First of all, #1 step to being happy on these forums, I've found, is to make liberal use of the ignore button. So if I don't respond to some responses, its because I've already added you to ignore, its not personal, I just don't want to read responses from anyone posting negative comments about how they feel the game "should" be, what it really "is" even if it isn't, appeals to authority "Bioware wants it to be this way" or "we don't know what bioware intends", etc. After the slicing nerf, I was pretty irritated, not because I didn't expect it to be nerfed, I did, but because instead of making 40% profit and them changing it to 10%, I make 0 or negative. Of course I might have been in the minority thinking the point of the skill was to make money, it doesn't now, and maybe thats intentional or maybe it isn't. Of course some people claim to make money, even friends, but when I ask them to track their results on a spreadsheet, it turns out they're losing, even if they "feel" like they're gaining. Whatever, that isn't the point, just putting it out there. My point is, I love the crafting in this game. Its fun, I love the RE concept. I love being in the middle of a mission, realizing my wife doesn't have a good earpiece, and sending a crewmember out to make one using resources I've stockpiled in my cargo hold. Honestly, how cool is that? Also, I love that I queue up 5 at a time, I give her the first one, break the rest and then give her a blue (or even a purple) by the end of the night. Its awesome. I'm only lvl 32, so I guess I'm "doing it wrong" by using the skills as a supplement to my ingame playing rather than waiting until I'm 50 to make "fat stacks" of credits, but the point of the game isn't to make money. But here is the deal. Bioware intentionally (I know, appealing to authority statement) gave us 2 gathering skills and 1 crafting skill. Each person can be an island and give themselves pretty much everything they need. Each alt only needs to be 14 or 15 to have a 2nd companion (I get my ships early), and each alt can master a skill without ever going being lvl 14, if you're willing to pass your alts credits or materials. Essentially, each person can provide for themselves everything they need, and if you have a friend or two, this becomes substantially easier. If you stop worrying about "who will buy your stuff" and instead think of it from a single player perspective, it all makes sense. You make stuff for yourself and your friends, they've given us everything we need to be self sufficient, and even made it so it doesn't interfere with your fun by letting your crews do it all. I stopped looking on the GTN, stopped worrying if my crew skills "had a point", and its fun, I'm enjoying myself. I keep reading these threads and occasionally replying, because by all means I want the skills to be more fun, do more, etc. But it sort of aggravates me to see so much gnashing of teeth when people talk about viable economies and how the whole point of crafting is to make profit. The game doesn't seem setup that way, and its more fun to "play" because of it. If there are more disposable items from more professions, "maybe" a viable economy will form, but currently they've seemed to given us every way possible to avoid becoming accountants and to instead remain heroes.

Congrats on continuing to make money with slicing! My slicing 400 skill must be broken, the couple crit successes don't negate the "success" and get me 50-75% returns. I kept it because...its a maxed out skill, kinda silly to give up on it when I can just make an alt. Do you have your companion's affection maxed out or something? My understanding was it only affected time, but if it will actually make the slicing missions give me more than I spend, I'd happily raise their affection more (I have Mako 75% of full)

I think it is very fair of the OP to say there is a disconnect between himself and the developers, I think he is extremely incorrect in thinking there is a disconnect between himself and the "players" however. He isn't unhappy that he can't sit and click to craft, because obviously he can still do that. He's unhappy that "other" players can do what he does but better because they will continue getting resources while crafting if they don't sit in the fleet and craft. Unfortunate for him, I love this crafting system. Hopefully the tyranny of the majority encourages the developers to push the existing crafting system and make it even better, because I love this system (even if I don't necessarily love each individual skill as it is)

The fact that there are no level limits on crafting meant that there wasn't much point in me dropping slicing 400 just to get something else, I just made an alt and switched to Biochem. When biochem gets nerfed, I'll start another alt.

I get them just fine too, I just end up at a loss when I do them overall (stopped after 12 "successful" rich and/or bounteful missions ending in a loss of 300 credits), so don't feel bad. I realize that people have apparently shown that it isn't just a matter of doing rich and/or bounteful, there are specific named questions that apparently consistently give a small amount of positive credits, but I refuse to consider it anything else but bugged and am waiting for them to change slicing entirely (thats my hope, to get rid of the stupid arguments on here about the value of slicing)

I manage my crew missions through my ipad remoted into my computer as it is, I change things during breaks, lunch, etc. On one hand, I'm not sure I want to level the playing field with less technologically apt people, on the other hand, maybe if tons of people were converting their credits into materials via crew missions, I'd have cheaper prices so I wouldn't have to spend as much buying stacks of mats to supplement my own salvaging. Lets do it, I'd rather have the additional mats than the slight advantage of selling my leftover mats for more.

Really? You're the first person I've heard of claiming so, other than people linking to torhead (where everything has an augment slot even if it doesn't in game). Anyone else seen augment slots or is this unique to the radiant blade?

My impression is that it does RE on each one, making it the best type of RE because normally when I RE a stack of 10, I get a schematic.

Its my feeling, based on people I talk to (anecdotally I know), that most people want orange equipment. They seem to want to fill every slot with orange equipment. "I" want to fill every slot with orange equipment. Orange equipment doesn't have augment slots, even when crafted by crafters. This one small oversight by the devs has rendered the crafting system somewhat weak, and slicers dependent on earning credits directly since augments are mostly only useful as a novelty. Slicers "shouldn't" be doing missions for 1-time missions to sell, because mathematically you'd have to charge so much for the missions to earn back the cost of doing the vast amount of slicing missions that it wouldn't make sense. Luckily for most servers, the majority of slicers aren't doing the math and are selling missions dramatically under what they cost. The game is fantastic, I have faith the devs will be heavily modifying many parts of the crafting system, when they do, I'd like to see green rich missions become the norm for lockbox missions, because I think then you'd have something to sell that would have variable value to different people. And to me, what makes the other gathering professions so valuable (and my wife rich) is the fact that no one truly knows what their time is worth and thus what materials are worth.

But its not in balance, which is why no skill should ever have been created to return raw credits. There is value and there is potential value. Credits have value, they don't have potential value. Items have potential value, no one can force you to sell the items for less than what you want. Also, if you take an item and craft it into an item that you use, you've removed all references to value, other than what you assign to it. If you offered me 4 items worth 600 credits for 1000 credits, or 600 credits for 1000 credits, I would take the 4 items every single time I was willing to invest 1000 credits. I would "never" choose the 600 credits for 1000 credits. I've gone on the GTN and bought a blue material for double what I thought it was worth, just to craft an item I wanted "right now". That person, whoever they were, didn't rip me off, they offered me a convenience I was willing to pay. You can't sell 600 credits on the GTN, other than I could buy materials and put those up for sell on the GTN. You know what buys more materials than 600 credits? 1000 credits. My hope, buy posting here and there, is that it keeps the issue going indefinitely, until the devs put in a different system. Bioware can do better than a mission that costs you credits to make potentially less credits, give us something different that we can "potentially" sell for more, rather than know is the same or less.

I see a lot of posts that say crafting doesn't need to be useful until the end game. Alternatively, people don't need money until after 40, since their equipment is going to change so fast, and everyone "knows" not to worry about gearing up until the end game. If you have this sort of sentiment, not only do I disagree with you, but I think at least one dev at Bioware disagrees with you too! Here is my logic. 1) If crafting was for higher tiers, why bother creating items that are only useful to lower level characters? I'm not just talking about gear, I'm talking about grenades and other consumables. Why create purple lvl 7 mods? Seriously, think about it. Do you really think the devs run the report "Look at these idiots reverse engineering their lvl 7 mods until they get purples! HA HA HA SUCKERS!"??!? 2) Why would a developer post today that people that rush to lvl 50 should expect to be lonely in a somewhat snide fashion? Its almost like they think the person shouldn't have tried to get max level so fast. So I was wondering to myself how the issue could be so contentious. Surely people like to play with their gear? Then I realized, no, maybe some people don't. It goes back to the different types of players. You know, its some sort of list like Completionists, PVP, Explorers, etc Some players are dedicated to leveling. I don't know what category they'd be, maybe Completionists. They want, no, maybe they even "need" to constantly level. And those people wonder what everyone else is doing wasting their time doing things that don't directly help leveling. The same way people who love to switch out their gear, love to mod things, play with different types of looks, etc, want to spend their credits on being the best character they can be "AT EVERY LEVEL OF THE GAME". Yes we know the gear is going to be outleveled soon. Awesome, that means I get to look for new gear! You know when I'll be sad and less interested in playing my character? When I'm lvl 50 and can't find any better gear. Because I don't play the game to be lvl 50. I don't play it to complete every quest either. I play it to find loots and to experience story. When I run out of new loot to find, and no more story to experience, I'll either make a new character or quit the game. And not NERD RAGE quit, just...quit, like I did when Deux Ex got boring, or any other game got boring. Not when I hit the end of the game, or max my level, or whatever, just when I stop thinking I can experience anything novel or interesting. It isn't natural (to me) to play the same game longer than a year, a game, like a movie or a tv series, is meant to end. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Its silly to get angry when it does. I don't know if other people who are trying to make money in their 20s also love to play with their gear and spend far too much time crafting new things just for the fun of crafting them, are also people irritated by the slicing change, but I know at least I am, and constant pressure from people to "grow up and play the game right, focus on lvl 50 since thats the only part of the game that matters" is pretty irritating.

I hope Hushia's boss realizes that at the end of the day, her boss can say "Before I pay you a hundred bucks, I need you to pay me 120 for the privilege of learning new skills and gaining experience that will be useful for more money in the future". If I do a mission and get 4 items that "you" say are worth 600 credits, I might actually get 80 credits from a vendor or 1000 credits from someone desperate to get a lot of items to craft. If I do a mission and lose 200 credits, I've lost 200 credits. I didn't even get a skill point (since I'm maxed on my gathering skill), I've just lost. Losing is losing. I really hope the lockboxes are going away soon, give us something that has the "chance", based on player sentiment, of being worth more.

I think this is a very worthwhile idea. Whether slicers enable augment slots or they simple add augment slots to critically crafted orange items, slicing as a "gathering" skill only produces 1 thing reliably, augments, and the augments are junk right now for the vast majority of people. I'd personally rather have a full set of orange gear with purple mods than a full set of purple gear. On a different note, I'm now adding anyone who hijacks a slicer thread with "stop being greedy and wanting something for nothing" to my ignore list. I hope they add me and anyone else wanting reasonable changes to their ignore list, then we can each exist in parallel forums without irritating the other.

I have all of the gathering skills to support my crafting skills, I still buy off the GTN. Often for convenience and the fact that when I want to craft, I often have a goal in mind. I'll spend 20-30 minutes crafting, finding that schematic I wanted, whatever, which often takes up more resources than I have on hand, and having the skill doesn't mean I can just get 40 of a resource material that second, and I don't necessarily want to wait a few days. Part of the problem, IMO, is the 2 day limit on putting things on the GTN. If you could put materials on the GTN for 7 days at a time, I think you'd be much more likely to sell your materials (as long as the price was fair).

Continued threads like these only show how much certain people are desperate that other people play the game "their" way. The non-slicers QQed before the nerf, and now QQ even more "just in case" the devs might adjust the nerf back a bit the other way (though personally I wish they'd get rid of the lockboxes completely and put in something else to gather and avoid the issue entirely) But as you say, the more threads like these, the more people who have no stake in the issue continue to push back which only creates more feedback, the more the slicing issue will be seen as an ongoing issue that should continue to be looked at.

If you plan on never having any alts, get rid of it. IMO. If you plan on having alts, keep it, its already 400, you can slice flashpoints bonus mission objectives for the fun of it with your main, meanwhile you can have a lvl 16 alt with 2 companions raise another skill up to 400. If anything, your main should be salvaging skills and your alts should be crafting skills, because you want access to high level nodes where as your crafter's level doesn't matter.

You can't get certain materials by harvesting nodes. Now there is a subset of the SWTOR population (including, I'm sure, some BioWare developers), that believe if you're not running around clicking on things with the risk of immediate death, that you don't deserve extra credits. The reality is that you "should" be able to make money by supplying a legitimate need something that is either difficult or a hassle to acquire themselves. You can definitely make a lot of money on the GTN by selling materials that people want. These materials often will come from doing missions, since thats the only place you can get certain materials. So, just like slicing used to be, you do pay X credits to do missions, you make huge amounts of credits, but it requires you being clever. Low level missions offer you little hope of making large amounts of credits, because the most "elite" players will only buy low level components when they are trying to power-grind a crew skill, usually after they've hit 50 and decided to squeeze some sort of extra optimization out of the game. The lucky thing there is that they tend to buy large stacks with the readily available credits. The unlucky thing is there isn't many 50s yet. I recommend learning about the craft skills that use your gathering missions. For example, you are thinking of dropping diplomacy, but biochem "needs" medical components that come from diplomacy. They can't find their materials out in the world, so they either have to get diplomacy and grind it up themselves, or they have to rely on the GTN. But not all components are equal, components required to create potent consumables are going to be in higher demand that consumables that are either permanent or lame. I didn't understand what was valuable or not, until I created some alts and messed around with the different skills. Even if crafting isn't that interesting to you, I recommend playing with it a bit, even if just with your character and getting then dropping the skills.

The way all of the non-slicers are promoting how great it is to be able to get back 80-105% of the credits spent on a credit slicing mission, I think they should drop their skills and switch to slicing! Every person who tells me I should be lucky to be able to slice for a lvl 50 augment should buy a lvl 50 augment off me for what, at least double the cost of my mission to get that augment? And it should be sight unseen, you give me the credits first, then I'll give you the augment, same as my missions do for me. I'm not wanting lockboxes to be made profitable again, obviously the non-slicers will all QQ if that were to happen and I don't want anyone sad. But I would be happy if Bioware 1) added augment slots to crafted orange gear (even if only on a crit or whatever, same as non-orange gear). This change alone would suddenly make my augment missions possibly worth it. It would also make crafted orange armor be very valuable to me, helping the non-slicers not QQ over my OP slicing ability to get augments. And isn't that what we want for everyone? All of the crafting missions to be useful? 2) get rid of credit lockboxes. I know I know, I should be thanksful to spend 1000 credits and get 800 credits on my successful mission. And when I spend 1700 credits and get 1900, I should be jumping up and down for making 200 credits in 20 minutes. But I'm a whiner that way, QQ is addicting. When I'm doing a 4-man flashpoint and send my companions off to salvage, I'm not losing credits and I'm not trying to skill up, I'm getting substantially more resources than I can get on the flashpoint so I can craft before I log out. I would spend 60 seconds to get more resources than my missions salvaging in the real world, but no one will tell me where the magical place is with these piles of resources. In my world I salvage while doing missions probably once every 10 minutes, not 1/companion like I do with missions. Until someone shares, I have to do salvage missions and apparently not lose money but instead gain valuable resources I use to craft with (I know, I must be doing something wrong, or maybe salvaging is OP and needs to be nerfed because I actually use my resources to craft instead of trying to sell them, I better stock up now, please don't QQ about it until I have more time to stock up). 3) After removing the credit credit lockboxes, add new lockboxes that return random items or green schemas like ppl say (with the crits still returning what they do now). Or maybe control pads to summon a 60 second droid or something. Something related to hacking computers that I could use (which negates value) or can possibly sell for who knows how much on the GTN. Basically, the other missions give things that its up to the player to be clever and turn into more valuable credits than the cost of the mission, credit lockboxes guarantees you can't be clever and "will" lose (or at least for those of us who are unlucky, I gave up after 12 missions of rich and abundant successes and several hours later returning me -300 credits, I've seen some non-slicers saying how much money they keep making now with slicing after the nerf) My wife has tons of money, entirely from having 3 salvaging skills and selling on the GTN. Shes skilled, she takes things off the GTN when people flood it with cheap mats, and puts things back on when things become profitable. Every day I watch my credit balance get lower, as I buy expensive skills to level up, while she has ever more money (talking hundreds of thousands at this point). When they sliced nerfing I wondered if I'd be able to buy the next speeder upgrade, but she continues to inflate her money (and yes she does these supposedly money losing missions for the other 3 salvaging skills). I won't share which salvaging skills she has, I wouldn't want more QQ on the forums to cause the devs to reduce the number of mats she gets or something.

Regarding your spreadsheet usage. How awesome would it be if they gave us a simple REST api that could extract our character's data in XML format? A very simple listing of character recipes known could enable all kinds of cool tools, plus spreadsheets like you're talking about could be generated automatically. The price of them writing a SQL query + a few dozen lines of code could save them dozens of hours of GUI work.

Maybe. At this point, it seems useless, but I want to believe that Bioware will do something sensible like get rid of the credit lockboxes completely and replace them with something cooler (if small constant credit gain is not part of their overall plan)