The starter planets used to be decent. Never perfect but it was always a welcoming place for new players will a bunch of people like myself experienced enough with the game to answer the newbie questions. Now it's literally just gold spammers from my experience. How do new players feel about this? They start the game and just see chat blasted with gold spammers then go experience DK chat which for those of us who remember, is essentially Barrens chat 2.0

It’s horrendous on Tython at the moment, the first thing you see when you land or create a new character is credit spammers bombarding chat and then you get the dreaded private messages from them and the mail spam once they have your character name.

 

Even if you get enough people to squelch them on the starter planet, they are back with another character in a minute.

Edited November 16, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Ord Mantell has been horrendous about this for years. I believe it's the gold farmers' favorite planet.

There's the option to turn off the general chat if you are bothered by it. It's what I have done, I just have it turned off all the time except when looking for a group or something.

 

And yes, Bioware is constantly working on combating the gold spammers. As Eric Musco has stated before however, it's a continual cat and mouse game, because whenever the devs implement a new measure against goldspammers, the latter find new ways to circumvent it. Every single MMO has this issue and every single MMO is fighting this fight, SWTOR is not the only one having this issue.

Edited November 16, 2019 by Ylliarus

Bioware/EA are you ever going to make an attempt to address the gold spammers?

 

They do make the effort, and they've mentioned before how they go about it. They wait until they've connected the dots between various accounts who are spamming, and then do a general take-down of those accounts all at once.

 

It's a time-consuming process, and I can totally see the effort put on pause at times while EA employees work on other tasks, but never fear.

 

They'll clean house, and when they do, there's glorious silence for six months or more, as we had until recently.

It's cyclical. We're just in the most detestable part of the cycle right now.

Edited November 16, 2019 by xordevoreaux

They do make the effort, and they've mentioned before how they go about it. They wait until they've connected the dots between various accounts who are spamming, and then do a general take-down of those accounts all at once.

 

It's a time-consuming process, and I can totally see the effort put on pause at times while EA employees work on other tasks, but never fear.

 

They'll clean house, and when they do, there's glorious silence for six months or more, as we had until recently.

It's cyclical. We're just in the most detestable part of the cycle right now.

 

Very much agreed. I bet that sometime before the Christmas holidays we'll see a big take-down again and then we'll have some peace again. It's just how it goes with stuff like goldspammers, the devs implement new measures and the gold sellers go out of their way to find new ways to circumvent the newly implemented measures.

The issue is Bioware have created the perfect environment for them with this expansion with all the massive credit sinks,

Anyone would think they were specifically catering to the credit spammers business model or the credit spammers are actually an EA front for p2w (I know it’s not).

 

Time poor players or poor players or new players can’t afford the huge credit sinks that have been added in this expansion, so of course credit spammers are doing roaring business and spamming more than “usual”.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s not hard to understand that when you make the game too expensive for the causal’s to play (credit wise), they will of course look for a faster way to keep up with everyone else.

 

Bioware have also shot themselves in the foot again because everyone who buys credits is unlikely to buy CM coins as well. So they are most likely losing “real” money to add “virtual currency” credit sinks. IMO, this makes no sense and is a really bad business decision that could and probably is losing them real income

It’s also counter productive as it’s not removing credits from the super rich players. All they are doing is jacking up their prices on everything else and it’s causing more inflation.

 

As in real life, the poor are getting poorer, the middle income players are now becoming poor as well and the super rich just get richer. I know this for a fact because I’ve just hit 1 billion credits, adding 200,000,000’ in the last two weeks alone because I’ve got the slush fund to buy up cheaper items and relist them higher.

While my poor wife who was middle income at best is now in hock to me with all the “loans” I’ve given her. Only joking, I’d give it too her anyway 💕💕. But my point stands, if it wasn’t for me giving her credits, she wouldn’t be able to gear at the vendors, wouldn’t be able to craft or do lots of things she did before.

 

The fact is Bioware have created this perfect scenario even when people were telling them on the pts that this would happen.

Yeah, it's really too bad it's so difficult to combat the spammers. Like yesterday on Tython, it would have been funny if it wasn't so annoying. I switched map instances because it was so crowded and I was trying to finish a quest that umpteen others were trying to get at the same time. New instance. Only 5 people on the whole instance and the chat was blissfully quiet for a heartbeat except for someone talking in chat and I could actually see what they were saying without all the spam in between. In less than 2 minutes the credit spam started so I switched to a chat tab with no general in disgust. Man, those people are fast when a new instance goes up. Did they seriously think that one of us 5 players there would be in the least interested in their bs? Well I guess people must be buying from them or maybe they'd give up?

 

Or are the chats all connected? *shrugs*

Edited November 16, 2019 by VarnieTsk

Well OP, im sure BW makes an effort, but making everything absurdly expensive with 6.0 certainly does not help....

The issue is Bioware have created the perfect environment for them with this expansion with all the massive credit sinks,

Anyone would think they were specifically catering to the credit spammers business model or the credit spammers are actually an EA front for p2w (I know it’s not).

 

Time poor players or poor players or new players can’t afford the huge credit sinks that have been added in this expansion, so of course credit spammers are doing roaring business and spamming more than “usual”.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s not hard to understand that when you make the game too expensive for the causal’s to play (credit wise), they will of course look for a faster way to keep up with everyone else.

 

Bioware have also shot themselves in the foot again because everyone who buys credits is unlikely to buy CM coins as well. So they are most likely losing “real” money to add “virtual currency” credit sinks. IMO, this makes no sense and is a really bad business decision that could and probably is losing them real income

It’s also counter productive as it’s not removing credits from the super rich players. All they are doing is jacking up their prices on everything else and it’s causing more inflation.

 

As in real life, the poor are getting poorer, the middle income players are now becoming poor as well and the super rich just get richer. I know this for a fact because I’ve just hit 1 billion credits, adding 200,000,000’ in the last two weeks alone because I’ve got the slush fund to buy up cheaper items and relist them higher.

While my poor wife who was middle income at best is now in hock to me with all the “loans” I’ve given her. Only joking, I’d give it too her anyway 💕💕. But my point stands, if it wasn’t for me giving her credits, she wouldn’t be able to gear at the vendors, wouldn’t be able to craft or do lots of things she did before.

 

The fact is Bioware have created this perfect scenario even when people were telling them on the pts that this would happen.

 

Huh, I hadn't thought about that, but you're very correct in that assessment. The credit sink that crafting has become is indeed the perfect environment for gold spammers and sellers, as many more people would be tempted now to actually go and buy credits from those sellers.

 

Wouldn't it be an idea if Bioware simply started selling credits themselves? For example, spend 1000 CC and get 10 mil credits for it. I believe Guild Wars 2 has such an option, that you can spend their variant of CC on getting gold, silver and such. This would simply put credit spammers out of business, no?

Huh, I hadn't thought about that, but you're very correct in that assessment. The credit sink that crafting has become is indeed the perfect environment for gold spammers and sellers, as many more people would be tempted now to actually go and buy credits from those sellers.

 

Wouldn't it be an idea if Bioware simply started selling credits themselves? For example, spend 1000 CC and get 10 mil credits for it. I believe Guild Wars 2 has such an option, that you can spend their variant of CC on getting gold, silver and such. This would simply put credit spammers out of business, no?

 

Unlikely as their prices would still be way higher then a credit farmer I'd be willing to bet. Bioware isn't likely to do this anyhow when they just went to the trouble they have to remove credits from the economy. Would just be putting it right back sgain.

Unlikely as their prices would still be way higher then a credit farmer I'd be willing to bet. Bioware isn't likely to do this anyhow when they just went to the trouble they have to remove credits from the economy. Would just be putting it right back sgain.

 

But surely they have to see that with this approach they have created a perfect environment for the credit sellers? Even if the create these enormous credit sinks, people simply want to have and use credits. This is a case where, despite the fact this is the devs' game, they have to see and realise what their players want to get from the product they produce. Punishing us for wanting to gather, have and use credits is not going to work beneficially in this case.

To be fair, SWTOR before 6.0 wasn't even busy enough to attract the attention of credit spammers. It had mostly died out on its own because it wasn't lucrative enough.

 

The fact that they are back is a sign that the game is healthy again, as unsightly as it is.

 

so I just wonder if the development team is just a little bit Rusty and now has to get back into the swing of things to try to block these guys?

Huh, I hadn't thought about that, but you're very correct in that assessment. The credit sink that crafting has become is indeed the perfect environment for gold spammers and sellers, as many more people would be tempted now to actually go and buy credits from those sellers.

 

Wouldn't it be an idea if Bioware simply started selling credits themselves? For example, spend 1000 CC and get 10 mil credits for it. I believe Guild Wars 2 has such an option, that you can spend their variant of CC on getting gold, silver and such. This would simply put credit spammers out of business, no?

 

Tbh, I've often wondered why more games don't do this very thing. Seems like a no-brainer to me that if people are going to be buying credits/gold anyway, whatever currency, that the companies would want to be the ones selling it. May not put the illegal sellers out of business completely as they would prob drop prices below what the companies sell it for, but it might make it so unprofitable for them that they'd rather spend their time on some other game. lol. I'd bet dollars to donuts that a lot of those buyers would rather be dealing with a legit company, and those who never buy from the spammers might buy from the game company.

Edited November 16, 2019 by VarnieTsk

The issue is Bioware have created the perfect environment for them with this expansion with all the massive credit sinks,

Anyone would think they were specifically catering to the credit spammers business model or the credit spammers are actually an EA front for p2w (I know it’s not).

 

Time poor players or poor players or new players can’t afford the huge credit sinks that have been added in this expansion, so of course credit spammers are doing roaring business and spamming more than “usual”.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s not hard to understand that when you make the game too expensive for the causal’s to play (credit wise), they will of course look for a faster way to keep up with everyone else.

 

Bioware have also shot themselves in the foot again because everyone who buys credits is unlikely to buy CM coins as well. So they are most likely losing “real” money to add “virtual currency” credit sinks. IMO, this makes no sense and is a really bad business decision that could and probably is losing them real income

It’s also counter productive as it’s not removing credits from the super rich players. All they are doing is jacking up their prices on everything else and it’s causing more inflation.

 

As in real life, the poor are getting poorer, the middle income players are now becoming poor as well and the super rich just get richer. I know this for a fact because I’ve just hit 1 billion credits, adding 200,000,000’ in the last two weeks alone because I’ve got the slush fund to buy up cheaper items and relist them higher.

While my poor wife who was middle income at best is now in hock to me with all the “loans” I’ve given her. Only joking, I’d give it too her anyway 💕💕. But my point stands, if it wasn’t for me giving her credits, she wouldn’t be able to gear at the vendors, wouldn’t be able to craft or do lots of things she did before.

 

The fact is Bioware have created this perfect scenario even when people were telling them on the pts that this would happen.

 

So you're criticizing SWTOR while simultaneously benefiting yourself and contributing to the problem.

 

Oh, well, do what you have to to keep up with the Jones' right? If you don't price gouge, someone else will, I guess.

Edited November 16, 2019 by sharkfishman

Huh, I hadn't thought about that, but you're very correct in that assessment. The credit sink that crafting has become is indeed the perfect environment for gold spammers and sellers, as many more people would be tempted now to actually go and buy credits from those sellers.

 

Wouldn't it be an idea if Bioware simply started selling credits themselves? For example, spend 1000 CC and get 10 mil credits for it. I believe Guild Wars 2 has such an option, that you can spend their variant of CC on getting gold, silver and such. This would simply put credit spammers out of business, no?

 

They already do this (indirectly) by selling items directly on the Cartel Market, which can then be sold on the GTN.

They already do this (indirectly) by selling items directly on the Cartel Market, which can then be sold on the GTN.

 

True, but by making it so you have to use a work-around, people like me won't bother going through the hassle. Then again I'm one of those odd-balls that doesn't really care about having a lot of credits over and above what I need to buy something I want, so I just never bother with it. If, however, I wanted to buy something and could just hop on the cartel and buy the credits I need for it there & then, I might actually do it. lol. There is no way in 9 hells I will ever buy from some credit-spam outfit, so I just do without.

I don't normally chime in on this …

 

BUT .. last night I created a new Smuggler character. At the starting point: Ord Mantel... The entire time I was on that planet general chat was clogged with gold spammers over 90% of the time.

 

I turned in as many as "spam" as possible .. but I think we all know that new accounts will be generated faster than they are blocked.

 

I disagree with the theory that BW has created the "perfect environment" with this situation.

 

My thoughts: regardless of WHO is responsible for the crunch in cash needed … regardless of HOW we got to this point... something really does need to be done about the gold spammers.

 

It's getting pretty bad !

To be fair, SWTOR before 6.0 wasn't even busy enough to attract the attention of credit spammers. It had mostly died out on its own because it wasn't lucrative enough.

 

The fact that they are back is a sign that the game is healthy again, as unsightly as it is.

 

so I just wonder if the development team is just a little bit Rusty and now has to get back into the swing of things to try to block these guys?

 

Incorrect.

 

Before 6.0 ever launched, they were on starter planets. I go their frequently to recruit. Sometimes that's the only messages you see. Doesn't have anything to do with the expac & it's "credit" sinks, IMO.

One of them the other night was just standing as you load in for the first time ever. Not even bothering to logout as the Fleet ones do. (They logout, wait a min or two & back in spam & back out. Guess hoping they won't get caught.)

Edited November 16, 2019 by CaptRogue

They already do this (indirectly) by selling items directly on the Cartel Market, which can then be sold on the GTN.

 

How do you think I have been amassing credits if not this way however, the indirect manner isn't always the most stable way, as you won't get guaranteed sales when you need them and the prices may fluctuate based on supply and demand. Simply offering credit packs would provide a stable manner to buy credits whenever you want or need, so that you won't have to rely on a good day on the GTN.

Edited November 16, 2019 by Ylliarus

How do you think I have been amassing credits if not this way however, the indirect manner isn't always the most stable way, as you won't get guaranteed sales when you need them and the prices may fluctuate based on supply and demand. Simply offering credit packs would provide a stable manner to buy credits whenever you want or need, so that you won't have to rely on a good day on the GTN.

 

I'm not against the suggestion, mind you.

 

But I think that many people (IMO) asking for this feature may not enjoy the prices SWTOR would charge, because it would likely be similar to what you can get via this indirect method.

 

These days, you can buy a Nathema Zealot set for what, 1440 CC I think?

 

It's virtually guaranteed to sell for AT LEAST 50 million. I'm fairly sure in the present climate you could probably get 50 million for the chest piece alone. In any case, we're talking about a ratio of approximately 3000/1 for your investment in CCs.

 

100 CC would be equal to about 3 million credits.

 

1,000 CC for 30 million.

 

Do you really think players crying for an option to buy credits directly from BioWare would pay $10 for 30 million credits? (Honest question, not being sarcastic)

I made a post about 3 years ago saying...

 

As long as I'm receiving spam from CKDJFUJ#U)(R$DS j fja, then BW is doing something right.

 

Obviously, there would be an increase just after the release of 6.0.

 

The real answer, though, is it's like playing 'whack-a-mole' -- they will never defeat them. No MMORPG has. There's a reason cockroaches have survived over 300 million years and date back to the Carboniferous era. I have a sneaking suspicion, not to be Dasty Downer, they will outlive homosapiens as well.

 

Fortunately, I'm a Hutt and live in a galaxy far, far away. Dance party on my pleasure barge anyone? I just added an infinity pool, which on Tatooine, works wonders.

 

Dasty

Edited November 16, 2019 by Jdast

I'm not against the suggestion, mind you.

 

But I think that many people (IMO) asking for this feature may not enjoy the prices SWTOR would charge, because it would likely be similar to what you can get via this indirect method.

 

These days, you can buy a Nathema Zealot set for what, 1440 CC I think?

 

It's virtually guaranteed to sell for AT LEAST 50 million. I'm fairly sure in the present climate you could probably get 50 million for the chest piece alone. In any case, we're talking about a ratio of approximately 3000/1 for your investment in CCs.

 

100 CC would be equal to about 3 million credits.

 

1,000 CC for 30 million.

 

Do you really think players crying for an option to buy credits directly from BioWare would pay $10 for 30 million credits? (Honest question, not being sarcastic)

 

I'd pay that price for sure xD multiple times likely... ._.

 

I do see the point you're making however. The fluctuation of the market means that converting CCs to credits can be highly profitable at some point. Not too long ago for example, the Character Renames were going on the GTN for 50 mil credits each. Now however, with the CC price for those lowered, the amount of renames has tripled and the prices have gone down to 20ish million credits each. With a fixed price for credit packs, one wouldn't be able to play the market, true. It's a difficult question, indeed, because the dev team would have to weigh the pros and cons very carefully here.

 

Because, if the prices are too high for the credit packs, gold sellers will simply undercut the price and still attract a lot of clients. And letting the credits go for too low a price will inflate the market. So it does make it understandable why the devs haven't implemented this feature yet.

 

Honest question though, do people really buy credits from gold sellers? It seems so incredibly shady, I'd be afraid to just visit their sites our of fear for some malware or virus or something.

Incorrect.

 

Before 6.0 ever launched, they were on starter planets. I go their frequently to recruit. Sometimes that's the only messages you see. Doesn't have anything to do with the expac & it's "credit" sinks, IMO.

One of them the other night was just standing as you load in for the first time ever. Not even bothering to logout as the Fleet ones do. (They logout, wait a min or two & back in spam & back out. Guess hoping they won't get caught.)

 

Pretty much right on !!

 

There is something else driving the "market" for the credits needed to compete in the game. For now that is irrelevant. Stop the spammers first … then sort out the other issues and solve them one at the time !

 

Note: IMO.. the spammers have been around on starter planets for a reason … AND for some time now ! AND YES … since we have a new XP that has just started the natural tendency is for these exploiters to use that as an opportunity to do their due diligence to get more business. It's just that simple.

 

Don't blame BW for the increased number of crooks out there. But it would be nice if this issue were addressed and the spammers were gone !

So you're criticizing SWTOR while simultaneously benefiting yourself and contributing to the problem.

 

Oh, well, do what you have to to keep up with the Jones' right? If you don't price gouge, someone else will, I guess.

 

I would be a hypocrite to whine about the credit sinks while not explaining my situation. I’m laying out the facts and my experience. I can see a problem and the fix. It’s not my fault they don’t understand “cause and effects” or listen to people who told them this would happen. It’s economics 101. The more you overly tax everyone the same, the bigger the gap between those that have and those that don’t. It’s the same in the real world.

 

Bioware added credit sinks for everything and I need to pay those credits as much as everyone else, so I still need to make credits. I’m just lucky I can afford to take risks to get bigger gains. Which is what I’m doing, when I buy something cheaper to list higher, I can never guarantee it will sell or that someone else isn’t doing the same and then they flood the market and I can’t sell. It’s happened many times to me. The difference is that risk is mitigated because I’ve such a large sum of credits to play with. That’s how the rich in this world keep getting richer.

 

I’m criticising the credit sinks and system because they aren’t targeting my wealth or the wealth of other players who have 10x or 100x more than me. The sinks are targeting the wrong players and the wrong players are being caught up in them the most. I can see that and it’s why I’m pointing out the facts.

 

Now if Bioware were smarter, they would have created credit sinks based on wealth instead of playable content that affects poor or middle wealth players. They could add a GTN tax that scales more with cost and not a flat tax. They could add some vendors with really sort after or extremely rare (world drop) vanity items, mounts, Armor, crystals, etc that cost a bunch of credits. All of these things have been suggested in the past, including from me.

 

If Bioware want to remove credits from the game, you don’t create credit sinks like these that affect the average player, all it does is make them poor and they turn to credit spammers. It’s like any economy with run away inflation, you don’t print money to fix it because that just makes it worse. Which is basically what credit farmers and sellers are doing. They are injecting new credits into the game while Bioware are over taxing the average players. Players like me who have the credits don’t want them to be overly diminished (especially if they worked hard to get them like I did and didn’t just buy cartel market stuff to list)l. So we play the game the way Bioware set it up. We mitigate our own loss by accumulating more credits and the gap between those losing credits and those with credits gets bigger.

 

The only way to help fix this issue is to make it a less desirable environment or business model for credit spammers to operate. Banning them isn’t enough and never has been. Making it harder for players to make credits or adding credit sinks like these is what’s caused the problem. So there needs to be a three prong approach. Add wealth targeted credits sinks (like a wealth tax), remove or reduce the current credit sinks significantly and add more ways for the average player to make lots more credits.

 

That would give the average player more credits and they wouldn’t need to buy off credit spammers. Which means the credit spammers business model wouldn’t work as well. Therefore they would be less aggressive because it wouldn’t be lucrative or easy money for them. The end result is less credit spammers. More fun for the average player and the wealth gap diminishes instead of widens.