Slicing: Why it had to be nerfed.

[Belkiratwo]

I agree with this. There are ways to make money besides slicing, but they involve PVP or flashpoints or the AH and crafting. Slicing was a nice way to get out of those things if you don't like them. But it was easily exploitable in a game-ruining sort of way.

 

I think the solution is twofold: make slicing *slightly* profitable for casual players while somehow restricting it from being exploited.

 

Or, make questing/grinding more profitable.

 

Or make vendor stuff (training/speeders/etc.) cheaper.

 

Or some combination of all that.

 

But the exploitative opportunity of slicing had to go.

 

I still agree with you though, the game is supposed to be fun for a variety of playstyles. I hope BW can meet this need in further enhancements.

 

Stick with us!!

 

 

 

Slicing would just be a large INITIAL source of liquidity in the market. As stated above, the growth of the economy due to slicing would plateau and overtime the diversity of the market as more people reach bother higher player and crafting levels would lead to the eventual decline of slicing as a driving force.

 

In a mature market slicing would make up a small percentage of the overall liquidity and due to the ceiling of growth possible on slicing it would most likely become the least profitable overtime.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Belkiratwo

[Sakes]

Rofl... so sending a companion on a mission for 1250 and them coming back with 1000 is working as intended? It clearly states the missions are to yield lockboxes.

 

So you basically paid 250 for a 1-2 points of skill and a chance to get an item you can sell.

 

Seems balanced to me considering other gathering professions pay 1250 for some materials that are worth considerably less.

[NermalDetonator]

 

Slicing gives people, especially new characters, more options to have fun! The original post wants people to fit their, old boring, time consuming way of playing the game. They want people to do work. Barf.

 

No, it doesnt. It leads to new characters being unable to buy jack, aside from vendor sold goods.

[Iridor]

The central argument here is exactly right... the problem is that the mere existence of lockbox missions contradicts the entire thing. Yes, a gathering skill that gets money for pushing a button may be imbalanced. But if that's so, why do lockbox missions - meaning, missions which have only the purpose of getting money back - exist?

[NermalDetonator]

The central argument here is exactly right... the problem is that the mere existence of lockbox missions contradicts the entire thing. Yes, a gathering skill that gets money for pushing a button may be imbalanced. But if that's so, why do lockbox missions - meaning, missions which have only the purpose of getting money back - exist?

 

Except its not always cash in the boxes...

[Osirous]

Slicing would just be a large INITIAL source of liquidity in the market. As stated above, the growth of the economy due to slicing would plateau and overtime the diversity of the market as more people reach bother higher player and crafting levels would lead to the eventual decline of slicing as a driving force.

 

In a mature market slicing would make up a small percentage of the overall liquidity and due to the ceiling of growth possible on slicing it would most likely become the least profitable overtime.

 

No, it doesnt. It leads to new characters being unable to buy jack, aside from vendor sold goods.

 

^this

 

Initial liquidity raises the bar so new players have to farm slicing like crazy to catch up. Bringing the entire market back down keeps it at a lower overal level so newer players can catch up quicker. Just look at WOW, after many many years they've continually had to modify the early game to be faster and more lucrative to keep up with the ever increasing overall market. This was a proactive strike to keep that in check as much as possible.

[Mogget]

There seems to be a lot of misinformation about Slicing and it's nerf. I know it's probably a waste of time but I figured I'd try to explain what is going on as best I can.

 

Let me start by explaining what slicing is and what it is for.

 

There are three types of trade skills in SWTOR. Crafting skills turn raw materials into products which players use themselves or sell for profit. Gathering skills gather materials from nodes. Mission skills run missions to recieve materials. Slicing is a gathering skill.

 

The confusion comes from the fact that slicers thought they should be making money off running missions with a gathering skill. This was never intended to be the case. Gathering skill missions are credit sinks. You can pay large amounts of credits in exchange for raw materials. If a Scavenger or Archeologist runs a mission, they recieve materials for far above market price. They don't rely on missions to make credits, they make their credits from gathering from nodes.

 

This is the intended design for Slicing as well. Bioware doesn't want players to be able to press a button, wait, and recieve money. They want Slicers to make their money by harvesting nodes. A lot of slicers have complained that nodes are too difficult to come by, but this is a result of so many people going Slicing in order to benefit from the missions. If everyone went Scavenging, then Scavengers would have the same problem, it isn't anything inherently wrong with Slicing, and it will balance itself out naturally as people shift away from it to new skills.

 

On the other hand, Mission skills do not have nodes, players need to run missions to recieve the products. So, Mission skills had to run missions, and gathering skills needed to gather nodes, but Slicing was the best of both worlds, having both nodes to gather and profitable missions. This clearly wasn't be design.

 

Next I want to explain why it had to be changed.

 

Slicing would have lead to rapid inflation, that is, everyone would have had far more credits then they knew what to do with. The cost of player made things would rapidly rise and become out of sync with training costs and other expenses. We would see player services and goods priced too high for those items to be purchased by anyone but established level 50s.

 

Why would this have happened? Quite simply the problem with slicing missions was there was no dimishing returns on additional players doing it. Nodes are a finite resource, only so many exist, and they only respawn so quickly. The server essentailly creates X amount of resources an hour and players can never get more then that amount. More players simply means splitting that same amount up more times.

 

Missions are entirely different. The game doesn't care who many missions are gone on, the costs and rewards are identical. There is no competition for resources, and no limit on how many can be created. For mission skills this is ok because of supply and demand. If I take Underworld trading on 1 character, then leveled up a second and also took UT, I wouldn't make 2x the profit because there is finite demand for those products. By increasing supply without increasing demand I'm simply lowering the value of what I produce. It's a built in balance. If everyone took UT, those products would plumet in value, turning a profit would become impossible and people would switch to different trade skills until it balanced itself back out.

 

This would never had happened in slicing because it produces raw credits. Having 2 slicers running missions was twice as much profit as having 1 slicer running missions. Having 8 was 8 times as much profit. Unlike with UT and flooding the market, there was no reason not to have every character you had with slicing.

 

So instead of the server creating X amount of product in nodes and splitting it between players, we had player directly creating credits with no limit or checks. It was an untenable situation.

 

If slicing was free credits then there would be no reason to do anything else for credits, especally considering inflation would mean the amount of credits recieved from doing dailies or grinding mobs would be undervalued. When everyone has more credits then they know what to do with it means no one bothers to do their dailies, to gather items, to grind mobs, to actually go out in the world and play the game. Maintaining a balance between credits entering the world and credits leaving the world is absolutely vital to the survival of any game, and leaving slicing as it was would have made that entirely impossible.

 

There are some who may feel there is a lack of credits entering the world now with Slicing nerfed. Even if this were the case, it would be better fixed by doing things like reducing training costs or increasing quest rewards, rather then returning slicing to the way it was. Also keep in mind there are far more credit sinks while leveling then there are at max level, and currently the vast majority of players are still leveling.

 

I'm sorry for those effected, but it had to be done. There will be a short term deflation, and there will be more competition for other nodes as people switch, but it had to be done. There was simply no way to maintain a healthy economy with the way Slicing was.

 

All the other gathering skill missions give crafting mats. What does slicing give? Nothing. It doesn't help a character at all except for the augments, and you need good crafted equipment to use them. Might as well just remove it from the game and make it possible for the cybertech crafters to make augments.

 

Not to mention the time it took to get high in slicing. How about those people who don't get their time back? Hours gone. BW should have at least offered to switch to a new skill at the same level or half that the slicing was.

[Bibdy]

Why do people keep making Slicing-related threads thinking its going to be the defacto, be-all, end-all discussion to finish all of the complaining for good? How long have you been on the internet? All you're doing is prolonging the complaining by giving the same handful of stubborn babies another thread to scream and cry in. Stop trying to reason with the unreasonable.

[Sticksabbi]

The central argument here is exactly right... the problem is that the mere existence of lockbox missions contradicts the entire thing. Yes, a gathering skill that gets money for pushing a button may be imbalanced. But if that's so, why do lockbox missions - meaning, missions which have only the purpose of getting money back - exist?

 

The same reason that there are missions in underworld trading that cost less, take less time, and only yield companion gifts. To provide a cheaper way to level the skill and get a chance to yield crit items i.e. schematics.

[Osirous]

The central argument here is exactly right... the problem is that the mere existence of lockbox missions contradicts the entire thing. Yes, a gathering skill that gets money for pushing a button may be imbalanced. But if that's so, why do lockbox missions - meaning, missions which have only the purpose of getting money back - exist?

 

LOCKboxes. Not creditboxes.

 

It's been said a million times, the point of mission skills for any profession are rares, not base materials. The base material for scavanging is metal and compounds. You get them from gathering nodes. You lose money getting them from missions, but you get a chance at rares. Slicing missions lose money but have a chance at rares. You just lose less money slicing, or have the chance to make money. Some stats show you still make money on average. I think the false news that you lose money on slicing missions is anecdotal at best anyway. You just don't make it hand over fist like you used to.

 

But the point is slicing missions ISN'T for credits! It's for the rares! They just aren't rare anymore because everyone's mother is a slicer because it used to make credits too!

[Osirous]

Why do people keep making Slicing-related threads thinking its going to be the defacto, be-all, end-all discussion to finish all of the complaining for good? How long have you been on the internet? All you're doing is prolonging the complaining by giving the same handful of stubborn babies another thread to scream and cry in. Stop trying to reason with the unreasonable.

 

Whats the value of reason if it isn't shared? That's like telling teachers to stop instructing children that don't know any better.

 

It's a losing battle but if we don't fight we have no right to expect the outcome to be any different.

 

I like to see I'm not alone. There actually are people out there who get it.

 

*edit* And what, you expect me to actually work? This is why I play MMO's. To distract me from work.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Osirous

[Drewser]

Slicing would just be a large INITIAL source of liquidity in the market. As stated above, the growth of the economy due to slicing would plateau and overtime the diversity of the market as more people reach bother higher player and crafting levels would lead to the eventual decline of slicing as a driving force.

 

In a mature market slicing would make up a small percentage of the overall liquidity and due to the ceiling of growth possible on slicing it would most likely become the least profitable overtime.

 

You are talking way over the heads of people that are screaming, "slicing is free money, it will kill the game".

[Bibdy]

Whats the value of reason if it isn't shared? That's like telling teachers to stop instructing children that don't know any better.

 

It's a losing battle but if we don't fight we have no right to expect the outcome to be any different.

 

I like to see I'm not alone. There actually are people out there who get it.

 

*edit* And what, you expect me to actually work? This is why I play MMO's. To distract me from work.

 

Ah yes, the very definition of madness. While I agree, I think it's a much better use of the 'teachers' time to educate everyone ELSE than try to argue with people so pent up with hate and frustration they'd cut off their nose to spite their face. If they want to run around, scream, cry, threaten account cancellation and whatever else, just let them air out their grievances and go.

[Deedre]

You are talking way over the heads of people that are screaming, "slicing is free money, it will kill the game".

 

No, he's simply wrong. It would merely lead to inflating the whole economy over time, because the money supply would keep expanding and not be offset by in game money sinks. This tends to happen anyways in MMO economies without anything like slicing. You have to be very careful about how a game introduces new money into its economy -- and giving each and every player a license to print money over and above the sources of money created in game could only lead to one result down the line.

 

What is inflation? Too much money chasing too few goods.

 

I'm baffled by an alleged economics major uptopic who doesn't understand this rather obvious point.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Deedre

[Sakes]

Why do people keep making Slicing-related threads thinking its going to be the defacto, be-all, end-all discussion to finish all of the complaining for good? How long have you been on the internet? All you're doing is prolonging the complaining by giving the same handful of stubborn babies another thread to scream and cry in. Stop trying to reason with the unreasonable.

 

I think a lot of players are reasonable people who honestly don't understand the nerf because they never played in beta and they've never had another trade skill. They think it's perfectly normal to get profit from running gathering trade skill missions and don't understand the impact on the economy slicing missions were having.

 

I never intended for this to be an 'end all be all' conversation, merely my opinions of what was wrong and why it had to be changed in the hopes that it would inform some people.

[Daragoz]

Quite frankly, I don't give a damn about the slicing making money. I may not like the nerf, but my central argument is a lack of credit income. If slicing makes me the credits I NEED to survive, then I am damn well going to fight my *** off to make it change and be profitable. Like I have stated before, at lvl 26 my mission rewards don't give me enough credits, and killing random enemies (which i enjoy doing) only gets me 1 MAYBE 2 trash items to sell every 6-10 enemies. How am I suppose to survive in this mmo with 0 credits?

 

That is my central argument, and also the argument of many others. I do not wish to play this game being poor. I also don't expect to be a billionaire at lvl 13. I want the credits to survive, that's it. I don't mind grinding to get them, so long as I ACTUALLY get the credits. This is why I am not playing my lvl 26 sage. I have no meny for ANYTHING. I can not craft, I can not buy the armor I need... Hell, I am not even REMOTELY close to getting that damn speeder skill.

 

Sure a lot of people say "oh screw you.. I had that at lvl 13..." I say ********.

 

Find a way to increase credit gain without breaking the game. That is ALL I want.

[Drewser]

No, he's simply wrong. It would merely lead to inflating the whole economy over time, because the money supply would keep expanding and not be offset by in game money sinks. This tends to happen anyways in MMO economies without anything like slicing. You have to be very careful about how a game introduces new money into its economy -- and giving each and every player a license to print money over and above the sources of money created in game could only lead to one result down the line.

 

I'm baffled by an alleged economics major uptopic who doesn't understand this rather obvious point.

 

You don't get his point.

[Deedre]

You don't get his point.

 

You're not getting mine.

[Daragoz]

Quite frankly, I don't give a damn about the slicing making money. I may not like the nerf, but my central argument is a lack of credit income. If slicing makes me the credits I NEED to survive, then I am damn well going to fight my *** off to make it change and be profitable. Like I have stated before, at lvl 26 my mission rewards don't give me enough credits, and killing random enemies (which i enjoy doing) only gets me 1 MAYBE 2 trash items to sell every 6-10 enemies. How am I suppose to survive in this mmo with 0 credits?

 

That is my central argument, and also the argument of many others. I do not wish to play this game being poor. I also don't expect to be a billionaire at lvl 13. I want the credits to survive, that's it. I don't mind grinding to get them, so long as I ACTUALLY get the credits. This is why I am not playing my lvl 26 sage. I have no meny for ANYTHING. I can not craft, I can not buy the armor I need... Hell, I am not even REMOTELY close to getting that damn speeder skill.

 

Sure a lot of people say "oh screw you.. I had that at lvl 13..." I say ********.

 

Find a way to increase credit gain without breaking the game. That is ALL I want.

[Bibdy]

Quite frankly, I don't give a damn about the slicing making money. I may not like the nerf, but my central argument is a lack of credit income. If slicing makes me the credits I NEED to survive, then I am damn well going to fight my *** off to make it change and be profitable. Like I have stated before, at lvl 26 my mission rewards don't give me enough credits, and killing random enemies (which i enjoy doing) only gets me 1 MAYBE 2 trash items to sell every 6-10 enemies. How am I suppose to survive in this mmo with 0 credits?

 

That is my central argument, and also the argument of many others. I do not wish to play this game being poor. I also don't expect to be a billionaire at lvl 13. I want the credits to survive, that's it. I don't mind grinding to get them, so long as I ACTUALLY get the credits. This is why I am not playing my lvl 26 sage. I have no meny for ANYTHING. I can not craft, I can not buy the armor I need... Hell, I am not even REMOTELY close to getting that damn speeder skill.

 

Sure a lot of people say "oh screw you.. I had that at lvl 13..." I say ********.

 

Find a way to increase credit gain without breaking the game. That is ALL I want.

 

Oh for crying out loud. People are getting 400/400/400 with tradeskills that DON'T include Slicing, well before level 50, and they're doing just fine with money. Just because you can't afford your rank 2, or rank 3 speeder training the MOMENT you hit level 40/50, doesn't mean the whole system is broken. Those are meant to be accomplishments that you get either from frugality or time. Stop playing like an idiot, throwing money at everything that has a price tag on it and you'll find you have a lot more of it to go around.

[Osirous]

You don't get his point.

 

You don't get hers. Slicing may have a static level of income, but its, like she said, a money printing button. There is no physical limit to the money you can introduce with it. You simply have to create more characters, more accounts, more gold farmers. Inflation will never stop when players control a free money button. That is why no MMO has ever had one, and Bioware had to stop this one.

[Daragoz]

Apparently your missing my point. I don't have the credit income to start with. so "for crying out loud" stop trolling.

[Kordoyn]

I think that most of the people complaining are those who picked a crafting profession(s) instead of slicing. I also expect this to backfire and crafted item prices drop substantially as the slicers are not there to buy their goods. It's a lose/lose situation. Slicers have considerably less money, crafters lose money on crafting.

[Daragoz]

As a point on other crafts, how is an artifice supposed to craft a purple rarity enhancement if they don't have Chrysopaz gems that never get rewarded from missions and are NEVER on the auction block. And when they are, they sell for atleast 5000 credits EACH.

 

I am an artifice, and I lack materials to craft. I have tried doing missions, but I am out of money. So I have no way to get my items to even sell on the auction block at all. So, from my standpoint, without slicing around making money, I am losing. Until I find a way to make some credits, I am deadlocked from crafting let alone leveling.

[Belkiratwo]

You don't get hers. Slicing may have a static level of income, but its, like she said, a money printing button. There is no physical limit to the money you can introduce with it. You simply have to create more characters, more accounts, more gold farmers. Inflation will never stop when players control a free money button. That is why no MMO has ever had one, and Bioware had to stop this one.

 

 

My point was what you call "inflation" i call normalization and once the economy normalized around a level 50 player base the entire economy will shift and slicing would become obsolete as other sources of income become more profitable.

 

I completely understand the concept of a "print money" button but when that button can only produce a set amount no matter what then why would it be worth investment if there are other areas of growth that have a much higher potential for return?

 

Slicing only appears to be a "print money" button now because there is no market for:

 

- augments

- high end crafted items

- high end materials

- expensive vanity items

- mods/ship items

- companion items

 

The current market population is almost exclusively leveling characters and the initial wave of level 50's that are more than likely the foundation of the initial wave of raiders.

 

My whole point is that the market isn't MATURE enough at this point to make such a rash decision and all economic theory points to an eventual decline in the value of slicing as most people view it.

 

edit: i'll grant that BW has access to the actual statistics and my conclusions are based on personal observation but I just find it highly unlikely that 2 weeks could be enough time to determine the overall effect slicing in it's previous state would have had.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Belkiratwo