Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[mogishu]

stagnating the economy is never a good thing. There needs to be both a supply and a demand, but if there aren't people with a demand (I.E., don't want to buy anything because of lack of money), there will naturally be a high supply. The high supply will cause prices to drop, or possibly cause a crash. As it's an in-game economy though, we don't really get to look forward to naked homeless people on the street.

 

Still, Slicers get free credits off the ground, and I hit level 400 before the nerf so I don't have to pay to level it... so I'm fine with the change, as selfish as that is. I'm sure we'll find our 'place' eventually.

 

 

Problem is nothing is in real demand at the moment because the majority of the population is still leveling. Smart people do not buy gear and spend much on the GTN while leveling. If you do it right you can level your professions, level your character to max without buying anything on the GTN.

 

When the majority of the pop is at 50 then supply and demand will become evident and that is when people will start buying. That is when gatherer's can start making money on high level mats and crafters on high level gear/mods.

[Kotli]

I

I like Slicers because they buy the stuff I list.

 

Give the Slicers their money back so they can keep funding my speeder training, damnit.

 

QFT I had a few crafters and never had enough money to buy anything (all Republic), as I always needed that money for training crafting and speeder.

 

And 1 Slicer Char (Empire)and i had enough free creds to pop over to the market place and drop a couple Ks of credits on stuff like a few blue & purple mods etc every 5 lvls or so.

 

No slicing profit = no credits to buy anything = who can craft a thing without going broke?

 

I guess the few guys who made 8 Slicers char and farmed creds 24/7 pre nerf are the only ones left now with spare cash.

 

 

^ to the guy who says it will pick up at lvl 50 umm not really why buy stuff when you can get equal or better from flashpoints/ops? (looking at ToRhead drop listing theres drops with ~30-50 more points in each stat than the best craftables or a 100 stat point differnce in used main stats).

Edited December 27, 2011 by Kotli

[aquariuseffect]

Even if the "grind" is fun and challenging?

 

I dont find farming thousands of mobs for hours on end just to vendor trash drops fun

[Greyfeld]

That's good. Maintaining credit flow should be a good challenge

 

If it was cheap then there wouldn't be any purpose to buying those now would there?

 

Turning required training into a grind is not good gameplay. It's a poor design decision that should be shunned, not encouraged.

 

Luxury items like speeders should be costly. Required items like ability training should not.

 

But since they both run on the same financial curve, you can't avoid one or the other by tooling around with the economy.

[WillySWTOR]

I guess the only reason to do Slicing now is if your crafting skill is Cybertech because you can get blue and purple schematics on occasion.

 

But, this nerf makes me a sad Pandaran. Less than two weeks after EGA and one week after official launch and the first major nerf comes down...

[zisskhan]

I believe the over Crafting its self is broken.. Instead of decrease profits in slicing they should have reduced the mission cost for other crew skills. Right now all crafting mission cost large amount of money for unknown yield of resources. This way they would have increase Craft material production and the profit margins for Crafter .. Now all crew skills are useless unless you got buyers paying big bucks... I truly feel the whole economy system of the game is broken.. Buying new skills cost huge lot of money and even you complete all the mission you barely left with credits..

[Maxvla]

With slicing I was supporting guild crafters with 5k credit checks in the mail regularly. In return they would send me barrels, armorings, etc. Now I can't afford to help them and pay for skills at the same time. In the end crafting suffers from this change more than slicing. You can still make a little money from slicing but now it will all be saved for personal use for bag upgrades, speeders, class skills, repairs.

 

Thanks for breaking my ability to be a helpful guild member.

[mogishu]

So wait. Now you'll have to actually *do* something to make credits? You can't get rich without leaving your ship?

 

Slicing, in the way it was implemented, was simply a bad idea to begin with. Crafting has always been a money-sink in almost every game. (Yes, I know there are those few who turn profits by crafting, but for the vast majority of players crafting yields a net loss.)

 

Slicing not only wasn't a money-sink, it actually yielded profits. The profits from crafting systems has almost always come from the gatherers or farmers of very rare crafting mats and crafters of epic items. In other words, something has to be done in order to make money-- it isn't just generated at a steady pace by the RNG. The way slicing worked before you could get rich literally doing nothing but logging in and sending your companions out. Stupid system.

 

If you are smart you can still make a good profit from slicing while you level. All you have to do is gather all the slicing nodes you see and do not send your companions out on slicing missions. If you do that you will make money and level slicing, hell you will probably make more money then the other gathering professions because atm mats are not in that much demand.

[VioletZero]

Turning required training into a grind is not good gameplay. It's a poor design decision that should be shunned, not encouraged.

 

Luxury items like speeders should be costly. Required items like ability training should not.

 

But since they both run on the same financial curve, you can't avoid one or the other by tooling around with the economy.

 

Actually, that's a very good idea that actually gives some purpose to having ability ranks instead of just scaling with level like in WoW.

[CericME]

Anyone who says to "gather slice points" have never done that before. It is ridiculously hard to find slicing nodes unless your someplace that it Makes the absolute least amount of sense for there to be vaults, I've found more in the forest then in any building.

 

The time investment you have to make you be better off grinding mobs for loot.

 

I took slicing because I wanted a moderate source of income that I knew would never net me the big bucks other crafters will get end game if this game is designed right. I'm fine with that. The trade off is that I don't have to find mats.

Edited December 27, 2011 by CericME

[Pirate_Ron]

As a slicer and cybertech crafter, I had sunk ALL of my money into buying materials to level my cybertech. I didn't take scavenge, so I needed a way to get the materials needed.

 

Slicing shouldn't be hit with a nerf bat this early in the game as we need more of the players of higher level to see the results of it over a long period.

 

As a Cybertech crafter and slicer as well, I gave my cybertech all the skills he needed to be self sufficient and made an alt to make credits. The credits I made as a slicer were going towards driving skill, not mats. Reason being the gathering missions kept me close to broke.

 

Everyone is failing to see that the issue here is that gatherers put their mats up for sale for high prices. Everyone took slicing to cover the costs of the mats thus feeding the greed. If people can't afford what is being offered then the sellers have no choice but to lower the prices to be in line with what the economy can afford. Lose the free money, people can't afford the items, sellers lose their deposits so have to lower prices to remain competitive. With all the money being generated with slicing inflation was ballooning way too fast in a new game. If things had kept going the way they were you would be seeing mats going for 10 times what they are going for now, thus punishing anyone who didn't take slicing.

 

This why when you look at older MMO's and check the prices on your grinding mats, and see how expensive they are. It's because you have a high level community that has the money to purchase them so they can speed an alt through a new trade skill. It ends up making stuff unafforadable for new players.

 

Slicing should have never been a way to make fast money. If various websites telling you how to make money in TOR fast had never said a word about slicing this discussion would have never occured in the first place. Almost everyone who took the skill took it for the fast buck. I know I did. I went through all of EGA without slicing till I read that it was an easy way to make money. I was gonna take it originally as it fit my character (smuggler) but decided against it so I could get mats for Cybertech.

[Racheakt]

I agree that Slicing should have a use, but the use should NOT just be an endless flow of cash for no cost and no effort.

 

Yes, but there is NOTHING to the skill now. Trust me when I say augments are not it endgame, everyone is going to be in PVP/RAID/Orange gear -- all of which lack augment slots. the formulas and missions you get are so rare that there is no way to bank on them.

 

Slicing is worthless now unless you grind world safes, which I have 2/3 ninjaed while I fight the mobs while standing on the safe.

 

For the justification to me a money looser slicing missions needs another tangable outcome that is tradeable/useable -- if not cash what? It provides no mats, what other things it provides are so rare they are hard to factor into its worth.

[sotaka]

Problem is nothing is in real demand at the moment because the majority of the population is still leveling. Smart people do not buy gear and spend much on the GTN while leveling. If you do it right you can level your professions, level your character to max without buying anything on the GTN.

 

When the majority of the pop is at 50 then supply and demand will become evident and that is when people will start buying. That is when gatherer's can start making money on high level mats and crafters on high level gear/mods.

 

I agree, there just aren't enough people at max-level to really say wheather this will affect the economy or not. IT will be interesting to watch, but otherwise, right now I have a nice tradeskill at 400 that I can just go out and grab money off the ground with. It seems like Slicing is more a supplemental income as it should be, instead of a Primary source of income.

 

Think about it - when will you (most likely) make money on Slicing now?

 

Say, doing your dailies? You will need to slice on the field, just as gatherers need to gather resources on the field, as well. It won't be easy, but it will be free money then.

 

 

I think the concern people have, is that all you're getting is a static amount of money from the credits on the field, where others could turn adn sell theirs on the Marketplace (If it were working as intended) for whatever amount they could get out of it. This will either prove good or bad for Slicers. If the lockboxes cost MORE THAN the materials selling, then it will be good for them. If the materials sell for MORE THAN The amount they make from lockboxes, it will be bad for them.

 

In the end, that'll become perspective of "Which side am I on?" instead of anything more productive.

[Valethar]

 

Hell make the lockboxes in slicing more like the ones from Treasure hunting where there is random loot in them as well.

 

 

In order to make it a viable skill again, they would also need to tie it to an existing crafting skill. Taking Slicing means you give up another gathering skill that would have provided materials for a crafting skill. The money made from slicing helped offset that by allowing you to purchase another players excess materials.

 

Slicing needed a balance pass to make it a little less lucrative. It did not need a complete knee jerk hatchet job that left people with a skill that no longer has any value. The schematics and missions obtained from Slicing do not hold much value, and as such are an extremely poor substitute.

 

There are a ridiculous number of cash sinks in the game that a skill such as slicing helps counter. Once you start getting into the high 20's and early 30's your ability/skill training gets very expensive. The 'scale' for the costs on extra inventory slots is nothing short of a crakeheads bad trip. Speeder training jumps from 40k at the first tier to over 200k at the second. That's a 500% increase.

 

I can understand BioWare wanting to protect the game economy by scaling back what was perceived as a virtual printing press for cash. Unfortunately, they chose to do so without any though to how it should be done, much less giving it anything resembling 'quality control' or testing.

 

Instead of balancing the skill, they just created another controversy that will leave them with more egg on their faces at a time when they should be concentrating on fixing real bugs and dealing with server queues.

[Malactie]

I made a huger post about this before. But what it comes down to is bioware did this to prevent a massive ireprable economic crash. It is nesicary and has nothing to do with the players opinion. slicing before was basicaly an exploit. read my post from before. There would be way to much inflation.

 

Seriously dosent anyone remember the way FF 11 economy was trashed in the first month

[sotaka]

I made a huger post about this before. But what it comes down to is bioware did this to prevent a massive ireprable economic crash. It is nesicary and has nothing to do with the players opinion. slicing before was basicaly an exploit. read my post from before. There would be way to much inflation.

 

Seriously dosent anyone remember the way FF 11 economy was trashed in the first month

 

Rusty Subligars, you mean? Man, that **** was so broken. XD

[Hidalgo]

Slicing not only wasn't a money-sink, it actually yielded profits. The profits from crafting systems has almost always come from the gatherers or farmers of very rare crafting mats and crafters of epic items. In other words, something has to be done in order to make money-- it isn't just generated at a steady pace by the RNG. The way slicing worked before you could get rich literally doing nothing but loggi and sending your companions out. Stupid system.

ng in

 

if your not yielding credits in your crafting profession you are crafting wrong lol.

 

without slicing, the prices of items will sky rocket, as there is no healthy flow of wealth to the players, everyone's bank goes down and they can't afford to buy mats to sell their upper ware, the only way to reliably make money now is to sell archaeology mats to the medical droid, or to sell your rubat crystals on the bazaar for 2cpu, in which case your making about 14 credits per archeology run.

 

 

turns out, much of the game economy relied upon slicing.

[Valethar]

Anyone who says to "gather slice points" have never done that before. It is ridiculously hard to find slicing nodes unless your someplace that it Makes the absolute least amount of sense for there to be vaults, I've found more in the forest then in any building.

 

 

It doesn't help that they can't seem to figure out what's causing the nodes to bug, so when you do find one, you can't use it anyway.

[rlhaas]

I'm going to keep slicing (currently at 400) just because I think BW will tune it up a little in the forseeable future. No use letting 400 skill points go to waste. Thanks, whiners!

[Kripes]

Poorly planned knee-jerk nerfs already. Just what I was hoping not to see from Bioware. Sigh.

[TheHiddey]

When a skill is so good that you're at a severe monetary disadvantage for NOT taking it, it needs to be nerfed.

 

It will be further tweaked, I am sure.

[mogishu]

I believe the over Crafting its self is broken.. Instead of decrease profits in slicing they should have reduced the mission cost for other crew skills. Right now all crafting mission cost large amount of money for unknown yield of resources. This way they would have increase Craft material production and the profit margins for Crafter .. Now all crew skills are useless unless you got buyers paying big bucks... I truly feel the whole economy system of the game is broken.. Buying new skills cost huge lot of money and even you complete all the mission you barely left with credits..

 

You do know that you do not need to send out your companions on missions for any of the crafting professions in order to level the profession. Same applies to gathering skills. If you really want to level a mission skill before 50 only send companions on the low cost/short missions.

 

The mats you get from mission skills are rare mats used to make rare/epic gear. You can craft greens to level the profession, reverse engineer those, get mats back and just keep leveling it away.

 

The missions imo are a waste to while you level. Missions will have a better use at max level when you actually need those mats.

[Greyfeld]

Actually, that's a very good idea that actually gives some purpose to having ability ranks instead of just scaling with level like in WoW.

 

This statement only proves you don't know what you're talking about. WoW used to have ability ranks just like SWTOR currently does, and it was a money sink as well. But the cost per rank was low enough that it was only a pain if you didn't spend some time making sales to keep a few spare gold in your pocket.

 

On the other hand, mount training was astronomically expensive and required at least a week of farming to save up for, even if you knew how to play the auction. Of course, then TBC came out and made farming ridiculously easy... but then, flying mount training was once again astronomically expensive.

 

Luxuries should always be more of a gold sink than necessities. It puts everybody on equal footing, but allows extras that don't effect gameplay for those who put in the effort.

[AramakEffect]

 

Seriously dosent anyone remember the way FF 11 economy was trashed in the first month

 

Ahhh...now those were the days.

[Racheakt]

I'm going to keep slicing (currently at 400) just because I think BW will tune it up a little in the forseeable future. No use letting 400 skill points go to waste. Thanks, whiners!

 

Me too, I just am not going to do missions anymore. I think this patch should be dubbed "the day the augments dissapeared"