Slicing nodes broken, giving way too many credits since 4.1

[MiguelGx]

This has to be nerfed inmediately.

[ivanhedgehog]

You're confused.

 

A. Player loots mob, turns in quest, opens slicing box, sells something to an NPC vendor == credits are "created" out of thin air and now exist in the game.

 

B. Player buys something from a vendor, pays a travel fee, mod-ripping fee, buys a legacy unlock with credits == credits are "deleted" and no longer exist in the game.

 

C. Player makes something and sells it to another player, credits go from Player A -> Player B. Credits are moved around and are NOT created. If the sale happens through the GTN, 6% of those credits are, in fact, deleted.

 

Inflation happens when A exceeds B and C. C is not capable of causing inflation in this game.

 

It DOES NOT matter. what matters is a few players amassing huge bank accounts, being able to lock out or corner markets. then players get marginalized because they do not spend their entire time in game competing in wealth generation. when the economy becomes one sided or becomes the most important part of the game, the devs have a problem. which is 100% their own creation. a robust economy creates more wealth and there is no problem, it moves around...the problem starts when the money collects in a few players banks and is used to strangle other players participation.

[grayblux]

Its getting pretty ridiculous. Farmers "speeding" to slicing nodes and you will see the same ones on 24/7 on rotation. Please fix this, it along with 8 minute slicing missions is killing the economy.

[DawnAskham]

It DOES NOT matter. what matters is a few players amassing huge bank accounts, being able to lock out or corner markets. then players get marginalized because they do not spend their entire time in game competing in wealth generation. when the economy becomes one sided or becomes the most important part of the game, the devs have a problem. which is 100% their own creation. a robust economy creates more wealth and there is no problem, it moves around...the problem starts when the money collects in a few players banks and is used to strangle other players participation.

 

While I agree a robust economy is preferable to one which is not, I recognize that simply giving everyone easy access to credit generating methods doesn't address your complaints about people with more credits than you, and may not be healthy for the game's economy as a whole given the effects on inflation.

 

If simply adding currency to an economy was all it took to fix economic problems and have a robust economy, then Weimar German and Zimbabwe in the 2000s should have had two of the best economies in history, instead of two of the worst.

 

Oh and simply adding credits doesn't do anything to change the distribution of wealth.

 

Those who have been here the longest, put in the most effort (or money in the case of RL$ to CM to credits or RMT buyers), managed their wealth, controlled their spending, etc., will still have more credits than most.

Edited February 22, 2016 by DawnAskham

[squirrelballz]

People need to relax with the exaggeration of slicing killing the economy, heroics do a fine job of that themselves. Slicing is fine where it is don't listen to bunch of money hoarding crybabies, slicing is working as intended for once in a long time BW.

 

Edited February 22, 2016 by squirrelballz

[Khevar]

It DOES NOT matter. what matters is a few players amassing huge bank accounts, being able to lock out or corner markets. then players get marginalized because they do not spend their entire time in game competing in wealth generation. when the economy becomes one sided or becomes the most important part of the game, the devs have a problem. which is 100% their own creation. a robust economy creates more wealth and there is no problem, it moves around...the problem starts when the money collects in a few players banks and is used to strangle other players participation.

First of all, you tried to claim that crafting was a cause of inflation. It is that that I'm arguing against. Have you changed your tune? I see you haven't mentioned inflation in the post I quoted above.

 

Second of all, "player being locked out of markets" is a bit silly. Unless you're specifically referring to the ultra-rare CM item market (e.g. Unstable Arbiter's Saber), the vast majority of the market has remained well within reasonable levels for quite some time.

 

I tested this fact recently by starting a new character on a new server with no legacy, no "sugar daddy" alts, and I was able to obtain pretty much everything I needed simply by playing the game, gathering mats and selling them.

 

So if you're claiming "a few players are using their wealth to strangle other player's participation", I'd love for you to back this up with some specific examples.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Khevar

[grayblux]

It's creating inflation when there is no need to. Botters and farmers are taking extreme advantage of this by doing it on multiple zones 24/7. If you go out and take a look you will see. Its something that doesnt help the 99 percent of the population, just makes things more expensive overtime, but it is very beneficial to the crowd that can run toons 24/7 getting nodes and monopolizing them. I dont see how anyone can argue it not being a detriment to the community. The less money that is created out of thin air, the easier it is for the economy to grow at a reasonable rate. With the credit change to mobs that seemed like it was a turn around in the direction of stabilization, so why this change?

[squirrelballz]

It's creating inflation when there is no need to. Botters and farmers are taking extreme advantage of this by doing it on multiple zones 24/7. If you go out and take a look you will see. Its something that doesnt help the 99 percent of the population, just makes things more expensive overtime, but it is very beneficial to the crowd that can run toons 24/7 getting nodes and monopolizing them. I dont see how anyone can argue it not being a detriment to the community. The less money that is created out of thin air, the easier it is for the economy to grow at a reasonable rate. With the credit change to mobs that seemed like it was a turn around in the direction of stabilization, so why this change?

 

Where do you have the metrics to back that up? First of all even if botters are getting most the nodes those credits are not introduced into the economy until someone buys from a credit seller. BW has it's own metrics and if anything they know more accurately what is hurting the economy and what not. I'm sure if slicing needs nerfing which it doesn't since BW doesn't know balance it will nerf it to kingdom come and then we will all go about our merry way till they decide to buff it again and then the cycle will continue.

Edited February 22, 2016 by squirrelballz

[grayblux]

Metrics to back up basic economical reasoning? If you create more money out of nothing, the price of goods will increase. There is no reason for slicing boxes to give that much. It will do NOTHING but hurt the economy and slowly the game overall as everything will start getting more expensive. You aren't presenting any sort of logical argument as to why it should stay in its form.

[blueket]

It is kind of hard to nerf something that wasn't intended in the first place. It really looks like somebody forgot something when they were doing all the new gathering/crafting changes. There was no reason to "buff" slicing nodes and no mention of it in patch notes. Not to mention the fact that you only get rare quality lockboxes now. I would be shocked if this actually is intended.

 

People that think slicing is fine now are so wrong it is not even funny. For example security chests on high level planets gave 10k-20k credits with a limited number of spawns. They were more spread out and had a respawn of 5-30 mins. Slicing nodes how they are currently put the chests to shame. In the end they removed the credits from chests because it was just bots teleport hacking and getting them.

 

Personally I'd like to see slicing nodes give materials instead of credits. Main reason being is that slicing nodes is the last thing left in the game where bots can easily get lots of credits(especially with how they are now). Sure there might be bots farming mobs or materials but they are getting peanuts compared to a bot getting slicing nodes(especially if teleport hacking). I think it is best for the game in the long term as bots would be generating way less credits and keeps inflation as minimal as possible.

[ivanhedgehog]

While I agree a robust economy is preferable to one which is not, I recognize that simply giving everyone easy access to credit generating methods doesn't address your complaints about people with more credits than you, and may not be healthy for the game's economy as a whole given the effects on inflation.

 

If simply adding currency to an economy was all it took to fix economic problems and have a robust economy, then Weimar German and Zimbabwe in the 2000s should have had two of the best economies in history, instead of two of the worst.

 

Oh and simply adding credits doesn't do anything to change the distribution of wealth.

 

Those who have been here the longest, put in the most effort (or money in the case of RL$ to CM to credits or RMT buyers), managed their wealth, controlled their spending, etc., will still have more credits than most.

 

this is NOT a real economy. dont confuse the 2. they dumped billions into the economy with the heroic grind. if you castrate slicing, you need to do the same to heroics. and you need to replace slicing boxes in the mission list for slicing. we need a system to degrade the largest banks, maybe a 10% loss per month if the total is over 100 million, or something in that vein. that would do more to reign in inflation than destroying slicing would

[ivanhedgehog]

First of all, you tried to claim that crafting was a cause of inflation. It is that that I'm arguing against. Have you changed your tune? I see you haven't mentioned inflation in the post I quoted above.

 

Second of all, "player being locked out of markets" is a bit silly. Unless you're specifically referring to the ultra-rare CM item market (e.g. Unstable Arbiter's Saber), the vast majority of the market has remained well within reasonable levels for quite some time.

 

I tested this fact recently by starting a new character on a new server with no legacy, no "sugar daddy" alts, and I was able to obtain pretty much everything I needed simply by playing the game, gathering mats and selling them.

 

So if you're claiming "a few players are using their wealth to strangle other player's participation", I'd love for you to back this up with some specific examples.

 

rare high level mats is a fine example. when their market dominance was challenged, the gtn whales screamed and got it restored. crafting in and of itself does not cause inflation, it allows a few people to gather an inordinate amount of wealth which does cause inflation.added to the devs psychotic drop rate of good items and the large pools of wealth become obvious. It isnt about what is 'needed" onc e you restrict a large percentage of your customers to the barf ugly fingerpainted models that they can afford and reserve anything that looks good to the gtn whales, the appeal of the game will lessen for all these new players that are supposedly flooding in. I have been here since day 1, I have all the nice shinies that I want(arbiters saber is butt ugly IMO) Listening to some of the people I got to try the game, they understand that they will probably never get a chance at a lot of the cool shinies in the game.

[Nothing_Shines]

What, exactly, are you spending all your credits on in this game that you're finding it so hard to buy everything you want? What are you budgeting for? Are you buying food? Are you buying fuel for your speeder? Heating your stronghold? Are you paying income taxes? Putting your kids through an academy? Paying that monthly holonet bill?

 

You can, quite literally, not spend one credit from character creation through until you acquire your starship and head off from the capital world. Oh, wait. You don't even need to pay then. The heroic teleports can get you to every world except what? Quesh? FOR FREE. Repair bills, if you even somehow manage to get damaged enough that your armor breaks and you are forced to repair, are a joke. But then, why repair when you can get by just fine with empty shells or swapping in the vendor trash that drops constantly?

 

I haven't bought or crafted a single mod for a toon below level 65 since 4.0 hit. I usually wear empty shells until I leave the capital world at 35. Nothing short of pulling entire areas full of mobs or a world boss can overcome a level synced, over level toon with a companion out unless you are completely clueless about how your class works. You should be raking in credits from missions, drops, vendored trash, nodes, crafted crap you sell to fools on the GTN that think they need low level mods and gear, plus whatever CM crap you're able to buy low and sell high. Your overhead should effectively be nothing until you hit the once per legacy or per toon QoL sinks, which end up paying for themselves ten times over in time saved.

 

Every single other thing you might be buying with credits is either a luxury/show-off perk or item on the GTN. And those luxury items either cost other people real world money (or CC grants), or time, effort and luck to grind out by running content and/or praying to the RNG gods, so they can list them and fools like you who don't have a clue what you're doing can whine about how everything you think you need to play, but really just want, is overpriced by greedy rich players sticking it to the unwashed poor masses, because slicing nodes on Yavin being fought over by players and bots give out a relative handful of credits.

 

The arbiter single lightsaber is 40+ million on Harb, 50+ on JC and last I checked on BC, they didn't even have any listed. It is stupidly rare, pretty cool looking, and inspired by the incredibly popular movie, making it both desirable as a vanity item and in extremely short supply. If slicing nodes gave 0 credits, the arbiter would still cost 40+ million. I've opened over 315 cartel packs and haven't gotten one. You better believe if I got TWO, the one I sold would be listed for an amount to significantly offset the credit/cc investment it took to get it. If I really wanted it, through, I'd just grind the credits through one of the many avenues available and just buy it. You know, like all the people represented by the posters in this thread not whining about how the fake economy in the video game is unfair do.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Nothing_Shines

[Xauxau]

crafting in and of itself does not cause inflation, it allows a few people to gather an inordinate amount of wealth which does cause inflation..

 

Any nitwit with enough neurons to read a spreadsheet can create an entire suite of maxed crafter alts within a few days. There is no secret to it.

 

Its true that crafting allows active players to make a modest sums of credits every day with minimal effort, and over time (weeks and months) this can add up to a great deal of in-game wealth. But _ANYONE_ can do this.

 

I'm sorry, but this is just grossly misconceived. There is no way SWTOR crafting allows "a few people to gather an inordinate amount of wealth". There is no barrier to any player joining the "few" here except exceptional laziness.

 

And crafting also acts as a fairly hefty currency sink in the game. Its a deflationary mechanism in SWTOR. Every crafted item sucks currency out of the game, and effectively lowers the price of everything on the GTN.

[DreadtechSavant]

I make my credits by doing heroics. Have I ever gone to Yavin to slice nodes. Yes but not for credits. When I made my free level 60 character the only crew skill I did not have 500 in was slicing. on one server. So changed archaeology for slicing went to Yavin and got the skill to 500 in about two hours. once it was 500 I left and carried on questing in KotFE.

 

Since 4.0 has anything changed for me. No sill sell items for what I was before 4.0 or the most resent change to slicing. If an item does not sell it does not sell. I also buy at the same prize range as before. OK yes I have more credits now than before 4.0 because of Heroics. Do I spend more on GTN because I have more credit, no cannot say I do. Slicing has had zero impact on me, the way I play or any aspect of the game for me. if anyone has let this affect them in any way, well as far as I am concerned that's on you as players not the game.

In-fact its other areas of the game such as level-sync and mats only gotten though Op's or group content ,good or bad will depend on individual points of view, but these have had a much bigger impact on this game for me.

Edited February 22, 2016 by DreadtechSavant

[Aeneas_Falco]

Any nitwit with enough neurons to read a spreadsheet can create an entire suite of maxed crafter alts within a few days. There is no secret to it.

 

Its true that crafting allows active players to make a modest sums of credits every day with minimal effort, and over time (weeks and months) this can add up to a great deal of in-game wealth. But _ANYONE_ can do this.

 

I'm sorry, but this is just grossly misconceived. There is no way SWTOR crafting allows "a few people to gather an inordinate amount of wealth". There is no barrier to any player joining the "few" here except exceptional laziness.

 

And crafting also acts as a fairly hefty currency sink in the game. Its a deflationary mechanism in SWTOR. Every crafted item sucks currency out of the game, and effectively lowers the price of everything on the GTN.

 

This.

 

The biggest creators of inordinate wealth are the Cartel Market and gold sellers. While players can bank large sums of credits over time through crafting, it doesn't really hold a candle to regularly putting cartel market purchases on the GTN. There are quite a few people who make regular CM purchases just for that purpose.

 

Gold selling is a little more difficult to gauge, but when you get emails advertising $2.00 for a million creds,...its probably a safe bet that there are players who've purchased hundreds of millions.

 

A player character can go from broke to J.P. Morgan status in a single session if the player is willing to spend enough real world money to do so, whether inside the game (CM Market) or outside. (gold farmers)

Some people have.

 

While neither creates wealth directly, it leads to inflation by encouraging a lot of additional credit generation. The people buying the Cartel Market items on the GTN are repeatedly grinding out credit-generating content to buy the items they want (the most sought after items usually priced well beyond what you'd save just doing class / world missions) if they don't use the CM or gold farmers themselves, and the gold farmers continue using bots to grind slicing nodes because there are always going to be players who will pay them real world money for it.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Aeneas_Falco

[Max_Killjoy]

Any thoughts on the idea of putting a fixed range of sales prices, with the max GTN listing price for any item being X * vendor price?

 

Totally brainstorming, and fully willing to see the idea shot down with logic (not "but then I can't be a whale" cries, actual logic based on impacts to the game that actually matter).

Edited February 22, 2016 by Max_Killjoy

[IanArgent]

Any thoughts on the idea of putting a fixed range of sales prices, with the max GTN listing price for any item being X * vendor price?

 

Totally brainstorming, and fully willing to see the idea shot down with logic (not "but then I can't be a whale" cries, actual logic based on impacts to the game that actually matter).

 

Price fixing leads to shortages, always and everywhere. It's a really bad idea.

 

Besides, Cartel Pack items don't HAVE a vendor sale price, and the vendor sale price on other items bears no relationship to the GTN price.

 

Much better to control the credit fountain and (to a lesser extent) the credit sink rates to try and hit a target amount of credit supply in the system. The "best" and most functional MMO economy I ever saw do this did it automatically via automatically variable "tax rate" mechanisms and adjustment of treasure payout for encounters. But, it was a sandbox MMO without levels. The other interesting thing about it was it was built almost ground-up as F2P with a premium currency; they started with a sub model, but when they transitioned to F2P, they dropped the sub entirely and did a much more thorough job of redoing the mechanics; AND you could buy the Cartel Coin equivalent at auction in an entirely player-driven economy. So you could grind "credits" and buy "CC" off other players directly via a GTN-like interface, or if you had more money than time, you could sell "CC" that you bought with RL money for credits. These coins were used to buy badges to access certain parts of the game, most of which ran in login day time, but a couple of which that allowed "offline" participation ran in calendar days.

[Nothing_Shines]

So, you want to establish a command economy for luxury goods. Brilliant.

 

I'm sure that Star Wars The Soviet Socialist Old Republic will work out great.

 

Down with the free market!

[Max_Killjoy]

So, you want to establish a command economy for luxury goods. Brilliant.

 

I'm sure that Star Wars The Soviet Socialist Old Republic will work out great.

 

Down with the free market!

 

It's a game.

 

It's all fake, and all for fun.

 

I'm perfectly willing to entertain ideas and concepts in a game that have no connection to what I'd consider for a fraction of a second in real life.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Max_Killjoy

[Max_Killjoy]

Price fixing leads to shortages, always and everywhere. It's a really bad idea.

 

Besides, Cartel Pack items don't HAVE a vendor sale price, and the vendor sale price on other items bears no relationship to the GTN price.

 

Much better to control the credit fountain and (to a lesser extent) the credit sink rates to try and hit a target amount of credit supply in the system. The "best" and most functional MMO economy I ever saw do this did it automatically via automatically variable "tax rate" mechanisms and adjustment of treasure payout for encounters. But, it was a sandbox MMO without levels. The other interesting thing about it was it was built almost ground-up as F2P with a premium currency; they started with a sub model, but when they transitioned to F2P, they dropped the sub entirely and did a much more thorough job of redoing the mechanics; AND you could buy the Cartel Coin equivalent at auction in an entirely player-driven economy. So you could grind "credits" and buy "CC" off other players directly via a GTN-like interface, or if you had more money than time, you could sell "CC" that you bought with RL money for credits. These coins were used to buy badges to access certain parts of the game, most of which ran in login day time, but a couple of which that allowed "offline" participation ran in calendar days.

 

How about a graduated sales tax on the GTN, so that the highest prices took a much bigger hit?

 

Or would that just price more people out of the market while the "whales" would just throw more credits at stuff?

 

~~~~

 

Because I haven't touched KotFE, I've really had no incentive to grind weekly heroics... just how high are the credit "rewards" for those? Do they actually make the dailies into a pittance, as some seem to be implying?

Edited February 22, 2016 by Max_Killjoy

[ivanhedgehog]

Any nitwit with enough neurons to read a spreadsheet can create an entire suite of maxed crafter alts within a few days. There is no secret to it.

 

Its true that crafting allows active players to make a modest sums of credits every day with minimal effort, and over time (weeks and months) this can add up to a great deal of in-game wealth. But _ANYONE_ can do this.

 

I'm sorry, but this is just grossly misconceived. There is no way SWTOR crafting allows "a few people to gather an inordinate amount of wealth". There is no barrier to any player joining the "few" here except exceptional laziness.

 

And crafting also acts as a fairly hefty currency sink in the game. Its a deflationary mechanism in SWTOR. Every crafted item sucks currency out of the game, and effectively lowers the price of everything on the GTN.

 

crafting mats are gated behind ops and conquest. unless you want to craft garbage. crafting doesnt "destroy" credits, it shuffles them around.

 

and to a previous poster, you cant use heroic tp while leveling, many quests require you to use your ship. the quest wont advance unless you fly there.

[squirrelballz]

If people want slicing and heroics to be nerfed then I want tax brackets to be implemented in order to stabilize the economy as well. That way all those extra credits get flushed out every few months and inflation stays in check. The problem would be solved and there would then be no need to nerf slicing or anything else and it would discourage hoarding credits excessively and give new players a chance to accumulate wealth as well. So either stop with the stupid nerf calls or lets have some real economic taxes put into place to balance out this "excessive amount of credits." People are too stupid to realize that BW doesn't understand balance when it comes to nerfing.

[ivanhedgehog]

How about a graduated sales tax on the GTN, so that the highest prices took a much bigger hit?

 

Or would that just price more people out of the market while the "whales" would just throw more credits at stuff?

 

~~~~

 

Because I haven't touched KotFE, I've really had no incentive to grind weekly heroics... just how high are the credit "rewards" for those? Do they actually make the dailies into a pittance, as some seem to be implying?

 

they could put a limit on total credits a player can have. that would hit the gold sellers hard. or they could start tracking large lump sum transfers and catch them that way. or they could go after bots, but that seems to be too much trouble considering hom many sit on ord mantel and hutta for weeks on end

[Darevsool]

Difficult not to notice the increase.

To be honest I'm not sure what I think about it.

 

I know I love having slicing and treasure hunting now, they seem FAR more useful than they did before.

 

I know I don't like seeing all the bots run around. It went from seeing them in a few 'leveling spots' to now on Yavin. There is a lot of competition for those slicing nodes on yavin now, and on PVE servers, not much to do about it. I guess that's one of the few (in my opinion) good things about the PVP servers, bots can be killed more easily.

 

The problem with the bots, though, is the bots...not the slicing nodes. Don't like bots? Fix the bot problem. Removing the 'carrot' doesn't solve the bot problem, it only shifts them to a different area. Fix the actual problem.

 

Getting back to the slicing nodes...I don't see it as that big of a deal. To be honest, I never understood why, starting with the Rishi expansion, multiple slicing boxes were put into the nodes. Leave it at one. Leave them the blue quality, but reduce them to a single box per node. However, even if they leave everything alone, as it is now, the only real problem is the bots.

 

The bots have the spawn pattern down. They run their path on a timer, cloaking/decloaking, regular players have to compete with that and I suspect that is why there is a large volume of complaints about it.