Add to this that slicing profits are SET IN STONE. They have a hard cap and cannot increase beyond a certain point. They cause early game inflation (which is actually a good thing, not all inflation is bad.) but it actually helps to regulate late game inflation as it establishes a baseline earning level which creates a spending cap for many players. The leading cause of inflation is not "slicers" or "gold farmers" (by the way, they serve the same purpose. You're going to have one or the other in this game, and if you just really love gold farmers, then you enjoy that.) but basically your average greedy player who says to himself "If I can get 20 credits for [item], I bet I can get 25... maybe 30."

Okay. It is friendly and easier income. It is also low yield. Being a passable employee at mcdonalds is not hard, and you'll easilly swing the payments on your gas and your own phone line (repairs, skill training) and even a beater (lvl 25 bike) or an okay used car. (lvl 40) If you put in a lot of overtime, you'll eventually make enough to save up for some very nice things with a lot of hard work. Slicing works much the same way. When you're 16 years old and get that first paycheck for a few hundred dollars, you feel rich. Being a McDonald's manager at 18 sound like you've got it made! If you manage to get there, you feel like you're on top of the world. As you get older, you realize that mommy and daddy won't pay your rent forever. You need to take care of your own health, which is declining, kids of your own cost ludicrous amounts of money and it seems like just taking a vacation isn't as simple as popping $20 in gas in your beat up 80s model oldsmobile and seeing how far it will take you. In short, your expenses increase. RAPIDLY. That $400 paycheck you thought made you the richest person on earth means jack when you're shelling out $1000 on your mortgage alone. TL;DR: Slicing was a LOW PROFIT (yes, you're reading that correctly. Your 200k returns over two weeks does not impress me. I made almost that much yesterday by logging on and selling my gathered materials and crafted goods on my level 15 toon, and spent another 28k just in class ability training, and 15k in repairs on a level 28 toon.) way for casual players to keep up with their play costs that are set expenses in the game, and also a trap option for hardcore players who are to slow to realize that just gathering materials for crafters or crafting items people will actually use (instead of reverse engineering everything in an attempt to play "pokemon with patterns") is where the insane profits are. Since I'ma crafter, why am i so bent out of shape about the slicing nerf? Because it's ruined my customer base. The large number of casual players are now broke. The hardcore players who are idiots are losing what money they have. I sell about half of what I did before, and while I'm probably one of the wealthiest folks on my server, being the richest guy in an empty world because frustrated players don't log in because it's not fun to be broke is not enjoyable for me either. This is actually a false statement. Space missions are zero risk. Slicing had a chance for failure which was a risk. Solo grinding out money in Esseles/Black talon (clocks in about 6k an hour--more than pre-nerf slicing) is a better bargain because you also wind up with affection to reduce mission times as well as dark side/light side points. Just grinding equal level mobs for an hour is a better return than pre-nerf slicing, and is low risk unless you're an idiot. Underworld Trading/Treasure Hunting/Diplomacy/Investigation can gather materials which can be sold for about 4-30 times what the mission costs. That's far more yield than slicing ever returned, and is also no real risk. There is always a market for mats. Crafting items that are not readillly available through vendors, flashpoints and questing are money makers, taking the materials crafted above and quadrupling their value. Biochem is the easiest to see returns on, Cybertech has ship upgrades that are better than vendor available ones and available at lower levels, Artifice has crystals and Arms/Armor/Synth... make and sell orange equipment. They're essentially vanity items and people buy the hell out of them. All of this is proven to return a profit that is substantially higher than the cost. One problem is most people think 6k profit in an hour (hard to actually make with pre-nerf slicing, actually) is a big deal. It's not. The other is that crafters think that "buy every single pattern available and then take the last 40 saleable items i just made and destroy them for a chance to get a new pattern i will not sell any of, so i can make 40 of those and destroy them" is a "cost" of their craft. it's not. That's a collectible/vanity game, not a fixed cost. You're supposed to lose money on collectible/vanity games. They're a money sink created for that exact purpose. Anything else you'd like refuted?

I'm aware of that. I get them at approximately the same rate that I get purple mats from other gathering professions (which are also accompanied by schematics) The difference is that as an Underworld Trader/Treasure Hunter/Scavenger I was making far more credits posting my mats directly to an Auction house than I ever did by slicing. I have 4 characters on one server. One uses slicing. (used, really, I got it to 400 and realized that even pre-nerf it was the least profitable skill they had.) The one that has made the most money so far is my Cybertech/Scavenger/Treasure Hunter. Self-support my own mats and I sell off the excess for silly amounts of money. Instead of crafting a bunch of things and then repeatedly destroying them to "catch 'em al" with the patterns, I selectively pick which ones to buy and craft. Then I craft them. Then I sell them. Despite the economic downturn, yesterday I made 200k in profit, after costs are accounted for with this one character alone. This was not residual income from things made and posted days before--it was income made yesterday from things posted yesterday. That is one character who is level 15. For all the cries of how "horribly unprofitable" all the other crew skills are, how borked crafting is, and how you apparently lose money ate everything, I've managed to make more profit with one character at level 15 in FIVE HOURS OF PLAY after the nerf with a slowed economy, than was possible by micromanaging 8 slicer alts who were high enough level to send out 3 companions constantly for 10 hours a day before the nerf. Now I realize that this is unfair. And so, BoiWare, I humbly submit that you should immediately nerf all gathering and tradeskills to be unprofitable so that I cannot be unjustly enriched. Given current market prices on my server, I have worked up a few guidelines: Underworld Trading/Treasure Hunting/Diplomacy/Investigation: Moderate yield: 85% failure rate, returns one blue material on success. Abundant yield: 90% failure rate, returns two blue materials on success. Bountiful yield: 50% failure rate, returns two blue materials on success. Rich yield: 10% failure rate, returns two blue materials on success. Scavenging/Bioanalysis/Archaeology: Moderate yield: 10% failure rate, returns 2 materials on success. Abundant yield: 5% failure rate, returns 2 materials on success. Bountiful yield: 25% failure rate, returns 3 materials on success. Rich yield: 5% failure rate, returns 4 materials on success. Crafting skills: Crafting skills were tough. I can take 1000cr worth of materials (GNT value) and turn it into 4000cr worth of stuff easily. I think the best solution is to add a 75% failure rate to all crafting opportunities.

Yeah, I did miss that one, sorta. Your casual gamer is not going to count that as an option, and you will have casual gamers that will continue to play no matter what. He will look at what's going on and (like all other games on the market) either take a (functioning) slicing if it's available , or he's going to call up NiHaoCreditsdotcom and hand them his credit card number. What I choose, and what many of the people here choose, and what the folks that quit choose isn't what I was pointing at. Functional slicing will drastically reduce the need for gold farmers to the point of it being unprofitable for them to operate. Non-functioning slicing makes this MMO just like every other, where they can turn a buck off of someone, and believe me, they will.

Maybe this will help. In a real (modern) economy, you have: (highly simplified) Raw materials. (self explanatory) Finished goods. (products ready for the consumer to use) Man hours. (time spent by individuals to gather materials of produce finished goods) Currency. (an agreed upon medium that can be exchanged for any of the above.) You buy man hours currency to gather materials. You buy more man hours to convert those materials into finished goods. You sell finished goods to consumers. The consumers buy those finished goods by selling man hours. Growth is limited by any of these factors. Take away man hours less is produced so you can't sell it. Take away currency and the rate of exchange is hampered by haggling and backorders as people wait to accumulate it to purchase. remove materials and your man hours produce nothing to sell. SW:TOR doesn't have a "man hours" really. even time spent by the player and invested by crew missions are another variable that behaves differently than "man hours" would in the real world. It's more like a fiscal quarter that happens to be a different length of time for everyone involved. Materials and finished goods have an easy analog in... materials and finished goods. (unsurprisingly) Credits... Credits serve as both the man hours (as they produce materials, and finished goods, and via slicing could produce more of themselves to function as "man hours.") and the currency, which is what seems to be tripping people up. The slicing nerf is having the same effect on the economy as if someone were to make it illegal to work more than 20 hours a week. No money, no overtime, production is severely hampered, there's an initial glut of unsold goods on the market because no one buys, but that dwindles as less is produced to sell because of production, and less people are willing to buy because they have less money to spend. Even those with large amounts of money are in trouble as their fixed expenditures must still be met, and the finished goods they need are simply not available to buy, leading to rising prices, so you have not deflation but inflation in cost, as overall wealth goes down. Yes, there is an initial glut of supply which makes you think "oh the market will adjust." What happens when you lose money on all the other gathering and crafting skills? Not like before when you lost it via incompetence and overspending, but because there is literally no one there buying your goods and finished products sell for less than the rtaw materials cost to produce? Gold sellers, that's what happens. they realize they can make real money off of a fake economy that is floundering because of a lack of raw currency. Believe it or not, Gold farmers are excellent game economists--it helps them go where the real money is and stay in business. Sound familiar? Check your server right now. That's what's happening. An influx of raw credits is what is needed to motivate the economy, and to keep it going as it matures, and indeed a baseline return (minimum wage!) is what helps to standardize prices and prevent overinflation. You have two choices: Slicing as a minimum wage mechanic that grants an influx of raw credits, or goldsellers who steal accounts, scam their customers and pollute the game with unregulated amounts of money as the influx of raw credits. you're going to have one or the other. And before you start QQing, yeah, slicing was minimum wage. If you lost money gathering and crafting "then you are bad and should feel bad," as the meme goes. Your complaints are equivalent to the guy who mines gold in his back yard and presses it into toilet paper complaining that his car got repossessed while the McDonald's employee can go see a movie after he pays his rent and car payment. You don't (and did not) have less earning potential, you have just far outspent the greater potential you had on things you didn't need.

No, I have concluded that you have not reached 50 in this game based on your many comments that would be either idiocy or malevolence if you actually knew how the game played at that level. I chose to conclude (which is a position I take based on evidence gathered, rather than an assumption which is based on little or nothing) that you didn't know, rather than conclude that you are an idiot or a jerk. How nice. I go to work to work for my success, personally. They pay me in real money. 100 credits a minute (top net result from pre-nerf slicing) is ~6000 credits per hour. 3 companions slicing per hour=18000 credits per hour. 2 hours in an operation can easily result in 40,000 in repairs. So... Constant slicing (which i will not be able to manage while playing, mind you) for three hours will net me two hours to play something I want. I work 40 hours a week to do what I want for the other 128. When i get a better fun/work return ratio from my job than I do from a game, it is time to stop paying real money for that game.

I am baffled by how you can be so well spoken and so very, very, very bad at math and simple reasoning. this is probably the most correct thing you've said so far, but probably not for the reasons you think. Actually, no. Slicing returning raw credits serves both to invigorate a young economy and later can help act as a baseline that will actually SLOW inflation as the game progresses. Individuals who use slicing will not pay more than a certain amount for goods, because they CAN not. They have no choice, they simply do not have more than that amount to spend. in the short term it drives up prices and makes the low level convenience of a speeder seem relatively accessible to a casual player, but still makes those later upgrades pretty daunting when combined with the costs of higher level training, repair bills, etc. That sounds entirely like it was working (pretty close to) intended IMO. Yes, although It can help to ameliorate some of that shifting, and act as a baseline for comparison which actually makes the game economy MORE stable, rather than less.

No, it wasn't good enough. If it had been too good then you'd see a continued trend of inflation and en excess of credits despite being all-but-removed as an option. If it had been "good enough" you wouldn't have seen level 50 players immediately drop it to pick up crafting. If it had been "close to being good but still too much" then it would take about a week to two weeks to notice the economic downturn. But no, the change was immediate and negative. So... not just "not good enough" but "not good enough by far." What you call "too much" and "too easy" are highly suspect. Also, please note that level cap is not 25. Much changes in between 30 and 40, and far more between 40 and 50. your "too much" today is going to be "this game is a broken and unplayable korean-style grindfest" in about a week. If you think it's all the money anyone needed, then please let me know what life is like when you get done selecting your advanced class, as it seems you haven't made it that far, yet.

Yes and no. I do primarily care because it's hurting my profits. Duh. What astounds me is that other people want to see slicing broken or break it even worse IN SPITE of it hurting their profits. I don't advocate or approve of griefing, but I get the mentality. What I fail to comprehend is people so dedicated to it that they'd continue despite the obvious effects it has on themselves. It's like if PvP put some 2 hour death buff on the loser and an hour and a half death buff on the winner and people still go gank folks in the newbie zone because "he got it worse! ROFLMAO" Most of it comes from slicers, I assume. I don't know. I didn't send out an exit poll with every purchase asking for detailed information about the character that just bought my stack of Wind Crystals. They could be slicers, they could be crafters who sold something to a slicer or someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who sold something to someone who was a slicer. (That's referred to, in laymans terms, as "an economy that is working.") Now I have less customers. I recognize a few of the names and they're the same folks who bought a lot before. They buy less now. That measn that folsk who didn't have large amounts of reserve cash have stopped buying altogether and those with large amounts of reserve cash are spending less because they are expecting to have less because they realize that "economics just got REAL, motha(shut yo mouth!)." No. inflation begins when someone realizes that they can charge more for a good than what they are getting and decide to do so. This prompts the next person down the line to do the same thing and so on. This is not always bad. It's only bad when there are stark inequities in between supply and end user, to the point that supplier cannot pay his rent and keep supplying. I know you hear the big kids say "inflation!" with fear in their eyes, and it seems like a fun word to use as a boogeyman, but it's not. You fail to grasp the concept. This is a video game. EVERYTHING comes from nowhere. Raw materials come from nowhere. Finished goods come from nowhere. Money comes from nowhere. Wealth is not a dirty word. People being rich happens, even in games. Your own jealousy may encourage you to demonize it rather than getting off your own butt and putting in the needed time to get the same results, but even that won't solve your problem. The amounts people had (and still have) are not "large." These folks that think they're rich are the equivalent of a nine year old squealing in delight because he found a dollar bill on the sidewalk. (To give you an idea of what that's worth, I made ~$15 while typing up this post.) They seem large to them because they pay a couple grand for a repair bill and the 40 grand training for a speeder that's not supposed to be difficult or expensive to get (it's minor convenience, not mechanically imbalancing and created user satisfaction. Making it difficult to get is flat out poor game design theory) is the biggest cash they've shelled out. They don't realize they're going to spend millions at level 50 for a minor upgrade to it. Just because you don't understand how math works does not mean it's balanced now. I do agree, it certainly was not balanced. The high level returns were pitiful and sad. The low and mid level returns needed minor tweaking to bring them down and the high end needed to go way up. I'd say in about six months you should put a level cap on it (and probably others) but for the moment, level caps and low slicing profitability stunt the growth of an economy that needs a kick start, not a choke chain.

At present, I've put less effort into it today than I have responding to you posts (so, you know... not much at all. ) and made another 20k in confirmed profits already. By confirmed profit I mean "I spent 40k on running gathering missions already and have had 60k in sales only from the things I put on the market today, and have a large number of things that have yet to sell on the market as well as more in my cargo hold I am holding back to avoid flooding the market." None of this profit involved slicing buy the way. Congratulations. If you'd picked up UT and sold off the excess blues instead, you could have half a mil or more despite your destructive tendencies. Except that I'm now making far less for that effort. not because they stopped ME from slicing, but because they stopped my CUSTOMERS from slicing. they are unwilling to spend money, so my crafting skills and gathering skills have also sharply decreased in value. I'm working twice as hard to bring in half as much. That's not "fine." Okay, well then lets nerf all the gathering missions. Lets nerf all of the mission only gathering skills, too. Now we'll have underworld trading nodes, because they make SUBSTANTIALLY MORE MONEY from seconds of added effort. Let me lay some math on you. Pre-nerf slicing: I click a button to send out a companion to slice on two half hour missions. Result is about 6000 credits in profit. (~100 credits per minute average) Pre-nerf Underworld Trading: (UT wasn't nerfed, only its customer base so i now make less)I click a button to send out a companion to slice on two half hour missions. Modal result is 16 items that sell reliably for 750-1k each. That's 12,000-16,000 credits per hour, with an average result around 14.5k from what I received. My extra step on that alt was standing next to a GTN instead of in the cantina where I can hear the music, and occasionally listing something. For that one extra step (less than a minute per hour of extra work) I reaped more than 200% of what I would have from slicing pre-nerf. I'm not even going to go into what happens when I craft, but even with my own collector's tendencies and buying up cheap patterns I cannot use yet, I make gathering look like chump change.

That's silly. Slicing returns are fixed, finite, and capped. They are also less than returns from other sources, including every other gathering skill, selling crafted items instead of reverse engineering them, space missions, grinding, running quests, PvP... I don't recall him saying that. What do you think every gathering skill does? Pay 500 credits and 12 minutes to get 2400 credits worth of materials? Sound familiar? i can think of no response to this other than: Lolwut. There are several restrictions on this. One is time, which does factor in as even if my time dialation device does work, i cannot get it to sync with my server allowing me to run an infinite amount of missions in a finite amount of time. the other is the return amount, which starts off high but decreases sharply when compared to fixed costs as one levels to the point that it is irrelevant in your 40s as a money making device and generally only suited to have to skip things in flashpoints. If i set up alts to slice and hire a team of folks to run missions on the dot 24 hours a day, I am making less credits than I would by having them gather via scavenging, bioanalysis, archaeology, underworld trading, investigation, diplomacy, treasure hunting, or just going out and grinding space missions. so are the returns from slicing. If we're not figuring in fixed factors then I guess we'll discount any profits from slicing altogether and therefore slicing needed an infinite buff. No, I won't. Most of what you said won't make sense to a high school dropout with half a semester of Economics.

Slicing is nice to have for the flashpoint skips. If you want to make money: Scavenging, Bio, and Arch. That's the way it has always been. The time you spend opening up the slicing boxes would be better spent harvesting nearly any other node and putting the results on the auction house. If you want a mission skill, I suggest Underworld Trading or treasure Hunting. Either does pretty well for itself, and returns much higher profits than actual gathering missions--of course, no node gathering or flashpoint skips from those.

Except even those people were making far less cash than they could have through a variety of other methods--several of which are still in place and far less work intensive. "Top money" from slicing rquired running 8 alts with three companions going each on missions of about 5 minutes... by the time you get done logging/relogging/relogging/relogging you need to go back to the beginning. That is CONSTANT management. Compare to gathering up high tier materials which takes much longer for a much better return, (click, click, click, got watch TV for 45 minutes, come back and plop it on the auction house, before I send them off again, more TV watching...) I'd argue that in this case it was A, B, and C who were failing at basic math (if I spend more than i make, I will surely have lots of money!) and complaining because the rest of the alphabet either knew better or realized it was their own fault if they overspent. This isn't a problem of failed mechanics. This is a problem of people with very poor management skills who refused to utilize the option specifically created to make the game playable for people with poor management skills, and were mad because people took the option they refused and didn't suffer because of it. It's not enough that crafters win. Other people have to LOSE for it to be okay.

Huh? What part of any of what I just told you about my method involved slicing? None of it. ZERO. Lemme say it again, since you may only be reading the small bits. NO SLICING INVOLVED. I advanced my cycbertech very rapidly due to using the craft skill repsonsibly instead of buying everything. I then sold my products and made more profit faster than it was possible with pre-nerf slicing. I made money very quickly because i was nto slicing, i was paying people to slice for me with the items that i made. From looking at the time tables for pre-nerf slicing and the timetables for gathering and crafting I have now, I spent about 10 minutes gathering and crafting for every HOUR someone spent slicing open the absolute best return slicing mission to pay me for that 10 minutes. Yes, (low level!) Crafting gave me a 600% return over what I'd have gotten spending that time slicing. If slicing was unbalanced it was because it made too little money to compete with someone properly utilizing any other craft. Was slicing very good for you? Yes, because it gave you money instead of materials you had no concept of value for. If you think bronzium is worthless for anything other than making into crappy greens that you will then smash to bits to get one piece of bronzium from and maybe a new pattern, then you're going to do that. To me, bronzium is worth about 50 credits a piece, although I can craft it into somethign that will turn a few thousand credits when i mix it with other things. Credits have an obvious value to you. You can see it right there. 1 credit=1 credit. The only benefit to slicing is that it allows people who have zero sense to only fail slightly miserably instead of incredibly miserably.

"Your icon looks like a woman." That is a statement of provable observational worth. If you were a mysogynist, you might take it as an insult, but that doesn't mean it is one. you taking offense or claiming that notes about provable, observable behavior are insulting says much more about you than it does me. I just like pointing that out.

I have a feeling I'll enjoy this explanation. Don't presume to tell me what I think. I don't suppose you could point me to where I said any of this? Because allow me to let you in on not what i think, but what I do. My crafter stays comfortably in the fleet, sending out his companion (singular! he's only level 15, remember!) to go gather materials. He sells about half of them because other crafters are idiots, and will buy them in bulk so they can keep reverse engineering to get recipes for more things they won't sell. The other half he keeps. When he has enough for a good run of crafting, he stops gathering and starts crafting. He crafts patterns (still standing at the nice little cargo hold overlooking the cantina) I know will sell. If it's somethign that liable to be very popular, i'll even reverse engineer to get a blue pattern, but I don't make many of them. What I make, I put up for sale and then i advertise that they're for sale. I don't spam, just one or two little blurbs in general and one in guild. Then i go back to gathering. I didn't sweat. I don't fret, and I'm actually doing it right this second. Again, you're terrible at mindreading. Also, I'm not sure what you think is so hard about "gathering" out in the world. (which i do while questing, when it's convenient as a bonus only) It's a game. you sit your butt down in a chair. You watch a screen. you're not slaving away at anything. you're not a hero. you're not entitled. You may feel you are, but you're not.

That's not insulting. I can get that way if you'd like. Go back a few pages. Start reading this from the beginning and you'll see no shortage of people who think that when they: spend money to get resources from other people spend money to buy recipes they don't need to level, or won't sell, or will make only to reverse engineer to get the blue and epic versions, which they want only as a "collector" take their products and reverse engineer all of them or the majority of them make nothing sell nothing fail to do so much research as just asking in General what people need or looking at a /who list to see what classes are in the majority and anticipate the buying needs of that mrket can't be bothered to do anythign more than slap an item on the GTN for three times the price of what a competitor is selling it for (also known as the CRAFTERS trying to cause inflation) That they deserve and are absolutely entitled to continue to make MORE money than Slicers. Why? because "slicing isn't a real skill anyways." I didn't point fingers or name names. I merely made note of a trend of behavior. if you think that trend of behavior applies to yourself, then you might want to consider some introspection instead of claiming to take offense at comments that weren't directed at you.

*headdesk* It actually wasn't "too good" in beta. There were just a lot of whiny people who didn't want to take slicing that were upset that someone was buying their goods to give them money, and they didn't just have credits appear in their pockets while they chucked money out a window. Exactly like now. The difference in between the nerf then and the nerf now is that the economy now is still incredibly young and unstable and did not have the larger surplus of credits to fall back on, nor were the starting values appropriate for keeping an economy going on the higher end. 400 slicing was providing laughable returns for anyone in the 40s. But because you don't have the progress now that you did then, you wind up with things like... people having less money saved up to spend on GTN purchases, so crafters and gatherers make even less money than they did before--assuming they try to sell anything and don't just keep whining that their constant Reverse Engineering and buying up every schematic they can get regardless of use or value and not making any attempt to sell anything, that money doesn't magically appear in their pocket along with the other considerable gains they're getting from progressing a crafting skill.

Yes, because for the majority of the audience, it was massively unfun. But, it's kinda fun for a minority, and to that minority, that is what's important, apparently.

Am I confusing people, or was it you that was talking about preconceived notions a few posts back? Are we supposed to abandon our preconceptions, or just abandon any thought, idea, or opinion (even if based on sound study of centuries of economoic behavior) that disagree with your preconceptions? you're upset because your level 25 speeder was "cheap?" Tell them to jack up the price. Hell, if you want to "work for it so bad, go buy an extra hundred thousand worth of vendored items and then destroy them all so you'll have a harder time, then YOUR preconceived notions don't need to screw with how WE have fun. When you finally get to level 40 and want to get the upgrade, come back and tell me how cheap that was. When you're 50 and paying 25-35k for repairs, come back and tell me how cheap that is. When you're level 45 and haven't trained a skill since 40, come back and tell me how awesome and fun it is and how that's just how its intended--you needed to "work for it." I'm trying very hard not to be rude about this, but you're coming off not only as incredibly hypocritical, but also massively ignorant of how the game actually functions beyond the first few hours of game play.

Except that it is not at all like them. I made (and despite a market downturn am still making) money off of scavenging missions. I get about a 500% profit from rich yield scavenging missions. For me, that means I run two rich yield and then set aside the next for my own crafting. I make money gathering. I make money crafting. I make less money slicing, and always have.

Uh... Are you getting your economic tips from fortune cookies and crackerjack boxes? I'm not trying to be condescending, but you keep spouting little "truisms" that aren't always true. Competition is good for an economy in a thriving, healthy market with large amounts of cash flow. The current economy is not thriving, it is not healthy, and it does not have much cash flow at all. 500 people trying to sell the same thing when no one is buying does not make a healthy economy. it makes for ludicrous deflation to the point that vendoring gained items yields less of a loss (and it is most assuredly a loss) than attempting to bring them to market, at which point there is simply no reason to craft or gather at all. Deflation is not always good. Inflation is not always bad. Competition is not always good.

Well playing the AH wasn't the only way to a self sustaining income... until tuesday. Slicing was an excellent option. Now the AH is shut down for all intents and purposes, because the slicers (your money producing customer base) have no money and aren't buying. So... Your options for a self-sustaining income while levelling have become: space missions. >_> You can probably still sell off gathered mats for the next few days, maybe a week or two, but you're going to run out of customers in short order.

I dunno, my sage is sitting at a quarter of a million credits now thanks to treasure hunting & selling things made via cybertech. (He's level 15 by the way.) My smuggler (who does also have slicing) was sitting at half a mil from UT metals and fabrics (lots of jedi=lots of fabric needed for all those robes. Duh.) until I went on a spending spree last night because the economy took a nose dive when people realized they couldn't buy anything and neither could anyone else. I picked up a whole suite of level 50 epic schematics for 1000 credits each. Frankly, I'm not sure why I'm in favor of reverting the slicing nerf, it's going to make me more money than actually having the skill ever did.

I don't think it needs to be reworked, it's actually pretty functional. I do think that perhaps a bit more call for player made creations (to aid in kicking the economy into gear) at low to mid levels would have been good for launch, as well as a more functional GTN... But it is workable as it stands. What needs to be adjusted is some folks mentalities. "I take the stuff I get and mash it inot things that i then destroy to get back evens smaller amounts of things and maybe a new recipe i don't need to go along with the other recipes I bought that I don't need. I am spending all this money and not getting anything back when I keep tossing my opportunities to make money out the window!!! I'm nto making any money FFS and this is WRONG."