Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[Xhino]

Everything I am saying here is with the quality of the game in mind.

 

I come from a school of thought that handouts are not a good thing. And that's what they were. Lockbox missions were completely devoid of costs 99% of the time. And yet you got money for it. The game just giving you money, for nothing.

 

This is why I say we get rid of lockbox missions, and then increase the yield of slicing nodes. Because then, at the very least, you have to put in the time necessary to get the nodes. You can't just log into an alt, put all of your companions on lockbox missions and then come back later with a profit.

 

My time is definitely money worth. Besides if you remove lockbox missions, you'll remove the whole purpose of CREW skills for slicing almost entirely. Trust me, I've been trying to sell augments on the market and I keep receiving mail back, but to no avail, It's just the refund and the actual augment sent back from market, because noone was willing to buy it. People don't either have money to waste, because of the expensive skills or aren't just interested in augments.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Xhino

[VioletZero]

My time is definitely money worth. Besides if you remove lockbox missions, you'll remove the whole purpose of CREW skills for slicing almost entirely. Trust me, I've been trying to sell augments on the market and I keep receiving mail back, but to no avail, It's just the refund and the actual augment sent back from market, because noone was willing to buy it.

 

Well, I wouldn't suggest taking it out without putting something back in its place.

 

I just don't think that the cost of a mission skill and the reward of a mission skill should be the same thing. And especially not a being able to fuel one another.

[JCShooter]

Because I didn't think people just wanted handouts.

 

Because that's pretty much what lockbox missions were. It was just the game giving them money for doing absolutely nothing.

 

 

Would you mind transferring 80 euro's to my bank account if that's absolutely nothing to you.

 

Games should be fun, with old way slicing this game was one of the first I saw myself trying and doing everything because I wasn't constantly trying to afford my skills, repair my armor or spend hours on harvesting nodes just to actually experience the -content- of the game.

 

What's the point of leveling if the real battle is my money?

[OklahomaSooner]

I just ran another two missions, both 27-30 minute missions. They both costed me roughly 2k to start.

 

One failed, the other jeweled lockbox gave me 1600 credits.

 

Its just absolutely useless right now. I am losing money doing these missions.

[Elear]

If only I got 1800 worth of crystals every time when I sent my companion on that archaeology mission...

 

You can sell them for 1800, and most people will buy it(if they have money to spend) since you're selling it at production cost, so even people with this skill may want to pay you instead of sending own mission.

 

Slicer can't sell his 500 credits for 550.

 

 

What slicing needs is more use - aguments are hardly useful since sloted gear is so rare, and skill generating pure money is trouble by itself - later, when inflation kicks in, it would need a buff to stay on par with other skills, and that would increase inflation.

Skill flawed at very idea, but BW decided to put it in game, so now they have to work this out. Or leave it as it is, and it'll solve itself, since it'll become rarest crew skill and schematic/agument prices will skyrocket.

[Sunfire-]

I have to agree, even if I don't slice, 2000 credits and 30-40 minutes of companion loss for a mission and then getting a return of 1700 or less most of the time doesn't sound great. There has to be a return of some sort, whether it's credits or more special missions for other crafting classes. Otherwise, it seems really pointless to have this crafting profession that, quite essentially, a money sink ONLY.

 

Unless there's a decent chance for some gigantic jackpot per slicing mission... then there's no reason for any person to choose slicing to take up a spot (even augments seem to be less than worthwhile). If they are constantly losing money with no reasonable way of regaining it, then it seems lopsided.

 

While I don't think slicers should get receive double their investment money per mission, I think it's reasonable to have it so they don't lose money every time they partake in a slicing mission.

[Zennshi]

Underworld trading provides a service to someone. It gets them materials that they couldn't get on their own. And you put in the training and the money necessary to get it up to the level of the mat you wanted to sell.

 

Slicing is just free money. For absolutely no cost. As for opportunity cost, fine. Whatever. But at the very LEAST, they should put in something that they won't get a straight net gain from. Like a commendation or something. Or time spent looking for lockboxes.

 

How about the chance to fail and lose your investment? Is that not good enough?

 

You know what the bad part of having lots of the same tradeskills are though, the more stuff you put up on the GTN the lower the prices get, so really, this nerf will effect everyone.

 

Slicers provided a service, its called buying the materials on the GTN.

 

Or are you really going to look at that in a bad light?

 

I used my slicers to support my crafters so I can sell stuff that is worth selling. Is that so ignoble?

[Kashaan]

The game just giving you money, for nothing.

 

 

 

And this is where you're wrong.

 

Making money cost TIME. Slicing works just like any other profession. It cost money and time to send crew on missions, and our reward was money.

 

You spend time and money on missions, and your reward is MATS. Which you then use to craft EQUIPMENT which you then either:

 

A) Use to save you money that you otherwise would have needed to spend on equipment

 

or

 

B) Sell for a profit.

 

 

Do you still not get it? Slicing and any other profession all leads to the same place: Money. Either saving it by not buying mats/gear, or spending it to get said mats/gear.

 

*sigh*

[Arkteruss]

Underworld trading provides a service to someone. It gets them materials that they couldn't get on their own. And you put in the training and the money necessary to get it up to the level of the mat you wanted to sell.

 

Slicing is just free money. For absolutely no cost. As for opportunity cost, fine. Whatever. But at the very LEAST, they should put in something that they won't get a straight net gain from. Like a commendation or something. Or time spent looking for lockboxes.

 

A service? You're speaking as if slicers are simply keeping the credits and not doing anything with it. If they're gaining so called incredible profits, what are they spending them on? Things people make maybe? No point in providing a service if no ones there to buy it, slicing means theres just about always someone with money to buy something. Why all the QQ.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Arkteruss

[Hidalgo]

And this is where you're wrong.

 

Making money cost TIME. Slicing works just like any other profession. It cost money and time to send crew on missions, and our reward was money.

 

You spend time and money on missions, and your reward is MATS. Which you then use to craft EQUIPMENT which you then either:

 

A) Use to save you money that you otherwise would have needed to spend on equipment

 

or

 

B) Sell for a profit.

 

 

Do you still not get it? Slicing and any other profession all leads to the same place: Money. Either saving it by not buying mats/gear, or spending it to get said mats/gear.

 

*sigh*

 

QFT

[VioletZero]

How about the chance to fail and lose your investment? Is that not good enough?

 

You know what the bad part of having lots of the same tradeskills are though, the more stuff you put up on the GTN the lower the prices get, so really, this nerf will effect everyone.

 

Slicers provided a service, its called buying the materials on the GTN.

 

Or are you really going to look at that in a bad light?

 

I used my slicers to support my crafters so I can sell stuff that is worth selling. Is that so ignoble?

 

That's actually a really good argument.

 

No really, I am impressed.

 

But the same argument could be made of people who counterfeit. Sure, it may help in the short term but there's a very good reason why counterfeiting is illegal.

 

In the case of this game, it's a little different because of static prices. But I still wouldn't want the economy to inflate because then buying things from these static vendors becomes too easy. And we don't want things to be too easy.

[Iamaborat]

People need to stop exaggerating on how much credits they lose now through slicing. I haven't lost one credit since the patch. I'm currently at 380 slicing and sent my companions a couple times (sent each out 5 times) and I always chose bountiful/rich yields. I profited. I didn't lose anything. Not to mention all the archaeology and scavenging nodes I pick up while I'm questing, I can still make TONS of credits from selling those in the GTN, but of course not as much before the nerf.

 

The thing is a lot of people who use slicing are choosing the wrong missions. They just randomly choose one and expect profit. You won't get profit if you don't choose right missions.

[Contumelious]

And this is where you're wrong.

 

Making money cost TIME. Slicing works just like any other profession. It cost money and time to send crew on missions, and our reward was money.

 

You spend time and money on missions, and your reward is MATS. Which you then use to craft EQUIPMENT which you then either:

 

A) Use to save you money that you otherwise would have needed to spend on equipment

 

or

 

B) Sell for a profit.

 

 

Do you still not get it? Slicing and any other profession all leads to the same place: Money. Either saving it by not buying mats/gear, or spending it to get said mats/gear.

 

*sigh*

 

You do realise nobody is buying gear off of the GTN, right? You can make all that green gear all day, you're still not going to sell it, much less for a profit.

 

Hey, if you reverse engineer the item 10 times and get a blue, it is still worse than the orange the guy can get by going to the warzone for 1 hour and buy with commendations.

 

Oh yeah, and if you reverse engineer for the epic recipe? Don't even make me go into how much money you've lost.

 

Oh, and "nobody" buying gear is not accurate. Only casuals or inexperienced players buy gear consistently off of the AH outside of max/near max level. It is a stupid waste of money, as missions (not even bringing up the aforementioned ridiculously easily obtainable PvP rewards) give you better, if not vastly better, equipment.

 

You save your credits, because that's what you do.

 

If you're whining that when you're "hoarding" your credits, you're not having fun, and when you're not hoarding, you're broke... Well...

 

Welcome to your first MMO! =)

[Davalimar]

I'm not about to quit the game over this nerf, but I'm also extremely disappointed by it.

 

I won't deny that slicing was a profitable tradeskill and that some nerf was justified, but considering that the skill replaced another gathering skill, meaning that in order to get certain crafting components I would have to level an alt or buy them off the AH, I think it was a fair tradeoff that I was making simply making money, while not being able to use my companions, and with nothing material to show for it unless I spent the money I made.

 

After the nerf, what's the point of even having slicing around if you get nothing from it?

 

Whereas before I would buy my mats from someone else, splurge on buying something from the GTN simply because it looked cool, or sell the patterns I got from slicing for dirt cheap to other players - now that I'm either maintaining or losing my money and am at the level where I'm spending 30-50k per new ability at my trainer, I have absolutely no interest in contributing to the player economy of the game.

 

My suggestion now is for players to hold on to the rare mission schematics and sell them later when the prices have skyrocketed since no one else will have slicing to farm them anymore.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Davalimar

[BozPity]

Tested for 1 hour, skill at mid-120s. Character level 15 (if that's relevant). Companion missions only, no gathering. Chose higher-yield missions for the most part, but mixed in augment missions when no lockbox skillups were available.

 

Net Loss of almost exactly 2000 credits.

Net Gain of two level 19 augments, neither of which I can use. Approximate auction house value of 100 credits each (real world is lower, by a bit).

 

Total Net Loss: 1800 credits

 

Average lockbox contents at this level in open world is about 35 credits, if I can find an uncontested node.

 

The above is real-world testing. I can't see how Bioware could have tested the nerf prior to implementation, based on A.) my results B.) the lack of tester feedback and C.) time to implementation of the nerf.

 

Maybe it gets better at higher levels? Or, if having a craft that returns raw credits has been found to be unbalancing, will there be some kind of reason to have it? I didn't get a schematic or mission in the hour I tested, so unless you really need a lot of augments, I cannot see a reason to keep it.

[RandyMcStud]

Look to the people who are complaining about this change, the problem is fairly simple, to level all other crafting and mission professions, it costs a fair bit of money. Slicing was having good enough returns that you were guaranteed to generate significant money over time, especially when you can start sending 3+ companions and still have a companion out, whereas for other professions, this simply made losses even steeper.

 

What does this mean? It means, for first time alts especially, slicing is unambiguously the better choice, so everyone gravitates towards slicing and away from everything else, everyone one has loads of easy money, and very few people are actually gathering stuff from the alternatives to slicing. Demand is large and supply is small. That just causes prices to skyrocket, and it will make everything more expensive, which hurts especially those who dont want to bother with crew skills, or dont want to spend the considerable ammount of time needed to manage auctions of your stuff. It also makes the game less interesting, by removing meaningful choices, and delaying the availability of gear from the alternatives to slicing untill people start leveling their alts.

 

For the above reasons, nerfing slicing was a no brainer. Maybe it needs to provide better rewards for things other than cash, but complaining that you can no longer get 1-3k every 30 mins per companion not presently in use, without having to do anything other than click a button, is just plain silly. And telling people who arent slicers that them having an inferior profession and rampant inflation of their server's economy (so they can recieve your devalued money when you buy their stuff, money that would be worth more and you could have gotten by other means without slicing being in its prenerf form) is in their interest is even sillier.

 

Also, ive leveled 3 professions, not sold a thing on AH, am not a slicer, and could easily afford speeder training at 25, and already have the money for level 40 training, at 39, so claims that this training will be massively delayed because of this is total crap.

Edited December 28, 2011 by RandyMcStud

[pryt]

The thing is a lot of people who use slicing are choosing the wrong missions. They just randomly choose one and expect profit. You won't get profit if you don't choose right missions.

 

Fun part is, I get more missions and patterns out of moderate and abundant missions, which I before the nerf financed with the occasionally selection of rich yield ones. Which is now of course: Game Over.

[Shimlock]

Lol is this the first thread thats gonna hit 100 post or has there been one yet? Also slicing kinda goes well with artifice and arch.

[VioletZero]

*snip*

 

Costs time?

 

You mean the whole 15 seconds at most it takes to open a crew skills menu and then send your companions on missions?

 

That's not much of a cost. And I can't imagine that you are just sitting there watching the clock while they are on crew skills.

Edited December 28, 2011 by VioletZero

[Satans_Chosen]

I can back up the OP's assertions. I ran 8 Rich rank 5 lockboxes today, on six of those occasions I lost money, between 200 - 600 credits each. 5 of the those loses came from green lockboxes, from which I would make between 1.5k - 3.5k before the nerf. In both of the other two profits, I made less than 500 credits.

 

We are talking about 30 min runs that yield basically no other benefit except the rare possibility of schematics or missions (I've run no less than 40 Rich rank 5 lockbox slices, and I have not gotten more than a couple of schematic or missions). So basically it's just a continuous loss of credits on top of the wasted time.

 

Why didn't whoever nerfed Slicing just remove the lockbox missions period?

[OklahomaSooner]

People need to stop exaggerating on how much credits they lose now through slicing. I haven't lost one credit since the patch. I'm currently at 380 slicing and sent my companions a couple times (sent each out 5 times) and I always chose bountiful/rich yields. I profited. I didn't lose anything. Not to mention all the archaeology and scavenging nodes I pick up while I'm questing, I can still make TONS of credits from selling those in the GTN, but of course not as much before the nerf.

 

The thing is a lot of people who use slicing are choosing the wrong missions. They just randomly choose one and expect profit. You won't get profit if you don't choose right missions.

 

I am only choosing Bountiful/Rich Yield missions. bro.

 

Simply put, there is not enough profit when you factor in that 1/3 of the time your mission just fails, 1/3 of the time you just lose money, and then 1/3 of the time you get a profit that is not very large. That doesn't count the rare critical proc, however.

 

The above is not acceptable when I am investing 30 minutes in one mission.

[Xhino]

As I see it Slicing would be the money maker for the economy of SWTOR. Indeed, quests and such also give money, but they are primarily used for skills, which cost a lot if I say so myself, and to my understanding, repairing your gear at the higher levels. Eventually, you would say that slicing would inflate almost everything, and that might be true, but that will take months before that happens. Slicing creates money out of thin air, just as NPC vendors suck that money back into a vortex or burn it.

 

The current problem is that the economy is weak ( on my server) and that someone will actually need someone to print out money, because not everything is player controlled, the real issue are the vendors. That or Bioware could go on a rampage New Deal and literally buy everything available on the market and let cash flow in so that we aren't overrun by people spending more money on vendors, which would then disappear forever and actually spending it in the market, so that other professions can also actually profit then lose their money.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Xhino

[Kashaan]

<snipped for baseless assumptions and flat-out falsities>

 

You save your credits, because that's what you do.

 

 

 

Whoa! When did you put a camera in my room!

 

I've spent a LOT of money on the AH for MATERIALS FOR CRAFTING that I can't get myself.

 

Seriously... you need to consider all options and follow thoughts through to conclusion before you make uninformed posts.

[Seifz]

I have yet to get credits in my lockboxes, I usually get a blue item.

 

So either you are lying through your teeth, or I am just that 'lucky'.

 

=/

 

No, I'm not lying. I hardly ever get gear in my lockboxes. I've been running lockbox missions almost exclusively to level TH as cheaply as possible and I almost always get credits. I think I've had about 3 pieces of green gear, 1 piece of blue, and one low-level schematic so far. The rest are all credits (at a loss).

[Zennshi]

You do realise nobody is buying gear off of the GTN, right? You can make all that green gear all day, you're still not going to sell it, much less for a profit.

 

Hey, if you reverse engineer the item 10 times and get a blue, it is still worse than the orange the guy can get by going to the warzone for 1 hour and buy with commendations.

 

Oh yeah, and if you reverse engineer for the epic recipe? Don't even make me go into how much money you've lost.

 

Oh, and "nobody" buying gear is not accurate. Only casuals or inexperienced players buy gear consistently off of the AH outside of max/near max level. It is a stupid waste of money, as missions (not even bringing up the aforementioned ridiculously easily obtainable PvP rewards) give you better, if not vastly better, equipment.

 

You save your credits, because that's what you do.

 

If you're whining that when you're "hoarding" your credits, you're not having fun, and when you're not hoarding, you're broke... Well...

 

Welcome to your first MMO! =)

 

This is a well known fact, and this is on bioware.

 

The fact that you can get better gear for being harpderp imma pvptard lulz. Is beyond stupid.

 

That ruins games. When you have to compete with vendors for profits? That screws your crafting systems.

 

But nerfing slicing is not going to change this, so this nerf was unnecessary.