Hello,

 

What is the current state of the Economy right now??

 

Prices on the GTN are spiking rapidly and inflation is definitively taking place.

 

Is this due to out break months ago with the Companion gifts or is a direct effect of the Cartel Market?

 

Regardless the economy is changing and I can't decide whether it's positive or moving out of control.

 

Maybe with this new patch it'll balance things out.

 

Anyways, please let me know what you guys think.

Hello,

 

What is the current state of the Economy right now??

 

Prices on the GTN are spiking rapidly and inflation is definitively taking place.

 

Is this due to out break months ago with the Companion gifts or is a direct effect of the Cartel Market?

 

Regardless the economy is changing and I can't decide whether it's positive or moving out of control.

 

Maybe with this new patch it'll balance things out.

 

Anyways, please let me know what you guys think.

 

its out of control tbh no one really buys the packs compared to before direct sell defo taken over. and with that decos are more rare along with armour sets

I bought a Gav Daragon armor set for 250k today, so I'm not complaining. Watch the trade channel, that's where the deals are to be had. Edited September 16, 2018 by Ardrossan

I find that as an experienced but semi-casual player with crafters and plenty of level 70 toons, I can easily afford the mid-level items I want and an ocassional high end item. The credit amounts may get bigger, but my purchasing power has never changed. I was poorest the first 6 months of the game, back when there were far more credit drains. Ever since then, I've been able to keep up enough credits just by playing.

 

I can see how a new player might think they need to buy everything under the sun, but if you're talking about keeping up month by month on buying the new goodies from the cartel market you shouldn't have any problem.

Trade channel??? That's interesting.....

 

BTW thank you for your input, I appreciate it!

My observations;

Prices for main crafted items (new augs & 246 gear) have stayed very static for the past several months already. There is some fluctuation ofc, mainly correlating with mats prices, but no noticeable trend up.

 

Most "desirable" CM items have gone down a. lot. during the last year; most rare armor sets, mounts and weapons are now a fraction of what they cost before.

 

General cc to credits ratio has gone up when it comes to items only available directly from CM (tokens, renames, bundles, etc.), aka more credits per cc are demanded. Packs have gone up in price quite a bit in the last year.

 

In genera,no, it's not out of control at all at the moment. I attribute most of it to ultimate packs and the availability of stuff on CM but the reason can be something else of course.

Edited September 17, 2018 by exfell

The poor economy in the game is a direct symptom of the cartel market, if you ask me.

 

It astounds me that one day a particular item will be priced reasonably, and the next day it's five or six times more expensive, for no apparent reason.

 

What bugs me even more is that I only recently came back from an extended hiatus away from swtor (2+ years). Back when I played before, you were 'rich' if you had 5-10 million credits, and most items - even more rare cartel market items - were usually priced under 1 mil. Now everything is in the 30-100 mil range.

 

That's also a symptom of the cartel market pricing. Back then, most armor sets and weapons on the cartel market were 500-750 coins, now everything is 2000-5000 coins. Bioware/EA have literally doubled or tripled the price on nearly every cartel market item, probably because they're not making as much money as they want to, but they dont seem to understand that if you raise prices to the ridiculous levels they're at right now not as many people will be buying. Personally, I'll never spend 30-50$ for a single digital item, especially not one that offers no distinct gameplay advantage. Even Star trek online, with it's 50$ ship packs, was giving you multiple ships with quite a bit more artwork involved than swtor's weapons or armor sets, and those ships came with gameplay benefits.

 

EA's greed is ruining everything, as usual.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Tenacity

As long as folks keep spending 5k + CC on sparkly things in the CM BW will keep selling.

For the most part the prices on the GTN aren't to bad. Rare platinum item prices have dropped massively. Items that used to sell for 150-200 million, sell for around 50 mil now. Everyday crafting materials have stayed relatively the same over the years, the newer crafting Mats (CMT's) have stayed about the same price as when they came out (if not dropped some since that time). For the most part the only items that people would even consider to highly priced on the GTN are the rare platinum CM items, and that is simply supply and demand, and as I said earlier, those prices decreased considerably due to all the direct sales that BW has had over the past few months. Edited September 17, 2018 by Toraak

I find that as an experienced but semi-casual player with crafters and plenty of level 70 toons, I can easily afford the mid-level items I want and an ocassional high end item. The credit amounts may get bigger, but my purchasing power has never changed. I was poorest the first 6 months of the game, back when there were far more credit drains. Ever since then, I've been able to keep up enough credits just by playing.

 

I can see how a new player might think they need to buy everything under the sun, but if you're talking about keeping up month by month on buying the new goodies from the cartel market you shouldn't have any problem.

 

This is the key with respect to MMO player economies.

 

It is a given that the in game currency supply in an MMO will increase over time. In the case of SWTOR.... with the release of 4.0 the studio opened the credit fountains in game quite a bit and as such it increased the pace of new credits entering the economy. This was actually a good thing for new players as it made it such that they could reach rough parity with veteran players in terms of economic buying power, within 6 months. In some MMOs.. you can never catch up with veteran wealth AND it is veteran wealth that drives player economy prices more than anything else.

 

In practicality though.. it's all relative. As annabethchase noted, for the ongoing player.... buying power really does not change much even with increasing credits in game. I think players need to keep in mind that at any given point in time... only a small fraction of credits are actually in circulation. Why? because there is not much to spend them on other then crafted items or vanity items being resold from the GTN... and these sales do not remove credits from the economy (other then a modest 8% selling tax) they just move from player to player. Most of the actual credit supply sits in the wallets of players... not being spent at all.

 

The reality in the player economy is there are segments of the market where there is actually deflation over time in terms of prices, there are items that are rare or no longer in circulation from world drops that command very high prices, and then we have the super rare and very desired cosmetic items from the CM that get resold into the player economies. It is really only the last category, and only select items, that are seeing persistent inflation of prices. And yet even in the case of super rare CM items... with periodic direct sales and ongoing drops from Chance Cubes or pack reissues...... prices are not stable at the high end of asking prices... because --> competition in listing prices.

 

Now.. the big hitch with MMO player economies rests upon the shoulders of players who have been gone for one or more years and come back to find credits to be worth less on average then when they left. But that is actually true of any MMO with an in game currency and a player driven economy with some form of resale market feature. I was quite wealthy when I left WoW 8 years ago, and I know from casual conversations with friends and guild mates that if I returned today... I would not be wealthy by any real measure.... because I have been gone a long time and the economy has continued to move forward.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Andryah

For the most part the prices on the GTN aren't to bad. Rare platinum item prices have dropped massively. Items that used to sell for 150-200 million, sell for around 50 mil now. Everyday crafting materials have stayed relatively the same over the years, the newer crafting Mats (CMT's) have stayed about the same price as when they came out (if not dropped some since that time). For the most part the only items that people would even consider to highly priced on the GTN are the rare platinum CM items, and that is simply supply and demand, and as I said earlier, those prices decreased considerably due to all the direct sales that BW has had over the past few months.

 

^^ accurate assessment.

I have bought only very few items - especially armor sets - on the GTN since KOTET, because the prices are too high for my personal taste.

 

One thing I've found to be true, however, is that very low-priced single parts from complete armor sets can be found deeply embedded among the other "adaptive armor" stuff.

Thorough searching is a "must", there.

Edited September 17, 2018 by AlrikFassbauer

Items are way down imo. I bought a Ziost Guardian lightsaber for 3.25 million about a month ago. They used to sell for 75 million or something. Revan Rebrone set are practically given away for a 2 month sub now. They were in the 120 million range before the spring sale and I bought the Revan and the Revan Reborn set for like 34 million for both. Cheap cheap cheap.

Items are way down imo. I bought a Ziost Guardian lightsaber for 3.25 million about a month ago. They used to sell for 75 million or something. Revan Rebrone set are practically given away for a 2 month sub now. They were in the 120 million range before the spring sale and I bought the Revan and the Revan Reborn set for like 34 million for both. Cheap cheap cheap.

 

You are correct, at least for the NA servers. I can't comment on the EU servers as I don't play them.

 

A lot of prices for super rare and highly desired items ARE actually down quite a bit on the NA servers. Some by as much as 75% over the last 6 months. And since this was the only market segment for CM items that typically saw inflationary pricing over time... this very much undercuts player complaints about "inflation".

 

In addition, a lot of once super rare and highly desired items are not so desired anymore because the desire has been superseded by newer items. The lesson to be learned here is do not collect high value items, take a break, and then come back and expect to even make back your investment in said items. You will likely be facing a loss.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Andryah

You are correct, at least for the NA servers. I can't comment on the EU servers as I don't play them.

 

A lot of prices for super rare and highly desired items ARE actually down quite a bit on the NA servers. Some by as much as 75% over the last 6 months. And since this was the only market segment for CM items that typically saw inflationary pricing over time... this very much undercuts player complaints about "inflation".

 

In addition, a lot of once super rare and highly desired items are not so desired anymore because the desire has been superseded by newer items. The lesson to be learned here is do not collect high value items, take a break, and then come back and expect to even make back your investment in said items. You will likely be facing a loss.

 

This is true. Some of the rarest CM items have come way down. I believe this has to do, at least in part, with the greater frequency of direct sales making the "jackpot" of getting a rare item in a pack much less significant. This is one of the reasons I've never bothered with the CM-flipping approach. IMO, it's too costly (IRL dollars) and that market is flaky (not to derail, but this is a noteworthy datapoint for the P2W proponents as it's not as easy as it once was to get to just buy and flip).

 

But to be fair, nearly everything else on the GTN is experiencing inflation. All mats have seen big time inflation. Level 8-10 mats as well as assemblies, for example, have seen 50-100% increases over the past 9ish months. CM items such as renames, CXP boosts, valor boosts, and the like are up about 40% over just the past few months. Master's datacron is up 25%+ since it was introduced. There are many other examples. But I suspect that these too will drop as demand drops (again, a different can of worms about the state of the game, P2W, and whatnot).

 

So I do agree that the relative impact of the CM on the in-game inflation is decreasing. But the value of a credit today is much less than it was even just a year ago, and certainly beyond that. There are almost no impactful credit sinks, and every alt/sub etc. just prints money with every play which of course means there will necessarily be inflation (unless fewer of those credits get sloshed around in game but to fewer people playing)...