Is this game's economy still obliterated?

[Zero]

I played the game many years ago when the economy was still normal, then came back a couple of years ago (shortly after it was placed on Steam) to see that 95% of the stuff on the market was impossible for free/premium players to interact with because of the money cap for non-subs. Is this still the case? Thinking about giving the game another go, but if the economy/market is still useless for non-subs then I'm not going to bother.

[10sir]

Short answer? Yes. Nearly irrecoverably so.

Long answer? They are starting to make small changes to the economy that will gradually siphon the unfathomably ludicrous amount of exploit-generated credits, but it will take a considerable amount of time for the changes to have significant enough of an impact to restore a balanced economy. Feel free to look up the changes on the swtor forums. They are moving in the right direction, very slowly.

At this rate it'll be ~30 years before the economy recovers & stabilizes without a HARD credit wipe; a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥ credit reset across the board for the whole game.

[Jzin]

What they done recently is to fix informational inefficiency by introducing historical mean prices in the GTN. This should reduce impulsiveness from buyers somewhat and therefore reduce demand for illegal credit trading in the blackmarket.

For example, I had wanted to purchase an armor set priced at 500m only having to find out the following day some other dude post a sale for 250m only. I had no way of knowing what the market price is for the set. The dude may be using an alt to post a bogus 500m sale to try and clinch a deal at 250m when he originally bought it only at 50m or something. Unbeknownst buyers may also be tricked into thinking they may be able to flip the 250m purchase for a quick 300m sale. The plausible market inefficiency is endless.

I am in the new server now and market prices are somewhat very manageable.Albeit I would expect inflation to kick in given time thought just like in real life. If you are tight in real life cash, then i would suggest saving up on those cartel coins you earn and buy a hypercrate. Though you may have to save up quite a while to get there. After which, sell them individually and these things sell like hotcakes.

IMO, the greatest credit sink could be to introduce a currency exchange where one can exchange credits for any other forms of currency just as you could in a galaxy. This may create a unique experience if guilds / planets run on different currencies lol.

[FlatoutEarth]

you wont be able to buy the Artifact Authorization for 1,000,000 Credits, for sure

what do you want to buy to play the game? what do you want to play inside the game? operations ("raids") are subscribers only. you cant buy a pass to play them, even for real money, unless you subscribe

flashpoints ("dungeons")? you can practically do infinite number of them

PvP has been unlimited for about 6 months or so

what do you want from the game as F2P/Preferred?

[Hadradavus]

The GTN is definitely in a much better position than before and isn't a total clown world (shoutout to when processed isotope stabilizers were going for 80k a pop), and there's a decent range of CM stuff that's fallen below 1M credits, but there's still plenty of stuff out of reach (at least by Star Forge prices) for F2P/Pref, the most practical of these being augments and gold consumables.

[Berserkr]

Origineel geplaatst door FlatoutEarth:

you wont be able to buy the Artifact Authorization for 1,000,000 Credits, for sure

The good old days

[Zero]

My issue is that I would be playing it with someone who hasn't unlocked any of the authorizations and some of them are basically mandatory if you want to have a good time playing. I already have most of them for my entire account (got them for 100k-200k each way back when I originally played, depending on the unlock) but it would almost certainly ruin the fun for them if they couldn't equip gear because of the restriction on it.

[Hugh de Salle]

I started again on the new Pacific server even though my old server was in Europe i wanted experience the game again like when i first started i gave up billions of credits and legendary status in order to play from scratch and its wonderful the GTN is great because nobody has any money.

They need to credit wipe all the servers those that moan are not in it for the game and can feck off.

[Irinka]

As long as you are able to buy things in the cartel market and then sell them on the GTN the economy will be bad. I bought 3 Commander Compendiums and sold each one for 500M aprox. Haven't had to worry about credits ever again

[Hugh de Salle]

Origineel geplaatst door Irinka:

As long as you are able to buy things in the cartel market and then sell them on the GTN the economy will be bad. I bought 3 Commander Compendiums and sold each one for 500M aprox. Haven't had to worry about credits ever again

GTN items are not the problem Credits are.

[Irinka]

Origineel geplaatst door Hugh de Salle:

Origineel geplaatst door Irinka:

As long as you are able to buy things in the cartel market and then sell them on the GTN the economy will be bad. I bought 3 Commander Compendiums and sold each one for 500M aprox. Haven't had to worry about credits ever again

GTN items are not the problem Credits are.

Sure, but credits are a problem because they are not earned in game only, everyone with a credit card can buy them. Not directly. But like I said you just buy something in the cartel market and put it on the GTN. Can make a billion in less than a day, as long as you have real money

[Dr. Atrocious]

Origineel geplaatst door Irinka:

Sure, but credits are a problem because they are not earned in game only, everyone with a credit card can buy them. Not directly. But like I said you just buy something in the cartel market and put it on the GTN. Can make a billion in less than a day, as long as you have real money

That's not quite how it works since Cartel Market items don't inject credits into the economy on their own, but it is true that buying and selling them on the GTN can be a shortcut.

[Hugh de Salle]

Origineel geplaatst door Dr. Atrocious:

Origineel geplaatst door Irinka:

Sure, but credits are a problem because they are not earned in game only, everyone with a credit card can buy them. Not directly. But like I said you just buy something in the cartel market and put it on the GTN. Can make a billion in less than a day, as long as you have real money

That's not quite how it works since Cartel Market items don't inject credits into the economy on their own, but it is true that buying and selling them on the GTN can be a shortcut.

I agree but the credits need to be in place to push the prices up , On the new server its fantastic its like going back to 2012 however again its just too easy to make credits , I run maybe 15 Heroics a day and make about 750,000 credits and that's not taken into consideration the stuff i sell on the GTN from them in essence your looking at nearly a million credits a day for what a couple of hours that's far to much.

The devs need to cut back on credit rewards.

[Sgt.Parker]

There is need for money sink. Making fast travel more expensive is one way but there is limit before those fresh end up being forced to only leg it.

Currency exchange perhaps? From credits to tech fragments or to other items. (Like 1M or 10M per 100-500 fragments or such) But that would level up peoples gear who dont spend too much time playing but have a lot of cash...

[PocketYoda]

Honestly its the cash shop that destroyed it, its even worse now people can't even sell in game loot drops..

[Dr. Atrocious]

Origineel geplaatst door PocketYoda:

Honestly its the cash shop that destroyed it, its even worse now people can't even sell in game loot drops..

While the economy being problematic is ultimately a F2P issue, The Cartel Market couldn't "destroy" it. If that were the case, you should be able to purchase anything from the CM and sell it on the GTN on Shae Vizla server for the exact same prices as Star Forge. You can't do this because there aren't enough credits on the server yet. Credits can't be bought directly nor does the GTN produce credits out of nothing.