was going to have issues, many unintentional.

But rather than make the simplest changes first (like increasing the GTN limit, just applying the fee to credit transfers only, banning exploiters and sellers), give the changes some time to have an effect on the game, evaluate progress, and then move on to more changes later if needed, we get this garbage.

Oh and for the record the issue here is the same one I brought up when they first posted this idea - some things are going to get assigned idiotic values and thus have idiotic fees.

That 'Twisted Fang' saber has been posted on the GTN across every server in the past month - so its 'value' to at least some of the players willing to sell is clearly less than 1 billion.

That 'Twisted Fang' saber has been posted as low as 550 hundred million on at least one server since 7.3.

So just how TF does anyone justify or defend whatever goofball code they added that tries to apply a 'trade fee' regardless of the number of credits on the other side as though the market value of the item is 2.6 billion?  

Do they just guess at value if nothing has sold?

Does the value in their table get updated in near real-time based on GTN sales, or is it updated on some other cycle like daily, weekly, or monthly?

Is the value based on the lowest price sold, the highest price sold, the mean average, the median average, or just the last price sold before the value table was updated?

And this is before even getting into the social interactions that will be curtailed or eliminated because of these fees - from basic barter to crafting for friends using their mats to trading unwanted items to friends and families to social giveaways to charity to whatever reason players have for wanting to trade items. 

Anyways, my bet is this change along with other recent news and the little content added in this past patch do little to stabilize or grow the revenues associated with the game, and most likely will be a drag on the game's future revenues.

[Darcmoon]

1 hour ago, DawnAskham said:

Do they just guess at value if nothing has sold?

Does the value in their table get updated in near real-time based on GTN sales, or is it updated on some other cycle like daily, weekly, or monthly?

Is the value based on the lowest price sold, the highest price sold, the mean average, the median average, or just the last price sold before the value table was updated?

According to the post about this, it is currently a median across all servers.  With the GTN overhaul they are planning to have it per server.  The 'tax' requires a patch to update it for each item.  Additionally, it is based off of what has sold.  If they don't have data from it being sold on the GTN, they had a conversion for the Cartel Market items.

[TrixxieTriss]

16 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

So its intended for them to lie about a tax and do the exact opposite of what they claim they want now? Good to know. 

As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, they didn’t lie.
You just misread & therefore misinterpreted what they said incorrectly. 
Wether any of us agree with how they’ve set it up or not, they didn’t lie about it. 

[microstyles]

6 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, they didn’t lie.
You just misread & therefore misinterpreted what they said incorrectly. 

I think it's fair to say that the initial economy post was pretty misleading about this. 

As others have said, the initial dev economy post says that items would be subject to "the same fee" as everything else. That's pretty unambiguously referring to the 8% GTN fee.

What they clarified later is that the 8% fee would be applied to whatever value bioware assigned to the item. In GeneralGyro's original post, the assigned value was apparently like 5x the actual value of the item. Given that disparity, it's tough to call that "the same fee" with a straight face.

It's not like dark projects are some super rare item that's tough to put a price on. There are pages of them on the GTN of them at all times. I bought some around the price that Gyro was selling them for a week or so before the patch.

[captainbladejk]

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, they didn’t lie.
You just misread & therefore misinterpreted what they said incorrectly. 
Wether any of us agree with how they’ve set it up or not, they didn’t lie about it. 

When you outright say it will be subject to the same fee, but it's not the same fee, then that is objectively a lie because it's not what they said. Even if you want to give them a pass on that one and say "it's just misunderstood" the rest of the point still stands. You're not going to encourage people to sell for lower by charging them a higher tax rate for doing it. Those 2 things don't go together like that. By assigning a "value" of around 2.6b credits for the Twisted Fang I used before and charging me a 212.8m tax, you're guarantee I'm not selling it for cheaper than I might have otherwise. If they want to lower prices, that isn't how you do it. 

[Przemo_No]

" The transfer of some high value items through mail or direct trade is subject to a credit fee based on its value, paid by the sender "

I think people misread this line.  The meaning here is that it is NOT your standard 8% tax, but another one, based on "avergaed market value" on all servers. (or any other "valuation" construction they used).

 

But whatever it is, it works, because the intention was NOT TO allow people to sell items for obscene prices. That is all.

And now we hear crying about it.

 

 

 

[Darcmoon]

1 hour ago, Przemo_No said:

" The transfer of some high value items through mail or direct trade is subject to a credit fee based on its value, paid by the sender "

I think people misread this line.  The meaning here is that it is NOT your standard 8% tax, but another one, based on "avergaed market value" on all servers. (or any other "valuation" construction they used).

 

But whatever it is, it works, because the intention was NOT TO allow people to sell items for obscene prices. That is all.

And now we hear crying about it.

 

 

 

In the first post about the changes they made the bullet points made it clear that fee was 8%. Now they could have decided to change that amount but they didn’t tell us that so we have to go with the 8%. They also said in another post that they were going with a median price of all the servers using sales, not postings.  They also have a conversion they use but we don’t know what it is. 
 

If the intention was not to sell at obscene prices, it doesn’t really work.  Why sell something for 400m if you are taxed almost half of that?  It just makes people want to charge more so they get what they consider a fair amount. 

Edited June 17, 2023 by Darcmoon

[ceryxp]

16 hours ago, Darcmoon said:

In the first post about the changes they made the bullet points made it clear that fee was 8%. Now they could have decided to change that amount but they didn’t tell us that so we have to go with the 8%. They also said in another post that they were going with a median price of all the servers using sales, not postings.  They also have a conversion they use but we don’t know what it is. 
 

If the intention was not to sell at obscene prices, it doesn’t really work.  Why sell something for 400m if you are taxed almost half of that?  It just makes people want to charge more so they get what they consider a fair amount. 

No, no, you misunderstand.  They are totally charging 8%, but it is not 8% of the value of the item as it is currently listed on the GTN, or 8% of however much you want to price the item at, it is 8% of whatever value they decided to attach to the item based upon a median value of all items of that type across all servers, as well as, arcane pseudo-science extracted from the aether of an Archfey's nether loins.  And since that value was based upon that particular alignment of starts, planets, and an Archfey's haemorrhoids, that 8% will not be representative of the current value of the item.  Which is why something may be selling for 200 million on the GTN but has a tax of 200 million because at the particular moment when BW looked at their database of totally real numbers the item was valued at 2.5 billion.

Here is a post by JoeStramaglia showing some examples of how they decided to tax items.  Notice how almost every single one of those example tax values is actually over 8%, some going over 11%.  Which proves they just made up whatever value they wanted.

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929203-pts-economic-balance-changes/page/2/#comment-9758139 - be certain to go to the prior BW post to see Joe's explanation

And since those tax values are set until they decide to update their database, the taxes will never be representative of the current value of the item.

Which is why they should not have attached a tax to trades, or mail did not have credits involved, and just taxed the credits.  But apparently that would have taken work because there is currently no way to calculate tax on the credits in a trade widow or attached to a mail.  Because, by Mephistopheles, it is too much to ask that they implement a proper solution.

Edited June 18, 2023 by ceryxp
correction, I misread a prior dev post

[Darcmoon]

9 minutes ago, ceryxp said:

No, no, you misunderstand.  They are totally charging 8%, but it is not 8% of the value of the item as it is currently listed on the GTN, or 8% of however much you want to price the item at, it is 8% of whatever value they decided to attach to the item based upon a median value of all items of that type across all servers, as well as, arcane pseudo-science extracted from the aether of an Archfey's nether loins.  And since that value was based upon that particular alignment of starts, planets, and an Archfey's haemorrhoids, that 8% will not be representative of the current value of the item.  Which is why something may be selling for 200 million on the GTN but has a tax of 200 million because at the particular moment when BW looked at their database of totally real numbers the item was valued at 2.5 billion.

Here is a post by JoeStramaglia showing some examples of how they decided to tax items.  Notice how almost every single one of those example tax values is actually over 8%, some going over 11%.  Which proves they just made up whatever value they wanted.

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929203-pts-economic-balance-changes/page/2/#comment-9758139 - be certain to go to the prior BW post to see Joe's explanation

And since those tax values are set until they decide to update their database, the taxes will never be representative of the current value of the item.

Which is why they should not have attached a tax to trades, or mail did not have credits involved, and just taxed the credits.  But apparently that would have taken work because there is currently no way to calculate tax on the credits in a trade widow or attached to a mail.  Because, by Mephistopheles, it is too much to ask that they implement a proper solution.

Oh, I agree with you.  That’s why I said it is based off the median of all the servers and their conversion. It also looks like the decided some of those items are worth more than that in their opinion so they bumped up the tax a bit.  I do believe some of the taxes aren’t quite right anyways and have inflated values above what they are supposed to be. 

[DawnAskham]

On 6/16/2023 at 11:49 AM, Darcmoon said:

According to the post about this, it is currently a median across all servers.  With the GTN overhaul they are planning to have it per server.  The 'tax' requires a patch to update it for each item.  Additionally, it is based off of what has sold.  If they don't have data from it being sold on the GTN, they had a conversion for the Cartel Market items.

LMAO if this idiotic trade tax requires a patch to update item values.

So whatever imaginary values they assign to items will be stuck with us for months on end.

Every time I think Bioware can't be this dumb, they prove me wrong.

I should have read closer and known better - the idea Bioware could implement something that would take actual live sales data to determine average server market value in anything near real-time on an ongoing basis without doing a patch sounds absurd when I say it out loud. 

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by DawnAskham