The Contraband Slot Machine

[AdrianDmitruk]

I'm going to repost what I said elsewhere, in a thread that is more likely to be seen by Bioware employees:

 

Yes, the slot machine supplanted crew skill missions. However now the odds are so bad that there is no point to playing the slots at all, other than that buying a slot off GTN is much cheaper than buying hypercrates of contraband resale packs off GTN for the rep--which I accomplished last week. It's a shame to lose the QOL improvements to crafting that the slots brought us--as a crafter I went from logging 16 toons for crew skills, to logging in 2 toons to play the game--a difference of about 45 minutes per login for me to actually play the game. The reasonable thing to do would have been to nerf such that the cost of mats through slots/jawa barter was comparable to crew skills costs, perhaps slightly more expensive as a "convenience tax" somewhere between 10-30% (think somewhere between a sales tax and a VAT). That way both methods of getting mats are viable, with players having a choice of which method to use. Now the costs via slots are so astronomical that we have no choice but to multiply the alts and waste an hour of our playtime Troll Crafting upon login and again before logoff.

 

As it is, I already got my legend rep from playing slots last week. I have seen the new odds published off-site, I have seen people post their sample sizes with many thousands of chips here, and all I can say is that there is no point in continuing to use the slot machine whatsoever. The scrap materials from the machine need to be calculated based upon the cost to acquire the mats from crew skill missions plus some percentage for convenience, not blindly nerfed by moving the decimal point two places to the right. And there was no reason to change cartel market certificate drops whatsoever. None. At least if the certs had been left alone, the machine would still have a viable (but much narrower) use.

[KTap]

Everything I've heard (mostly what other people in this thread have said) is BoP

 

But... Lord Veijel wants to ride around on his stolen Republic Walker

[DawnAskham]

Keep blaming greedy crafters or gouging slicers or whatever all you want, but Bioware has designed the game - including crafting - with certain assumptions around how much effort and time it will take to accomplish or obtain various things or items.

 

This includes everything from leveling up to gaining PVP valor ranks to stuff like obtaining purple relics for your alts or augmenting all your gear with top level augments.

 

The slot machine was clearly broken as it allowed players to short cut - by a large amount of time - the intended effort and time the devs had built into the game for obtaining high level materials for high level crafting, and it was thus nerfed for that reason.

 

Was it poor management that allowed this to go live in such a broken state in the first place? Absolutely.

 

Should players expect better from Bioware? Indeed they should.

 

Should players expect anything other than some possible small tweaks to better balance the risk / reward? No.

Edited January 21, 2015 by DawnAskham

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Lol @ people thinking they are going to get refunds for buying crates/packs to solely get this machine.

 

I can't get past the fact that people actually thought this huge economy changing item was going to stay as is and actually put real life money into and now have the nerve to whinge about it.

 

Even looking at the effect the old drop rate has had on cartel certificate items ( cartel certificates being a rare commodity given to those who spent a lot on packs ) it was obvious this too was going to be nerfed.

 

Whilst I agree the drop rates have been dropped too hard ( I think 1% - .5% on Purple Jawa Junk seems fair being that if/when prices go back up 1 Purple = 40K+ ) and will most likely be somewhat scaled up if you bought this item thinking you had your own personal money tree and are now angry it's gone then you are delusional.

 

Also how many of you actually even made a loss? I figure you would need 1 stack of purples to break even on the initial sell point of 4 million ( much cheaper later on ) if prices go back to 40K+, 2 stacks at the current pricing of Midlithe which was up at 20K last I checked ( may have dropped again ). What's the norm a hypercrate even sells for? Say 4 million ... again 1-2 stacks. I'm sure most people got 10+ easy.

 

If you somehow did make a loss on this ... what were you doing with? Sitting their looking at and not using it even AFTER they announced it would be nerfed and after many people both in chat and on forums said it would definitely be nerfed.

 

Sorry but you snooze you lose if that's the case, I don't know why people would ONLY buy the crates for this item, get the item, then not use it for maximised profit.

 

It was so ridiculously easy to make massive profits off this thing ( heck, I didn't even take cartel certs drop into consideration above lol ) I find it utterly ridiculous people are now whinging about refunds heh.

[lightSaberAddiCt]

You really believe that THIS is the reason they made this change?

 

Yes I really believe that is why. I think the had a knee jerk reaction due to the people saying it was an exploit to misdirect attention on the ravager exploit, then added to that the constant posts by a small number of people. So they changed the odds to EXACTLY what the people in the posts said it should be.

 

Only now they are seeing that in fact, the honked off quite a larger number of people, people that actually spend money in the CM, that the mega rich mat sellers dont need to due to the fact they have so much creds, if they want something from the CM, they can just buy it off the GTN.

 

Now I bet they are scrambling to figure out how to put out this forest fire, that was caused by a small campfire.

Edited January 21, 2015 by lightSaberAddiCt

[Draqsko]

Should players expect anything other than some possible small tweaks to better balance the risk / reward? No.

 

This small tweak was brought to you by BW's new SWTOR development tools...

 

Hero Engine Code Editor

[LordArtemis]

The time has come, The Walrus said, to speak of many things. Of Howard Roarke and Architects, of cabbages and kings. And why the wind blows east then west, And whether devs have wings.

 

Artemis, you did *not* suggest that purples be dialed down, you said they were fine as they were -- that was what started our conversation yesterday, in this very thread:

You:http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7965732&postcount=456

Me: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7965732&postcount=463

 

My proposal (from way earlier in the thread) was that removing all jawa stuff (replacing drops with the free spin, not a loss), or at least reducing the purples to 1%, and leaving the rest as is would be sufficient to correct the damage to mission gathering skills without negatively impacting the rest of the machine's functionality.

 

So basically you are asking them to balance the nerf by adopting my suggestion.

 

I'm not saying this to gloat or rub anything in, because like you, I am "not thrilled" with the stealth nerf to the Certificate drop rates. And, as I said, I don't like to take pleasure in others' misfortune. I know you thought the devs were taking the game in a 'better" direction. To be honest, I had hoped that it really was intentional (even if it was something I didn't want), since I'd rather somebody do a good job on a game I wouldn't like than a bad job on one I do.

 

You were the one that corrected me on the purples eartharioch....you convinced me. I posted later on in the thread somewhere that I was starting to see what you meant...the RNG had my purple drop rate low, but it caught up pretty quick.

 

In other words, you were most definitely right with respect to the drop rate for purples being far too high. Just wanted to make sure my credit to you on that point was clear.

 

I was wrong. I appreciate you changing my mind.

Edited January 21, 2015 by LordArtemis

[eartharioch]

They state as well that the intent of having the materials drop from the slot was intentional as a price pressure on the current markets as they were higher than they wanted to see.

 

They were looking for a fun way to exert a market pressure downwards on pricing for the current top tier materials and items produced with them, but one that was making things accessible, not 'rock bottom'.

 

That is not what they said. They said, "When we were going into 3.0.2, we wanted to make Grade 11 materials more accessible to more players than they were at the time." That doesn't mean that they thought the prices were too high -- if the prices really were too high, nobody would have been buying them, and sellers should have lowered the prices without any need for BW to do anything. The fact that the prices were that high and stuff was selling [would have] told BW that the demand is extremely high compared to the supply. I know that I was running missions as fast as I could, and (at the pre-crash sales prices) I assume most people who could were as well, but only BW could tell if players were running a reasonable number of missions.

 

I don't know what the facts are (since I don't have access to BW's metrics), but if the prices were being caused by deliberate undersupply (unlikely), BW should have done nothing (since all players have access to the missions, adequate in gamer self help exists). If, on the other hand, demand was high even though the "expected" number of missions was being run (no deliberate undersupply), than adding new mat sources (hopefully at less attractive price/time points than running missions) is a reasonable solution.

 

In short, you are confusing a symptom with the cause.

[Khevar]

Yes I really believe that is why. I think the had a knee jerk reaction due to the people saying it was an exploit to misdirect attention on the ravager exploit, then added to that the constant posts by a small number of people. So they changed the odds to EXACTLY what the people in the posts said it should be.

I completely disagree.

 

I believe that one of two things happened:

 

1. Someone misplaced a decimal place in today's patch (and is now in deep trouble), or

2. Someone decided ON PURPOSE to kill the results of the slots.

 

If it was on purpose, there is no way it was due to "constant posts by a small number of people", because the nerf that was delivered is NOT what anyone was demanding.

 

You're welcome to link even a single post from anyone that demands what we ended up getting. Forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Khevar

[LordArtemis]

I am not sure If I should put this here or in the other "conversation" thread, so I will post it in both just in case one gets more traffic than the other.

 

So I have a few suggestions to fix this.

 

They could change drop rates as follows....

 

fail - 24.993%

token - 26%

green rep - 20%

blue rep - 15%

purple rep - 5%

green mat - 6%

blue mat - 2%

purple mat - 1%

certificate - 4%

mount - 0.007%

 

This would drastically reduce high end scraps without nerfing them out of existence, increase the mount chance to the one during the NarShadaa Nightlife event, and push certificates up to the level they should be. It also keeps failure level below 25 percent like it should be.

 

Now, if they choose to keep scrap levels at current levels (which, IMO would be fine)

 

fail - 24.993%

token - 30.55%

green rep - 20%

blue rep - 15%

purple rep - 5%

green mat - 0.2%

blue mat - 0.15%

purple mat - 0.1%

certificate - 4%

mount - 0.007%

 

Now this doubles old cert drop rate, making it the main prize along with rep tokens, and rolls the extra percentage into the token drop. The failure rate remains below 25 percent.

 

And here is a third option, if they wanted to go the route of adding a "lucky" buff.

 

fail - 35%/24.993%

token - 20%/26%

lucky buff - 10%

green rep - 16.999%/20%

blue rep - 13%/15%

purple rep - 4.5%/5%

green mat - 0.2%/6%

blue mat - 0.15%/2%

purple mat - 0.1%/1%

certificate - 0.05%/4%

mount - 0.002%/0.007%

 

Now, this setup would provide the current numbers, but would boost the numbers as shown in the second set if you hit a "lucky buff", that would last for a certain period of time. This is the best option IMO...it gives players the incentive to roll for a chance to get better numbers...not as good as they were, but much better than they are.

 

This reduces the chances from a pure reset to one of the sets above, which averages out a lower amount overall, but nowhere near as bad as it is now....and players have an incentive to roll.

 

This would be the option I would choose to make everyone happy.

Edited January 21, 2015 by LordArtemis

[Shoraan]

Yes I really believe that is why. I think the had a knee jerk reaction due to the people saying it was an exploit to misdirect attention on the ravager exploit, then added to that the constant posts by a small number of people. So they changed the odds to EXACTLY what the people in the posts said it should be.

 

Only now they are seeing that in fact, the honked off quite a larger number of people, people that actually spend money in the CM, that the mega rich mat sellers dont need to due to the fact they have so much creds, if they want something from the CM, they can just buy it off the GTN.

 

Now I bet they are scrambling to figure out how to put out this forest fire, that was caused by a small campfire.

 

I didn't see a single post demanding they reduce the drop rates to where it's almost cheaper to buy CM packs from the GTN, hoping to get Jawa Junk from there instead of trying the slot machine.

 

As I wrote in another post:

 

[...] The challenge with new "toys" is finding the sweet spot of "attractive", which lies somehere between "useless" and "totally OP". [...]

 

It seems they may have missed that sweet spot - and not just by a little.

 

What is really weird is the increase of the price for the chips. Why does that need to be increased if the drop rates for the nice things are basically down to zero? Imagine a public transport company announcing their ticket price going up by 50% and a day later they announce that instead of buses they now use donkeys for transportation.

 

We would have been better of if they hadn't announced the patch at all. But stating that the chip price would see an increase by 50% without revealing the nerf bat - that's just mean. And it's not like speculatiion based on info gathered on the PTS. It's really omitting important information and therefore suggesting that the nerf would be moderate.

 

Seriously, with the current drop rate I'm tempted to delete the chips I still have (despite their cost) and do something else with the time I save. (Like posting here, which is about as productive as feeding chips to the slot machine.)

[xRedx]

I'm going to repost what I said elsewhere, in a thread that is more likely to be seen by Bioware employees:

 

 

 

As it is, I already got my legend rep from playing slots last week. I have seen the new odds published off-site, I have seen people post their sample sizes with many thousands of chips here, and all I can say is that there is no point in continuing to use the slot machine whatsoever. The scrap materials from the machine need to be calculated based upon the cost to acquire the mats from crew skill missions plus some percentage for convenience, not blindly nerfed by moving the decimal point two places to the right. And there was no reason to change cartel market certificate drops whatsoever. None. At least if the certs had been left alone, the machine would still have a viable (but much narrower) use.

 

Basically this. Slots were all the rage last week and it lasted that one week. Now nobody cares about the slots after they've been nerfed to near death. If it was working 100% as planned, why "fix" it? Like everyone else, I figured that the items needed a different drop rate. I ended up getting way more purple than green scraps. That's what I think was the worst part that needed to be fixed: make it slightly more difficult to obtain purple materials. Now it's a pain to just get one or two green scraps, nevermind any purples, and it's easier to get the walker from Yavin than the one in the slots. What's the point of it now? It's just a decoration that eats your credits. Nobody's coming over to play anymore. You're not fooling anyone.

 

One piece of green scrap isn't worth 75k credits.

Edited January 21, 2015 by xRedx

[Andryah]

Honestly, if they do another tweak on these rates, I'm pretty sure for every one person who is mollified you'll have two or three who get more pissed off. ("You owe me [X] number of certs because I spent a thousand coins while the rate was still lower!" "I sold my machine super-cheap because you made the rewards suck, you just screwed me by making them desirable again!" "Oh great, BW, way to cave to whining minority that wanted the rates higher!" "What is this amateur hour BS, you're changing it again?!?!")

 

Yep.

 

They have created operational quicksand here.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yep.

 

They have created operational quicksand here.

 

Indeed. They've created a no-win situation for themselves, and in such a way that the only rational conclusion is that they're either inept, or dishonest.

 

Eric -- sorry, but we can no longer take your statements as factual, even if you were just as jerked around as the players have been in this debacle.

 

(Damn I'm glad I waited a week before spending credits on a CSM.)

[LordArtemis]

Contraband slot machine patch......

[dscount]

I agree a "Nerf" was needed and expected to a small degree, but this was not a nerf. This was the REMOVAL of the item from the game basically. Making it more useless than crafting missions are today (Which suck BTW).

 

I'll move mine back into inventory and replace with something useful in the strong hold.. Like a planter.

 

Sorry Bioware... you guys screwed the pooch on this one. Your economics person must be the same person that hosed 16m SM Loot table.

[Jeweledleah]

Contraband slot machine patch......

 

you know... when I see you lose your cool and Adryah actualy shake head at these developments

 

you KNOW bioware REALLY messed up this time.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Jeweledleah

[MeNaCe-NZ]

They could change drop rates as follows....

 

fail - 24.993%

token - 26%

green rep - 20%

blue rep - 15%

purple rep - 5%

green mat - 6%

blue mat - 2%

purple mat - 1%

certificate - 4%

mount - 0.007%

 

^^ This would be fine imo and adjust the coin rate to suit over time to ensure the slots still become a generally "loss" making venture. There should never be guaranteed winning gambling, that's just retarded.

 

Though 4% cert rate? 0.4% I would want, these were supposed to be a rare reward for pack buyers so should still be fairly hard to obtain.

 

For example I can see why bring in the rep trophies to help people get rep because with the amount of packs now they may very well never or very rarely bring back those old packs. The certs however can be used on ALL CM rep vendors and drop from all current and old packs except nightlife ( which dropped no rep ). Thus they give people easy rep for old content that can't be obtained any other way ideally but if they want the items from the vendors that use cert's they can buy the current packs ( or risk a very rare drop rate on the slots ).

 

In short, there is no reason certs should be a fairly easy drop on slots, they should be very rare ( .4% sounds fair ).

 

One last thing ... I paid MILLIONS of credits getting my contraband reputation up when apcks were costing around 400K each. Based on people's refund theory should I get a refund because BW never mentioned they were bringing this in? Or should I get a refund because they bought the packs back?

No I shouldn't, it sounds stupid doesn't it? I ran the risk and got what I paid for ( except I had utterly zero hint these slots would shot up, everyone knew they would be nerfed though ).

[Andryah]

Eric -- sorry, but we can no longer take your statements as factual, even if you were just as jerked around as the players have been in this debacle.

 

I generally cut dev teams a lot of slack because it is indeed hard to please everyone.

 

But in this case, I agree with you.

 

On this one, it's like he is role playing Goldilocks, while trolling the playerbase with his very best rendition of Lucy&the-football....with a little Dr Evil thrown in for good measure just to make sure nobody is left who is not pissed off about this whole debacle.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[MeNaCe-NZ]

1. Someone misplaced a decimal place in today's patch (and is now in deep trouble), or

 

I agree with this, the same person who set purple/blue/green drop rates too high and at the same rate when they first launched which when you think of it is more of a stuff up then this nerf but everyone wasn't whinging so hard then were they heh.

[DurdensWrath]

Indeed. They've created a no-win situation for themselves, and in such a way that the only rational conclusion is that they're either inept, or dishonest.

 

Eric -- sorry, but we can no longer take your statements as factual, even if you were just as jerked around as the players have been in this debacle.

 

(Damn I'm glad I waited a week before spending credits on a CSM.)

 

I have to wonder if Eric is even trustworthy any more. I've placed him in the same category as Casey Hudson.

 

I'd almost rather I never heard from him again, and someone else did his job.

[Andryah]

I agree with this, the same person who set purple/blue/green drop rates too high and at the same rate when they first launched which when you think of it is more of a stuff up then this nerf but everyone wasn't whinging so hard then were they heh.

 

dang interns!

 

Everyone knows interns should only be allowed to redo the engine, over the weekend, while drunk and blind folded.

[Andryah]

I have to wonder if Eric is even trustworthy any more.

 

Trust. Hard to earn, easy to forfeit. Even harder to earn it back.

 

Eric is definitely way into deficit territory here at the moment.

 

The complete silence on the part of gold posts here today.... not helping either.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[Reno_Tarshil]

Trust. Hard to earn, easy to forfeit. Even harder to earn it back.

 

Eric is definitely way into deficit territory here at the moment.

 

The complete silence on the part of gold posts here today.... not helping either.

 

He's just a messenger though. Not shure why he's suddenly become a scapegoat.

[Vhaegrant]

No item is introduced into a running game without a point of concept and a brief of what it should achieve.

If an item is going to generate an output that has the potential to affect the economy a moderate amount of theory-craft should be spent on it.

Best practice would indicate a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis (SWOT) be carried out.

 

I know that and I failed Business Studies.

 

I suspect that yet again the developers just don't get the sort of time some MMO players are willing to put into pressing the same button over and over and over again. I've seen the number of coins some players went through during the Nightlife event and having glanced through a few of the threads on the Contraband Slots there has been little change.

 

The end result is, a fun item that was probably intended to be used as a buffer for those players struggling to get access to purple crafting mats has been run into the ground by the 24/7 MMO brigade.

 

It's why we don't get to have nice stuff