Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[Tehlily]

I'm barely breaking even if that on slicing now I have to pay out 1780 and 1485 and the returns are less then the amounts I payed now so I'm losing credits on slicing at max level

[Raximillian]

I'm barely breaking even if that on slicing now I have to pay out 1780 and 1485 and the returns are less then the amounts I payed now so I'm losing credits on slicing at max level

 

What about lockboxes out in the field? And pattern or mission item returns? Do you take those into account?

[crowquil]

What about lockboxes out in the field? And pattern or mission item returns? Do you take those into account?

 

well they just took away the only really good place to farm them

[pryt]

I'm currently running another purple skill 340 Slicing itself mission, will see if I got as much 'bad luck' as with the last one, which yielded loss and a crap Augment. Which was, and maybe is again, ~90 minutes of wasted companion time (or ~2 hours if you're not using Mako).

[RaZoor]

What about lockboxes out in the field? And pattern or mission item returns? Do you take those into account?

 

Mission rewards are definitely a big question mark. However they only yield extra mats at an extra cost with a chance of failure, I dont see them becoming valuable enough to make you feel like I HAVE GOT to keep slicing.

 

As far as boxes in the field. You could kill the two groups you ran around to get a box and get more money.

 

The skill is pointless now.. simple as that. Especially when you throw in that any crafting profession requires two skills to support it. The only reason to have slicing before was to fund one of the skills, vs doing it yourself. Now you might as well just get the appropriate support skills and do dailys for dough like everyone else.

[laural]

Great question......

 

I will give you a 13 yr mmo's perspective. A long time ago there were no forums, and MMO's were awesome. Why? Because ranting crybaby whiners didnt have soapboxes to stand on and wash us all down the salty river. Now, SWG was the first MMO released that had its own forums and its own Reps managing said forums, and we all saw how retarded that became. It has been a continuous downward spiral ever since where softy unhappy gamers (hardcore happy gamers are actually playing) think they know better than developers how to make a game. Unfortunately someone somewhere decided customer support was a valuable feature and would make them all rich, and yet failed to realize the forums are filled with people who arent playing their game at THAT moment for whatever reason, instead they are soapboxing about it. Most likely because they are unhappy or dont have access to it at THAT moment (work). So you have a situation where the truly happy people who are playing dont have a voice. The only voices are those who are unhappy and searching for a soapbox to rant from... FORUMS. All it really does is create the exact problem you have so eloquently pointed out.

 

Thank you. I suppose at this rate, MMOs will always be the same with no changes because anything they do differently will end up being considered "broken" because other MMOs haven't done it like that. It will be a vicious cycle of complaining that they're all the same yet not accepting anything that does change.

[KTheAlchemist]

Well, those prices should be set against the gains of someone that does not have any tradeskills at all. If they balanced all prices taking into account a person with slicing getting a greater income, then it makes slicing a compulsory skill choice... Not a good design.

 

I hope BW reviews money sinks after this change. But the good thing, is that the game is better if you struggle a bit for money. I hated WoW after LK when money just built up and there was nothing to drain it

 

They should, but they're very evidently not. Basically, here's what I think happened:

 

1. Slicing needed an internal review. It didn't happen.

 

2. Beta players reported no problems with being able to afford the fixed-price items. The prices were set at levels affordable to players based on the existence of Slicing, with the oversight of not realizing that prices at that level were affordable *because* of the high credit incomes both to Slicers, and to crafters, coming from slicing players.

 

3. Bioware makes the changes to Slicing, without thinking them through to the impact on fixed prices of training etc.

[Sanchpanza]

I am getting sick and tired of people sprouting on here how things "Should" be when it comes to crafting. That is YOUR opinion, based off experiences with limited crafting systems.

 

This had the ability, and up until the patch was doing so, to take the tediousness out of crafting.

 

Pre Patch I could have one character sending out crafting companions on slicing missions to get my augments and money to fund the crafting on my other characters, while those other characters made armour and upgrades for each other. I didn't hoard money, I didn't go over the top, I used it to simply enable me to explore the crafting side of the game, without having to spend hours and hours running around looking for resources and slicing nodes.

 

NOW, because a MINORITY whined about slicing I am in the same boat I've been with every other MMO to date. The same BORING tactic of having to run around for hours on end just to keep myself geared for my level.

 

Previous to the patch I could run around on characters, having my non-active companions out crafting stuff as I went, meaning that I could keep myself geared up to be competent for my level. It took very little out of my game time, because if I was running low on funds I simply transferred some over by mail. The only grinding I had was possibly waiting for my companion to finish crafting, but I could just sit there with a book and keep a nominal eye on the screen.

 

NOW, for me to upgrade one bit of armour on one character I'm looking at about 2 hours of grinding for cash (minimum) to be able to afford to get the materials to get that upgraded bit of armour, or I have to send companions out on other missions and then put those gained items on the AH, meaning a severe delay to getting the armour I want. Thats 2 hours of me doing something that I DON'T enjoy to enable me to play the game at the best of my ability.

 

It really saddens me that people are so short sighted about things that are new that they have to demand the nerf bat be swung, rather than getting on board and embracing something that made everyone's lives easier, just because of out-dated concepts of how crafting should work.

 

Yes, slicing was a bit overpowered, it was very easy to get a lot of money at low levels. But that could have been fixed by imposing a limit on the level of missions you could run relative to your character. They could have just increased the mission times on the slicing missions. It didn't need to be made unprofitable and nerfed beyond recognition.

 

I've seen every argument possible against slicing being profitable and they basically fall into a couple of categories:

 

1) It will unbalance the economy of the game because people have lots of cash to spend so will pay more for items, but "apparently" this wouldn't happen if slicing is unprofitable.

 

WRONG. Every major MMO suffers from ridiculous inflation because of end-level players having more cash than people levelling. Slicing would have made no difference to this. But instead of everyone being in the same boat, and us all being able to afford items, instead we're back to the elitist thing of those that power level will have an advantage over those that take the time to enjoy and explore the game. Slicing is not an exponential gain in money like power levelling to 50 is. At 400 Slicing my profit margin will be the same whether I'm level 10 or I'm level 50. At low levels this is a LOT of money for a lowbie character, but at high levels it really is not that much at all compared to what you can earn by simply running around killing things. It would take 10 missions, at 35 minutes a piece, to be able to afford to repair armour after a tough instance. 350 total minutes of missions to repair your armour does not seem over-powered to me.

 

Inflation has happened in EVERY SINGLE MMO that I've played where trading was a large part of the game; UO, AO, WoW, Lotr:O... Wherever you have a limitless cap on money at end game you will end up with incredible inflation.

 

2) Mission skills shouldn't generate outright profit.

 

Well, this is just a pointless argument. Everything you get from missions has value of some sort or another. I had a quick look on the AH of my server while posting this, and Terenthium for example was going at about 100 per item on average. If you sold every terenthium you got from abundant underworld trading missions you'd be in roughly the same profit margin as running rich lockbox yields on tier 1 of slicing. And thats before inflation hits the market, that profit margin will only increase as more and more people hit max level and have money to give to alts in order to power level their crew skills.

 

Every advancement you do to your crew skills is an investment in money you can reclaim at a later date. Yes, you might spend 5000 even on tier 1 trying to get all the purple and blue recipes, but you will easily be able to sell them for a profit from the point you learn them onwards. With gathering skills you can literally just dump them on the AH for a profit when the market gets going.

 

3) Gathering skills should be about collecting from nodes.

 

This is a concept that was brought in during the WoW era and has prevailed since. It doesn't mean that it's correct. And it certainly isn't fun. Earlier games than WoW had different ways of doing this. UO, for example, had the ability to mine every bit of rock or mountain you found (with the chance of finding even rare metals in the same area as low grade ones), and you could harvest every tree for logs. AO and EQ, on the other hand, went the route of buying everything you wanted for crafting.

 

All three of those games (UO, AO and EQ) were highly successful, and none were severly damaged by not having nodes to harvest in the way we consider them today. WoW was the game that set out the idea that you should ONLY gather THESE nodes when you are THIS level and in THESE areas, and unfortunately everyone thinks that because the biggest MMO game of the last 10 years does it then every other MMO after it has to copy it.

 

We had a chance to break the mould here, but with our reactionary opinions we just brought it back to the same standard that we've had for 10 years.

 

Sorry to rant, but watching people making base claims about how slicing unbalanced the game and how crafting "should" be just gets on my nerves.

[Drakovicz]

They should, but they're very evidently not. Basically, here's what I think happened:

 

1. Slicing needed an internal review. It didn't happen.

 

2. Beta players reported no problems with being able to afford the fixed-price items. The prices were set at levels affordable to players based on the existence of Slicing, with the oversight of not realizing that prices at that level were affordable *because* of the high credit incomes both to Slicers, and to crafters, coming from slicing players.

 

3. Bioware makes the changes to Slicing, without thinking them through to the impact on fixed prices of training etc.

 

Its funny that you mention it, because if you watched the forums before launch, the Beta player DID report (both to Bioware and in forums) that the Slicing was overpowered, and then, Bioware DID nerf it.

 

The Kicker? They did it cautiously as to not make Slicing useless (exactly the same as you are all clamoring for), resulting in Slicing as you know it at launch.

 

Some things simply HAVE to be nerfed into uselessness and then carefully built from ground again, and Slicing is one of them.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Drakovicz

[KTheAlchemist]

Its funny that you mention it, because if you watched the forums before launch, the Beta player DID report (both to Bioware and in forums) that the Slicing was overpowered, and then, Bioware DID nerf it.

 

The Kicker? They did it cautiously as to not make Slicing useless (exactly the same as you are all clamoring for), resulting in Slicing as you know it at launch.

 

Some things simply HAVE to be nerfed into uselessness and then carefully built from ground again, and Slicing is one of them.

 

I'm not sure how any of that dictates that slicing must be overnerfed and built back up. I'm not sure that the utter stall they've put the economy into is a good thing.

 

EDIT: Bottom line, the situation now is that the fixed cost prices are too high for the current state of deflation. They need to either reduce those prices, or bring slicing back up. Right now is when w'ere leveling, NOW is when players are feeling the pinch of these decisions and making up their minds about the game accordingly.

Edited December 29, 2011 by KTheAlchemist

[Wingfoot]

Ya this is ridiculous. I just got the result of a class 6 WEALTHY mission:

 

Cost 3k

Time 2 hours 24 minutes

 

 

Result = 2700 Credits, level 49 crappy augment

 

 

 

AWESOME!

[laural]

Ya this is ridiculous. I just got the result of a class 6 WEALTHY mission:

 

Cost 3k

Time 2 hours 24 minutes

 

 

Result = 2700 Credits, level 49 crappy augment

 

 

 

AWESOME!

 

 

I suggest you just stop using missions for now until we know what is going to happen. Plenty of data is out there that finds many people are losing money. It's a gamble mission now and I don't know about you, but my credits are too precious for me to gamble with at this point (just as I don't gamble in real life).

[Zakkana]

I will give you a 13 yr mmo's perspective. A long time ago there were no forums, and MMO's were awesome. Why? Because ranting crybaby whiners didnt have soapboxes to stand on and wash us all down the salty river. Now, SWG was the first MMO released that had its own forums and its own Reps managing said forums, and we all saw how retarded that became. It has been a continuous downward spiral ever since where softy unhappy gamers (hardcore happy gamers are actually playing) think they know better than developers how to make a game. Unfortunately someone somewhere decided customer support was a valuable feature and would make them all rich, and yet failed to realize the forums are filled with people who arent playing their game at THAT moment for whatever reason, instead they are soapboxing about it. Most likely because they are unhappy or dont have access to it at THAT moment (work). So you have a situation where the truly happy people who are playing dont have a voice. The only voices are those who are unhappy and searching for a soapbox to rant from... FORUMS. All it really does is create the exact problem you have so eloquently pointed out.

 

Amen!

 

Take a look at what happens on patch day in the forums. All people do is complain that the servers are down. And if it gets extended because staff wants to make sure things are stable, they complain some more. The rest of us either are either at work/school, playing another game to kill time, or doing something productive. What are they doing? Frothing at the mouth in a gaming forum.

 

Then when actual players who play the game voice their concerns, they just gloat that they got something we utilized destroyed.

[supeyfuper]

well we do live in a 'I want it all and I want it now, and if I don't have it, somethings wrong with something somewhere' society

 

working for stuffs waaay to overrated anyway

 

p.s. un-nerf slicing

[Drakovicz]

I'm not sure how any of that dictates that slicing must be overnerfed and built back up. I'm not sure that the utter stall they've put the economy into is a good thing.

 

EDIT: Bottom line, the situation now is that the fixed cost prices are too high for the current state of deflation. They need to either reduce those prices, or bring slicing back up. Right now is when w'ere leveling, NOW is when players are feeling the pinch of these decisions and making up their minds about the game accordingly.

 

Because for Slicing , there are two modes on how it can function

 

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.

 

2)It barely breaks even: The skill is pretty much useless, with its only saving grace being bonus mission, schematics and maybe augments. This inevitably leads to massive dissatisfaction and whining from everyone who picked up the skill, for whatever reason, and a heavy hit for the economy in the short-term.In long-term it allows for a healthy economy.

 

Overall, a crafting skill with money-making as a sole function is a really bad idea. Because of how economy in MMO work, it can be either useless or overpowered and ruining economy, with no middle ground.

 

They really should rework Slicing from the ground up. (For example, I would like if Slicing Missions would specialize in Bonus Missions and Schematics, with Augments as a secondary, and the only way how to get Credit Lockboxes would be World Nodes.)

Edited December 29, 2011 by Drakovicz

[RvEijndhoven]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

 

The problem with Slicing pre-nerf was not that it was profitable. It was that the other Crew Skills weren't.

 

This left people who didn't have slicing feeling cheated for not having a Crew Skill they could finance their non-combat activities with.

 

Part of the reason why I'm against the nerf is that I play together with my brother, I took Artifice, Archeology and Treasure hunting, he took Synthweaving, Underworld Trading and Slicing. I provided Archeology mats for both of us and he provided the cash needed for both of us to run Crew Skill missions without being broke after one round of them.

 

Now, not only am I 'archeologying' for two people, I'm grinding low level hilts off of my share of the mats in order to be able to finance the both of us, while he's stuck with not one, but two dead end skills (Turns out Synthweaving blows).

 

Hence my earlier suggestion that Crew Skill missions should not cost credits.

 

This would also go towards fixing Slicing, because right now, for the person buying them Bonus Missions do not cost what the Slicer sells them for... They cost that amount plus the amount the actual mission costs to run. Except that the Slicer sees none of that money because it's a money sink. What you end up with is that if a Slicer sells a Bonus Mission for 1200 credits (in order to recoup the loss he made on the mission to get it) and that mission costs 1200 credits to run, it ends up costing the buyer 2400 credits for a mission which returns materials far below that value.

 

Removing the credit cost will lower the prices of everything crafting-related on the GTN and at the same time balance out the difference between Salvaging, Bioanalysis and Archeology (namely: Salvagers and Bioanalists can harvest off of mobs which respawn far quicker than Archeology nodes AND end up bringing in credits in the form of loot). With time being the only factor, Slicing becomes relatively speaking less profitable because everyone can make money off of their Crew Skill (and with the Crew Skill money sink gone, people will have more cash left over to spend on other things).

Edited December 29, 2011 by RvEijndhoven

[Caveat]

The only voices are those who are unhappy and searching for a soapbox to rant from... FORUMS. All it really does is create the exact problem you have so eloquently pointed out.

 

This has been my complaint for years. If someone is having a great time playing, not a care in the world, the last thing he or she is going to do is stop playing, rush to the forums and say, "Hey guys, just wanna say you're doing a great job!" If they did, maybe then they'd see this vocal minority tearing apart something that the true majority is quite happy with and rally to defend it. Instead, that never happens and the happy majority gets blindsided by a change. What happens next? An influx of new complainers to the forums. Wash, rinse and repeat.

 

Granted, forums are here to stay. Nothing much you can do about that now. With that in mind, it would have been nice for Bioware to at least step forward and say something about the change to help placate some folks on what they already knew was a controversial issue. Would I like to know that the change in Slicing was based on the comprehensive, continuous study of data collected by the development team? If most of us had at least heard that, people could, at the very least, stop pointing the finger at the forum whiners. You know, help defuse the situation a little.

 

Instead, I'm left to wonder if part of my gaming experience with SWTOR will be having to come to the forums to defend stuff I enjoy in the game... in which case I expect some cash or experience for my characters in return.

[zootzoot]

Because for Slicing , there are two modes on how it can function

 

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.

 

2)It barely breaks even: The skill is pretty much useless, with its only saving grace being bonus mission, schematics and maybe augments. This inevitably leads to massive dissatisfaction and whining from everyone who picked up the skill, for whatever reason, and a heavy hit for the economy in the short-term.In long-term it allows for a healthy economy.

 

Overall, a crafting skill with money-making as a sole function is a really bad idea. Because of how economy in MMO work, it can be either useless or overpowered and ruining economy, with no middle ground.

 

They really should rework Slicing from the ground up. (For example, I would like if Slicing Missions would specialize in Bonus Missions and Schematics, with Augments as a secondary, and the only way how to get Credit Lockboxes would be World Nodes.)

 

 

I agree. The issue revolves around the Lockbox Missions. They need to be reworked. It's ludicrous to have a mission that only yields credits to ever lose money if successful. The credits from Lockbox Missions should be the Bonus. The main objective should be patterns and their ilk IMO. Make it more like the other Gathering profs.

[laural]

I agree. The issue revolves around the Lockbox Missions. They need to be reworked. It's ludicrous to have a mission that only yields credits to ever lose money if successful. The credits from Lockbox Missions should be the Bonus. The main objective should be patterns and their ilk IMO. Make it more like the other Gathering profs.

 

This is probably their best bet at this point IF they are going to do anything about it. 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.

Edited December 29, 2011 by laural

[Zakkana]

This is probably their best bet at this point IF they are going to do anything about it. 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.

 

No, they can do it anytime. They just need to be firm. Make plenty of notice that this change will happen so people have time to pick their one character to have it on per faction per server and then do it. If they complain, too damn bad. It'll be just like Blizzard's stance when they started lowering mount prices.

[Pestwulf]

I took slicing for two reasons.

 

1) for the chance at schematics

2) for the chance at additional missions that you couldn't get otherwise (I originally thought this meant that I might be able to slice open a door in a mission to get a "side mission" or get to areas otherwise unavailable)

 

The credits let me make a little money while continuing to sift for schematics and it let me take other missions without necessarily having to sell the results, but instead bank them.

 

Now with this latest nerf, I'm kind of appalled. Augment missions are useless. You can not sell the augments to anything other than a vendor and they are a huge loss, the only benefit is gaining skill.

 

Lockboxes are now another loss overall and the chance to get a schematic hasn't changed. so instead of a gathering skill that produces something (in this case it was credits), you now have a lottery longshot odds. This nerf to slicing has rendered it profitless from pretty much every viewpoint. It produces nothing to fund a craft, it produces nothing to sell...it's just a pure money sink now.

 

Does anyone know if the Schematics you can get from Underworld Trading are the same ones available from the lockboxes? If so, we can just give up Slicing and go to UT to try and get schematics. At least there is some profit to be had there in the form of the bars.

 

Terenthium is a freaking gold mine.

 

With this latest change, the developers are basically floundering in their vision for the gathering skill. Making changes with no real goal in mind except for knee jerk reactions.

 

If they want to tone down, or even completely alter the way slicing works and make it exactly like the other gathering professions, that would be fine as long as they knew what they wanted. But nerfing it in such a way that it has now become a "skill" with no useful output is just beyond silly.

 

Either un-nerf it, or give it some kind of meaning other than money if that that is your problem, but how it is now is just insulting.

[laural]

No, they can do it anytime. They just need to be firm. Make plenty of notice that this change will happen so people have time to pick their one character to have it on per faction per server and then do it. If they complain, too damn bad. It'll be just like Blizzard's stance when they started lowering mount prices.

 

Well if that is what they do, I'm going out and buying a case of popcorn so I can sit back and watch the forums explode. Better than watching a movie and will last longer too!

 

Edited to add that it would also affect my professions, so I really wouldn't be too happy about it. I still don't think it would be a good idea from the standpoint of time and money people have put into their professions.

Edited December 29, 2011 by laural

[Zakkana]

Well if that is what they do, I'm going out and buying a case of popcorn so I can sit back and watch the forums explode. Better than watching a movie and will last longer too!

 

The only real people it would affect would be credit farmers. Any reasonable person would not need it on more than one character on a faction.

[pryt]

Ya this is ridiculous. I just got the result of a class 6 WEALTHY mission:

 

Cost 3k

Time 2 hours 24 minutes

 

 

Result = 2700 Credits, level 49 crappy augment

 

 

 

AWESOME!

 

 

I can second that, except that the Augment was a 22 one for Willpower.

 

I'll be saving my missions now, at least those for slicing. Those for Scavenging or Underworld Trading are quite good. Got 30/31 grade 6 metals/components from that Scavenging one.

[laural]

The only real people it would affect would be credit farmers. Any reasonable person would not need it on more than one character on a faction.

 

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).