Transcription (partial) of Slot Machine Q&A friom Cantina

[DarkPharohEclip]

And this POS mount they give us for the slot machine debacle , isn't worth the time of day or the pixels it's made up of. Why do they reskin a mount and act like it is a new mount that only you can get from the slots? When you can get this mount on other vendors for much less hassle? I will tell you why, this dev team is lazy as **** and they will reskin everything so they don't have to come up with anything new... Almost all our gear is reskinned rehashed garbage.

[Frybert]

I'd feel more charitable towards BioWare if they hadn't:

 

-released a massively broken item without running the numbers as to its effect

-posted patch notes indicating a moderate nerf to the item

-released devastating nerf to the item DIRECTLY CONTRADICTED by the patch notes of the previous day (they said they'd buff the rep item drop rate, but they actually nerfed it slightly)

-after forum uproar over nerf, made hasty excuse at a community event but didn't even acknowledge the controversy via any official forum post, thereby losing control of the messaging

 

pooch = screwed // BioWare = losing confidence of fanbase

 

Ah, but they've finally decided the fate of the exploitorists. Progress my friends.

 

Edited January 25, 2015 by Frybert

[DarkPharohEclip]

/cue I've been playing since 1975 beta tests, this and that, gonna quit over the slots, blablabla

 

Does this seem like a joke to you? A lot , and I mean a lot, of people have been screwed by this nerf. Several people I know including myself have purchased many cartel packs and spend **** tons of real life money and in game credits to get this damned slot machine, that is now utterly useless! You don't think that is true? Give it a whirl for yourself. I can only think that the only people that would have been complaining are those that may not have had direct access to one of these machines. It isn't that hard to get one, or use the guild slot machine or go find a public stronghold and use their slot machines. If you don't have a guild.. why not? You get alot of benefits in this game simply by being in a guild and a lot of guilds don't even give a **** if you even socialize with them.

 

Too many people in this game pretend to worry about a fantasy economy. Who gives a ****, this isn't wall street... The game won't crash because a few items have become a bit cheaper to purchase, and like I have said before this idea that the machine was spewing out purple mats left and right is a pure fabrication... This was just an over exaggeration of what the machine was really outputting. Probably made by people who never even used the machines in the first place and were jealous that they didn't have one of their own.

Edited January 25, 2015 by DarkPharohEclip

[Draqsko]

Ah, but they've finally decided the fate of the exploitorists. Progress my friends.

 

They decided that long ago, they just decided to tell us they decided their fate now. Here's their fate:

 

Possible suspension of the worst offenders, the ones that sold it and transferred it to other servers.

Everyone else gets off scott-free.

 

It won't be more than that especially now, they can't afford to ban hammer everyone with the current "sh-storm supercell," as someone else put it, of dissatisfaction with their poor decisions and buggy release. Whether they truly meant to follow through or were just pulling our chain before with the previous "heads will roll" type statement they released, we will never know. But the fact is they've tied their own hands now, and cannot act as harsh as we would like and perhaps they too would have originally liked.

[ivanhedgehog]

Ah, but they've finally decided the fate of the exploitorists. Progress my friends.

 

unless the nuke all those accounts too, that would be the wrong act at the wrong time

[MSchuyler]

To listen to this thread and the others on this subject you would think EVERYONE is crafting from grade 11 materials and EVERYONE bought a slot machine and used it to the max to stock up on Jawa junk to get midlithe crystals. And now EVERYONE is going to quit because EVERYONE is so torqued about this.

 

Nonsense.

 

1. The fact is it was Senior crafter/gatherers who became pissed off because nearly anyone could get some serious grade 11 materials without paying the rip-off high prices these people could charge because the GTN was working properly and that was what the market would bear.

 

2. So when the word gout out that you could get a slot machine where the drop rate was greater than elephant poop in a circus performance lots of people rushed in to cash in on the cash cow. Now the virtual monopoly of the senior crafters was broken and they loudly complained.

 

3. So BW actually listened, looked at "the analytics" which NONE OF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO and discovered that yup, they had created a problem BECAUSE of the Gold Rush mentality of some players.

 

4. So they rolled it back and THAT caused all the gold rush players to be torqued off because they thought this gravy train was going to exist FOREVER!

 

So now there is all this angst from what amounts to very few players. Why are they angry? Because of THEIR OWN GREED in both cases.

 

Poor babies. But there can be some good out of this:

 

If this situation causes some hot-head players to leave, that would be very good for the game. I really hope they follow through with their threats. If I were conspiracy minded I would suggest BW did this all on purpose just to anger the anger-bound greedy people who play this game and get them the hell out of here.

 

Good riddance.

[Frybert]

They decided that long ago, they just decided to tell us they decided their fate now. Here's their fate:

 

Possible suspension of the worst offenders, the ones that sold it and transferred it to other servers.

Everyone else gets off scott-free.

 

It won't be more than that especially now, they can't afford to ban hammer everyone with the current "sh-storm supercell," as someone else put it, of dissatisfaction with their poor decisions and buggy release. Whether they truly meant to follow through or were just pulling our chain before with the previous "heads will roll" type statement they released, we will never know. But the fact is they've tied their own hands now, and cannot act as harsh as we would like and perhaps they too would have originally liked.

 

unless the nuke all those accounts too, that would be the wrong act at the wrong time

 

I'm sorry I forgot to put out something for a sarcasm detector to pick up on.

 

@ivan: Which means its probably the exact thing BW will do.

[Kourage]

we found that players were simply neglecting crew skills

 

Exactly. I stopped sending out companions on Crew Skill Missions and BioWare could easily see that the vast majority of other players also stopped. Why bother with mats so cheap or easily and quickly obtainable from another method? Replacing Crew Skill Missions with a slot machine & jawa vendor was not intended. We would all drop Underworld Trading or whatever and take up slicing for the open world lockboxes had they not corrected the mistake.

 

One of the reasons I think we lacked the mats was because of a new level cap, high demand, and a lot of players too lazy to drop Biochem/Bioanalysis/Diplomacy combo they had on 75% of their characters. They should have increased the return rates, or better yet the crit chance. There's far too many blue mats in the game, and we need more purple. Increasing the chance of purples makes way too much sense, but doesn't sell cartel coins.

[DarkPharohEclip]

Exactly. I stopped sending out companions on Crew Skill Missions and BioWare could easily see that the vast majority of other players also stopped. Why bother with mats so cheap or easily and quickly obtainable from another method? Replacing Crew Skill Missions with a slot machine & jawa vendor was not intended. We would all drop Underworld Trading or whatever and take up slicing for the open world lockboxes had they not corrected the mistake.

 

One of the reasons I think we lacked the mats was because of a new level cap, high demand, and a lot of players too lazy to drop Biochem/Bioanalysis/Diplomacy combo they had on 75% of their characters. They should have increased the return rates, or better yet the crit chance. There's far too many blue mats in the game, and we need more purple. Increasing the chance of purples makes way too much sense, but doesn't sell cartel coins.

 

Underworld trading is useless anyhow... It is not worth all the credits spent sending your crew members out to never get a purple mat anyhow, or rarely enough so that it doesn't make up for the loss by sending all your crew members out to get them... I would rather send them out to scavenge because there is a decent return there.

[dharh]

Exactly. I stopped sending out companions on Crew Skill Missions and BioWare could easily see that the vast majority of other players also stopped. Why bother with mats so cheap or easily and quickly obtainable from another method? Replacing Crew Skill Missions with a slot machine & jawa vendor was not intended. We would all drop Underworld Trading or whatever and take up slicing for the open world lockboxes had they not corrected the mistake.

 

One of the reasons I think we lacked the mats was because of a new level cap, high demand, and a lot of players too lazy to drop Biochem/Bioanalysis/Diplomacy combo they had on 75% of their characters. They should have increased the return rates, or better yet the crit chance. There's far too many blue mats in the game, and we need more purple. Increasing the chance of purples makes way too much sense, but doesn't sell cartel coins.

 

The flawed design of the original slot ratios aside, I think the real issue here is that Crew Skill Missions _suck_. Such a high time sink it turns players away who just want to play the game. The resulting high costs of the mats from players who are willing to spend the time and effort for profit make it hard for players with modest amounts of credits to afford much. It's just flawed design imo all around.

Edited January 25, 2015 by dharh

[Ksilvante]

Exactly. I stopped sending out companions on Crew Skill Missions and BioWare could easily see that the vast majority of other players also stopped. Why bother with mats so cheap or easily and quickly obtainable from another method? Replacing Crew Skill Missions with a slot machine & jawa vendor was not intended. We would all drop Underworld Trading or whatever and take up slicing for the open world lockboxes had they not corrected the mistake.

 

One of the reasons I think we lacked the mats was because of a new level cap, high demand, and a lot of players too lazy to drop Biochem/Bioanalysis/Diplomacy combo they had on 75% of their characters. They should have increased the return rates, or better yet the crit chance. There's far too many blue mats in the game, and we need more purple. Increasing the chance of purples makes way too much sense, but doesn't sell cartel coins.

 

Yet again about your claim of lazy people........

 

Assumption:

......a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof.

Edited January 25, 2015 by Ksilvante

[Kourage]

Underworld trading is useless anyhow... It is not worth all the credits spent sending your crew members out to never get a purple mat anyhow, or rarely enough so that it doesn't make up for the loss by sending all your crew members out to get them... I would rather send them out to scavenge because there is a decent return there.

 

Before 3.0, I pretty much sent companions out for low level mats needed for conquest. After 3.0, I had a reason to send out as many as I could for Crew Skill Missions. For those don't don't understand, those are for mats you couldn't gather yourself. Level 11 scavenging, I would only send for the parts. The materials themselves are super easy and fast to farm manually.

[Kourage]

The flawed design of the original slot ratios aside, I think the real issue here is that Crew Skill Missions _suck_. Such a high time sink it turns players away who just want to play the game. The resulting high costs of the mats from players who are willing to spend the time and effort for profit make it hard for players with modest amounts of credits unable to afford much. It's just flawed design imo all around.

Yes and instead of adjusting the crit rates on crew skill missions, they added grade 11 materials to the Jawas and put in a Cartel Item that spit out lots of junk to trade for them! I bet it raised quite a bit of cash for BioWare.

[Khryn]

Tinfoil hats EVERYWHERE!

 

You could not look me in the eye and tell me that you felt Slot Machines weren't broken.

Bioware even came out and said they weren't an exploit. Obviously someone thought that it may

have been an exploit, else they would not have answered that. (Which is where they made their

biggest mistake in spin control here. They should have immediately disabled the slot machines.)

 

 

What makes me laugh is when people say "THEY TOOK THE FUN FACTOR FROM IT."

Or something idiotic like that.

 

And all these people that rushed to exploit it are now mad. If Bioware had just said "Yes, it is broken and

may be considered an exploit" then all these idiots wouldn't be whining that they blew their paychecks buying

hypercrates to get a printing press err Slot Machine... And they rushed to do it because they ALL knew that

it was going to be nerfed. No one in their right mind could say that watching TV and clicking once every 5 seconds

was as intended for the slot machine.

[DurdensWrath]

So, for one thing, it is OBVIOUS that none of the devs are Computer Science majors. Because if you get that degree from any reputable institution, you have both a minor and math, and required statistics.

 

Secondly, I notice that ONCE AGAIN, Eric or whatever Dumb-A answered that neglected completely to talk about the whole host of OTHER things besides the Jawa scrap that were nerfed. Nobody was really annoyed about the scrap nerf as they were the undocumented and uncommunicated nerfs.

 

So, as it stands now. Eric is 100% untrustworthy. He had several days to get the appropriate information, and failed to justify it. I trust him about as much as a politician now.

Edited January 25, 2015 by DurdensWrath

[BuriDogshin]

Secondly, I notice that ONCE AGAIN, Eric or whatever Dumb-A answered that ...

It was Eric Musco. And boy, must he have rehearsed it. Smug little bass...something.

[Infernixx]

Just want to point out that JJ 'was' dropping too much. No one is disputing that.

 

The anger comes from the fact that rather than just fix that particular aspect of the Slot Machine, they changed the loss rate from 25% to 40%, nerfed the other Scavenging Scrap that wasn't JJ, and severely nerfed the drop rate of Cartel Certs.

 

All of that was not only not mentioned in the patch notes, they weren't even hinted at, and are now steadfastly ignored by the Developers and Community reps. They're outright refusing to comment on those changes.

 

THAT is what has the community in an uproar. Not the JJ nerf. That was needed and detailed beforehand. The rest hit us out of nowhere and isn't even being acknowledged.

[DurdensWrath]

Just want to point out that JJ 'was' dropping too much. No one is disputing that.

 

The anger comes from the fact that rather than just fix that particular aspect of the Slot Machine, they changed the loss rate from 25% to 40%, nerfed the other Scavenging Scrap that wasn't JJ, and severely nerfed the drop rate of Cartel Certs.

 

All of that was not only not mentioned in the patch notes, they weren't even hinted at, and are now steadfastly ignored by the Developers and Community reps. They're outright refusing to comment on those changes.

 

THAT is what has the community in an uproar. Not the JJ nerf. That was needed and detailed beforehand. The rest hit us out of nowhere and isn't even being acknowledged.

 

Exactly. Nobody REASONABLE is upset about the scrap nerf. The loss rate, and the certificates got most everyone steamed. I really regret not abusing the machine. I've learned my lesson.

Edited January 25, 2015 by DurdensWrath

[Siddalee]

You know, I really don't care about the nerf to the Jawa Junk that much. It was a fair nerf. But why nerf the Cartel Certs, which aren't tradeable and which was NOT in the patch notes? That is very underhanded to me, honestly. I would like to see it and the Walker rates addressed by the Devs. I would also like to see future slots released for ICE, Bounty Supply, etc.

[NSaynKnutt]

The idea of the slot machine ... was always for you to get reputation ... old Cartel market reputation. ... When we implemented the slot machine, you may have noticed that is had a much greater value as indicated by the drops that came out of it, the Jawa scraps ... Those drop rates, when I made the initial post, everything I said in there I never meant to mislead anybody although a whole lot of people feel that way and that was not intentional. What was there was not a bug, those were the rates that we intended to release it with, which is did not consider it an exploit or anything like that. But players certainly raised a lot of concern about what effect that could have on the economy, so we knew we had to take a look at it, and that's simply what I said.

 

I understand about the scraps. They appear to believe from their own internal analysis that the Scrap/Parts/Junk drops were having a negative effect on the crafting community. Okay, whatever. I don't know enough information to dispute the point. However, he completely skirts the issue of almost doubling the loss rate, and drastically nerfing the certs! Seriously, Musco? We're not idiots, we can Google "swtor contraband slot machine drop rates 3.0.2a" and see the mined statistics. Refusing to mention the issue we all know is there doesn't help, it only makes things worse.

 

sdfkjbffgarg

[Taramayne]

What I find slightly insulting though, is that those comments seemed to make a big deal out of "but we put an exclusive mount in to make it up to you"... when the odds of getting that mount are astronomically poor.

 

Honestly, I think they should just go ahead and delete the damn things from the game and give everyone who owned one a free "exclusive" mount in trade. Then we can all just move on.

[branmakmuffin]

Assuming the transcript is accurate, notice how keeps using the phrase "Jawa scrap," whereas the 3.0.2a patch notes specifically and conspicuously mentioned "Jawa junk."

 

If this transcript is accurate, it is just making a bad situation even worse as it makes it like they simply trying to brush the whole thing under the rug and hope it will go away. He admits they made a mistake with the original drop rate. Time for him to admit they made a mistake with the nerf, scrap the whole slot machine idea (like the encrypted data cubes), make amends to the player base and move on from this debacle. In the minds of many players, I have no doubt that "slot machine" will forever be tainted in TOR.

[Heat-Wave]

6 millions for the slot that I donated single-handedly to my guild SH, along with another bought by another guild member for I'm guessing some other mills.

 

Me, neither this other guild member, neither the rest of our guild have made a fuss ever since the drop rates have changed, or " nerfed ". don't see why everyone is eviscerating each other about.

 

Just get out there, do you crew skill missions, like, you know, what's happened for the last 3 years of this game.

 

 

And had you spent $50 of real money to obtain it, rather than in game credits, would you still feel the same way?

[SelinaH]

I understand about the scraps. They appear to believe from their own internal analysis that the Scrap/Parts/Junk drops were having a negative effect on the crafting community. Okay, whatever. I don't know enough information to dispute the point. However, he completely skirts the issue of almost doubling the loss rate, and drastically nerfing the certs! Seriously, Musco? We're not idiots, we can Google "swtor contraband slot machine drop rates 3.0.2a" and see the mined statistics. Refusing to mention the issue we all know is there doesn't help, it only makes things worse.

 

At this point, I feel it's entirely possible that they don't even realize just how badly they borked the drop rate on everything. As though even they didn't intend to nerf it this badly, but decimals are tricksy and false. And because nobody at the office bothered to test the machine post-patch, they're left shaking their heads at how unreasonable we all are.

 

It's sad that I can envision this scenario as even remotely feasible. Sigh.

[Taramayne]

You know what's funny? After all this, people are still trying to sell the slots for over a million creds on GTN.