Test of Repair Costs

Please don't troll this thread with political rants that have nothing to do with repair costs or SWTOR.

Thanks to everyone else for your kind words!

Allow me to rephrase (political references were used to give a common point of reference not to offend)

The in game economy is broken and has been broken from the start. The developers needed to realize that the in game economy needed to work very similar to that of a country or some form of government even corporate economics would have been better than what we are currently experiencing. Instead they used the typical video game economics that have been used since the days of the first Single player RPG's. Player is expected to be able to earn "X' amount of money from lvl 1 - lvl 20, While in Area's "A" & "B" Items in area "A" cost this much items in area "B" are this much, so on and so forth. Money earned is static as is the value of the available items and services that the creators have control over.
The economic system of the game suggests an expectation that ALL players will group up into guilds and that all players in said guilds will be willing to pool their $, crafting mats, crafted goods and acquired loot It also suggests that they expected that the guilds would help, support and assist each other in nearly all aspects of the game. The in game economy suggests that little thought was given to the possibility that many players would decide to take advantage of the economic model to add their own in game dynamic to the game; the extreme acquisition of wealth. Players who have gotten bored with the provided content and have found that they have the ability to "do what ever it takes" to earn exorbitant amounts of money. The "greed" factor was almost ignored and now BW/EA are attempting to correct that by hitting the area that they think will affect the wealthiest, end game content and operations. While this was initially true, raiders were the wealthiest among us, but as they ran the ops more frequently and began being able to "farm" these high level operations for gear and crafting mats that content began to get stale for them as well. So They began running the ops to get the gear to be able to learn the schematics. Once they began learning the schematics they were able to charge whatever price they wanted for the crafted items. Most of these items started selling at well over 1 million credits and in some cases 2 million the endgame craftsmen became extremely wealthy in a matter of weeks, in the case of one of my guild mates it was just a few days. Now the extremely wealthy in the game, similar to the extremely wealthy in real life, control the economy not EA/BW. In game economy is what will kill this game, because the developers have no control over it anymore. They can inject random things, like higher repair bills, large fees for selling items on the GTN, etc to try to regain control, but similar to real life (and please excuse the political reference here, I just don't know how else to say this) if the government passes regulations that cause gas prices to increase it hurts us regular Joes because we have limited funds and limited ways to get those funds. It doesn't hurt the rich because they have multiple ways to earn credits and they have stockpiled so much cash that the increase is insignificant to them.
At this point the economy of the game is out of the developers control and they really can't change it. It will be the death of the game, the players will kill the game from the inside. Casual gamers won't be able to "afford" to play the game anymore and they will leave when the casual gamers leave all together the game is dead because casual gamers make up the largest population of gamers across all gaming platforms.

Nevertheless, you still have no idea what you're talking about when using those references. That's what's offensive.

I guess the legacy chest would be the most expensive by far gear to repair then ?

Also if you could add the legacychest to your test.

Has anyone tested the new Gree legacy gear? I was lucky enough to have picked low level orange shells to carry around my bh/dg mods so my repair bills haven't been as bad as many others, but now I have all this new pretty gear sitting in my bags. I'd like to get it augmented and modded, but if the repair bills are going to go up I might as well let it sit.

Very interesting. I'm glad someone has the approach I have when it comes to dispute. I don't just rely on feelings. I am also interested in seeing what price difference there is for premium and prototype mods in each chest shell. Very well thought out and I'll be watching this post for more info.

Thank you Totaltrash.

I can assure you full exalted legacy hurts the wallet worse than dating a Playboy Playmate, regardless your level.

Seriously, learn to hit the enter key now and again... regardless of what you were posting, it is extremely difficult to read wall of texts with no white space in between. I like walls of texts... but not those kinds... They hurt my head.

Ok, now this needs correction. This is a common misinterpretation of people who view economies from the top down, rather than how they truly function, from the bottom up. If you are willing to pay ten times the realistic value of an item, you just make that seller unduly rich. This is analogous to professional athletes. They make millions, not because they work for a millionaire, but because we are willing to pay $10,000 for season tickets. The economy is set by the buyer, not the seller. If the buyer has less to spend, the sellers will capitulate and lower their prices to keep a flow of income.

The method in which they employ isn't out of bounds for their goals, except your assumption on what those goals are. Having started a new character to test these theories, I have noted that they are in line with the expenses incurred during beta. I created a new Bounty Hunter/Powertech and started my usual grind to level 20. I find that the costs and expenses are in line with the expenses I incurred during beta. Before the fix, I would leave the starter worlds in excess of 10,000 cr. Now it's back to the beta, where I would leave with 6,000+ cr. 12,000 cr leaving Dromund Kaas vs. 25,000+ prior to the fix. I should not that I did not rely on any guild funds or crafting by fellow guildmates.

Having observed the market over the last year, the prices (on my server at least), have double or tripled for low level gear and crafting materials. In some cases, have increased by a factor of 20. Desh and Silica, once listed at 5-15 cr/unit, now price at 100-125 cr/unit. This is crazy. So the little guy is the one being hurt currently. The market needed an adjustment.

The game economy for SWTOR does not need to reflect real life. That would add a ridiculous level of complexity that will not benefit the game. You want ridiculously complex, play EVE Online (great game btw). It just needs to be balanced. The two ways implemented are ways to control this. Two sources of money are crafting and adventuring. Crafting had its hit with the increased cost of the GTN. Personally, I don't believe it's enough, but I'll redress in my own post. The second is the correction to gear damage. Now it is not also without its flaws, but the implementation was necessary.

Yes, the whole point is to create a money sink. If there is less money in the economy, there will be less to spend and people will have to be more frugal. That was the point. This frugality will be common among new players and the old will either adapt or go someplace else. It is unfortunate that some of us have become used to the income, but it needed to happen. If left unchecked the economy would spiral out of control and be prohibitively expensive for new players. The only lowbies out there will be made by current players who can transfer credits from their 50s to pay the insane pricing that would result, if left unchecked.

As for the high end ops players, they are taking the biggest hit because now. Ops don't pay out like they used to and you will face high repair costs to "pay" for the ability to craft those high level items. I, for one, never supported this type of crafting. All schematics must be able to be attained through work unrelated to ops or flashpoints. Either through crafting missions or reverse engineering. The effect currently will still yield those who have money to be able to acquire more. It will balance out, in the VERY long run, by the fact that they will not be able to afford the pricing, and they will either lower their prices or not have an income. The real balance will be to correct the crafting so that it is acquired through work unrelated to ops and flashpoints, without losing the incentive to run those missions.

Did EA do it right? They definitely did not. They did a bad job at reimplementation. Right now, we are just suffering from sticker shock. It should have taken place over months, not a sudden hit as they did. They will learn that drastic change, while needed, must come gradually. This is just EA showing its inexperience at dealing with an MMO community.

(Sorry, I had to break up your original post to be easily digestible.)

Seriously, I didn't read a word of either. Being concise is a virtue.