Slicing post-nerf, please look at the numbers BW

[DarthSublimitas]

And that was why the NGE (and some would even argue the CU) was such a failure for Star Wars Galaxies. It was a minority wanting to inflict their play style onto others. The even worse part was, at least for the NGE, was that after roughly 50% of the player base walked in less than 30 days and SOE was forced to refund people for Trials of Obi-wan expansion, they still maintained the NGE was a "positive" change.

 

When will people just learn to lay back and just effing play?

 

Nooooooooooo, these games are NOT MEANT TO BE FUN. Don't you know nuttin...?! As soon as something is enjoyable or fun for the casualy player, BAM! POW! Nerf bat MUST fall and you are now reassigneed to the eternal grind for mats.

 

I'm so confused now lmao! I'm so poor. Trying to make money, so I dropped my artiface for scavenging - currently have scavenging, arch and slicing. Went to Hutta to farm the robots there for low lvl stuff. 30 - 40 min went to 81 or so. Grabbed slicing after nerf. Really only grabbed it cuz I thought it would be fun to "steal" other NPC's safes lol. Made a test on the slicing missions - you lose money so badly, it's not even worth sending them out on them. Slicing is only good for gathering nodes. Mission costs 100c you get back 80c - what's the point?? I can easily lvl up the profession "cracking" safes.

 

I'm thinking the scavaging skills can have their use. Later I'll prob drop something and craft something - maybe but in all reality, it's left a very sour taste in my mouth. Diplomacy is a joke unless you do biochem - which one of my toons does and that, so far, is the only thing truly useful and viable in the game. Perhaps I should just make all my toons do biochem - at least the stuff is useful. I'll be poor but maybe someone will buy some bacteria lmao...

[myrken]

Dropped my sub to one month still waiting to hear from Bioware if we don't and were ignored ill just wait 4 months for the US launch of Tera Online and look back at this games Picasso graphics from Tera's DX11 jaw dropping ones and laugh then go pick up GW2 and look into a western launch of the new Phantasy Star Online 2 scheduled for release in Japan come 2012. SWTOR isnt the first and wont be the last but if it crumbles after this much of a hyped launch EA will look even lamer than they already are if that's even possible after reading their wiki. I mean seriously look at their history.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts

 

That being said now would be the time to respond to your player base but if Bioware wishes a repeat of services rendered on the mass effect forums this game is shoveling a grave with its own headstone. They need to step their game up or this product will fail due to past track records of EA's management and Biowares terrible response times. On a lighter note Bioware employees do work very hard because EA = The Grinch of all corporations breathing down their neck. Like really take a look at the wiki and see how EA treats its staff and developers. Oh and slicing needs to be set back to what it was and the economy needs to stabilize before the player base knee jerks out of subscriptions.

 

Check out EA's employee treatment records on the wiki dam that's sad.

Edited December 30, 2011 by myrken

[xDoomsDayx]

And that was why the NGE (and some would even argue the CU) was such a failure for Star Wars Galaxies. It was a minority wanting to inflict their play style onto others. The even worse part was, at least for the NGE, was that after roughly 50% of the player base walked in less than 30 days and SOE was forced to refund people for Trials of Obi-wan expansion, they still maintained the NGE was a "positive" change.

 

When will people just learn to lay back and just effing play?

 

I am from old school. My still favorite MMO is EQ. I enjoyed grinding, I enjoyed camping mobs and best of all, I enjoyed being a group where not only did you have time to chat in between fights, heck, fighting was usually slow enough that you could chat during the fights to. It was probably the best social game out there. I am much older now though. I dont have the hours and hours to dedicate to grouping that I once did. I am not saying that I wouldn't play a new EQ if it was made (well except it would be made by sony). But what I am saying is, I have been picking my games more based on my gaming requirements at this time. SWTOR for the most part has met those needs nicely. I dont really know how much replayability it has though. I absolutely love the story line missions but I am not a huge fan of redoing the same content over and over and over. So I am not sure if a single class story is worth it when you have to go through all the same content over again while your doing the new story line. I guess I kinda got burnt out on that type of grinding long ago.

 

My class was hit in swg long before the nge and cu. The creature handlers got their tree completely rescrambled just a month after release because people were complaining about CH's running around with 3 rancors. That was NOT the problem. The problem was that you were supposed to be a MASTER (meaning trained all the skills in ch) in order to be able to tame and trade pets. A bug in their code allowed people to put 1 point into the second tier of skills and they could use rancors. Instead of fixing the selling bug and making it so that master could only have that many pets out. They redid the entire tree and made them the laughing stock of the world. AND on top of all that, they still didnt fix the damn bug where you could trade pets while not being a master which is what caused part of the initial problem in the first place!

 

Sadly, bioware is currently showing the exact same contempt for its player base by not discussing this issue with us as smedley did in all the games he has handled. Does bioware really want to earn the reputation that smedley has earned over the years, and do it in only 1 week? Oh well, they only got what, 15+ish days before my sub runs out. Again, its one thing to make changes to a game. I fully understand that. However, its very different about doing something like that when it has a huge impact and they don't want to discuss it.

[Avaraen]

I'll admit I didn't read 70+ pages, especially as the last page was getting a bit off-topic. So, to throw in my 2c about slicing:

 

Please look at the numbers now Bioware.

I am not jumping up and down saying "PUT IT BACK". I am saying, however, that now it loses money.

 

The spreadsheet linked indicates that slicing is still profitable, which matches my anecdotal experience in lower levels of slicing. Class 3 and Class 6 Lockboxes are a terrible return, comparatively, but otherwise, the numbers scale steadily. Taking a reduction in profit to slog through ranks 3 & 6 isn't fun; fix that and you're taking a step in the right direction.

 

That said, the profit margin is ... not impressive. I don't think slicing should be an extremely high profit skill, but it should scale steadily upwards with each skill bracket, and the return per mission should be considerably higher than it is currently (particularly at higher skill levels). I'd like to point out as well, that at level 18 I can farm Black Talon solo and make ~6000 credits per hour, plus alignment and companion affection. There is zero risk in doing so at that level, just time investment. I'm not saying slicing should be that profitable, since my character gets to continue on questing, etc., while crew members run missions, but it really ought to be a bit better than penny slots.

[myrken]

What cracks me up is how the 30 day free trial is seeming more and more to be Biowares trial and less of a game trial.

[Zakkana]

What cracks me up is how the 30 day free trial is seeming more and more to be Biowares trial and less of a game trial.

 

Yup. And they're failing at it. They need to post something even if it is "We are examining the issue." Otherwise it comes across as they just don't care.

[SeedyJ]

Yup. And they're failing at it. They need to post something even if it is "We are examining the issue." Otherwise it comes across as they just don't care.

 

That's why cancelling subscriptions is one of the few ways to get them to notice. The devs won't notice at first but the bean-counters will, and less cash makes for sad financial pandas.

[Yummymango]

Bioware really needs to respond. Their attitude of making changes suddenly (in 1 week of launch) and then not getting back to people with a proper answer is wrong and reflects bad policies.

 

Also guys I am not sure but seems many others are lucky. My level 6 mission mostly get me less money than what I spend or not much profit. Also augment missions get me green trash which no one wants to buy and I have to vendor it.

[Manathayria]

Here is the issue though, you are not selling them for more than you pay to get them. You also have to make (minimal) effort to sell them, whereas with Slicing you could run 8 characters login/3 clicks/logout/repeat

 

Issue... slicing didn't yield anything other than credits.... augments (which NO ONE buys - had a few epics bouncing off the GT for a bit now and finally gave up even with price drops) and schematics which are very, rare.

 

The nerf needs 'fixed' I think at least making it so you break even with the skill from missions (I can and do make more off my UT and other mission skills than slicing gives).

 

Do I think it needs to go back up to previous levels? No, not really.

 

Does it need at least to be turned so that it can make a profit off missions? Yes.

 

Other gathering professions you will make cash off gathering and off of the missions. Generally you will make more off any of your gathering than that slicer made off of theirs. It's why I ran it with another gathering profession - not slicing alone.

 

That said... top end slicers aren't seeing as huge of a 'loss' as those that're leveling the skill. Overall those chests were barely touched - though I won't be running anymore of those missions till my companions are much higher on affection since I lose all my profits if I come back with one failed mission.

 

This skill was meant for casuals - honestly, slicing missions themselves - according to those that really did the math. Pre-nerf were probably 20-30cr a minute. Now it's around 10-15? Something like that? (lost the post in the mountain of posts) But at 50, you're making bank off of things other than that. Honestly the cr drip only becomes an issue when you're looking at a guy that runs 8 characters 6 companions 24/7 with that drip. But they really can do that with any real gathering skill that's going to turn up blue mats - which makes the slicing irrelevant. Any long term gamer can tell you the slicing will fall behind in yield vs the crafters if you don't make all the items they make at the top end worthless.

[Kerplode]

Oh the tears!

 

If slicing doesn't yield you great profit then take a different crew skill and stop whining

[sildoor]

Love the tears .. .

 

Just adept maybe ? if u dont like runing around collecting boxes of money then change proffesion ? I did.. got treasery hunting now , might not give me pure money but I dont need money anyway thx to broken slicing

[SeedyJ]

Bioware really needs to respond. Their attitude of making changes suddenly (in 1 week of launch) and then not getting back to people with a proper answer is wrong and reflects bad policies.

 

Also guys I am not sure but seems many others are lucky. My level 6 mission mostly get me less money than what I spend or not much profit. Also augment missions get me green trash which no one wants to buy and I have to vendor it.

 

tbh I'd get more creds/minute spamming the lowest lev space mission than I would from slicing, and the lack of any response from BW smacks of a dangerous degree of complacency.

[Nahela]

Oh the tears!

 

If slicing doesn't yield you great profit then take a different crew skill and stop whining

 

Yeah because a crew skill being nerfed to the point where it literally doesn't serve the purpose it's intended for is whining. Get over yourself.

 

Watching markets immediately tank within 48 hours of this nerf is pretty wild. All the mission-profession materials plummeting in value because there's no Slicers left to buy them (and those that are, can't afford it).

 

At the same time, watching myself level and not be able to afford skill training is sad. Granted I can't even begin to fathom why I would spend 8k-15k credits on +5 Endurance (Shadow's Training, seriously BW?), but it still seems silly.

[Yummymango]

Oh the tears!

 

If slicing doesn't yield you great profit then take a different crew skill and stop whining

 

You know what, why didn't the people who were whining last week about slicing giving more credits roll for slicing. It is a profession why not take it. But no, lets try to get it nerfed so "BALANCE IT". balance my ***

 

Also why would I delete my 400 level profession and start a new one from scratch

Edited December 30, 2011 by Yummymango

[Nahela]

The worst part, is I see the patch notes and think "okay, no big deal", only to realize after I've spent all my credits that my primary means of making money is no longer available. So now I'm sitting here, unable to train skills, profession, etc. Extremely frustrating. About to just shelve the character.

[Pansophist]

I am from old school. My still favorite MMO is EQ. I enjoyed grinding, I enjoyed camping mobs and best of all, I enjoyed being a group where not only did you have time to chat in between fights, heck, fighting was usually slow enough that you could chat during the fights to. It was probably the best social game out there. I am much older now though. I dont have the hours and hours to dedicate to grouping that I once did. I am not saying that I wouldn't play a new EQ if it was made (well except it would be made by sony). But what I am saying is, I have been picking my games more based on my gaming requirements at this time. SWTOR for the most part has met those needs nicely. I dont really know how much replayability it has though. I absolutely love the story line missions but I am not a huge fan of redoing the same content over and over and over. So I am not sure if a single class story is worth it when you have to go through all the same content over again while your doing the new story line. I guess I kinda got burnt out on that type of grinding long ago.

 

My class was hit in swg long before the nge and cu. The creature handlers got their tree completely rescrambled just a month after release because people were complaining about CH's running around with 3 rancors. That was NOT the problem. The problem was that you were supposed to be a MASTER (meaning trained all the skills in ch) in order to be able to tame and trade pets. A bug in their code allowed people to put 1 point into the second tier of skills and they could use rancors. Instead of fixing the selling bug and making it so that master could only have that many pets out. They redid the entire tree and made them the laughing stock of the world. AND on top of all that, they still didnt fix the damn bug where you could trade pets while not being a master which is what caused part of the initial problem in the first place!

 

Sadly, bioware is currently showing the exact same contempt for its player base by not discussing this issue with us as smedley did in all the games he has handled. Does bioware really want to earn the reputation that smedley has earned over the years, and do it in only 1 week? Oh well, they only got what, 15+ish days before my sub runs out. Again, its one thing to make changes to a game. I fully understand that. However, its very different about doing something like that when it has a huge impact and they don't want to discuss it.

That was very well put, just wanted to say thank you for the input. I'm still hoping we will see a response from them by the end of next week.

 

And guys, just flag the troll's posts as spam/insulting, then add them to your ignore list. It's what I do, and it's been pretty effective thus far, even stopped quite a few of the trolls from posting in this thread.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Pansophist

[Engleheart]

tbh I'd get more creds/minute spamming the lowest lev space mission than I would from slicing, and the lack of any response from BW smacks of a dangerous degree of complacency.

 

 

 

Or just sheer lack of ability when it comes to responding to hot topics such as this. I mean the Lower Mods on the forum are not even allow to comment on such issues, and the Higher-ups refuse to comment because

 

 

A)are to busy counting there own profits from the slicing of my wallet and heart

&

B)Are to <fill-in the blank> to do so themselves.

[DarthSublimitas]

That's why cancelling subscriptions is one of the few ways to get them to notice. The devs won't notice at first but the bean-counters will, and less cash makes for sad financial pandas.

 

So perhaps that's what we all need to do en masse. We should all either shorten our subs - I originally did 3 months but am seriously thinking of about either cancelling or shortening it to a month at a time.

 

Apathy=Death. And that is what BW is doing now - not communicating with us showing us apathy and this may be the death of their game...

 

What is this nonsense that they're are not speaking with us - WE keep THEM in business with our subs - cut the subs and see how fast they respond...

[Donger]

So perhaps that's what we all need to do en masse. We should all either shorten our subs - I originally did 3 months but am seriously thinking of about either cancelling or shortening it to a month at a time.

 

Apathy=Death. And that is what BW is doing now - not communicating with us showing us apathy and this may be the death of their game...

 

What is this nonsense that they're are not speaking with us - WE keep THEM in business with our subs - cut the subs and see how fast they respond...

 

That is the only issue I have. Nerf what ever you want, just give some feedback on the direction you expect this game to go in. A sliver of the overall big picture that want crafting to go in.

 

The silence points in the direction that they don't have a clue what to do with this mess they have created. Too scared to ask the community for advice? I would be too after reading some of the posts in here, but if they dig deep enough there have been some very good ideas about how to fix not only slicing, but the other crafts too.

 

I don't know why every one just wants to post BWAAAA you QQ nerdraged quit over a nerf!!!

 

They should be standing firm with us on the issue of no communication. Who knows? next nerf might be your favorite part of the game and then you will be wanting answers and getting nothing but silence.

[MnMrMustard]

Slicing was over-nerfed. I agree it made too much money too quickly but now it loses money and isn't worth anything.

 

Bioanalysis, Archaeology, and Scavenging make more by doing missions and selling materials on the GTN than slicing ever has, even if I get the mats from missions!

 

Remember, slicing is a GATHERING skill. Slicers gather lockboxes and augments, not materials to craft. Gathing skills, if you are not using them to craft, WILL MAKE YOU MONEY! Gathering+Crafting will MAKE YOU MORE MONEY!

 

Slicing, if kept healthy, will keep gold farmers out as people will not have ANY need to buy from them!

[Darksx]

Why Bioware, Why!!!

 

Nerfing Slicing as it is now is totally uncalled for, I never used slicing during the beta, but a friend of mine did. Yes he made a lot of credits, but he was nowhere near a millionaire as you are calming.

 

Let’s be totally honest here about Slicing, I only took this skill to make money to buy the mats I needed for Sythweaving, but Slicing got nerfed so badly that you don’t even make money from it at all. Examples of this are this; you send a Companion out on a mission, that mission varies from 1K to 2K depending.

 

More than half the time they now come back with less credits then it took for me to send them on the mission. This does not include failed missions which are a total loss of credits.

 

Utterly ridiculous!!

 

Bioware made a knee jerk reaction to trying to fix this and all they have done was ruin Slicing and made it a completely useless skill to have now. I have wasted countless hours and money on a skill that now does nothing for me. For example, I had slicing, I made enough credits to buy mats I needed, and training. But I was still not able to buy my speeder training. So how does anyone figure Slicing was over powered?

 

Another fine example of how messed up Slicing is, I’m on Balmorra, and I’m still finding nodes that require 25. This planet is a planet where level 20s hang out and quest. This is just another example of how messed up this really is.

 

As I said, I took this skill to make money to buy mats to make Armor with, I tried the Underworld trading , but that skill was very lacking too. It got very frustrating trying to get mats. It was costing you 400 credits to get one piece of cloth that I could go to the AH and buy for 100 credits. If anything needed nefring and fixing its skills like that that don’t bring any normal amounts of items to help you level the skill you are working on.

 

Slicing was not making tons of money, in the beta it did, but since the game released it was on par. and did not need the over nerfing it got.

Edited December 30, 2011 by Darksx

[DarthSublimitas]

I just grabbed slicing cuz I thought it would be cool to steal other NPC's safes lol But after sending my toons on 2 missions, post nerf, NO WAY, will I do this until it's fixed; you loose money. Who in their right mind invests in something that only loses money???

[omegatay]

Slicing nerfs aside, I am personally appalled at the lack of feedback from Bioware in general. Only forum that receives any responses from Bioware at all is customer service.

 

As everyone agrees it either shows a total lack of compentence, or they just don't care.

 

The thing is, I DON'T have to care either. In this case I speak with my wallet.

 

Get with it Bioware, your reputation is going down the toilet.

[Guen]

Slicing may have needed to be nerfed, yes, but the nerf was too much. The real problem here is not slicing, rather that the other crew skills are too expensive. With all the training costs for new recipes plus the gathering missions I had to send my guys on because most of the archaeology nodes were broken, it would be cheaper to not be a crafter and just buy from crafters.

 

Crew Skills need a serious look at. My level 32 character has almost no money (my slicing husband had to give me the money for speeder training) and my alt with cybertech and scavenging has twice as much money as my main because scavenging nodes are every two feet and all of them work so I haven't once had to send her on a scavenging quest. Crew skills are supposed to help you make money not be a huge credit sink because otherwise, what's the point of crafting? You can just not craft and buy stuff from the vendors for cheaper than it is to craft a similar item.

 

Buff slicing a tiny bit. Fix all the other crew skills so that sending them on missions is cheaper and buying recipes is cheaper, because right now, without slicing, it is impossible to make any money on crafting.

[Yummymango]

I just grabbed slicing cuz I thought it would be cool to steal other NPC's safes lol But after sending my toons on 2 missions, post nerf, NO WAY, will I do this until it's fixed; you loose money. Who in their right mind invests in something that only loses money???

 

I did the exact same thing on my 2nd alt to test low level slicing and he also lost money like my main toons high level missions. This is just messed up!

 

I will request BW to start slicing and see themselves what is the condition of it right now. We all are not just crying for no reason.