Yep, was pointing this out earlier as well. I think you def onto something.

 

Put it this way.. If you have a character in a high yield guild, you earn 300.000 credits in 15 mins. This through the two conq mission dings -alone-. (raw credits+selling the certificates)

 

Honest question: Can anyone reading this come up with an activity that generates that many new credits to the game even remotely as fast? I've no clue how much some bots or whatnot exploit this. I'm quite sure perfectly normal players doing perfectly normal gameplay generate much more credits to the world than they used to tho.

 

 

I talked about price of hypercrates here 10 days back it seems..I remember checking the price then,was 250 mils.

Cheapest are 290 mils today.

Selling stuff to other players DOES NOT add credits to the game.

Conquest is a once and done thing - as in you get rewards once per week per character (and another once per week if in a guild hitting target) - it isn't something that can be done 24 / 7 by a bot.

Also your 15 minutes to cap is for one character, the next takes longer, the next longer still, the next longer still, until there isn't much of anything to do to earn conquest points but farm EV or other champ trash.

I'm sure conquest along with everything else that comes with it (credits from doing all the content that generate conquest points) does add a decent amount of credits to the game, but no where near the amounts that would allow a player to generate the billions being sold cheaply by the credit sellers.

Selling stuff to other players DOES NOT add credits to the game.

 

Conquest is a once and done thing - as in you get rewards once per week per character (and another once per week if in a guild hitting target) - it isn't something that can be done 24 / 7 by a bot.

 

Also your 15 minutes to cap is for one character, the next takes longer, the next longer still, the next longer still, until there isn't much of anything to do to earn conquest points but farm EV or other champ trash.

 

I'm sure conquest along with everything else that comes with it (credits from doing all the content that generate conquest points) does add a decent amount of credits to the game, but no where near the amounts that would allow a player to generate the billions being sold cheaply by the credit sellers.

exactly, which has been said over and over, in many different ways. But you can only say something so many times...lol

Selling stuff to other players DOES NOT add credits to the game.

I'm pretty sure nobody has suggested that? Not sure where you got the idea.. I mention hyper crate in context of inflation. Evolution of their pricetag is one way to try and keep track of it.

Conquest is a once and done thing - as in you get rewards once per week per character (and another once per week if in a guild hitting target) - it isn't something that can be done 24 / 7 by a bot.

Normal players posting on these very forums often talk about bringing up to 30 chars to target. So it can potentially be once and done x 30 or once and done x40.As long as there isn't some exploit tied to this, I'm pretty sure no gold farmer bot or such can bring in tons of credits via conq tho, no. Char cap happens way before billions happen. Or maybe they juggle hundreds or thousands of different accounts? < - - -Hmm, Im officially betting a tauntaun on that, actually.

However, amount of credits normal players create to the game via normal gameplay has gone up by quite a bit for sure thanks to the wonderful conq patch of last spring.

Also your 15 minutes to cap is for one character, the next takes longer, the next longer still, the next longer still, until there isn't much of anything to do to earn conquest points but farm EV or other champ trash.

As long as we talking about gluttony taking place on live servers, you won't run out of daily planetaries before you run out of gaming hours in a day I think. You can easily make like..what, 250k conq in 90 mins?Even more? That's 4-5 characters to target. That is also 4 x 300k shiny new credits to the game. On top of mission rewards and whatnot.

Conq reward, credits included is pretty trivial for all who do like one character/week. But it does pile up real fast.

Super casual player who plays like 2 hours a week and brings 2 chars to target in that time prolly creates 2 x more credits than he used to.

Super hardcore player who brings 30 characters to target generates 30 x 300k. These are pretty significant amounts.

For prices to be this low from the spammers means that they can get an account to generate hundreds of millions per day per account and that it is totally automated by some kind of a bot program or they are doing something nefarious with tons of free to play accounts. Otherwise there is no way it would be worth their time and effort with prices this low.

I even saw people asking on reddit in the past week if it is safe to buy credits, so people are obviously tempted even more by them with these low prices and it must be costing the game sales of cartel coins. Since prices are so low that cartel coins becomes a much less of a value proposition because of the price difference of buying credits versus buying cartel items and selling them for credits. The spammers are undercutting the price by 3-5 times or more versus buying cartel coins.

Looks like they can't/won't fix it so just expect even more inflation that has been going on for over 2 years now.

I'm pretty sure nobody has suggested that? Not sure where you got the idea.. I mention hyper crate in context of inflation. Evolution of their pricetag is one way to try and keep track of it.

 

 

Normal players posting on these very forums often talk about bringing up to 30 chars to target. So it can potentially be once and done x 30 or once and done x40.As long as there isn't some exploit tied to this, I'm pretty sure no gold farmer bot or such can bring in tons of credits via conq tho, no. Char cap happens way before billions happen. Or maybe they juggle hundreds or thousands of different accounts? < - - -Hmm, Im officially betting a tauntaun on that, actually.

 

However, amount of credits normal players create to the game via normal gameplay has gone up by quite a bit for sure thanks to the wonderful conq patch of last spring.

 

 

As long as we talking about gluttony taking place on live servers, you won't run out of daily planetaries before you run out of gaming hours in a day I think. You can easily make like..what, 250k conq in 90 mins?Even more? That's 4-5 characters to target. That is also 4 x 300k shiny new credits to the game. On top of mission rewards and whatnot.

 

Conq reward, credits included is pretty trivial for all who do like one character/week. But it does pile up real fast.

Super casual player who plays like 2 hours a week and brings 2 chars to target in that time prolly creates 2 x more credits than he used to.

Super hardcore player who brings 30 characters to target generates 30 x 300k. These are pretty significant amounts.

But to generate the amounts needed to cause this much inflation it would have to be a lot more than that and unlimited repeatable and easily automated with some kind of a bot.

What i don't understand is how the devs cant figure out what it is. Either from their internal metrics or from doing a sting operation on the credit farmers.

If the devs do know how they are generating so many credits and think it is legit then why not tell us so we can all benefit from this wonderful activity. lol

Some of you are focused only on supply, but you are forgetting demand.

I have no idea if this is true, but the claim in this thread goes like so:

Credit sellers used to sell 1 billion credits for $150. Now they sell 1 billion credits for $30.

Does this prove supply of credits (or credit sellers) went up?

No, it could also be that demand for credits went down.

Why would demand for credits go down?

Remember that most players are not interested in buying credits. For instance, players who already have lots of credits do not care about buying more of them. Only players with relatively few credits compared to what they want to buy on the GTN are interested in buying credits.

If, for instance, you change Conquest so that it becomes easier for players with fewer credits to make more credits, even if they are making those additional credits by selling mats on the GTN, it will cause the price (in dollars) of credits to drop. And this can happen even if there is no actual inflation in credits.

Here is another very obvious possibility: demand (in dollars) for credits drops because, in the real world, people have less dollars to spend. Or, they are just more cautious about spending dollars. What might cause that to happen? Well a recession caused by a pandemic, for instance.

In other words, a drop in the dollar price of credits, even a drastic drop, does not (surprisingly) prove all by itself that there is inflation of credits in-game.

***

On top of all this, SWTOR is a much smaller market than WoW. Just because there are paid gold-farmers in WoW, does not mean there are paid credit farmers in SWTOR.

Until I see some concrete evidence suggesting otherwise, I will continue to believe that the primary problem with credit-sellers is that they compromise players' accounts. That causes Bioware to lose paying customers.

If that is the case, Bioware is probably thrilled if there is declining demand for credit sellers.

***

Finally, I do not understand how it is possible for in-game inflation to harm cartel sales. The more inflation there is, the more credits someone can get for selling in-game what they buy with real dollars on the cartel market.

On top of all that, when it comes to in-game credits there are only two options. Inflation or deflation. Inflation is definitely better!

Some of you are focused only on supply, but you are forgetting demand.

 

I have no idea if this is true, but the claim in this thread goes like so:

 

Credit sellers used to sell 1 billion credits for $150. Now they sell 1 billion credits for $30.

 

Does this prove supply of credits (or credit sellers) went up?

 

No, it could also be that demand for credits went down.

 

Why would demand for credits go down?

 

Remember that most players are not interested in buying credits. For instance, players who already have lots of credits do not care about buying more of them. Only players with relatively few credits compared to what they want to buy on the GTN are interested in buying credits.

 

If, for instance, you change Conquest so that it becomes easier for players with fewer credits to make more credits, even if they are making those additional credits by selling mats on the GTN, it will cause the price (in dollars) of credits to drop. And this can happen even if there is no actual inflation in credits.

 

Here is another very obvious possibility: demand (in dollars) for credits drops because, in the real world, people have less dollars to spend. Or, they are just more cautious about spending dollars. What might cause that to happen? Well a recession caused by a pandemic, for instance.

 

In other words, a drop in the dollar price of credits, even a drastic drop, does not (surprisingly) prove all by itself that there is inflation of credits in-game.

***

On top of all this, SWTOR is a much smaller market than WoW. Just because there are paid gold-farmers in WoW, does not mean there are paid credit farmers in SWTOR.

 

Until I see some concrete evidence suggesting otherwise, I will continue to believe that the primary problem with credit-sellers is that they compromise players' accounts. That causes Bioware to lose paying customers.

 

If that is the case, Bioware is probably thrilled if there is declining demand for credit sellers.

***

Finally, I do not understand how it is possible for in-game inflation to harm cartel sales. The more inflation there is, the more credits someone can get for selling in-game what they buy with real dollars on the cartel market.

 

On top of all that, when it comes to in-game credits there are only two options. Inflation or deflation. Inflation is definitely better!

Because at the same time prices from the credit sellers went down drastically the prices for items in game went up drastically. Therefore the supply of credits went up drastically and apparently they were making lots of sales.

No, it could also be that demand for credits went down.

Except there is no proof of that and considering the increase of the amount of credit seller activity it's more plausible that the demand went up.

Besides your example only proves there is inflation in the game and that much is true. So again, you make a poor case for your statement.

Except there is no proof of that and considering the increase of the amount of credit seller activity it's more plausible that the demand went up.

 

Besides your example only proves there is inflation in the game and that much is true. So again, you make a poor case for your statement.

Except if the demand went up, so would the cost. So it is very reasonable to believe that less people are purchasing from them.

Except if the demand went up, so would the cost. So it is very reasonable to believe that less people are purchasing from them.

Demand would have went up once the game was added to steam. The fact that prices still go down is more evidence that they have an easy way or an exploit to get tons of credits. It may even be an unlimited amount of credits if it's an actual exploit.

Also, if several people know the exploit/method then they would just keep competing on price to get more sales as they can get credits for nothing, basically.

Except if the demand went up, so would the cost. So it is very reasonable to believe that less people are purchasing from them.

Black dyes just went up from 50M to 100M credits on my server. And that's just one example, so yeah, the prices did go up. But in the end when the supply stays strong then the CM is doing well. And as long as a group of people buys the CM items then BW can deal with another group of players buying credits to meet that supply. In fact they need it so that the richer players can do the supply and the less affluent players can keep the demand up.

So yeah prices will fluctuate but they are going up left and right. I even saw character renames for 100M. They used to be around 30M.

Point being, the cost of CM items has gone up, at least on my server (DM).

Because at the same time prices from the credit sellers went down drastically the prices for items in game went up drastically. Therefore the supply of credits went up drastically and apparently they were making lots of sales.

Huh?

If they were making lots of sales, prices would go up, not down! You don't lower your prices when you're selling a lot!

When people drastically drop their prices, it's because they are desperate.

Black dyes just went up from 50M to 100M credits on my server. And that's just one example, so yeah, the prices did go up. But in the end when the supply stays strong then the CM is doing well. And as long as a group of people buys the CM items then BW can deal with another group of players buying credits to meet that supply. In fact they need it so that the richer players can do the supply and the less affluent players can keep the demand up.

 

So yeah prices will fluctuate but they are going up left and right. I even saw character renames for 100M. They used to be around 30M.

 

Point being, the cost of CM items has gone up, at least on my server (DM).

Yeah exactly, so since it's so easy to make credits, why would anyone buy credits from a credit seller?

Thus, the prices (in dollars) that credit sellers charge has to drop.

This presents no evidence whatsoever of any exploit.

You should be happy there is inflation. The alternative is deflation, which means the game is dying.

Yeah exactly, so since it's so easy to make credits, why would anyone buy credits from a credit seller?

 

Thus, the prices (in dollars) that credit sellers charge has to drop.

 

This presents no evidence whatsoever of any exploit.

 

You should be happy there is inflation. The alternative is deflation, which means the game is dying.

It's easy enough to make credits, but not in those amounts. It takes a while still to get 100M together by doing dailies and such and then you can only buy 1 black dye. And very few people make the investment to get into crafting or enjoy power trading. Also, those things only work as long as only a few people do them or it will stop being profitable.

And it's not about whether or not there is inflation but how much and how fast. Prices doubling in one month is not a good sign and certainly not a sign of a healthy economy. But the point is that more people are driven to the CM to buy items they can sell there. And for others to be able to afford all those items, the credit sellers are a definite option because they are a LOT cheaper. But it does come at a risk of course.

In the end you can say all you want but the truth is that the credit sellers are here and that means there is business for them or they would've been long gone. And the more credits they farm with their bots, the higher the inflation gets.

It's easy enough to make credits, but not in those amounts. It takes a while still to get 100M together by doing dailies and such and then you can only buy 1 black dye. And very few people make the investment to get into crafting or enjoy power trading. Also, those things only work as long as only a few people do them or it will stop being profitable.

 

And it's not about whether or not there is inflation but how much and how fast. Prices doubling in one month is not a good sign and certainly not a sign of a healthy economy. But the point is that more people are driven to the CM to buy items they can sell there. And for others to be able to afford all those items, the credit sellers are a definite option because they are a LOT cheaper. But it does come at a risk of course.

 

In the end you can say all you want but the truth is that the credit sellers are here and that means there is business for them or they would've been long gone. And the more credits they farm with their bots, the higher the inflation gets.

You have provided no evidence that "prices have doubled." They have not doubled on my server. Not even close. One observation of one item, made by you alone, doesn't show that prices have doubled. It doesn't even suggest that prices have doubled.

Tons of credits come BACK into the game when players come back. You have no idea how many players came back when Conquest was changed, or how many credits they brought with them. Those credits were dead credits when those players weren't playing, but now they are flowing through the economy.

There are many players making many more credits as a result of all sorts of things, primarily Conquest. That prices of the most exclusive items rise the fastest is not exactly surprising, given that people can easily pool credits from many characters. I have made hundreds of millions of credits since the changes to Conquest, and I am not making any attempt to maximize credits or maximize mat sales on the GTN. This is entirely from me playing the content I enjoy and selling mats at whatever the going price is.

Oh, and the fact that there are no actual credit sinks in the game. There's just the GTN, which does not remove credits from circulation. It just passes them between players. So what have I spent those credits on? Well, the most expensive decorations, of course. Talking about the prices of the most expensive vanity items is misleading.

The existence of credit sellers only proves that there is profit in taking over the accounts of people who buy from them. Most scams are about getting your passwords, infecting your computer and eventually getting access to your bank account. And that is certainly enough of a reason for Bioware to focus on shutting them down. That and their infuriating spam.

If there was so much botting and exploiting going on, why can't anyone seem to find any evidence of it? Shouldn't I be seeing botting everywhere? In all the years I've played this game, since the freaking beta tests, the only behavior I've ever seen that looked like botting was back in the day surrounding the Yavin temple. Those looked like bots to me. In fact I'm sure those were bots. Other than that, I haven't seen it.

Anyone can just assert what "the truth is". I'll just wait for the evidence, thanks.

You have provided no evidence that "prices have doubled." They have not doubled on my server. Not even close. One observation of one item, made by you alone, doesn't show that prices have doubled. It doesn't even suggest that prices have doubled.

 

actually, on all servers, it depends on what you buy, hypercrates used to go for 5 million, shocking i know, they went up slowly, till they reached about 150 million or so, but in the last couple of months, they#ve jumped to about 260/280 million. Personal Bundles have gone from about 30 million to nearly 150 million. No one has a complete list, but lots of deco's have increased several fold, and then we have the mats, anything needed for CQ stuff, has gone through the roof, some of it going for nearly 9k a piece. This is just a few items I've noticed, and there are more.

If there was so much botting and exploiting going on, why can't anyone seem to find any evidence of it?

There's a couple of threads about it, especially in the pvp forums.....no idea how true it is, but have a look and see. If it's real, it puts the company in a really bad light...

Actually you could probably use this post as a starting investigation point,

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=984861

If there was so much botting and exploiting going on, why can't anyone seem to find any evidence of it? Shouldn't I be seeing botting everywhere?

They could be doing something nefarious in instances and you would never see them.

In the past there were exploits involving something as simple as interacting with a vendor.

It's easy enough to make credits, but not in those amounts. It takes a while still to get 100M together by doing dailies and such and then you can only buy 1 black dye. And very few people make the investment to get into crafting or enjoy power trading. Also, those things only work as long as only a few people do them or it will stop being profitable.

 

gets.

Your claim about 100 mil is totally false... You can make that very easily within two weeks with just conquest and embers alone, if you are WILLING to put in the effort....

The game will return the investment if you invest time in it. This playerbase being super casual, only a small minority accumulate a large amount of wealth from whaling the cartel market, playing the GTN , crafting or other in game activities. I don't include the credit sellers and bots, only the legit ways of earning credits. The fact that most people waste credits on irrelevant things that they get bored of the next day, doesn't mean that it's not possible to gather a pretty large sum of credits.

Your claim about 100 mil is totally false... You can make that very easily within two weeks with just conquest and embers alone, if you are WILLING to put in the effort.....

It's funny how you say I'm wrong and then continue with arguments that prove my point...it takes two weeks just to get that one black dye. BW know that most people are not willing to do that and that's why they make it that long.

Also you say "very easily" and then you say you have to be "willing to put in the effort". Those are contradictory. It's easy in the sense that anyone can do it, but not easy in putting up with that grind.

What you do is take one thing out of context. You say hey it "only" takes two weeks to get a 100M. But I say it's just the one item that you get and people want more items. So really you have to be "willing" to put up with a continuous grind if you want to get all the items you want. Then grinding is all you'll do and very few people are actually willing to do that and for good reason. It's not fun for most people.

So really, your point is what's false here. Two weeks of grinding away is NOT ok, just for a one-shot dye and because most cosmetics come from the CM you either pay up or put up. Neither of which is attractive to do for a lot of people.

Can you think of many other legit ways to "create"300k new credits into the game with 15 mins of work?

While doing achievements for the swoop event I have realized that if you run the dailies on one toon for the achievement you get over 500k credits just for the dailies and stuff when you sell it all. Not to mention the weeklies which u get just one time. Its takes a little under 20 min.

If you complete the achievements you will end up with 100 mil.

While doing achievements for the swoop event I have realized that if you run the dailies on one toon for the achievement you get over 500k credits just for the dailies and stuff when you sell it all. Not to mention the weeklies which u get just one time. Its takes a little under 20 min.

 

If you complete the achievements you will end up with 100 mil.

The achievements that include doing each course 200 times if I'm not mistaken.

It's funny how you say I'm wrong and then continue with arguments that prove my point...it takes two weeks just to get that one black dye. BW know that most people are not willing to do that and that's why they make it that long.

 

Also you say "very easily" and then you say you have to be "willing to put in the effort". Those are contradictory. It's easy in the sense that anyone can do it, but not easy in putting up with that grind.

 

What you do is take one thing out of context. You say hey it "only" takes two weeks to get a 100M. But I say it's just the one item that you get and people want more items. So really you have to be "willing" to put up with a continuous grind if you want to get all the items you want. Then grinding is all you'll do and very few people are actually willing to do that and for good reason. It's not fun for most people.

 

So really, your point is what's false here. Two weeks of grinding away is NOT ok, just for a one-shot dye and because most cosmetics come from the CM you either pay up or put up. Neither of which is attractive to do for a lot of people.

Buy every stronghold except Alderaan and unlock every room(50-60 mil credits) =150% conquest bonus then join a large yield guild and do conquest on 20 alts for 2 weeks or maybe 3 weeks. If not 100 mil, you can get 70 mil...

Who's willing to do what ? I used to reach conquest goal on 3 alts every day.. Easily doable if you do the above mentioned with not much effort and you can also play what you like... I don't need to do it anymore because I have enough credits, but I would if needed..

2 weeks of grinding is a very reasonable time, and it's not that much of a grind, as you aren't doing only that when you log in.. You don''t expect credits to just fall out of the sky, I hope...

Buy every stronghold except Alderaan and unlock every room(50-60 mil credits) =150% conquest bonus then join a large yield guild and do conquest on 20 alts for 2 weeks or maybe 3 weeks. If not 100 mil, you can get 70 mil...

 

Who's willing to do what ? I used to reach conquest goal on 3 alts every day.. Easily doable if you do the above mentioned with not much effort and you can also play what you like... I don't need to do it anymore because I have enough credits, but I would if needed..

 

2 weeks of grinding is a very reasonable time, and it's not that much of a grind, as you aren't doing only that when you log in.. You don''t expect credits to just fall out of the sky, I hope...

This is so true. Making credits in this game is very easy to do. People just need to learn how to do it, and not to waste credits on trivial things from the GTN that are massively over priced.

I found the ultimate solution, the one true solution to stop credit sellers forever but it's basically impossible for that to happen but the answer is:

42

Ooops, wrong universe, actually it's to stop using their services. They wouldn't exist, if no one used their services.