Some baseline inflation might be caused by the general ec influx vs sinks discrepancies, but the most rampant cases of inflation are due to speculation. Solution: Make anything you buy off the exchange bound to account. That way, exchange prices are once again set by those generating items, and not in the hands of a bunch of greedy billionaires.
That would certainly be a great way to completely destroy the game - not only would it crash the market but it would crash the playerbase as well. Bind on account from Exchange will destroy this game and you'll see a mass exodus of players.
This whole thread works on the premise that there's an actual inflation. Without even taking account of all the variables concerning how much some objects are wanted and what kind of actions Cryptic is undertaking (f.e. 15% off zen, etc).
Now, there's no actual facts shared with us by OP concerning this "inflation" except for some (much wanted) objects which may have risen somewhat.
Most of the posters ^^ have their own ideas how to "fix" this inflation. All from a good heart, but what are the consequences of all those ideas?
Yes, some people have more EC then others, but trying to make it more difficult for the rich ones only tends to bite yourself in the back.
Don't forget; keys/FSM's are bought with real money. People want worth for their money. What happens when the exchange get "locked"? These Keys/FSM's won't be bought anymore. Who'll be hurt by this??
A) People who've saved up for keys/FSM's... The seller, who'll eventually search for a different MMO with an easier economy...
C) Cryptic, cause anyone who bought keys/FSM's to resell are unable to, and therefor no longer investing...
D) You; less money to Cryptic means less money for development.
In the end, it's all about what the madman wants to pay for their goods. You want keys/FSM to drop? Don't buy/let other buy it! Sellers usually try to undercut other sellers.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
That would certainly be a great way to completely destroy the game - not only would it crash the market but it would crash the playerbase as well. Bind on account from Exchange will destroy this game and you'll see a mass exodus of players.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
That would certainly be a great way to completely destroy the game - not only would it crash the market but it would crash the playerbase as well. Bind on account from Exchange will destroy this game and you'll see a mass exodus of players.
"Mass exodus" of the few big players that live for and from playing the market? :rolleyes: Most players would greatly benefit from exchange being an actual exchange and not a play field for the ec rich to get richer at the expense of everyone else.
"Mass exodus" of the few big players that live for and from playing the market? :rolleyes: Most players would greatly benefit from exchange being an actual exchange and not a play field for the ec rich to get richer at the expense of everyone else.
At the "expense" of other players - i.e. "It's not fair! this costs more money and I have to work harder to obtain this item!". Work harder and smarter if you want to obtain something. This comes across as whining above. This isn't food you're obtaining for your family so you all don't starve to death you're being gouged on here - it's shinies in a game. You don't have to have all purple shinies to play the game - it's not a requirement. You aren't being "cheated" in any way other than having to work longer and/or harder to obtain very rare/special items. If you want to obtain wealth in the game work for it like the rest of us who work for it.
"Mass exodus" of the few big players that live for and from playing the market? :rolleyes: Most players would greatly benefit from exchange being an actual exchange and not a play field for the ec rich to get richer at the expense of everyone else.
Removing market speculation from the game will solve nothing. There is still high demand for some very limited items. If anything, prices would probably go higher much faster.
Some baseline inflation might be caused by the general ec influx vs sinks discrepancies, but the most rampant cases of inflation are due to speculation. Solution: Make anything you buy off the exchange bound to account. That way, exchange prices are once again set by those generating items, and not in the hands of a bunch of greedy billionaires.
Do you really think manufacturers will charge less than the alleged greedy billionaires are charging now?
And once players stop buying for resale, using their own inventories and exchange slots as temporary storage, manufacturers will have more unsold items clogging their inventory, forcing them to trash those items or temporarily stop production, both of which will reduce supply and cause further price increases.
If you think prices were too high when there are still 20 of an item on the exchange, you'll be more annoyed when there are only a handful. As an example, look at the Mirror Universe Negh'Var. At the time of this writing, there are only 5 on the exchange, with the cheapest listing being 9.99 million EC. (one or two weeks ago it was still sold for ~2.5M EC)
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
In lieu of desirable items that can be purchased, taxes and fees provide a good way to bleed off some of the excess EC in the game... and I am not simply speaking about the exchange. However, they should not be so high as to actually have a detrimental effect on the economy.
I have already posted about various listing / maintenance fees and sale / luxury taxes on the exchange and the overall impact should not be very large. I stated a 1% sales tax for simplicity sake, but let's bump that up to 2% to give it a bit more bite. That means an item listed for 100,000 EC will end up costing the "consumer" 102,000 EC. The extra 2,000 tax is not much of a burden for most people. In fact, it can be argued that it is pretty negligible. For something listed at 5 million ECs, the effect of the 2% tax increases the total cost 5.1 million ECs. I am pretty sure that those who can afford to pay 5 mil ECs for an item can afford the extra 100k ECs.
I believe I arbitrarily stated that items listed for more than 100 mil ECs should be subjected to a luxury tax of 2%, but let's bump that up to 4%. That means the total price will be 104 million ECs to the purchaser. If you can afford to spend 100 million on an item then the extra 4 mil should not be much of a burden.
Yes, people will probably try to pass on things like maintenance fees and listing fees to the consumer. However, the consumer has a choice not to purchase that particular item. They could wait for the same item to be sold by someone else for a lower price. There is a point where people will be unwilling to spend money on a particular item, and at that point if the seller truly wants to get rid of whatever he/she has that person will lower the price.
I will say that there are people who lack self control. For example, I have seen many threads where people bought up to 200 master keys and complained the did not get a free ship. I don't know if those keys were bought off the exchanged, or if they used Zen to buy them. In any case, those people spend a lot of real / virtual money before they said enough is enough. I would assume most people would not burn through as many as 200 keys to attempt to get a free ship. If they actually spent real money on the keys, then I am sure Crypt thanks them for their patronage.
Add ship repair and personal injury fees (which only affects players doing elite STFs or increase the difficulty level above normal) works as another potential way to remove a bit of excess ECs players are accumulating.
Add a general sales tax for anything purchased from a vendor.
Complaints about these fees and taxes on new players / new character would more or less be a farce. I created a Romulan toon and I am currently at level 13. I think I currently have around 350,000 ECs from loot drops most of which were not worth listing on the exchange for sale. I think I only made at most 100,000 from items sold on the Exchange. For simplicity sake let's just say I would have to pay a total 5,000 ECs for list fees, that means I would only have 345,000 ECs right now. I have not bought anything off the exchange yet.
If you're having trouble finding EC sinks in the game, might I suggest you send some of that tired currency my way? I'm trying to save for one of those 3M Temporal Science Vessels on the Exchange.
A "Fleet Tax" would not totally lockout a player from joining a fleet. If the player really does want to join a fleet then that person will find ways to save up for it. However, the "Fleet Tax" should not be so high that it discourages players from joining a fleet.
Well the reason i sugested this is because most people i read or experience are only want to join Tier 5 Maxed fleets no matter if it is in my friends fleet (( who has TS3 and a website )) his fleet is tier 1 and he told me people even LEAVING to join T5 fleets...
or my fleet wich i recently started... whenever i put recruiting messages they /tell me " what tier? not tier 5? no man thanks...
question is how are we supposed to get tier 5 when no one wants to join?
Do you really think manufacturers will charge less than the alleged greedy billionaires are charging now? [...]
Yes. Especially concerning the lockbox stuff, without speculation prices of currently dropping items would be considerably cheaper due to lower immediate demand, and would afterwards rise in a much smoother curve when supply/demand slowly shift. Also beyond lockboxes, prices would fall as people couldn't protect their prices any more by buying up cheaper stuff.
Why not just have ships bind when you get them out of a lockbox? Just as dumb/bad.
The end of that plan, if it were implemented, would be to essentially make opening lock boxes the only way to get lockbox ships, and make every ship cost some fixed proportion of the price of 250 keys if bought on the exchange, in keeping with its drop rate vs the drop rate of other prizes in the box and their relative values.
I'm certainly not against lockbox stuff being tradeable, and my suggestion wouldn't change anything in that regard. Only difference would be, that your seller is the actual person who opened the lockbox, and not a profiteering reseller.
question is how are we supposed to get tier 5 when no one wants to join?
The problem is people want instant gratification. It's human nature I suppose. Trying to find people who wants to actually join a fleet in order to help build it up over time is rather difficult.
A "Fleet Tax" should not be used to penalize players for wanting to join a Tier 5 fleet. But the amount of that tax should be more than for lower tier fleets.
Personally, I am not looking to join a fleet and if I ever wanted Tier 5 equipment I read there is a public channel that allows players to purchase said equipment from generous Tier 5 fleets without the need to join the fleet. However, for now I am happy doing end game content with pretty much basic equipment. While I am currently in the middle of doing the last tier in the Omega Rep System I have yet to purchase any equipment.
I am somewhat hesitant to purchase "uber" equipment (and slot Doffs) at the moment because I really enjoy the current challenge I am facing with an un-optimized ship.
IMO a tax would be bad as it would (as it does in real life) only really affect the poorest people.
A newbie with only a few 100Ks or EC is going to feel the pinch of even a 1-5% tax on anything he buys or sells but a 3 year veteran with 100 mil+ EC is really not going to notice the tax.
I mean even if you sell something like a lockbox ship for 50 mil the tax would be such a small amount most won't notice it, or they will just jack up the price to cover the cost of the tax.
And if you try to make it like RL and have the tax level variable depending on how rich people are then you'll just chase off all the top end players.
Really thew only way prices will drop are if one of the following happens:
1) Every player stops buying the expensive stuff - therefore forcing sellers to either lower their prices or not sell their goods. This basically happens already, if the demand drops (due to people not willing to pay high EC costs) then the demand drops off.
2) Cryptic floods the market with the rare expensive stuff so the cost drops off as it all becomes more accessible. This basically happens every time theres a lockbox rerun (the old ships start to pop up again so there's more of them so their cost drops, just see how much Tuffi freighters cost now compared to when they are not availble in drops.
The prices are high for two reasons - people are greedy and will charge the max they can get, and there are always plenty of fools ready to be parted from their cash to by said expensive (and probably overpriced) goods.
You guys have missed a spot, darn asking to put up taxes on EC sails ?
We try to sell stuff to earn EC to buy something else if you raise taxes the price only goes up !!!
Have you seen a Voth Beam Array Mk XI is doing 700.000 EC what you think will happen if they put up taxes ? it will be like 1.700.000 EC to get out the tax rate.
Only way to circumvent this is to get better drops !! If drops get better prizes might drop a little, It's not only EC thats high it's also Dilithium thats very high at the moment I believe it was between 140 and 150 at the moment.
Vendors where they deleted all greens and blue where you can only buy white have you seen what they ask for a prize.... I thought Cryptic smoke fun stuff but I believe the OP does too, better call a doctor.... Dang
See other MMO's who has an exchange there the prizes are also HIGH END !!!
So I would say it's pretty normal for an exchange and if the OP is low on money I suggest to do a few space battle grind stuff sell it at vendors 10 runs you can easily make 1.000.000 EC
Or do a few runs with the borg at Otha Ground Battle or Kerat Space Battle.
There is a lot of ways to earn some nice credits !!!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
I would like to see a Ferengi Stock Market on Ferenginar that players could play with EC. Unlike the failed Latinum system, there would be more rewards and titles up for grabs. Have auctions at certain time zones in places like DS9 or Bajor where players can bid on an item that is one of a kind. Nothing major but maybe a special non-tradable BO of a race not yet added. Special black market ship hull schemes for Section 31 on the Ferengi black market that cost you a small fortune in EC, and so on.
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
The only thing EC taxes on the exchange will do is hurt the people without much EC.
Those of us with fat EC wallets will not be affected by it sufficiently enough to solve this hypothetical problem.
The only people who will suffer are those who habitually make poor financial decisions, do not know how much things will sell for, and who will literally waste their hard-earned EC on simply trying to cover the tax on their item. You will have to deal with players who are unwilling to deal with a tax to sell their items.
Has anyone attempted to systematically measure inflation in the game? I'm sure Cryptic has the data and can do it if they want, but I want to know if a player has real data. I don't mean just watching the price of master keys or the prices of particular items you want to buy. I believe the correct way is to measure inflation is to watch the prices of a large basket of goods over time. (Anyone with a degree in economics want to comment on this?) You have to be careful about which goods to include in the basket. I think we should exclude all "vendor trash", whose prices have remained stable at around half their face value. I think we should also exclude all items from the most recent lockbox, since the prices of those items will increase when the lockbox stops dropping. The question is how long do we wait after a lockbox stops dropping before including its items in the basket.
Yeah, inflation is bad. Good thing they got rid of our old Tour the Galaxy in order to quell the EC inflation.....
The tour was literally a single drop in the torrent of EC that some players earn through exploiting the exchange market and systematic loot farming. Not only was shutting it down completely ineffective in slowing down inflation, it also destroyed a completely valid and very popular event.
Taxes are never good in general. They only prove that something is wrong with the system.
If you tax the trade you will get spammed by the ec speculators wherever you go, no zone chat will se safe
Comments
That would certainly be a great way to completely destroy the game - not only would it crash the market but it would crash the playerbase as well. Bind on account from Exchange will destroy this game and you'll see a mass exodus of players.
Now, there's no actual facts shared with us by OP concerning this "inflation" except for some (much wanted) objects which may have risen somewhat.
Most of the posters ^^ have their own ideas how to "fix" this inflation. All from a good heart, but what are the consequences of all those ideas?
Yes, some people have more EC then others, but trying to make it more difficult for the rich ones only tends to bite yourself in the back.
Don't forget; keys/FSM's are bought with real money. People want worth for their money. What happens when the exchange get "locked"? These Keys/FSM's won't be bought anymore. Who'll be hurt by this??
A) People who've saved up for keys/FSM's...
C) Cryptic, cause anyone who bought keys/FSM's to resell are unable to, and therefor no longer investing...
D) You; less money to Cryptic means less money for development.
In the end, it's all about what the madman wants to pay for their goods. You want keys/FSM to drop? Don't buy/let other buy it! Sellers usually try to undercut other sellers.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
At the "expense" of other players - i.e. "It's not fair! this costs more money and I have to work harder to obtain this item!". Work harder and smarter if you want to obtain something. This comes across as whining above. This isn't food you're obtaining for your family so you all don't starve to death you're being gouged on here - it's shinies in a game. You don't have to have all purple shinies to play the game - it's not a requirement. You aren't being "cheated" in any way other than having to work longer and/or harder to obtain very rare/special items. If you want to obtain wealth in the game work for it like the rest of us who work for it.
Removing market speculation from the game will solve nothing. There is still high demand for some very limited items. If anything, prices would probably go higher much faster.
STO Resources: <Ship Comparison - All Tiers + Small Craft + Hangar Pets> <Damage Resistance>
<R&D + Upgrade Costs> <Duty Officer Finder> <Suliban Doff Reqs> <Fleet Costs> <Rep Costs>
<Keybind Tour the Galaxy> <Fleet / Armada Management> <Currency Exchange> <Other STO Links>
And once players stop buying for resale, using their own inventories and exchange slots as temporary storage, manufacturers will have more unsold items clogging their inventory, forcing them to trash those items or temporarily stop production, both of which will reduce supply and cause further price increases.
If you think prices were too high when there are still 20 of an item on the exchange, you'll be more annoyed when there are only a handful. As an example, look at the Mirror Universe Negh'Var. At the time of this writing, there are only 5 on the exchange, with the cheapest listing being 9.99 million EC. (one or two weeks ago it was still sold for ~2.5M EC)
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
I have already posted about various listing / maintenance fees and sale / luxury taxes on the exchange and the overall impact should not be very large. I stated a 1% sales tax for simplicity sake, but let's bump that up to 2% to give it a bit more bite. That means an item listed for 100,000 EC will end up costing the "consumer" 102,000 EC. The extra 2,000 tax is not much of a burden for most people. In fact, it can be argued that it is pretty negligible. For something listed at 5 million ECs, the effect of the 2% tax increases the total cost 5.1 million ECs. I am pretty sure that those who can afford to pay 5 mil ECs for an item can afford the extra 100k ECs.
I believe I arbitrarily stated that items listed for more than 100 mil ECs should be subjected to a luxury tax of 2%, but let's bump that up to 4%. That means the total price will be 104 million ECs to the purchaser. If you can afford to spend 100 million on an item then the extra 4 mil should not be much of a burden.
Yes, people will probably try to pass on things like maintenance fees and listing fees to the consumer. However, the consumer has a choice not to purchase that particular item. They could wait for the same item to be sold by someone else for a lower price. There is a point where people will be unwilling to spend money on a particular item, and at that point if the seller truly wants to get rid of whatever he/she has that person will lower the price.
I will say that there are people who lack self control. For example, I have seen many threads where people bought up to 200 master keys and complained the did not get a free ship. I don't know if those keys were bought off the exchanged, or if they used Zen to buy them. In any case, those people spend a lot of real / virtual money before they said enough is enough. I would assume most people would not burn through as many as 200 keys to attempt to get a free ship. If they actually spent real money on the keys, then I am sure Crypt thanks them for their patronage.
Add ship repair and personal injury fees (which only affects players doing elite STFs or increase the difficulty level above normal) works as another potential way to remove a bit of excess ECs players are accumulating.
Add a general sales tax for anything purchased from a vendor.
Complaints about these fees and taxes on new players / new character would more or less be a farce. I created a Romulan toon and I am currently at level 13. I think I currently have around 350,000 ECs from loot drops most of which were not worth listing on the exchange for sale. I think I only made at most 100,000 from items sold on the Exchange. For simplicity sake let's just say I would have to pay a total 5,000 ECs for list fees, that means I would only have 345,000 ECs right now. I have not bought anything off the exchange yet.
Well the reason i sugested this is because most people i read or experience are only want to join Tier 5 Maxed fleets no matter if it is in my friends fleet (( who has TS3 and a website )) his fleet is tier 1 and he told me people even LEAVING to join T5 fleets...
or my fleet wich i recently started... whenever i put recruiting messages they /tell me " what tier? not tier 5? no man thanks...
question is how are we supposed to get tier 5 when no one wants to join?
I'm certainly not against lockbox stuff being tradeable, and my suggestion wouldn't change anything in that regard. Only difference would be, that your seller is the actual person who opened the lockbox, and not a profiteering reseller.
The problem is people want instant gratification. It's human nature I suppose. Trying to find people who wants to actually join a fleet in order to help build it up over time is rather difficult.
A "Fleet Tax" should not be used to penalize players for wanting to join a Tier 5 fleet. But the amount of that tax should be more than for lower tier fleets.
Personally, I am not looking to join a fleet and if I ever wanted Tier 5 equipment I read there is a public channel that allows players to purchase said equipment from generous Tier 5 fleets without the need to join the fleet. However, for now I am happy doing end game content with pretty much basic equipment. While I am currently in the middle of doing the last tier in the Omega Rep System I have yet to purchase any equipment.
I am somewhat hesitant to purchase "uber" equipment (and slot Doffs) at the moment because I really enjoy the current challenge I am facing with an un-optimized ship.
A newbie with only a few 100Ks or EC is going to feel the pinch of even a 1-5% tax on anything he buys or sells but a 3 year veteran with 100 mil+ EC is really not going to notice the tax.
I mean even if you sell something like a lockbox ship for 50 mil the tax would be such a small amount most won't notice it, or they will just jack up the price to cover the cost of the tax.
And if you try to make it like RL and have the tax level variable depending on how rich people are then you'll just chase off all the top end players.
Really thew only way prices will drop are if one of the following happens:
1) Every player stops buying the expensive stuff - therefore forcing sellers to either lower their prices or not sell their goods. This basically happens already, if the demand drops (due to people not willing to pay high EC costs) then the demand drops off.
2) Cryptic floods the market with the rare expensive stuff so the cost drops off as it all becomes more accessible. This basically happens every time theres a lockbox rerun (the old ships start to pop up again so there's more of them so their cost drops, just see how much Tuffi freighters cost now compared to when they are not availble in drops.
The prices are high for two reasons - people are greedy and will charge the max they can get, and there are always plenty of fools ready to be parted from their cash to by said expensive (and probably overpriced) goods.
We try to sell stuff to earn EC to buy something else if you raise taxes the price only goes up !!!
Have you seen a Voth Beam Array Mk XI is doing 700.000 EC what you think will happen if they put up taxes ? it will be like 1.700.000 EC to get out the tax rate.
Only way to circumvent this is to get better drops !! If drops get better prizes might drop a little, It's not only EC thats high it's also Dilithium thats very high at the moment I believe it was between 140 and 150 at the moment.
Vendors where they deleted all greens and blue where you can only buy white have you seen what they ask for a prize.... I thought Cryptic smoke fun stuff but I believe the OP does too, better call a doctor.... Dang
See other MMO's who has an exchange there the prizes are also HIGH END !!!
So I would say it's pretty normal for an exchange and if the OP is low on money I suggest to do a few space battle grind stuff sell it at vendors 10 runs you can easily make 1.000.000 EC
Or do a few runs with the borg at Otha Ground Battle or Kerat Space Battle.
There is a lot of ways to earn some nice credits !!!
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
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Jokes aside, no mmo has ever managed to check inflation by limiting faucet, the only effective method is setting up sink.
The joke with them getting rid of the old tour the galaxy isn't that it doesn't go far enough, but rather it missed the point entirely.
Those of us with fat EC wallets will not be affected by it sufficiently enough to solve this hypothetical problem.
The only people who will suffer are those who habitually make poor financial decisions, do not know how much things will sell for, and who will literally waste their hard-earned EC on simply trying to cover the tax on their item. You will have to deal with players who are unwilling to deal with a tax to sell their items.
The tour was literally a single drop in the torrent of EC that some players earn through exploiting the exchange market and systematic loot farming. Not only was shutting it down completely ineffective in slowing down inflation, it also destroyed a completely valid and very popular event.
If you tax the trade you will get spammed by the ec speculators wherever you go, no zone chat will se safe