History of Credit Exploits and Inflation in SWTOR
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- With hypercrates costing ONE BILLION CREDITS this video explores this history of inflation and explits in Star Wars: The Old Republic. What happened that's made it so bad?
🔗 My notes and all my sources linked: docs.google.co...
Exploits History
• 2012 - Mail/Trading Exploit: Very easily create large quantities of credits through use of in-game mail and trading. The game did not update server side properly. You could dupe anything the easiest being money.
• 2015 Summer - Temple Chair Exploit: Could buy a Temple Chair item from the Cartel Bazaar vendor, and could sell it back for 100 credits… and repeat that until it was patched.
• 2015 End of Year - Stack Exploit: You could purchase a stack of items from a vendor, then sell each item for the price of the entire stack. So if an item cost 10 credits, you could buy a stack of 1000 then sell each item for 10,000 credits each… easily earning billions. over 500 accounts were banned!
• 2017 Companion Gifts Exploit: Could buy companion gifts from the vendor for 0 credits, you could get a stack of 10,000 and sell it back to the vendor for 10 million credits in a few seconds, repeat until it was patched.
Bioware fixed it on the fleet… but then the exploiters found another exploitable vendor on Dromund Kaas and repeated it for a few more hours.
They then went and bought every rare item on the GTN, distributing the credits into the economy, laundering the money and making it hard to “delete” from the economy.
--- Then these players who didn’t exploit suddenly made a sale of their items, and had tons of credits that they’d earned legitimately, but that were created through exploiting… I assume none of these were removed.
--- I actually got hit by this! I had some rare items for sale, a I logged in and made 60 mill over night when before everything had been selling at a slow pace.
--- Friend of mine was really into buying and selling on the GTN, he had around 3,000 items listed on the GTN and they all got bought up overnight - same thing, they were not exploiting, so they did not have any of their credits removed. Happened to basically anyone who was selling any rare Cartel items on the GTN at the time.
--- Those rare items were also removed from the game when many of the exploiting accounts eventually got banned, which made supply even less available making the prices go up.
--- Unfortunately not every player who participated was banned and not all of the exploited credits were removed from their accounts - many found other ways to launder their money like hiding them by sending it to a friend or selling it to a second account on the GTN, hiding it in legacy banks, hiding it in guild banks, buying items like companion gifts from vendors to later resell on the GTN, or other creative ways.
• 2019 Chance Cubes Exploit: Duplicating Items Exploit - Technically would help the economy by introducing more items, lowering demand as more players would get the items they need. LOL. A lot of bans went out for this one. Chance Cube exploit - selling stacks of 500
Non-credits exploits I didn't cover:
Umbara Stronghold
Ziost
Ravagers
Fractured
Ranked PvP (win trading)
PvP (being where you aren’t supposed to be on the map)
2016 disintegration / galactic command
/getdown 2012 exploit
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i remember how i would grind for hours and hours after school to buy all my abilities. seeing a lightsaber for 50K felt impossible to reach, huh the good old days
Most I had was 1.25 million credits after grinding for years. Then took a break and hoped back in 2019 and sold a cartel item for 180 million and was making 30 million credits per week lmao. Haven’t played since so idk how it is now
Yeah, same. I remember I was on Rishi with a BH when the expansion dropped, and I was so poor I couldn't afford the new abilities. In fact, buying the new abilities made me so poor, I couldn't even afford to leave the planet. xD
@@NarasimhaDiyasena Similar but even worse. The most expensive items on Darth Malgus are not even listed on GTN anymore because they're worth more than the sale cap (1 billion)... It's just insane and Bioware doesn't give too many fucks.
Im new and when I saw how many credits and I was mind blown
@@olafgurke4699 didn't quests give credits back then?
the first time i reached or went over 1 million credits i felt like a millionaire that could anything...good times lol
Exactly! I wanted Sateele Shan holostatue and it cost around 4 mil on GTN, and when I finally got the money and purchased it I was euphoric, lol.
I bought a revans mask for 4.5 million years ago, now the price is just ridiculous and you are better off just using cc coins
Now if you have 1 million credits you may as well be broke and homeless.
Played st launch 100k felt like a millionair
The most expensive think I bout was the entire tula hord set at release for like 10mil
I remember I once had two unstabe dual sabers so I sold one on the GTN. A guy messaged me if I wanted to sell it for a lower price as he didnt had the money to match my price.
Sold it to him for his ask price. He was so happy with it. Felt good doing that. Made me feel content. Credits werent an issue and made that guys day.
900 million. take it or leave it.
@@freddym99 I always the 'needy' guy trying to buy things out of my price range, and people like you really made my day when I got it, hated grinding but loved the stories. Thanks for that.
I remember clearly the day when I bought the darth revan chestpiece for 400k, i never bound it to a character so i can still sell it, which i will eventually do
I remember when the Red Black Dye used to cost 35,000 average, now days i see them around 185,000
That's a good example since they are easy to produce. Not just cartel stuff has gone up.
On my server, I'm somewhat known for crafting a lot of the popular craftable dyes and putting them up at a slight profit, 100+ of them every night to try and keep the market somewhat stable. Every couple of weeks I get someone messaging to ask why I'm doing it, but every time, I notice that material prices often begin to drop.
A friend "sponsored" me to go to their server and do the same thing every time prices get ridiculous there.
@@LevadeNZ never heard of you
@@LevadeNZ I do the same with craftable armors on the GTN. I see a lot of pieces going for 400-600k credits. I sell mine for 100k (which I think is a reasonable price), and still earn a nice amount. But the prices don't go down at all, my armor sets get sold, and the other not so much. I'm wondering if it's really me being the problem, offering my armor pieces for a low price?
@@hrginho Sometimes it takes quite a while unfortunately. I might flood the market with grade 4 dyes, and it takes a couple weeks for material prices to drop, but I have the stocks to keep up the pace until they do.
I actually started talking about this in a swtor session once in the republic fleet. Some of the folks were acting like I was crazy talking about how awfully inflated the current prices are.
yes they are the ones making money so they have to shut that shit down..
interesting
I just now reached a billion credits, which these days is just enough for one platinum item, then you’re broke again.
I remember I bought the HAVOC SQUAD armor for less than 1 million. I was preferred status. Then i got subbed, sold it for 220 million. Great success!
Making one million in an hour or even five million an hour is no where near enough to buy simple things like a dye going for one billion credits or even a 500 million armor set. Most players only have a few hours at most before having to go to sleep to get ready for work or school. The inflation is killing the game for sure. This is pushing people to make the black market even worse because people are now going to gold farmers a lot more than ever before. Thanks for making this video. Something has to be done.
This is worse than Venezuela's economy, but at least they have the US imposed sanctions as an excuse. EA doesn't have an excuse.
FYI, The black and black dye on the Satele Shan is going for 1 billion.
It's because they have no new players and the core players have ENOURMOUS wealth, and control the economy themselves. The rich stay rich, the poor will never get rich, and it will be like that until the game ends.
you say shit is expensive on gtn.... wait i have a little idea... sell stuff on the gtn
" The inflation is killing the game for sure. This is pushing people to make the black market even worse because people are now going to gold farmers a lot more than ever before. Thanks for making this video. Something has to be done.
This is worse than Venezuela's economy, but at least they have the US imposed sanctions as an excuse. EA doesn't have an excuse."
inflation is indeed a catchup mechanic. it helps new players and especially returning players.
and its unavoidable.
i started playing on starforge again like 3 weeks ago.
had 45 million.
now after selling some fp decos and stuff i got from galactic seasons. i am at 2 billion credits. have all my 3 gear sets augmented (blue because if i dont run gods nim i dont need more)
sorry but if you are too lazy to go to onderon and farm some crafting mats (which sell for horrendous prices) its not the games fault.
you would need gigantic credit sinks to get more credits off the gtn whales than farmes can create.
those credit sinks would be a nightmare for new players.
its mmo economics not real world economics.
Those are 2 quite similar but in certain points highly different things.
what is the games fault is the credit cap in the gtn.
it has to go.
if people trade more shit without paying taxes the main credit sink does not work anymore, that leads to the hyperinflation we see now.
it might look scary, but if you know how to play the gtn a bit its super easy to get money.
@@hoebertrabeck1621 The comment you replied to is about a year old. Today, 2 billion can get you two dyes. The main credit sink in the game has always been gear repair. Credit sinks are everywhere actually. It has never fixed the economy of this game. It never eased it, it never slowed it down. Credit sinks don't work in real life either.
In my opinion, the only solution is to accept the economy as is and have everything in the game reward more credits. Raise the minimum wage. Better yet, make the economy reward so well it's a living wage, enough to buy pretty things to make your toon look good to keep you playing, while also having enough for necessities like augment kits, augments, stims, adrenals etc to be able to play endgame content.
Barely getting by is fine too. But a Star Wars toon can not live on bread alone.
@@HiddenPalm "Better yet, make the economy reward so well it's a living wage, enough to buy pretty things to make your toon look good to keep you playing, while also having enough for necessities like augment kits, augments, stims, adrenals etc to be able to play endgame content. "
do you have an economocs degree from the "unicorn university of dreams"?
if you raise the minimum wage you raise the price.
when everybody has more money the prices go up. it will be the same ratio from income to expenses.
a few people control the gtns. if you put on crafting mats relatively cheap, they will be bought in masses and resold with a profit.
its a uncontrolled hypercapitalistic system, where if you have the money you can control the market as you wish.
no minimum wage can change this.
I remember when I logged in one day and a friend had received the credit cap because of a mistake made by the Devs. What's crazier is, because he was such an honest guy, he told BW and they just let him keep the creds. It had affected so much and it was the real start of hyper inflation. Now it looks like things have gotten worse since I last logged in. I remember things being between 1-100 million depending on its value as an item (typically deco's and really nice looking armor) and now it is looking like items at 1 billion is not all that crazy. Friggin' sheeeeeeeeeesh.
lol WUT
like they are selling the trash armor from the starter planets for 10k but your favorite robe or blaster rifle is so damn expensive that its not even shown anymore...
This is so interesting, I just came back to the game after about 4-5 years and was surprised by the prices
Ditto
A half hour video for a beefy topic. lol I remember the days when seeing something for 200k felt like a big deal.
Remember the time when everyone thought that a BB dye of 3mil was crazy? XD
I feel like I left a lot of stuff out too!
I've also played off and on since launch, and remember the earlier days of the game. I came back to the game in 2017 after a couple years off, played for awhile, and I remember stuff like gold armor packs being ~15 million credits (which I used to regularly buy off the GTN), and most expensive cosmetic items were around 20 million or less. I took a few years off, came back earlier this year and was floored at how much everything cost. I was sitting on a lot of stuff I had bought on the CM back in the day, and I quickly realized I was now sitting on billions of credits in CM items. The inflation is absolutely insane.
Hey, do you remember even earlier days?
I am wondering, how far the current twotino population was before you caught them into mean motion resonance?
@@Eltaurus - "Hey, do you remember even earlier days?"
Um, excuse me, but I don't prefer to discuss my distant past. I also don't waste time and energy talking about the orbits of puny planetoids with perfect strangers. You keep your mind on those forests and tornadoes and all that other sh** you got over there in your lil Goldilocks zone. Don't worry about what happens out here fella.
@@Kryptic1046 you really are an ice giant
@@Eltaurus @Neptune that was unexpected ^^'
27:23 This actually happened to me a couple days ago. I really wanted to buy the Resilient Warden armor set. I checked the GTN, saw it was going for about 800m credits, said "screw it" and bought it for cartel coins which I had left over from when I was subscribed.
I remember something I did to help the economy slightly. I had a rare lightsaber from a cartel pack that I didn’t want. It was a double saber (I think it was like the defiant or onslaught saber idk) it was on the GTN for like 500 mill. I sold mine on the GTN for like 50 mill. The prices came crashing down trying to compete with my price. From what I saw, they have gone back up to about 100 mill. But it’s still cool that I broke the economy for a hot second.
The person selling it for 500 million most likely bought it for ur 50 million just to resell it for his/her price.
@@Adamopoly yeah if anything, this probably made it worse because now this person selling it for 500 million has more of them and can force prices to stay high for longer 😂
@@FalandraAoC exactly what I would do lol
I call BS. One item cannot cause a price crash. For that multiple items need to be offered at the 50 mill mark to cause other sellers to decrease their prices because they cannot buy those themselves.
I remember the companion gifts exploit.
I also remember someone (on Reddit, I believe) bragging about it, and writing what basically amounted to a manifesto that summed up as "cheaters always win" after managing to avoid the ban-hammer.
Guild mates and I was talking about Credit sinks how to fix the economy. Ships... Now here me out. Imagine having 20 different ships and you're able to upgrade and customize the look of & have a small group of 2-8 on board. Not able to be sold on GTN and make the Credit SINK HUGH to get the credits out. Just saying those with tons of money would dump tons into it.
i love this idea - I also think we should be able to add decos to our existing ships. Adding ships for purchase is a great idea.
This is something that was brought up in the video, credit sinks like this make it so the only people that get experience this are the people who exploited or who got lucky getting rich. Meaning probably about 90%-99% of players won't have any opportunity to do this.
Where they need credit sinks: Collection unlocks should be able to be bought with credits. More galactic seasons more often. Etc...
But no credit sink will put a dent into the mega wealthy's wallets. Imo the economy in the game is the best I have ever seen it right now. You 100% can make good credits playing the game and actually work towards and achieve farming for items you want without spending real money. The prices are just intimidating. My idea would be to do a credit gouge; reduce the amounts of credits in the game. If you had 2bil, you now have 200mil - or something along those lines. If done right credits and items will still hold their value, but the intimidating prices of things will significantly drop.
@@phaedrus12134 you know how many players would leave the game if the gouged the credits from people and give them nothing in return... honestly.
I agree open some of the Cartel Gear, mounts, season pass things.
I personally believe ships would be a great way to get the credits out of the economy.
They can see how much the top credit holders have.
Adjust the price of the ships so that it's a huge credit sink.
They can't be sold on GTN. Once bought EA swtor can take those credits out of the economy and delete them.
Then another credit sink would be buying all the stuff that you can decorate your ship with. Credits again and can't be sold on the gun or any other way.
EA swtor takes those credits out of the economy and deletes them.
I also agree that you can grind the game and get everything you wnat and need.
However just taking something from people like credits. Your hitting people that spent a lot of money on the game too. The money that has gone to the companies staff to make new stuff, the money that kept the servers running for years now. I've only been playing for 3 months if they did that I would take my 200$ a month I have spent in tho 3 months to a different game.
Yeah 2400$ a year sounds like a drop in the bucket. What happens when others who spend more than that leave the game. Do you think that would help or hurt the game?
I try and do my part. When I pop hyper crates I sell the good stuff usually undercut the lowest price by 10-20% so that those that have been saving and are super close to getting it can get it.
In all honesty it's EA swtor game. They will do what they need to do to keep the lights on and people working.
@@Aceswolf reducing the number of credits in the game, increases the value of a single credit. By gouging credits nothing would need to be given in return, as the credits would be worth more. Aka you'd still be just as wealthy, the numbers just wouldn't be so ridiculous...
I made 100k and I started 2 days ago. ON Korriban. Selling the loot i got, apprentice sabers when I got the light sabers, one from the Inqusitior or one of the Heroic Missions.
Oh, my goodness... I remember just grinding the Black Hole dailies and the ones on Belsavis to make credits.
Maybe there could be a Smuggler's Run type event. Like how you spend credits to send companions off to get crafting mats, you could pay a Cartel smuggler to get rare, non-tradeable items for you. The more dangerous the mission, the more you pay, and there'd be a chance they get caught and don't come back at all.
oh i LOVE this idea. losing a level 50 comp permanently!
very good
Nope. Let’s just charge for quick travel instead!
The referral program added it's fair share to the issue. Plenty of people used it legitimately or gave away stuff, but there were players who spent all their time paying a small sum of credits to new subscribers and then getting the monthly cartel coin bonus until they cancelled their sub. I heard some players made upwards of $200-$1000 in cartel coins per month like this.
Technically this HELPED inflation as it introduced more items (supply) into the economy. I was worried when they took it away as less people would be able to throw cartel packs onto the gtn making them scarcer. Luckily we saw more cartel coins come back via galactic Seasons.
I remember saving up all my credits just to buy my abilities. Then when I bought my first cartell backs and started selling my duplicate stuff on the GTN and actually reached a million I was stunned. Of course in those days the high prices were still like 40 or 50 thousand with the super rare being 100000 or more
one way to fix it: they could just add reskinned cartel market armors/weapons packs to a vendor for credits, or cool armor that can only be bought for credits, but have those packs always be bound so they cant resell it. the excess cash will be gone in no time because at the end of the day people just want to look pretty
I remember when augment kits first came out, I had prepared and built a ton of bracers ahead of time to deconstruct. I had several characters making aug kits and they were selling for a good amount. I ended up making 26 million in 1 day. I felt like a god. I was easily the richest of all my friends.
Smart!!!
The inflation is why I stopped bothering with the GTN
It works both ways. The economy of the game is actually really healthy right now. With conquest, things sell extremely well - especially things like crafting materials that contribute to conquest.
Are things expensive right now? Yes, but you can also sell things and actually make good profit. I make 50mil+ a day just sending my companions on missions while I play. So even though things are expensive right now, they are very obtainable without having to spend any real money - more so now then ever.
Keep thinking it can't keep going up but prices are just increasing
When ROTHC released I used the game time that came with that pre-purchase to grind heroics etc for credits so that I could buy account wide unlocks for when my subscription would inevitably fall back to preferred status. I cant have payed more than a 1 to 2 million for some of the higher end ones like section-x access and artifact authorisation, and most likely less than 500 thousand for the lower end ones like inventory & cargo hold slots.
Looking at the huge cost now, I count myself lucky that I was able to do this and have access to things that would otherwise be disabled while not subscribed. I dread to think about the credit sink it is to decorate strongholds now compared to before the inflation, all those nice cartel market decorations locked off because of the extortionate prices.
100mil Lana customizations, I fixed everything lol
I was so brought when I purchased a contraband slot machine for 20m credits. So proud . . . now it costs 950m credits minimum.
On the bright side, when I returned, I had some cartel market stuff ready to sell.
As someone who's been around since launch, this was a trip down memory lane. Fwiw, I still have hundreds of those gifts. I never did the exploit, but I have max influence companions on my crafters which is it's own reward. 😁
Back in 2013. I found out that Rubat Crystals were one of the most sought after items. So I sent all my followers to get them and used to make bank off them. Made about a million in the first year of playing. I remember thinking that 1 million credits was crazy. Now I can make that in a few hours. Crazy.
Some of the larger guilds have a conquest crafting exploit. I've seen their conquest score rise millions in minutes. I imagine if they're getting credits for conquest on top of it, that it's another credit exploit as well.
God I remember feeling decked out having collected tulak hords armor, white black lightsaber crystal, dies and a couple of mounts for something under 10 Millie's. I looked at some of those same items that and we're at Zimbabwe levels of inflation
I remember grinding for a few weeks just to get the few million or so credits for the Korrealis Commander way back in the day when they announced it was going to be leaving the game. Things were so expensive and there weren't a lot of ways to earn credits as easily after the game launched. Keep up the content! I may be interested in playing again. Haven't played since the KotFE storyline.
@Swtorista
The only good way to stop the inflation is to limit the amount an item can be sold for capping under 50,000,000 because nothing should cost more than a guild ship. Set tiered maximums for every items rarity. Then you also add a 25% tax to every gtn purchase costing more credits to buy. Also add a 25% cost to list based on your price. So you sell an item for 50,000,000 you spend 12,500,000 just to put it up on the market. people will be able to buy entire supplies but prices for players will go back to more reasonable rates.
agree
"Republic credits are no good out here. I need something more real"
Ending the referral system means that less people are buying hyper crates, which would often drop the most sought after items, creating a steady supply and making the prices drop. Now that bioware removed this so that people buy more cartel coins, prices have risen because the value of things are more in line with real life money.
yes.
Technically, more people should be able to buy Hypercrates via the cartel coins from Galactic Seasons, if I've done my math guessing right.
@@Swtorista while it does offer an opportunity for players who didnt partake in the referral program to earn cartel coins, I personally think that it doesnt nearly amount to the amount of cartel coins people were earning through referrals. For one thing, I didnt participate in galactic seasons at all because it required me to play the pvp at times which is annoying. Its also a set amount of cartel coins per season, unless theres some kind of way to earn them that i am unaware of. I know there were alot of people whos entire existence were getting people to click their links, these people would mostly buy hypercrates and resell any of the items.
I remember buying hypercrates for 4-6M credits on the GTN around 2014. 1B is plain ludicrous.
Back in the day when my main character had to run through the dune desert because I couldn't afford a speeder and the ability to ride it... I miss these days :D
Every MMO fights with this problem: more or less. How much is done depends on the developers and those paying their wages.
STO and other MMOs usually find alternative ways to pay for stuff and to create credit sinks. The new season introduced both: new coins to use at vendors and taking credits out of the market. Other events offer similar event currencies. Check your inventory and you will probably find a lot of different currencies in there.
I didn't use any exploit (at least not knowingly - you know it starts as a bug so nobody knows). Which is one more reasons those responsible for the game are slow in erasing funds from this (falling victim of a bug is not the same as intentionally using an exploit). On the other hand WE will never know what stuff is kept track off for just finding those bad guys.
I played all 8 classes through the first 3 chapters and now (after selling of crafting materials like crazy) I have bought anything I like and have more than 300mio in my account bank. I'm not into fancy gear, I mostly buy functional stuff (and most of the rest I'll receive as presents from the game).
Summing it up: I'm not affected by this (except the inflation gives me more money when selling off materials).
even private servers for SWG l.ike legends has this issue. before it grew big the server had a player that found a credit dupe and put trillions in and wiped entire servers market.
credits stayed and items poofed. it ruined the server yet none of the players who joined after it know and to this day the ecom there is so bad... it's why I'm glad I'm playing on a smaller server for SWG Named prophecy...they fixed the exploits so no one could usem.
@@TaurielWoW When Diablo3 got out they had an auction house. That was abused a lot and thus they almost completely abandoned it and turned up the drops. Thus players got their stuff more from loot than from shopping.
In Neverwinter Online they had an early exploit involving cats (if I remember right). Those not involved and in the game at that time received a special cat coat as a memorial of that fiasco.
So yes, attempts at fraudulant behaviour are rampant in all online games I know. As I Don't care about anything I cannot get by my own means, I don't pay much attention. Additionally I message the game guardians with any attempt to sell me coins (many games feature a spam / similar button to make that easy). BTW gold sellers may get their gold from hacking - thus getting in contact may be a very bad idea.
At launch I had recruited a person to guild who was into "finding exploits", once I heard him openly talk about it he was removed immediately. He was systematically testing the sync between the server and client and moving credits. Needles to say, this person was removed at once. The Dev's have always had the ability to remove credits but they could have rolled back all the transactions for that 2017 GTN bust.
Star Wars: The Venezuelan Republic
Lmao yea
They should do a credits squish. Every 100 credits should be squished into 1 credit. (1000 turns into 100 or 10000 turns into 1000) That could bring down prices a bit. Then in another year or two. Do another credit squish
There’s something incredibly funny and amazing that the concept of an actual economy and inflation existing in a video game
I won a Revan Reborn set from a Swtorista raffle once (thanks, btw). Oh boy am I glad I did not have to purchase it for GTN prices!
I am also glad I don't have to buy prizes from the GTN LOL
Master's datacron costs 800 mils on darth malgus right now O_O.
I still have a couple in my Legacy vault. Once I noticed the price climbing, I bought what I could and kept them for when I wanted to create alts.
I recently logged back to the game and went to GTN and WOW! Prices in the *millions*!!!!?! I used to think I was very wealthy for having a few million in the bank... Hyperinflation! Nice video :) Thanks for the history :)
Finally became a billionaire a couple of months ago. Was shocked to see that apparently I am still considered middling in the broken swtor economy hahaha
Only in SWTOR can you be an in-game literal billionaire and still be one of 'the poors.'
When Makeb released, we sold the new Augmentation Kits for 140K Credits... Later on "Black and Black" Dye Modules were EXTREMELY expensive when they did cost 1 to 5 million credits...
Lol this video was from a year ago and these prices seem sooo incredibly low it’s bananas
It just sucks that the best fixes for inflation punishes new players 😢
zimbabwe laughes as this game now : who has the highest inflation now boi!
I recently just saw someone talking about inflation and telling people to undercut everyone on the market when looking up ways to earn credits and what sells on the market. So this video is amazing timing.
Thank you for this video. Nobody believes me when I explain how bad credit exploits have ruined the economy of the game over the years - everyone wants to blame it on credit sellers, when this is a very small percentage of the problem.
This has gotten so bad because people printed a crap ton of credits, add this with the referral system (another thing people like to blame) being taken out - so a lot of items aren't for sale in the quantities they used to be.
An economy is all about supply/demand/amount of currency. All of which is out of wack right now.
At least making credits IN GAME is easier than it has ever been right now.
Again, thanks for the video. This needed explained from someone trusted.
Edit* it's actually crazy how good the economy is right now in terms of how easy it is the make credits in the game - without spending anything on the cm. If the exploit problems of the past weren't still haunting the game, it wouldn't be so intimidating to most people but with how well the conquest system was redone, crafting materials are very profitable.
I think it's less credit seller and exploits than it is the balance of the ingame credit sinks themselves. If you remember shortly before 6.0 we'd kind of hit a stabilised point where prices weren't too crazy because the only thing you could possibly need a million credits for outside of the GTN was a select handful of legacy perks. After 6.0 bioware not only introduced arbitrary credit walls for crafting but decided 1 million credits was the new baseline for armours and cosmetics even from vendors, along with the infinite sinks that are tunings.
Inflation spiked massively right after 6.0 and it was all because bioware decided to raise the standard so that a million credits was no longer just nice to have but the bare minimum for you to do almost anything at level cap.
@@DatAsuna it's like 90% exploits. I've seen people with 100s of billions loaded into their wallet. These mega wealthy players that made their credits from exploits have more wealth than any credit sink could swallow. And because they have hoarded items, they will not stop accumulating wealth - these items will always be worth a lot. With this wealth they essentially can control the market at any given time - when they do this they flood credits into people's wallets and then those people begin to overpay on things. There is a reason people can sell a lightsaber for 2bil+, because people are paying that much for them. Inflation like we are seeing is a direct consequence of people printing money and circulating it into a market they control...
Really feels like 2017 one in particular probably should've been a rollback, that sounds so bad.
The "the wealthy" legacy title is awarded for the first time when you get 10 million credits. That says a lot about the current state of things.
I remember when the game first came out and people within the 1-5 million credit range were considered 'rich'. I would come home from school, log on, and farm a chest route on Hoth and eventually Corellia for hours and hours getting raw credits. 50k per hour, 70k per hour, almost 100k per hour were considered insane rates. Nowadays you run makeb and if you get less than 200 million in materials it's considered a light run... oh how things have changed.
Fortunately I’ve been playing SWTOR for yeaaarrrsss so I’ve been able to accrue 5+ billion credits. However I have to be so careful on how I wanna approach buying stuff 😂 Having to buy a revan set for 1 billion a set is insane
5B isn't that much, actually.
During galactic seasons I created a fresh new character on a server I haven't played before, and was able to get 1B in under a month.
@@Eltaurus yeah I’m sitting in 45B
@@Eltaurus Key statement “+” I have definitely gotten more then 5 billion. These inflations on certain GTM items is insane and sometimes drains me so I have to build that back up.
@@iEpitome with all those tons of circulating credits I already bought every item from the collections that there is on GTN. So I can't really relate to that.
Was there on pre-launch beta test. I recall buying inventory slots / cargo hold slots and being like "wow that's expensive".
Played for a few months after release and then.. life happened. Now I'm back after almost 10 years, looking at gtn and like "wtf is going on there".
Back when you could only get pink crystals thru a multi planet process and high level artificer, my guild made a MINT farming those.
that was neat back then!
my guild does 100,000,000 credit giveaways every tuesday and when someone wins it its cool but nothing to speical, shows how much inflation has taken over them game
Yeah been playing since launch and I only play a few hours a week and make 25 million . The GTN prices have gone insane in last year
It’s how it is across all MMORPG games. Players increase it for crazy amounts and everyone just follow suit thinking they will get the in game money for it. I ALWAYS undercut them by half and always get my stuff sold quick either by someone who needs it or by other sellers trying to keep people from undercutting them.
The most ironic thing was when they implemented the update this year with quick travel cost ect. to combat inflation and in that update there was a credit exploit when you could claim money from your mail multible times (we paid our guilds conquest reward and the people could withdraw the tens of millions multible times)
I have a screenshot somewhere, taken soon after launch, of me checking my in-game mail showing the notifications of items sold on the GTN. I'd sold a bunch of augments, accumulated via slicing gathering missions, for around 10-20 creds each :P
I remember back when 500k was rich, good times
As a big fan of the original KOTOR series when the remake trailer came out I got super hyped and started playing TOR for the first time... I'm absolutely loving the story content, but the prices of things on the GTN and whatnot are just crazy. I've been spending most of my time as a new player just making credits via gathering because I feel broke af lol, but thankfully now as a grade 11 slicer I am actually making a fair amount of credits. I hear that black friday can be a good time for CM sales too so I'm hoping they'll be some good sales then.
Just do some solo flashpoints like 'A traitor among the Chiss' and loot some decorations. Hanging plants can be sold for over 15 millions. I've sold a bunch of those decorations last months and I earned a few hundred millions $. Forget making this kind of money within the game. Even the slicing run in Breaktown (witch use to get me ALOT of millions) can even make it any more with 25+ hours of farming.
I remember the first time I got 1 million I bought that VIP pass to go up to the top level of the space station. I found one vendor up there and a bunch of NPC's....... That was it. I legit just grinded days and weeks to have the ability to jump off the railing of the VIP lounge. Cheers SWTOR
OMG LITERALLY SAME, I WAS SO PISSED LOOOOOOOL. And the thing is, for whatever reason I was expecting there to be like loads of people up there you know? Like a lil exclusive club that only “elite” players at the time could get into…NOPE. No one and nothing there except shit vendors
One of the largest inflation factors is also the sale and purchase of credits for real life money. Credit sellers hoard incomprehensible amounts of credits and then release the “capital” back into the economy like a shockwave after someone buys a large stack of credits, making the actual value of credits themselves borderline non-existent.
BLACK BLACK DYE : if you're a veteran player that has CANTINA CRATES in the mail at character creation, you have a 1% chance roughly of getting a BOUND black black dye. So if you do, you can either put that in some cartel market armor for that char (or any armor with a dye slot), or put it in legacy gear, to be used by any of YOUR chars. Odessen crates (KOTFE) give some excellent pieces of random legacy gear.
So if you have the patience you can reroll and delete chars until you get that dye. I once got a char that got two in a row !!
Just remember it's bound (so no trading it around, even to your alts, except in legacy gear).
they could do what black desert does and give every item a fixed price range on the gtn. I think runescape does it too.
There was also another "buy a stack for 0 and sell for 10 mio" exploit. This one was regarding the fireworks, one new type, that was added to the anniversary vendor once in either 2019 or 2020.
oooh
I really hope there is a highschool teacher out there somewhere that watches this and uses it to teach their students about real-world inflation. You can't just make money out of nothing and not effect the economy, you might make more per mission(day at work), but it doesn't matter if the hypercrate(used car) now costs 50% more.
Yep it's a great comparison. This is why we aren't allowed to print money at home lol
One single ultimate pack is worth between 109 million and 125 million credits on my server at the moment (February 2022). So a hypercrate is worth around 3 billion credits...
Yep they keep going up!
Watching this makes me wonder; when exactly did I become okay with throwing around over 100mil like it's pocket change?
with the crazy inflation i had an idea for biow to do credit reduction account wide by removing two or three decimals - it would affect those insanely rich exploiters while leaving those with fewwer credits also affected but way less simply because they have less money.
Unfortunately this one would cause a lot of people to quit I'm anger that their credits are being taken away haha!
@@Swtorista their value would remain the same, just the number itself would be changed
Only people who failed economics class would be mad at that kinda move 😂
very interesting video.
I actually recorded all my market transaction for hypercrates and single packs between the end of 2015 and begining of 2017. There i somewhat can see the spikes mentioned by you in this video and also how the hypercrate price evolved over time. Luckily, even though i stopped trading a long time ago, i had most of my money invested in packs...
You pretty much covered everything in the video, but if you are interested i could send you this spreadsheet.
Credit sinks are interesting. But it can't be a sole solution. Price regulations on the GTN along with credit sinks would be more effective in my opinion. For example instead of a 1 billion price regulation on all items on the gtn, make all dyes limited to 500k, with cartel dyes having a higher credit limit like 2million. Similar price regulations for other item categories like decorations and mounts, etc. The price regulations would be correlated to the intended ways players can earn credits in the game. This all gets readjusted twice a year.
This may mean, that all items will be sold at their highest regulated prices possible, and extremely rich market savvy players would be dominating the GTN for some months. But after a while, this will even out as those filthy rich players run out of items to sell along with some credit sinks - and the market being flooded, a sign of a healthy server.
And since prices on the GTN for every item significantly decreased, people will be buying everything they can. Which in my opinion will be returned right back to the market, making practically every player a participant of the market, making it thrive. Once the market gets flooded again because of more participants, dyes can go back down to 20k making the game more enjoyable to new players, keeping the community growing.
This massive push towards participation in the market is capitalism, and the price regulations to make things significantly more affordable to all is communism. Best of both worlds to solve SWTOR's economic crises.
You're welcome.
As a new player I was shocked to see the prices. Similarly though that shock came with the understanding that a lot of my useless crafting mats (for me) could sell for millions.
So it’s a double edged sword, and I can also make dyes so I suspect that’s big money too
I just want my Hoth mount hah
Black/Black dyes on my server (Satele Shan) are around 900 million.
Last time I played was about a year ago and they were 1/10th that price.
This video made me think I have to start investing my swtor credits before they lose their value xD
Ive ammased like 60mill over the years ive played but sheesh why inflation gotta be so bad
got senya tiral's saber pike in a hypercrate a while ago, this close to selling it on the gtn for a million credits to see how fast it goes away
the cartel packs are running for 7.6 billion right now
I started playing Swtor like 5 years ago too and as a preferred player the credit cap was at 350k i think and with this amount you could buy quite a lot of stuff. Nowadays i think the cap is rised to 1million?...it's been a year since i played the last time :) However 1million even a year ago was like nothing worth.
In my eyes the exploits are the one thing, idiots who abuse bugs will be allways in every game, but with the expansions bioware also rised the rewards for missions (especially heroics) extremly. I don't know if it is on purpose from the side of bioware because with this they want to push more players into an abo (because the cap for a preferred is in no proportion anymore) but i think it would be way better if they would just cut all credits in stock of all players, all rewards from missions and all prices for items on the GTN by lets say 1/100 or even 1/1000. Then the prices would become realistic again. Like in real you don't pay 2000$ for bread, you buy 2$ and items from vendors, upgrades or housings would become something you really have to work for once again.
It's definitely an option for them to reduce the rewards. There's need to be some kind of fix for the existing billions of credits in the economy tho
I took a break around the time Satele Shan's armor and Senya's lightsaber pike were the most expensive items on the GTN at about 30M credits. I just returned about a month ago and Senya's lightsaber pike is now in the hundred millions. Insanity!
If you can even find it for sale at all!!!
I'm also on Star Forge, and even though it hasn't even been a month since you uploaded this video but Master's Datacrons are now going for 740 million. The price went up another 50%.
yep...
Just returned to the game a week ago after being away for about 10 years. What I'm seeing is insane inflation and it's probably not worth getting back into but the story... the story.. oh man I love the stories..
wow big gap welcome back! There's tons to do in the game even if you ignore the gtn all together
Whenever I sell my items I try to sell it lower than the gtn just to make some players day :)
That's basic economics. I do it all the time and stuff sells fast. Just undercut the cheapest price by about 1%.
That's called undercutting.
Back in 2015, the anniversary vendor allowed you to sell free items back for credits. Bioware banned anyone buying and reselling high quantities of these items.
As someone who's part of the RP community of SWTOR, I feel like it's safe to say that we get hit the hardest from in-game inflation. Acquiring a custom made outfit from multiple sets can take hundreds of millions of credits if not a billion, especially if you want that sweet black/black dye. This is also the case for decorations as a large chunk originate from the cartel market. What especially sucks for me in particular is I bought a crap ton of armor sets hoping to sell them on the GTN only to take a break from the game before they were sold.
Somehow those items were sent into the void and never came out so I have to start fresh again -_-
30 day mail timer :(
I think it's more people don't want to lose a hunk of credits to the GTN on a billion cred sale. Even in your screencaps it shows items for a billion, but the GTN fee would literally delete tens of millions on a billion sale. I'd 100% sell that in person to dodge that huge loss. IMO they should have done a server rollback after such devastating exploits, all items and credits go right back where they were before everything went nuts. Which also means credits that came out of nowhere go back to nowhere.
Also, I just have to know, what's the armour that the (trooper I presume?) is wearing in your video? The one wielding a bowcastor and dancing with c2.
The easiest way to get large amount of money now in SWTOR is to make flashpoints like 'A traitor among the Chiss' or 'The Nathema Conspiracy' and loot decorations to sell for a few millions $ each on the GTN. When vers 4 came out (KOTFE) I was slicing in breaktown non-stop and making millions. I bought my stronghold and everything in it within a few months. But when V5 (KOTET) came out the loot in the slicing nodes have been cut in half and I never did the same kind of money in-game.
I used to use warzone commendations to buy the faction guard personnel for player homes and then sell some of them, back when I had a subscription. Was profitable enough to get some other stuff I wanted.
A nice parallel between the game exploit and printing trillions of US dollars.
I remember Tempest Warden being a low cost armor before Jedi Under Siege, whatta time
I just started to get into this game(taking a break from FFXIV) and its crazy to look at this game's economy, something aint right lol. It's nice to see a lil bit of the history as to what happened.
World of Warcraft has a "Black Market" where old items that can't be obtained anymore through original means have a chance to be bought through there (e.g. from events, giveaways, or even super rare drops from dungeons/raids). This is a pure money sink with it being based on an auction and not a flat cost. Thus when money starts to drop, the cost of the item will also drop, meaning people with less money can still have a chance of picking it up.
SWTOR could have taken this route with all the items they had in giveaways in the past, but instead they put the items into the Galactic Seasons. Given how much they copy World of Warcraft, there is zero chance they were not aware of this method of killing off inflation, so they have simply chosen to not deal with the inflation instead.
An effective credit sink that RuneScape added in was when they made a wishing well, for X amount of gold thrown in they would donate X Amount of money to charity. People threw tons and tons of gold into it to do good, and fixed some of the inflation. It was all around a positive
SWTOR needs a mandatory Pazaak Tournament as a credit sink!
Saw berserker going for like 1 mil on GTN. tried selling it at like 800k, no takers. sold it for like 250k, sold quickly.
I also remember a few years ago (3 or 4 at most), the most expensive thing on the GTN was a Crate-o-Matic for 500 mil. Now things are 100 times that.
Not sure how this video made it into my suggestion feed but I was part of that first big credit exploit right around the launch of KOTFE. I was buying stacks of decorations with planetary commendations and splitting 1 item and selling it back for the same price of the stack (we learned that this could be done with any item at any vendor on any planet so it wasn't just fleet decorations). This lasted for just over a month and after like 3 weeks we thought it was simply a new feature to the game because several events and updates literally happen at the time like Ilum pvp e.g.
I personally bought every single crate-o-matic at the time on from the market but they were wiped them from the game. sorry treasure hunters it wasn't personal and I had planned on giving them all away for free to people but I was banned before I could. We sold the vast majority to the gold farmers and I bought a new car, couple of friends also bought cars and the gold farmers got banned in the end along with the rest of us so we made off like literal bandits.
At the time the best way of making money was doing Section x, czerker and oricon dailies which was about 350k per planet.
I can't decide if I want to say thanks for sharing the history or yell at you for helping ruining the economy lol!
@@Swtorista by the sounds of it the next exploit you talked about was far more extreme given that they didn't roll back or wipe the credits. It wasn't so bad though because i think a majority of people who got banned weren't people you wanted in the community anyway myself included.
Lol, that's cute
Now face the wall :)
Some other things they could do to help: Reduce vender prices for items you sell them, add a tax to cartel market (or increase current one, can't remember if there already is one), and increase convenience travel prices with character level (fast travels, ship flight costs, etc) (this one they halfway put in, but as far as I can tell it doesn't scale with level)
Why would you tax cartel market? Its real world money, people would just stop buying packs and bioware would lose money
I used to make a fortune off the trade market. I loved listing all my 100 items I could list at a time and wake up in the morning and only having like 15 items left. With about 15-20 mil in sales. Those were fun times
Hypercrates on Darth Malgus are now around 10-12 billion 😰 This brings another problem to players: since there is only 4.2b limit per character, you need to trade billions of credits to someone who can easily just grab your creds an run (a player tried to do this to me, but I didn't want to trade credits to him if he doesn't show me an item, which he didn't do), so people can easily lose their credits. Also, Cartel packs used to be way cheaper just a few months ago, now they are over 400m on GTN. It's horrible. :(