The "Slicing Was Nerfed" Thread

[Evildrider]

The next step will be them removing either the credits from it or removing all in-world nodes. It's still free money. And it's too big of a faucet.

That being said, speeder prices are too high given this nerf.

I don't have slicing and I had no problems buying any speeders.  Slicing was not a needed skill, it was just a cash machine.

[Maledict]

It's quite interesting look at the data being collected on the forums. Slicing was nerfed three, maybe four ways it seems.

- mission yield was cut by approx 71% across the board expcept for tier 6 missions which got a slight boost.
- critical success rate of missions appears to have been decreased by an equal amount.
- companion affection no longer decreases mission time. (it never said it did, but pre-patch you ground get up to a 15% decrease I mission time from affection)
- potentially also the failure rate was increased, but this one hasn't been tested properly yet and may just be RNG.

Despite all that, it still seems to be the only skill that can make money on my server. I'm on one of the highest population Euro servers, and underworld trading metals sell for less than the mission cost once you add in the listing fee. No tradeskills makes money at all.

[sam, an eggplant]

Once you include failures, lockbox missions are a net negative. If you notice, the people noting a small profit just lucked out and didn't have any failures. It really is time to drop the skill.

Slicing needs to be completely reworked. Lockbox missions should be replaced with something different; maybe random crafting materials with a slightly better yield to compensate for not being able to specify what you want, or perhaps missions that reward mission discovery items. Itemization needs to be changed so players want augments. The gathering node lockboxes are fine and can remain.

[Der Helm]

once you add in the listing fee.

Pretty sure you get the listing fee back after you sell your auction. Or after it times out.

You know, like in WoW. 

[Fabricated]

I'm only familiar with Armormech, but if you crit making a piece of armor it gets an augment slot. Of course so far I have 4 companions as a trooper and none of them have bonuses to armormech so I haven't seen it happen a lot, but yeah, that's how you get augment slots.

As for slicing...well, it needed nerfed. Sorry, none of the other tradeskills gave you piles of free money. I'm honestly not sure what to do with it however since it's extremely hard to determine that sweet spot where it's profitable but not so good that it's a free money fountain or an enticement to shithead Chinese goldfarmers to just buy 1000 accounts and sit around mashing the mission button. Crafting mats as a reward are kinda pointless in light of them being generally worthless due to underworld trading/scavenging/etc providing pretty much everything you need.

[Threash]

I kept a log before and after.

At the high end they cut the yield by about half, don't have enough data to be conclusive yet because the missions take so long to run. 
At the low end they doubled the yield, plenty of data here because they run so fast.

They may have increased the mission failure chance overall.  Prior to the patch there were 5 missions that yielded more than a credit per second, I expect all of those to be dramatically reduced, to the 0.25-0.35 range.  Cutting the yield by a factor of 4-7 is a pretty heavy nerf, might make an interesting decision on which mission you run as tier 1 missions have a higher per second yield but are much more hands-on to manage than the longer running tier 6 missions.

Sooo i should be running tier 1 missions? and are the higher reward missions still better than the lower ones?

[sam, an eggplant]

Of course it needed to be nerfed. But the way they nerfed it rendered the skill garbage.

You shouldn't be running slicing missions at all. Either drop the skill or just harvest nodes with it.

[apocrypha]

Once you include failures, lockbox missions are a net negative. If you notice, the people noting a small profit just lucked out and didn't have any failures. It really is time to drop the skill.

My little sample was, well, too little, but out of 12 missions I had 2 failures, and still made a (tiny) net profit. But, 12 missions is clearly far too small a sample to be meaningful, just an observation.

[luckton]

I say they should have left the rewards as they were, but double/triple/quadruple the time needed to complete missions.  You still nerf the credits-per-hour ratio, but still make the reward worthwhile.*

*Note: I've never dabbled at all in Slicing, so if this idea sounds like I'm talking out of my ass, I am ^_^

[sam, an eggplant]

Missions already took over 40 minutes at high levels. At some point you hit absurdity. Lockbox missions need to go entirely. It's a flawed design, so there's no way to fix the implementation.

[Paelos]

They took an atomic bomb to the skill.

They made a moderate nerf to an obviously overpowered crew skill that still pays you to level it. 

The skill was based on the time value of money. The idea that developing your tradeskills should somehow be a net loss in a regular circumstance is the problem.

[Thrawn]

If you notice, the people noting a small profit just lucked out and didn't have any failures. It really is time to drop the skill.

It's not luck, 400/400 slicing and companions with around 2,000 affection.  It's very rare that I ever see a failure anymore.

The skill was based on the time value of money. The idea that developing your tradeskills should somehow be a net loss in a regular circumstance is the problem.

Difference of opinions I guess, I was thinking the exact opposite.  That the idea that leveling your trade skills should pay out huge gains is the problem, that and the fact that people have this idea that if they have to actually work at saving enough credits for a mount instead of having it's handed to them that the economy is broken.

[caladein]

- companion affection no longer decreases mission time. (it never said it did, but pre-patch you ground get up to a 15% decrease I mission time from affection)

It still decreases mission time.  I just tried it out now and a mission listed at 01:12:00 "starts the clock" at 01:01:55 with a companion at 9606 affection (and no relevant efficiency bonus) and 01:11:57 with the ship droid.

Before anyone asks, as that's obviously an augment mission, lockbox ones show the same behavior.

[Mrbloodworth]

Thanks for the correction-- SWTOR has so many types of "crap that slots into other crap" that it's easy to get them confused.

Indeed.

[kildorn]

What amuses me about slicing:

It's a gathering profession, not a mission profession.

If you do nothing but spam missions on your gathering profession: you are INSANE. And likely broke. Gathering is for finding world nodes and getting shit from them. The missions are for needed specific X Y or Z in exchange for credits. Slicers haven't been bitching that world nodes are the problem, they've just been using the mission functionality 24/7, which is intended on a gathering profession to convert credits to materials. In Slicing's case it was converting credits into a shitload more credits.

Now it converts credits into a few more credits (every bit of forum math I've seen still has it being net positive over time, just Barely net positive). But if you use it as *gasp* a gathering profession, it's just a free few thousand credits every few minutes when you slice a world node.

[Sky]

It's not "fine", there is absolutely zero point in it existing now. 

If you are actually out there gathering everything is a profit, slicing better than most i assume. 

Can we shut the fuck about it now?

[luckton]

It's not "fine", there is absolutely zero point in it existing now.

If you are actually out there gathering everything is a profit, slicing better than most i assume.  

 

[Lantyssa]

They really need to remove the lockbox functionality of Slicing and have it return something of worth, but not usually credits.  Maybe random items different from what Treasure Hunting does.

[tmp]

Difference of opinions I guess, I was thinking the exact opposite.  That the idea that leveling your trade skills should pay out huge gains is the problem

I think the problem may be this idea the trade skills are something that's only there to "level up", rather than function as a source of equipment for whatever level you have it at, one that's guaranteed to be viable to operate at whatever level it is at, too.

I don't see why there should be net loss attached to rising it -- working on my other progress bars is an endless stream of loot, credits and xp points. All there to encourage you to keep running that treadmill. Why should crafting be that one redheaded stepchild that stabs you in the cock, instead? All that does is making less people do the crafting, which means less gear options available for all players, which doesn't benefit the game in the slightest.

[kildorn]

Crafting in this game is really, REALLY trivial to do, so I don't buy into the whole "nobody will bother" aspect. If anything, what will keep people away from crafting is that it seems to cap out at needing heroic mats/schematics to do level 50 items. I can make epics that are better than anything you'll find on a commendation vendor right now (and had two done by the time I could equip them), but they're going to be about even with heroic 50 blues from what I can tell.

But actually doing the crafting? It's trivial since you just send your companions out to do shit. If anything sucks about crafting it's that the system doesn't really click until you have your second companion. So the low tiers where you'd eat up the ability to make your own gear, you aren't really making gear.

[tmp]

Crafting in this game is really, REALLY trivial to do, so I don't buy into the whole "nobody will bother" aspect.

If it actually costs me money to the point where it's cheaper to just buy equally good stuff i need from vendors, why bother? The latter also saves me all the mucking around with sending companions out, running to these resource nodes and all the other shit which yes, is trivial, but still takes time i could be instead spending on kicking the foozles in the balls, which is equally trivial but pays me money, in contrast.

[kildorn]

Crafting in this game is really, REALLY trivial to do, so I don't buy into the whole "nobody will bother" aspect.

If it actually costs me money to the point where it's cheaper to just buy equally good stuff i need from vendors, why bother? The latter also saves me all the mucking around with sending companions out, running to these resource nodes and all the other shit which yes, is trivial, but still takes time i could be instead spending on kicking the foozles in the balls, which is equally trivial but pays me money, in contrast.

Gathering and Crafting for skillups does not cost a dime? Well, depending on the tradeskill you may need to spend 200-1000 credits/hour for flux or what have you. Most of them can harvest half the mobs you fight (salvaging and biochem, depending on the planet)

The crafting that costs money is Blue+ quality. But you don't need to touch that stuff to hit 400. You just gather away, and randomly pick a party member to queue 5 craft combines on and ignore them. Compared to crafting in pretty much every other MMO ever? This shit be trivial, yo.

[Thrawn]

Why should crafting be that one redheaded stepchild that stabs you in the cock, instead?

So that crafted materials actually have a value instead of just being fodder everyone gets for free?

I'm starting to think this whole stupid slicing debate is really just two sides - people who care about the game having a good competitive market, and people who just want everything to be free.

[Sky]

I thought it was between people who took slicing and crafters.

[Merusk]

Why should crafting be that one redheaded stepchild that stabs you in the cock, instead?

So that crafted materials actually have a value instead of just being fodder everyone gets for free?

I'm starting to think this whole stupid slicing debate is really just two sides - people who care about the game having a good competitive market, and people who just want everything to be free.

Fuck markets.  I don't want them in my games. There is no "market" when all gear from raids is > crafted mats anyway, so pretending there is only happens to appease crafters.

[Fordel]

This is why I always stick to Alchemy, or Space Alchemy in this game.

[Tannhauser]

Folks wanted Slicing nerfed, so quit bitching that they nerfed it too hard.  I guess players who've had the game two weeks know better than the devs who've had the game since 2006. 

Crafting not making money?  Adorable!  Meanwhile my vault looks like Scrooge McDucks. But we'll see what happens after the great Slicing nerf. 

Seems to me there are a lot of 'experts' who are trying to fuck this game up.  And Bioware is listening to them.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I want to know who got the idea that making a tradeskill produce nothing but meanwhile while simultaneously having it so that the player themselves spent none of their actual time on said tradeskill, would be a good idea in any circumstance.

[tmp]

The crafting that costs money is Blue+ quality. But you don't need to touch that stuff to hit 400. You just gather away, and randomly pick a party member to queue 5 craft combines on and ignore them.

That's crux of the matter, really -- is crafting just something "you raise to 400" (and if you do, then for what?) ignoring bulk of options in the process, or something that should ideally make you want to actually play with it by being beneficial all the way?

[Samprimary]

I informed bioware of an exploit I found with artifice which turned it into even more free money than slicing, despite being a building-stuff-skill. They hotfixed it. I'll live comfortably with the finder's take :>

[tmp]

So that crafted materials actually have a value instead of just being fodder everyone gets for free?

Except that isn't determined by what your crafting costs were, because the buyer couldn't care less about them. But mostly by what it costs to get an NPC-generated equivalent. At the other end you have the bottom value determined by how much the NPCs are willing to pay for the produced stuff. It's pretty much the same like it works for the "market" of npc loot drops.

And just like with the drops the game already throttles potential supply of crafted stuff through multiple gates -- number of available skills you can have trained, crafting mission lengths, node quantity/respawn timers and whatever else is there i can't think of at the moment. With all these in place the arbitrary cost attached to crafting really doesn't have any purpose other than discourage people from actually using the system to full extent.

[Tannhauser]

I can only speak for Cybertech, but I craft mods I use on my guns, armor, ship and droid.  I also sell mods on the GTN for a nice chunk of change.  So yeah, crafting is useful leveling up.  I could have zoomed higher, but now I'm on Tier 5 and CT keeps my gear always up to date.  I got blues, I got purpz.  Now let's see what happens to my profits with the slicing nerf. 

[Lightstalker]

Standard Slicing missions in terms of credit per second yield.  Prior to the patch the highest yield on this scale was 1.7, now the highest yield is 0.4 (and previously all missions had positive yields).  Now Slicing casually supports 1 additional character instead of 6.  Still going to be a massive credit source in the world.

I also saw 18 failed missions out of 250 for a fail rate of about 7%; only a few of the 33-40 and 41-48 missions have fewer than 10 samples.  Still, a single failed mission can still move the average quite a bit, especially with the missions more expensive bountiful and rich missions - hence their lower yields.  It looks like they brought in the Max side of the equation without adjusting the up-front cost, which has the consequence of making the lower level in tier missions look better.

[kildorn]

The crafting that costs money is Blue+ quality. But you don't need to touch that stuff to hit 400. You just gather away, and randomly pick a party member to queue 5 craft combines on and ignore them.

That's crux of the matter, really -- is crafting just something "you raise to 400" (and if you do, then for what?) ignoring bulk of options in the process, or something that should ideally make you want to actually play with it by being beneficial all the way?

I found it beneficial, and used blue items I made for myself all the way to 50(cybertech, so I was making armor pieces and mods). But if you just want a 400 skill to make shit then, you don't need to spend much money at all (really, vendoring the shit you make will more than make up the cost of the flux missions if you want)

My comment was entirely that it's really really EASY to max out a crafting skill. There is no dick-stabbing point in the curve or anything where you need to dump millions of spacebucks into it or time.

[Threash]

So running level 1 moderate missions: cost 95, pay out around 140-146 each.  They take 3 mins.  That's just all kinds of broken, the skill gets worse as you level it up.  Running the missions you get at skill level 1 is the best way to make a profit.