Feb 25, 2012

Posted by in Blue Milk & Cereal | 21 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do Credits Matter?

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The recent Public Test Server patch notes for patch 1.1.5 that indicated that speeders will have their priced reduced until patch 1.2. Now, there are no more details than that right now, and I can’t imagine the thinking behind that. Will they go back up in price in 1.2?

At any rate, I posed this very question on the PTS forum and once of the responses was from a player that said he had so many credits, he could afford anything they put up. This got me to thinking… do credits even matter anymore? It seems that most players who simply play the game have more than enough credits to do whatever they need to that the game lays out for them. In a way, your “credit counter” is just another progress bar. Not very interesting.

And honestly, I’m not just picking on TOR here. Most MMOs, including World of Warcraft, have devalued in-game currency so much that it has lost nearly all meaning. Some of this is due to the constant fight between gold farmers and RMT. There are all kinds of special currencies, badges, tokens and whatnot that replace the “money” in the game to assure the player is the one doing the content and earning the reward.

I miss the old days. When money was money and it was a way to buy whatever you wanted! And even then, I don’t think games should automatically fill your “money progress bar” so that you can have everything… you should have to work a bit and save – just like in real life – to achieve certain things.

What’s the solutoin? I don’t know… is it soulbound currency that you could only spend with NPCs and the Auction House/GTN? Maybe. But it just feels like we’ve lost our way (and the battle) when we’re looking for ways to replace currency with… other types of currency. What are your thoughts?

Do credits matter enough in TOR (or any other MMO)?

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  1. This is a depends answer. At lower levels and if you decide to purchase gear or schematics from the GTN, then yes? They are important. Once you hit the level cap, they seem all but useless once you get the top of the line goodies.

  2. I’m in agreement with Blind. As you are leveling, credits are extremely important. It’s only at the higher levels where credits lose their meaning. Being able to get 1.5 million credits from a week of dailies? Yeah, that kinda devalues them.

  3. All I know is I just hit level 50 on my main toon and when I got my training for my level 50 skills (which speeder training and level 50 speeder is part of) I only had 5,000 credits left. I also didn’t get in on the slicing hayday at the beginning of the game though either. I went from like 444,000 credits to 5,000. That’s pretty drastic.

  4. Last time credits mattere truly in an mmo was Swg. The reason was that was a true Mmo. It was a complete player based economy. Everything in game was made by players. Loot was ok, but not as good as player made stuff. All items were sold depending on the players themselves what they chose to set the prices and not developers. in all other mmos, loot and such are the best. So no need for creds that much now

    • While I fully enjoyed swg, I was insanely rich when I stopped playing which was only a couple months after it launched. Credits didn’t mean all that much, on the other hand I was a pure crafter so that probably skews my perception.

  5. The only thing I need credits for after 50 is for repair costs. Those can be expensive.

  6. Tell me the next time your on swtor and ill see if i can get on at that time so i can share some of my ideas with ya.

  7. I only use credits to repair and to send to my alts as they power level other crafting skills.

  8. The issue is that there are not enough interesting ways yet to spend the credits. I think we’ll be seeing more in the near future.

  9. Money is a gating system and so far it’s only (but comprehensively) gating the casual player base.

    Vehicle prices are insane, I was surprised when I first saw them, I fully expected them (and skill training) to be expensive but after paying the 210,000 (Level 40) I was honestly shocked to see that the next level (Level 50) was 330,000.
    Just buying all the skills for level 50 cost somewhere near 100,000 (from memory).

    I personally think that though there is a lot of money in the system for people who play a lot the methods of acquisition are extremely limited for casual players.

    By way of example: Repairs for my (well geared) tank after Kaon hard mode topped 50k last night (and I managed to escape a few deaths that the others stumbled into, much to my grumbling- but it was a pug).
    It took hours just to get the team together for a rare opportunity to do *a* hard mode… and the balancing in the instance was rubbish – being frequently stunned and thrown all over the place makes for a very jarring experience.

    It took hours, was a lot of work, felt buggy and cost a small fortune – ultimately it was not fun.
    That makes for a pretty significant disincentive – I’m certainly not going to put my hand up for that again.
    Making repairs and group activities so expensive means simply that a portion of the player base will need to choose very carefully what they participate in or alternatively find themselves either unwilling to participate for the fear of loss or unable to participate in *core aspects* of the game because they lack the funds to do so.

  10. Totally disagree with David.

    My experiences with HM Kaon, even from the 1st run have been positive. If you had expected tank and spank style, then obviously the HM fps are not for you, and you should just stick to normal. You need to use CC on mobs. As tank, you probably have to label it for the others.

    Credits is easy to get. All you need is some gathering crew skill like Slicing, or UWT. Or just do some dallies. These would net you more than enough credits to last for your repairs, not to mention Rakata implants and earpieces.

    If you expected to just sit there idly and press some buttons w/o using your brains. Then just stick to normals modes.

  11. Money only matters to crafting games like SWG which only was about players ripping off other players.

    Games are there to get away from real life issues not add to issues in fantasy world.

    I am glad credits are not the deciding factor in SWTOR. I rather earn stuff by doing stuff in game to earn and not pay others to get.

  12. After you hit 50, the repairs on gear is extensive and expensive. Especially when you group, and suppose to have a dedicated healer that doesn’t want to heal properly. Yet he wants to cast lighting and fight with his light-saber. Then you wipe after every mini-boss in the flash-point(Black Talon Hard mode).
    I went from 250,000 credits to 32,000 in one night, for repairs and loans. And no we did not complete the flash-point that night. Wipe after wipe take it toll on other players.
    So, yes credits are needed, and important to me. My toon is broke as hell, now.

  13. I’d be curious whether there is a split between people who PvP a lot and those who don’t – ie, does one pursuit make more credits more easily.

    I don’t PvP at all, and I definitely have to consciously go and do “high value” things for a day or two of my gaming week in order to be cash rich enough to pay my way through the progression raiding our guild is doing.

    But then, I’m not a biochem, so raiding is fricking expensive. Stupid biochem *mutter mutter mutter*.

  14. If your goal is to hoard money, you can certainly succeed. It’s all a matter of personal circumstances. I usually float between 200k and 1mil, but as others have said, repairs on a tough night can be expensive. I don’t game the AH, though I do love the slicing, I turn around and sell missions for very reasoable prices, so I don’t make tons of money, but I enjoy it. I think we have a good number of money sinks in the game to control some of the economics. Having finite forms of decay on things would be a stronger economic system, but would require a far stronger crafting system.

  15. If you do the belsavus and ilum dailies you can easily net 200k credits in an hour or so of your time. If someone is broke they really just need to figure out something they can do to change that situation. I myself have easily 20 million credits between my characters and I know a friend has over 10 on his toons. I prefer to pvp but still do my pve dailies for some extra cash in preparation for hopefully something to spend it on in the future.

  16. Given enough time, money never matters much in MMOs. The question is, should they, and at what stages of progress? There are roughly three:
    – During levelling
    – Fresh max level
    – Old max level

    During levelling they do matter in SWTOR, chiefly because of speeder costs which is something you have to save up for (assuming you don’t have a level 50 sugardaddy char), and due to the price of skills after a certain point (roguhly level 25). Here I think they have hit a good balance, where just questing you have enough to cover your expenses almost at once, though the price of speeder training can take you by surprise which is a bit unfortunate. Still, overall it works. If you can manage to generate some extra income, either by selling things or through Slicing, you get a nice bonus in being able to get some better-than-normal gear from the GTN.

    As a fresh level 50, most will be hurting for cash for some of the same reasons. It does give you the feeling that just because you’ve finally arrived at 50, there is still more to do, but on the other hand not being able to buy your final skills or reap the rewards in the form of a shiny new speeder is a letdown. I think credits probably matter a bit too much here: a large expense for clearing the final hurdle seems punishing rather than rewarding.

    For an old level 50, credits quickly become meaningless, if you are willing to put in the time to clear the dailies. Your backlog of expenses are out of the way soon, and there are few recurring costs in the game, and besides horribly expensive speeders, also few big things left to buy. Here I think the credits don’t matter nearly enough. While I don’t advocate any systems that say “Must be this wealthy to play”, optional or supportive parts of the end-game could come with some fee that is not strictly tied to bound currency. One might envision a sort of group-adrenal that a player could buy for Ilum PvP, allowing them to trade cash for a short buff to their team in open world PvP.

  17. I play on a very low-population server and it is very difficult to get things to sell. I have four toons that I’m leveling together for crafting purposes because items I need for certain things just aren’t available to be purchased. Two of these toons have slicing as their third crew skill and they are the ones with just enough to cover new skill costs and new recipes for crafting. I’m not sure what the situation will be when they all are ready for their lvl 40 riding skills and mounts. So yes, credits are important and on my server, in short supply.

  18. Darth Todd says:

    I’d like to see a third answer to the question, or maybe a second question: Should money matter?

    I’d say no, since it is in infinite supply anyway. I really enjoy the commendations system and PvP badges and such. It means that you actually do have to play the game to get certain things.

    I haven’t played WoW in 3 years or so, so I don’t know what it’s like there now. I remember when I first started playing in late Vanilla, you’d be like level 15 or 20 before you even had 1 gold saved up to your name. Saving the 5k for the epic flyer at level 70 took weeks of endless grinding. I do remember when I quit, there was a vendor selling that big mammoth mount with the integrated bank for 20k gold. And only a handful of people on the server had one.

  19. bitsrboolean says:

    The mounts with the price reduction until 1.2 are getting pulled from the game in 1.2. They are reduced now so that more people can afford them before they are gone forever.

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