Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Star Wars Galaxies : The Economy
vthings wrote:
Flatfingers wrote:
On that basis, I wonder how many players in SWG are really "poor?"
What's the definition of "poverty" in SWG, anyway?
Oh, I know this one. Having played the game for more than a month and having to do delivery missions again to get your house uncondemed because you can't do 5k missions anymore and even the lowest 800 credit missions on Tat are out of your league. SOE finally forced me to take up an elite combat profession and I'm a little bitter.
Sure you can't get credit in this game but you can find yourself in the hole if you count a condemed building, those Imperial fees, or you could even consider the fact that you need to repair your speederbike from time to time.
Its true that credits are not the only measure of wealth. I have only 2k to my name at the momentin actual credits but I'm worth several million when you factor in all the stuff I mined out of the ground and is sitting in my house right now. Be that as it may, credits still help.
I don't know what the point of this thread is but I like the discussion.
Yeah but your character won't die if you have no credits, since you don't have to sleep, eat, drink or have shelter. You could run around in your underwear all day and you won't get arrested. Poverty is a foreign concept in this game. There's plenty of ways that the game mechanics make the game unfun like having a condemned house, but that's not the same as being poor. There's no discrimination in this game in the sense that everyone can get a job and often times it's for the same pay.
TribalWarrior wrote:
I have been playing SWG for over a year and a half. I started the game with no one and had to become independent. Mining and selling helped me survive for 9 months until I joined a guild and got some help. In those 9 months I learned valuable money lessons. But as the time has gone by I have seen a drastic change in the SWG world.
First, Post CU the mission terminal credits have significantly decreased. Veterna players have millions of credits from the 30K + missions pre-CU that they would group solo. SOE saw the lake of teamwork and interaction in the galaxy and nerfed the terminal money payouts and changed the combat system so that it would tend to force more players into group hunting. Many people do not group group still but its much easier to group hunt in my opinion.
Second, I can see how it would be difficult for a new player to the game under the current system to establish themselves. At a max of 10K a mission they have to do three times as much work as a vet had to do Pre-CU to reap the same benefit. Factor that into the increased amount of time it would take to do all those missions and you have a significant difference in the earning potential for newbie players than you did for PRE-CU vets.
The problem I see that this creates is obviously inflation, but also a large economic gap between vets and newbies. I have seen weapons costs raise from 100K for a good laser rifle to 4 mil for the same or worse statistical rifle simply because of spawn scarcity and because too many players are trying to get rich quick due to uber loot prices set by vets. There is no way an expendable item that will eventually decay and dissapear like a run-of-the-mill laser rifle should cost 4 million credits no matter what special materials a weaponsmith uses. THAT'S RIDICULIOUS! Some of you will say well the price is high because the materials needed to make the weapon are hard to find, very well but not 4 million credits high. Value is the name of the game and right now on many servers the value of simple items is overvalued. Part of the problem is that vets have come to expect large summs of credits and cannot adjust to the Post-CU world. Newbies don't know any better, and there is a sucker around every corner willing to give in to this vicious cycle.
Then there is the problem with the duplicated credit scam. Over 4 billion fake credits were used during the last year on SWG and only 80% of those creits have been removed from the game leaving an unusual amount of credits flying around the galaxy creating inflation that will not soon be fixed. ONly time can right the economy, time for vets to adjust there expectations,a nd time for newbies to grind there own economic freedom.
All of your points have been refuted except the lower paying missions which incidentally is not that great of a hurdle. If weapons are that highly priced, go find another seller of weapons. Do some footwork. The credit dupe credits have been addressed or removed by the devs already, don't assume that they're still in-game.
I will assume whatever I want I have it on good word that the dev's estimated they only tracked and recup 80% of the fake credits. As to your "all your arguments have been refuted" line that is not true. My points have not been refuted. do the math.
Pre-CU:
Group solo mission 30K in 20 minutes = 1 mission payout
Post-CU:
Group mission 9K in 20 minutes = 1 mission payout
Obviously you cannot see the disparity between these obvious facts. For new players it will take them 3 x the time to make what veteran players made in one mission solo Pre-CU.
Pre-CU:
1 hour of grinding = 90K
Post- CU:
1 hour of grind = 30K
Span this over a week for 4 hours a day
Pre-CU: 360K a day x 7 days = 2.5 million a week
Post-CU: 120K a day x 7 days = 840K a week
The numbers don't lie the disparity between Pre-CU mission and Post-CU missions is painfully obvious and needs to be fixed. I have read little on this board addressing these points I have made. Veterans can't adjust to the new system, newbies can't survive, there is now too little credit in the system. What has happened is that the galaxies have moved from one extreme inflation to deflation and its yet to balance out.
Not to pile on, TribalWarrior, but I think bluejanus is correct.
In particular:
TribalWarrior wrote:
Post CU the mission terminal credits have significantly decreased.... I can see how it would be difficult for a new player to the game under the current system to establish themselves.
It sounds from this like you're assuming that taking combat missions should be an effective way to make money.
Why make that assumption?
I've always thought the correct balance in SWG was for crafters to be able to make lots of money but have trouble defending themselves from physical danger, while combat players should be physically powerful but cash-poor. This would make both kinds of players useful to each other. Crafters would pay for protection, giving combatants the cash with which to buy the things they want. If you want to be rich, you need to be a crafter; if you want to be powerful, you need to be a combatant... but it should be extremely difficult to be both at the same time.
Instead of this dynamic, we have self-sufficiently rich combatants.Between very generous combat mission payouts (with no equivalent high payouts for, say, high-endArtisan or Entertainer missions) and high-end (and therefore valuable) loot, combat players had no need for non-combat players except for buffs, healing, andthe occasional bit of armor or weapon.Handing out great wads of cashinsured virtually instant gratification for any of these desires.
The CU changed that... somewhat. First, the level of physical danger for non-combatants was increased dramatically. And now we've seen a minor decrease in how much money combatants can collect. (It would be a major increase, but high-end loot that can be sold for lots of credits is not only still dropping, they're adding to the numbers of such things.)
Overall, then, I think we're still not at the most effective balance point yet. Too many combatants are both powerful and rich. But maybe these are steps in the right direction.
I'm not expecting everyone to agree with this opinion, of course. 
--Flatfingers
bluejanus wrote:
The credit dupe credits have been addressed or removed by the devs already, don't assume that they're still in-game.
Last I heard, 75% of the credits were removed and that was that. It didn't sound like anything else was going to be or could be done. Did they end up making some effort beyond that?
Maybe I'm misrembering, but I thought solo-group mission payouts were nerfed well before the CU went live. IIRC, they changed it so that everyone in the group shared the payout. But now, if you do a 9K mission, everyone in the group gets 9K. Isn't this correct? So you get a group of 8 people together, that's 16 9K missions, which = 144K per person. How long would it take a good group to complete all 16 missions?
Of course, it was never intended for players to be able to solo 30K missions. Unbalanced combat was one of the justifications for the CU in the first place.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Vastar wrote:
bluejanus wrote:
The credit dupe credits have been addressed or removed by the devs already, don't assume that they're still in-game.
Last I heard, 75% of the credits were removed and that was that. It didn't sound like anything else was going to be or could be done. Did they end up making some effort beyond that?
I heard a larger percentage, but the effects are definitely going to vary since the majority of the duping occurred on other servers. I think the Kettemoor percentage might be higher.
Im getting tired of saying this story to noobs. Instead of telling them how hard it was for me when i started im gonna right a small guide how to make money.
Welcome to SWG, You have aBARC speeder in your inventory that is worth alot. Try and sell it on your Galaxie trade forums for around 4 million. Instead of pissing away your 4 mil invest it, by some armor, a few harvestors(make shure to have power) and keep some for getting new space ships.
Go grind JTL, lots of cash to be made there. I make 1 mil a day sellign componets in deep space at master.
sry for my ranting
HOW MUCH MORE EASIER CAN IT GET, I M TRUNING INTO DADDY WAR BUCKS POST-CU !!!! 
... count to 10.. count to 10....
a question from a newb like me.
what exactly is hologrinding?
and now to my rant
i started about three months ago, and so far, i have ended up with 500K on my main and i am 1xxx shipwright. i got most of that in about the 3rd month after i had enough money to buy resources and afford the maintenence on harvesters, all i did the first 2 months was do missions and space loot. then i grinded for about an hour a day and got my first elite. the problem is newbs will start and think 'wow, this isnt fun, its way too hard' and quit playing, thatis why we dont havea"middle class" in this game, the people who are rich started when it was easier to get rich and now the newbs think it is impossible and give up before they can make any credits. one problem the newbs think it is so hard is because a lot of them burn a hole in there pocket buying things, because they do a mission and think 'wow, now i can buy [insert item here]' that is also hurting them, because its making them poorer and the "rich" people richer. this makes an even bigger gap between the ecomnomic classes.
Message Edited by eurno_ebaebro__kyra on 07-10-2005 10:38 AM
I don't recall exactly but I don't think I had 500,000 credits sitting in the bank after three months, two years ago.
