Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[WuphonsReach]

The idea that I've seen mentioned a few times of limiting the character levels to crew skill levels was good, but it was something that could have only been done at the onset, not afterwards when people have raised their skills above their levels (and it would have to be across the board for all of them, not just slicing). Can't very well take away stuff people have already learned and paid for and gathered/bought mats for without an even bigger uproar than this current one.

 

Well, they already took profitable Slicing away, so why couldn't they also take away other stuff?

 

The issue is not that you can level your skill to 400, the issue is that you can send your companions out on missions outside of your level range. Put the level range restriction in, people will still have their level 400 whatever skill (not taken away) but they just won't be able to send their companions out on the higher level missions without leveling up.

[Deathmvp]

Like I said if Bio does not want to at lest restore part of the nerf then just do this.

 

Switch the missions and the lock boxes. Make it so the mission is to get mission for class and if you are lucky you get a lock box every so offen on any mission you do. Yes this would make us need the AH to make a profit but then at lest you feel like you are getting something you paid money and time for with a chance of bounse cash.

[laural]

Well, they already took profitable Slicing away, so why couldn't they also take away other stuff?

 

The issue is not that you can level your skill to 400, the issue is that you can send your companions out on missions outside of your level range. Put the level range restriction in, people will still have their level 400 whatever skill (not taken away) but they just won't be able to send their companions out on the higher level missions without leveling up.

 

Good point - I didn't think of it like that. It would work that way then.

[Engleheart]

They just need to nerf everything! you make to much money off everything, hence the need for a Profession Nerf.

 

Sarcasm^

[Zakkana]

Are you talking about just slicing? I was talking all skills. If they do it for one, they'd have to do it for all (in my opinion).

 

Not really. Logic dictates you only have one character with each gathering skill and one mission skill (or whatever TH/UT/etc are called)

[JCShooter]

I just hope they aren't pulling a "let's ignore the issue till it dies off" because for me and my brother this is something pretty game breaking.

[LeperJack]

1) It turns out noticeable profit: The skill is useful, very much so in fact because it is self-sustaining, thus making it extremely easy to level and easy to use: you don't have to use that stupid Auction House, or spamming Trade channel, you just click, wait for a bit, and a money comes rolling in. Unfortunately for all it short-term benefits, it will inevitably lead to hyper-inflation in long-term, resulting in ruined economy and massive newbie unfriendliness.

Incorrect.

 

At level 50, (pre-nerf) slicing made laughable money. Most people simply retrained it because the time spent was not worth the return given. They picked up gathering, mission or even crafting skills if they hadn't gotten one before because THOSE make money.

 

Slicing was worthwhile during levelling because of the frontloaded profit. In short it MADE the game newbie friendly because profit returns on it allowed a low level character to "catch up" to where the economy would be with large numbers of high level players who can afford to pay 30k for a repair bill because they rake in a hundred thousand running 15 minutes worth of space combat dailes.

 

Slicing profits are also a fixed number--meaning that even if everyone took slicing, there is a hard ceiling at which a slicing based economy stabilizes, which is (shockingly) not that high.

 

Additionally, any system with an auction house, crafting and easily available gathering skills makes any economy newbie friendly.

 

"Oh man, this level 10 blaster (that i don't need, but want) costs 8 million credits!!! ***."

"Huh. wait, I pick up scavenging and spend 95 credits and get back 2 desh which I can sell for 1 million credits on the market each? Bonus."

 

At this point, everyone is a "new" player, save for those who've leveled to 50 or some, and they can tell you that slicing simply is not worthwhile to keep at that level once you've collected all the augments you'll want, the schematics you can use and maybe a couple mission discoveries for fun. At high level, the cash return on slicing (pre-nerf) was inconsequential.

 

Because everyone is a new player, you have low money reserves. No money=no one spends anything. Slicing allowed an avenue to alleviate that and kick start the economy, and i thought it was a brilliant stroke of genius masterminded by an expert economist/game designer until I saw the nerf. Now I realize it was just accidental success.

 

Your assertion that slicers made "too much" is based on a narrow view of a tiny portion of the game, and some sort of "I didn't take it, so it has to be wrong" mentality. The sad thing is, in an economy with functional slicing, crafters and other gatherers make more money, because slicers are your broad consumer base. They BUY things you MAKE.

 

Of course an important part of that is that you MAKE things and then SELL them. Every person i've asked, who's complained about low crafting profitability has told me they spend so much money bnuying up every recipe and then they reverse engineer to get more recipes and they cannot understand why they aren't making money.

 

Note that no where in that process did they mention selling anything. No, they buy, and spend, and invest, and buy more, and throw away money on things they not only are they not selling, but no one would buy if they tried. You do not need to have blue and epic recipes for level 2 mods. You do not need blue and epic recipes for the lowest teir of lightsaber crystals--although i'd say those are more likely to make money than the rest. you do not need to fill your inventory with epic mods to level with, and if you do, you should not be surprised that you are cash poor.

 

Do I like slicing? yes. Do I have it? On one toon out of 5, yes. Did I make silly amounts of money pre-nerf? Yes. Was it from slicing? No. It was from selling gathered materials and items that can't be bought off vendors or easily found from basic questing, and thus had a need.

 

I don't want the nerf reverted so I can go back to "mad slicing profits" (I keep it for skipping through trash pulls in flashpoints) I want it reverted so people will start buying things from me off the market again. The nerf didn't hurt me as a slicer, it hurt me as a Crafter, as a Gatherer, and as a Player.

Edited December 29, 2011 by LeperJack

[Anzel]

They just need to nerf everything! you make to much money off everything, hence the need for a Profession Nerf.

 

Sarcasm^

 

That's what looks like will happen. BW is obviously no different thaw SOE. The first order of business was to nerf something :/

[Pansophist]

I just hope they aren't pulling a "let's ignore the issue till it dies off" because for me and my brother this is something pretty game breaking.

 

I feel the same way. They have 19 more days to respond with their reasoning and provide a workable solution to the crew skills in general. I cancelled my re-subscription...and once (if) communication improves I will re-sub.

 

I just want to re-iterate a key point I still feel a lot of people are missing.

 

There are so many people who talk about how 'broken' slicing was. These people were largely, unfortunately, not 50. Or even close.

 

The costs as you approach and then hit 50 are _much_ higher than most of you seem to believe. Yes, slicing was overpowered for those leveling up. Overpowered meaning it provided money for casual players to purchase their skills, mounts, bank tabs, and spend a fair amount at the AH leveling up without having to have a main or farm to do it.

 

This is why the idea of level caps on gathering professions would be so successful (not completely remedy the situation, but certainly help). Had level caps been implemented, you wouldn't have level 30s running around with a 400k credits making everyone around them believe that it was a lot.

 

Slicing was made for casual players who do not _want_ to spend their time roaming around looking for lockboxes, farming space missions throughout the day, the thing most of us hardcore players don't mind too much.

 

Please remember, not everyone is a hardcore or even semi-hardcore player. This game has been targeted to casual players for a long time now, and I know a lot of my friends who quit MMOs in general came back for this game just for that reason.

 

It's a fine balance to cater to hardcore players and casual players in the same game. Slicing, in my opinion, was a great avenue that opened up a lot of otherwise unattainable things to the casual player.

[Sanchpanza]

Slicing, or any other money making ability for that matter, does not cause hyper inflation in the MMO economy. What causes inflation in these games is what people DO with the money. It's down to greed from the sellers, and more money than sense for buyers at the end of the day. Whether that money comes from low level players with lots of money from slicing, or from high level players with lots of money that they just gain through killing things, what kills the economy is greed and more money than sense.

 

This is how it has happened every time I've seen inflation:

 

Start of the game - Everyone sells things for a small profit, because people aren't buying the expensive stuff, they haven't got enough cash.

 

A month into the game - Things start to go from the AH like **** off of a shovel, because a lot of players have hit 50 and decide to power level their crafting skills and twink up their lowbie characters.

 

From this point, the sellers of the products realise that they are selling things incredibly quickly, but not a huge amount of profit. A select few decide to up the prices and see if they still get money.

 

People with high level characters look at the AH and buy out everything they can to help their alt, the reasonable and the unreasonably priced items.

 

Two months into the game - All the sellers look at the AH and see that stuff priced way more expensively than they would have done it is still selling. They, in turn, up their prices to get a piece of this action.

 

At this point, newer characters aren't buying those products, they can't afford them, but there's now enough max level players in the game creating alts that those products still sell like wild fire, because, hey, who cares if it's overpriced if the money means nothing to you?

 

Sellers see more chance for profit, raise their prices more. Max level characters keep buying etc etc. The cycle goes on.

 

Let us not also forget those people that purposely perpetuate inflation in the market by buying all of the lower priced items and then sell them on at much higher prices.

 

 

Now, I'm not saying there is anything to stop lower level characters grinding out node collection or mission skills to get in on the money, but by this point the inflation has started, and there's no going back from that point.

 

 

Inflation is kept in check in a real economy because there is a limit to what people can earn and save. People have expenditures pretty close to their incomes most of the time, so they can't afford rapidly escalating prices, which keeps those prices in check.

 

In an MMO there is no limit on what people can earn, and once they're geared up then their only expenses are repairs and maybe some consumable items, but really there will be a huge gap between their income and expenditure. Meaning that they have excess cash and will buy more expensive products even if they are not reasonable.

 

Slicing would do nothing to this trend. The only thing that can REALLY change this is to put an upper limit on the amount of money that people can have. But that would cause uproar.

 

I'll give you an example from WoW; I started playing WoW at the very beginning, but I didn't really get into the crafting for about a year, just because I couldn't be arsed to run around collecting nodes, and lets be honest, there was bugger all good stuff to craft at low levels.

 

After just a year, people were selling stacks of the lowest grade metal for 1g a piece. I then took a break from the game and came back about 4 years later. The same stacks of metal were selling for 15g a piece (albeit, I didn't sell things for that price). That is a 1400% increase in prices over the course of 4 years. In the space of a week of playing a level 15 character and just running around outside stormwind I made 500g, and that wasn't even gaming an incredible amount or selling stacks at the highest price I could, literally logging on that character, doing a run around that area for 30 mins and putting the stacks on the AH a couple of times a day for a "reasonable" price.

[The_Archon]

I just hope they aren't pulling a "let's ignore the issue till it dies off" because for me and my brother this is something pretty game breaking.

 

If you believe the slicing nerf was "game breaking", then you really should go ahead and leave now. Please. Back from whence you came.

[Anzel]

If you believe the slicing nerf was "game breaking", then you really should go ahead and leave now. Please. Back from whence you came.

 

Nice... this is what we saw in SWG over and over again. "If you don't like <insert NERF here> go play WoW".

 

Yeah... that worked out really really well :/

 

Here's a novel idea. Find a way to balance the game without NERFING everything. Stop crippling parts of the game and try ADDING to other parts. Crazy right?

[The_Archon]

Slicing was made for casual players who do not _want_ to spend their time roaming around looking for lockboxes,

 

Wrong. Slicing was designed exactly for this purpose. It's a gathering skill, not a crafting skill. You go out, you gather. That's exactly how it works and what it was made for.

 

farming space missions throughout the day, the thing most of us hardcore players don't mind too much.

 

"Us hardcore players"... okay.

 

Companion missions are supposed to cost money; everyone else's missions do. You're supposed to make your money by gathering if you're a slicer, everything else is just gravy, you should not expect to consistently make a profit from companion missions.

[drgentleman]

I really wanted to like this game. I tried really hard. But things like this, and Bioware's inherent lack of response, make it impossible. GGNORE

[Pansophist]

Wrong. Slicing was designed exactly for this purpose. It's a gathering skill, not a crafting skill. You go out, you gather. That's exactly how it works and what it was made for.

 

 

 

"Us hardcore players"... okay.

 

Companion missions are supposed to cost money; everyone else's missions do. You're supposed to make your money by gathering if you're a slicer, everything else is just gravy, you should not expect to consistently make a profit from companion missions.

 

Wrong. All gathering professions can use companions to go out and retrieve materials. I'm sure BW made a mistake by letting them do it, right? Since because you believe everyone should go out and 'gather,' it must be the truth.

 

 

As for your secondary point, what are the other gathering professions then? I send my companions out on UWT missions and sell for a profit. That requires no effort either, should we just nerf that too? Or perhaps because it's not in the form of 'credits,' then the limited perspective some people have makes it somewhat different.

Sad how limited everyone's points of view are.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Pansophist

[Maisen]

Just another test: after 6:30 hours of slicing missions (around 26, 350 slicing, I did rich lockbox of lvl 6 and 5, if rich isn't available on 6, I chose rich bcause abundant or moderate is simply a waste everytime) I am even just because I fail 4 missions and lose all the gain. I didn't found any recipe, so what's the point of this heavy nerf?

 

I hope BW will fix it, I don't want easy money, but don't want to waste time to gain nothing

[The_Archon]

Just another test: after 6:30 hours of slicing missions (around 26, 350 slicing, I did rich lockbox of lvl 6 and 5, if rich isn't available on 6, I chose rich bcause abundant or moderate is simply a waste everytime) I am even just because I fail 4 missions and lose all the gain. I didn't found any recipe, so what's the point of this heavy nerf?

 

I hope BW will fix it, I don't want easy money, but don't want to waste time to gain nothing

 

Do you ever gather boxes out in the world or do you only send companions on missions?

[Progen]

I think the realignment so slicing returns the same as the other gathering skills is great.

 

Keep up the good work BW

 

For those moaning about the nerf: quit.

 

Its ok: we wont miss you, we promise.

[Progen]

Nice... this is what we saw in SWG over and over again. "If you don't like <insert NERF here> go play WoW".

 

Yeah... that worked out really really well :/

 

Here's a novel idea. Find a way to balance the game without NERFING everything. Stop crippling parts of the game and try ADDING to other parts. Crazy right?

 

But Slicing was overpowered compared to all the other gathering skills - yes even at level 50.

 

Now its even, and you QQ.

 

If you don't like it, man up and put up, or leave. Those are your two options, because people complaining on the forums are <2% of the people who even use this feature...and they still use it every day and wont leave the game.

 

But don't take my word for it, heres a very enlightening and educational presentation about forums from one of the ex studio heads at EA:

 

[Seniorrostov]

You know what my problem with slicing is? Yea I gather boxes, so I'm not easymode QQing. When you send your companion out for scavenging missions, you don't lose scavenging materials. The point is that I opted for early money while crafters opted for big money later when people are actually 50. Who's to say that the money pre-nerf would amount to anything in two months? Now I did see a nerf coming, but a nearly 100% nerf to missions and roughly 50% nerf to boxes? Seems a littte kneejerk to the QQing neckbeards Edited December 29, 2011 by Seniorrostov

[Nahela]

Such a prime example of ignorance of the MMO genre and learning nothing from others experiences.

 

So much feedback went into this beta, and so many issues are still present that affect the community more than Bioware seems to accept. Slicing was slightly over-tuned at launch, but it was serving the purpose it needed to (aside from high ranking missions being terrible). However, tons of feedback went into this in beta and the problem wasn't resolved.

 

Jedi/Sith are now complaining about the hood up/down issue, nevermind the whole problem Twi'leks face. Months and months of feedback went into this, last minute changes were made in the final beta build that removed a ton of options that players wanted.

 

I think it's fixed now, but the whole "UI can't be interacted with" bug went live. I can't even fathom how that got past beta.

 

Graphical anomalies everywhere that were present in beta and reported months in advance.

 

A ton of stuff changed at the last minute, much of which was not for the better.

 

Back on topic: It really can't be said enough how much worse this is for the game's overall economy than leaving it as it was at release.

[SirFlashington]

Yes, the glory days are over, but it's not actually too bad. You can still make a 400-600 credit profit on certain 41-48 missions.

 

Also, thanks to everyone who's been updating and maintaining the spreadsheet. We now have Yield stats and graphs up which displays average profits per Yield type (Moderate, Rich, Bountiful, etc).

[The_Archon]

Wrong. All gathering professions can use companions to go out and retrieve materials. I'm sure BW made a mistake by letting them do it, right? Since because you believe everyone should go out and 'gather,' it must be the truth.

 

I never said they didn't. But they cost money to run. Picking them up off the ground is free, and that is called "gathering". 100% pure profit for slicers. Go out, do that, stop whining about not making fat cash from the missions that are supposed to cost you cash.

 

As for your secondary point, what are the other gathering professions then? I send my companions out on UWT missions and sell for a profit. That requires no effort either, should we just nerf that too? Or perhaps because it's not in the form of 'credits,' then the limited perspective some people have makes it somewhat different.

Sad how limited everyone's points of view are.

 

Depends. Is UWT contributing a gigantic disparity between itself and the other professions? If yes, then it needs adjustment. I don't think it is... unlike slicing did. What's your point here?

[LeperJack]

Companion missions are supposed to cost money; everyone else's missions do. You're supposed to make your money by gathering if you're a slicer, everything else is just gravy, you should not expect to consistently make a profit from companion missions.

How the hell are your companion missions costing you money?!

 

Treasure hunting: Level2

12 minutes, 500 credits, return 8 blue pieces minimum on rich.

Each sells for 300 credits, I just made 1900 profit in 12 minutes.

 

Since mat costs and sale prices actually rise exponentially with tier, I make more on a level 4 MODERATE than I do on a level 2 Rich yield.

 

If you're complaining that you're losing money, then you may want to submit a bug report, as mine make me filthy rich and seem to be working as intended.

[Nahela]

I think the realignment so slicing returns the same as the other gathering skills is great.

 

Keep up the good work BW

 

For those moaning about the nerf: quit.

 

Its ok: we wont miss you, we promise.

 

Except that the returns are not the same. Now you get next to nothing and still have to pay everybody else for materials for your crafting profession.

 

"We won't miss you" is utter ignorance. No, you're not going to please everyone, but writing off subscribers is foolish. This was largely the mentality taken with Rift, a game whose population has steadily declined since launch.