Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[thebaldwin]

A bunch of random economy thoughts:

 

There seems to be an argument that the slicers can switch to a different profession and make "more" money selling mats. The market for mats would correct itself to make that less profitable.

 

If more of the slicers do that it will drive the price of mats down as the natural forces of the free market (undercutting, availability). I am of the opinion this is decent for the near term economy.

 

So cheaper mats equals higher profitability (easier leveling also as their are chearper raw materials) on crafted goods. Which means more crafters, this means forces of the market (undercutting and availability) should drive down the cost of gear. This may make between level gear affordable and desireable to more people.

 

Everyone keeps talking about 'inflation' like it is not going happen now because of this "change". In the long term the game will see huge inflation no matter how the market is manipulated at this moment. As people get fully geared there is no need for player made goods (until the next exansion or money sink is introduced) which will mean more money in everyone's pocket and inflation. I do think this change will lead to a more even inflation until a huge population of the servers reach the endgame.

 

Once people level a lot of the self-sustainers will simply start alts to craft consumables as you can feed them with money from your upperlevel and you can simply buy the mats to level the trade and run missions for materials to level the skills and keep youself in supply.

 

I guess I can't understand the gold-farming positive or negative effect everyone keeps talking about here either. I assume buying gold (or credits) is more a function of not wanting to take part in the timesinks (which slicing is) and getting the immediate gratification than the availability of money. Also if everyone can slice and has large sums of money wouldn't everything worth having simply cost huge sums of credits on the market? I would think those who "have to have something" would still buy gold regardless of their ability to grind the money through slicing as it's still going to require a grind. Eventually though who don't want to grind would still buy credits which they would do no matter how you change slicing. Somepeople simply want everything without the time investment.

 

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Edited December 28, 2011 by thebaldwin

[KTheAlchemist]

1. How is having a profession that simply gathers money for you, with no need to buy or sell anything based on demand, not inherently broken? How is that a "fixed" crafting system? How can that even be considered crafting at all?

 

 

2. Logic tells you that if everyone ever picked slicing as a profession and is now complaining about the nerf, it was OP. Ideally there should never be a "no brainier" profession that everyone picks up.

 

Hope that clears it up for you.

 

1. Your assumption of brokenness is based upon a system that MMO's themselves created. Think a little outside your presumptions of how things "should" be, to if it is truly broken to have any sort of profit off of it. While it did I believe need a nerf, this nerf was extreme, overzealous, and knee-jerk.

 

2. Logic tells us no such thing. Really, you just fail logic forever, I'm not sure where to begin on "If a lot of people chose it, it was overpowered/unbalancing." The former in no way necessitates the latter.

Edited December 28, 2011 by KTheAlchemist

[Arkteruss]

1. How is having a profession that simply gathers money for you, with no need to buy or sell anything based on demand, not inherently broken? How is that a "fixed" crafting system? How can that even be considered crafting at all?

 

 

2. Logic tells you that if everyone ever picked slicing as a profession and is now complaining about the nerf, it was OP. Ideally there should never be a "no brainier" profession that everyone picks up.

 

Hope that clears it up for you.

 

Nerfing slicing didn't fix anything. People weren't buying junk crafted items before, they sure won't be now. Making crafted items more appealing to spend money on would, slicing had nothing to do with how crappy crafted items are; they were spending creds on stuff like speeders, starship upgrades, and npc vendors.

 

How did nerfing slicing solve anything aside placate crafters being mad that they chose a profession that isn't profitable at all. Be mad at the slicers? Or be mad at the devs who made crafting a pointless endeavour?

[Kazro]

So because WoW had broken crafting, this game should have broken crafting? Also, "the fact that this qq thread is over 100 pages long justifies the nerf"...you fail logic forever.

 

Don't Feed the Trolls

[Balorn]

Here's the stats I've gathered so far on slicing pre- and post-nerf.

 

Pre-Nerf: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmY2FiqYUa9FdEh3RTlKY1VxdGQ4T0VTcVZONWpibHc&single=true&gid=5&output=html

 

Current (should auto-update as I do more missions): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AmY2FiqYUa9FdDdKbGQ4elpVSEVSODJoR3BueUMtZWc&single=true&gid=2&output=html

[PloGreen]

Oh come on.. The nerf was inevitable. People in my guild with 500k at level 25 because of this prof. What did you expect? News flash crafting missions are supposed to cost you, it does for the other proffs. You can't make shed loads if cash the way you used to because it was too bloody easy, and way ahead of the proffesions. You can make money, just not as much as you could - which lets face it was way more than any of the other proffs.

It may well have got nerfed too much, or maybe it was never supposed to be the way you thought it was in the first place.

As I have archeology, underworld trading and synthweaver as my profs - sympathy = 0. People were bragging about how much cash they were making using slicing so what on earth did anyone expect? Could see it coming a mile off.

[Ashanor]

So I went ahead and checked the numbers using this guys slicing data spreadsheet. This is the best spreadsheet around in my opinion, and it has more data than the rest that I have seen. These are also the highest grossing missions from before the nerf.

 

Missions: (numbers are credits per minute, yellow is pre nerf, red is post nerf)

 

17-24

 

Sullustan Conspiracy: 72.12 -5.88

For Better Or Worse: 79.59 22.86

 

25-32

 

Arranged Accidents: 98.66 -5.11 (minimal data post nerf)

Prince Of Fools: 99.54 8.74

The Automated Saboteur: 103.39 20.67

 

33-40

 

Pointing Fingers: 94.77 10.50

Be Careful What You Read: 97.76 18.61

 

41-48

 

Taking Back Control: 78.24 13.04

Finding Our Way: 80.30 19.95 (minimal data post nerf)

The Fly On The Wall: 93.56 17.62

 

As you can tell, this nerf was ridiculously and pointlessly large. It couldn't have been that far off from what Bioware's metrics told them was fine previous to release. What it looks like is we are being punished for people who were abusing the system with many different characters. What they should have done is just cap the number of companions that can be on a slicing mission per account to 5 and then cap the number of slicing missions you could do in a day. That would have kept the people who don't want to craft happy, while at the same time punishing people who would abuse the system.

 

If someone wants to quote my post and figure out the percentages for each mission and post them in a 3rd color that would be great. I don't have time to do it myself at the moment.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Ashanor

[Ashanor]

Oh come on.. The nerf was inevitable. People in my guild with 500k at level 25 because of this prof. What did you expect? News flash crafting missions are supposed to cost you, it does for the other proffs. You can't make shed loads if cash the way you used to because it was too bloody easy, and way ahead of the proffesions. You can make money, just not as much as you could - which lets face it was way more than any of the other proffs.

It may well have got nerfed too much, or maybe it was never supposed to be the way you thought it was in the first place.

As I have archeology, underworld trading and synthweaver as my profs - sympathy = 0. People were bragging about how much cash they were making using slicing so what on earth did anyone expect? Could see it coming a mile off.

 

Slicing wasn't supposed to cost you, it was supposed to stimulate the economy and create players who couldn't get the materials themselves so they bought them off the GTN. It was also meant for people that do not like to craft or gather.

 

What did we expect? Not a 75-85% nerf, that's for sure. A proper approach would have been doing what I previously mentioned (daily caps and companions per account caps), but if they were insistent on doing things the way they did they should have tried 10-15% at most.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Ashanor

[Jessie-Lacey]

If the market price goes down the market dies. Things already sell for double what you can simply vendor them for. If you can vendor it for the same as you sell it there will be 0 incentive to sell on the AH. Boom AH dies. Plus without slicers buying the pricey stuff the market becomes out of balance. There's 100k epic speeder patterns selling for 25k on my server because people don't get that at level 50 people will spend 100k for it because they've spent nearly half a million in training for it anyways.

[gumnutza]

Now you're like every other craft where you don't earn money going on missions.

 

But unlike crafting slicing has no other benefits. You make money on lockboxes. You don't get much else out of it other than the occasional schematic or augments no one wants. Crafters on the other hand can craft and are rewarded by being able to make money selling what they craft.

[Amaranth]

Slicing wasn't supposed to cost you, it was supposed to stimulate the economy and create players who couldn't get the materials themselves so they bought them off the GTN. It was also meant for people that do not like to craft or gather.

 

What did we expect? Not a 75-85% nerf, that's for sure. A proper approach would have been doing what I previously mentioned (daily caps and companions per account caps), but if they were insistent on doing things the way they did they should have tried 10-15% at most.

 

Exactly. Slicing isn't like other crafting professions, it's supposed to actually make money for you which you can then spend on crafted goods (as opposed to crafters who spend money on materials to make something that should hopefully sell for a profit).

 

Did it need an adjustment? Of course it did. But they went too far in my opinion. And I'm not even a slicer.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Amaranth

[Furiel]

My experience with slicing last night mimics many people here, where I had a number of negative results, and overall while I did profit, it was an insignificant amount. I ran 6 missions each with 3 different companions, none of them have slicing bonuses and my results were as follows:

 

Started with 351 slicing skill, ended with 371, slicing level 5 and 6 lockboxes

 

Comp 1: ran 6 moderate yield level 6 lockbock missions at a cost of 1415 credits each. Results were, in order: 1958, 1645, 1531, 2035, 1935, 1693

 

Comp 2: ran 6 abundant yield level 6 lockbox missions at a cost of 1485 credits each.

results were, in order: 3454, 1235, 1731, 1228, 1193, 1512

 

Comp 3: ran 6 rich yeild level 5 lockbox missions, 5 costing 1930 credits and one costing 2025 credits.

Results were, in order: 2269, 0, 6000, 2479, 1522, 2483

 

So over 18 attempts I had 1 failure, 5 other missions that lost money, 11 positive missions and 1 critical success. So 1/3 of the time I flat out lost money on the misson. Lets look at the overall numbers.

 

Credits spent on missions: 29075

Credits returned from missions: 35903

Total profit from missions: 6828

Average profit per mission: 379.333 credits

 

And that is with 1 critical result in a small sample size. There is 1 failure as well, which helps balance against the critical outlier, however the critical result was still more than double any other result so it is inflating the total and average profit to a degree.

 

So at the top end of slicing we are looking at a return on investment of about 400 credits for 30 minutes of your companion's time with a 33% chance of failure, failure being defined as any result that is not a positive cash gain. I'm not a business or math professional, but I can tell you that just looking at those numbers that the low rate or return combined with teh high chance of failure makes this skill practically worthless as it is currently and I hope that it will be readjusted in the near future.

[PloGreen]

Slicing wasn't supposed to cost you, it was supposed to stimulate the economy and create players who couldn't get the materials themselves so they bought them off the GTN. It was also meant for people that do not like to craft or gather.

 

What did we expect? Not a 75-85% nerf, that's for sure. A proper approach would have been doing what I previously mentioned (daily caps and companions per account caps), but if they were insistent on doing things the way they did they should have tried 10-15% at most.

 

It should cost you (most of the time) if you send companions to do missions instead of doing it yourself. It got nerfed because it was over the top, surely you can see that? Whether the nerd was too hard is up for debate, but seriously anyone who did not see this nerd coming or thinks there should not be one needs to get their head out of the clouds. You made alot of cash, now you can't anymore. Find another way like everyone else (no offense).

[Elear]

The fact this qq thread is over 100 pages long justifies the nerf, it was OP, if kept the way it was the game would have had inflation not seen sense FF XI had those stupid had you could fish up.

 

- Reduce JK/SW mele range to 0.25m, to force them to stand on top of their targets

- Wait for hundreds of 100 pages long threads to pop up

- Nerf justified, good job!

[Picoom]

News flash crafting missions are supposed to cost you, it does for the other proffs.

Precisely what are you crafting with slicing?

[crowquil]

this is the most rage I've seen about anything ever

the fact that BW hasn't responded to all this is making me hope that they're running around trying to get testing done to fix the situation and are too busy to be able to respond yet

that or they just don't care and a lol'ing all the way to the bank

Edited December 28, 2011 by crowquil

[ImperiumAlpha]

this is the most rage I've seen about anything ever

the fact that BW hasn't responded to all this is making me hope that they're running around trying to get testing done to fix the situation and are too busy to be able to respond yet

that or they just don't care and a lol'ing all the way to the bank

 

With that attitude they will quickly blow The Old Republic into ground.

[Jessie-Lacey]

all they really needed to do was nerf it a little, not like to the point of making it more or less useless. Augments that you can get sell for less than the cost of the mission to get them. And lock boxes now often come up under what you pay for as well. Therefore, it is a useless profession where as others actually have potential to yield profit if the market prices stay up. But they will drop, so everyone will bleed credits on professions to make gear they can't sell. WIN!

[Pokeytehpenguin]

- Reduce JK/SW mele range to 0.25m, to force them to stand on top of their targets

- Wait for hundreds of 100 pages long threads to pop up

- Nerf justified, good job!

 

It would be, if everyone had rolled JK/SW because they were so OP before the nerf.

[Cyrenity]

You all need to keep in mind that this is their first MMO. This thread clearly bares the signs of the Veruca Salt Syndrome

 

[WuphonsReach]

The only OP thing about slicing was that you could get 400 slicing at lvl 34 or so

 

You could get to 400 slicing *way* before level 34. I was in the mid-300 skill level at level 19.

 

The OP bit was that as soon as you could train for crew skills and had a single companion, you could simply pump out Slicing missions 24x7 without ever having to level up. In fact, *all* of the crew skills are broken in this manner because there's no restriction based on character level.

 

Slicing was just the most obviously broken of the bunch because it generally always returns a profit (and not from having to sell items on the GTN).

 

If they had put level restriction caps (i.e. you can't learn past 150 slicing until you level up past level 15) then there would have been no need to nerf slicing rewards at all.

[ImperiumAlpha]

You all need to keep in mind that this is their first MMO. This thread clearly bares the signs of the Veruca Salt Syndrome

 

 

Yes we want answer now. After all slicing was nerf without thinking involve so why can't they fix it without thinking too ?

[Amaranth]

It would be, if everyone had rolled JK/SW because they were so OP before the nerf.

 

But just because people are upset over a nerf, that doesn't mean the nerf (or the degree of the nerf) is justified. You posted a logical fallacy.

[Ruke]

I just have to laugh at the slicers who made hundreds of thousands of credits for doing nothing. Every other crew skill loses money, even treasure hunting for lockboxes. Why should slicers automatically get huge amounts of credits for doing the same thing?

 

Are credits all you get back from the lockbox missions? or do you get gear that you can sell too? If you get gear then you're already getting back what the rest of us do. Sell it to make money like the rest of us.

 

Dont want to sell stuff? Then you don't want to trade skill. Having an auto-make-money option is ridiculous. There has to be some work involved.

 

Side note:

BW Please run some scans over the character base and remove all over-credits earned through Slicing up till the fix. You realize how fudged up the economy is now that some level 50's have a million credits and others have have 100k?

[Jessie-Lacey]

Honestly a 50-60% nerf would have been fine. But so far I'm getting negative yield off rich, and 200-300 cr off abundant yield, idk just seems all out of wack.