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the 4 billion credit cap for Subscribers is worse than F2P limits


Carba

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A quick Google search finds the price of a billion credits retail to be somewhere around $20-$25 USD.

 

Even if we assume someone is very good at farming credits and can farm 10 million credits an hour, hour after hour (raw credits - not selling CM stuff or farming ranked / NiM mats), a billion credits would still take 100 hours.

 

And that is before deducting the fees the seller would incur such as payment fees (credit cards / PayPal / whatever) and fees to the person or organization or whatever behind the credit selling site.

 

So I am to believe there are players spending 100 hours for less than $20?

I'm an in-game multibilionnaire, only because I decided I was fed up being in-game poor! I don't farm (100 hours running round doing the same thing over and over? Nah. Definitely not for me). The nearest to farming I got was doing H2s before they were made worthless (the tonnes of tat that used to drop from mobs during H2s used to be vendor valuable. Now everything is level-synched, armour drops are nothing but deconstruction fodder). I've never raided so I save a lot of credits not being geared to best and I no longer PvP since the changes came in so don't need to be geared for that any more either. I stopped upgrading my characters amplifiers because why bother as a soloer - that is a ridiculous and unnecessary expense if you have loads of alts.

 

I find it quite easy to make credits as a soloer. I also stopped bothering with most higher level crafting after realising that anything after 600 skill is a waste of time and effort. I just make the highest level medpacs and stims for my alts rather than sell them. I do sell low level crafted stuff instead & low level mats when I can be bothered to list them (I don't farm mats; I just pick them up if they happen to be in front of a character or send my companions on missions). I sell CM Cartel packs that I buy with my sub CC reward - they are quite valuable right now.

I'm also a spendaholic so I'd probably have several billion more if I didn't keep buying things like character-to-level-70-boosts (for altoholics, they are a godsend) and SH decorations from the GTN.

Buying credits off sellers with real life money? Nope.

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I wasn't suggesting everyone with a billion credits or more is a cheater - I have billions just like many players that have played the game for years.

 

However, I'm also certain that most of my credits have come from selling stuff to other players (mostly crafting, some flipping), not from any credits earned on missions or looted from enemies (in other words, most of my credits came from someone else with credits, not the game itself).

 

So no, I still don't believe most of the excessive credits chasing items on the GTN driving the silly inflation originated from players looting every enemy and completing a bunch of missions over time.

 

And just because you have never seen a gold farmer in any game doesn't mean they don't exist - I mean where do you think the sellers advertising 1 billion credits for $20 bucks get their stock?

 

Where did I say that I've never seen one? I've never used one is what I said, why try to twist that?

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Be careful what you wish for Trixxie, last time we had a Tax increase a lot of the prices increased too, as the sellers simply transferred the increase to the buyers.

 

If you really want to get prices on the GTN under control, make the deposit a percentage of the sale price that only gets refunded when an item sells. Problems with that would be that the "rich" would remain so while the "poor" would have an even harder time to catch up and it would almost certainly hurt CM sales since suddenly the sellers would run the risk of losing money and would perceive a devaluation of their CCs.

 

I’m talking about a sliding scale tax. Not a flat rate across the board. They could even reduce the tax on items below 100,000 credits.

 

Ie, you could start the tax at 2% or 3 % and scale it up to 20%. Something like this :

2% = 1 - 20,000 credits

3% = 20,001 - 40,000 credits

etc

etc

etc

20% = 500,000,000 - 1,000,000,000 credits

 

The idea isn’t to hurt anyone, but to remove excess credits from the game. If someone sells something for 500,000,000 credits, they pay 20% tax on it. They still get a heap of credits, but BioWare takes 100,000,000 credits out of the game.

If the person buying can afford to pay that much for something, they have plenty of credits, so it’s not hurting anyone.

 

On the flip side, you might find the savvy seller realising they can sell something at a lower price and get nearly the same return because they pay less tax and they might make more in the long run because they can sell more of them. That would actually reduce costs and some inflation on the GTN.

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A quick Google search finds the price of a billion credits retail to be somewhere around $20-$25 USD.

 

Even if we assume someone is very good at farming credits and can farm 10 million credits an hour, hour after hour (raw credits - not selling CM stuff or farming ranked / NiM mats), a billion credits would still take 100 hours.

 

And that is before deducting the fees the seller would incur such as payment fees (credit cards / PayPal / whatever) and fees to the person or organization or whatever behind the credit selling site.

 

So I am to believe there are players spending 100 hours for less than $20?

 

I find that highly doubtful.

 

Exploits that allow someone to gain far more credits an hour than is possible with general (non-exploitive) gameplay and bots that can run 24 / 7 unattended - that I can believe.

 

EDIT TO ADD: I mentioned the mats as one of the proposed hypothetical ways large amounts of credits were being generated by actual players was well-geared groups running group content.

 

I can't think of any content that provides anywhere near millions per player per hour in raw credits (absent exploits) - and any geared group capable of running all content would most likely focus on farming ranked and NIM for mats to sell to others or selling services such as runs for achievements, titles, and mounts.

 

Actually, it’s very easy to make credits if you’ve been playing for a number of years and have learnt how the economy works.

 

It’s also easier to not waste credits on things you don’t need to play the actual game and save them. If you just play the game as it’s meant to be played, those hundreds or in my case thousands of hours add up.

 

I don’t play the game to make credits, I play the game and get credits along the way. I don’t give the credits I get a monetary value because that would be stupid. I’m playing a game to have fun and relax. It’s called recreation and I don’t place a monetary value on it the same as I don’t place a monetary value on how many hours I sleep or lay in bed.

 

I’ve given advice over the years on how to make credits crafting or on the GTN. The best advice is to not waste your mats crafting something you will then sell for less than the mats themselves are worth. I see this happening all the time on the GTN and it blows my mind how allergic players are to making easy credits. They would rather engage in price wars and market domination at the expense of actually making any credits,

 

I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s take black and light gray dyes as the example. They are an extremely popular color and always in high demand, but some people flood the market with them at extremely cheap prices and then others engage in price wars with them that drive the price even lower. The prices actually go lower than what the mats by themselves sell for on the GTN. On top of that, black and light gray belong to a group of 6 dyes that use the mats and you can make those other dyes and sell them for 3-4 times what the black and gray dyes are worth.

 

The issue isn’t people botting in this game to make credits, the issue is people don’t take the time to understand the principles of making credits.

I literally make a couple 100 million a week on a slow week and a couple billion a month on a good month. I don’t spend all my time farming mats or crafting, but I do a small amount each time I’m on. I also always send my crew off on missions when I’m logged in. I look for good deals on mats on the GTN or people selling things too cheap. I then buy them and relist what I don’t want to keep.

 

My general advice for the GTN is don’t be the cheapest. People will still buy your stuff if you aren’t the cheapest

Don’t engage in price wars because all you do is drive the price down

Don’t overlist and flood the market or you drive the price down.

Only list 1-2 of the same thing at a time. Make sure you have a large portfolio of things to sell so you aren’t reliant on one thing. Variety is what you need.

Make your items stand out. I’m not going to tell you how to do that, everyone has their methods and I’m not going to give away all my knowledge.

 

Lastly, if you want to make credits you have to do the work. But at the same time you should work smart and not hard because working smart will net you way more credits than working too hard.

 

Have there been exploits in the past? Sure there have.

Are there credit sellers in the game that use people from low economic areas to farm and then sell the credits for real $$? Sure there are and Bioware always has an uphill battle to fight them.

 

But there are no exploits at the moment and those of us making lots of credits are able to because we understand how the games economy works. We aren’t cheating and we aren’t exploiting to do it. Taking our hard earned credits as some have suggested to reset the economy would make a lot of players quit instantly. It would probably kill the game over night.

 

Is inflation high?

Yes it is on some items. But some other items have completely lost their value or become stagnant. The only solution that the majority of players would accept to curb the inflation or reduce the amount of credits in the game is from credits sinks. But most players don’t want credit sinks that limit their game play or affect mechanics that slow it down. Ie, RNG mechanics that use gambling as a credit sink.

The best credit sink in this game is the GTN tax and it’s why I’ll keep saying that Bioware should look at making it a sliding tax based on how much something is sold for.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Actually, it’s very easy to make credits if you’ve been playing for a number of years and have learnt how the economy works.

 

It’s also easier to not waste credits on things you don’t need to play the actual game and save them. If you just play the game as it’s meant to be played, those hundreds or in my case thousands of hours add up.

 

I don’t play the game to make credits, I play the game and get credits along the way. I don’t give the credits I get a monetary value because that would be stupid. I’m playing a game to have fun and relax. It’s called recreation and I don’t place a monetary value on it the same as I don’t place a monetary value on how many hours I sleep or lay in bed.

 

I’ve given advice over the years on how to make credits crafting or on the GTN. The best advice is to not waste your mats crafting something you will then sell for less than the mats themselves are worth. I see this happening all the time on the GTN and it blows my mind how allergic players are to making easy credits. They would rather engage in price wars and market domination at the expense of actually making any credits,

 

I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s take black and light gray dyes as the example. They are an extremely popular color and always in high demand, but some people flood the market with them at extremely cheap prices and then others engage in price wars with them that drive the price even lower. The prices actually go lower than what the mats by themselves sell for on the GTN. On top of that, black and light gray belong to a group of 6 dyes that use the mats and you can make those other dyes and sell them for 3-4 times what the black and gray dyes are worth.

 

The issue isn’t people botting in this game to make credits, the issue is people don’t take the time to understand the principles of making credits.

I literally make a couple 100 million a week on a slow week and a couple billion a month on a good month. I don’t spend all my time farming mats or crafting, but I do a small amount each time I’m on. I also always send my crew off on missions when I’m logged in. I look for good deals on mats on the GTN or people selling things too cheap. I then buy them and relist what I don’t want to keep.

 

My general advice for the GTN is don’t be the cheapest. People will still buy your stuff if you aren’t the cheapest

Don’t engage in price wars because all you do is drive the price down

Don’t overlist and flood the market or you drive the price down.

Only list 1-2 of the same thing at a time. Make sure you have a large portfolio of things to sell so you aren’t reliant on one thing. Variety is what you need.

Make your items stand out. I’m not going to tell you how to do that, everyone has their methods and I’m not going to give away all my knowledge.

 

Lastly, if you want to make credits you have to do the work. But at the same time you should work smart and not hard because working smart will net you way more credits than working too hard.

 

Have there been exploits in the past? Sure there have.

Are there credit sellers in the game that use people from low economic areas to farm and then sell the credits for real $$? Sure there are and Bioware always has an uphill battle to fight them.

 

But there are no exploits at the moment and those of us making lots of credits are able to because we understand how the games economy works. We aren’t cheating and we aren’t exploiting to do it. Taking our hard earned credits as some have suggested to reset the economy would make a lot of players quit instantly. It would probably kill the game over night.

 

Is inflation high?

Yes it is on some items. But some other items have completely lost their value or become stagnant. The only solution that the majority of players would accept to curb the inflation or reduce the amount of credits in the game is from credits sinks. But most players don’t want credit sinks that limit their game play or affect mechanics that slow it down. Ie, RNG mechanics that use gambling as a credit sink.

The best credit sink in this game is the GTN tax and it’s why I’ll keep saying that Bioware should look at making it a sliding tax based on how much something is sold for.

 

I agree with most of what you wrote and quite a bit of what others have written - and am certainly not suggesting or supportive of any of the idiotic suggestions that pop up in these types of threads (wealth tax, hard cap credit limits, reset all credits, etc).

 

And yes, it isn't hard to 'make credits' in this game, and most people should be able to afford most in-game items with a bit of time and effort without having to play GTN games (selling CM items, flipping, crafting, mats, etc).

 

However and as with several other posters / typical replies about 'making credits', NONE of what you have written about how you or others make credits has anything to do with the supply of credits in the economy.

 

Crafting, selling mats, flipping items, selling CM items - NONE of those activities ADD credits to the economy - they simply move credits around (and when using the GTN, some are removed).

 

And while the prices for in-game items (items sold by game vendors/systems) have not risen and many general-purpose items have had stagnant pricing (such as basic crafted items), desirable and low supply CM stuff has seen high inflation while the value of credits relative to real-world currency has dropped.

 

For examp[le, less than a year ago a Masters Datacron could be had for 50-60 million - good luck finding one for less than 200 million today.

 

At the same time, less than a year ago sellers were spamming everywhere with $20 buying approximately 200 million credits - and while today their spam is much less prevalent, $20 now buys approximately 1 billion credits.

 

Yet with all that inflation, mission payouts and credits from drops have stayed stagnant (many were nerfed going into 6.0), and credits from drops and completing missions just doesn't provide billions in raw credits.

 

So my hypothesis is that there are still exploits and / or bots in-game that are continuing to pump credits into the economy beyond what would be expected from normal gameplay.

 

And it is just that - a hypothesis based on observable though limited data.

 

NONE of which is to say everyone or even many / most with billions of credits are exploiting or botting or buying credits (or again that I in any way support any of the idiotic ideas that can be summarized as 'just take away all their credits').

 

But I understand that the credits I pull out of the GTN every day have to come from somewhere, and IMO, the math when looking at activities that add raw credits does not add up to the levels of inflation.

 

And IMO the current levels of inflation are unhealthy and undesirable for the game - and I'd like to see better management of the economy by Bioware going forward to slow inflation.

Edited by DawnAskham
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Actually, it’s very easy to make credits if you’ve been playing for a number of years and have learnt how the economy works.

 

It’s also easier to not waste credits on things you don’t need to play the actual game and save them. If you just play the game as it’s meant to be played, those hundreds or in my case thousands of hours add up.

 

LIES!!! It's never easy to not spend credits on things I don't need, which is why I'm never rich in any MMO. It's shiny, and I wants it is enough reason for me to spend credits... :p

 

EDIT: Which is why some people are rich, I might add... :D

Edited by robertthebard
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[/snip]

.

 

Yes I did read what you read.. and there is a lot good information there.

 

BUT .. there are still a couple of issues that seem to be a point of contention;

** Where are the credits coming from ? Frankly I had just a little over 80 Mil credits that I EARNED just PLAYING the game. If I wanted to upgrade any part of the armor (pre 6.0) It was a real struggle. Soooo I just began to invest small amounts of credits in the GTN.

 

Now hang on a sec !! No this does not account for BILLIONS ! BUT that is how I started out ! I think some would be shocked to know just how little so many players start out with just before they do just what I did.

 

** Credit farmers ... they do exist. It's been a long time since we read the post (and I don't remember what area) ... but it was posted in detail how literally hundreds of millions of credits could be earned by playing in a guild that was geared to a lot of high end game play ( obviously not done in story mode ) . BUT this player was also into not just FP's .. but OP's and other aspects of the game as well.

 

YES there really are people who you know ... actually play SWTOR !! ...:eek::eek::eek:

 

AND further more they're pretty darn good at it too !! They EARN those rewards !! Nothing wrong with that. They should not be penalized for those efforts.

 

** Bots.. ??? possibly. But before we start looking at another part of the game that gets nerfed due to the "possibility" of cheating we really need to get this cleared up and focus on an appropriate action to take against those who are guilty of said exploit.

 

** Credit sellers. If I had my way they would ALL be shut down over night !! (or sooner). I don't know of anyone who would object to that !!

 

** The high (or over priced) augments ?? If augments (or even mods) that were reasonably close to the specs on those crafted were available at the "fleet" with LESS RNG attached to them I could almost guarantee a drop in the cost on the GTN. Heck .. even if those augments were available as rare drops in game that would change things quite a bit !!

 

Taxation ... that rarely stops things. In fact that often contributes to additional inflation. ( I would personally just adjust my cost accordingly ... as I already do !! ) ;)

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So my hypothesis is that there are still exploits and / or bots in-game that are continuing to pump credits into the economy beyond what would be expected from normal gameplay.

 

And it is just that - a hypothesis based on observable though limited data.

 

 

This is quite possible, but you have to remember CQ generates a lot of credits, and with more and more people pushing their alts through it, this has been one huge source of credits. As well as that, there are a lot more loot drops these days, especially when 75. All this adds to the increasing pool of credits.

 

 

And IMO the current levels of inflation are unhealthy and undesirable for the game - and I'd like to see better management of the economy by Bioware going forward to slow inflation.

 

I agree with this, but I think they've left it too long, I'm not sure there is any reasonable approach they can, or even want to take to stabilise it.

Edited by DarkTergon
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Where did I say that I've never seen one? I've never used one is what I said, why try to twist that?

 

Maybe use the word 'used' if you mean 'used', as in 'I've never used a credit seller' instead of 'I've never hit a credit seller' which is what you wrote.

 

Anyways, I was not trying to twist what you wrote - I simply misunderstood.

Edited by DawnAskham
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Roflmao!! Term "1st world problem" is too 32 bit to fully describe how obscene this concern is. Roll a bank alt, name her Marie Antoinette and drop 4 bils on her.

 

This is truly the largest non issue in the history of non issues!

 

 

The mega-inflation is so huge that credits are getting more and more impractical though. Maybe BW could introduce something like "platinium credit": players would have the option to turn 1 bil normal credits into 1 platinium credit. It'd also fix the turbo primadonna issue of evil 4 bil cap holding your characters' finances a hostage.

Edited by Stradlin
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Maybe use the word 'used' if you mean 'used', as in 'I've never used a credit seller' instead of 'I've never hit a credit seller' which is what you wrote.

 

Anyways, I was not trying to twist what you wrote - I simply misunderstood.

 

Interesting, I guess things like "I should hit the gym" have a completely different meaning for you? :eek:

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Given there are 5 servers, 52 character limit per server the credit limit would be:

 

5 servers = 5 legacy banks. 104,294,817,294 limit per bank = 521,474,086,470

5*52 characters at a limit of 4,294,817,295 each = 2,604,294,817,295

 

Grand total = 3,125,768,903,765

 

If that isn't enough space then each toon could also own a guild bank which has a limit of 4,294,967,295 = 1,116,691,496,700.

 

That brings the credit limit up to 4,242,460,400,465.

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I cannot say I really agree with you on this OP, but then again I don't spend all my time just playing the GTN. So never even got close to 4B in credits.

 

BW may or may not have reasons to limit the amout of credits a player or character or bank can have, that be up to them to explain. That however does not change the fact that you as a player know the limit and should act acordently.

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  • 1 year later...

Inflation, Inflation

Solutions to credit limits for subscribers could include raising the limit a single character can hold, and also increasing cargo hold limits.

The GTN needs to be expanded to allow for listing of items well past 1B, at least 10B or more.

When trading credits and items the game should NOT allow the trade to be consummated if by doing so it would put either of the traders over the cap in inventory, either in items or credits. At the very least, a pop up window should appear during the trade cautioning the players what the limits for credits is and and reminding them to clear space to the trade can go through with both players receiving both the item and credits in full.

Another simple solution would be that if a player was unable to accept the full amount of a trade, (6B for example) when hitting the trade button, the game would give the player as much as he could carry up to the limit and simply mail the rest of the funds to that player, like what happens when you have multiple items on the auction house expire and not enough room in your inventory for it all.

Edited by MotorCityMan
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Each character can hold 4 billion in their inventory, that's limited by the variable type used (and is likely far more complicated to change than it sounds).

 

Legacy hold can hold 100 billion, that has nothing to do with your characters, it's just an arbitrary limit that can be increased by a lot (millions of billions) if need be.

 

Anyway, with so many players being at the inventory limit, maybe it's time for a currency reform - cut 2-3 zeroes?

 

I have to agree, cutting zeros would actually make the GTN viable again, however, it will only last for so long as the root problem is not fixed. Inflation needs to be reduced and stabilized. Make a Cartel Coin <-> Credit transfer NPC and inflation issues would be fixed instantly.

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More accurately a progressive tax system. The higher the price, the higher the tax rate.

More specifically, the higher the price, the higher the *marginal* tax rate == the higher the tax rate on the last credits added.

 

If you just change the overall tax rate, you end up with weird "gaps" in the price structure. Imagine if your income tax worked like that. Let's say that you pay 10% if your after-deductions income is up to 10,000€, and 15% if it's above that. In such a schema, would you really want to move from earning 9,990 € taxable (where you pay 999€ tax), to earning 10,010€, where you pay 1,501€50. +20€ earned, +511€50 in tax...

 

EDIT: real-world income tax systems work on a "marginal rate" basis, not a "total rate" basis.

Edited by SteveTheCynic
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