Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Slicing Nerf - Overnerf?
dubyahite
Member UncommonPosts: 2,483
So if you read the patch notes, you would know that slicing mission rewards were "adjusted."
For a little background into the slicing skill, for those that don't know, it is a gathering skill that is designed for those that aren't interested in crafting. Basically, it is a gathering skill for money. Each mission you send your companions on costs a certain amount of money, but returns with a lockbox that contains money. This skill doesn't really go with any crafting skill, except kind of with cybertech because it yields cyber schematics, so having it severely impacts your ability to gather mats for crafting.
It's purpose, to be clear, is to make money. The problem with slicing is that it has always been able to make a ridiculous amount of money. In beta, Bioware nerfed the skill a little bit several times. They were always taking the slow route of small adjustments and presumably observing the effect on the economy.
They have tried to tune it down several times, but even at launch it was a bit overpowered. People were reporting the ability to make over a million credits in 4 days, simply by sending their 5 crew members on missions. This is a ridiculous amount of money. As a person who leveled slicing to 400, and loved the money it made, even I knew it needed another nerf.
Bioware, however, has not just nerfed the slicing ability, they have nuked it. People are regularly reporting that they are losing money on the skill. With my attempts to test it out post patch today, I also lost money. I tried several different tiers of missions and several different kinds of yields, the lockboxes consistently brought back less money than it cost to send them out.
This begs the question, what is the point of this skill now? It is a gathering skill, intended to gather money. Why do I have a crafting skill that costs 2000 to use, and returns 1600? It's like throwing money away for no reason.
Some will say that these missions return schematics, and mission discovery items, but the rates on getting those are extremely low. It does not make it worth the loss of money.
Other gathering professions are money sinks, but at least they bring back something you can use (materials, gifts, etc) or sell. With slicing now, I am paying money to get less money back. What the hell is that?
I'm hoping that this will be straightened out soon, otherwise the skill is not even worth having. It serves no purpose and shouldn't even exist if it is meant to be kept like this.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
Comments
It actually beats me that they thought this up in the first place. A skill that makes you money with the click of a button? Even with little rewards but with 5 continously deployed companions that's asking for economic trouble.
Going about the effort and costs to level any other mission skill and use those mats for re-engineering tons of crafted gear to unlock better schematics and using even more resources to make them and sell those on the GMT should always be more rewarding as there is much more effort and money involved.
I hope they'll port slicing into a skill which is more about crafting support than mainly a silly credit faucet. Better to cut off its head early than late (in that sense they should have done this in beta already).
My brand new bloggity blog.
It seems like a terrible idea either way. Crafting and gathering skills should be profitable only because of a demand. Slicing is (was) simply a money generator. The only reason I can imagine it existing in the first place is because of a genuine lack of interest in the longevity of TOR, in this case in regards to the economy.
As it is now, however, it's not even a suitable money sink. The skill should have been removed completely a long time ago. There's really no way to balance something like this. The only acceptable solution is its complete removal.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
I understand my master,
As for OP yes it needed a nerf man. It was too good and was making too much money for low-mid level missions,
Currently Playing: SSFIV AE, SFxTekken, SWTOR, WoW. Waiting for: GW2, Resident Evil 6.
Slicing needs a new roll, get rid of Lockboxes and give Augments to someone else and actually give them a roll of an enchanter.
I understand what you guys are saying, and I will be the first to admit it needed a nerf, but I do think it can have a useful place in this game without competely screwing up the economy.
A couple of the things people used slicing for that could be legitimate if they can figure out how to balance it:
Buying mats off the AH to level crafting professions. This sounds bad, but it really could have a positive effect. All the people out there slicing their heads off need someone to sell them stuff. I and many others were buying mats to level our actual production skills. This gave people with the other gathering skills a way to make a large amount of profit off of their mats. The problem has been that it kind of causes huge inflation, but I attribute that to the imbalance of the skill, not the existence of it. It could be brought in line a little better.
Covering the cost of actually leveling other professions through missions. People have figured out exactly which missions to run, and how many of them to simultaneously make exactly the amount of money needed to level up another skill. With 5 deployable companions (and in an ideally balanced world) you might run 3 slicing missions to cover the cost of 2 gathering or mission skills.
A lot of people don't like to bother with crafting, this gives them a way to make money that they will eventually spend on crafted items or materials. Because of the fact that it severely damages your ability to craft by taking up a slot and not providing mats, people that were slicing were funneling money to crafters.
Like I said, it needed a big nerf, but this was overkill. I have a feeling they freaked out about the negative effect it was having on the economy, and temporarily made it useless until they can figure out what to do with it. Like Pony said, this should have been done in beta. Also, there are people with millions of credits from it. I'm guessing they might be giving some time for those people to spend their money before tuning it back up.
It's like they "turned off" slicing. Like I said, as it stands it seems completely useless. It is a money sink that gives you nothing.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
This I would be all for. If they increased the amount of cybertech schematics that it yielded, or gave it some other useful item, it would at least server a purpose.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
I'm confused by BW's delay. There were pages of threads discussing slicing in beta and how it was OP. Makes me think that they really didn't want/need the 12 months of beta feedback and that they were going to do what they wanted anyway.
I don't have slicing on any of my characters now, was gonna have it alongside scavenging and cybertech on one of my alts, probably still will, but that kind of nerfage is bizarre. Had it on my trooper and BH in testing and liked it a lot.
I know they claimed in the last testing build that they had nerfed it, but as Dubyahite says, it didn't make much of a difference. I assumed whatever tweak they put in place now would have been a mite less of a sledgehammer. I would have thought it would have made more sense to level out the number of lockboxes available to both sides at early levels - Coruscant is brimful of the things, Kaas not so much.
If they're going to nerf the mission-based side of things, they should balance it by putting more lockboxes in the world. Those really are 'free money' and there tends to be a better chance at goodies from them.
Do augments still come from slicing missions? They, alongside the ship parts schematics, were the only thing besides credits (and the occasional mission discovery) that made it worthwhile.
I'd hope there's something more robust planned for it. There's gonna be a LOT of unhappy players out there if they don't do something. I ran Cedemimu the other day with a guy who had made 170k in a day from slicing, and while that is kinda OP, I didn't begrude him it because I'd made out like a bandit on the GTN with stims and medpacks the same day. They have cred-sinks in place for the people making all those credits, the 1 million CE lounge bracelet, the 1.5 million speeders.
At least these slicers will have enough money for their level 40 and level 50 speeder piloting skills : )
I guess I'm just taken aback that they hit it so hard now, when the first question on everybody's mind all through testing when patch notes came out was 'Have they nerfed slicing yet?'. Should have been pre-launch tbh, and even then, turning it in to a credit sink was not the way to go.
My total speculation is that they really like the idea of this skill, but can't quite figure out the math on how to make it work and not mess up the economy badly. I feel like, while this game is fully released, slicing is something that is still in testing.
Like I said earlier, I really think they are "turning it off" until they can figure out how to make it work properly, or they are trying to get people to ditch it before they tune it up a bit again. Who knows, this whole thing is really weird.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Actualy the nerf kinda makes sense to me.
You can still earn money by going out into the world and slicing nodes, so the skill is still usefull.
What was nerfed is the ability to send companions out 24x7 while afk (possibly with a macro) - that was the main imbalance.
They did scale down the reards quiet a bit thats true i dont loose money but am not making much either....however its not all about the money tho!
Slicing is also a good metyhod to get shematics and new ghathering quests which you can sell (or use and sell the crafted product) also bare in mind that you always can go out gathering yourself withhout the 2k to send out a companion each spot still offers a nice income
Actually , I am having a bit of a different experience that the OP. I am still showing a profit on my 400 skill on the republic side and 120 skill now on Empire side. Though it is not as "fruitful" as before , but I will be honest and say that I was rolling cash before. On average I would say running 3 missions at a time last night over the course about 8-10 times sending out 3 companions ....2, 49-50 missions and 1 , 41-48 mission, I would average paying out 5500-6000 credits and would make 8-10k back. Still very profitable if running around slicing in the game world. Not counting the random "mission" drops you get from slicing that sell for 960 to the vendor and about 4k on the AH, they seem to sell quite well for me on my server.
I'm doing this on the tier 5 missions (which have been shown to be the most return per hour before and after the patch). The chance on hitting those schematics and discovery items are very low.
The other thing I haven't mentioned is augments, again these are not really worth it. Not many people are using them (they require crit crafted gear) and there is not much of a market for them yet.
The open world nodes are definitely free, but again they are not very common. Besides, any other gathering skill can be useful through missions AND the open world nodes.
I don't intend to ditch slicing just yet (I leveled it to 400 and dot want to lose that). I'll see where they go with this skill, but I feel like picking up any other gathering skill would be wiser if it stays like this.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Personally I would have wished for a financial rollback of those heavy slicers. Hearing what amount of credits they've made in those few days really makes me doubt how stable the economy in this game will be and that after only those few days. Hearing that people have 4-5 times the amount of credits when they hit level 50 and sliced their rear ends off most of the time.
Really a silly way to generate credits.
This is the correct answer. It is now an active/use-while-questing skill. If you put slicing on a toon that is questing, you will get boxes which are free, being part of the environment (same as scavenging all the raw materials are just laying around). They just made it so lvl 10 crafting toons can't amass huge sums of wealth. Not happy about it but such as it is.
I personally had a level 20 toon that I wasn't doing anything with and was just sending my 2 companions out on slicing missions. Of course, that was giving them enough $$ to fund his cybertech and investigation (investigation IMO is quite sad....) skills.
I didn't play it AFK or with macros, of course. I have the game on my laptop that I can monitor and keep active while I do RL work.
*shrug*
My point is that it is not worth it as a "use while questing" skill. There is no reason to pick it up just for this when every other mission skill is useful in both ways.
I don't think this is what Bioware intends with this skill. If it is, then what is the point of having missions to send your companions on? This defeats the whole purpose of the crew skill system.
Beyond that, there are plenty of other skills (like treasure hunting) that are still very profitable using both missions and gathering in the world.
If it is just an open world gathering skill, then the profit is not worth picking it up. Remember, slicing is a skill designed entirely around providing credits. If it doesn't provide a profit it is entirely useless.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
I think the whole idea behind slicing is bad. An MMORPG needs to have an economy to have a functionaing AH/GTM. And the more things that are pumping money into the economy (mobs, quest rewards, BG rewards), the more things you need pumping money OUT of the economy (training, NPC sold consumables, money lost of missions) to prevent inflation.
Having a crew skill delivers steady, high income for virtually no risk, and fairly quickly is a recipe for uber inflation. It has the potential to kill any budding economy that SWTOR could have.
So basically, it sucks that they had to nerf it to hell, but it had to happen IMO. It really shouldn't have been in the game to begin with.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
It's a trap! ... and you fell for it.
Yes, it was completely over nerfed.
Yes, it will get buffed as it's completely illogical and broken in it's current state.
Yes, you fell for their trap. They made it so bad so slicers will be happy to get back a fraction of what the nerf took away.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
I disagree.. I liked slicing a lot the way it was. Sure I could have a ton of money.. but I had to send all of my guys out all of the time to get that money... and it always, always, went back into the community somehow. You should never be taking hits on slicing missions... nominal gains.. sure, but only when you completely fail a mission should you take a hit.
The thing is, slicing should be a way to get money for those that don't spend all day crafting and selling on the AH. Thats really what it was for me, I mean I have all my crew skills maxed right now, but only 1 is a crafting skill.. I tooks 1 mission skill and slicing on my main, and bought all the materials I needed for crafting. It was a different way to do it, but worked well for me and those I bought from.
Hahah, it reminds me of this old NES game Nobunaga's Ambition, where if you raised taxes 30% your people would be crying, but then you could just lower is 2% and they would be happy again.
I think BW is going to bust out a Nobunaga's Ambition on you guys
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
The problem is that crafting is a zero sum endeavor when you consider the economy as a whole. Yeah, you can make money crafting/gathering, but that money comes from other players and not from the outside. When money comes from the outside in an MMORPG, it can cause inflation. Slicing brings a lot of money into the economy from the outside fairly constantly.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
even if it made only 1 of profit it would be abused,so making it loose money is the only way to make this work!another great idear from a pen pusher that has no link whatsoever with reality(gees this make me do a paralelle with politician lol!they ll probably have to rewaork the whole mecanic of that proffession ,it cant stay like this and IT CANT go back to what it was!unless they limit this proffession to one companion per turn then they could bring back the reward to what it was!(okok maybe add time to their craft like 10 minute instead of wtv it is!they ll need to work a lot on it to balance it !(probably on the simulating bench right now if they have one of those!
Kind of true... but the truth is, instead of slicing, now I just go to voss and kill some mobs and gain about the same amount through grinding if I get low on cash.
Slicing was just a different way to do the same thing.
Absolutely, but it has the potential to more than double the amount of money coming in from the outside. Because if you are slicing while you are grinding MOBs, you're getting twice as much money (depending on the scale of money you're getting from each activity, but you get my point).
And imagine Chinese gold farmers with this. They will keep accounts online for 24/7 with 1 dude watching like 10 machines doing slicing with macros. It's just dangerous is all I'm saying.
I just don't see a good way to implement it. You either make it makes good money and is useful for casual players, but wrecks the economy from abuse. Or you make it so it makes a paltry profit, and is thus pointless, but preserves the economy.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Basically this. The skill never made any logical sense whatsoever on why it was even in the game. All they did now was attach a crap ton of RNG to it and if anyone here knows Aion you know American kiddies hate that crap really bad.