Slicing: Why it had to be nerfed.

[leihn]

Again... the other gathering skills make the money from the product, not from selling the raw materials.

 

For slicing there is no product.

 

And on the normal slicing missions you actually lose money with no return, as it currently is.

 

This isn't smart.

 

Lets just say it takes me 2 Scavenging missions to craft a prototype Blue of some sort (this is pretty low, since sometimes you get bad luck and need 3 to get the materials required), discounting the Investigation mission completely (since you'd either run that or buy that material anyways as it cannot be scavenged), you would be paying around 2000-2200 creds to run those two missions to return materials that would likely sell on the GTN for less than that. Even if it sells for 1900-2100 (net loss of 100 average creds) it would be in my best interest to never use these missions for materials and instead either Scavenge them from nodes (+1900-2100 profit) or BUY them from the GTN (+100 profit).

 

Regardless of whether my final product that I produce sells for 3000, 30,000, or 300,000,000 credits, the fact that my COST from using a Gathering Mission is HIGHER than my COST from simply BUYING the materials is why it's a NET LOSS to go on those missions.

 

Edit: But yes, there is certain server economy constraints in play, there is the possibility that on some servers certain gathering professions will be more profitable than their mission costs, though I can't see that being the case for any densely populated server.

Edited December 28, 2011 by leihn

[Ravaran]

Again... the other gathering skills make the money from the product, not from selling the raw materials.

 

For slicing there is no product.

 

And on the normal slicing missions you actually lose money with no return, as it currently is.

 

Also to the point of inflation... I just found a level 46 rare that sells for 8k on a vendor already. Slicing made 36k an hour (check spreadsheets in other threads).

 

Compared to endgame economy slicing was not that bad, that it needed to be hammered into complete uselessness. Ah well.

 

Yes so then we can say slicing should provide you with enough credits to purchase the mats. If bioanylisis pays 800 credits for 600 credits worth of mats, then a slicer should earn 400 credits for a similiar 600 credit mission. But unlike credits, the market price of mats will likely drop, making a 600 credit gain for an 800 credit cost more valuable than a similair bioanylsis mission. Like bioanalysis, the real money is farming in the open world.

[Osirous]

I just don't understand so many people saying the only reward for slicing is credits?? That's like saying the only reward for underworld trading is companion gifts???

 

Slicing is for getting augments, schematics, missions, and also possibly credits. I see no evidence that slicing was made for credits. They added credits, because like treasure hunting, the GOOD rewards from slicing have to be very rare to keep them valuable. So they give you the option of making *some* credits to offset the rarity of the good items. But they gave you alittle too many credits so EVERYONE picked up slicing, making the *rare* items no longer rare, and therefor worthless.

 

Now that slicing won't be so common, the rare items will become more rare and therefor more valuable.

 

I do agree, however, that the demand for these rare items needs to be increased a little too. Which means making the rare items a little more powerful/valuable. There just isn't enough gear that requires augments and the rare schematics aren't that much (if any) better than vendor stuff.

 

But slicing isn't for credits!! The credits just offset the supposed rarity of the actual rewards!!

[SithyJerry]

Its been nerfed to much as i was trying to outline in another thread that immediatly got closed. :')

 

Overeager moderators. :r

 

 

Anyway lvl 1 abundant missions = costs 120 credits - gains maybe 90 creds 9 out of 10 times.

 

The higher you go the same it remains i've noticed.

If you're lucky you either get roughly the same amount in return or 100 creds more.. this is ridiculous.

 

It shouldnt have been "nerfed" this much.

Remember most slicers (like myself) take no other profession untill much later.

So any income from "crafting" comes from slicing.

 

Other craft skills can do just as well or better.. the only reason they didnt yet is because the market is still trying to find a balance between price sales/demand etc.

 

FYI nobody cares about the augments.. and gaining missions are fairly rare now even more then before as it was totally random.

And even if you did gain a mission drop ..there would be 100 other sellers already with the same thing.

Edited December 28, 2011 by SithyJerry

[Skogula]

They will probably need to re-adjust slicing. I've done testing all day, and when you calculate return/minute the tiers don't scale up.

 

Tier 1 slicing: -6 credits/minute

Tier 2 slicing: 12.78 credits/minute

Tier 3 slicing: 13.19 credits/minute

Tier 4 slicing: 19.96 credits/minute

Tier 5 slicing: 18.56 credits/minute

Tier 6 slicing: 5.5 credits/minute

 

This was calculated using the formula (reward / time) - (cost / time) with a minimum of 10 samples per tier.

 

One would assume that the actual returns would scale with the tier of "quests" done.

[Osirous]

Yes so then we can say slicing should provide you with enough credits to purchase the mats. If bioanylisis pays 800 credits for 600 credits worth of mats, then a slicer should earn 400 credits for a similiar 600 credit mission. But unlike credits, the market price of mats will likely drop, making a 600 credit gain for an 800 credit cost more valuable than a similair bioanylsis mission. Like bioanalysis, the real money is farming in the open world.

 

Yes, this is the offset I mentioned before. Both a bioanalyst and slicer spend 800 credits on a mission. The bio gets 600 credits worth of mats, and a chance at crit for something better. The slicer gets 600 credits back and a chance at a crit for something better.

 

This makes sense to me.

 

*edit* The only problem is the market determines the value of the mats a bio gets, and the slicer reward is static. So Bioware took a guess at what they think values should be. It won't be perfect on any server, but the same can be said for say an archaeologist. Depending on the server it may or may not make more than a bioanalyst or scavenger. Slicers, however, just straight don't have the chance of making more than anyone else. Which is why I think their *rare* rewards need to be buffed to offset this inherent loss.

 

*edit* But I think making slicers make a static guaranteed profit is not good because it introduces an unhealthy credit source that can be exploited, as we have seen already. That will ruin a game faster than anything.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Osirous

[Ravaran]

Yes, this is the offset I mentioned before. Both a bioanalyst and slicer spend 800 credits on a mission. The bio gets 600 credits worth of mats, and a chance at crit for something better. The slicer gets 600 credits back and a chance at a crit for something better.

 

This makes sense to me.

 

*edit* The only problem is the market determines the value of the mats a bio gets, and the slicer reward is static. So Bioware took a guess at what they think values should be. It won't be perfect on any server, but the same can be said for say an archaeologist. Depending on the server it may or may not make more than a bioanalyst or scavenger. Slicers, however, just straight don't have the chance of making more than anyone else. Which is why I think their *rare* rewards need to be buffed to offset this inherent loss.

 

*edit* But I think making slicers make a static guaranteed profit is not good because it introduces an unhealthy credit source that can be exploited, as we have seen already. That will ruin a game faster than anything.

 

Perhaps for now, but as more players roll alts and power-level crew skills, they will likely get more mats than what they want. They will not care if they sell these mats for dirt cheap. At least the gains/losses from slicing are constant, but as the supply exceeds the demand, mats prices will plummet making running gathering missions be more and more of a loss. Also, credit box crits will be much more valauble as more people move away from slicing and actually figure out the mission discoveries.

[Morlaak]

The problem with Slicing now is that, without incentive to run missions, I'll also get less schematics. I personally recommend you all buy your slicing-related gathering missions and schematics fast, because their price is going to rise soon. Edited December 28, 2011 by Morlaak

[Jjix]

Inflation was never a problem except for slicers. The value of the credit would decline, but the amount of credits earned through slicing would have remained the same. Which means, in effect, slicing would have eventually become balanced, and even underpowered, due to inflation itself. Meanwhile the other crafting professions would essentially only be positively impacted by inflation. The cost of running missions would become negligible due to the lower value of the credit, yet the amount crafters would sell their items for would be entirely based on supply and demand, effectively making them immune to the impact of inflation.

[leihn]

Inflation was never a problem except for slicers. The value of the credit would decline, but the amount of credits earned through slicing would have remained the same. Which means, in effect, slicing would have eventually become balanced, and even underpowered, due to inflation itself. Meanwhile the other crafting professions would essentially only be positively impacted by inflation. The cost of running missions would become negligible due to the lower value of the credit, yet the amount crafters would sell their items for would be entirely based on supply and demand, effectively making them immune to the impact of inflation.

 

This is actually an organic truth, based on the presence of slicers in the system matched with sufficient demand for the other trade skills.

[Daragoz]

I also got my thread closed instantaneously and a re-link to a thread that's bogus. The only way I was making any headway in the game was slicing. Now I am considering not playing until BW fixes the profit margins. My lvl 26 sage on Tatooine isn't making crap for money. I do not have my speeder skill yet, and I can not afford to train my skills. For every 6-10 kills I do, I get 1 MAYBE 2 trash items to sell. Missions are not giving as much as they should in rewards. All this adds up to me not being able to have fun. Slicing was fun. I wasn't making obscene amounts of cash, but I was making enough to support myself. I won't be slicing anymore or doing ANY crafting at all, or even using the auction house. Instead of leveling, i'm going to have to give up my leveling and go back to Nar Shaddaa or Taris where I can survive long enough to MAYBE get some cash. Nerfing slicing and a lack of income from enemies killed and too low income from mission rewards has killed me. The speeder skill being 40,000 credits, and my sage skills being 2,500 credits is too much for the income lvl. I say raise slicing to be 20% profitable AT THE LEAST and raise the enemy drop percentages. I love grinding and killing monsters for fun, but this is plain stupid. The last game I played where the income was like this was a game called Rappelz. I do not want SWTOR to end up like that crappy game.

 

Please BW, take note and fix things. I know a lot of people that are DONE with SWTOR over the slicing nerf. The game isn't fun to them, the economy has been trashed... People don't want to grind for 6 days to get 5000 credits. And that is PRECISELY what the nerf has done.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Daragoz

[Osirous]

Inflation was never a problem except for slicers. The value of the credit would decline, but the amount of credits earned through slicing would have remained the same. Which means, in effect, slicing would have eventually become balanced, and even underpowered, due to inflation itself. Meanwhile the other crafting professions would essentially only be positively impacted by inflation. The cost of running missions would become negligible due to the lower value of the credit, yet the amount crafters would sell their items for would be entirely based on supply and demand, effectively making them immune to the impact of inflation.

 

But this logic puts slicing as the credit source for the entire crafting economy, as opposed to questing being the main credit source. Unless questing rewards were increased to match slicing rewards, but then slicers still have the advantage over non slicers.

 

The problem is to balance the economy for crafters and non crafters alike. You can't just make slicing be the credit source for the entire game because then people will stop questing, doing dailies, etc. They will just log in, send off their slicing missions, log out.

 

The point is to make the things that are *fun* make money. Crafting is fun, and it makes money on the GTM. Questin is fun, and it makes money in quest rewards/drops. Etc. Having slicing be the baseline for making profit to fund the economy takes away from the things that are what make the game a game.

 

Thats fine if you want to leave slicing where it was. But then everything else in the game needs to be brought up to that level as well, and its easier to bring slicing back down to where everything else is.

 

People can still make profit on slicing, its just very very small. And there is a higher risk of getting stuck on a losing streak. But there are extensive stats out there showing you still, overall, make money on average. Just very little.

[leihn]

I also got my thread closed instantaneously for and a re-link to a thread thats bogus. The only way i was making any headway in the game was slicing. Now I am considering not playing until BW fixes the profit margins. My lvl 26 sage on tatooine isnt making crap for money. I do not have my speeder skill yet, and I can not afford to train my skills. For every 6-10 kills I do, I get 1 MAYBE 2 trash items to sell. Missions are not giving as much as they should in rewards. All this adds up to me not being able to have fun. Slicing was fun. I wasn't making obscene amounts of cash, but I was making enough to support myself. I won't be slicing anymore or doing ANY crafting at all, or even using the auction house. Instead of going to have to give up my leveling and go back to Nar Shaddaa or Taris where I can survive long enough to MAYBE get some cash. Nerfing slicing and a lack of income from enemies killed and too low income from mission rewards has killed me. The speeder skill being 40,000 credits, and my sage skills being 2,500 credits is too much for the income lvl. I say raise slicing to be 20% profitable AT THE LEAST and raise the enemy drop percentages. I love grinding and killing monsters for fun, but this is plain stupid. The last game I played where the income was like this was a game called Rappelz. I do not want SWTOR to end up like that crappy game.

 

Please BW, take note and fix things. I know a lot of people that are DONE with SWTOR over the slicing nerf. The game isn't fun to them, the economy has been trashed... People don't want to grind for 6 days to get 5000 credits. And that is PRECISELY what the nerf has done.

 

Counterpoint, my first toon is an Imperial Agent and I went Armstech/Scavenging/Investigation.

 

Without selling anything on the GTN and only vendoring the items I've produced I was able to afford my Speeder and all of my skills at level 25 while simultaneously leveling my skill in Armstech primarily through Scavenging in the world and Investigation Missions to keep up or ahead of what my current level was.

 

You do not need to abuse slicing to make money, you simply need to do appropriate level quests and loot everything.

[Osirous]

I also got my thread closed instantaneously and a re-link to a thread that's bogus. The only way I was making any headway in the game was slicing. Now I am considering not playing until BW fixes the profit margins. My lvl 26 sage on Tatooine isn't making crap for money. I do not have my speeder skill yet, and I can not afford to train my skills. For every 6-10 kills I do, I get 1 MAYBE 2 trash items to sell. Missions are not giving as much as they should in rewards. All this adds up to me not being able to have fun. Slicing was fun. I wasn't making obscene amounts of cash, but I was making enough to support myself. I won't be slicing anymore or doing ANY crafting at all, or even using the auction house. Instead of leveling, i'm going to have to give up my leveling and go back to Nar Shaddaa or Taris where I can survive long enough to MAYBE get some cash. Nerfing slicing and a lack of income from enemies killed and too low income from mission rewards has killed me. The speeder skill being 40,000 credits, and my sage skills being 2,500 credits is too much for the income lvl. I say raise slicing to be 20% profitable AT THE LEAST and raise the enemy drop percentages. I love grinding and killing monsters for fun, but this is plain stupid. The last game I played where the income was like this was a game called Rappelz. I do not want SWTOR to end up like that crappy game.

 

Please BW, take note and fix things. I know a lot of people that are DONE with SWTOR over the slicing nerf. The game isn't fun to them, the economy has been trashed... People don't want to grind for 6 days to get 5000 credits. And that is PRECISELY what the nerf has done.

 

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!!

[Mrshush]

The fact is the BW has went too far. You are wrong in saying that Slicing is a 100% gathering professions. have you tried slicing. Not all the time people are ready to buy the junk that you get from low level missions.

 

But in actual gathering professions you can sell pretty much what you gather. Whether you gather from nodes or send you companions. We are actually losing money right now from slicing because the nerf has been huge.

 

get over yourself. beta testers told bw that slicing needed a nerf for at least 6months. try actually crafting, bet you never had to few funds to buy new patterns oh wait you dont craft. nevermind.

[Vandallz]

You are losing money running missions. You were never intended to make money running missions. You make money harvesting nodes.

 

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.

[Mrshush]

Counterpoint, my first toon is an Imperial Agent and I went Armstech/Scavenging/Investigation.

 

Without selling anything on the GTN and only vendoring the items I've produced I was able to afford my Speeder and all of my skills at level 25 while simultaneously leveling my skill in Armstech primarily through Scavenging in the world and Investigation Missions to keep up or ahead of what my current level was.

 

You do not need to abuse slicing to make money, you simply need to do appropriate level quests and loot everything.

 

i agree, i had enough money to get my speeder, the point is, is that slicers could buy their 25 training 3x over. i did slicing in beta to see what the hype was. it is an economy breaker.

[Cactusgod]

I think you're wrong about slicing missions and making money. I believe that we were indeed supposed to make SOME money from slicing, because we are choosing to do something that almost gives us absolutely no benefit, besides the rare time we get crafting missions. Those crafting missions generally dont sell enough to make up on the losses, so they're irrelevant in my book.

 

Every other profession has the ability to create something of value. We simply get a box of money. Sending people out for a box of money to return with less money is just stupid. Even if we only got 100 credits per box, it still has to be a positive number for it to make sense.

[Creed_Buhallin]

To the OP: Thanks for someone finally saying this.

 

The number of people who seem to think the purpose of slicing was to give them free money is astonishing.

[Mrshush]

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.

 

and actually yes. because the missions are a way to raise the skill with a slight reward. also you get a chance at patterns/items with lock boxes.

[Sticksabbi]

Excellent post! I agree. I don't think you should be able to make any money at all off running slicing missions. This will lead to hyper inflation. If you think this won't happen with the slicing "print money" button consider the following.

 

Let's say, I'm a chinese 'gold' farmer. I create a character lvl it up to 25ish in order to get 3 companions. For this character let's say I make 100c for a 5 minute mission that's roughly whopping 20 credits per minute (cpm). I know what your thinking, "20cpm that's nothing!" The problem is it adds up. I do this with each of my 3 companions. I'm now up to 60 cpm. Still not a game breaking amount, I know.

 

But I'm all about maximizing profit here so I do this 5 more times on a particular server. Make a character, level it up to 26ish, get 3 companions, send them on nonstop slicing missions, and switch between the characters every minute or so to complete missions and send the companions back out on new ones.; 5 X 60cpm = 210 cpm.

 

Now I'm probably going to be doing this across multiple accounts as well so let's say I have a measly 3 accounts that I'm generating credits on this one server. So you can triple that number to 630cpm. Since there are 60 minutes in an hour that makes 37,800cph. Since I'm getting paid by the thousands of credits I spend 18 hours today 'harvesting' credits that makes 680,400 credits per day. That's nothing to spit at...

[Deedre]

To the OP: Thanks for someone finally saying this.

 

The number of people who seem to think the purpose of slicing was to give them free money is astonishing.

 

No, what's astonishing is the number of people who think this is actually a good idea.

[Mrshush]

I think you're wrong about slicing missions and making money. I believe that we were indeed supposed to make SOME money from slicing, because we are choosing to do something that almost gives us absolutely no benefit, besides the rare time we get crafting missions. Those crafting missions generally dont sell enough to make up on the losses, so they're irrelevant in my book.

 

Every other profession has the ability to create something of value. We simply get a box of money. Sending people out for a box of money to return with less money is just stupid. Even if we only got 100 credits per box, it still has to be a positive number for it to make sense.

 

no the intention of gathering skill missions, is to raise the skill, or get some particular crafting material you currently can find, not to profit, this was stated somewhere back in the beta forums.

if you want to make money go gather. its not an easy mode where you make 8alts and have them running missions offline to get rich, which ppl ARE doing.

 

the gathering missions are for chances to get rare patterns.

 

No, what's astonishing is the number of people who think this is actually a good idea.

 

entitled generation wants free money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Please BW, take note and fix things. I know a lot of people that are DONE with SWTOR over the slicing nerf. The game isn't fun to them, the economy has been trashed... People don't want to grind for 6 days to get 5000 credits. And that is PRECISELY what the nerf has done.

if that is why they are leaving

good fing bye.

 

6days for 5k? so bad. just soooo bad.

 

entitled generation rage on. rage on.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Mrshush

[Osirous]

no the intention of gathering skill missions, is to raise the skill, or get some particular crafting material you currently can find, not to profit, this was stated somewhere back in the beta forums.

if you want to make money go gather. its not an easy mode where you make 8alts and have them running missions offline to get rich, which ppl ARE doing.

 

the gathering missions are for chances to get rare patterns.

 

 

 

entitled generation wants free money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

+1 for you. This is so simple to me, I am astonished how people are surprised by this! I picked up slicing not realizing it was "free money". I wanted the schematics for ships since I am a cybertech. After the first few missions I immediately realized I needed to farm the mother loving life out of this profession while I could! The next day it was nerfed..... ohwell! Glad it was fixed before the whole thing went to heck.

[NermalDetonator]

I do agree for most of the stuff said from TO but why do we need to nerf something if there are far more important things to be done instead of balancing...... for an example a friend of mine is still not able to speak in all chats

 

Because the "free money" button has much more of an overall negative impact, and can wreck the economy from the start. Slicing was a gold farmer's wet dream. anyone whining at this point is so stupidly short sighted its funny. And lol on that "economics major" post above. What total BS. Anyone with half a brain knows how bad dupes screw up MMO's.... those complaining are just upset their cheat got fixed.