Slicing - The Raw Data on the Nerf

[maguino]

BOOHOO.

 

Slicers were posting screenshots of 200k+ bank accounts at lvl 17, when every other person could barely afford a speeder by level 25. You think we feel sorry for you? 'Nerf'.... the balls on you spoiled heathens. They should have divided all slicer bank accounts by 5, then you might have a clue what its like to level up a tradeskill and be broke at the same time.

[WowWasBetter]

BOOHOO.

 

Slicers were posting screenshots of 200k+ bank accounts at lvl 17, when every other person could barely afford a speeder by level 25. You think we feel sorry for you? 'Nerf'.... the balls on you spoiled heathens. They should have divided all slicer bank accounts by 5, then you might have a clue what its like to level up a tradeskill and be broke at the same time.

 

Sorry dude, but if you're broke its your own fault. I am not a slicer and I had 70k in the bank before I hit 25, sure my biochem was weak but now that's almost caught up and I still have over 15k.

[ClockworkBling]

BOOHOO.

 

Slicers were posting screenshots of 200k+ bank accounts at lvl 17, when every other person could barely afford a speeder by level 25. You think we feel sorry for you? 'Nerf'.... the balls on you spoiled heathens. They should have divided all slicer bank accounts by 5, then you might have a clue what its like to level up a tradeskill and be broke at the same time.

 

We are the 99%! Bail out the Galactic Bank! Occupy Hutta!

 

I love it when poor peoples' solution to poverty is to make everyone else poor. Guess where that logic gets you.

[WowWasBetter]

We are the 99%! Bail out the Galactic Bank! Occupy Hutta!

 

I love it when poor peoples' solution to poverty is to make everyone else poor. Guess where that logic gets you.

 

Big difference between a game economy and the real world. Slicers can't buy devs to make slicing more profitable while people can buy off politicians. Lets not turn this into a political debate though.

[GumBoil]

Good job, and pretty reasoned conclusions.

[Rhinoplat]

Sooo....

 

You guys have to farm credits like the rest of us?

 

The horror.

 

I know it's been said probably, but what was stopping you or anyone else from having a slicing main or alt. Slicing was available to everyone - it's not a Class specific skill.

[Spidermack]

The whole point of this skill was to give people who dont like crafting an option to stay reasonably level with credits to afford basic stuff.

 

If it does not do that then its broken.

 

you may not like the idea, but the whole purpose was to provide a reasonable income stream for people who dont like playing the GTN.

 

Seriously, I'm getting the impression BW dont have a clue where they want to go with this.

 

 

OP - nice post.

 

I've been following this thread since last night and I completely agree with you. One of the things I HATED about games like WoW and CoH was how incredibly hard it could be for someone new to the game to make money. Unless you knew the market, and what sold, you couldn't make anything. Slicing gave me a way to earn the extra credits without having to spend a long time getting to know the market and finding the best items to sell.

 

My Conclusion: Slicing may have needed a nerf, but it was nerfed WAY to much.

[Satpolpp]

Lower the CPS further but eliminate the chance of losing money. Fine tune it so it yields slightly higher than, lets say, scavenging mats vendored or biochem mats vendored

 

Why slightly higher?

Because other gathering skills' mats have MORE value than vendor, i.e. they can be sold/speculated in ah, they can be used to other crafting skills, whereas slicing's mats (i.e. credits) have no other value than the value of the credit itself

 

Can anyone point out which gathering skill in any MMO that can actually lose money? GATHER = COLLECT = $$$ (no matter how low they sell for, but not lose money)

[Numerii]

I still make credits with slicing. It's nowhere near the amount it used to be but it's still a steady trickling of credits over time.

 

I think the nerf might have been a bit much but overall it's much closer to what I was expecting from a crew skill that didn't involve crafting.

 

Basically I just stay away from buying stuff from the GTN, sell what I can and run missions and when I finally hit 50 I'll actually decide what crafting skill to get into and have the credits to level it up.

[Raximillian]

Very good thread... I wanted to get some data as well, but you are way beyond me. This was my data for one day, will try to collect more. They are all lockboxes lvl 5 missions, since that is the highest I can run, and all ran with the robot companion, so no bonuses. Info is credits spent, time, and gain:

 

1135 - 27.45 - 0 (botched mission)

1075 - 26.16 - 1230

1075 - 26.16 - 2545 (also got a purple mission item for investigation 300)

1135 - 27.45 - 1141

1075 - 26.16 - 1202

1930 - 29.28 - 2757

 

So from just missions, I made 1450 creds, even with one botched mission. So decent. No incredible outcome, but positive nonetheless. However, I was also in the field and found about 9 safes that averaged about 200 creds each, for an extra ~1800 creds. And the purple mission item sells on the AH default price of 3645. Not sure it would sell for that price, but that is roughly what it is worth.

 

So sure, it was nerfed somewhat, but it is still slightly profitable. At least it is not losing money. I'll see how it goes tomorrow, but it seems to be ok still, just not the money printing machine it was before (which it should not be).

[Olarid]

Slicing was considered OP if you didn't have it, funny thing is, everyone can have it!

[DarthSublimitas]

This is a great improvement. It will also stop the price inflation that was rapidly happening on the market so all the other skills also will bring in less money. This forces real choices of what you want instead of min-maxing and buying everything. So you specialize. Maybe you focus on ship improvements or maybe getting crafting materials or maybe getting most of your power upgrades.

 

ROFLMMFAO - You must be in a dreamworld. Because of this, less credits to the slicers MEANS less money spent on the AH which hurts the crafters. Plus, any rare or epic blueprints that do fall that can ONLY be obtained via slicing WILL NOT be made to the general public but rather to my alts. I would also suggest all other slicers out there to do the same. For all those QQer's that complained we were making too much money didn't have the foresight to see that we help fuel the crafters on the AH.

 

Just as my Master, Kreia, held the galaxy by the throat, I too will hold the galaxy by the financial throat and call to the other slicers to do the same.

[DarthTHC]

Some of your thinking is just plain off. Credits per second is irrelevant unless you sit ingame and spend 100% of your time slicing. If you take one of your companions out and adventure while rotating the rest through slicing missions, you're not experiencing any sort of loss of opportunity.

 

A more relevant comparison would be to compare slicing mission returns to what you could sell other mission returns for on the GTN. Of course, selling items takes more time and is a bit more complicated so those mission returns should be more valuable than slicing mission returns.

 

BioWare didn't nerf this because people cried about it. BioWare adjusted it because the data they have on it (and they can analyze every slicing mission every one of us does) tells them the missions aren't doing what they wanted.

 

In my own experience, slicing is still profitable. I'm still working my way up, but here's the breakdown so far:

 

Grade 1 Lockboxes: -595 credits / 6 missions for a net loss of 99 credits per mission

 

Grade 2 Lockboxes: +313 credits / 40 missions for a net profit of 8 credits per mission

 

Grade 3 Lockboxes: +4,997 / 46 = 109 / mission

 

Grade 4 Lockboxes: +19,457 / 82 = 237 / mission

 

Grade 5 Lockboxes: +6,649 / 21 missions = 317 / mission

 

There clearly isn't a huge profit margin in running slicing missions up to grade 5. However, there is profit in it.

 

In my experience, I make a lot more profit at the same grade for running other mission skills, especially Treasure Hunting, Underworld Trading, and Diplomacy.

[Hayken]

Can't believe the non slicers saying it's balanced now... Like they're on some kind crusade against slicers.

 

Okay, it was over the top before, but getting negative creds from it now, is just ridiculous, then why have the skill in game?..

 

 

At least make it so we get some profit, doesn't have to be a ton, or remove it from the game.

 

 

Edit: Meh, whatever, dropped my 400 slicing... guess it's 3 gatherings for me.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Hayken

[DJIzzy]

[Removed for GREAT JUSTICE ] Edited December 30, 2011 by DJIzzy

[DJIzzy]

You could have taken slicing, your comment is worthless just like you. It is your choice to limit yourself for no other reason then your own ignorance, just as it is my choice to not limit myself. If slicing wasen't available to you, then you have every right to complain. However slicing was and still is freely available to you, its your own fault you didn't take it!

 

Farm credits like the rest of us... LMAO I'm better then you, so why should I have to play on your level?

 

Evidently if you're choosing to stick with a broken crew skill and gripe about it and how you want it back to being OP, you are limiting yourself. We're not making you keep it

[DJIzzy]

You realize you can do 1-2 quests, take the reward and vendor drops you get from killing mobs, at level 50 and get 6-7k? Your hour just took me 5-10 minutes and I didn't have to spend hours leveling a skill to 400.

 

Quests I'm doing right now at 38 pay out 1000-1500 credits already. Add a few decent gray drops or even a blue/orange item and you are nearly there and not even level 50.

 

Okay, so you can do one or two quests and take the reward and vendor drops to get 6-7k, great. So can he. I don't understand why that should keep him from doing his slicing quests in the meantime to end up with 14k for that hour. Unless, of course, you think you need your companions to do quests...

 

It's meant to be a supplement, not a replacement, to your income from questing. It was over-nerfed, that is absolutely true. But a nerf was needed when my level 8 agent was able to make slicing 400 without doing anything but crew skill missions, and wind up with more money than my non-slicer main.

Edited December 30, 2011 by DJIzzy

[DJIzzy]

[quote=DarthSublimitas;858924

But that's just what happens when something artificial, i.e., SLICING, is injected into an economy. But that's just my humble opinion...

 

Fixed

 

Let me just put it out there loud and clear that the argument that the slicing nerf is going to ruin the economy is as full of bull as anything I've ever heard, for two reasons.

 

1) I'm a broke artificer/arch/TH. I still buy missions, implants, mods, augments, anything and everything I need that I can't produce for myself because I intend not to be gimped when I flashpoint or pvp.

 

I finance this by follow the laws of supply and demand; i sell things at a price that provides profit, and if it doesn't profit, I don't craft it.

 

And I quest and do dailies (PVP, Space, Flashpoints, Heroics). I sacrifice time, effort, and my speeder to have full skills, 250+ on all three crew skills, and a very strong working knowledge of my server's economy and they way my crew skills complement each other.

 

Whatever people stop buying, I'll stop making, but for now they're eating up my level 7 prototype-grade crystals like candies, and I'm making 300c per pure profit. They do take a while to sell, and the server is small, so this is just beginning to get me to "on par", minus the fact that I'm missing three ability upgrades, speeder training and the speeder itself.

 

2) To presume that it's balanced to say that the economy should depend on the generosity of players of one single profession is effectively an open admission of imbalance. The rest of the economy should not HAVE to treat slicers as royalty who may or may not, at their royal discretion, deign to bestow their glorious wealth upon the rest of us. To say that you funded 4-5 alts, not to mention your whole damn guild, is an OPEN ADMISSION that it's out of balance. I can barely fund myself with my everyday joe professions, let alone the rest of my guild.

 

What SHOULD be the case is that any gathering profession should be able to fund a character. The argument that anyone (implied: everyone) could be a slicer is valid, but only insofar as it's viewed as an option as opposed to a necessity. When everyone has to be a slicer to break even at the casual level of play the system is broken.

 

Hell at that rate, they should just give everyone an extra slot for slicing.

[DJIzzy]

Very good thread... I wanted to get some data as well, but you are way beyond me. This was my data for one day, will try to collect more. They are all lockboxes lvl 5 missions, since that is the highest I can run, and all ran with the robot companion, so no bonuses. Info is credits spent, time, and gain:

 

1135 - 27.45 - 0 (botched mission)

1075 - 26.16 - 1230

1075 - 26.16 - 2545 (also got a purple mission item for investigation 300)

1135 - 27.45 - 1141

1075 - 26.16 - 1202

1930 - 29.28 - 2757

 

So from just missions, I made 1450 creds, even with one botched mission. So decent. No incredible outcome, but positive nonetheless. However, I was also in the field and found about 9 safes that averaged about 200 creds each, for an extra ~1800 creds. And the purple mission item sells on the AH default price of 3645. Not sure it would sell for that price, but that is roughly what it is worth.

 

So sure, it was nerfed somewhat, but it is still slightly profitable. At least it is not losing money. I'll see how it goes tomorrow, but it seems to be ok still, just not the money printing machine it was before (which it should not be).

 

But the problem lies in the fact that most people that are upset about the nerf WANT it to be a credit printing machine. They want no negative outcomes possible, hundreds, if not thousands, of credit profit on each mission, and wonder why people who play every other crew skill get irritated about that entitlement mentality..

[Repefe]

But the problem lies in the fact that most people that are upset about the nerf WANT it to be a credit printing machine. They want no negative outcomes possible, hundreds, if not thousands, of credit profit on each mission, and wonder why people who play every other crew skill get irritated about that entitlement mentality..

 

Lets summ up what slicing does now if you don't run around collecting nodes.

 

1. It makes laughable proft per hour. The opportunity cost is way higher than what you get for running slicing missions.

2. It gives you crew missions of questionable demand.

3. It gives you cybertech schematics that GTM is flooded with.

 

So schematics nobody wants and crew missions at the price of one crew skill slot. I am keeping slicing ... on my alt. Wasting crew skill slot on main is stupid unless you want to run around clicking nodes.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Repefe

[nix_crash]

There's just no way to balance a "crafting skill" that has nothing to do with supply/demand market rules but directly print money - it will always be "too much" or "too little" and exploitable like heck or completely worthless.

just remove the lockboxes and make slicing into a true crafting skill wich produce something that apply to the supply/demand rules as everything else.

[IceJudge]

Sucks to see slicing get nerfed. Ah well :\.