Slicing: Why it had to be nerfed.

[Ayern]

I support the Slicing nerf. Why? Because it DOES bring it more in balance with the other skills. Complain all you want about the lockbox missions tending to return with a loss, I could care less. You know why? I level Treasure Hunting.

 

While Treasure Hunting does have two other mission rewards (Gemstones and Companion Gifts), the lockbox missions almost always return a loss. So why do I still do them? Because they can also give me weapons and armor, and maybe even higher quality boxes that give better items and/or more creds.

 

The economy will even out. I've seen worse things happen to an MMO (Yes, I'm looking at you Runescape). It's not going to be an overnight thing, especially since a HUGE (Stupidly overpoweredly so) cred fountain was governed. But all the slicers that are annoyed that they can't make infinite gold doing nothing are NOT helping.

 

By taking the mindset of "I'm doing missions to make a profit!" you're just setting yourself up for failure. Yeah, a large majority of the time, your missions return creds. That's not what they were intended to do. Slicing (exluding random drops) is the only way to get missions for other skills. Those (I know, it's surprising) come from lockboxes. The creds you get are essentially a consolation prize. It's like that in Treasure Hunting AND Underworld Trading, and you don't hear people from those respective parties making as much as an uproar as the Slicers.

 

Face it, you're mad that Bioware implemented their first controversial balance, and you want to strike out and anyone you can.

 

 

 

I'm going to call out the bolded part. Having Slicing where it was would have made cred sellers MORE inclined to do their business. By nerfing it, Bioware removed a massive, effortless, credit fountain that could be (...and was, from the way people are complaining about the nerf) exploited.

 

well you are entitled to your opinion, but I have played more than one game where the currency was a grind to get and guess what? people aren't going to do it. And you're a fool if you think otherwise. This will only invite bots/farmers/gold sellers into the game. Already people are not spending, which negates your entire argument. So nice try, but you are dead wrong here.

[Lamentari]

Slicing was a hot topic in Beta and honestly the change should have happen before launch. The game has only been open a bit around 2 weeks officially. Let it go people let it go...

[Viconiuz]

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.

 

Right...

 

I loled. So it was first like that for 2-3 years in Beta - And then in the official release of the game - but it was "never intended to be the case"? Cool

Edited December 29, 2011 by Viconiuz

[Pandabutt]

You may have an argument that Slicing is not worthwhile, but a broken profession that few or none take is better than one that everyone takes and leads to a ruined game. By the way, I don't think anyone who runs Scavenge missions is making a profit selling materials on the market so in that same sense it is losing money.

 

Believe it or not. It is worse how it is now.

 

I won't argue that returning 6x the cost for missions was broken, but a guaranteed negative return 99.9% of the time is even worse given the impact of this one skill.

 

Slicing fuels the economy by generating credits. Without the high yields from slicing, all credits generated by drops, missions, and nodes go back into the game rather than into the games economy. The cost of skills, upgrades, repairs, and crew skill missions outweighs the economy at this stage. People won't buy off the GTN, or pay other players directly, when all their credits are going to maintaining their gear and skills.

 

Sure, NERFing Slicing was the right thing to do given the over-the-top yields, but NERFing it to the point that it is broken even more than it was to begin with is overdoing it. They should have instead done one of the following.

 

1. Increased Mission Times for Slicing by double.
   
2. Added random crafting materials as potential rewards from lockboxes generated by slicing.
   
3. Reduced Yield SLIGHTLY! 2-3x, maybe 4x, yield is reasonable given the nature of the skill.
   

 

This current NERFis much worse than things were to start.

 

Gathering skills give you a product in return, even if the product costs less than the credits spent to obtain it you still receive compensation for your pay. Slicing yielded this compensation in the form of profitable gains, but now it is pure loss. There is no usable return. You send a companion out on a Crew mission for Scavaging and you get components you can then use for crafting. You send a companion out on a mission for slicing and you receive a box of credits that, before the NERF, you can use to purchase components for crafting. Now, however, you receive a box of credits that you can't use for anything since it contains less than you spent to obtain it.

 

Additionally, Slicing didn't guarantee profits preNERF either. It had low yield boxes, and failure chances just like ever other crew skill. I personally watched my credit supply drop doing slicing the day before the NERF from constant failures and low yield boxes. In the period of 2 hours I had 3 boxes that profited over the mission cost. Typically it did yield profitable returns, but it had good chances to fail and yield low returns all it's own.

[Raximillian]

Believe it or not. It is worse how it is now.

 

I won't argue that returning 6x the cost for missions was broken, but a guaranteed negative return 99.9% of the time is even worse given the impact of this one skill.

 

Slicing fuels the economy by generating credits. Without the high yields from slicing, all credits generated by drops, missions, and nodes go back into the game rather than into the games economy. The cost of skills, upgrades, repairs, and crew skill missions outweighs the economy at this stage. People won't buy off the GTN, or pay other players directly, when all their credits are going to maintaining their gear and skills.

 

Sure, NERFing Slicing was the right thing to do given the over-the-top yields, but NERFing it to the point that it is broken even more than it was to begin with is overdoing it. They should have instead done one of the following.

 

1. Increased Mission Times for Slicing by double.
   
2. Added random crafting materials as potential rewards from lockboxes generated by slicing.
   
3. Reduced Yield SLIGHTLY! 2-3x, maybe 4x, yield is reasonable given the nature of the skill.
   

 

This current NERFis much worse than things were to start.

 

Gathering skills give you a product in return, even if the product costs less than the credits spent to obtain it you still receive compensation for your pay. Slicing yielded this compensation in the form of profitable gains, but now it is pure loss. There is no usable return. You send a companion out on a Crew mission for Scavaging and you get components you can then use for crafting. You send a companion out on a mission for slicing and you receive a box of credits that, before the NERF, you can use to purchase components for crafting. Now, however, you receive a box of credits that you can't use for anything since it contains less than you spent to obtain it.

 

Additionally, Slicing didn't guarantee profits preNERF either. It had low yield boxes, and failure chances just like ever other crew skill. I personally watched my credit supply drop doing slicing the day before the NERF from constant failures and low yield boxes. In the period of 2 hours I had 3 boxes that profited over the mission cost. Typically it did yield profitable returns, but it had good chances to fail and yield low returns all it's own.

 

There is the problem. Slicing should not return lockboxes. Period. It should return something else. Because with lockboxes, you have 3 options. You lose money, you break even, or you make money. The first 2 are unwanted, and the 3rd makes it a money printing press. Either solution is not good for the game.

 

They should change the lockboxes to those random item boxes. So you get a random green. The random green would probably sell for less than the mission cost on a vendor, but it could sell for more in the AH (depending on demand), or be useful for you or your companions. That would bring it more inline.

 

Anyway, slicing will always be a problem as long as it returns credits directly. It should return something else.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Raximillian

[Dredknut]

the most pimple fact of the matter is there were more important issues than a crew skill that should have been addressed first and they have not been.

 

I lol'd hard

[Acidictadpole]

In my opinion (since we have to say that unless we're a dev, apparently), missions are not used to increase your net worth, but provide a means to increase your skill level, and bring in materials, at the cost of credits (instead of harvesting nodes).

 

Slicing still has an overall positive income (everyone I've seen complain about the income from slicing has had an overall positive) of around 20 CPS. It's super low compared to what it was, but it's still a net gain including a skill increase! From this increase you can harvest better world nodes (which are rare now because so many people were taking slicing for the missions), and gain (currently rather worthless, but not useless) augments for critically crafted items.

 

People who lost their milkdaddy profession are now taking the passive aggressive approach of saying "Now that I don't have any credits, I'm not going to buy anything on the market! Nerfing slicing has killed the game's economy!". Well that's just ********. The game's economy hasn't even begun to stabilize yet because there's little understanding about how income/expense will form over the long term. Now that there's less credits being generated by the game, inflation will slow down, and the market will adjust.

 

People will realize that they can't sell items on the market for as much because people don't have slicing. In order to sell things, they will adjust their prices accordingly, and everything should balance out in the end.

[magicaldork]

Slicing is perfect the way it is right now. Go out and quest and you will find slicing nodes throughout the world. You may not be able to get 1 million credits by the time you are level 20, but it helps pay the bills.

 

Eventually the trade network will begin to be used by the community and a healthy economy will begin to emerge.

[IronheadOK]

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.

 

 

 

It is a gathering profession because you are supposed to make your profit from gathering nodes, NOT from running missions. Any profit from running missions should be very minimal at best.

 

I dropped UT for slicing the night before the nerf, I kept slicing becuase I have made plenty of credits by just gathering from footlockers, lockboxes, etc while I am out in the world questing.

 

Why do slicers think they should be able to make profit by just sending their crews on missions, when everyone else has to send the crews on misssions, then either use the returns to craft or manage inventory on the GTN in order to be able to profit.

 

Don't tell me it detracts from your enjoyment of the game, if you are killing anything while you are "enjoying the game" then you are making enough to pay for your repair bills, everything else, cool gear, mounts, etc is a luxury that you are meant to have to work for.

 

If poeple spent half the time gathering nodes that they do whining on the forums they would be millionares.

[OdonKnight]

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.

 

 

BW absolutely had to go this far. Beyond any scaling and bringing it more in line with others, the fact that people are working on and looking to use/using remote ways to play their characters outside of actually playing the game (Crew skill mission app?) would make anything that allows a straight hefty profit from a straight crew mission disastrous to the economy as a whole. Unless everyone has an alt with slicing and can remotely go on crew skills those that do would so devalue the currency that prices would reach astronomical amounts. Why do you think gold farming is pursued aggressively as it is elsewhere.. because people are bored and want to use countless design hours stopping creation of imaginary money?

[IronheadOK]

Right...

 

I loled. So it was first like that for 2-3 years in Beta - And then in the official release of the game - but it was "never intended to be the case"? Cool

 

This is an understandable complaint, it should have been fixed a long time ago, but frankly it would not have had as big an effect on the micro economy of beta, when compared with the macro economy of the actual release.

 

The complaint should be that it was not fixed before release, at the same time you have to realize the problem was magnified a thousand fold when the game went live and the few who were making insane profits become the many, and every day were trending towards the majority.

 

The author is correct, this would have broken the economy. And that is coming from someone who was making good money selling synthweave greens at horribly inflated prices.

[Eegorr]

Believe it or not. It is worse how it is now.

 

I won't argue that returning 6x the cost for missions was broken, but a guaranteed negative return 99.9% of the time is even worse given the impact of this one skill.

 

 

You are either lying or not using it properly (I'm hoping for the latter). I slice constantly on my alt, and I'm making money. Not insane ammounts of money as before the patch, but something much more reasonable, and still enough to fund my crafting needs.

 

To say that you constantly lose money on slicing missions is nothing but a lie. You don't. You only loose money on some of them. Just choose the right missions and you will still make money.

 

The nerf was necessary.

[KapitanAwesome]

I have to agree that nerfing it was the right thing to do, but why couldn't they wait until AFTER I bought my speeder training and speeder?

 

Harvesting the slicing nodes is garbage, there aren't any in the flashpoints, and the ones out in the world only give 100 or 200 credits. You could kill the lizard beside the node and his loot would sell for more to a vendor.

 

But I'll keep it anyway, just for those two broken elevators I've come across that can be sliced.

[IronheadOK]

You are either lying or not using it properly (I'm hoping for the latter). I slice constantly on my alt, and I'm making money. Not insane ammounts of money as before the patch, but something much more reasonable, and still enough to fund my crafting needs.

 

To say that you constantly lose money on slicing missions is nothing but a lie. You don't. You only loose money on some of them. Just choose the right missions and you will still make money.

 

The nerf was necessary.

 

I agree, thats either a lie or just very poor mission choice.

 

I'm making about 1.5k profit an hour running level 3 and 4 slicing missions, keeping my companions constatnly out on missions. I'm making about 2.5k profit an hour from gathering nodes as I quest.

 

It's not broken, you just have to work at it.

[IronheadOK]

I have to agree that nerfing it was the right thing to do, but why couldn't they wait until AFTER I bought my speeder training and speeder?

 

Harvesting the slicing nodes is garbage, there aren't any in the flashpoints, and the ones out in the world only give 100 or 200 credits. You could kill the lizard beside the node and his loot would sell for more to a vendor.

 

But I'll keep it anyway, just for those two broken elevators I've come across that can be sliced.

 

Are you level 10?

 

I've never gathered a node with less than 150 in it, and in Nar Shadda my average was 300 credits per node with nodes all over the place. I play on a server with a que so its always fully populated and there are still TONS of nodes to gather.

 

If you are doing your leveling exclusively though flashpoints that's fine, but you should not exepct to make money with professions if you level that way.

[Engleheart]

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

 

So why have mission in the first place when you can level off the nodes? Circular reason is a logical fallacy, and is out-lawed in the civilized person's brain.

[Morfranic]

Am I the ONLY one that understands why they nerfed it and doesnt argue? Im glad they did if for no other reason, it makes it harder for gold spammers to get gold to spam you with. I was already receiving gold spam invites on day 1 of launch. Disgusting.

 

I have a slicer...I make huge cash off nodes. I thought it was pretty rediculous that I could just make piles of cash by sending my crew on slicing missions when my other characters who had actual trade skills didnt have the option.

 

In my opinion...the slicing skill should just be completely removed from the game. The notion that having a pile of cash just laying around somewhere, waiting to be unlocked by the right person....well, thats just stupid. I could understand if there was a node behind a locked door, in a room that was well guarded...but when its in a junk pile it just makes no sense.

 

This is the only game where they put a skill in that basically is "free money" and its totally not needed. Economies in every game have survived off what people make from missions rewards, from looting corpses, and from what they sell out of their inventory.

 

Slicing is not needed...remove it from the game.

[Eegorr]

I agree, thats either a lie or just very poor mission choice.

 

I'm making about 1.5k profit an hour running level 3 and 4 slicing missions, keeping my companions constatnly out on missions. I'm making about 2.5k profit an hour from gathering nodes as I quest.

 

It's not broken, you just have to work at it.

 

This is about what I make as well.

 

I'm going to get flamed now, but I'm really annoyed when I stumble over safes in the friggin jungle. I mean come on. That's just silly. It's fine if we can find terminals to slice in the cities and in the bases, but in the jungle? Make an effort to make the environments believable at least.

[Silvatre]

Slicing is not needed anymore. I only wonder if people who already got 400 should keep it, since nobody else will do that anymore (if nothing will be changed).

 

Keep your augments (and schematics) - they will be very rare. I wish I could do that, unfortunately I'm not at home :-)

Edited December 29, 2011 by Silvatre

[Acidictadpole]

So why have mission in the first place when you can level off the nodes? Circular reason is a logical fallacy, and is out-lawed in the civilized person's brain.

 

This isn't circular reasoning, so I think anyone could just disregard any insult you throw around.

 

Circular reasoning is saying "The sun rises because the sun rises". Not "Nodes increase your skill level, as do Missions".

 

Missions are in the game so that you can increase your skill level and gain materials while spending credits. The advantage (and disadvantage) for slicing missions is that you get them for a net gain over time (so they don't have a cost), and you gain skill levels without having to find nodes.

 

The missions also allow someone who decides to pick up slicing at 50 to not be REQUIRED to go to Coruscant, Nar Shadaa, etc etc in order to skill up.

[DustomaticGXC]

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

 

First of all, are you a Bioware spokesperson? No? Then you're guessing.

 

Secondly, other mission skills DO make money. I make about 500% profit from Underworld Trading missions by selling in the GTN. Slicing used to make money with missions sans the need to bother with the GTN, but it was also only about 150-200% profit. Less trouble, less profit.

 

The Slicing nerf was a blessing in disguise for me, because before this I was dumb enough to believe all the tools who said you couldn't make money with mission skills.

[Acidictadpole]

First of all, are you a Bioware spokesperson? No? Then you're guessing.

 

Sure he's guessing. This point has been pointed out about 1,000 other times in the thread. You should read through it in its entirety before quoting the third post. That said, it's a very good guess. Making money from missions just got nerfed, the other mission skills have a non-static value on their return, whereas Slicing's return is directly turned into credits, and has no dependence on the state of the market.

 

Secondly, other mission skills DO make money. I make about 500% profit from Underworld Trading missions by selling in the GTN. Slicing used to make money with missions sans the need to bother with the GTN, but it was also only about 150-200% profit. Less trouble, less profit.

 

The reason you made 500% profit was because people took slicing as a secondary moneymaking skill. Nobody's going to have absurd income anymore, so this will be brought back in line also.

 

 

The Slicing nerf was a blessing in disguise for me, because before this I was dumb enough to believe all the tools who said you couldn't make money with mission skills.

 

See my above point. You won't be making as much anymore because there'll be much less inflation in the game. Credits will now become more valuable, and things will drop in price.

 

edit: Not to mention the people who will now be dropping slicing and picking their mission skill back up to do their crafting properly.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Acidictadpole

[Thanatosx]

Am I the ONLY one that understands why they nerfed it and doesnt argue? Im glad they did if for no other reason, it makes it harder for gold spammers to get gold to spam you with. I was already receiving gold spam invites on day 1 of launch. Disgusting.

 

Most slicers know why it was nerfed and agree with it...but disagree on the EXTENT it was nerfed.

 

Except that other MMO's have shown that as currency becomes easier to get, gold sellers end up making less and as currency is harder to get, gold sellers do much better business.

 

The MMO's that let you buy cash from them? hardly a gold seller in sight.

 

Though that has all led them to adapting and selling other services, to be fair.

 

I have a slicer...I make huge cash off nodes. I thought it was pretty rediculous that I could just make piles of cash by sending my crew on slicing missions when my other characters who had actual trade skills didnt have the option.

 

I've never gotten more than 300 credits from a node and those are few and far in between, most of the time I get around 100. But I haven't seen nodes past level 28 yet. Missionwise it's possible to still make a modest profit if you are lucky. The first day of the nerf, I sliced all day and made around 1k total....the next I lost 5k.

 

Part of the problem is how steep the risk vs. reward is in that it isn't balanced right now.

 

In my opinion...the slicing skill should just be completely removed from the game. The notion that having a pile of cash just laying around somewhere, waiting to be unlocked by the right person....well, thats just stupid. I could understand if there was a node behind a locked door, in a room that was well guarded...but when its in a junk pile it just makes no sense.

 

This is the only game where they put a skill in that basically is "free money" and its totally not needed. Economies in every game have survived off what people make from missions rewards, from looting corpses, and from what they sell out of their inventory.

 

Slicing is not needed...remove it from the game.

 

The problem is, only a small portion of the overall gaming populace made huge piles of cash and so there seems to be a group mentality of punishing everyone for those few who made factories and rushed to 50 to exploit the system.

 

Some other points you are technically incorrect on: it's not free money, you pay for missions and you can fail or have non-profitable mission returns, many games have currency laying around for players to pick up or items to vendor and it's often hidden in plain sight or in piles of junk and what-not, this game (according to the posts I've read from developers and other long time players) was striving to be different from every other MMO and MMO Economy...it didn't want to be WoW Clone 2.0 and as such, was trying to implement innovative crafting ideas (such as slicing).

 

But as is often the case, some idea's are so far ahead of their time, narrow minded people who are used to old methods (say like the RIAA, MPAA, etc.) get them killed before they can get off the ground.

 

Of course, this is all just IMHO - refer to my standard disclaimer for the rest.

[Acidictadpole]

Some other points you are technically incorrect on: it's not free money, you pay for missions and you can fail or have non-profitable mission returns, many games have currency laying around for players to pick up or items to vendor and it's often hidden in plain sight or in piles of junk and what-not, this game (according to the posts I've read from developers and other long time players) was striving to be different from every other MMO and MMO Economy...it didn't want to be WoW Clone 2.0 and as such, was trying to implement innovative crafting ideas (such as slicing).

 

All the studies I've seen had still shown a net profit after a long duration of constant slicing missions. Considering that all you need to do for slicing missions is click "Go!" on a companion, it is free money.

[LifeHatesMe]

[...]Except that other MMO's have shown that as currency becomes easier to get, gold sellers end up making less and as currency is harder to get, gold sellers do much better business.[...]

WTB: Chinese farmer.

 

We don't need slicing.. !