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The biggest credit sink is missing the biggest trades; items now traded above GTN cap


Eckrond

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With the economy already in shambles, inflation has reached such a high point that big ticket items are routinely traded above the 1 billion credit cap of the GTN, which means trades that would normally take 60-80 million minimum out of the economy are now just adding to an already growing issue that created this specific problem to begin with.

 

Obviously the immediate fix is the raise the GTN cap, but the bigger issue of the inflated economy comes from having no other credit sinks to reasonably spend on. A vendor with curated items has long been suggested, personal stronghold decorations working like guild donations has also been suggested where additional copies can be purchased for credits, IMPLEMENT SOMETHING PLEASE, SOME IDEA.

 

Thank you.

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You're so focused on replying with memes you don't bother to read.

 

I've been fighting for and proposing credit sinks for a long time. Unfortunately, Bioware sees these threads as complaints about inflation and the only thing they have time for is to nerf rewards (which actually makes the "inflation" problem worse to players with less credits).

 

We lost the biggest credit sink (6.0 gearing with its RNG and amplifiers) and replaced it with nothing in 7.0. And you are correct that now that the GTN is the biggest credit sink it is missing the mark due to the 1B cap.

 

Off the top of my head, I would propose:

 

-- a GTN cap increase

-- replacing many of the gains we used to get from amplifiers with character perks (not legacy perks)

-- replicating the guild perks as character perks as well (either as a much higher cost as a permanent perk, or as a time limited gain like the guild perks)

-- adding decos to every rep vendor that can be purchased with credits. These can be simple things we see all the time in the game, but have never had available as deco.

-- more companion customization for credits

-- allow character appearance modifications to be done without CCs, but for mega credits.

Edited by BRKMSN
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FYI Items were being traded for over the 1 billion cap for years.

 

Bioware has shown no interest in actually "Fixing" anything, but instead taking a hammer to everything. There will be no real credit sink changes, there will be credit nerfs and maybe even an increase to GTN sales tax to remove more credits from the game.

 

These are the people that believed that removing the "free" gear rewards from pre 7.0 and implementing the current new system of 20k credits + special new currency was somehow a "sink".

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This is why I'm baffled about why they left the huge tech fragment cost for Kai Zykken's random box of cosmetic gear instead of converting it into a credit sink. Ditto the Command Crate cosmetic sets. Why the huge tech fragment cost, when it's credit inflation we are having trouble with? I have billions to throw at cosmetic vendors, but I don't have the tech fragments that would allow me to do that throwing, so my credits just keep piling up.
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This is why I'm baffled about why they left the huge tech fragment cost for Kai Zykken's random box of cosmetic gear instead of converting it into a credit sink. Ditto the Command Crate cosmetic sets. Why the huge tech fragment cost, when it's credit inflation we are having trouble with? I have billions to throw at cosmetic vendors, but I don't have the tech fragments that would allow me to do that throwing, so my credits just keep piling up.

 

That would be great indeed... Although I'd guess that most of the players who have a lot of credits had plenty of time to get all the armor they wanted too.

 

We need expensive stronghold decorations and cosmetic items that ONLY cost credits.

 

And the GTN definitely needs to have its cap increased.

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I agree that the GTN cap needs to be raised and that there needs to be more credit sinks. The issue is that most implementations of a credit sink involve more content or taking existing content from other areas. This is a hard sell since, for example, decoration items and cosmetics could otherwise sell for cartel coins rather than credits. I still think it would be worth it since inflation is a problem but I'm not the one who would lose a bunch of money in the process.

 

Re-rolling amplifiers seemed to be a good credit sink but I assume that the RNG was viewed unfavorably by the majority of the population. Another way of spending credits on minor endgame gains though might be a good thing.

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Someone can correct me if I'm mis-remembering, since my recollection is a bit fuzzy.

 

In 1.0 vanilla swtor, there was a credit sink. The Korrealis mounts that dropped in the command crates (Baron, Commander, Prince, Sovereign) were sold on the fleet (2 per faction I think?) for what was - at the time - ridiculous amounts of credits. 1mil each I think, although it could have been higher, I can't remember.

 

The result? There was so much whining that BW removed the vendor. Most of the complaining was about exclusive content for the wealthy, though once BW allowed mounts on the fleet (originally you had to run everywhere), there were also people using them to troll by parking their giant speeders over mailboxes or blocking the GTN terminals. So that was also a complaint.

 

So to play devil's advocate, here's an example. Say they introduce another mount vendor on each fleet. Four amazing unique mounts per faction, all with a cool flourish. And they also have a perk that no other mounts have - your active companion visibly rides on the mount with you. The mounts are BoP and can't be unlocked in collections, so you have to purchase them on a per-character basis, and they're 500+mil each. Or let's get serious and say they're a billion each. So all the crazy-wealthy are queuing up for the exclusive mounts, and obscene amounts of credits are disappearing from the game. Mission accomplished, right? But how long before the forums and subreddit are full of posts crying about how this cool new feature is exclusive to the hardcore wealthy or people who buy credits with cash? I can almost guarantee that it would happen.

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Yeah unfortunately that's always going to happen - put a credit sink in the game and people without many credits will complain that they can't get it.

 

But gosh, seriously, it's so EASY to make credits right now (obviously not for preferred players though).

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With the economy already in shambles, inflation has reached such a high point that big ticket items are routinely traded above the 1 billion credit cap of the GTN, which means trades that would normally take 60-80 million minimum out of the economy are now just adding to an already growing issue that created this specific problem to begin with.

 

Obviously the immediate fix is the raise the GTN cap, but the bigger issue of the inflated economy comes from having no other credit sinks to reasonably spend on. A vendor with curated items has long been suggested, personal stronghold decorations working like guild donations has also been suggested where additional copies can be purchased for credits, IMPLEMENT SOMETHING PLEASE, SOME IDEA.

 

Thank you.

 

The idiots put in olds sets from 6.0 and command for tech frags instead of credits. Which was incredibly stupid.

Edited by DurdensWrath
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The idiots put in olds sets from 6.0 and command for tech frags instead of credits. Which was incredibly stupid.

 

But they want us to grind too.

 

That's why I don't think we'll ever get a credit sink, it would just hurt their grind and/or CC sales...

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GTN credit cap needs to be raised if only so players can sell items above the 1 billion cap and have taxes taken out as a credit sink. My highest single item sale so far has been 30 billion credits all of which was tax free.

 

My thread about that issue: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=1000665

 

This game needs credit sinks. Allow players to buy Tech Frags; something needs to be done to remove large amounts of credits from the economy (and deleting credits is not a well thought out response).

 

For longer development add all cosmetic drops from Ops to Collections and allow players to unlock them account wide for billions of credits each, but only once they collect them from ops. DO NOT just add it to Collections and toss a CC cost to unlock like Bioware did for Remnant Sets. The Remnant sets should have been Credits only to unlock account wide. Items obtained only in the game should only be unlocked with credits to act as a credit sink.

 

We lost two of the best credit sinks we had in 6.0. The cost to roll Amplifiers and removing Mods (77k per mod). Nothing has replaced those or any of the other credit sinks we lost in 6.0.

 

Eventually Bioware will need to take inflation and the 1 billion credit limit on the GTN seriously because at some point anything above 1,000 CC won't sell on the GTN because it's worth more than 1 billion credits. This means the CM revenue will drop drastically since people do not want to spend real money on the CM to stand around fleet trying to sell those items for hours.

 

This is why I'm baffled about why they left the huge tech fragment cost for Kai Zykken's random box of cosmetic gear instead of converting it into a credit sink. Ditto the Command Crate cosmetic sets. Why the huge tech fragment cost, when it's credit inflation we are having trouble with? I have billions to throw at cosmetic vendors, but I don't have the tech fragments that would allow me to do that throwing, so my credits just keep piling up.

 

I suggested this on the PTS. Made no sense to worry about tech frags when these sets could have easily been a great credit sink.

 

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=1000412

Edited by illgot
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I think instead of raising the GTN cap, a much better solution would be to add the same tax when trading credits in person or via mail with characters that are not part of the same Legacy. This would also prevent the common practice of shifting credits around by using mule F2P accounts when yet another exploit has been found. Edited by Phazonfreak
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The only thing requiring stupid amounts of money to be spent is the ridiculous demands by some players, with warped senses of achievement or genuinely bad intent, for the price of items. There is no game mechanic requiring the acquisition of such huge sums of money as an objective for all players. Sure there're the Stronghold expansion costs, some Endgame pieces of equipment and account and character unlocks, all of whose (meagre) inflated costs were feeble attempts to soak up credits from the otherwise bottomless influx of "corrupt" credits into the game.

 

The reason so much money is flowing in the game is precisely because huge amounts can be transacted via GTN and inter-character trade between players. So first and foremost you need to constrict that flow. Look at all the items sold by vendors or bought back by them as "trash", mostly valued at mere hundreds or thousands of credits, they don't back up truckloads of credits to compensate you when you vendor the junk you acquire from trashing increasingly more powerful mobs at higher levels. The in-game economy amongst NPCs is a modest and reasonable one.

 

- So, firstly, cap all transaction amounts between player accounts to 1 million credits (MCr), there's nothing in the game that necessitates more than this for "progression". That's toon-to-toon by gifting or in exchange either "face-to-face" or by mail or GTN (or whatever else).

 

- Cap all toon "wallets" at say 10 MCr, Legacy and Guild banks at 1 billion (BCr). Move all bar 5 MCr of each toon and bank balances over 1 BCr into escrow, which is then free to withdraw from but cannot be added to. So once you fill up your wallets you cannot accept any more credits. Additional toon slots can be (temporarily) bought for 100 MCr up to current cap of toons per account.

 

- Make all CM items BoP or BoL, i.e. non-tradeable between players. So now the only "unreasonable" economy is driven by craftable or dropped items.

 

- Reduce (or increase) the cost of each existing credit sink to what's now reasonably attainable by all players and depending on how necessary or luxury they are.

 

- Introduce some time-limited buy-back vendors who will exchange credits for CC at say 10 MCr to 1 CC (or higher if the community of veterans and bad actors is so unreasonably wealthy). These vendors could be re-deployed if the economy gets overblown again at whatever exchange rate is needed.

 

- If it isn't already then make credits an in-game "cryptocurrency" so chain of custody is maintained and now bad actors (and their customers) have nowhere to hide.

 

- Revise material costs and requirements for current end-game craftables to make them more reasonable in the revised economy.

 

- Increase the tempo of release of new items in CM (BoP or BoL) and as BoE drops across all levels and play areas, but at suitable drop rates to reward reasonable graft for luck or grind of combinations of untradeable mission materials and currencies. Items should include moddable armour, accessory and weapon skins.

 

- Start adding new exploration and treasure hunts and Heroic missions in existing play areas with some of these new items as rewards.

 

- Add more craftable item and modification schematics (up to Endgame stat levels) to be dropped and found.

 

- There are no doubt other additions to generate (persisting) player interest

beyond just new zones and Operations. E.g. allow raiding of Guild properties either as PvP or PvE (where defenders in the latter are automated member toons). Loot would be random draws from equipped items and specific trophies for destroyed assets (yes that means destructible decos and infrastructure). Defenders would reap the random loot from defeated attackers. Guilds would then have to re-build damaged properties. Attackers and defenders would earn "Siege" XP (at different rates for victory or defeat) that could be traded for ship encryptions, stronghold reinforcement bonuses, destructible defending decos, siege attack bonuses and, maybe, even destructible multiple-toon crewed siege mounts.

Such epic confrontations could be automatically streamed to various platforms and even monetised by rewarding participating players with CC or real-world loot and cash.

 

People who genuinely feel the acquisition of wealth is the be all and end all of the game and would quit because of these limits aren't of the mind to keep the game healthy. We're better off without them. People who play the game for the love of the IP and experience they can generate within the game world are who are needed and should be nurtured.

 

Note: Any commercialisation of the above ideas will require the appropriate negotiated compensation for licensing.

Edited by Zorii_Bliss
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The only thing requiring stupid amounts of money to be spent is the ridiculous demands by some players, with warped senses of achievement or genuinely bad intent, for the price of items. There is no game mechanic requiring the acquisition of such huge sums of money as an objective for all players. Sure there're the Stronghold expansion costs, some Endgame pieces of equipment and account and character unlocks, all of whose (meagre) inflated costs were feeble attempts to soak up credits from the otherwise bottomless influx of "corrupt" credits into the game.

 

The reason so much money is flowing in the game is precisely because huge amounts can be transacted via GTN and inter-character trade between players. So first and foremost you need to constrict that flow. Look at all the items sold by vendors or bought back by them as "trash", mostly valued at mere hundreds or thousands of credits, they don't back up truckloads of credits to compensate you when you vendor the junk you acquire from trashing increasingly more powerful mobs at higher levels. The in-game economy amongst NPCs is a modest and reasonable one.

 

- So, firstly, cap all transaction amounts between player accounts to 1 million credits (MCr), there's nothing in the game that necessitates more than this for "progression". That's toon-to-toon by gifting or in exchange either "face-to-face" or by mail or GTN (or whatever else).

 

- Cap all toon "wallets" at say 10 MCr, Legacy and Guild banks at 1 billion (BCr). Move all bar 5 MCr of each toon and bank balances over 1 BCr into escrow, which is then free to withdraw from but cannot be added to. So once you fill up your wallets you cannot accept any more credits. Additional toon slots can be (temporarily) bought for 100 MCr up to current cap of toons per account.

 

- Make all CM items BoP or BoL, i.e. non-tradeable between players. So now the only "unreasonable" economy is driven by craftable or dropped items.

 

- Reduce (or increase) the cost of each existing credit sink to what's now reasonably attainable by all players and depending on how necessary or luxury they are.

 

- Introduce some time-limited buy-back vendors who will exchange credits for CC at say 10 MCr to 1 CC (or higher if the community of veterans and bad actors is so unreasonably wealthy). These vendors could be re-deployed if the economy gets overblown again at whatever exchange rate is needed.

 

- If it isn't already then make credits an in-game "cryptocurrency" so chain of custody is maintained and now bad actors (and their customers) have nowhere to hide.

 

- Revise material costs and requirements for current end-game craftables to make them more reasonable in the revised economy.

 

- Increase the tempo of release of new items in CM (BoP or BoL) and as BoE drops across all levels and play areas, but at suitable drop rates to reward reasonable graft for luck or grind of combinations of untradeable mission materials and currencies. Items should include moddable armour, accessory and weapon skins.

 

- Start adding new exploration and treasure hunts and Heroic missions in existing play areas with some of these new items as rewards.

 

- Add more craftable item and modification schematics (up to Endgame stat levels) to be dropped and found.

 

- There are no doubt other additions to generate (persisting) player interest

beyond just new zones and Operations. E.g. allow raiding of Guild properties either as PvP or PvE (where defenders in the latter are automated member toons). Loot would be random draws from equipped items and specific trophies for destroyed assets (yes that means destructible decos and infrastructure). Defenders would reap the random loot from defeated attackers. Guilds would then have to re-build damaged properties. Attackers and defenders would earn "Siege" XP (at different rates for victory or defeat) that could be traded for ship encryptions, stronghold reinforcement bonuses, destructible defending decos, siege attack bonuses and, maybe, even destructible multiple-toon crewed siege mounts.

Such epic confrontations could be automatically streamed to various platforms and even monetised by rewarding participating players with CC or real-world loot and cash.

 

People who genuinely feel the acquisition of wealth is the be all and end all of the game and would quit because of these limits aren't of the mind to keep the game healthy. We're better off without them. People who play the game for the love of the IP and experience they can generate within the game world are who are needed and should be nurtured.

 

Note: Any commercialisation of the above ideas will require the appropriate negotiated compensation for licensing.

 

Yeah no devs, don't listen to this.

 

This is definitely a game I wouldn't be playing.

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Couple of things.

1) I think the cries about inflation is mostly the newer players that feel it is unfair that 10 minutes into the game, they can't afford the same things as those that have been accumulating credits since opening day.

 

2) SWTOR lost a huge credit sink when it took away paying for abilities. AFAIK that has never been replaced.

 

3) GTN needs to be a progressive tax system. That means the higher the price, the higher the sales tax percentage. So while you may be paying 3% tax on a 100K item, you'll pay 15% tax on a 100M item.

 

4) I'm a statistician, not an economist, but I can't help thinking that the game movement from crafting to buying things off CM is part of the problem. I bought a hypercrate and rather than selling it for $1B I opened all of the packs. I kept a lot of the cool items, gave cool items away to my guildies and STILL managed to sell the rest for well over $1B. Honestly, that was a fun experience but I can't help thinking that spending real money and getting over $1B for it contributes to the inflation.

 

5) I know the thinking is inflation = bad, but what is the real purpose in reducing inflation? No, really; why do we need to reduce inflation? Is there anything necessary to playing the game (like medpacks, basic speeders, utility items for the stronghold like legacy bank and mailbox, etc.) that is unaffordable to new players? Why can't players be expected to grind for credits (like we have to grind for gear) for fancy but ultimately unnecessary items?

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Couple of things.

1) I think the cries about inflation is mostly the newer players that feel it is unfair that 10 minutes into the game, they can't afford the same things as those that have been accumulating credits since opening day.

 

2) SWTOR lost a huge credit sink when it took away paying for abilities. AFAIK that has never been replaced.

 

3) GTN needs to be a progressive tax system. That means the higher the price, the higher the sales tax percentage. So while you may be paying 3% tax on a 100K item, you'll pay 15% tax on a 100M item.

 

4) I'm a statistician, not an economist, but I can't help thinking that the game movement from crafting to buying things off CM is part of the problem. I bought a hypercrate and rather than selling it for $1B I opened all of the packs. I kept a lot of the cool items, gave cool items away to my guildies and STILL managed to sell the rest for well over $1B. Honestly, that was a fun experience but I can't help thinking that spending real money and getting over $1B for it contributes to the inflation.

 

5) I know the thinking is inflation = bad, but what is the real purpose in reducing inflation? No, really; why do we need to reduce inflation? Is there anything necessary to playing the game (like medpacks, basic speeders, utility items for the stronghold like legacy bank and mailbox, etc.) that is unaffordable to new players? Why can't players be expected to grind for credits (like we have to grind for gear) for fancy but ultimately unnecessary items?

 

I agree. Especially as it's pretty easy nowadays to make millions.

 

I'd also wager that most people who have billions have spent real money for CC. So yeah there's going to be a difference between someone who spent $50 on the game and a brand new player. But it's not like it's pay to win, we're talking about completely OPTIONAL items. It's 10yo game, of course there'll be some rich players by now...

 

That being said, you got lucky getting 1b from your hypercrate stuff while keeping some. Speaking as someone who has bought a LOT of hypercrates (for credits), I've rarely got my money back from selling the stuff (especially when you factor in the time it takes to list those things off the GTN).

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That being said, you got lucky getting 1b from your hypercrate stuff while keeping some. Speaking as someone who has bought a LOT of hypercrates (for credits), I've rarely got my money back from selling the stuff (especially when you factor in the time it takes to list those things off the GTN).

 

I tried it with cartel packs before and never made any real money. I was lucky in that I got quite a few items that were selling on GTN for hundreds of millions of credits. I was patient and over a few weeks was able to sell almost everything I put up, and what I couldn't sell were a couple items for 100K so those went to the guild.

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GTN credit cap needs to be raised if only so players can sell items above the 1 billion cap and have taxes taken out as a credit sink. My highest single item sale so far has been 30 billion credits all of which was tax free.

Ok, I have to ask. What single item in this game is worth 30 billion credits?!?

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Is there anything necessary to playing the game (like medpacks, basic speeders, utility items for the stronghold like legacy bank and mailbox, etc.) that is unaffordable to new players?

 

Augments. Completely unaffordable to newer players. The mats sunce 7.0 are even harder to come by.

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Augments. Completely unaffordable to newer players. The mats sunce 7.0 are even harder to come by.

 

The mats for augments have not been harder to come by since 7.0. Go out and spend some time farming them by hand (thats's what I do). It does take time and patience, but it can be done easily without anything other then time spent.

 

The only people paying for augments on the GTN are those that just want them quickly, or don't want to spend the time to get the mats themselves.

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