Rebuff Slicing - A plea from a non-slicer

[Treebyrn]

So if you send 1000 credits on a mission and get 800 back, its broken.

 

If any other craft spends 1000 credits on a mission and gets items worth 800 credits upon reselling, it's all good?

 

And btw, the guy you quoted was right. If you browse these forums and look at the posts of people who actually bothered to write down gains/losses, Slicing missions are still profitable. Just run Abundant/Rich ones. At the end of the day you'll have made a profit.

 

Funny I keep seeing a lot of people posting saying exactly what you did in red but they seem to forget that the value of the non-slicing mission returns are never constant. You say for that 1000 credit mission you only got 800 credits worth of mats but I and others will say we got way more than 800 credits worth because we used those mats to make something to either sell on the GTN or keep for ourselves or give to our friends / companions. Plus you seem to forget that the return on your 1000 credit mission may be worth 800 credits today but tomorrow may be worth 3000 credits.

 

As it stands now with slicing missions (lock boxes) the value on the return is constant; what you get from the lock box is what you get, whether it is a loss or a gain.

[Tzimisce]

i have 6 characters, none above level 35 yet, 5 were and probably are still going to be supported by a level 24 toon i slice with... give a mission, log on a character, switch back, do a mission, log back on my other one, when im playing other games/doing wokr or just chilling at home i turn the graphic son this to nothing and do slicing missions while tapping a key every 15 minutes to not afk, zero effort millions upon millions of credits.

 

a single character in their mid 20s doing slicing missions constantly has more than supported 5 characters including every trade skill and is sitting on over a million credits still... i am utterly unsurprised at the nerf, and expected it.

[KTheAlchemist]

Well Gamers need to learn, not everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. It is what is killing games, making them worse, making them cater to people who want everything for nothing. Sure there are many games out now, but they went down from 40 hours to 10-15 average. My point is we need to get back to the older games, where hitting 50 and having a mount meant something, now the only sign of having something is having over 1 mil credits lol. The sooner Bioware kicks them in the butt and say, ' WORK for some money, don't be lazy. The better.

 

This...WORK mentality is why I stopped playing WoW after nearly seven years of being a raider. This should be a game, never work. If grinding face is your thing, by all means go to it, but the problem, the real problem right now is that once you hit a certain point after the slicing nerf, grinding is now required just to afford the basic SWTOR "costs of living". That's a problem, and the real problem...prices of repairs, training, and missions all need to be tuned downward.

[Neblin]

Funny I keep seeing a lot of people posting saying exactly what you did in red but they seem to forget that the value of the non-slicing mission returns are never constant. You say for that 1000 credit mission you only got 800 credits worth of mats but I and others will say we got way more than 800 credits worth because we used those mats to make something to either sell on the GTN or keep for ourselves or give to our friends / companions. Plus you seem to forget that the return on your 1000 credit mission may be worth 800 credits today but tomorrow may be worth 3000 credits.

 

As it stands now with slicing missions (lock boxes) the value on the return is constant; what you get from the lock box is what you get, whether it is a loss or a gain.

 

You once ignore what people have been telling you: Slicing will still net you a profit at the end of the day. People have used the skill and taken notes. It is still profitable post patch.

 

Other professions can get you items which can end up as a gain or loss. Lets assume for your sake that overall it will be a gain if you play the GTN right.

 

Slicing as well will always end up with an overall gain in credit from what many people have already posted, using actual data instead of wild speculations.

 

How exactly is this not balanced?

[DervimNorth]

Just another slicing rant, nothing to see here. Oh wait, except I'm not a slicer, and I am asking for a slicing buff. That's new.

 

By nerfing slicing I have noticed my income cut from 200-250k/day to barely hitting the 100k/day mark from the Galactic Trade Network. Note I am a huge AH player in WoW, so it obviously rolled over to SWTOR. This just shows the sheer volume at which the slicing hit the GTN - over half of my income is completely destroyed, think about what it did to the casual seller that isn't constantly undercutting competition.

 

By nerfing slicing you did not stabilize the economy, you cut all player spending in fear of not having credits again. With the ridiculously high cost of everything at high levels, the income from Slicing was nothing near "insane", and was in fact supplemental.

 

People saw making that much money as crazy, but when I am selling my Grade 6 materials at 2k/each, and they were moving, I see nothing wrong with that. Now? I can't sell them for half that. And actual crafted gear? Yeah, you might as well go ahead and sell it to a vendor, because that sure as hell is not moving now.

 

Also, to add, the GTN without slicing is COMPLETELY OVERSATURATED now. We went from around 60 pages of scavenging materials to over 200 overnight. Now obviously something is wrong there, and the number just keeps growing. Supply/demand is nowhere near what it should be.

 

And don't come in saying "it's early, markets are stabilizing". Yeah, it is, and they SHOULD be, but they won't with this skewed of a system. Supply will continue to grow and grow as demand sits at 0.

 

What's that called? Oh yeah, deflation. People know, even if they aren't fully aware that they do, that if they hold their money now that the prices will plummet to where things are near-vendoring price.

 

For those of us who play games for strong economies, this slicing nerf was a slap in the face. Even those of us without Slicing but knows general economic principles feel it, and it's not a good feeling. It's that angus not peppered, coming in dry feeling - and it hurts.

 

Please buff Slicing to be profitable. And not 15k credits in 5 hours "profitable", I mean actually profitable to where it's worth a 50's time to send 3 companions out on lockbox missions. That also doesn't mean it needs to be 5Cr/second like it was before, just meet somewhere in the middle.

 

I salute you for your attempts to instill common sense into the brains of masses. Unfortunately, some people just refuse to believe in facts or/and are driven by the hate/envy for others. Which makes arguing pretty pointless.

 

I suggest you do what you do best until silly masses realize the error of their ways on their own. Admittedly, there's a slim chance of that happening, but who knows! Maybe after overstocking their inventory without credits to buy more space...Maybe some of people will start asking "what if..." questions.

 

Of course more likely they'll just farm more credits to make more undemanded stuff.

[SuperInfestor]

Yeah, I agree Slicing was a bit over nerfed.

 

It needed a slight nerf because low levels were getting way too much money...

 

It wasn't the all powerful crew skill at 50, though.

[Treebyrn]

You once ignore what people have been telling you: Slicing will still net you a profit at the end of the day. People have used the skill and taken notes. It is still profitable post patch.

 

Other professions can get you items which can end up as a gain or loss. Lets assume for your sake that overall it will be a gain if you play the GTN right.

 

Slicing as well will always end up with an overall gain in credit from what many people have already posted, using actual data instead of wild speculations.

 

How exactly is this not balanced?

 

Perhaps I did not do a good job of explaining myself.... I am not arguing that Slicing is still not profitable. I am just stating that some people tend to under value the returns from other crewskill missions.

 

Kind of off topic but I as a crafter would like to see Bioware lower the price and time of most of the crewskill missions.

[Arkanicus]

Patently false. Once the non-Slicers start putting up their mats, they'll get paid for their mats. Since there was more money around with Slicers, their mats were going to sell for higher prices. The money would have made it into non-Slicer's hands once the economy had settled. The game wasn't even out for two weeks before they nerfed Slicing: the market was not even well-formed when they nerfhammered Slicing, which was foolish. No one had started to put enough mats out onto the market to completely supply it, which is why everyone was keeping credits in their pocket, which led to everyone keeping credits and storing them until they could spend them on stuff, whether it was twink gear or, you know, crafting materials. Now they've just slammed the market by withdrawing a ton of credits from the market. Think of it as akin to a massive credit crunch or the Federal Reserve requiring everyone to buy bonds to pull back the money supply by at least 30%. The results wouldn't be pretty in either real-life case, and we're seeing it in TOR now.

.

 

This is the trickle down effect. I don't agree with this method at all. It has been shown on some recent economic studies of the 90s-20s in the g7 economies that actually general broad tax-cuts and increased income gain across the board is better than only a select group of people getting more money and dictating the economy.

 

It's better for a general increase in income from dailies/quests/fp that everyone gets and will seep into the market than just a select bunch of people aka slicers. This trickle down effect of only giving slicers buff to push the economy is basically what the bush tax-cuts and corporate tax cuts of the early 2000s lead to the wide disparity of income levels and eroding of the middle classes in America. We don't want that happening in Swtors economy.

 

I would also like to point out that I've worked for RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) if that helps add some weight to my argument.

[crowquil]

Well Gamers need to learn, not everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. It is what is killing games, making them worse, making them cater to people who want everything for nothing. Sure there are many games out now, but they went down from 40 hours to 10-15 average. My point is we need to get back to the older games, where hitting 50 and having a mount meant something, now the only sign of having something is having over 1 mil credits lol. The sooner Bioware kicks them in the butt and say, ' WORK for some money, don't be lazy. The better.

 

I don't agree with this a lot of people who play games used to have more free time on their hands like when that other mmo came out the only obligation I had was school now I spent most of the last three years in a state/country away from my family so family events are really important to me I have work, school, National Guard, and girlfriend obligations I don't have the time to sink in to 50 hour single player games anymore I want to enjoy a game not turn it in to work too I feel a lot more people are in this situation too it's lees we're lazy and more we don't have the time to waste "working" in game

this is also probably where the "casual boom" is coming from

Edited January 1, 2012 by crowquil

[Putok]

I agree 100%. I'm still pulling in about 100-150k a day selling "niche" items (mainly lowish level blue/purple implants that are well stated. Critically crafted purple ones will easily fetch 25k), but a lot of "bread and butter" isn't selling well at all. Companion gifts are not moving like they used to, nor are buff or healing consumables, nor are raw mats.

 

I still have slicing, because I can make a little profit chaining the rich lockbox missions, it seems that ground spawn slicing nodes are pretty untouched on planets from level 30 on up, and I'm very hesitant to drop a skill I leveled to 400.

[Putok]

The problem with slicing is not level 50 characters with 400 slicing. It was the level 20 characters with 400 slicing making more money then they supposed to by sending their companions on high level, high yield missions.

 

Automated Saboteur always was, and still is, the most profitable mission by a long shot. The high level missions weren't what was making smart slicers big money. The two rich T5 missions were the only high level ones that were comparable to Automated Sab. The bountiful T4 missions weren't that far off, but in my experience Automated Sab was always the best cr/minute, and Prince of Fools was easily on par with T4 bountifuls.

[Putok]

You know what? I am being an ***. I apologize for my behavior.

 

I still think it was broken before. But I am NOT in favor of having useless crew skills.

 

The way that Slicing is currently implemented in game is completely at odds with the way crew skills work. That's what it comes down to. Both its pre-nerf and post nerf forms are evidence of this.

 

How exactly this will be fixed is another issue all together.

 

I think it was broken in two ways.

 

Far too much money in the teens and low 20s, far too little at level cap. High level space mission bring in more than 20 times the credits per minute that slicing did pre-nerf. Other gathering and mission scales also outpaced it by huge margins once GTN sales were factored in. Slicing was far too good at low levels, and far too weak at high levels.

 

I think the solution would be to partially reverse the nerf for lower level slicing missions, and cap what level slicing missions a toon can run based on their level (or scale returns based on their level). Higher level slicing missions, at least those run by high level slicers, need a large buff from pre-nerf levels for the skill to be remotely competitive at level cap, or significant perks beyond money need to be introduced.

 

Given it doesn't scale with inflation, whereas crafting and gathering skills do, keeping it viable at level cap is pretty close to impossible IMHO. Revamping the profession so that it provides some sort of benefit to the player might be a better option. Perhaps the ability to actually craft augments for a price? Increasing the stats of all augments equipped by a percentage?

 

It's honestly a very poorly designed skill, as it stands, and nearly impossible to balance at both low and high levels.

[sosolidshoe]

What you say makes a case for buffing slicing if and only if slicing was the only way that credits entered the economy.

 

Deflation could just as easily be avoided by buffing other sources of income. i.e. make other professions more profitable OR *gasp* increase the credit reward for questing and dailies.

 

This is a better alternative as it provides additional income across the board to all players rather than just the players not interested in real crafting skills.

 

Who is more likely to spend money on crafted items; a slicer with no real crafting skills but an excess of funds, or a crafter with a lack of funds and the ability to make half the gear they'll ever need for themselves? The whole point of a money-based economy is that the money moves from one individual to another - the slicer provides the crafter with income, the crafter provides the slicer with convenience.

 

If you just increase everybody's income, you've done nothing except inflate the value of the currency. An item may cost more, but the credits are worth less. The whole point of slicing was to supplement your normal earned income, so that you could transfer the additional wealth over to those who'd devoted their resources to producing goods. Those who were arguing that slicing was inflationary just didn't have a decent understanding of economics, and wouldn't shut up and listen, even when an actual economist posted here destroying all their arguments.

[bbates]

I guess what I dont get is slicing has been pretty much the same since beta. So why now is it so over powered it needs a 75% nerf obviously in beta you thought the numbers and returns were ok. Now I can see going in and saying hey wow these players are really going after this skill, maybe more so then any of our testers or any of our math showed was possible and some of the vocal minority are getting pretty crazy on the forums so we need to take action. But the over reaction of the nerfbat is what breaks games. I would have said a 30% reduction would have been fine maybe even 35% but going at skill like that so early in a game is just a knee jerk reaction. Only people it really helps is the gold farmers.

 

Healing in pvp is overpowered lets do a 30% reduction during pvp ok got it. Sliceing is overpowered lets do a 75% reduction. Not ok.

[PsrDirector]

don't buff slicing buff everything else

[riftguy]

I guess what I dont get is slicing has been pretty much the same since beta. So why now is it so over powered it needs a 75% nerf obviously in beta you thought the numbers and returns were ok.

Here's a theory... How about because it's fine when humans were doing it in beta and early access, but it's a mechanic that can very easily be exploited by haxxors and gold farmers to easily to farm billions of credits and kill the game for everyone? So in order to prevent irreparable damage to the game they had to put a halt to it FAST. It's the same thing as turning off the Ilum boxes when they started to get exploited.

 

Hopefully they'll be able to come up with an alternative mechanic that allows us casual players to escape the grind but not provide exploiters with something so easily exploitable. But until then, this forum rage is just pointless. Go back to playing and level yourself up to a point where you can grind out credits far in excess of what you'd get from slicing missions.

[Neblin]

I guess what I dont get is slicing has been pretty much the same since beta. So why now is it so over powered it needs a 75% nerf obviously in beta you thought the numbers and returns were ok.

 

Not actually sure about this so I'd like a beta tester to confirm/deny, but weren't credit boxes from Slicing missions added at the very end of the beta?

 

Here are the Nov. 24th beta patch notes:

 

Gathering Skills

Slicing now yields credit mission boxes.

 

http://www.swtor.net/2011/11/25/star-wars-the-old-republic-24112011-patch-notes/

 

EDIT: Well the SWTOR link doesn't work anymore since beta is over.

http://www.swtor.dk/artikler/patch-notes-074207-beta

 

So yeah... if that's true, then this is a recent addition and tweaking a 1 month old feature is to be expected.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Neblin

[Nub_Sauce]

Omg someone that actually knows how to voice a games flaws. The economy in the GTN was already unestablished, and nerfing slicing has also cut my profits from selling crafting materials.

[Lexster]

Okay, Im not sure what people are having problems with. With slicing today, as a vanguard, sending out only c2-n2 and aric jorgan, Ive gone from 110 slicing skill, to 300. Ive not done a single world node during this time. I have only selected lockboxes, and the skill is not only paying for itself to run for skillups while I sit in Carrick Station, it has netted me about 40k profit to boot. This isn't counting the few dozen schematics and and nearly as many random mission items.

 

So Im going from low skill to still undermax skill, using 2 companions (terrible efficiency), avoiding world nodes/quests/kills. . . . achieving skill increases, and gaining a profit. Meanwhile, my two characters with artifice and synthweaving are broke and awaiting cash infusions from my lvl 17 slicer so that they can finish off their crew skills. If this toon was further along in levels/companions my gain would be greater by far.

 

Im not sure what the problem is for people, I cant be that lucky. I do missions at yellow con or just slightly orange to minimize my failures. My boxes in average in T3 range usually cost 800-1200 and each netted 1600-2200 on average, with very few being less than I paid in mission cost. T4 Ive not charted much yet, but will be keeping an eye on tomorrow since Ive nothing better to do until I get back home from xmas holiday on thursday(wife's laptop is getting me about 8-15fps, so its barely playable).

 

edit: Im on a pvp-rp server, GTN is awful so trying to sell things typically seems to be below cost, or buying what I want seems to be nonexistant. During my time in game I check back every 5 or 6 minutes, and talk to people asking questions. My values could have been higher if I had the mind to actively send out companions the moment they finished or if I didnt go out with wife and son.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Lexster

[Flaxman]

I am in favor of the slicing nerf, not because it yielded too much money, but because it was too easy to make the money.

Slicing is a gathering skill and should be treated as such.

Then again, the nerf may have been done in the wrong way, nerfing the profit instead of making us actually have to work some for the credits.

But one thing that bothers me is that people are saying that the slicing nerf brought down the economy and want it undone because of it.

Do you really think that one proffession should be responsible for the whole games economy?

That slicers should be able to just click their way to credits so they can buy the things the other professions have to put some work and effort into making?

Then whats the point of the other proffessions if you can take up slicing and just buy everyting you need effortlessly?

But yet again i agree, the nerf was too much at once, it should have been done over time, but a nerf really had to be done.

[TheBoredfish]

Many people who were for slicing claimed this was going to happen as soon as the nerf came down...

 

 

Best part? It's going to continue to drop for at least a few more days.

 

I expect you'll hit the 40-50k per day income playing the market before the end.

[TheBoredfish]

I am in favor of the slicing nerf, not because it yielded too much money, but because it was too easy to make the money.

Slicing is a gathering skill and should be treated as such.

Then again, the nerf may have been done in the wrong way, nerfing the profit instead of making us actually have to work some for the credits.

But one thing that bothers me is that people are saying that the slicing nerf brought down the economy and want it undone because of it.

Do you really think that one proffession should be responsible for the whole games economy?

That slicers should be able to just click their way to credits so they can buy the things the other professions have to put some work and effort into making?

Then whats the point of the other proffessions if you can take up slicing and just buy everyting you need effortlessly?

But yet again i agree, the nerf was too much at once, it should have been done over time, but a nerf really had to be done.

 

 

Here's why slicing mattered. The short version

 

Everyone takes slicing because it generated a huge sum of credits. People send those credits off to alts which craft goods. Since slicers can't craft their own goods at least not without buying stuff on GTN they have to spend those credits.

 

Those credits find their way into the pockets of the crafters who then make bank selling a level 15 green for 10-15k due to inflation.

 

That one green pays for level ups and everything else for at least two levels.

 

 

 

Tell me how this doesn't sound good to you? And tell me why you are Pro-"I want everyone to be broke all the time just like my characters"

[Lexster]

You are overlooking the fact that merchants sell blue quality gear for a pittance. Between commendations and specialty goods merchants, the cost of goods can't get that high since they are the EXACT same items people can make with the exception of purple items. So if you want to pay 15k for a green lvl 15 item, you deserve to be ripped off when there are at least 2 other ways to get better gear for less.

[elarahis]

People will start buying again when sellers start lowering their prices.

 

Slicing had started to create an uncontrolable inflation (meaning, credit lost value) which is bad in any economy.

 

Obviously now that credits are regaining some value, if people don't lower their prices, noone will be able to buy.

 

There are many things in the game that are meant to be expensive (like mounts), slicing made those cheap to anyone, not just slicers, since slicers would give their easily earned credits to other players through the GTN, and that was not intended.

 

As for peopel who don't understand what slicing is for, I will explain you :

 

You can basically have all your crew slicing all day for FREE, you can even make a little money through lockboxes, and you get tons of new schematics for FREE in the process. You can sell or use those schematics. Now if I want to get schematics with underworld trading, I have to pay (like 600 credits at level 24, which represents A LOT for me as I have about 8000 credits in bank total), and I mihgt find a schematic, and I MIGHT sell the metals I get from the mission at the GTN for maybe a little more than 600. All in all I take more risk than with slicing since I have to sell my mats to get the money back, which takes a considerable amount of time.

 

With slicing you can basically farm schematics all day with all your crew for free which is huge, and that's the only intended purpose of lockbox missions.

Edited January 2, 2012 by elarahis

[Quixand]

People will start buying again when sellers start lowering their prices.

 

Slicing had started to create an uncontrolable inflation (meaning, credit lost value) which is bad in any economy.

 

Obviously now that credits are regaining some value, if people don't lower their prices, noone will be able to buy.

 

There are many things in the game that are meant to be expensive (like mounts), slicing made those cheap to anyone, not just slicers, since slicers would give their easily earned credits to other players through the GTN, and that was not intended.

 

As for peopel who don't understand what slicing is for, I will explain you :

 

You can basically have all your crew slicing all day for FREE, you can even make a little money through lockboxes, and you get tons of new schematics for FREE in the process. You can sell or use those schematics. Now if I want to get schematics with underworld trading, I have to pay (like 600 credits at level 24, which represents A LOT for me as I have about 8000 credits in bank total), and I mihgt find a schematic, and I MIGHT sell the metals I get from the mission at the GTN for maybe a little more than 600. All in all I take more risk than with slicing since I have to sell my mats to get the money back, which takes a considerable amount of time.

 

With slicing you can basically farm schematics all day with all your crew for free which is huge, and that's the only intended purpose of lockbox missions.

 

You are VASTLY uniformed on this subject.

 

Slicing missions are most assuredly NOT free. They are expensive. Very, expensive.

In doing so, you most often LOSE money. You have a CHANCE...a very SMALL chance at getting a schematic. Let me reiterate...a VERY SMALL CHANCE of getting a schematic.