A single player can raise that much in 3 days of doing Belsavis and Ilum dailies. You have 5-6 casual players getting on once a week you can buy this in one night for less than 50% of your take if all of you actually care to contribute.

I can't speak for Aion as I didn't play it, but the place I found WoW to be a grind was when they got so lazy that it was "In order to get geared you need to do dailies and dungeons to max these 3 reps and then get these other 2 to revered. Now you need to run dailies for 30 days to get access to the next tier of raid content." I'm sorry, but as was mentioned prior in this thread... If you make the content hard enough that people actually learn to use their tools then you'd both slow down the people (probably not the l337 gamers who are complaining about boredom but at least those who need to be shown an interrupt at 50th level) and you would not have to resort to a series of daily quests which are the equivalent of repetitive motion injuries in order to pace your gamers.

Why do you believe that this should be the case? There are a million examples in the world where this is not the case. Higher level missions provide you access to the shinier specs and mission discoveries. You should not be running them for profit, you should be running them for the purple 300+ schematics. I am kinda bothered by the fact that the moderate and abundant yields are worth more than the rich ones, but that's something I figured out right after the patch and have adapted to....

I'm confused... The title is about how companions ruin the game, especially the solo PvE portion but then OP goes on to explain how the companion keeps him alive most of the time... First, there *is* an attack-my-target command. It's CTRL+1 for every companion. You probably already know this, but I'm just gonna highlight it to demonstrate why I'm confused by the post. So what I *really* hear here is "damn, this stuff is hard to solo and I want it easier so I don't have to watch my pulls or bother to heal between pulls." Don't blame that on the companion. And personally, I am not in favor of making the game simpler... I want player skill to matter and this kind of complaint drives toward a game where all that matters is gear score (and if you don't get that statement, PM me because it's not worth opening that can of worms here and sidetracking the thread). Yes, there *are* problems with some of the AI. I won't deny that. What I will say is that I don't have any problem coping with those issues by planning for them. Changing my timing. Working to coordinate my actions with my companions instead of assuming that the AI should make my companion predict my actions... Now, granted, I am used to playing pet classes in MMOs so this is not news to me, but it does mean that for a lot of classes, Gunslingers being a pointed example, this is all about managing your companion sensibly and that doesn't mean *just* gearing him correctly (which it sounds like has been done here).

I agree with what you've said and most of the rest of your post as well but that was not what I was addressing as the quote in my original post demonstrated. I can't address Slicing and whether or not it scales but I can absolutely state that I am earning more money than every one of the whiners going on about how they make 100c per mission and I am doing it with fewer companions who have lower affection which means that none of them are actually demonstrating the true earning potential of Slicing. Every mission I am running is still available to them and yet they're finding a way to lose money on missions? I was not trying to address how it compares to other crafting which seems to be the crux of your argument (I can't save based on the whining in the forums which is probably as suspect as the whining about how Slicing is losing people money). I *do* know that I have picked up a number of missions and schema which sell well on the GTN or are useful to me for my Cybertech toon and someone is going to have to continue doing Slicing or those schemas will no longer be available (and their prices will rise with demand making Slicers more money). My intent has always been to use Slicing until I hit 50 so I had cash available to train and expand inventory and so on and then drop it for Cybertech on that toon and thus far it's working like a charm.

Since it is not a crafting skill that should probably have been obvious from the get-go. If you want to craft something, take a skill that actually supports, I dunno, CRAFTING! Complaining that Slicing doesn't support crafting is a waste of breath. It's not supposed to. Complaining that Slicing does not make you money is a statement that you are doing something wrong (see prior post). Complaining in general is not helpful in this context. If you want to keep Slicing and make a profit using it then for heavens sake post what you are doing that is failing so hard and ask people who are happy with it what they are doing to make their profit. If you don't want to keep Slicing then quit worrying about it in general.

I keep hearing this utterly stupid statement. What the heck are you idiots doing to lose this money? I have 3 companions with 300 points in slicing and my companions are nowhere near the 10000 point cap and yet I make hundreds of credits on missions less than 15 minutes long. Put that together and I am making 3000c per hour without any criticals or stuff to sell on the GTN. That's post-nerf numbers sitting on my startship and not harvesting a single node. Please stop whining about how bad Slicing is for you unless you want to actually explain what you are doing that is causing this failure. If I can make this kind of money with 3 companions then I know you can. All I can wonder is what the heck you are doing to fail so badly at what is still a highly profittable skill.

Seriously? That's pretty amazing since I make about $6k per hour with 2 companions and only 200 points. Maybe you should actually think about what you're doing before clicking the shiny buttons. Different missions are there for different reasons and the most expensive missions are *not* the most reliable way of generating cash.

Without a combat log would you glean much that could not be learned on trash out in the wilds?

And specifically, the only mod that matters is the one with the "Rating" on it (which should be the armoring). The other mods affect the bonuses but not the raw armor of the piece. If the new mod you put in had the same Rating with better stats elsewhere you would not expect the armor value to change anyway (bug or no). Same is true of weapons where I belive it is the barrel or hilt which has the rating attached (going from memory).

That is correct. There is no credit-cost associated but you cannot do a "mission" unless you have all the items required for the thing you are going to craft in your inventory. It should also be noted that crafting (unlike all other skills) allows you to queue 5 things up at once so you can have 5 of the same or different items in line to be built. As was mentioned elsewhere, crafting inventory in your cargo hold also counts for this. You don't have to have it in your personal inventory.

You absolutely can. Do it all the time.

NERF TH! Yes, they do. I didn't find it as lucrative as the OP but then I was using a different method for selecting which missions to run. It's possible that I could do better using TH now than I did then.

Short Version: Expect no further fix, drop Slicing. Long Version: Learn to slice world nodes and actually run lower level Lockbox missions. I still make bank running Slicing missions because I am not running the most expensive missions. I run the ones that are cheap enough to actually make a profit. And no, that profit is not as big as it used to be but it is still a measurable profit... Put it this way... I cover my Slicing missions *and* my Underworld Trading missions and still make bit of profit. Sounds like you're not using Slicing efficiently if you're losing money.

There was either some sarcasm there or the first answer doesn't know how Diplomacy works (I'm guessing the former). Bioanalysis and Scavenging have "nodes" in the world that you can harvest with absolutely zero expense (as does Slicing). Diplomacy is a mission skill, meaning that it only allows you to do things through crew missions. For a "gathering" skill like Slicing, Bioanalysis or Scavenging you should focus on using them as you play by finding nodes. This will save you mission cash. For Mission skills like Treasure Hunting, Diplomacy and Investigation, you want to focus on running missions that will gain you skill (yellow is usually optimal) and will provide you something that actually benefits you, whether that is crafting items (I need Underworld Metals but not Luxury Fabrics so I never run those missions with Treasure Hunting) or Companion Gifts. Like anything else in real life or the computer, crew skills require that you actually look at what you are getting for the time and money that you invest in them and then make choices to garner the most for your investment. (And yes, doing something for the role-playing or fun of it is fine, just understand what you want to gain and make sure that you are gaining as much as you can for your investment.) Budget your credits and don't spend them on things that you don't need. Get your bioanalysis goodies from nodes, not missions. Get your Medical Supplies from missions but focus on missions that actually get you Medical Supplies, not the other stuff...

I just don't get the complaints about the nerf, myself, and I am a slicer. By paying just a tad of attention you can still make a handsome profit. I *did* have to step back one rank (from orange to yellow) to be consistent at it but I am still advancing my skill, making a profit and getting something out of my companions while I go fly my space missions. The profit is still there, it's just not as outrageous as it used to be...

Keep in mind that this is one of the strong arguments *against* LFG tools and cross-server instances. The fastest way to break people of this kind of behavior is to quit grouping with them and make sure everyone knows why.

Because they want to treat mission skills as a form of roulette where you spend resources repeatedly for the chance of getting a rare return which pays off. In the case of Slicing, those are the missions and schematics, not the lockboxes.

Slicing is a strange beast and what they do with it will reflect a lot on how they think it should function. First, remember that Slicing is a gathering profession, not a mission profession. You can go out into the world and use it to collect from resource nodes essentially yielding free credits. Second, as a community we don't have enough statistical data at this point to talk about the bonus items from *any* profession. It's possible that Slicing is intended to function as a gathering skill with the ability to run missions for a chance at the rare items (in this case new missions and cybertech recipes) just the same way that Bioanalysis is a gathering skill that you occassionally run as a mission hoping to get the rare Samples and Compounds. If that is the case, you can predict that the prices for those Shematics and Missions is going to go through the roof since there is no longer any other upside to running Slicing missions and so players will have to price accordingly to make their money back. Will the changes make or break Slicing? Doubtful. As it stands, Slicing is no longer a no-brainer the way it was yesterday. It will certainly have an impact on the general economy though as the availability of the Missions and Schematics from Slicing become more rare (and that may be a major motivator for Bioware).

I know the Empire vendor is in the Imperial Fleet near, if I recall correctly, the Combat Trainers. Turn on your vendors on your map and mouse over them. You'll find him.

Be very careful what you wish for. I'm one of those healers out there that people are whining about not having available and you bet your buns I NEED that gear for my tank Companion. Or do you plan on power-levelling me so I can heal you? I have mixed emotion about DPS classes grabbing more gear for DPS Companions byt I got no qualms about Tanks and Healers gearing their primary support Companions specifically for solo levelling. I try to be considerate about Orange drops specifically because they are appearance items and even if they come stocked with mods I believe (note, that's a personal opinion and I know it) that players should be wearing Oranges before Companions should.

Appreciating this FOR YOU is not a race to 50. You are not the sole representative of the player base. Don't get me wrong. I agree with you and could care less about the race to 50. I want to see everything and do all the quests and find all the little hidden funnsies. Heck, I almost fell out of my chair last night when I (Sith Sorceror) and my friend (Imperial Operative) finished Black Talon and got to Drumond Kaas where he mouthed of to one of the quest givers and she promptly told him to respect his Sith Masters, she was talking to me, not him. That's something the racers will never notice but you know what... They don't care that they missed it either and they think I'm nuts for enjoying that. Takes all kinds. Welcome to the MMO world.

Food for thought. If you spent the time instead of waiting in queue playing a new toon up on a Light server, do you think that you'd actually be higher level on the new server before you'd get to play your current character? I mean... You want to change servers so the issue here is not staying with guildies or something (which I would totally get)....

Full just means that the server is at capacity at the time they are trying to log in. They can wait in queue like everyone else and whent hey get in will be able to create a character. It just means that until the new wears off and people play with moderation (or quit playing as their time runs out) that they'll have to wait in queues every time they get on to play with you.

Actually, I have both a Sage and a Sorceror at 20 and my rotations for both are identical. Timing is the same, skills have the same effects, etc. The only differences come from numerical differences in my stats/gear. Even the Trooper and the BH function the same way with the bars counting in different directions (although my only practical experience there is with the BH). There *are* some minor differences but they have very little impact on my play. The most notable is that lightning damage is done at the beginning of the animation and the telekinetics do damage at the end of the animation (which might have slight impact in something like PvP but not in PvE where I spend most of my time).