My question is:

 

What is being done about people who made billions by exploiters buying their overpriced stuff?

 

And yes - it does affect me. And you as well, most likely.

 

Right, because he's gonna tell us.

I asked because as far as my research goes, there isn’t one. I don’t think he specifically meant an exploit. I believe he may have been referring to a bug, so I was hoping he could confirm.

They could just increase ingame "tax" a bit to drain out credits. Biggest would be possible make GTN commission 7 or 8%, yes people will increase selling price to recover the percent lost but it will still remove credits from the game. Decreasing some prices would also work like on companion gifts. This may help in two ways, remove credits from the game and increase supply, possibly lowering GTN prices as well.

NOOOO.. don’t add any ingame tax

That won’t even affect the Uber rich that have all the credits. All it does is affect the average players.

Yes they could reduce prices on companion gifts. It wouldn’t help to lower GTN prices, but it would help the average player.

No, they could ban all the exploiters which they should've done from the first second of the exploit

^^THIS^^

Don't punish me...I don't make crap and I can't afford much at all...

No, they could ban all the exploiters which they should've done from the first second of the exploit

It should be easy to check if they've made more then 1 mil credits on a singular alt with this exploit. That would count as an exploiter in my book. Ban and block there IP address or something. These guys ruin it for the rest of the players.

It should be easy to check if they've made more then 1 mil credits on a singular alt with this exploit. That would count as an exploiter in my book. Ban and block there IP address or something. These guys ruin it for the rest of the players.

This type of tracking is easy...it's the guys who created free alt accounts to do the exploit and then bought overpriced junk on the GTN to launder the $ that are harder to track down.

What other exploit?

Exploits cannot be made public on the forums. Hopefully they know about from the bug reports people have been sending http://cdn-www.swtor.com/community/images/swtor/smilies/cool.png

I under increasing the tax so to speak wont effect the uber rich. I was coming from the point of general inflation of prices and amount of credits in the game. Even if they ban all of the exploiters and take the related credits it still wont remove all of the credits from this and other past exploits. I doubt they will remove credits or items from non exploiter who purchased and sold something perhaps third removed from the exploiter. As they removed a lot of credit sinks from the game already, the credit pool is growing faster than the removal from the game and prices are effected from this.

It is as if the government started printing millions of dollars every day and pushed it into the economy, inflation spirals out of control. I would rather a credit be a credit instead of having to print 100000 credit bills to buy a loaf of bread as some country economies have done so to speak. Good examples German currency before WW2 and Valenzuela currently to just name a couple. A 7 percent commission on the GTN as opposed to 6 would not be noticed by most and in reality is is very little. would this be enough? only the devs have the numbers on this issue.

I under increasing the tax so to speak wont effect the uber rich. I was coming from the point of general inflation of prices and amount of credits in the game. Even if they ban all of the exploiters and take the related credits it still wont remove all of the credits from this and other past exploits. I doubt they will remove credits or items from non exploiter who purchased and sold something perhaps third removed from the exploiter. As they removed a lot of credit sinks from the game already, the credit pool is growing faster than the removal from the game and prices are effected from this.

 

It is as if the government started printing millions of dollars every day and pushed it into the economy, inflation spirals out of control. I would rather a credit be a credit instead of having to print 100000 credit bills to buy a loaf of bread as some country economies have done so to speak. Good examples German currency before WW2 and Valenzuela currently to just name a couple. A 7 percent commission on the GTN as opposed to 6 would not be noticed by most and in reality is is very little. would this be enough? only the devs have the numbers on this issue.

The game economy is not the same though. All prices in game for game elements are fixed. In a real economy the price of a train ticket will go up immensely if inflation hits. In SWTOR the cost in credits to travel to alderaan by ship will stay the same no matter how many credits are in the game economy. So the costs in the game for normal playing activity are not subject to inflation.

However, it does affect the cosmetic side of the game. Some naive people will tell you that it's "just cosmetics" and it doesn't matter but I disagree. Cosmetics are hugely important and have become a big part of the game due to slow content release but high cartel market releases. They have essentially taken the place of content for a lot of people.

And there it becomes unfair because it's those really rich players that control the market and whether other players can even hope to get certain items. They have the power to buy out a given item from the GTN completely, stock it and then sell at outrageous prices. Each time they do sell something it increases their ability to control the GTN.

I personally think this is detrimental to the overall experience and it gives power to a small group of players and away from Bioware. That is also the excuse for Bioware because it's the players doing it.

There is an appeal to a free market but a free market will create inequality because most people are not so good at manipulating such a market. When the small group of skilled people who are good at this get free reign, that's when this sort of thing happens.

Now Bioware is taking action and banning people I'm sure. But it's after the fact and it won't fix the problem that causes the market to be this way. Not saying it's easy to fix either though, but the truth is that a lot of cosmetic items like armour sets, weapons and decorations are out of reach of most players.

If most players don't care about that, then it's not a problem. When it discourages a lot of people and angers them, then it is a problem because they will stop enjoying the game possibly and leave. The cartel packs played right into this.

So I am glad to see a lot more direct sales. I find that a good thing. Of course the GTN is still screwed if exploits just keep happening. Bioware will generally find out afterwards and the credits have already gone all over the place via trade. I don't think they can undo more than just a part of the damage done each time an exploit hits.