7.4 GTN Preview Live on PTS

[arunav]

1 hour ago, Darcmoon said:

Then the issue I mentioned is a distinct possibility.  If I want to sell an item and when I look at the GTN it shows a price of 513,210 credits most people will post theirs at that price or just under that but then with tax it will end up more than the one we looked at.  Also, if that price with tax is the number used for the median price, the lowest or the recent prices that the GTN shows us that will cause people to price it higher and higher. 

I find it slightly disturbing this wasn't identified in the design process. 

It should be a pretty easy fix, to include the buyer's tax in the seller's posting price when the seller is posting an item, but it's not promising that this was overlooked in the first place. 

The team is just trying to do too much with too few people, changing so many fundamental SWTOR systems in 7.x. 

[Darcmoon]

16 minutes ago, arunav said:

I find it slightly disturbing this wasn't identified in the design process. 

It should be a pretty easy fix, to include the buyer's tax in the seller's posting price when the seller is posting an item, but it's not promising that this was overlooked in the first place. 

The team is just trying to do too much with too few people, changing so many fundamental SWTOR systems in 7.x. 

The buyers fee is shown when you are going to post an item but realistically, most players aren’t going to pay to much attention to it and those that do I doubt will have the patience to keep putting in prices to see if they can get it below the other one correctly. 

[arunav]

1 hour ago, Darcmoon said:

The buyers fee is shown when you are going to post an item but realistically, most players aren’t going to pay to much attention to it and those that do I doubt will have the patience to keep putting in prices to see if they can get it below the other one correctly. 

Oh, I took a look back at the interface again. This seems alright to me - it does show what the total price with the buyer's fee will be. 

I understand what you're pointing out, but it isn't hard to lower the sell price until it's below what's currently listed.

Might some people get confused in the initial weeks after the change? Surely. But folks will get used to it. 

[TrixxieTriss]

8 hours ago, black_pyros said:

I am preferred for more than 4 months already and still can post.

😂 probably just targeted me then.

I guess they rescinded my preferred posting privileges because I’m too outspoken & post to much 🤷🏻‍♀️. But when I resubbed, it was undone.

I wonder what will happen when I go back to back to preferred? Will I be silenced again?

Edited October 29, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, elimatorxv said:

wow this will kill off the buyers section regarding gtn, oh well another bad decision by bioware. what else is new

My thoughts exactly. 

I don’t mind the progressive tax idea, I actually came up with it originally. But I don’t like how they’ve completely swapped the fee/tax system from seller to the buyer or the rather large non refundable seller fees. 

When the sellers pay the fees & taxes now, we know the total cost to sell something & we know we will get it back  if it doesn’t sell. The buyer doesn’t have to worry about any fees/taxes at all. And we all know how it works & adjust our pricing based on our costs.

I really hope @JoeStramaglia is reading this feedback because I think this is way too much radical change & it will back fire badly. It will drive away competition & put upward price pressures. And it will ultimately affect Broadswords own cartel market income stream too. 

As a major dye crafter & GTN seller, I will literally stop doing both with this non refundable seller fee. I’m not going to spend hours gathering & crafting something that can be really time consuming with such a small profit margin, if I can’t guarantee my own costs. Which I won’t be able to if fees aren’t refundable. 

When I’m playing, I literally make & list 50-100 dyes a day on the GTN. I know who the other major crafter/sellers are. Sometime certain colours are in demand that day & sometimes they aren’t. So sometimes all my dyes sell & other days they don’t. But I always know my costs because the fee is refundable.

These changes that add large non refundable fees are too much & way too high. It will mean some days I might actually be losing credits as a seller instead of making them.

So why would I sacrifice my time gathering mats, crafting & listing dyes, just to lose credits? The answer is I wouldn’t. I will just stop crafting & selling. Which will effectively remove my 50-100 crafted dyes from the GTN market each day. And I’m sure I won’t be the only player who decides to do this. What happens when all the other crafters figure this out too?

What I predict will happen, is there will be way less stock or choice available on the GTN. Which will actually put upward pressure on inflation because demand will out strip supply. Not only that, but players like me who enjoy the current GTN trading cycle, will stop supplying the GTN & may even leave the game. 

@JoeStramaglia please reconsider how you are implementing this. It is too much radical change for such an old game. You are going to upset both sellers & buyers. 

Move the sales tax/fees back to the sellers. We already know to adjust our sell price to accommodate them. Making the buyers pay these costs will put many off using the GTN.

Remove or drastically reduce the costs of the non refundable listing fees. They are way too high, especially when you will already have a new progressive tax/fee system that will target the super expensive items. You don’t need any more fees/credit sinks except that one. 

FYI @JoeStramaglia

✨The same principle works for Cartel Coin credit whales as crafters. Who spend real world money to buy CM items to sell on the GTN. This will make trading less predictable for them & actually push up prices on the GTN as many CC whales stop buying & maybe leave the game. Which will impact Broadswords revenue stream ✨

Edited October 29, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[VegaMist]

So, the buyers now will be taxed for every purchase, and the sellers will have to pay for the privilege of listing items, regardless of whether they sell or not, effectively limiting, and potentially eliminating, any reason to list at all (why would one list if the losses are guaranteed but earnings aren't). What a brilliant idea to re-make GTN only so it could die a painful death. Oh, and don't be surprised if your Cartel Market sales go down drastically since way fewer people would risk buying items to resell on GTN compared to now, and the numbers will keep going down as the time goes on. And I have a feeling such draconian charges may affect the number of subscribers as well (in a negative way of course).

Edited October 29, 2023 by VegaMist

[Nightblazer]

Would really like a filter for the cartel market to hide or filter out items in my collections I have already collected.

[Ruchalus]

Alright so one thing is really confusing me with the bulk purchases.

Let's say someone is looking to buy 500 Red Power Crystals for crafting

There are 3 different sellers at the various prices

• Seller #1 has 400 crystals available at 1,000 credits each
• Seller #2 has 300 crystals available at 2,000 credits each
• Seller #3 has 800 crystals available at 10,000 credits each

Buy purchases 500 crystals, Seller #1 sells out and Seller 2 now has 200 crystals at 2,000 credits each. What confuses me is that I tried buying like this on the PTS and I got refunded some credits. I think this has something to do with a new feature that was stated:

If you overpay due to a new lower price, you will be refunded.

So does this mean Seller #2 is being forced to sell crystals at 1,000 credits each to match Seller #1's prices for the sake of the buyer? Are these credits coming from thin air? I can't tell what exactly I'm being "refunded" for and this particular change is extremely convoluted.

[Ruchalus]

17 hours ago, Ruchalus said:

Alright so one thing is really confusing me with the bulk purchases.

Let's say someone is looking to buy 500 Red Power Crystals for crafting

There are 3 different sellers at the various prices

• Seller #1 has 400 crystals available at 1,000 credits each
• Seller #2 has 300 crystals available at 2,000 credits each
• Seller #3 has 800 crystals available at 10,000 credits each

Buy purchases 500 crystals, Seller #1 sells out and Seller 2 now has 200 crystals at 2,000 credits each. What confuses me is that I tried buying like this on the PTS and I got refunded some credits. I think this has something to do with a new feature that was stated:

If you overpay due to a new lower price, you will be refunded.

So does this mean Seller #2 is being forced to sell crystals at 1,000 credits each to match Seller #1's prices for the sake of the buyer? Are these credits coming from thin air? I can't tell what exactly I'm being "refunded" for and this particular change is extremely convoluted.

Figured it out. So in the previously mentioned example, because the buyer needed more crystals than Seller 1 had, the entire price per unit would use seller's 2 price. The purchase would cost 1,000,000 credits for the 500 crystals at seller 2's prices. Because there were 400 cheaper crystals, the GTN refunds the difference. The buyer would be refunded 400,000 to account for seller 1's 400 crystals at 1,000 credits.

Edited October 30, 2023 by Ruchalus

[Swuuutor]

Hello,

I am really looking forward to changes to the GTN, but I am wondering why there is a limit of how many favorite items I can have; especially such a low number of 5. I am looking for this feature since a long time. For example if you want to compare a couple of cool lightsabers, you will put them in ur favorites and then can compare them there. But 5 is really not enough. Please increase or don't have a limit it at all since it really makes no sense to have one there.

[black_pyros]

6 hours ago, Ruchalus said:

Figured it out. So in the previously mentioned example, because the buyer needed more crystals than Seller 1 had, the entire price per unit would use seller's 2 price. The purchase would cost 1,000,000 credits for the 500 crystals at seller 2's prices. Because there were 4,875 cheaper crystals, the GTN refunds the difference. The buyer would be refunded 400,000 to account for seller 1's 400 crystals at 1,000 credits.

The more complicated the system is, the more prone to potential bugs and exploits. That's not good.

[DreadzKaiser]

Well this bodes poorly.

I do generally like a lot of the changes going on here, but putting that massive fee on the buyer is........gonna make me not want to buy.

I understand that you want to delete credits from the system but this feels like it's going to crash the economy into a tree instead of just slowing things down and curbing inflation. I just came back to the game after being gone for a long time, before all the crazy inflation. as a result I do NOT have a massive stack of credits that need deleting so from my perspective, we are just slapping a universal price increase on everything to make it harder for my non-Billionaire bank account to afford, while making my income more unstable by slapping my listings with these non-refundable fees should my listings not sell.

and as I've been trying (and failing) to flip some tunings I got on the GTN for a month now because of constant undercuts, I clearly should not bother posting any of that now.

 

I'm all for a UI update but a lot of this feels like fixing what ain't broke.

Edited October 30, 2023 by DreadzKaiser

[ShadowyKai]

Quote

fixing what ain't broke

Having played this game for several years, it has been my observation that fixing what isn't broken seems to be the developers' specialty.

[VegaMist]

16 hours ago, Ruchalus said:

Alright so one thing is really confusing me with the bulk purchases.

Let's say someone is looking to buy 500 Red Power Crystals for crafting

There are 3 different sellers at the various prices

• Seller #1 has 400 crystals available at 1,000 credits each
• Seller #2 has 300 crystals available at 2,000 credits each
• Seller #3 has 800 crystals available at 10,000 credits each

Buy purchases 500 crystals, Seller #1 sells out and Seller 2 now has 200 crystals at 2,000 credits each. What confuses me is that I tried buying like this on the PTS and I got refunded some credits. I think this has something to do with a new feature that was stated:

If you overpay due to a new lower price, you will be refunded.

So does this mean Seller #2 is being forced to sell crystals at 1,000 credits each to match Seller #1's prices for the sake of the buyer? Are these credits coming from thin air? I can't tell what exactly I'm being "refunded" for and this particular change is extremely convoluted.

Question, can you see, as a buyer, how many crystals are available at 1,000 credits each?

[Ruchalus]

52 minutes ago, VegaMist said:

Question, can you see, as a buyer, how many crystals are available at 1,000 credits each?

Yes you can, you'd be able to see the first 20 sellers from cheapest to most expensive, quantities, and cost per unit.

[Ruchalus]

On 10/27/2023 at 9:52 AM, JoeStramaglia said:

 

Minimum Price	Marginal Rate	Cumulative Fee	Effective Rate
0	6%	0	6%
1,000,000	8%	60,000	6%
10,000,000	10%	780,000	7.80%
100,000,000	12%	9,780,000	9.78%
500,000,000	14%	57,780,000	11.56%
1,000,000,000	16%	127,780,000	12.78%
3,000,000,000	16%	447,780,000	14.95%

 

I was talking to a programmer friend for help understanding this math and we've discovered a flaw, the in-game calculations are off. He described it as: "Floating Point Rounding issues: Large numbers cause math problems"

Something about the limits of binary and using tricks to calculate above a certain number and that it would be better to set the cap to 2 billion and use integers.

Here's the fees I get when I enter an item at the listed prices:

• 1,000,000 --- 60,000 fee
• 10,000,000 --- 780,000 fee
• 100,000,000 --- 9,760,000 fee (off by 20k)
• 500,000,000 --- 57,540,000 fee (off by 40k)
• 1,000,000,000 --- 125,320,000 fee (off by 2,460,000)
• 3,000,000,000 --- 433,099,984 fee (off by 14,680,016)

The math coded into the GTN to calculate fees is off, likely due to the Floating Point Rounding issue mentioned earlier. This stuff is above my paygrade and I can still barely understand it after my friend explained it to me, but it's something the programmers should look into.

 

[Darthjantom]

Shift + clicking an item in your inventory no longer places item name in search bar of GTN for easy searching.

Won't let me search some categories like pets or mounts without typing something in search bar (I would like to just see all pets or mounts listed on gtn).

A bit annoying you have to switch windows/tabs to see what an item is currently going for on the GTN with the buyer's tax.

The new features all seem handy to have.

However, the listing fee no longer refunding if an item doesn't sell is probably my biggest gripe in all of this. It will only make me think twice about listing stuff on GTN at all, especially rarer items worth a lot, or items that might not be in demand much but still fetch a high price. It makes selling certain stuff a risk, I don't want to loose credits without even selling an item, feels like a punishment. And seems like it might dissuade people from listing stuff unless they are sure it will sell.

[DreadzKaiser]

28 minutes ago, Darthjantom said:

Shift + clicking an item in your inventory no longer places item name in search bar of GTN for easy searching.

Needs to be Addressed. now.

losing that is not worth any other QoL updates

[Darkestmonty]

31 minutes ago, Darthjantom said:

However, the listing fee no longer refunding if an item doesn't sell is probably my biggest gripe in all of this. It will only make me think twice about listing stuff on GTN at all, especially rarer items worth a lot, or items that might not be in demand much but still fetch a high price. It makes selling certain stuff a risk, I don't want to loose credits without even selling an item, feels like a punishment. And seems like it might dissuade people from listing stuff unless they are sure it will sell.

This is actually a good thing. How many people currently list a lot of random player made dyes, etc for 3 billion credits hoping someone will accidentally buy them?

How many times have you seen a person flood a market by posting their 5,500 dark projects in stacks of 100?

Right now a lot of people use exploitative posting tactics hoping a buyer makes a mistake or floods the market and keeps undercutting anyone making it nearly impossible for others to make sales.

The new GTN system will at least make the practice of listing items for 3 billion in the hopes someone buys it by mistake obsolete and maybe curb the practice of flooding a market knowing you won't sell anything but guaranteeing no one else will either.

BTW, posting fees being non-refundable is not an issue since sellers no longer get taxed by the GTN.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Darkestmonty

[Darkestmonty]

Suggestion:

• Have two options for how much a player wants to charge for their item. "Price" and "Price with Taxes"

The "Price" field is the amount a player will pay before taxes.

The "Price with Taxes" field will be the total amount we want buyers to pay after taxes are included.

[VegaMist]

6 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

This is actually a good thing. How many people currently list a lot of random player made dyes, etc for 3 billion credits hoping someone will accidentally buy them?

How many times have you seen a person flood a market by posting their 5,500 dark projects in stacks of 100?

Right now a lot of people use exploitative posting tactics hoping a buyer makes a mistake or floods the market and keeps undercutting anyone making it nearly impossible for others to make sales.

The new GTN system will at least make the practice of listing items for 3 billion in the hopes someone buys it by mistake obsolete and maybe curb the practice of flooding a market knowing you won't sell anything but guaranteeing no one else will either.

BTW, posting fees being non-refundable is not an issue since sellers no longer get taxed by the GTN.

In the new system, undercutting will flourish since only lowest-priced items will be visible, and selling a low-end item for a top price will mostly disappear for the same reason why undercutting will flourish (except if it's the only item on the market). Neither of those though has anything to do with non-refundable fees which will create the risk for every seller that they will incur continues losses regardless whether they sell popular items (since undercutting will flourish), valuable low-demand items (which may take months to sell even with no competition), or Cartel Market items which require a certain price point in order to justify buying them from CM for re-sale in the first place (also may take a while to sell, especially armor pieces which CM hands out individually rather than boxed as a set).

Edited October 31, 2023 by VegaMist

[Lord_Malganus]

1 hour ago, VegaMist said:

In the new system, undercutting will flourish since only lowest-priced items will be visible, and selling a low-end item for a top price will mostly disappear for the same reason why undercutting will flourish (except if it's the only item on the market).

So if only the lowest-priced items will be visible, is that not a form of artificially controlling the market in an attempt to reduce inflation? I am sincerely asking because I'm not understanding what the changes are attempting to achieve.

[Darthjantom]

13 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

This is actually a good thing. How many people currently list a lot of random player made dyes, etc for 3 billion credits hoping someone will accidentally buy them?

The new GTN system will at least make the practice of listing items for 3 billion in the hopes someone buys it by mistake obsolete and maybe curb the practice of flooding a market knowing you won't sell anything but guaranteeing no one else will either.

I have never heard of anyone "accidentally" buying an item for 3 billion, people don't buy stuff "accidentally" listed at those amounts. Certainly not cheap crap like crafted dyes etc. And even if this was a thing, which it wasn't, the new GTN already fixes this because all listings for an item are shown together with the cheapest always at the top.

13 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

How many times have you seen a person flood a market by posting their 5,500 dark projects in stacks of 100?

Right now a lot of people use exploitative posting tactics hoping a buyer makes a mistake or floods the market and keeps undercutting anyone making it nearly impossible for others to make sales.

And what is stopping them from listing all their dark projects on the new GTN just a few credits cheaper then the other current listings? The only difference now is if someone (or multiple someones) lists a crap ton of the same item AFTER you have listed yours, just cheaper then yours, and yours don't sell before your listings run out, you will basically have lost credits on it. As the dev post states: "You’ll always get the best available listing when you click purchase." Undercutting will continue to be the norm because the lowest listings will be the top listing and sell first.

13 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

BTW, posting fees being non-refundable is not an issue since sellers no longer get taxed by the GTN.

Instead you get to pay credits to GTN even if your stuff doesn't sell, so now you are paying a "tax" regardless if stuff sells or not.

7 hours ago, VegaMist said:

Neither of those though has anything to do with non-refundable fees which will create the risk for every seller that they will incur continues losses regardless whether they sell popular items (since undercutting will flourish), valuable low-demand items (which may take months to sell even with no competition), or Cartel Market items which require a certain price point in order to justify buying them from CM for re-sale in the first place (also may take a while to sell, especially armor pieces which CM hands out individually rather than boxed as a set).

I imagine it will just drive trade traffic away from the GTN again for in-person trades for such items, UNLESS the trade fees for these items are rediculously high to the point that risking having to pay multiple listing fees for relistings is still the better deal. Even so I predict we will see a lot less of such listings on GTN if this goes through. Either way, if the goal is to drain credits from the economy then I imagine you'd want to encourage players to sell stuff on the GTN so buyers/sellers fees are paid when these items do sell, not disuade them from listing potentially risky listings.

[OlBuzzard]

On 10/27/2023 at 11:01 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

Yep, the same as if they trade player to player, the receiver has to pay the fees. 

This will absolutely destroy the GTN market over night. I can’t see this being positively endorsed by the buying player base. 

As for the seller fees, I think they’re way too steep because they are already taxing the buyers. 

They either need to make the sellers fees refundable if an item doesn’t sell or lower that thresh hold a hell of a lot more. Because people will stop listing things on the GTN, especially with this new cheapest item always being first. 

It’s like Joe just wrote down every idea we gave him in the original GTN feedback thread, both good & bad, then implemented all of them 🤦‍♀️ I think he missed where we debated the pros & cons of each idea and said do either A. B. or C.
Either have sellers fees or have buyers fees. You don’t need both & the sellers fees should be mostly refundable or sellers will stop listing on the GTN. Which will only push up inflationary pressures with less items being listed. Demand will completely outstrip supply. 

They are adding too many ideas & radical changes to the way the market works. Which I believe are going to back fire & it will drive players away from the GTN, which will directly impact their Cartel Market direct sales income & cause them to lose actual money. 

They really need to do a financial risk assessment on this before pushing it live. 
 

 

IMO the whole matter resembles more of an "in your face" that's what you asked for now live with it...  rather than a sensible solution!  (I'm probably going to make an enemy out of some members of the team ... but right now that's just how all of this is coming across to me personally).

[geofraynils]

Quote

• Market Data
  • We have some more information coming to the purchase page that shows the current median value and its recent high/low values as well as a more historical version of that value.
  • Recent looks at a smaller subset of time to give you an idea of the trend.
  • Historical is a larger time frame but is not lifetime.
  • We plan on expanding on this section in the future, details to come when we have them.

I'd like to see the amount of items sold within the same time frame of the price you will show.