Why Nerfing Slicing was a BAD idea

[Daellia]

First, Slicing wasn't nerfed. I can confirm that my cash inflow (I keep a log of slicing missions) is roughly the same as it was yesterday.

 

Second:

 

This is how slicing ruins the economy. If it can be sold for more, it will be. Those that cannot afford it (did not take slicing) are isolated and left behind. If there was no slicing, that is, if some players weren't effortlessly making much more credits than everyone else, the GTN would stabalize itself because sellers would have to compromise on price. They will have to make their goods available to everyone and not just the ones with disposable incomes.

 

You're only doing a first-order analysis. What you've failed you take into account is that those that don't have slicing by definition have another profession, one that generates materials that by definition some of those that took slicing will need. This means the income of those that didn't take slicing goes up, while the income of those that did take slicing stays the same. The only people that get screwed are those that don't know about/understand the GTN, or those that take no professions at all. Once you take a higher-order analysis of the impact, it's quite clear that there's no issue.

 

Inflation is an issue in the real world because of two reasons. First, limited resources placing a cap on the total amount of "value" that can be in a currency, and thus and effective limit on the amount of currency that can exist. This allows cash-hoarding to be an issue, as those holding on to cash lower the effective ceiling on the rest of the society, raising themselves further in relation. The rich get richer, essentially. Secondly, one person's increased income, due to the above hoarding, does not necessarily translate into another's gain through trickle-down economics.

 

In game, however, there are two effects that completely negate the danger of inflation. Firstly, there's no cap on value. An effectively unlimited amount of credits may be created in game. Secondly, the economy is not completely player-driven like EVE's. NPC exchanges exist, and these have a flat rate. In addition, there are a number of flat non-inflating prices that keep the system in check, such as mission prices, repair cost, NPC goods prices, etc. Lastly, slicers gain their income from the system itself, rather than by depriving others of that money. Because of this, hoarding is irrelevant. In the real world, hoarding causes currency to collect in areas, depriving the reset of the system. In game, if someone hoards credits and never spends them, as far as the player economy is concerned, they might as well have never earned them. They don't count as a "slicer" if they aren't spending the income.

 

Income can be spend split between NPC exchanges and player exchanges. NPC exchanges are of static price, and excluding a couple vanity items (the several models of 1.5M credit speeders), there's no real dump for cash of that scale. Repairs are static and cheap. Thus that money is either hoarded and unspent, in which case it doesn't even factor into the player economy, or it is spent and translated directly to the gatherers, particularly those that took the professions that the slicers generally skimp on (at the moment, this generally means mission skills). Those gatherers gain the benefit from the slicers, and everyone wins. Inflation is meaningless, it's a closed system.

 

Excessively simplified example. Let's say the economy only has 2 people in it, Slicer and Gatherer. Slicer is earning a million credits per hour. Gatherer is generating a thousand crafting mats per hour. Gatherer sells half of his mats per hour, and Slicer uses half of his income to buy mats each hour. Per hour, each character will have the same income: half a million credits and 500 crafting mats.

 

It's even self-balancing. If there are too many gatherers, supply goes up, demand stays the same, prices and profits go down, slicing becomes relatively more lucrative, and some of the gatherers drop gathering for slicing. If there's too many slicers, demand goes up, supply stays the same, prices and profits go up, some of the slicers swap to gathering. There's no real financial barrier to entry, and the time-delay barrier to entry for swapping prevents slinky effects.

 

The system works if you let it. You just have to look deeper than the first week (when the economy is the very definition of volatile, with everyone leveling and everyone also starting at zero cash) and the first-order analysis. Slicers distribute that money right back to the gatherers, but because they don't take that money from the gatherers in the first place to get "rich", it's irrelevant.

 

Frankly, I can't think of a better system to prevent gold-selling. If the absolute most optimal way to make cash is easy and available to everyone, then the gold-sellers have nothing to go off of. Anyone can make credits just as easily as they can.

[HexCaliber]

Slicing is still massively out of whack compared to other crew skills, it's a credit farm that will destroy the economy. I know of two guilds on my server that openly admit they now have every member slicing to farm credits so they can start to control market prices.

 

I had taken slicing since it was nerfed in beta expecting it to be more reasonable, I have since dumped it as I refuse to add to the problem. Frankly, it needs reducing further, it makes acquiring gear, skills, equipment far, far easier than is possible with other crew skills.Ultimatly, it will drive prices much high than they would otherwise have been, forcing everyone else to take it too, which completely negates the point of having multiple crew harvesting skills.

[holybeardman]

Slicing is still massively out of whack compared to other crew skills, it's a credit farm that will destroy the economy. I know of two guilds on my server that openly admit they now have every member slicing to farm credits so they can start to control market prices.

 

Honestly while the credit ratio has the ability to be insane.. I find personally that I can sell crafting materials and mods and whatnot that I artifice for more of a profit... at my current level (which I know is lower) I rarely get a case that is a huge profit. Most of them make me back my money and just a bit. Nothing super over the top. But maybe thats just because my slicing is only at 200 at the moment. I can't really say for upper levels.

[Jeweledleah]

so I picked up slicing since everyone is talking how its the bee's knees.

 

so far I barely broke even. actually I might be going into red. granted, I just started running missions, but... does it ever get better? or is it the results of the nerf that I'm seeing?

 

right now, as far as credits are concerned I'm in a tight spot. I found myself doing something that I've never done before. leaving some skills untrained. granted - those are not the skills I'd actually be using but for a compulsive skill trainer like me, that little green cross under the trainer and those lit up icons? blarg.

 

I don't know if nerfing slicing was a bad idea per se. I'm just wondering that if what I'm seeing is the result of that nerf.. if it may have been a bit too much?

[Daellia]

so far I barely broke even. actually I might be going into red. granted, I just started running missions, but... does it ever get better? or is it the results of the nerf that I'm seeing?

 

It gets better. The key is to notice the yield of the missions. Generally moderate and even abundant yield missions give you barely any profit on average. Bountiful and Rich missions are the best bet, but you usually have to go down a tier of missions to get those. Ideally you should never send your companion on a moderate or abundance yield slicing mission. In addition, slicing nodes in the world are a huge source of profits. Nodes on Corellia are awarding 1-3k credits each, and you can easily collect a dozen or two per hour as you quest.

 

Beyond that, if you're having that much issues with cash, you're doing something else wrong. Quit buying armor off vendors (it's usually more expensive than it's worth. Note, this doesn't count items from commendations), quit buying stuff from the GTN, quit sending your companion on missions for any crew skill except slicing (subject to the above yield concerns).

 

 

Also, side note. THERE WAS NO NERF. It's a rumor spawned from a twitter post that has since been removed. All of the data I've collected on my slicing missions today shows less than a 5% variance in average profits and average credits per minute from missions.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Daellia

[belialle]

Nooooooooooooo. I can't escape economists. My partner is an economist (and guess who gets to be a test subject for new lectures/test questions/etc). Now we have Daellia bringing the dismal science to the MMO QQ threads. There is no escape for me. It's only a matter of time until I am assimilated. Edited December 25, 2011 by belialle

[Daellia]

Nooooooooooooo. I can't escape economists. My partner is an economist (and guess who gets to be a test subject for new lectures/test questions/etc). Now we have Daellia bringing the dismal science to the MMO QQ threads. There is no escape for me. It's only a matter of time until I am assimilated.

 

I'm not even an economist. I'm just a software engineer/mathematician that enjoys economics for the math puzzles and modeling challenges it provides.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Daellia

[holybeardman]

By all rights slicing isn't OP and hasn't been nerfed (as far as I can see). It's going to be a huge money maker forever just due to the fact that it's easy. If you do other crafting properly you could POTENTIALLY out sell slicing anyways.

[DarksideniYokoso]

Daellia's post hit it exactly, and the fear of inflation is blown way out of proportion. The underlying problem here is NOT the comparitive profit margins between slicing and other crew skills but rather the lack of useful end game products produced by crafts (something that is almost guaranteed to be added in as more and more players approach the end game). Because crafting does not produce highly desired and high demand products, the demand for rare schematics and rare/expensive mats is low. If products were more desireable, mats, schematics, and crafting missions become more desireable. As a result, gathering and mission skills besides slicing suffer poor profit margins.

 

Once more useful products are added to crafting skills, we will see the market balance out and most (if not all) crew skills will become profitable. Because Slicing provides very little of use to the crafting professions it is quite plausible that slicing will become a marginal or worthless skill in time... the flat rate of income by 400 slicers is barely influenced at all by the player base, only schematics and mods can be infrequently acquired (at a greater expense to slicers). Meanwhile the value of both products and materials will fluctuate at the whim of players, particularly once players are on their second or third characters.

 

As for armies of alts constantly relogging for offline slicing, first that will never factor in to the majority of player's game as players with slower computers, inferior internet connections, or indeed those not blessed with inhuman patience wont be able to fully take advantage of this. Second are opportunity costs which range from experience, rewards, story advancement, focus, patience, fun, and even other sources of income. Third, it is only one method of exploiting the economy for insane profits, perhaps the first discovered so far in SWtoR. If it can be done with slicing it can done with any trade or crew skill and is a tradeoff (I wouldn't call it a flaw, more like an exploit) of the companion crafting system in SWtoR. I strongly suspect that by the time most players are grinding their way through operations, alt slicer spamming wont be the ideal, best, or most commonly used method to wealth. If it is, then it can EASILY be addressed then. If the game can be so easily broken so quickly by the minority of players that chosse to abuse this exploit, then the system was too fragile to begin with

[Nocturnalis]

Actually, the fact that you can run it offline means slicing IS a problem.

If you even can make 10 creds a minute, so 6k an hour from slicing(which is 1/10th what you'll make if you do it right), that's 6k PER ALT.

Say you setup 6 alts with slicing, lets say each has 3 companions out that's 18 * 6k per hour, or roughly 100k per hour, and that's, again, 1/10th what you'll make if you did slicing right. And that's on TOP of whatever you make farming or pvping or whatever.

 

I have no issues with slicing, but that combined iwth doing it on offline characters was just broken.

 

The doing it with same account alts should have been nipped in the bud. My opinion is that should not be allowed until some level of Legacy is unlocked. Do it the EvE way at launch, only one char can train per account at any time. Only one crew can craft or run missions per account. I know this sounds too over the top but it would work and prevent inflation and excess from multiple crafting professions. Then unlock that with the legacy system and allow all chars per account to run their crew's at the same time.

[Daellia]

The doing it with same account alts should have been nipped in the bud. My opinion is that should not be allowed until some level of Legacy is unlocked. Do it the EvE way at launch, only one char can train per account at any time. Only one crew can craft or run missions per account. I know this sounds too over the top but it would work and prevent inflation and excess from multiple crafting professions. Then unlock that with the legacy system and allow all chars per account to run their crew's at the same time.

 

Or just put a global cap of 5 crew out on missions/crafting per account, and legacy can be used to raise that to maybe 8-10.

[Leo_Hyborian]

I give a A+ to the initial thread. Thanks for speaking up, and all your points are correct. Slicing was basically keeping a great cash flow in the GTN for people selling useless items they crafted while leveling..

 

Guess what my sales were today?

 

Very little indeed, people are having doubts about slicing.. dropping it.. and now *today* I see the GTN flooded with massive ammounts of crafting materials... and craftable lowbie gear.

 

Grats on QQ'ing guys, now your stuff isnt going to fly off the GTN no more. Your loss I guess.

 

was not aware of a nerf but i was buying 'crap' basically from the GTN and as this quoted one says....now i wont be. I probably wont be buying anything till lvl 50 off GTN if slicing been nerfed...why,

 

 

well simple, in 3 days gaming i got 100k from slicing (ok i not a farm bot but seriously everything in every game should be nerfed if based on the extreme players) now im lvl 24 and will soon have to buy mount skill which is around 50k, plus my skills so my credits will drop so i wont be spending credits on things i dont really need at GTN.

 

 

In short, slicing was keeping a good market economy for everyone else but without it no one will be buying stuff (keynesian multiplier for you)

 

 

I would like to add something else. In AoC at the release of game there was certain mobs that dropped large amounts of silver...people farmed them and they were nerfed. IT was the only way to get decent money without extremely farming and in the end the trader was dead, crafting died. no one brought anything ever so everyone stoppped crafting. when i started swtor i was pleased to actually make use of the GTN whereas for last three years in AoC i never brought anything cause it was a dead part of the game.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Leo_Hyborian

[HexCaliber]

The change to slicing was not the yield, it was the proportion of the highest yield missions that was adjusted, as these are where slicing offers its real rewards. Although as already pointed out, it's actually resulted in little difference over the longer term.

[Daellia]

The change to slicing was not the yield, it was the proportion of the highest yield missions that was adjusted, as these are where slicing offers its real rewards. Although as already pointed out, it's actually resulted in little difference over the longer term.

 

I think that was nerfed several days ago, before the game even launched, or maybe right as it was. I noticed a severe drop in the number of Rich missions about that time. I assumed it was because I'd maxed out slicing at 400, but a global nerf would make sense too. I just know that my credits per hour hasn't really changed at all since 2 days ago.

[Jokuhrix]

I'm not even an economist. I'm just a software engineer/mathematician that enjoys economics for the math puzzles and modeling challenges it provides.

 

You, sir, are a dangerous beast. Thanks for the thoughtful analysis.

[Shinyshin]

It seems like slicing will balance itself out in the long run; I suppose that's debatable, but Daellia kinda massacres all arguments to the contrary.

 

What seems much more supportable, though, is that there's this very brief window where anyone who takes slicing is greatly advantaged in the short term. Before the inflationary process had really gotten going, before the market was dictating prices, back in the prehistoric days of ToR, slicing provided a HUGE advantage and head start. In a much more static economy where everything was fixed low, being an early slicer--especially if you transitioned off into something more useful after getting a nice little nest egg--put you leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

 

That's certainly not true to the extent that it used to be. And soon, it might not be true at all. But there was damage done and people who took slicing early definitely reaped the benefit, far more than their counterparts who didn't.

 

Edit: This was especially true when the GTN prices were at their low, completely uninflated rates, back when nobody knew what to set the prices at. I'll admit, I took advantage of that--bought hundreds of tier 2s, 3s, 4s, and even some higher for cheap. Sure, for everyone else 10k a Mandalorian Ore was expensive...but we early slicers could completely take advantage of the system and, just as importantly, others' lack of understanding.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Shinyshin

[DeathHenk]

I love slicing. You can make more money with the other profs. Now back of ma fav!

[Strandberg]

didn't even know they had nerfed it allready, got it on 2 characters atm and less then 2 weeks after early access(that is 5 days after the release) i got about 1 mil credits thanks to slicing

it needs to be nerfed even more if you ask me.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Strandberg

[Shinyshin]

didn't even know they had nerfed it allready, got it on 2 characters atm and less then 2 weeks after early access(that is 5 days after the release) i got about 1 mil credits thanks to slicing

it needs to be nerfed even more if you ask me.

 

It's my understanding that there's a long-term and a short-term dimension to slicing. In the long term, it doesn't need to be nerfed at all and could turn out to be a very well-crafted system. In the short term (maybe only for the first week and a half of game release, maybe longer, who knows) it's given a sizable advantage to people who figured out slicing's role early on.

 

That said, I'm polysci, not econ (or insane math person). Different kind of trend-studying...

 

Also, a million credits is nothing. I haven't been playing that hardcore--been wandering around, exploring, having fun--and I make hundreds and hundreds of thousands daily. Hell, I spent 650k today just for hitting level 40. Furthermore, that million credits is going to be less and less significant over time.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Shinyshin

[Mchart]

I don't see what the issue is. As a slicer who picked up slicer before any of this became a 'big deal' I can say i'm most definatly not anymore rich then anyone else. The difference is that i'm not hoarding my cash. I've been using all my earned slicer credits on crafted items on the GTN. So the large majority of my slicing income is used to purchase items which I can't make myself, and goes into the pockets of crafters.

 

The biggest problem I can see right now is that there aren't enough crafters sticking decent stuff on the GTN. I barely can find the stuff I want right now, and gee-wiz whenever I buy items right now it always tends to be only a few names on the items. So I know for a fact there are a couple crafters on my server getting rich right now. Once more people stop hoarding credits (Honestly, there is no reason to hoard credits in this game. It's all PVE anyways. So buy what you want when you want.) and once more crafters realize that they need to use the GTN - It'll balance out.

 

As a crafter you really can't be complaining if you aren't sticking stuff on the GTN, and given the fact that most item categories on the GTN right now only pull up like 10 pages of stuff.. There aren't many crafters using it.

 

That being said, Bioware is to blame for the GTN being so slow right now. It's a lot harder to use then it should be. The search functions don't work half the time, and not being able to drill down the search categories even further really makes it a pain to use.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Mchart

[Daellia]

i got about 1 mil credits thanks to slicing

it needs to be nerfed even more if you ask me. [/QUOtE]

 

See, this is the problem. The idea that a million credits is a lot. It's not. Mount training cost 330k at 50. Skills at that level cost 30-50k to train. The third bay in your ship costs 400k, and I'm not sure what the 4th costs. 1 mil is a middling amount. The only issue is that people don't yet understand just how much the credit scale grows as you level. 5k credits for your inventory expansion at level 10 is a decent chunk of your cash, dropping 400k at 50 for that 3rd cargo bay slot makes (and is supposed to make) even less of a dent. Hell, vendor weapons on Boss cost 75k apiece. A million really isn't that much cash, and as the economy develops in-game, you'll see exactly how true that statement is.

[blindstrike]

ANYONE can make money so goldsellers are jobless

 

Now all are more independent , other games failed on this one .

Gold selling is a self inflicted problem the harder ya can get cash the higher the prices , the higher the prices , the more profit for gold sellers !!! The more hacking

 

No work for goldsellers = less hacking because profit is low , making most very good stuff BOP is also a good strategy to combat gold sellers .

 

Economy as in the real world is bad because then ya need laws to stop exploiters of the system and look at the real world we fail a lot

 

I dont want a economy like wow , that is a goldmine for goldsellers a self inflicted problem .

Wow could die by suicide

 

So yes keep Slicing as it is .

Edited December 25, 2011 by blindstrike

[Kidkidd]

My big problem with the system is i spent all of yesterday playing league of legends and made nearly 100k in swtor.

[Hajizan]

What I like about the majority of these posts are "I made my millions so now nerf slicing so no one else can"

 

Really its funny seeing all these people with millions and nothing to spend it on. lol

[Shroudveil]

imo all crafting skills need tweaks, not just slicing.

 

slicing atm is the best mission skill, so it is either nerf this or buff all the others, but buffing all the others would be more time/resource consuming than nerfing slicing.

 

p.e. diplomacy's light/dark bonuses are a joke when you can get light/dark off repeatable quests or repeating a flashpoint. Tottally removing ALL light/dark gains from repeatable content, and adding a minor gain for those points through a time consuming activity (farming mobs or something the like) would make diplomacy more appealing since it would give you a pain-free method to raise those points, and etc.

 

as it stands right now, slicing gives too much for loosing too little, since only prototype and legendary items need materials from mission skills i see a lot of people taking slicing till 50 and then powerleveling their mission skill for end-game gear.

 

another option would be to make much, much more easier to craft prototype and legendary gear for items BELOW end content, so as to make mission skills more valuable since they would give you the ability to have always legendary gear as you level up (as opposed to having a lot of cash while you level up). atm this isn't true, since making purple gear, and obtaining purple materials is hard as hell and really expensive.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Shroudveil