Slicing: Why it had to be nerfed.

[nexalacer]

Because it's been reiterated in several areas around the community, I'm going to quote what I think is the best illustration.

 

Source found here

 

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I've studied economics at university and earned a double major in business related fields. This is my two cents on how the SWTOR economy will handle the slicing nerf. Yes, this is prompted by the slicing nerf. Whatever your personal opinions are on slicing, very, VERY few people in this subreddit seem to grasp the fact that the SWTOR economy is about to seriously deflate.

 

Most people seem to be of the persuation that "lol you n00bs that took slicing should just pick a different profession and sell your mats to make money like the rest of us DERP" but what people aren't thinking about is that economics is rarely that simple. Most people that were making an excellent living on crafted items were doing so because slicing was the ONLY way, other than questing and PvP, of bringing more money into the SWTOR economy.

 

Now that slicing is gone, demand for GTN goods is going to plummet, meaning that prices will fall drastically and those people who are bragging about how much money they make selling implants and the like are going to feel the pinch just as bad if not worse than the players who had slicing as a profession. The influx of currency in this game was cut by, on average, somewhere around 70% with the slicing nerf taking into account the "buffer" from PvP and questing cash influx. That means prices, on average, will drop by approximately the same amount. It's not the GTN that's the problem, though...if prices fall so be it, everything will just even out, right?

Wrong.

 

Exorbitantly prices skill training, NOT including ridiculously priced speeder training, is far more important to players than buying goods from the GTN. As a result, players will be saving their money for those instead. THIS is where the true problem lies. At least if money is being spent in the GTN, it stays (mostly, after commission) in the SWTOR economy; skill training removes that money from the economy altogether. With so little true expendable income in the game, GTN goods may well fall further than 70% of their current values, making earning an in game living MUCH more difficult for EVERYONE.

 

This is why one of two things must happen in the near future:

• Slicing gets buffed again, but no where near where it was prior to the nerf. Slicing WAS somewhat OP, but the current nerf removes far too many credits from the economy to keep it stable at current skill training costs.
  
• Skill training costs will be significantly lowered. The only way for the games economy to properly survive after the slicing nerf if it remains unchanged is to lower the cost of skills to keep more credits in the SWTOR economy.
  
• Vendor prices when selling items/quest rewards/pvp rewards will rise to raise the influx of cash into the economy.
  

 

Thoughts?

 

tl;dr - The slicing nerf "ceteris paribus" (there was a definite need for a nerf, just not this big) is unsustainable and I've listed three alternatives.

 

This view is based on the currently flawed Keynesian/Neo-classical approach taught in modern universities. The underlying assumption here is that currency inflation, i.e. the growth in the quantity of currency, is required for economic growth.

 

This is a flawed approach for a number of reasons. However, to reduce the size of this post, rather than explain them all, I suggest reading some material from F.A. Hayek, Murray N. Rothbard, Tom Woods, or Ludwig von Mises, or any other economist of the Austrian School.

 

But in essence, what a growth in currency means for the player is a loss in value per unit of currency. So if you log out for a couple of days with 10k credits and the total currency circulating in the economy grows by X% during those two days, when you come back your 10k will be worth less in actual value than before you logged out. In other words, you will be able to buy LESS with what you had saved.

 

Of course, since MMO economies are based on an ever-increasing supply of currency, this is a problem you're going to face regardless. However, any means of reducing the supply of credits, aka money sinks, can reduce the effects of this currency inflation.

 

If slicing was bringing more credits into the economy than the money sinks were taking out, it had to be nerfed to maintain some sort of currency stability. You may see a short-term deflation from this reduction in currency quantity, but long-term the economy will be healthier for it.

[drdovetalk]

Agree with nexalacer that there are some wrong assumptions about deflation in the quoted post.

 

In fact, there will be no deflation as long as the traditional money sources in SWTOR (quest rewards, vendoring stuff, looted credits from mobs and slicing nodes) are keeping pace or slightly more than the money sinks (skill training, mounts, repair costs, travel costs, vendor sales).

 

But if we add profitable slicing missions into this mix, then we easily run the risk of hyper-inflation, since slicing missions are a scaleable means of printing money. There's a reason why in the real world, you don't see governments giving the citizens a means to print money.

[Maughann]

I don't see how a glut of cheap sliced items is good for the economy.

Nobody would be buying them because they'd all be slicing their own for the free credits.

 

If you making the products more scarce, people will take up other skills and the market will be less flooded, demand for slicing products will rise as will the prices. Bingo, there's your profit back, the system balances itself and the only people who are still complaining are the ones who can't grasp the idea that you'll make more from a rarer item than you will for something that's everywhere.

[kaoticdrake]

Flawed statement. If it was never intended to make money by running missions, then why would they have made missions that return credit cases? They could have made it so that missions only reward augments and missions for other professions. But no, BW added possibility to send companion to get raw credits.

 

You have good points but this is not one of them.

 

My opinion is that maybe a nerf was needed, but it might have been a bit too steep one. But it could be BW's strategy; There is now more slicers than intended, so they make the missions unprofitable until the amount of slicers is balanced again, and then make slicing again profitable, but not so much as to again screw up the balance

 

Maybe they made the missions so that you didn't LOSE massive amounts of credits, but only lost a small amount of credits but still received a skill gain. All of the other skills are pretty well balanced. They said that slicing was intended for those who didn't want to craft, which allowed players to make some extra money so they could buy stuff off the auction house. You can still make a TON of credits with slicing. Now you're just having to go to the nodes rather than being able to send off your companions without doing anything.

[Elyx]

Maybe they made the missions so that you didn't LOSE massive amounts of credits, but only lost a small amount of credits but still received a skill gain. All of the other skills are pretty well balanced. They said that slicing was intended for those who didn't want to craft, which allowed players to make some extra money so they could buy stuff off the auction house. You can still make a TON of credits with slicing. Now you're just having to go to the nodes rather than being able to send off your companions without doing anything.

 

I think that's the whole point though kaotic. they aren't losing massive amounts per mission...but they're throwing up huge numbers based off of massive amount of missions ran. if you compared it to any other gathering skill where you only ran missions, you would probably see an even larger loss on those gathering skills, because they dont get money back, only materials. And in the current market state, those materials are selling for far less then what most slicers were getting from their mission chests.

 

it's the false representation they keep throwing up to try to convince....someone...that Bioware has done something horribad. But its not reflective of what is really happening.

[Fubbik]

If the current state of slicing had been the only one ever known to players there wouldn't have been much fuss about it. Much less players would have picked it, used the missions to gain skill increases at no other gain and then gathered nodes for the real profit.

 

Since BW introduced a way to get infinite credits without even having to play the game, many players took slicing and are now complaining that BW nerfed the "exploit". Suck it up and be glad you got to gain sick amounts of credits while it lasted.

 

And for those comparing with other gathering professions, I personally stopped sending my companions out on scavenging missions as the cost kills your bankroll like nothing else. The loss of credits on slicing missions is nothing compared to the loss for other gathering missions.

[Zhakul]

I agree with the op. We made WAY TOO MUCH money for doing absolutely NOTHING. Later down the road this would cause credits to be completely worthless as a currency and no one would take seriously its value leaving the game without a true trade medium.

[Daragoz]

So what your really saying is that if you get "free money" AT ALL its an exploit and should be stopped? So monsters in the game shouldn't drop money? Or better yet, because of all the "economics" responses, anyone with a disability that is unable to work should not get that money simply because it's "free" and we should take it from them... right? After all, "free" is an evil exploit.

[darkneeds]

I wish I got credits by gathering from nodes in scavenging.

 

In any case, you forgot the "In my opinion" at the beginning of your post. As long as this is not an official BW post, it is all your opinion and speculation.

 

As for raising prices? What a load. I saw highly priced items on the DTN and then would see the same item for cheaper than you could get it off a vendor. All I know is that now that many people are dropping the skill due to it being nerfed, I can charge 10x's on the DTN for the missions and schematics I get from it. Rarity is what causes an increase in price. That and the person posting item!

 

Yep less slicers makes the missions you buy on the gah more expensive. In the short term this might not be a problem - in the long term it will cause more inflation because slicing mission drop rates have been Nerfed

[Sakes]

So what your really saying is that if you get "free money" AT ALL its an exploit and should be stopped? So monsters in the game shouldn't drop money? Or better yet, because of all the "economics" responses, anyone with a disability that is unable to work should not get that money simply because it's "free" and we should take it from them... right? After all, "free" is an evil exploit.

 

It's a matter of degree.

 

It's okay for credits to enter the system, in fact thats vital for the economy to function. The problem is when the amount of incoming credits is completely out of line with the amount of outgoing credits.

 

You can't farm mobs with 8 different characters at once while logged off. There are also only so many mobs and the only respawn so quickly, compared to the limitless number of slicing missions that could be run.

[darkneeds]

I never intended to take slicing for my characters. I picked up treasure hunting, artifice and archaeology on my main and ran missions in addition to gathering in the open worlds.

 

At about 20 or so (whenever you get the message to tell you to start saving for a speeder license) I looked at the credits I had and made the decision to untrain treasure hunting and pick up slicing instead.

 

Fast forward to level 25 on my main, speeder training barely dented the bank balance, I was running archaeology missions as well, I had cash to splash around on whatever I felt like buying and I had well over 100K credits sitting there spare with slicing levelled to ~250.

 

This was in a relatively short amount of time and required very little effort.

 

I think it should be entirely re-purposed to make it viable - clicking a button and just getting money delivered to me automatically shouldn't be the end result. I could have remained with treasure hunting initially, but why bother working so much harder with crafting/GTN etc. to turn a profit when the guy next to me just queues up his companions on slicing missions and reaps potentially staggering benefits with little effort?

 

So did slicing need a nerf? In my opinion, yes - and this is supported by the fact there are so many people complaining over not getting free credits anymore. (I'd still be using slicing if it weren't for the nerf but I'm not crushed about it.)

Let's see what Bioware do with it next.

 

Pre nerf - Slicing was netting me credits but mission failures were at about 25%. They should have just increased the mission failure rate rather then fushing the skill down the toilet

[darkneeds]

This view is based on the currently flawed Keynesian/Neo-classical approach taught in modern universities. The underlying assumption here is that currency inflation, i.e. the growth in the quantity of currency, is required for economic growth.

 

This is a flawed approach for a number of reasons. However, to reduce the size of this post, rather than explain them all, I suggest reading some material from F.A. Hayek, Murray N. Rothbard, Tom Woods, or Ludwig von Mises, or any other economist of the Austrian School.

 

But in essence, what a growth in currency means for the player is a loss in value per unit of currency. So if you log out for a couple of days with 10k credits and the total currency circulating in the economy grows by X% during those two days, when you come back your 10k will be worth less in actual value than before you logged out. In other words, you will be able to buy LESS with what you had saved.

 

Of course, since MMO economies are based on an ever-increasing supply of currency, this is a problem you're going to face regardless. However, any means of reducing the supply of credits, aka money sinks, can reduce the effects of this currency inflation.

 

If slicing was bringing more credits into the economy than the money sinks were taking out, it had to be nerfed to maintain some sort of currency stability. You may see a short-term deflation from this reduction in currency quantity, but long-term the economy will be healthier for it.

 

 

This is why 30% of America is out of work.

[Zennshi]

It's a matter of degree.

 

It's okay for credits to enter the system, in fact thats vital for the economy to function. The problem is when the amount of incoming credits is completely out of line with the amount of outgoing credits.

 

You can't farm mobs with 8 different characters at once while logged off. There are also only so many mobs and the only respawn so quickly, compared to the limitless number of slicing missions that could be run.

 

Most are saying that the total of their 8 slicing chars doesn't compete with one toon and 2 hours.

[Daragoz]

And everyone conveniently misses the fact that the carry over between the so called "free money button" and killing monsters works out the same.

 

You can hit a mission and wait for 45 minutes, 1hour, or longer. And have that time or more on 5 characters.

 

At the same time, you can camp the same single enemy in a game, spend 10 seconds or less killing it, wait 2 minutes, rinse lather repeat.

 

The fact nobody wants to admit is that a lvl 50 character NEEDS those millions to survive. So that lvl 16 character earning all those credits might actually be funding a lvl 50 character.

 

And before the emo rage starts about pvp and flying missions..... What if someone doesn't do either one? They are not limiting themselves, they are playing the game the way they want to.

 

So by everyone playing the poor me too many credits in-game emo cry baby rant, just remember your FORCING others to play how YOU WOULD.

 

So, the end result? SHAME ON YOU.

[Xontier]

This has been brought up before but what I can't figure out is why people seem to think that slicing is required to buy training/speeder and gear while leveling up.

 

I don't know what game you guys are playing but I never picked up slicing and instead when Bioanalysis, Biochem, and Diplomacy. I never ran Bio missions for mats (instead I gathered the nodes) but I did use Diplomacy to make the prototype versions of my stuff.

 

While doing all that, I STILL had enough money to buy every new skill, I had enough money to buy my speeder and training at 25, 40 AND 50. I had enough money to buy the mods for my orange gear. I had enough money to buy the schematics from vendors for Biochem.

 

All without slicing. I picked up everything that dropped from mobs, ran every mission I could find, and any blue/purple/orange I found I sold on the GTM.

 

This was all during EGA before the massive influx of players on Dec. 20.

 

The only times I have ever lacked money is when I went all out and paid PREMIUM prices for exceptional crafted gear with Augment slots, or some other foolish but ultimately unrequired choice of purchases.

 

 

 

Second point:

 

Slicing is a GATHERING skill. Claim what you want, but there are slicing nodes in the world to gather from. That's the very definition of a gathering skill. If you want your free money from slicing then go find those nodes. Yes, they were hard to find at times because EVERYONE had slicing, but now that a majority of people are going to drop it (because its not the free cashcow it used to be) you'll see more and more nodes for slicing around the world. THAT is where your money will come from.

 

If the only way I can make money selling my mats from bioanalysis is by gathering from NODES in the world, then the only way Slicers should be able to make money is by gathering from NODES in the world, not running missions while at the same time getting EVEN MORE money from PvP, Flashpoints, questing and/or gathering from slicing nodes.

 

 

 

 

Edit: Read through a few more comments and holy ****. How can you guys not see slicing needed to be nerfed?

 

I don't know if this number is correct or not, and frankly it really doesn't matter. A poster mentioned that Slicing made 36k an hour. I assume this is with 5 companions running the missions.

 

You can have 8 characters on a server. Each of those 8 characters can have 5 companions. That's a total of 40 (FORTY) companions on one server.

 

Let's take our (possible) imaginary number of 35k an hour and multiply it by 8 (the 8 characters with 5 companions each) which comes to...

 

288k A FREAKING HOUR. For doing what? NOTHING. For logging into a character, clicking a few buttons, then logging out and moving to the next. That would have absolutely destroyed the economy and made slicing REQUIRED to be able to buy anything on the GTM.

 

Even if the 36k/hour is wrong and the real slicing gain was only 10k/hour with 5 companions, that's still 80k/hour for doing absolutely nothing.

 

At least to make money in any other fashion (from quests, flashpoints, gathering skills, crafting, PvP, etc) you actually have to WORK for it.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Xontier

[Apsen_Layne]

yes becuase paying 2025 for a reward of 1970 makes sense? balance my ***.

[LilTikiBoy]

yes becuase paying 2025 for a reward of 1970 makes sense? balance my ***.

 

does when your running a "MISSION" with a "GATHERING" skill. why cant you people get that threw your thick skulls?

[Xontier]

does when your running a "MISSION" with a "GATHERING" skill. why cant you people get that threw your thick skulls?

 

Exactly. Slicers can still gather from nodes and get their free credits.

 

Again, the only reason there has been a lack of nodes in the world is because there was a HUGE amount of people with slicing. Now that less people will have it, there will be more nodes, and slicing will be viable (just not as big of a cashcow as it used to be)

[Twor]

This has been brought up before but what I can't figure out is why people seem to think that slicing is required to buy training/speeder and gear while leveling up.

 

I don't know what game you guys are playing but I never picked up slicing and instead when Bioanalysis, Biochem, and Diplomacy. I never ran Bio missions for mats (instead I gathered the nodes) but I did use Diplomacy to make the prototype versions of my stuff.

 

While doing all that, I STILL had enough money to buy every new skill, I had enough money to buy my speeder and training at 25, 40 AND 50. I had enough money to buy the mods for my orange gear. I had enough money to buy the schematics from vendors for Biochem.

 

All without slicing. I picked up everything that dropped from mobs, ran every mission I could find, and any blue/purple/orange I found I sold on the GTM.

 

This was all during EGA before the massive influx of players on Dec. 20.

 

The only times I have ever lacked money is when I went all out and paid PREMIUM prices for exceptional crafted gear with Augment slots, or some other foolish but ultimately unrequired choice of purchases.

 

 

And where do you think did the money came from that you got through the GTN? Wanna bet that 80% came from slicers who had to spend?

 

Look how much you made without the GTN, just from Mob drops and vendoring greens and than check how much you could have afforded to spend there... Such a shortsighted view.

[Evilsteps]

Exactly. Slicers can still gather from nodes and get their free credits.

 

Again, the only reason there has been a lack of nodes in the world is because there was a HUGE amount of people with slicing. Now that less people will have it, there will be more nodes, and slicing will be viable (just not as big of a cashcow as it used to be)

 

The fact people aren't understanding that point is simply proving what the problem was. They wanted to be able to make a crap load of cash and still be able to not interrupt whatever they were working on at the time. With the other gathering skills you actually have to run out of your way or clear some trash mobs to gather the node. Sending your companions on missions for all other gathering skills loses money too. Not by a little, but by a lot. The slicers just don't want to have to actually go out and gather from the nodes.

[Twor]

The fact people aren't understanding that point is simply proving what the problem was. They wanted to be able to make a crap load of cash and still be able to not interrupt whatever they were working on at the time. With the other gathering skills you actually have to run out of your way or clear some trash mobs to gather the node. Sending your companions on missions for all other gathering skills loses money too. Not by a little, but by a lot. The slicers just don't want to have to actually go out and gather from the nodes.

 

The fact that you ain't understanding is that you can send your crew on a scavenging mission, you pay to get materials back so you can craft.

With slicing you pay to lose money on the missions.

[Xontier]

The fact that you ain't understanding is that you can send your crew on a scavenging mission, you pay to get materials back so you can craft.

With slicing you pay to lose money on the missions.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArCSGLnwZLADdGxYdlhEejBFclBjR3l1N29OaW1kYUE&gid=5

 

Is that so? While that data is still relatively new, its showing that slicing still gives money from missions, just not the stupidly high amount of credits it used to.

 

Net profit is net profit, its just that post-nerf, the net profit is lower.

[Magaric]

Check my post. I no longer use the missions from slicing unless it a mission I 100% gather slice nodes.

[LilTikiBoy]

Wanna bet that 80% came from slicers who had to spend?

 

i fail to see how this helps prove that slicing didnt need nerfed.

[Azurial]

At 43 I have 400/400/400 Armour/Scavenging/UT.

 

I have spent roughly 1,000,000 on missions and matarials to try level up and to get purple recipies (I have 7) and this is just starting to pay off now as I can sell l49/50 armour pieces at about 20k each.

 

If you estimate that you take 3-8 tries to get a blue and then worse than that for a purple thats maybe 10 missions worth of materials for each tier jump at 1600cr a pop. (Also buying the recipies.

 

I'd anticipate to get full sets of heavy and medium purples it will set me back maybe 5 or 6million credits.

 

This is a huge investment and I think people need to consider the huge huge drain of reverse engineering on peoples funds (especially as they are providing useful items) compared to the click for credits nature of slicing which should at best give a modest return as it has no RE requirements.

 

For the record I have a measly 230k on hand and have not bought my speeder upgrade.

 

Remember this the next time you cant make 50k an hour.