Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[Pansophist]

Yes, Fun... Let's everyone say screw inflation and have fun... Then in 3 months when credit values get so low due to over inflation that credits become worthless and the player economy devolves into a barter system similar to what you see in D2 on battle.net. Since that's not really doable with the GTN it becomes completely worthless. You'll have people sitting in the main trade hubs spamming trade channels with "WTT 20 X Desh for Skill armor 3[superior] pst" Similar to the old EQ days.

 

so much fun...

 

Are you implying D2 was designed to use gold as their currency? Even from day one, that was not true. I was there, I remember.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Pansophist

[myrken]

So you actually think you know how "most people" do things? Your argument is basically garbage for this reason.

 

Yep because I'm one of those people and I've helped develop and manage mmos so your assumption of what i know makes your argument against my argument garbage.

[Mogget]

Everyone keeps dancing around the main issues with flames and whatnot. But here it is all layed out:

 

1) The slicing nerf was NEEDED. No one really disputes this.

2) The nerf was too much

3) The nerf was done, from all appearances, based on forum noise

4) They focused on this instead of addressing issues like UI problems, Guild/Party Chat breaking, memory leaks and a whole other host of problems that would be more of a concern than slicing itself.

5) The nerf is being judged at a time where the player base and server economies are new.

 

Did I miss any others?

 

The side effect that it made gold farmers useless which left plenty of materials for the gatherers to get in game because of the lack of gold farmers. Unlimited wealth goes well with the infinate materials.

 

Honestly I used to think it needed to be nerfed. Now the more I look at it it should go back to the way it was. Having infinate money for the lazy goes well with infinate raw materials for the not so lazy.

 

Back to the gold farmers. I didn't see a single spam in chat till last night. Now I virtually turn off general chat. Spammers ruin games and the slicing fixed that. Now it's broken. Funny thing is the spammers didn't really show up till the nerf. Coincidence?

Edited December 29, 2011 by Mogget

[Pansophist]

This.

 

All the people that have been trolling in here saying that "Slicing has been brought in line with the other gathering skills" are doing just that, trolling.

 

I have Scavenging and do the exact same thing listed here and make money doing it.

 

If you aren't making money off crafting then you are doing it wrong.

 

I feel as if the reason others say it has been brought in line is mostly due to jealousy and spite. So this is the justification for the early profits.

 

Again, they say it has been brought in line...but will you see any of them choosing Slicing? Nope.

Yep because I'm one of those people and I've helped develop and manage mmos so your assumption of what i know makes your argument against my argument garbage.

 

Careful, you'll hurt people's feelings when you say you might have more experience than them. Whether it's true or not, this is still the internet - no one would believe us anyway

[Sticksabbi]

Are you implying D2 was designed to use gold as their currency? Even from day one, that was not true. I was there, I remember.

Then you remember that gold was pretty much worthless because it was super easy to obtain. It had no real value. If the generation of money becomes easy. Money ceases being the measure of wealth and it's medium.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Sticksabbi

[myrken]

I feel as if the reason others say it has been brought in line is mostly due to jealousy and spite. So this is the justification for the early profits.

 

Again, they say it has been brought in line...but will you see any of them choosing Slicing? Nope.

 

 

Careful, you'll hurt people's feelings when you say you might have more experience than them. Whether it's true or not, this is still the internet - no one would believe us anyway

 

Yea sadly that's the truth of it all the more reason to be careful of who you criticize on the web.

[LeperJack]

The average player plays maybe 6-8 hours a day or so. There were people using slicing that were sitting for 16+ hours a day just raking in the cash. Players always end up getting the short end of the stick when it comes to a handful of people breaking game mechanics.

Except even those people were making far less cash than they could have through a variety of other methods--several of which are still in place and far less work intensive.

 

"Top money" from slicing rquired running 8 alts with three companions going each on missions of about 5 minutes... by the time you get done logging/relogging/relogging/relogging you need to go back to the beginning. That is CONSTANT management.

 

Compare to gathering up high tier materials which takes much longer for a much better return, (click, click, click, got watch TV for 45 minutes, come back and plop it on the auction house, before I send them off again, more TV watching...)

 

Companies always seem to take this "well if players x, y and z can't use this properly without causing trouble, the rest of the alphabet must suffer also."

I'd argue that in this case it was A, B, and C who were failing at basic math (if I spend more than i make, I will surely have lots of money!) and complaining because the rest of the alphabet either knew better or realized it was their own fault if they overspent.

 

This isn't a problem of failed mechanics. This is a problem of people with very poor management skills who refused to utilize the option specifically created to make the game playable for people with poor management skills, and were mad because people took the option they refused and didn't suffer because of it.

 

It's not enough that crafters win. Other people have to LOSE for it to be okay.

[MrFarnsworth]

Then you remember that gold was pretty much worthless because it was super easy to obtain. It had no real value. If the generation of money becomes easy. Money ceases being the measure of wealth and it's medium.

 

It had no real value because you could not buy anything of use with gold, not the other way around. This isn't a chicken or the egg case. You couldn't buy:

 

Socketed Items

Pgems

Uniques (SoJs)

Set items.

 

 

And in LoD you couldn't buy any of those and more importantly you couldn't buy runes.

 

It shouldn't be hard for you to realize that none of that is the case in this game, credits can buy ANYTHING.

[Pansophist]

Then you remember that gold was pretty much worthless because it was super easy to obtain. It had no real value. If the generation of money becomes easy. Money ceases being the measure of wealth and it's medium.

 

You did not answer my question. D2 did not have an AH. D2 was not designed to rely on gold to be an economic currency. Which is why, at the very beginning, gems were used in place of a currency. Then came rare items. Then came duping, which inflated the price of rare items, but they were still used successfully as a trading system.

 

LoD was the same way with runes. Runes are *still* used as currency. Well, until the forum gold system came about with D2JSP. And the reason that worked is because it was basically an Auction House in and of itself.

 

 

It had no real value because you could not buy anything of use with gold, not the other way around. This isn't a chicken or the egg case. You couldn't buy:

 

Socketed Items

Pgems

Uniques (SoJs)

Set items.

 

 

And in LoD you couldn't buy any of those and more importantly you couldn't buy runes.

 

It shouldn't be hard for you to realize that none of that is the case in this game, credits can buy ANYTHING.

 

 

Well said, I forgot to mention the lack of quality vendor items. Anyone who compares D2 economy with a system similar to that of WoW and SWTOR need not post on the mechanics of economics.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Pansophist

[Mogget]

Hold on. What do you think would happen if everone in the game went and got slicing? We would have a large amount of very wealthy players. Who just buy equipment from vendors? I think not. Time and again I have made far superior equipment from crafting. It would be realized eventually that crafting yeilds better equipment at least until level 30ish. Since that's as far as I've gotten. For a time there would be a higher demand than supply once the "Quality Crafted Equipment" was figured out. Then the market would level out as the supply increased and the wealthy started sharing the wealth.

 

Right now we are headed towards a supply intense economy which is never good. Case and point the current World Economy. I don't see it changing and leveling out because of the lack of credits now. The only way to get credits for free is to farm.......Not good.

 

I've watched the GTN boom over the last few days. I used to see maybe 3 or 4 people at one terminal on the GTN. Now I don't want to count.

 

I think the worst part of this is, since there aren't any people really going to the test server because it is so early in release, BW had nowhere to test this. So we, the active subscribers, are the test subjects.

 

I, for one, am glad at the amount of input from the community on the subject. Since we are test subjects might as well tell them what went wrong ay?

Edited December 29, 2011 by Mogget

[Yummymango]

All I say is that whether slicing needed a nerf or not the decision and action to nerf it was too quick and rush because if it needed a nerf it should have been done before launch.

 

Game has been out for just over a week and just because people started whining it got nerfed. ONE WEEK!

 

Shouldn't they give enough time for people to develop their skills and gain level and experience the game.

Shouldn't they analyze this situation properly before making rush decisions.

Shouldn't they ******* fix the queues that I have to wait for every evening after returning back from work. (yesterday it was 300 something, I know it is better than before)

Shouldn't they fix the stupid Auction house and make it more user friendly.

Shouldn't they do something about other professions and balance them.

Shouldn't they be fixing so many other bugs in game when I sometimes see my player standing outside ship during spaceship missions.

 

SO many other imp things to take care of rather than listening to whining bunch of people who haven't even reached level 20 in first few days.

 

Low level people don't even know that a speeder training at 40 costs 250K in addition to the high value of skill training and leveling. If one person is making more money than you, you will be able to sell at higher price an also make money.

 

Now we see threads about Bio chem being more beneficial than other professions and so does that mean they should nerf it too!

And shouldnt they give atleast 1 reply rather than keeping quiet.

 

Though at this time I am not at all thinking about stop playing but seriously if things like this continue I will lose interest.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Yummymango

[Sticksabbi]

You did not answer my question. D2 did not have an AH. D2 was not designed to rely on gold to be an economic currency. Which is why, at the very beginning, gems were used in place of a currency. Then came rare items. Then came duping, which inflated the price of rare items, but they were still used successfully as a trading system.

 

D2 wasn't DESIGNED with a player economy in mind one kind of grew up. My point in that argument was with hyper-inflation credits will be LIKE gold in d2. It will be worthless as a transaction medium.

 

In your own statement, duping is similar to making money off of slicing missions. Your essentially creating something out of nothing. Time doesn't restrict that equation because time is infinite. You need something finite to restrict this artificial growth. there are money sinks i.e. skills, speeders, etc... but those are fixed and as a result don't factor into this equation. Essentially those credits are never really destroyed. They just change hands. It was an infinite growth function with a limit of infinity.

 

Talk to an economist; I'm sure he would agree with me on this.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Sticksabbi

[Daemaro]

My point in that argument was with hyper-inflation credits will be LIKE gold in d2. It will be worthless as a transaction medium.

 

That's not true at all. The problem with gold in D2 was the game had near 0 gold sinks. You had repairs... that was pretty much it.

 

SWTOR has PLENTY of places to sink credits. Mounts and trainings, skills, bank and inventory space, VIP Badge, repairs. All of this stuff is pretty pricey at level 50.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Daemaro

[Raximillian]

There is no restriction on who can have slicing. Every single player on both factions could have a character with it. How is this a legitimate argument? Everyone had the same advantage if they chose to use it. It made the game easier and less tedious for everyone.

 

But now that is gone, and the game is reduced to a WoW level grindfest where you go out and farm low lvl areas that you're safe in for materials or lockboxes, thus depriving low lvl people of the opportunity to benefit from them.

 

Yep, the game sure is a better place without slicing.

 

If everyone needs to have slicing, then why even make it a choice? Just give it to everyone.

 

If I give everyone on the world 1 million dollars, do you think it will retain the same value?

[Yummymango]

That's not true at all. The problem with gold in D2 was the game had near 0 gold sinks. You had repairs... that was pretty much it.

 

SWTOR has PLENTY of places to sink credits. Mounts and trainings, skills, bank and inventory space, VIP Badge, repairs. All of this stuff is pretty pricey at level 50.

 

Sadly people don't know and realize this.

[Sticksabbi]

SWTOR has PLENTY of places to sink credits. Mounts and trainings, skills, bank and inventory space, VIP Badge, repairs. All of this stuff is pretty pricey at level 50.

 

I addressed that. Anything with a fixed cost can be completely ignored in the long run. Anything that has a cost that doesn't scale with the availability of credits can also be ignored in the long run. Inflation is a part of any game economy because it is an imitation of a real economy. The key to controlling inflation is to restrict as best you can it's rate of growth.

[LeperJack]

D2 wasn't DESIGNED with a player economy in mind one kind of grew up. My point in that argument was with hyper-inflation credits will be LIKE gold in d2. It will be worthless as a transaction medium.

That's silly. Slicing returns are fixed, finite, and capped. They are also less than returns from other sources, including every other gathering skill, selling crafted items instead of reverse engineering them, space missions, grinding, running quests, PvP...

 

In your own statement, duping is similar to making money off of slicing missions.

I don't recall him saying that.

 

Your essentially creating something out of nothing.

What do you think every gathering skill does? Pay 500 credits and 12 minutes to get 2400 credits worth of materials? Sound familiar?

 

Time doesn't factor into that equation because time is infinite.

i can think of no response to this other than: Lolwut.

 

You need something finite to restrict this artificial growth.

There are several restrictions on this. One is time, which does factor in as even if my time dialation device does work, i cannot get it to sync with my server allowing me to run an infinite amount of missions in a finite amount of time. the other is the return amount, which starts off high but decreases sharply when compared to fixed costs as one levels to the point that it is irrelevant in your 40s as a money making device and generally only suited to have to skip things in flashpoints. If i set up alts to slice and hire a team of folks to run missions on the dot 24 hours a day, I am making less credits than I would by having them gather via scavenging, bioanalysis, archaeology, underworld trading, investigation, diplomacy, treasure hunting, or just going out and grinding space missions.

 

there are money sinks i.e. skills, speeders, etc... but those are fixed and as a result don't factor into this equation.

so are the returns from slicing. If we're not figuring in fixed factors then I guess we'll discount any profits from slicing altogether and therefore slicing needed an infinite buff.

 

Talk to an economist; I'm sure he would agree with me on this.

No, I won't. Most of what you said won't make sense to a high school dropout with half a semester of Economics. Edited December 29, 2011 by LeperJack

[Raximillian]

Huh? What part of any of what I just told you about my method involved slicing?

 

None of it.

 

ZERO.

 

Lemme say it again, since you may only be reading the small bits.

 

NO SLICING INVOLVED.

 

 

 

I advanced my cycbertech very rapidly due to using the craft skill repsonsibly instead of buying everything. I then sold my products and made more profit faster than it was possible with pre-nerf slicing. I made money very quickly because i was nto slicing, i was paying people to slice for me with the items that i made. From looking at the time tables for pre-nerf slicing and the timetables for gathering and crafting I have now, I spent about 10 minutes gathering and crafting for every HOUR someone spent slicing open the absolute best return slicing mission to pay me for that 10 minutes.

 

Yes, (low level!) Crafting gave me a 600% return over what I'd have gotten spending that time slicing.

 

If slicing was unbalanced it was because it made too little money to compete with someone properly utilizing any other craft.

 

 

Was slicing very good for you? Yes, because it gave you money instead of materials you had no concept of value for. If you think bronzium is worthless for anything other than making into crappy greens that you will then smash to bits to get one piece of bronzium from and maybe a new pattern, then you're going to do that.

 

To me, bronzium is worth about 50 credits a piece, although I can craft it into somethign that will turn a few thousand credits when i mix it with other things.

 

Credits have an obvious value to you. You can see it right there. 1 credit=1 credit.

 

The only benefit to slicing is that it allows people who have zero sense to only fail slightly miserably instead of incredibly miserably.

 

You are playing the AH, that's great. Your income is dependent on the current supply demand, and you have to analyze and work for that money. That's perfectly fine, and you should make more money when you put your effort to it.

 

I did not make much effort, picked up slicing at lvl 15, and 9 levels later, had well 100K creds. And I was "wasting" my materials, by making stuff and crushing it. I now have a bunch of blue (although worthless) recipes. I like that.

 

It's fine if you put effort for your money. You should get lots of it, so congratulations. It's not fine it it comes with the press of a button. No effort at all. Does it make slicing the best of the best of the best? not for everyone, but for most people, it did. And once people start picking up on it, it becomes a "needed" skill, and the game is balanced around it. Should the game be balanced around one skill? no.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Raximillian

[mogishu]

I have spent hours now over the past several days reading thread after thread on the topic. I have come to the conclusion that Bioware needs to issues some kind of statement about this just to end all the damn QQ.

 

Problem is we do not know the reasoning behind the nerf. Most seem to say its because people were crying on the forums about that, fact is we do not know. None of us. Not one player knows the real reason and what it was based off of.

 

Its more likely that Bioware has some statistics that we do not because they can actually monitor the player base and game as whole. They saw something happening and took action.

 

I still think slicing has its uses and is an alternative choice for a player instead of picking up a Mission Skill. All the professions are about that, choices. How do you want to approach crafting and in this game we have more options instead of the classic 2 professions.

 

Maybe that was Bioware's intent. This banter, arguing, QQ etc.... will never end unless A) Bioware releases a statement on the subject or B) its just fades with time.

[thebreau]

If having a army of Alts doing slicing missions caused BW to nerf slicing, why not make it a logical nerf. A nerf that doesn't destroy the profession. I spent hours building my slicing skill to 400. Now I'm faced with the decision to change skills and lose all that time. Just to find out that BW thought things over and fix current problem. What am I to do?

 

Wouldn't allowing one alt character per server be a easier soluion?

 

Thrawm

[Engleheart]

don't try to talk economics here, no one understands, and i've gave up

[DustomaticGXC]

If everyone needs to have slicing, then why even make it a choice? Just give it to everyone.

 

If I give everyone on the world 1 million dollars, do you think it will retain the same value?

 

I used to make about 150-200% profit on Slicing missions. Now I make 500% profit on Underworld Trading missions selling product on the GTN.

 

Slicing was just for lazy people who were willing to make less profit in exchange for being able to bypass the use of the GTN.

[Raximillian]

I used to make about 150-200% profit on Slicing missions. Now I make 500% profit on Underworld Trading missions selling product on the GTN.

 

Slicing was just for lazy people who were willing to make less profit in exchange for being able to bypass the use of the GTN.

 

If you work for it, and can fight supply/demand, you deserve the money.

[Raximillian]

If having a army of Alts doing slicing missions caused BW to nerf slicing, why not make it a logical nerf. A nerf that doesn't destroy the profession. I spent hours building my slicing skill to 400. Now I'm faced with the decision to change skills and lose all that time. Just to find out that BW thought things over and fix current problem. What am I to do?

 

Wouldn't allowing one alt character per server be a easier soluion?

 

Thrawm

 

Bad solution. It means everyone would need to have a slicer alt just running missions to make it through the game?

 

Making a skill into a required skill is not a good idea.

 

Part of the problem with slicing is that it gives money directly. It should give something else that can be translated into money, or items or something. A tradeskill that simply gives money is not such a good idea.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Raximillian

[MarkBruno]

Despite the nerf, making money still comprises half of what slicing does. All you gather from nodes (at least sub level 25) is money. That's what the skill does. Schematic drop rates are around 20-25% off those credit missions. Augments are the the only other mission type. If the skill wasn't designed to make money that would mean that one half of the missions are pretty useless, no other skill has a rate of return THAT bad. It'd be literally like burning money.

 

As it stands now, slicing still prints money. I've got the data to prove it - I'm at like 150 missions and counting of keeping track. It does however print less money then it printed before the nerf. Unless someone else has counter data I'm standing by this conclusion.