Jump to content

BioWare, GTN prices are insane, its time to do something


ShieldProtection

Recommended Posts

Ok, fine, I will venture back into this thread.

 

I've mentioned this before in other threads but I feel I need to mention it again, as the vast majority here keep talking up either fixed credit sinks (which will only hurt the little guy) or market caps (we've already hit the market cap and it's not helping the situation one bit)

 

One thing to keep in mind is there are a LOT of good stuff out there that could sell for plenty on the GTN if people knew how much it was worth, or they could be bothered to go to a GTN terminal to actually list it (let's face it, the UI leaves something to be desired). I get mats, gifts etc. all the time but I just can't be bothered.

 

So what I would like to see happen is a GTN QoL overhaul that makes accessing the GTN and basic sales data very simple.

 

What this would look like

* GTN can be accessed anywhere in field (in much the same way as field repair droid. Possibly with modest CC reducible cooldown)

* Item tool tips will include basic GTN sale data (perhaps average selling price in last X amount of time) with modifier key for extended sale data (# of items sold, max/min prices, average time to sale etc.)

** This info should also be available in the CM, so people can see the most valuable items and will buy them to flip, driving prices down on the most valuable items, whatever that may be at the time. Same for crafting overview

* A one click option for an item to open the GTN and list an item (or multiple items) for a preset value (ex. min sale price in last 6 hours or some such. User configurable)

* Have a dedicated UI for managing expired items, relists and cashing out on earnings. Using the mailbox is just painful.

* [bonus] This one is a bit trickier, but item notifications would helpful for those items that are often not listed at all. A player could set a price watch of some sort on an item, and when the condition is met, they are notified (probably just in chat).

 

This won't have much impact on the ultra-valuable CM items, as supply of those items is unlikely to increase very much (though there might be some from the impulse buyers if they realized they can sell the shiny for big $$$), but for everything else, it should motivate people to supply more (with clearly displayed incentive that is quick and easy to access).

 

It may not be the latest CM shiny, but it still can work very well and lots of people can fork out for it instead (ex. see Black/Dark Other Colour dyes rather than buying Black/Black at crazy high prices)

 

This kind of system could increase supply of many items (decreasing prices), which will also remove more credits from circulation via the GTN tax and just be a general QoL improvement besides. (and more opportunities for BW to do CC unlocks, like field GTN cooldown reduction, increased sale slots etc.)

Edited by MadDutchman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 378
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

What scale would you use to determine who counts as the ultra wealthy?

 

It you can afford to regular buy items above 900 million on the GTN, then I’d classify you as ultra wealthy. But honestly, if you’ve over a billion credits your more wealthy than most swtor players. At some point you just stop counting credits because they have less meaning unless your goal is to reach the credit cap ;)

 

BioWare could you even lower the starting GTN tax down to 4% for items under 50,000 credits and gradually increase it based on listed prices. A capped tax of 16% would be enough for items over 900 million. They could even make the capped tax 24% and increase the GTN sale cap to 2 billion. But at the same time put a 500 million or 1 billion credit cap on player to player transfers. That way they stop people circumventing the Tax.

 

That sort of credit sink would target the wealthiest players the most and remove large quantities of credits at a time.

16% tax on 1 billion is 160 million tax

24% tax on 2 billion is 480 million tax

That’s a lot of credits taken out of the game at once. It would definitely eat into the credit stock pile currently in the game. While allowing cheaper items to be more accessible to new or poorer players.

Eventually inflation stops when the games credit stock pile shrinks and may even have deflation on many items.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It you can afford to regular buy items above 900 million on the GTN, then I’d classify you as ultra wealthy. But honestly, if you’ve over a billion credits your more wealthy than most swtor players. At some point you just stop counting credits because they have less meaning unless your goal is to reach the credit cap ;)

 

BioWare could you even lower the starting GTN tax down to 4% for items under 50,000 credits and gradually increase it based on listed prices. A capped tax of 16% would be enough for items over 900 million. They could even make the capped tax 24% and increase the GTN sale cap to 2 billion. But at the same time put a 500 million or 1 billion credit cap on player to player transfers. That way they stop people circumventing the Tax.

 

But they can still circumvent the tax in that instance just by doing multiple trades.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But they can still circumvent the tax in that instance just by doing multiple trades.

 

Doing so would run the risk of being ripped off by either the seller or the buyer. You can’t completely stop the trades and sure some people might risk it with people they know or trust. But the majority won’t want to take the risk on such a large sum and will just use the GTN. As long as BioWare are encouraging the majority to use the GTN, it would work fine.

Anyone running the risk gambit would be on there own and would learn to use the GTN really fast the first time they get ripped off trying to circumvent the caps.

Also, it would make life a little more difficult for the credit sellers ;)

Edited by TrixxieTriss
Link to comment
Share on other sites

happy to see that bioware data agree with the argument that its just too much credits being generated and not some qanon conspiracy with exploits, credit hacking and other things that crashed the market

 

It you can afford to regular buy items above 900 million on the GTN, then I’d classify you as ultra wealthy. But honestly, if you’ve over a billion credits your more wealthy than most swtor players. At some point you just stop counting credits because they have less meaning unless your goal is to reach the credit cap ;)

 

its probably important to stop and think about people who buy cartel market items through buying cc, its important for bioware to help promote a healthy economy but you should take into consideration that they also want players to keep buying CM items to either use themselves or sell on gtn for large amounts of credits. it seems that is easily forgotten

Edited by RikuvonDrake
Link to comment
Share on other sites

happy to see that bioware data agree with the argument that its just too much credits being generated and not some qanon conspiracy with exploits, credit hacking and other things that crashed the market

 

its probably important to stop and think about people who buy cartel market items through buying cc, its important for bioware to help promote a healthy economy but you should take into consideration that they also want players to keep buying CM items to either use themselves or sell on gtn for large amounts of credits. it seems that is easily forgotten

 

I agree that it probably helps Bioware, but I’m pretty sure they don’t want 3rd party credit sellers in the game or they wouldn’t ban them. So any reasonable proposal to limit credit sellers is good for that policy.

 

It’s also good that Bioware shared their view that it’s conquest credits that have caused much of the inflation (which most of us reasonable people recognised already) Hopefully the conspiracy theories about credit exploits can stop now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure you can classify somebody as "ultra-wealthy" who sold nothing from the CM, and generated their income playing the game.

 

Now, if you want to fix that? ALL CM items are BoL.

 

****************

 

Another (specific) credit sink. I've been running Kuat Drive Yards (KDY) non-stop. I should hit max rep the week after next. How many KDY kits do I have?

 

3. (<-- Not a typo)

 

I think I've seen 11 drop in that time. Fine. Now, as much as I would like one of the KDY mounts, am I going to keep running that FP (Deliberately) after I reach exalted?

 

Not on your life.

 

If killing an "Elite Defender" doesn't drop a KDY construction kit FOR EVERY PERSON IN GROUP, and making the next higher rep doesn't award one, I am sure as heck not buying one off the GTN for 22 million each. (<-- Not a typo)

 

SELL those mounts. 50 million each. Or whatever. SELL those KDY construction kits.

 

**************

 

There are credit sinks. One issue is you have people (level 75 I might add) who have 20k creds (<-- not a typo) to their name. Others have hundreds of millions.

 

I'm not saying EA should "cater to the rich". But they do need to drown out any noise from those who say "I can't afford X with credits".

 

***************

Apologies for rant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now, if you want to fix that? ALL CM items are BoL.

 

terrible idea as lots of players buy cartel coins to buy cartel market items which they then sell on gtn for credits, reducing swtor revenue is not something bioware would ever do

 

SELL those KDY construction kits.

 

technically this is already the case, you can buy those tokens from gtn which would remove credits from the economy as the gtn tax a cut of the profits, bioware wants you to play the game, offering an option to skip that would be bad

Link to comment
Share on other sites

reducing swtor revenue is not something bioware would ever do

 

Then we appear to be at a loggerhead. As long as CM items can be bought with RW money(ies), then turned around and sold for in-game credits, you will have the problem of the "wealthy" and those who * NEED * stuff. A9slo folks buying from 3rd parties)

 

Now, if you want to reduce credits from OPS, FPS, etc? Fine. Then those who have cash will be king.

 

I still believe the best option is credit sinks. That doesn't address the problem of those who don't know how, or "can't " make money, but that's their problem, not mine, yours or EA's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

reducing swtor revenue is not something bioware would ever do

 

Then we appear to be at a loggerhead. As long as CM items can be bought with RW money(ies), then turned around and sold for in-game credits, you will have the problem of the "wealthy" and those who * NEED * stuff. A9slo folks buying from 3rd parties)

 

Now, if you want to reduce credits from OPS, FPS, etc? Fine. Then those who have cash will be king.

 

this isn't a problem people with credits, either ingame or irl will have a far easier time getting what they want in terms of cosmetics, that's fine

 

I still believe the best option is credit sinks. That doesn't address the problem of those who don't know how, or "can't " make money, but that's their problem, not mine, yours or EA's.

 

bioware will introduce more credit sinks and reduce the credit generated by players, so that's all good, the rest isn't actually a problem

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

The only way to tackle inflation properly is reducing the amount of credits generated in the game and then adding credit sinks to remove some of the excessive amounts of credits already in the game.

 

BioWare are already planning to do the first part with the reduction in credits from conquest. Now they just need to add some cosmetic credits sinks and possibly consider adding a sliding scale on the GTN tax that targets the ultra wealthy.

 

Right. I think maybe Bioware has a bad experience with credit sinks because in the past, so many of them were credit sinks that were necessary to progress in the basic game. Like when we used to have to pay to level up skills.

 

It's true that no one likes or wants credit sinks if those credit sinks are necessary for basic game progression. But I would love to see more credit sinks put in place that are fun things to shoot for, not necessities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Trying to at least be part of the solution instead of a problem.

 

That said, I do want to say "Be careful what you wish for as you may just get it." Case in point is the one method that would fix the economy overnight and likely instill fear in the hearts of everyone in game (and have rage quitters galore). That said I do not in any way advocate this, just going to show it can be a destructive solution implemented.

 

What they could do is a solution simple as "The Intergalactic Banking Clans mainframe system was infected with a destructive virus launched by enemies of the clan. as a result all balances exceed "X" have been wipe out to 1 credit under this amount." "X" could be 1 billion credits or 10 billion credits or even 25 million credits. Inflation issues - solved. Too many credits - solved. Massive redistribution of credits and wealth - maybe solved. Massive outrage galore - absolutely. Again I don't advocate it, but just showing the downside if they wanted to use the stick over the carrot.

 

One thing I really wish they would do is allow for some gold sink that has minimal impact on the game as a whole, yet permanently takes credits out of the game. Best idea here is something like buying "knowledge datacrons". For every set ration of A:B where A is credits and B is XP, you could simply allow for those with wealth the ability to convert the credits to XP blocks for use on their lower level characters. if these were bound to legacy, would in turn limit these from appearing on the GTN as well and really work at credit reductions. one example of this is a 10:1 ratio of 10 credits for 1 XP point. Primary reason this wouldn't disrupt the game is simply they already do this with the advancement tokens of cartel coins to level 70 / 75 insta-max tokens.

 

Blakinik

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The real problem with credit sinks is that the ones that keep getting implemented do nothing to slow down inflation, they only hurt the little guy. The proposed changes will make it much more difficult for new players and very casual players to keep their gear repaired. With the upcoming changes to combat, characters are going to take more damage to their gear and will have less resources to pay for repairing it. All the people who come on and say they make millions in game are doing one of two things, running dozens of alts through conquest or are trading on the GTN. The GTN is the biggest source of cash flow in the game and should be the main target of any credit sinks.

 

Some ideas (some will be very controversial but I think big changes need to be made if control of inflation is really the goal)

 

1) a non refundable listing fee is the way to go. That straight up drains credits from the game with every listing and discourages people looking for "the big score" by listing an item over and over until it sells for a very high price. It also cuts into flippers who buy up all the low priced items and list them at much higher prices (steadily driving up the price) which may or may not sell every time for the price listed.

 

2) Instead of outright doubling the CXP needed to complete personal conquest and reducing the payout by 75%, set up the system to increase the amount needed each time personal conquest is completed in the legacy (50K for the first one, 75K for the second, 100K for the 3rd and so on). This would slow down the CXP farmers a bit while not impacting the player with only a couple of characters.

 

3) "destroy the market" for the highest priced CM items by making them more available in the Cartel Market for Cartel Coins. The reason a lot of things go for so much is that there is virtually no way to obtain them outside the GTN. For example, if Tulak Hord's lightsaber is going for 2 billion, have a 6 week sale on it on the Cartel market. Increasing the supply will drive down the price by lowering the demand.

 

4) Have the price of activating guild perks increase with the size of the guild. The really big guilds could easily handle double or triple the costs without any hardship while the small guilds could still afford to activate them. The big guilds are getting more benefit from the perks than the small guilds. This drains both the members coffers and the guild's coffers. One other thing I would propose, and this is very controversial, is to put an end to "sale runs" for Operations shinies.

Edited by DWho
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Supply is vital to stopping inflation. How many people realize that the Legendary Vendors on Coruscant and DK are still using defunct currency. Nobody can earn it, trade it, or get it. So the vendors are locking out some items. Now why not reset those vendors to pure credits and jack-up the prices?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Little supply does not magically create hundreds of billions of credits in the economy. Stop peddling your lies.

 

No because I'm not lying there re not enough ways to spend credits in-game that removes them from circulation. Please mind your manners.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Been reading through this from time to time, can't say i am too familiar with how the market got so inflated but i do have an idea for a solution that i havn't seen in here (unless i have missed a post somewhere).

 

Make a second auction house but with a differance.

1. Players cannot sell anything on here.

2. The items are put on by the game, either by staff or some sort of algorithym to determin it.

3. All items on it are removed stuff from the game, non obtainable mounts, retired cartel market items that kinda thing, or super rare cartel market drops. Basically the kinda stuff that is impossible or super hard to get with rng.

4. Two cagagories stocked speratly, first instant buy with a minimum price of 1billion credits.

5. Second catagory a blind bid system on a timer, player put in what they are willing to pay, winner gets it, loosers get there credits back less a comission maybe 5-10%

 

As it does not involve a player to player transaction and it is items placed by the game, the credits from buying it or the comission lost from the players that did not have a winning bid are just sucked out of the game.

 

I believe this would be an advantage as the cash rich players get super rare pieces in exchange for those credits being sucked out of the game. Also as these credits are no longer being passed round the gtn minus whats lets facte it is a small tax on the sale, it would help lessen the rampant inflation as there would be a second avenue for large sums of excess credits to be dumped into.

 

If anyone has suggestions on tweaks or changes, or differant paths to go on this i welcome discussion, this is just a broad outline not a finished idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, the easiest thing for ANY mmo to do to prevent overinflation (Which niether SWToR or FFXIV do, or anyone else for that matter) would be to place a cap on how much an item can be sold for based on its rarity in the game. Its a simple solution, yet both Bio Ware and Square-Enix are too lazy to do it. This is of course the real problem, instead of fixing that which is broken, they will try to sell us more crap to get us to forget about the issues. For example, Space missions, Horrible since launch, never fixed, no-one even plays them I mean, a Star-Fox (Space on Rails) system was the best they could do? GSF is "ok" but the original Space mission stuff needs an overhaul and has needed it for years.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, the easiest thing for ANY mmo to do to prevent overinflation (Which niether SWToR or FFXIV do, or anyone else for that matter) would be to place a cap on how much an item can be sold for based on its rarity in the game. Its a simple solution, yet both Bio Ware and Square-Enix are too lazy to do it.

 

It's not laziness, a cap would make it less likely people would sell it on the gtn,(which is happening already) people would just trade it instead. Not only that, if they capped what people could trade it for, people would just trade multiple times to pay for it, and then we'd have the ***** who'd get the cash first, and run, or worse, they get the item first, and not pay the rest. And CS would be flooded with calls/texts about these people.

 

The only way for this to stop is for PEOPLE to stop buying, but they won't, someone is always willing to shell out for an item, because they have to have the new shiny. And BW love this, as it means they sell more CC's, and make even more money.

Edited by DarkTergon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For example, Space missions, Horrible since launch, never fixed, no-one even plays them I mean, a Star-Fox (Space on Rails) system was the best they could do? GSF is "ok" but the original Space mission stuff needs an overhaul and has needed it for years.

 

1) What do space missions have to do with the price of tea in China (GTN inflation)?

 

2) I play space missions at least once per week on multiple characters. Using the fleet commendations I earn from them I purchase Grade 7 spaceship upgrades from the NPC vendor and post them for sale on the GTN. They sell quite well. This leads me to conclude your statement "no-one even plays them" is false. Getting back to the topic, I sold Grade 7 spaceship upgrades back in late 2019 for 13-18 million credits each. I now sell them for 45-50 million credits each. That is more than 200% increase in sale price in 2 years. I'm not sure where people get the credits to buy these limited scope of use items at such high prices.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...