Slot Machines: Limit the number of coins that can be used per day.

[Vhaegrant]

The Contraband slot machines are a good idea, aside from the obvious drop rates on the initial release, the biggest issue is that they are so easily exploited by those with a lot of time on their hands or the third party tech to run macros. This is not a good thing.

 

If news from the recent San Antonio Cantina event is true and they are not considering a further change then this also is not a good thing.

 

I agree that the first drop rates were far too high. But the reaction to nerf them into oblivion to balance it against those players that sit for 5+ hours at a time clicking the slots completely destroys the item for those that found it a fun way to pass a little time between queues popping.

 

It should also be remembered that while companions run Crew missions the player can get on with other stuff, whether in-game such as dailies, fps, etc... or out of game such as sleeping. The slot machine is an exclusive activity, you can not do anything else, although you can still send companions out on crew missions.

 

I have previously suggested differing drop rates, I'll list them again here for completion.

 

Raise slot-chip cost to 1,000 credits.

 

• 30.49% (0.3049) Loss
  
• 25% (0.25) Green Reputation Token
  
• 10% (0.1) Blue Reputation Token
  
• 4% (0.04) Purple Reputation Token
  
• 20% (0.2) Green Jawa Material
  
• 8% (0.08) Blue Jawa Material
  
• 2% (0.02) Purple Jawa Material
  
• 0.5% (0.005) Cartel Certificate
  
• 0.01% (0.0001) Faction Mount
  

 

Limit the amount of slot-chips a legacy can spend per day to 200.

 

I feel these steps go a long way to moderating the impact any abuse can have while still meeting the original criteria.

 

Restricting the number of times a player can do an activity is nothing new in MMOs. We already have dailies, weeklies, OP lockouts and a limit on the number of coms that can be earned in a week and stored.

 

I purposely removed the reward of a slot-chip as I prefer simpler maths, at most it extends the time spent feeding slot-chips into the machine, as pure reward with slot-chips costing 1,000 credits it is effectively the same as a Blue reputation win after you've maxed out reputation

 

The limit across the legacy is to stop abuse of using 22 character slots.

If 200 sounds too low then maybe a Legacy unlock feature could be added.

 

'I don't have a problem!' Legacy unlock :

• Rank 1: +100 slot-chips per day = 2,000,000 credits
  
• Rank 2: +100 slot-chips per day = 4,000,000 credits
  
• Rank 3: +100 slot-chips per day = 8,000,000 credits
  

Edited January 24, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[JainaShan]

i support that.

decent drop rates and nice idea with 200 chips limit

 

in that state its barely profitable, no economy impact and yet still fun to play that mini-game when waitin for gf pop.

[lightSaberAddiCt]

The only thing I would disagred with is the 2% drop rate for JJ. At 1k a spin, it should be a little higher. It should average the cost of missions that deliver a purple mat. It is more work to sit there staring at a machine, doing nothing else, then just sending comps on a mission and going about your business.

[beasthunt]

Make the drop rates a bit higher, the coins a bit cheaper (800 perhaps) and up the amount used to 400, and that sounds good.

[Vhaegrant]

The only thing I would disagred with is the 2% drop rate for JJ. At 1k a spin, it should be a little higher. It should average the cost of missions that deliver a purple mat. It is more work to sit there staring at a machine, doing nothing else, then just sending comps on a mission and going about your business.

 

I think it's a good point to make and one that bears repeating that the slot machine is an exclusive activity. Aside from running crew missions, which you can do alongside other activities too, all you are going to be doing is clicking the same decoration over and over and over again.

I think the drop rates in the first release were badly thought out with roughly equal chances of the green, blue and purple mats. The ratio I gave (10:4:1) was off the top of my head and something that felt right, of course I would prefer to see testing of such ratios on an in-game test bed, say the PTS, to make sure an item being introduced wouldn't drastically effect the game.

 

The trouble is that the slot machine means different things to different folk.

To some it was a good way of getting reputation with a vendor that they didn't have access to before (within reason, access was limited to Cartel Market packs sold for cash or credits) at a more reasonable rate.

To some it was a great way of gaining Cartel Certificates (again, drop rate far too high alongside the other odds), the best return I had on a single stack of 99 slot-chips was 6 cartel certificates.

To the vast majority it was a means to grind out vast numbers of jawa material tokens.

 

Somewhere in there lies a solution to balance the drop rates so that you don't need to sit there feeding a machine for hours upon end to see any return.

 

One of the better ways is to rise the price of the slot-chip and increase drop rates while limiting how many can be fed in per day (or week). Of course that could do with a little fine tuning

[Vhaegrant]

Make the drop rates a bit higher, the coins a bit cheaper (800 perhaps) and up the amount used to 400, and that sounds good.

 

The point is to try and strike a balance of a drop rate that is acceptable against a credit sink.

 

Jawa materials are not the only thing that drop, to many players the Cartel Certificates are equally if not more important.

 

I can't be angry at having the machines nerfed, I spent just under 5 million on the slot machine and a further 500,000 credits on slot-chips (10 stacks) and for that I enough reputation tokens to take me up to Legendary and 38 cartel certificates. That only took about an hour and a half of clicking over 3 days.

Those certificates will get me a nice mask of Revan and a couple of rare mounts all of which regularly sell (or at least appear on the GTN) in excess of 10 million credits.

 

If you make the slot-chips cheaper you lower the credit sink.

If you make the drop rate too high you invalidate other means of acquiring the items.

I did edit my original post to put in the option to increase the number of slot-chips through a legacy unlock.

 

I feel the biggest issue with the slot machine, and any future machine, is trying to balance it against those players that will sit and click on it for 10~20 mins while they get through a couple of stacks of chips and those that will sit there and click for upwards of 5+ hours at a time (with modern technology as it is the vast majority of MMO keyboards and mice come with macro facilities so some players may not even be at the keyboard while their character is doing this)

 

The 'fix' to the initial drop rates was a panic reaction. If they were looking at internal metrics I would assume the subsequent fix was made largely based on the time spent by players clicking for hours at a time. A very bad base line, especially as they were effectively forewarned that the slot machines were a time limited ... um really struggling to find a word in the English lexicon that isn't 'exploit'

 

The code for setting a variable, altering it and resetting it daily or weekly should be there already. So many aspects of the game already use it such as Daily/Weekly mission, OPs lockouts, Com earned per week, total com stored, legacy achievements, GTN.

 

It can't be beyond the limits of the engine to implement a restriction on the number of slot-chips a legacy can feed into the slot machines.

 

I balance it across the legacy to prevent over abuse of multiple characters (although I could make an argument to open it to a per character restriction to try and drive character slot unlock uptake )

The starting point of 200 slot-chips per day (or 1,400 per week) was there to keep the activity light (10~20 mins a day depending on whether you want to put the reward of a slot-chip back in) and stop the market from being flooded by cheap materials.

 

Anyone dedicated to churning out crew missions across 12-14 characters can get a far greater return on purple mats constantly cycling between the characters and sending crew out on the missions. An equally brain numbing activity all be it interspersed with far more loading screens

 

I just wanted to see the slot machines balanced back to a point where they were a viable source of entertainment for more casual less exploitative players.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[ghoul_drool]

Limiting the number of coins would have been an easy and painless solution. Wouldn't even have needed a price increase on the coins. Goes to show how little thought went into just maing the mats uber rare drops.

[Vhaegrant]

I didn't think to list the potential gain/loss break down in my original post:

 

200 slot-chips at 1,000 credits each = 200,000 credit outlay

 

 

• 30.49% (0.3049) Loss
  
• 25% (0.25) Green Reputation Token ~50@500cr = 25,000cr
  
• 10% (0.1) Blue Reputation Token ~20@1,000cr = 20,000cr
  
• 4% (0.04) Purple Reputation Token ~8@2,500cr = 20,000cr
  
• 20% (0.2) Green Jawa Material ~40
  
• 8% (0.08) Blue Jawa Material ~16
  
• 2% (0.02) Purple Jawa Material ~4
  
• 0.5% (0.005) Cartel Certificate ~1
  
• 0.01% (0.0001) Faction Mount ~small chance of getting a fun mount
  

 

The reputation tokens only have inherent value until the reputation for that vendor is maxed out to Legendary, after that they only offset the initial cost of the slot-chips. I suspect the reputation is not the primary consideration for balance but rather the cartel certificates and purple jawa tokens.

 

Initial outlay of 200,000cr less the redeemed reputation tokens (65,000cr) = 135,000cr loss

Rewards:

40 Green Jawa Material

16 Blue Jawa Material

4 Purple Jawa Material

1 Cartel Certificate

Very remote chance of Faction Mount

 

I suspect a payout of 135,000cr may be deemed too high, but personally I feel the Cartel Certificate should hold a reasonably high value, after all unless you are paying cartel coins (cash) for the cartel packs each costs on average in excess of 350,000cr on the GTN.

 

But, these are only suggested values, the main point I am trying to make is that the slot machines need to have an element of restricted use. This allows the drop rate to be high enough to be interesting, but not open to easy exploitation.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[venomlash]

I would support this.

 

The only problem is that people might make extra accounts to try and grind more chips...but if they really have that little life, eh, maybe we should just feel sorry for them.

[Ponytail]

Not to mention they could also have added other win options such as 1-3 coins returned, companion gifts, 5-6 mounts at present hard to get levels, 10-12 stronghold items at a hard to get level, etc. That would have served to reduce the amount of crafting materials as well while giving people reason to continue to play.

 

As it stands there just isn't much reason to play, especially after you get the faction mounts.

[Vhaegrant]

Not to mention they could also have added other win options such as 1-3 coins returned, companion gifts, 5-6 mounts at present hard to get levels, 10-12 stronghold items at a hard to get level, etc. That would have served to reduce the amount of crafting materials as well while giving people reason to continue to play.

 

As it stands there just isn't much reason to play, especially after you get the faction mounts.

 

Having just done a quick (an hour of my life I'll never get back) 500 slot-chip run to see the new drop rates with my own eyes, as the slot machines currently stand they are just for raising reputation (aside from reputation tokens all I got from 500 was 1 green Jawa token)

 

I think there is room to consider other items to put on the slot machines but you fall into the problem of making them the more attractive solution than getting the item the 'hard' way.

 

You have to keep the current cartel packs viable, if players know a year down the road that item is going to be winnable on a slot machine are they going to sink vast amounts of credits on it? Or, maybe just the knowledge that it will be available at a future time will be enough to devalue it. Remember all of these objects are virtual and have no intrinsic value other than their considered rarity.

 

I did think of suggesting linking a particular Mobs loot table to the slot machines, but then isn't the point of the game to be out their killing the mobs rather than paying a handful of credits for a similar drop chance?

 

I'll stand by my statement that the Slot machine was a good idea, I just feel it didn't get a full spin of the development cycle before it was released.

 

Lowering the drop rates was a much needed response (even better would have been to place it on the PTS so it could be tested) but to lower them so far was an insult.

[Drockter]

Completely support this.

 

Its strikes a nice balance on the machine... still useful, but not so useful that everything else becomes secondary.

[Vhaegrant]

The exact details could be debated, such as number and whether the lockout should be a daily or weekly limit, but the principle seems to offer up the best way of stopping over abuse while still being able to set the slot machine odds at a reasonable rate.

 

The biggest problem with the slot machines was purely the rate of purple jawa tokens (and to a lesser extent the cartel certificates).

 

The rate of green jawa tokens made no difference, if you don't believe me just go to Yavin 4 and do the dailies stopping to harvest a resource node if you see one on your mini radar. On one character with scavenging in about an hour of play I picked up just over 6 full stacks of grade 11 materials (3 of each)

 

The rate of blue jawa tokens was a bit high, they should be lower, but still on the slot machine, why? Because the number of crew missions run to try and get crits for purple mats already results in the blue material market being saturated with top grade materials.

 

The rate of purple jawa tokens was ridiculous. In many cases I won more purple tokens than I did green or blue. Couple this to the addition of grade 11 purples to the jawa vendor and it was an obvious problem waiting to happen. How this wasn't flagged before release should be of greater concern, not the damage it did to the economy (it could be argued it didn't damage the economy at all only the profit margins of dedicated crafters and CM whales in truth it only functioned as a credit sink.).

 

The rate of the cartel certificate was also too high (lowest from a stack of 99 slot-chips was 1, highest was 6). Bearing in mind for many the certificates are a reason to buy more cartel packs in the first place making them almost freely available (with the personnel decorations it could be argued it was a way of printing money) devalued the future cartel packs. This designed by the team responsible for the future sales of cartel packs

 

Lastly the reputation tokens, only useful if your reputation is below legendary. After that they are little more than a refund. With the raising of the price of a slot-chip to 750 credits it feels absurd to get a Jackpot animation for winning a green reputation token and actually loose 250 credits in the deal

 

Prior to the slot machine nerf I fed 500 slot-chips in at a cost of 250,000 credits

Winnings

37 (7.4%) Purple Reputation Token

57 (11.4%) Blue Reputation Token

52 (10.4%) Green Reputation Token

 

57 (11.4%) Purple Jawa Token

65 (13%) Blue Jawa Token

68 (13.6%) Green Jawa Token

 

15 (3%) Cartel Certificate

 

After the nerf I fed in another 500 at a cost of 375,000 credits

Winnings:

28 (5.6%) Purple Reputation Token

75 (15%) Blue Reputation Token

108 (21.6%) Green Reputation Token

 

0 (?%) Purple Jawa Token

0 (?%) Blue Jawa Token

1 (0.5%) Green Jawa Token

 

0 (?%) Cartel Certificate

Oh, and no I didn't get the mount

 

This wasn't a rebalancing of the drop rates, this was effectively the complete removal of an aspect that drove the sales of the item.

 

The lack of clear communication, or an observable chain of quality control, has concerned me more than the draconic alteration.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[comestbest]

the fix they did was fine. it's basically only a handful of people who keep bumping threads and keep making new threads about it.

 

 

resources should never come from a slot machine, the end.

[Sendric]

OP: Great idea and a fair middle ground. I also really like the idea of a legacy unlock to extend the cap.

[Mariojediwookie]

I would support this.

 

The only problem is that people might make extra accounts to try and grind more chips...but if they really have that little life, eh, maybe we should just feel sorry for them.

 

yeah, the credit farmers have no life. They are the only ones that could ruin a cap on chips per day.

 

Originally I thought this is what they were going to do......put a hard cap on the number rolls you can get at the slots per day BY LEGACY. Of course as the poster has suggested, they completely flipped out when they saw their internal numbers of how many certs and mats were acquired in a single week. They had to put the hammer down quick, that is understandable but now they have time to review it a hard cap per day is actually much easier to regulate (if you take credit farmers out of the equation).

 

Maybe the only way to regulate the credit farmers is putting a cap on how much each slot can be pulled overall (so the cap will be no the slot, not your character). That's probably the only way something like the poster wants will work.

[Vhaegrant]

the fix they did was fine. it's basically only a handful of people who keep bumping threads and keep making new threads about it.

The fix they did was heavy handed and completely changed the functioning of the Contraband Slot Machine.

Before the nerf it was stated to be working as intended and a fun way to circulate more grade 11 materials, after the nerf it is purely a Cartel reputation generator.

I feel people have a genuine grievance. I, and most others accept that the initial drop rates for purple jawa tokens and cartel certificates were too high. However releasing the slot machine in this state and saying continued use wasn't an 'exploit' drove a feeding frenzy that I feel over inflated the subsequent metrics used to determine the fix.

I'd not seen anyone previously suggest capping the number of times a slot machine could be played, hence the generation of another slot machine thread. Not just to complain but to offer constructive criticism and offer possible suggestions at a solution.

 

resources should never come from a slot machine, the end.

Resources should never be added that actively discourages the use of existing systems for their generation.

 

Green Materials are available freely when harvesting in game nodes and for bioanalysis and scavenging from silver and above mobs. The grade 11 greens from Rishi and Yavin 4 are harvested in much higher numbers and the mobs are effectively treated as a resource node, whereas previously a mob would only return 1-2 mats. Given this higher return and the amount of time players spend running dailies at endgame this market is already saturated.

 

Blue and Purple Materials are the main issue, Purples far more than Blue. There are no means of acquiring these from carrying out in-game actions on your character in an unlimited fashion. You have to send companions out on specific crew missions to stand a chance of getting the purples, otherwise you just get the blues. This drives far more blue materials in relation to purples and has kept the GTN prices of high end blue materials barely above the price you would get if you were to vendor them.

Or, you can buy cartel market packs, or you can join a guild that regularly places in the top 10 conquest table and achieve your own personal goal.

 

The big issue on the initial launch was having the Jawa tokens fall at roughly the same ratio. I suggest a 10 G : 4 B : 1 P ratio just because that feels about right. But I'm not saying I'd like that ratio fixed in stone, vary it, discuss it. If you feel having purple jawa tokens is the big issue take them off the slot machine altogether.

 

But, seeing as you have easy ways of gathering greens and generating blues I see no harm with leaving them on the slot machine.

 

The cartel certificates are another issue. They are a nice reward but at 3% felt their initial drop rate was too high and devalued their inclusion in existing cartel packs. However their current drop rate makes them non existent. With the higher drop rates and the inclusion of certain Stronghold decorations as cartel cert only purchases and tradable on the GTN you had an effective means of monetising the Cartel Certificates. Lowering the drop rates is a start but doesn't really help if a player can sit on a character and churn through stack after stack of slot-chips.

 

To me limiting the use seems the best compromise.

Again I offer suggestions not ultimatums.

 

Is a weekly limit fairer than a daily limit? What sort of values allow for reasonable drop rewards without unbalancing overall return? Should it be account wide, legacy wide or per character? Should it be affected by subscriber status? Should there be further unlocks available?

Edited January 28, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[Muljo_Stpho]

Limit the amount of slot-chips a legacy can spend per day to 200.

 

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with what you're trying to accomplish but I'm curious if you had any real thoughts on how they would actually implement such a thing because it seems to me like it would be a huge stretch to get anything even remotely close to this with current game mechanics. I mean...

 

A) You could create a debuff similar to "resource exhaustion" except that it would stack and it would be applied with every pull instead of having a random chance to be applied. (Call it... "token fiend"?) That would create a strict counter and maybe it could apply a new "slot machine exhaustion" debuff when you try to get past the 200 mark, although it would be tied to character, not legacy. (I'm not sure if they can have the same buff alter its functionality at a certain number of stacks. I doubt it. So the counter probably wouldn't be the same thing that actually prevents use when the limit is reached.)

 

B) You could move slot tokens into the currency tab and give them a cap of 200 so that you cannot pick up more than 200. But this would also be per character, not per legacy. And then it would not distinguish between tokens obtained through purchase and tokens obtained as "prizes", so the "free spin" result would become a bit of a penalty. (Once the cap is reached, if you win a token back you wouldn't really receive a token back so it would actually just be the same as a loss. And just imagine the "screw you!" prize that it would become if they added "win 2 tokens" as a possible result.)

 

C) See this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=793302

You could create a special token obtainable only through daily and weekly mission rewards. Change the gambling token to have this special token and small fee in credits as the purchase requirements, and add a separate option to purchase the gambling token at a much higher cost in credits. This would technically have no limit because of that second purchase option, but that option would be prohibitively expensive and therefore very inefficient for farming the machine with. What would be limited would be the cheap spins, since you would need to earn tokens from dailies and weeklies to convert into the gambling tokens. This option would also be on a per character basis, nothing legacy based about it. Although there's a practical limit as well. You can change characters to grind more dailies, but that means that much more time spent grinding dailies.

 

Any other ideas? And really think it through. Be as specific as you possibly can.

 

In the absence of an idea that actually captures your "limit of 200 uses per day per legacy", how do any of those options sound as alternatives? Which one would you think would be effective enough to serve the intended purpose in the best way possible?

 

edit: I thought I saw a comment somewhere in this topic that referenced the possibility of the decoration itself storing some sort of counter value and shutting itself down when the counter maxes out. I assume that this is based on the misconception of a "legacy lockout" on the resource node decorations when you get one to bug out and become unclickable. But that is not any sort of intended feature of the decoration. It is something failing to load correctly when you load directly into the same stronghold (rather than logging in anywhere else and then traveling to the stronghold after logging in (you can reliably duplicate or avoid the bug by being aware of this, although having guests hanging out in your stronghold can help cause the bug too regardless of where you log in when you switch characters)). Plus, it's easy enough to work around anyway. Edit mode, pick up decoration, place it again, and it's reset back to normal. They could never code a restriction into a decoration like that because we could always just pick it up and place it back down to reset it back to new anyway. (And people would freak out if they changed that so that decorations could get locked into place so that you can't edit a hook if somebody has used an interactive decoration in that hook too recently.)

Edited January 29, 2015 by Muljo_Stpho

[Vhaegrant]

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with what you're trying to accomplish but I'm curious if you had any real thoughts on how they would actually implement such a thing because it seems to me like it would be a huge stretch to get anything even remotely close to this with current game mechanics. I mean...

 

A) You could create a debuff similar to "resource exhaustion" except that it would stack and it would be applied with every pull instead of having a random chance to be applied. (Call it... "token fiend"?) That would create a strict counter and maybe it could apply a new "slot machine exhaustion" debuff when you try to get past the 200 mark, although it would be tied to character, not legacy. (I'm not sure if they can have the same buff alter its functionality at a certain number of stacks. I doubt it. So the counter probably wouldn't be the same thing that actually prevents use when the limit is reached.)

 

B) You could move slot tokens into the currency tab and give them a cap of 200 so that you cannot pick up more than 200. But this would also be per character, not per legacy. It also would not distinguish between tokens obtained through purchase and tokens obtained as "prizes", so the "free spin" result would become a bit of a penalty. (Once the cap is reached, if you win a token back you wouldn't really receive a token back so it would actually just be the same as a loss.)

 

C) See this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=793302

You could create a special token obtainable only through daily and weekly mission rewards. Change the gambling token to have this special token and small fee in credits as the purchase requirements, and add a separate option to purchase the gambling token at a much higher cost in credits. This would technically have no limit because of that second purchase option, but that option would be prohibitively expensive and therefore very inefficient for farming the machine with. What would be limited would be the cheap spins, since you would need to earn tokens from dailies and weeklies to convert into the gambling tokens. This option would also be on a per character basis, nothing legacy based about it. Although there's a practical limit as well. You can change characters to grind more dailies, but that means that much more time spent grinding dailies.

 

Any other ideas? And really think it through. Be as specific as you possibly can.

 

I suspect the game already sits with workable code in place.

The code I refer to is that used to track and alter Reputation levels across a players legacy (to a lesser degree the code is probably also there in the Achievements all though that is one way and doesn't have a weekly timer reset in it).

 

You only need to track two variables, and these are stored in the same area as other legacy bound variables:

Max_Chips : Maximum number of slot-chips used per time period.

Crnt_Chips : Current number of slot-chips used.

 

The first check is to make sure Crnt_Chips < Max_Chips. If that is true the random spin occurs and the outcome is determined. If Crnt_Chips=Max_Chips you trigger a message/ animation to say no more spins till reset.

 

The slot machine only increments Crnt_Chips +1 on a valid result, that is after the result of the spin is known, not when you imagine the slot-chip is being fed into the machine. Respin is not valid and so does not increment the Crnt_Chips variable, all other results are treated as valid.

 

On reset timer (a period of time, daily or weekly my suggested options) Crnt_Chips is reset to 0.

 

If the Legacy unlock option is added to open up a greater range they increment Max_Chips by the desired value.

 

 

Specific enough?

Edited January 29, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[LordArtemis]

I would be fine with a limit on coins.

 

I still think making the coins cost 2000c each is the way to go. At that price it is actually more economical to go with the missions, but better time wise to use the machine.

 

Of course I still think that purple and blue scraps needed to be nerfed as well. But green scrap was fine. Obviously so were certificates.

 

At 2000c each token I think the cost/return is reasonable.

[Vhaegrant]

yeah, the credit farmers have no life. They are the only ones that could ruin a cap on chips per day.

 

Originally I thought this is what they were going to do......put a hard cap on the number rolls you can get at the slots per day BY LEGACY. Of course as the poster has suggested, they completely flipped out when they saw their internal numbers of how many certs and mats were acquired in a single week. They had to put the hammer down quick, that is understandable but now they have time to review it a hard cap per day is actually much easier to regulate (if you take credit farmers out of the equation).

 

Maybe the only way to regulate the credit farmers is putting a cap on how much each slot can be pulled overall (so the cap will be no the slot, not your character). That's probably the only way something like the poster wants will work.

 

There is always a compromise to be made between accessibility to regular players and prevention of abuse by dedicated exploiters.

 

While not ideal and still open to some exploitation by those that want to put in the effort, I figured a cap linked to legacy meant the exploiter would have to take the time to log out of one account and into another. It's been awhile since I looked at the F2P/Preferred restrictions but I remember them being particularly harsh when it came to transferring items and credits by mail. That was the primary goal, to minimise the usage an exploiter could have from using a third party macro and increase the inconvenience factor by making them log on/off separate accounts.

 

Second to that is balancing the drop rates of the prizes to place a small to moderate loss on using the slot machines. This loss is in effect the player 'paying' for their winnings. Slot machines should definitely not be seen as a means to printing money. The two main offenders with regards to this were the Purple Jawa Tokens and the Cartel Certificates (specifically their use to purchase Personnel Stronghold decorations and relist them for sale on the GTN). I suggest both of these have their drop rate reduced. Using the slot machine should not supersede running crew missions for the acquisition of Purple materials, nor should it be easily abused to supply Cartel Certificates.

 

A third stage would be to alter the certificate costs on the existing vendors and make those Personnel Decorations Bind on Pickup, this would stop them being an easy way to monetise certificates. While the certificate would hold value to an individual, to an exploiter all that potential for profit would be locked onto their character thus making each stack of slot-chips far more costly, a pure credit sink. I'm not sure I know any credit farmers that would think running at a consistent loss is a viable path

 

From my tinkering with C++ and Neverwinter Nights, it is fine to place a variable on a non-player object in a single player game, in a multiplayer game (especially one with multiple instances) it is not such a good idea.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[Vhaegrant]

I would be fine with a limit on coins.

 

I still think making the coins cost 2000c each is the way to go. At that price it is actually more economical to go with the missions, but better time wise to use the machine.

 

Of course I still think that purple and blue scraps needed to be nerfed as well. But green scrap was fine. Obviously so were certificates.

 

At 2000c each token I think the cost/return is reasonable.

 

2,000 credits at the initial drop rates I take it?

 

I'm not so sure the drop rate of the certificates was great. They should be reasonably hard to acquire to help maintain some perceived rarity and hence value of the items on the Cartel Reputation Vendors. Without a usage limit and the high drop rate some early users have reported saving away upwards of 400 cartel certificates. This reduces the availability of such prestigious items as the Mask of Revan to a triviality rather than a choice.

Place in the usage limit and you can start to throttle back the pace at which a player can gather the certificates while still letting them drop at a rate that feels fun rather than a punishment.

 

Another solution, if BW are to continue on with the release of Slot Machines with reasonable drop rates, is to factor in the increased availability of the certificates with the intended rarity of the items by raising the certificate cost associated with the items (for example the Mask of Revan requires 100 certificates and 100,000k). And maybe consider raising the cost in certificates of the Personnel, or even going as far as making them Bind on Pick up so there is no means to monetise certificates through resale on the GTN. To an individual wanting the personnel this would make no difference but to a potential exploiter this would make using the machines far more of a credit sink.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Vhaegrant

[SelinaH]

I personally would prefer a debuff to a hard and fast limit. Muljo_Stpho suggested one similar to resource exhaustion; I've previously posted to suggest a debuff for reward drop rates similar to the "Feeling Lucky" buff from the Nightlife event.

 

Debuff post here

Full thread here

 

The advantage of a drop rate debuff is that you have the option of not completely gating the mechanic (that is, players could still use the machine); what would change is how attractive it would be to continue.

 

I could get behind a set limit on spins if it's determined that it would be the best and most feasible option. I'm just not sure it is, yet.

[Muljo_Stpho]

I suspect the game already sits with workable code in place.

The code I refer to is that used to track and alter Reputation levels across a players legacy (to a lesser degree the code is probably also there in the Achievements all though that is one way and doesn't have a weekly timer reset in it).

 

You only need to track two variables, and these are stored in the same area as other legacy bound variables:

Max_Chips : Maximum number of slot-chips used per time period.

Crnt_Chips : Current number of slot-chips used.

 

The first check is to make sure Crnt_Chips < Max_Chips. If that is true the random spin occurs and the outcome is determined. If Crnt_Chips=Max_Chips you trigger a message/ animation to say no more spins till reset.

 

The slot machine only increments Crnt_Chips +1 on a valid result, that is after the result of the spin is known, not when you imagine the slot-chip is being fed into the machine. Respin is not valid and so does not increment the Crnt_Chips variable, all other results are treated as valid.

 

On reset timer (a period of time, daily or weekly my suggested options) Crnt_Chips is reset to 0.

 

If the Legacy unlock option is added to open up a greater range they increment Max_Chips by the desired value.

 

 

Specific enough?

 

So aside from this error message if you try to spin after you've already hit the limit, where we would see this displayed... would be a new entry in the legacy menu possibly copy/pasted/modified from the reputation code as a base? (Hmmm... On that note, one counter for any and all slot machines to be introduced? Or a new counter added for each separate type of machine added?) Tweak the code to use the dailies reset time instead of the weeklies reset time... Tweak the code to zero out the current value on a reset as well since this is not exactly the same as reputation... Unless they want to keep in the system for ranks to be silly with it and grant new titles to those who keep coming back to the slots day after day? (In which case they'd pretty much have to plan to have a separate counter for each machine.) Hope that they don't screw something up and cause reputation values to get zeroed out at the next reset because they picked the wrong way to make that change...

 

Alright. It's something. Now if anybody over there actually reads and makes note of these ideas, if they bring something up at a meeting and ask "Is this feasible?" there's something specific to be discussed rather than (to imagine a worst case scenario for such a situation) getting a conversation that goes something like:

Exec: "An idea that fans have been floating around the forums says to add a legacy limit to slot machine uses so we can turn the drop rates back up a bit. Is it possible?"

Dev: "Shoot. I don't know... Maybe I could... Nah, but what if... No... How about..."

Exec: "Forget it. Moving onto the next idea." *crumples the paper and tosses it in the trash*

 

that is after the result of the spin is known, not when you imagine the slot-chip is being fed into the machine

 

That actually is exactly the same thing. We could see this demonstrated visually during the Nightlife Event when the lucky buff was active. The buff would disappear the instant you clicked on a machine for a jackpot roll, not the 2-3 seconds later when the animation actually reached the point where it shows the jackpot result. The result of the roll is determined before the animation is shown. The animation is just for show and has no actual relevance to anything.

[Lunafox]

The price we have to pay for chips now is too much. I wouldn't pay 1000. For the original chip price of 500, I'd be fine if they limited the number of stacks you can play to two per day or whatever, but it would have to be back pretty much to what it was before they nerf-zilla'd the machine.

 

Another thought I had, was put them back to the original way it was, but make it an 'event'. Like have a gambling weekend once every couple of months or so, and people could play to their hearts content then.