I'm always suspicious when I see abilities with long CDs. They are usually overpowered and never really become part of a skill rotation. I rarely use those kinds of skills at all because I always think I might need it "later". Something I rarely use is dead weight: uses up a hot key slot and I tend to forget about them. Why not reduce their effect and lower the CD instead? I mean what's the use of a grenade I can use every 5 minutes?!?!? Apparently (I'm not at 50 yet) people were getting a guaranteed kill every 5 minutes? This is outrageous! Come on it's not that hard. Put grenades on a 90 sec timer and reduce their dmg output so it's in line with med packs, which are also on a 90 sec timer (biochem medpacks, which everyone will be using soon because they still have to roll biochem to be competitive...).

This! Bioware's crafting system and how they go about fixing it is really frightening. What kind of game design is this? Trial & Error? Adjustments like these should have been done during beta. Doing it now in the live game just annoys many players and makes everything a gamble. Should I invest time in this crew skill, in this class or will it be changed soon. Sure MMO players are used to tweaks but so many hefty nerfs right at start (slicing, biochem, cybertech) makes me think crafting was added too late in development, or as an afterthought. Crafting isn't something hardcore any more - it has become quite interesting for most players to meddle with and therefore should have had a much higher priority - really a shame. I feel very insecure of what lies ahead already, which puts me in a passive, reluctant state. I start having second thoughts about starting my game client: what's the next nerf? Will it hit my crew skill, one of my class's abilities? Will all the long hours I invested in a feature have been spent in vain? No good thoughts to have in a game......

and something this obvious didn't come up during BETA?!?!? pathetic........

I was one of the first Master Weaponsmiths in SWG.... good times Guilds were competing to enlist me. Everyone knew the top crafters by name. At that time it was even possible to color the font of your auctioned items so some crafters were easily recognized by the way they "advertized" their goods... As for the thread's topic: I like the companion craft system but very often I would like to craft "personally" at the same time as well.

I think the OP meant grade 23 not lvl 23, so IOW the end game crystals for lvl 49-50 characters....

Yep, Slicing was a nice jump start for the TOR economy and community in general. Sure it could have been a problem in the long run and a nerf was needed but not that drastical... IMO, a moderate profit cut now and a complete redesign of the slicing missions some weeks later would have been better.

Very interesting analysis, much appreciated! It also kind of backs up my point of believing that the system isn't really balanced or even bugged (for example, class 1 rich yield mission)....

I believe luxury fabrics (from UT) don't appear in the GTN (auction house) - at least I couldn't find any, not even those I put up for auction. That of course makes it hard to buy them.....

So true. I've played WoW (sorry to bring up this example but most know what I'm talking about... ;^) since the first day of EU beta and most of the AH prices have increased between 100 and 1000 times of vanilla prices....

True but I had to give up a mission skill for it and would rather have a useful mission skill to send my companions on! Most players sacrificed their corresponding mission skill for slicing so they can still lvl their craft with their other gathering skill. So for me (and I guess) most it's a substitute for a mission skill, even though it is technically a gathering skill. That is probably the problem with the skill: the way it worked initially, it was a great substitute for a mission skill and that's why people chose it (they didn't primarily choose it for gathering). Now for me it's useless because it is NOT a substitute for a mission skill anymore. That's why I want to get rid of it ASAP. And that's why I want a dev response so I know it's not going to be changed again with the next patch......................

The problem is not that slicing isn't "profitable" any more, it's how bad the profit is compared to other mission skills. If I spent all that mission time (your examples) on other mission crew skills, I would have got mats that EASILY sell for over 1 million credits (I know the prices on the GTN because my alt mentioned above sells these mats for crazy amounts of credits). That's why I want to know whether they want to keep it like this so I can finally drop slicing for a mission skill that is MUCH MORE PROFITABLE at my lvl and that put all my companions to use much better. Call me a min-maxxer but I definitely don't run 100s of hours of missions like you did for this pathetic profit!

Yes, I'm aware of the patch notes. It doesn't mean that it's working as intended though. I'm not sure if you are an MMO veteran as I am, but my experience with other MMOs is that very often a fix creates other unwanted problems or is even bugged - especially when the patch is applied so quickly without proper consideration. They had plenty of time to fix the slicing problem during beta, so the only reason for not having fixed it then, is that they thought it was fine. If they thought it had been broken all the time, then they would have been incredibly [insert appropriate word here] to let it go live because changing sth. as important as that always causes an enormous uproar in the community and has a huge negative impact on the community and sales/subscriptions of the game. IOW I don't want to give up my 400 skill lvls only to learn that there had been a bug with lockboxes and that it was never intended to make people lose credits with lockbox missions and that they are going to change it again. THAT would really [insert appropriate word here] me off! Just for the record: I understand that they had to do sth. about slicing but I'd rather they got rid of the skill instead of making it useless and leaving me wondering what to do now.

I just want to know what to do now. Will Slicing stay like this, is it working as intended? Or will it be readjusted in the not-so-distant future (aka "soon")? Or will it be completely redesigned or even dropped completely? If I know that the extent of the nerf is really intended and not accidentally nerfed too much or even bugged, then I can happily dump my 400 skill and take a new gathering or mission crew skill. But as of now - since I can't really believe that they are being serious and I hope that they will again tweak the lockbox missions - I feel gimped with 2 crew skills instead of 3. I have slicing on my main with all the companions sitting around now because I don't send them on pointless missions anymore. Instead I have sent my lvl 10 alt on those other missions every one is whining about because they supposedly lose them so much money.... AND guess what? I make far more money with selling those mats on the GTN than with all my pre-nerf slicing missions. I mean I wasn't really surprised: You just have to sell your stuff instead of using all up on your crafting profession. If you did that, which is what slicers did because they can't use their credits for crafting, you would also make credits but that's probably a strange concept: Selling mats that I can use for crafting? But, but I can use them for crafting.....? Why should I sell them, or some of them to make a profit? And no, I don't want to pick lockboxes in the open world, I want to send my companions on missions! I hate the fact that they are standing there in my ship doing nothing while I'm running around. So, can I hope for a change or can I please drop this useless skill now? A dev reply would be much appreciated, Arc

Just as an aside: LotRO, also a promising project once, also had this issue from the beginning: long-winded combat animations and no direct control over your character. It was a game where you watched your character doing sth. rather than actually doing sth. Turbine realized that this was a core problem and changed it, made "instant" abilities truly instant or "immediate" as they then phrased it. These immediate skills/abilities interrupt every on-going animation and acts out the ability at the BEGINNING of its animation. Combat felt much smoother, directer than before but still nothing like WoW, which is really a shame since both LotRO and TOR have much more potential story-wise than WoW but nothing beats WoW's gameplay smoothness/direct responsiveness at the moment (at least nothing I have played and I play A LOT). Coming from someone that canncelled WoW and doesn't want to go back to a world of Pandas (even though Chuck Norris almost had me going back .

Has probably been mentioned a hundred times but I haven't got the time to read the full thread (as good as it must be): Perfect example of cast bar glitch: Call your speeder/hover bike and start running right after the cast bar is full (and gone). Right, action cancelled...... Other than that let me just add that I noticed TOR's unresponsiveness the 1st moment I played the game and also see it as a GAME-BREAKING feature! Arc out. EDIT: Just played around with it a bit and sometimes you can even see the speeder animation and then it still gets cancelled! If I were to time it, it's very likely at least a 0.5 sec delay.