I thought I'd start this thread as I am interested in peoples thoughts on the subject matter, I'm not having a moan! In this regard I'm actually doing alright, however.. that said, it is a subject close to my heart, being a Bank Manager in RL.

Many MMO's suffer due to the ingame pricing of items that allow players to progress, this then leads to players posting items on the GTN at overly inflated prices in order to progress themselves.

The GTN has already seen a drop in items being sold, i.e. when was the last time you sold a green item on the GTN and not to a junk dealer or other vendor?

The reason for this, is they're already out of date, and there are not enough new players coming on board to level new characters who will buy these low rank green items in order to progress the game themselves, this then leads to the number of new players joining the game dropping, and a number of current players leaving the game.

I'd be interested to hear from the Dev's as too how many players have actually left the game since it's release, we've already seen server drops, server character amalgamations and transfers happening. WHY?

Some would say it's the repetitiveness of the game, i.e. in order to get the Black hole gear, how many times do you need to repeat the black hole?, How many times do you need to REPEAT things in order to get them items you want or need, why not just have a decent pricing setup?

$1,000.000.00 credits for an item in game is ridiculous, some of the trade-in prices are also ludicrous, i.e War Lord gear, you have to REPEAT the PVP stuff in order to build up your commendations, so how many HuttBall games do you need to REPEAT to get this stuff? or should I put it this way, How many Huttball games are you willing to play?

Legacy items are also too high I think, $500.000.00 for the onboard ship email, come on!! This should have been onboard FREE as standard.

The credit drops are too low, especially for new players, do you know how long it takes to raise $100,000.00cr prior to level 20?, it's pathetic, and what's more is, $100.000.00 in game isn't alot of money when you compare it to the cost of things, see the $1,000.000.00 noted above.

Thoughts please folks, Devs please, I know it's early doors for this otherwise brilliant game, but come on, your pricing folk out of the game, I want to progress my toon, I'd like to be able to get the best gear for him, that said, do I want to wait and save for the next 6 months in order to buy something which will probably be out of date by the time I can afford to buy it.

Fantastic folk are reading my little thread, that said, what are your thoughts on this, do you agree or not, Y or N, or no opinion?

How do you feel about using so much of your hard earned credits and time, buying or upgrading stuff?

Please let me know.

If you think it's too expensive then keep this thread going, the Developers may take on board our feedback.

Thanks for reading so far, it's appreciated.

I agree with you, however SWTOR suffers from the same economic problems that most MMOs have :

1 - credits grow on trees

2 - in order to mitigate hyper-inflation you need heavy duty gold sinks

3 - you have to plan to combat the earning capabilities of your heaviest use players

In other words, the amount of money earned by players grinding their way through max-level content while they hunt don't commendations or other rewards is enormous, and this earning capability has to be offset by things to spend those credits on. A heavy use player running through this content can generate hundreds of thousands of credits per day without really focusing on doing so, while a casual player will have far less. In order to avoid heavy-use players completely unbalancing the cost of goods on the GTN with their spending power the game has to provide outlets for these easily acquired credit sums - the down side to which is that for casual players many items seem to be completely beyond any reasonable hope of acquisition.

My level 50 is a perfect example of this - I hit level 50 around 6 weeks ago and still don't have my level 3 speeder license, partly because it's too expensive, partly because I've got other priorities to spend on.

MMO economies are almost universally flawed because there is no limit to the amount of money in circulation - it's like going to your ATM and seeing that your balance is infinite, the only limit to the amount of cash you can withdraw is the speed at which the machine can dish the money out.

TLDR : Yes, the cost is too high. However it won't change because MMO economies are stupid.

Personally, I have no issue with the cost of things in game. I purchase only what I need, not all that is available.

So yes I have an onboard email terminal but no, I don't have any of the training dummies. I do have the onboard droid who will buy stuff from me, repair my items and give me the upgrades doe my other ship droid.

I do play a fair bit, so I guess credits are not a real issue to me (I have 3 level 50 characters and am currently working on a Smuggler to "complete" the Republic side. My main currently has just under 11mill credits) but if I can get the amount of credits I have then there is no reason others can't either.

Generally speaking credits need to be controlled. If lots of people have millions, the people sell for higher amounts and those with less credits cannot afford the items. Better to have just a few with laods of cash and the majority with a more modest amount so that prices of items don't get over inflated.

Will say again that no one legacy item is a requirement, so if you don't have the credits to buy then you really shouldn't worry.

As far as selling green gear for leveling... no one buys it because the missions give you gear that is good enough for leveling.

In regard to the cost of legacy stuff... well... Bioware is trying to figure out how to setup a game economy. This is their attempt at a sink.

Really, it just makes you decide what you want. For instance, I no longer purchase the 2nd and 3rd tier of speeder piloting so that I can get a set of recruit gear straight off for my alts at 50.

I don't think it's too high at all. It's very easy to raise the money for things I want. I've paid for two entire sets of Legacy 20 gear now, at 1.2 million a pop. Took all of about 4 days of dailies to raise it. Easy.

Couple dailies with any financial savvy at all, and you're looking at easy money.

The GTN has already seen a drop in items being sold, i.e. when was the last time you sold a green item on the GTN and not to a junk dealer or other vendor?

 

The reason for this, is they're already out of date, and there are not enough new players coming on board to level new characters who will buy these low rank green items in order to progress the game themselves, this then leads to the number of new players joining the game dropping, and a number of current players leaving the game.

Umm, no. The reason greens don't sell is three fold. Firstly new characters out level them too quickly, greens can be replaced by mission rewards very soon after you can wear them (its Blues that you can keep for a while). Secondly its very easy to get orange items and upgrade them with commendations (which cuts down the market for items you wanty to buy). Finally crafting greens in this game is simple due to the availability of resources, its only when you want to keep multiple characters/companions in complete on-level blue items that you have to worry about gathering materials.

I'd be interested to hear from the Dev's as too how many players have actually left the game since it's release, we've already seen server drops, server character amalgamations and transfers happening. WHY?

Because people buy a game and then decide they dont like it enough to keep playing.

Some would say it's the repetitiveness of the game, i.e. in order to get the Black hole gear, how many times do you need to repeat the black hole?, How many times do you need to REPEAT things in order to get them items you want or need, why not just have a decent pricing setup?

Because this is how MMOs work, they all have item grinds because no publisher has ever been able to produce content faster than players can beat it. And it does not take that long, my JK is in 5/5 Columi with 2 Rakata implants and I only started gearing her over the last 2 1/2 weeks and running OPS last week. I'm 2-3 days away from the Rakata earpiece.

$1,000.000.00 credits for an item in game is ridiculous, some of the trade-in prices are also ludicrous, i.e War Lord gear, you have to REPEAT the PVP stuff in order to build up your commendations, so how many HuttBall games do you need to REPEAT to get this stuff? or should I put it this way, How many Huttball games are you willing to play?

I disagree, prices seem about right for what the vendors sell. The drop in mod removal prices was needed for players who like to change outfits or have different outfits than the standard ones. I have never been short of money on my characters when it comes to buying things I need and I don't sell on the GTN.

As to how many Huttball games you need to play, if you want the best gear you have to work for it.

Legacy items are also too high I think, $500.000.00 for the onboard ship email, come on!! This should have been onboard FREE as standard.

Its a permanent unlock for all characters on the server and its not something you need to do.

The credit drops are too low, especially for new players, do you know how long it takes to raise $100,000.00cr prior to level 20?, it's pathetic, and what's more is, $100.000.00 in game isn't alot of money when you compare it to the cost of things, see the $1,000.000.00 noted above.

You don't need 100k prior to level 20, credit drops are more than sufficient to buy all your skills and everything else you need by level 20.

Thoughts please folks, Devs please, I know it's early doors for this otherwise brilliant game, but come on, your pricing folk out of the game, I want to progress my toon, I'd like to be able to get the best gear for him, that said, do I want to wait and save for the next 6 months in order to buy something which will probably be out of date by the time I can afford to buy it.

Until you hit level 50 you don't need the best gear in the game for PvE because the difference is not that big as you level and leveling is easy. The only place you do is PvP and those items you get using the commendations you earn by doing PvP.

Finally the high GTN prices would be even higher if there were not credit sinks in the game. Its easy to earn ~300k on a level 50 in a few hours which can be sent to lower level toons. Without the credit sinks that are in the game we would have far more money washing around which would mean higher GTN prices. MMOs need ways of removing credits from the game as they are a free resource, every minute of every day people are adding more credits to the balance in game, there has to be a way of removing credits.

The Cost of ingame items. Too High? .

no .

I don't agree, credits are easy to get, and without money sinks we all sit with tons of money and nothing ot spend it on.

I think repairs should go up in fact.

Do some dailies, you'll be rolling in cash.

Learn to auction, you will also be rolling in cash.

Basically, play the game, and you shouldn't have any issue with money.

The GTN has already seen a drop in items being sold, i.e. when was the last time you sold a green item on the GTN and not to a junk dealer or other vendor?

 

The reason for this, is they're already out of date, and there are not enough new players coming on board to level new characters who will buy these low rank green items in order to progress the game themselves, this then leads to the number of new players joining the game dropping, and a number of current players leaving the game.

 

Actually I think there is another reason for this...

I maybe bought a couple from the GTN on my first character and soon realized I didn't really make a difference. Pretty much by time I hit 50 I was still wearing some gear that I had had since at least level 40.

I levelled that character pretty much exclusively with a friend. We did all the quests. Including Heriocs. We were SO far above the level cap for each planet that we could do Heroic 4's together wearing really outdated gear.

I've just started leveling a new character. I haven't bought any gear. Even without grouping all of the solo content like with my first char, I'm still well above the level cap for the planet I'm on and I'm certainly not feeling any pressure to make sure I have the best up to date gear.

Basically what I'm saying is that I think the reason that there's not much being sold, especially green gear, is that there really isn't any incentive to gear up early in the game. You get handed a bunch of gear that's 'good enough' to get through most of the content. Maybe the increased server pops and group finder will pressure people to have decent gear for Flashpoints/Heroics but even in that case greens still wouldn't be in demand.

With regards to the rest of your post, at some point you need to get to 'end game'. There's not going to be new content as soon as the first person finishes the old content, so yes things need to be repeated. As the game progresses I have no doubt there'll be a greater range of repeatable content, but still repeatable content. If you don't add incentives to repeat the content then nobody's going to want to keep playing. Hence items/unlocks that are expensive whether it's credits or comms.

This is not a single player game. They want to give you something that takes time to achieve so that you keep paying.

I have no problem with the prices.

Yes you have to repeat some content, yes new players can't afford some things but that was designed that way and I don't see the problem.

You level a character, you are often short on money for this character. Once you are 50, between the extra quests, the dailies, you being a crafter, ... you get enough resources to have your first alt level with more money and better gear than your main.

Saying people left because of the high prices is imo silly.

If someone thinks the price are too high and doesn't like to repeat some content, what would happen if the prices where 10 times lower ? Yes they would get some things they can't right now but they would still leave because they don't like to repeat content anyway.

Thanks for the input, so far, all very valid points of view, and many of which I'm personally taking onboard as they will help me understand the game better and appreciate the way the money side of the game works.

As I said I'm not moaning, would just like to see what people think and if they have any idea's for improvements.

thanks again.

Since you're a bank manager, then it would be safe to assume that you know how to manage money.

I,myself have terrible credit, can't manage my own RL money, yet I have over 5 million in game credits.

Getting money in this game is super easy.

Doing all of the daily quests on the 3 planets will get you easily 300k/day.

Are some things way overpriced on the GTN? Of course, but everything is worth what it's purchaser will pay for it.

Simply don't pay that much lol, the reason you never see stuff for way cheaper is that people buy them so fast they never stay on the GTN for very long.

Umm, no. The reason greens don't sell is three fold. Firstly new characters out level them too quickly, greens can be replaced by mission rewards very soon after you can wear them (its Blues that you can keep for a while). Secondly its very easy to get orange items and upgrade them with commendations (which cuts down the market for items you wanty to buy). Finally crafting greens in this game is simple due to the availability of resources, its only when you want to keep multiple characters/companions in complete on-level blue items that you have to worry about gathering materials.

What you write here is true until tomorrow. In 1.3, green armors of all types for level 50 will be worth more than their vendor trash price. Why? Because you need to reverse engineer TEN of them to make one augment kit.