My Proposal to fix slicing and crafting as a whole.

[TheBoredfish]

Slicing isn't a missions skill it's a GATHERING skill like Archeology or Scavenging. You can gather resources for free from the game world. Hello?

 

Make a character, Go gather slicing nodes. Let us know how much you make.

 

probably somewhere right around 18 credits a minute?

[MorgonKara]

Make a character, Go gather slicing nodes. Let us know how much you make.

 

probably somewhere right around 18 credits a minute?

 

Gathering missions are a convenience. They allow you to pay credits to rank the skill and gather resources without having to find them in the game world. That is how all the gathering crew skills work. You can plug your ears and pretend that slicing missions should be able to run constantly in the background and yield big profits for easy rewards, but that is not how any of the gathering missions work. The fact that slicing missions can rank the skill and still turn an easy profit (however small) puts it ahead of the other gathering skills missions.

 

Sending companions on Archeology missions to rank my Synthweaving skill and craft armor for my character has been a large credit sink for me so far. It was only after they fixed the resource spawns that I was able to harvest and craft items to sell without a major loss.

 

And you guys are complaining about slicing turning a profit.

Edited January 2, 2012 by MorgonKara

[TheCro]

Good post. First and foremost, i think we really have to look at what the aspect or point of slicing is. A lot of people look at it as the profession where you get uber credits. You do, or did get good credits out of it. But...slicing in purpose, idea, i think is stealing. You can view it different ways, high tech hacking, bank robbery, thievery, but essentially the point of slicing is to steal, and one of those things is obvisiouly credits. You send your companion out, which you pay to do, or you do it yourself, to essentially steal money, rob, that's the whole point. You wouldnt go rob a bank if the profit of it was only a few hundred dollars more than what it cost you to put the whole plan together and execute it. So really the profession in sense is that, and i would certainly expect it to have good returns, and unlike other professions based on goods, which slicing does have, the aspect of the lockboxes and missions to me is purely about credits, and whatever else you may happen to find in a "deposit box" while robbing the bank. It doesnt become worthwhile with the nerfed returns, just as in real life you wouldnt take a job, like i said, where your sole purpose is stealing money, and not getting a profit really from it, and for what it costs. It really is just the evil of the profession, and purpose.

 

Secondly i do like the proposed idea of changes to other crafting professions in relation to augments. Im an old time SWG player, and there certainly wasnt a better economy or community which really stemmed from the crafting aspect of the game. I miss a game where you're truly interedependant on other characters for goods and all that. But i think having crafting professions that make equals to dungeons/raids/pvp stuff should be implemented. People are still going to do all the other stuff for fun and content, but for those like myself who are really into crafting, we want it to be worthwhile, and profitable for the time and money. Crafting is a huge credit sink in this game, and at this point for kinda iffy returns. I hardly ever make items with augment slots, and im sure it would happen more with increased affection than where im at with my characters/companions, but it still at this point hardly seems like something that exists, nor do i often see items on the GTN with augment slots. Making a crafting system that is sucessful and truly interdependant adds great depth and success to an MMO, so i hope to see growth in swtor involving that. They have the beginnings of some of that, but i def encourage more imput from players to add more depth and purpose to our crafting system.

[DarthDemens]

Gathering missions are a convenience. They allow you to pay credits to rank the skill and gather resources without having to find them in the game world. That is how all the gathering crew skills work. You can plug your ears and pretend that slicing missions should be able to run constantly in the background and yield big profits for easy rewards, but that is not how any of the gathering missions work. The fact that slicing missions can rank the skill and still turn an easy profit (however small) puts it ahead of the other gathering skills missions.

 

Sending companions on Archeology missions to rank my Synthweaving skill and craft armor for my character has been a large credit sink for me so far. It was only after they fixed the resource spawns that I was able to harvest and craft items to sell without a major loss.

 

And you guys are complaining about slicing turning a profit.

 

Yes, leveling the skills to gather mats is a large credit sink. For Slicers, the credit sink comes not from leveling the skill, but from having to buy the mats they can't gather on the GTN.

[ElderScout]

what's funny(not really) is that you basically just summed up the real world economy by your analogy of this fictional economy.... especially the part about printing money and burning it lol

[HungryJack]

In my opinion the goal of slicing was to cause inflation. If slicing wasn't an issue in the closed betas or internal testing then why is it an issue now.

 

This is the biggest fallacy supporting the anti-nerf side. I've heard it multiple times, "It wasn't a problem before, why is it now?"

 

History Lesson: Slicing was a useless skill in the betas, I should know I beta tested for months. Imagine slicing without lockboxes at all, and that's what you had. On November 24th, in preparation for the massive Thanksgiving Weekend Beta Test, BioWare added to ability to loot lockboxes through Slicing Missions. Now, why do you think that it wasn't a problem before? Those weekend tester had the game for a grand total of 4 days, 92 hours. Most of them never got far enough to learn about the massive exploit, and the long-term testers were already level 50 and had no reason to pick up Slicing. After the 4 day Weekend Test, the server was shut down for maintenance for 3 days, at which point it opened back up for another 4 day weekend test before the beta officially closed.

 

Lock Boxes from Slicing Missions were only in the beta test for 10 days of the servers being online.

[Catalystb]

In my opinion the goal of slicing was to cause inflation. If slicing wasn't an issue in the closed betas or internal testing then why is it an issue now.

 

Now people hear "Inflation" and think bad thoughts, however a balance of inflation and deflation is required for a stable market. As the OP said right now there are more money sinks than actual income.

 

I think slicing was the last skill created for the game to balance out the rest of them. Slicing created money to allow players to buy and sell goods for "cheap".

 

Overall Good post OP

 

I hope bioware decides to act upon this sooner as opposed to later. As it stands I've canceled my sub until they release official word on the matter.

 

I really hope bioware didn't create slicing to force a balance in credits, but I get the feeling they might have. I read some where that slicing was the last crafting skill to be made so that might also have to do with its balance.

 

A few posts I've read talked about slicing in beta, but crafting skills in general can't be truly balanced until long term testing can occur. Which might be why bioware had such a knee-jerk reaction to nerfing slicing when the game went retail.

 

In reality the community needs to put aside their feelings about slicing pre-nerf and come together as a community to come up with possible solutions for slicing. If anything the fact that the nerf happened so quickly is a sign that bioware has an eye on the forums, and is keeping a look-out for a viable solution. Constructive threads and cool heads will remedy the situation faster then pointing fingers and getting upset.

 

That last bit was regarding the community in general, just to be clear.

[ColonelKer-Nal]

The problem with slicing is that there wasn't a problem, just a bunch of scruffy nerf herders.

 

The long term issue with the economy is going to be the complete lack of money sinks at the level cap.

[Felfox]

I'd like to add a few thoughts myself on the matter of slicing.

 

A few key points to think about when dealing with slicing is that every craft profession requires two helper/gatherer skills to make them worth wild. Being able to make generic greens is nice for when you haven't found a good upgrade during missions in a while, but otherwise the real use of crafting is to make nice blue's and purples that'll really be handy for a while. To do that you need a steady supply of generic mats, and you need rare mats. The problem with slicing right off the bat is that this skill doesn't directly aid any craft (except cybertech but then only in giving it schematics you can't even use since you need rare mats to make them) So you're giving up a slot right off the bat for this skill, thus gimping your crafting profession.

 

Now, this wouldn't be a bad thing if all those credits you were 'gathering' could be used to buy things off the global market and thus help other players (so instead of a money sink gathering mats, you money sink it into other players for their mats) However people became furious because gaining money is a huge thing in mmos. This is sorta silly to me though as besides leveling skills and repair bills (which i agree cost a ton don't get me wrong) there really IS no major money sink investment in this game beyond token 'hey look at me!' items at level 50 that anyone can get just by playing the game for a little longer.

 

there's no tiered PvP and no reason not to be leveling so gear comes and goes really fast to the point that no one is really going to go out of their way to buy uber gear pre-50 unless they're really having trouble leveling. Ive yet to even see gear with aug slots so all those extremely expensive missions to get augs are pointless pre-50 as well and besides getting gatherer missions, slicing just sorta falls on it's face.

 

That said, I don't think slicing -needs- to be so bad and I understand it's rather silly to gain billions of credits for standing around. I think way's to fix slicing over all is to help it be that jack of all trade skill that doesn't fit with the others is by doing several little things.

 

For one, all gatherer/missions skills should be level gated at least a little, if you can't go out into the dangerous world or don't have enough 'worldly' experience, why should your crew be able to magically venture to dangerous worlds and get high end mats. Leave crafting un-level gated since it already is basically since you need to be a certain level to wear said gear. The point of this for slicing anyway would be to prevent low level players getting those level 50 -super boxes- that happened pre-nerf.

 

Another thing would be to stop the lose of credits on success... you're not gaining mats, you're juggling credits, a lose is a lose. Even if I get ripped off and only get like one piece of desh back for a mission, at least i have that one desh to show for it.

 

Make gear with aug slots more common so people will feel the need to use augs or at least recognize they exist in this game.

 

Also, this skill is basically hacking and slicing and so on, there should be much much more to it then just money and augs, up the mission items chance so at least those can be sold or in the case of a guild, given to friends and strangers to help their professions. Have more schematics for other professions and not just cybertech, make this jack of all trade help everyone.

 

And finally, though this would need to be tested... These are lock boxes, who's to say what's in em, maybe have them give a much smaller and much more random, chance to drop regular and rare mats from -every- profession. (would have to be low enough and random enough as to not feel like its more efficient then a pure gatherer mission) At least then, you can sell them on the GTM or trade with friends and be of help. Heck, maybe have rare one time use devices or other strange things.

 

Remember, this is the odd man out skill, its the skill you took that -doesn't- directly help another, so let it be the one that lets you gamble for all the weird/silly/community helpful/ so and so forth skill.

[Arradin]

Ok, here we go again. WALL OF TEXT, But constructive.

 

I do not claim that this is the truth, im no Economy Genious at all. Its my opinion:

 

I can honestly say, that i didnt read thru all the *REPLIES* to this thread, and to be honest, other peoples replies doesnt concern me at all. I´ve read the OP's Post(s) , and while some stuff are very valid, alot of them is not.

 

The most important thing is, that you cannot compare IRL Economy with a game one. You just can not. Why? Because real world economy is based on money CIRCULATING. In a game, it doesnt. Not this game, Anyway. Here money are *CREATED* And *DESTROYED* , and it is next to impossible to create an economy system that works the same in the long run.

 

In a game like this, Money are created from monsters, quests and whatnot, and the ONLY thing that 'eat' the money is vendors. So, what happens when you take the vendors out of it, or make them less appealing? Money is printed, but it's never taken out. I Farm X mobs, and only buy player-made stuff. Now, We are going to ASSUME that the person i buy stuff from, use it to buy other player made stuff, and wont spend it on vendor. The money now circulate in the player economy from player to player.

HOWEVER, i KEEP farming for money, adding more and more money to the same economy, it a pace/Ratio GREATER to the amount of money being soaked by the vendors.

 

SLICING , CREATES money in like, and throws it into the Economy. Other Gathering skills DOES NOT! You get materials, which you can SELL. but if you Sell them to vendors, it will NOT be worth the time and effort. If you sell to other players, you DO NOT print money, you get money that is already in the system!

 

I have read countless amount of threads and posts that state that slicing is good for the economy because it throws fuel on the fire. This is only partly true, but it is still PRINTING money, without taking them out at the same rate.

 

Another VERY important factor is **TIME AND EFFORT VS REWARD**.

 

Slicing, when used as mission skill ( You all know what i mean ), Generates money without time and effort. You send out NPCs to CREATE Money for you. Gathering herbs takes times and effort ( Sure, it might be little, but you acually need to do something ). You CAN send out companions to gather materials thru any other gathering skills, but that does DIRECTLY cut away from whatever profit you will get.

 

I am going to make a reference to the real world economy.

 

We have two people:

 

Me, i am a gatherer ingame. I go to Work IRL to make money. it takes time and effort, but i get money.

 

My friend, John. He is a slicer. He doesnt work. he got a portable Money printing machine in his house. But it sucks, it only generate $100 per day. but its Automatic.

 

Now, the people who yell that slicing was nerfed without needing it etc, will claim that John is good for the economy because John gets money he can spend in the store, meaning that more people have work to go to, and he stimulate the economy.

IT IS TRUE, HE DOES! BUT WHAT HAPPENS LONG TERM?

 

Comparing like this is not working, because you see the flaws in both arguments. because once again, you CAN NOT compare ingame economy to IRL Economy.

 

Bottom line is, Printing money without time and effort is BAD, no matter how you look at it. Printing money via quests and 'dungeons' etc is not bad, because it requires time and effort, and is reward for that.

 

When you use slicing is a gathering profession, it IS extremely good.

If you use it as a money printing skill, where you think you can get money without effort and time invested, I hope you cant make any money.

 

You can not, and you shouldnt. It was broken, and now it is fixed. We need to wait and see if it was overdone or not.

[Jjix]

The money sinks are already balanced by the amount of credits you get while questing.

 

The main money sink comes from every time a trade is conducted through the market a portion of that trade is taxed. That is one of the many reasons slicing was never a real threat . . . more money in the system would have meant more trading which in turn would have meant a larger amount of money being destroyed to offset the amount being printed. The system was designed to handle much more money than that being produced by questing alone.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Jjix

[solmanian]

I realy stopped reading midway through the second post. Your story was way too complicated. It stopped making sense around the part where the players are employees of the slicer. There's a reason why money printing is not a common job in the real world, mainly because if you can print money in your backyard u wouldn't do any other job. Heres a much shorter story: the president gives every citizen the right to print cash. So 90% of the people start printing money instead of actualy working. The 10% that actually do any work, because they actually like it or whatever, find themselves in a world where there is enormous demand for what they do, and all their customers are bilioners. Enter the milion dollar burger and a car that costs like a space shuttle.

[Jjix]

Me, i am a gatherer ingame. I go to Work IRL to make money. it takes time and effort, but i get money.

 

My friend, John. He is a slicer. He doesnt work. he got a portable Money printing machine in his house. But it sucks, it only generate $100 per day. but its Automatic.

 

 

Every item gathered from the npc environment, whether it be through crew missions or looting or quests is "printing money". The only reason slicing got a bad rap is because it didn't even try to create the illusion that you were doing something other than printing money, but in essence it was absolutely no different than hunting or any other method of clicking buttons to extract money and resources (which translate back into money) from the npc environment (i.e., printing it).

 

So really you are creating a false distinction between the "worker" and the "money printer" . . . there was no distinction except the illusion of one.

[kalexkhan]

You had some good ideas, but because you bury them under defense of slicing, no one is going to hear them.

[Arradin]

Every item gathered from the npc environment, whether it be through crew missions or looting or quests is "printing money". The only reason slicing got a bad rap is because it didn't even try to create the illusion that you were doing something other than printing money, but in essence it was absolutely no different than hunting or any other method of clicking buttons to extract money and resources (which translate back into money) from the npc environment (i.e., printing it).

 

So really you are creating a false distinction between the "worker" and the "money printer" . . . there was no distinction except the illusion of one.

 

You are missing out the time and effort factor.

 

Slicing require none to make profit. Its unique in that way, and thats why its bad.

[Zennshi]

I realy stopped reading midway through the second post. Your story was way too complicated. It stopped making sense around the part where the players are employees of the slicer. There's a reason why money printing is not a common job in the real world, mainly because if you can print money in your backyard u wouldn't do any other job. Heres a much shorter story: the president gives every citizen the right to print cash. So 90% of the people start printing money instead of actualy working. The 10% that actually do any work, because they actually like it or whatever, find themselves in a world where there is enormous demand for what they do, and all their customers are bilioners. Enter the milion dollar burger and a car that costs like a space shuttle.

 

That is a little bit over simplified, and doesn't really tell the background, but it is pretty on target for what it is worth...

[Zennshi]

You had some good ideas, but because you bury them under defense of slicing, no one is going to hear them.

 

That is because it is like trying to sell stem cell research to hardcore Christians as a genetics scientist. They just don't want to see the helpful aspect of it and pretty much shut it out on principle that they don't like it, period, even if there are "ethical" ways to approach it.

 

If they left slicing alone, it would have been fine. Once people start getting to level 50 and make fistfuls of cash the inflation will pick up worse than before. I wonder if they will nerf endgame missions because of all the money it will reap?

[Jjix]

You are missing out the time and effort factor.

 

Slicing require none to make profit. Its unique in that way, and thats why its bad.

 

This is the real reason people hated slicing. Because of the perception that it is lots of money for zero work. But if we put emotions and moral outrage aside, you'll see that slicing technically does take time and the amount of effort involved doesn't deviate too much from other crew skill professions. The main difference is that with the other crew skills you have to make your money by selling on the market, which can take more time . . . but it promises more reward . . . though the current state of the economy is such that that isn't currently the case.

 

Slicing is like putting your money in the bank and collecting interest. Or at least it would have been once the economy normalized . . . the amount people were making slicing relative to the rest of the economy was insane, but that is only because the rest of the economy had very little money in circulation. Slicing was like getting to level 20 instantly with very little work. The only catch is that you have to stay at level 20, while everyone else eventually passes you by. We never reached the point where people started to pass slicers by because people were too outraged at the initial advantage. Once people calm down they will slowly begin to buff slicing back up to its previous state, only people won't notice because its previous state was only overpowered in a young economy.

[Jjix]

 

The most important thing is, that you cannot compare IRL Economy with a game one. You just can not. Why? Because real world economy is based on money CIRCULATING. In a game, it doesnt. Not this game, Anyway. Here money are *CREATED* And *DESTROYED* , and it is next to impossible to create an economy system that works the same in the long run.

 

 

In the real world economy money is "created" whenever it is borrowed, and it is "destroyed" whenever that loan is paid off. It doesn't work solely thru "circulation", it never did. Money is an abstraction used to represent value, it isn't as concrete as many people think.

[sfryman]

Wow, seriously with the trickle-down theory? Reagan thought it would work too...

 

The problem is that if slicing makes oodles of credits with no work everyone will just pick up slicing. Massive inflation results.

[Philone]

I still can't understand why there is crying about slicing being a money sink. Understand what to do to make money and you will understand that it is fine where it is. Sure it isn't making as much as it did before, not even close, however it still makes a lot of credits. I am sure the people that are still complaining about the nerf aren't playing the AH. Mission Discoveries sell for 1000% more than they did before.

[Arradin]

In the real world economy money is "created" whenever it is borrowed, and it is "destroyed" whenever that loan is paid off. It doesn't work solely thru "circulation", it never did. Money is an abstraction used to represent value, it isn't as concrete as many people think.

 

What? No. Just no.

 

Are you trying to say that the local ATM acually prints the money you are collecting from it?

The economy is working because the money is circulating. The money you borrow from the bank is *PUT THERE BY SOMEONE ELSE SAVING MONEY*. It is never ever "created".

 

In a game, it is.

 

But ok, lets assume Money is going away from physical form, and everyone in the future will have credits on a bank account. Do you think you can just magically 'ADD' to your credits?

 

Nope.

[TheDarkerPhantom]

I still can't understand why there is crying about slicing being a money sink. Understand what to do to make money and you will understand that it is fine where it is. Sure it isn't making as much as it did before, not even close, however it still makes a lot of credits. I am sure the people that are still complaining about the nerf aren't playing the AH. Mission Discoveries sell for 1000% more than they did before.

 

 

Somebody recently posted a test, that they made on average 3,500 credits an hour, at level 50 this doesn't pay to repair a single item when its damaged.

 

I still cannot sell Mission Discoveries. Augments are basically worthless.. The only augments that seem to have any worth are the higher level ones, which I cannot attempt for, because my slicing is to low.

[wesmagyar]

What? No. Just no.

 

Are you trying to say that the local ATM acually prints the money you are collecting from it?

The economy is working because the money is circulating. The money you borrow from the bank is *PUT THERE BY SOMEONE ELSE SAVING MONEY*. It is never ever "created".

 

In a game, it is.

 

But ok, lets assume Money is going away from physical form, and everyone in the future will have credits on a bank account. Do you think you can just magically 'ADD' to your credits?

 

Nope.

 

lol... just lol....

have you ever heard of the Federal reserve? they print money all the time to pay debts...

and the base of this argument is simple...

have you tried to sell something you crafted on the GTN lately? i have.. not much is selling.

pre slicing nerf i was selling stuff left right and center.

the reason for that is... PEOPLE HAD DISPOSABLE INCOME... they dont now.

i have one slicer with the skill maxed and if IM LUCKY i can make MAYBE 10k in profit an hour. and at level 50 that is total chump change. not even worth the effort. and that needs to be addressed. at level 50 300k is practically chump change. and pre nerf slicers where making AT most that. the problem was all these little level 20 noobs saw that figure and **** a brick. not realizing that at high level that amount of credits is nothing.

[Ziegler]

Slicing deserved the nerf it got. Simple as that. This come from somebody that was slicing during beta and live. It may have been hit a little hard, as is usual with Devs knee jerk fixes. But it definately needed to be brought down some from what it was.

 

I'd rather see now that with the credit loss, they put more schems and missions in.