She's Crafty!

[Ingmar]

Yeah if I queue up 2 dudes to make 5 cybertech mods each, I typically get the blue mod before I RE all 10 of them.

[tmp]

I just don't get how a skill that PAYS ME to level it and find crafting recipes and crafting missions isn't broken.

Because the entire game pays you to level as it is -- the quests, the foozles, everything else does the exact same thing, spawning money and items out of thin air to reward you with. It's not broken, but their way to keep you busy at the treadmill.

I'm more surprised that people are so trained into the whole make-believe "money sink" way of thinking so deeply, that having a trade skill follow a different formula for a change is something they balk at.

(on separate note, adding a data point to the RE thing -- also usually getting a blue recipe out of 5-10 greens. Sometimes as early as 2-3. I don't really bother with the PUPRZ because the levels fly too fast early and mid-game to bother)

[Threash]

Every skill pays you to level it, the others just pay you in items.

[Trippy]

If you are trying to min/max crew skills, is +critical the companion bonus to go by or is there some cutoff where +efficiency is "better" than +critical?

[Murgos]

Slicings not broken, it's the engine driving the economy.

I just don't get how a skill that PAYS ME to level it and find crafting recipes and crafting missions isn't broken.  Those items will never have any value.

I defy you to tell me the real difference between an item worth 100000 credits and 100000 credits. It the same thing in a different shape.  The only real issue is that the economy isn't mature enough to have stabilized prices yet.

It's what 'worth' means.

[Maledict]

I just don't get how a skill that PAYS ME to level it and find crafting recipes and crafting missions isn't broken.

Because the entire game pays you to level as it is -- the quests, the foozles, everything else does the exact same thing, spawning money and items out of thin air to reward you with. It's not broken, but their way to keep you busy at the treadmill.

I'm more surprised that people are so trained into the whole make-believe "money sink" way of thinking so deeply, that having a trade skill follow a different formula for a change is something they balk at.

(on separate note, adding a data point to the RE thing -- also usually getting a blue recipe out of 5-10 greens. Sometimes as early as 2-3. I don't really bother with the PUPRZ because the levels fly too fast early and mid-game to bother)

And if slicing didnt give me vastly, *vastly* more wealth than any other option at my level you might have a point. But when saving a world gets me a whole 398 credits in the post from a Darth Lord, or finishing a long multi-haim quest line gives me 1500 credits, it's incredibly obvious that the game is not balanced around me earning 160 or so credits. *minute* from doing nothing. Especially when I'm not actually playing and can jus pop by every 30 minutes whilst doing other stuff.

If I didnt have slicing I would be utterly broke due to the cost of levelling tradeskills and skill upgrades, and wouldn't have had a hope in hell of affording my speeder. As it is I have the speeder and 150K already in the bank' which is VASTLY more than I should ave at level 25 - the game makes that very obvious with every other monetary reward in the game!

I just don't get why people throw all logic and sense to the wind and try to defend Slicing. It happily separates the game into haves and have nots - The only people who can buy things on the AH are those with slicing because we have all the cash! Trickle down economics doesn't work in real life, I'm not sure why it's supposed to work in star wars.

[Furiously]

I guess my question would be... What does a quest pay out at 50 when you get no exp? That will determine how broken slicing is.

[Simond]

Nothing, from what I've heard.

[apocrypha]

So here's a way to look at it - how about if Slicing is supposed to fund alts and other crafts?

My level 20 has Slicing 250 and hasn't leveled anything else yet. He's got 70k credits. My level 13 has been leveling Biochem/Bioanalysis/UT and is stony broke. I think he's got 2k creds. I'm going to have to send him money to pay from my Slicing dude so he can train class skills. Without having the Slicing bankroll I'd have to stop leveling his Biochem, no question.

[Threash]

I just don't get how a skill that PAYS ME to level it and find crafting recipes and crafting missions isn't broken.

Because the entire game pays you to level as it is -- the quests, the foozles, everything else does the exact same thing, spawning money and items out of thin air to reward you with. It's not broken, but their way to keep you busy at the treadmill.

I'm more surprised that people are so trained into the whole make-believe "money sink" way of thinking so deeply, that having a trade skill follow a different formula for a change is something they balk at.

(on separate note, adding a data point to the RE thing -- also usually getting a blue recipe out of 5-10 greens. Sometimes as early as 2-3. I don't really bother with the PUPRZ because the levels fly too fast early and mid-game to bother)

And if slicing didnt give me vastly, *vastly* more wealth than any other option at my level you might have a point. But when saving a world gets me a whole 398 credits in the post from a Darth Lord, or finishing a long multi-haim quest line gives me 1500 credits, it's incredibly obvious that the game is not balanced around me earning 160 or so credits. *minute* from doing nothing. Especially when I'm not actually playing and can jus pop by every 30 minutes whilst doing other stuff.

A five minute flying mission gets you around 2500 at my level for around 80 cost.  And none of my none slicing guildies are lacking their speeders or training money.

[eldaec]

I do find it hilarious the way trash quest npcs will promise fabulous riches from a scheme that sounds like it really should yield a significant sum, then you do the donkey work and they excitedly hand over your share of 200 credits.

[Wasted]

I'm an up-and-comer in the ruling elite and I'm basically working for tips.  So I have to run a gang of leet hackers on the side to fund the lifestyle I deserve, I'm only hitting republic targets I swear!

[kildorn]

I do find it hilarious the way trash quest npcs will promise fabulous riches from a scheme that sounds like it really should yield a significant sum, then you do the donkey work and they excitedly hand over your share of 200 credits.

*cough*  *cough*

[tmp]

And if slicing didnt give me vastly, *vastly* more wealth than any other option at my level you might have a point. But when saving a world gets me a whole 398 credits in the post from a Darth Lord, or finishing a long multi-haim quest line gives me 1500 credits, it's incredibly obvious that the game is not balanced around me earning 160 or so credits. *minute* from doing nothing. Especially when I'm not actually playing and can jus pop by every 30 minutes whilst doing other stuff.

Saving the world gives you 400 credits on top of murdering 20-30 foozles which saving the said world usually involves, each foozle paying you 50-100+ credits in their dropped unmentionables. It's effectively a bonus for sitting through cutscene which the quest will have and plain murdering the foozles for the heck of it won't.

But the point was really about the mechanics, not the exact values involved. Yes, you do have a point that slicing allows to generate money fast, compared to other options. I'm just arguing that's not "broken" any worse than any other source of (infinite) income in the typical MMO.

[amiable]

Party's over:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=90083&page=3

"Slicing

    Rewards from Slicing have been reduced to bring them into balance with other skills.
    Adjusted incorrect values for medium slicing boxes."

[kildorn]

Why are you reading MVP award threads? ;)

[sam, an eggplant]

I defy you to tell me the real difference between an item worth 100000 credits and 100000 credits. It the same thing in a different shape.  The only real issue is that the economy isn't mature enough to have stabilized prices yet.

You're looking at this as a player. As a player, you don't give a shit if you sell an item to another player for X credits or have the game generate the cash directly. But there is a very, very large difference to the economy.

Items are worth whatever players will give for it. If everybody has tons of money, that item is worth many credits. If money is scarce, it's worth less credits-- because money itself has greater value. Slicing is inflationary in that it directly introduces cash to the game world. This is so obviously a bad idea and I can't conceive how people don't seem to understand it. Nerfing slicing doesn't fix that, unless they nerf it to such a degree that it simply isn't worth doing at all. Even if the developers nerfed slicing income by 50%, if it's profitable, it's inflationary.

[luckton]

Why are you reading MVP award threads? ;)

lol as it is, the notes are correct.  Slicing was nerfed.

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.0.1/12272011

[Furiously]

Even if they make it break even costwise, I can still park an alt in a few spots with four to five boxes in close proximity and make free money. 

I guess they could make it negligible amounts. But...they need to make speeders cost less then.

[Draegan]

Level 50 quests return a 1:1 ration of xp to credits if I'm not mistaken.  So there is still a way to get cash.

We'll see how bad they really nerfed slicing today.  If you don't make any money, then it's a useless Crew Skill because you don't actually get anything from it unless you count random Augments.

[Furiously]

Or schematic and mission prices just went through the roof.

[tmp]

Slicing is inflationary in that it directly introduces cash to the game world. This is so obviously a bad idea and I can't conceive how people don't seem to understand it.

Not to point out the obvious again, but perhaps because it's what the entire "economy" of the MMO is based on? So making arbitrary calls about when the idea of spawning money out of thin air is bad and where it's treated as something normal, is odd at best.

[sam, an eggplant]

Not to point out the obvious again, but perhaps because it's what the entire "economy" of the MMO is based on? So making arbitrary calls about when the idea of spawning money out of thin air is bad and where it's treated as something normal, is odd at best.

All MMOs generate currency from nothing when you kill monsters and complete quests. This money is then drained out of the economy through various moneysinks like repair costs, auction fees, vendor crafting materials, taxi rides, etc. Generating money from nothing is not in of itself a problem-- it has to come from somewhere.

The issue here is that players can only have three tradeskills, and only slicing directly generates cash. If all the others generated roughly equivalent cash too, it would be easy to balance against the various moneysinks in the game. That would be fine. But with only one tradeskill making cash money, it either needs to be nerfed to such a degree that nobody takes it or it will exert an inflationary pressure on the economy.

And less importantly, the people who don't take slicing feel like suckers.

[Simond]

Even if they make it break even costwise, I can still park an alt in a few spots with four to five boxes in close proximity and make free money. 

I guess they could make it negligible amounts. But...they need to make speeders cost less then.

Why? Don't you remember in Vanilla WoW spending 35-40 grinding out earth elementals in the Badlands so you'd have enough cash for your mount and riding skill? What makes you think SWTOR is meant to be designed any differently?

[Ingmar]

I was getting thousands of credits per quest leading up to the initial 40k purchase, I was easily able to do it, without slicing. You just have to have some discipline about not sending someone off on a mission skill every single time it comes up.

[tmp]

But with only one tradeskill making cash money, it either needs to be nerfed to such a degree that nobody takes it or it will exert an inflationary pressure on the economy.

And yet again, what's exactly so terrifying about having one additional source of "inflationary pressure" in a game which is built upon this very principle?

(it's not the "it makes economy unbalanced!" argument, because the MMO "economies" are inherently out of balance in the first place, thanks to the whole printing infinite money out of thin air principle. The devs have realized that a few years ago, which is why you see the movement to various token-based systems for everything that's supposed to matter -- not to introduce any kind of nebulous balance, but simply to better control the pace of goods acquisition)

[tmp]

I was getting thousands of credits per quest leading up to the initial 40k purchase, I was easily able to do it, without slicing.

Additionally there's little point in desperately saving up all your money for X levels just so you can get that speeder as soon as you become eligible, when the monetary value of rewards from foozles grows significantly with each level.

Case in point: my character landed on Tatooine with literally 1k credits in pocket. Few hours of lizard and pig murdering later, she's at ~20k, and that's just from selling the grey trash to vendors every now and then. And with spending ~5k on crafting materials and whatnot meantime, too.

[sam, an eggplant]

There are three options on the table.

1) Slicing is awesome. All players choose to take it. This makes it easy to balance, since it's predictable, but is an obvious design flaw as there are a bunch of other tradeskills being ignored. This is basically where we stood pre-nerf-- if it wasn't nerfed, everybody would take it sooner or later. Sooner, for the clueful.

2) Nerf slicing to be roughly as profitable as other tradeskills. Lockbox missions level your skill but tend to break even over time. You take slicing to gather lockboxes in the world and run augment missions. Hopefully this is where we stand today, post-nerf.

3) Over-nerf slicing. Lockbox missions lose money over time. Everybody drops slicing.

I'm hoping for option number two, but I question how augment missions will match up to the other gathering tradeskills, since crafters actually need those materials. I guess we'll see. Either way, I'm glad I made my half a million credits per character pre-nerf.

[Threash]

The whole "you can't afford basic necessities unless you take up slicing" thing is obviously complete and utter bull.

[sam, an eggplant]

Can you maintain your crafting skill producing current-level items and buy your speeder at 25 without taking slicing?

[Ingmar]

Yes. I'm actually a few levels ahead on my crafting.

EDIT: And I haven't vendored anything I've made, just REd everything.

[Sky]

I'm a bit ahead, as well. And by level 34 I had enough money to catch up with not being able to train all my skills that I had been dealing with since level 25. And I opened the 20k row of inventory.

I have 8k on me now.

I haven't been able to spend money on anything else since I bought my speeder. So yeah, things are a bit tight.

500k, ffs.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I've also bought the 40k inventory row and never missed a skill train.

[tmp]

2) Nerf slicing to be roughly as profitable as other tradeskills.

The profit from other tradeskills is ultimately determined by the overall level of wealth the players have. Since slicing is one of such wealth sources, that's effectively not possible to achieve -- you'd be trying to hit a moving target, one whose position shifts in reaction to the very changes you make.

[sam, an eggplant]

Nah, you just do what I posted earlier, make lockbox missions break even over time, so slicing is more about gathering lockboxes in the world and augment missions.