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The Contraband Slot Machine


EricMusco

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Fair enough. I simply wanted to state what I would find acceptable, but my second list points out what I feel would be best in this situation.

1) Coins at 2k per.

2) Chance of critical return in crew missions increased by 10 percent across the board.

3) Payout of mats in crew missions increased by 50 percent across the board.

4) Reshuffle button for mission display.

 

IMO this would be the best course of action for everyone. It would make the slot machine a more effective credit sink, and would keep the appeal of crew missions intact.

 

You got my vote. While they add that reshuffle button (so tired of swapping instances:) ) maybe they could also add something so if I'm not sending my comps out on the highest level missions, I don't have to select the lower mission for every companion. Like maybe let it stay on the lower mission until I change it back:)

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With that being said, we do hear the concern from many of you around the effects of the Jawa Junk’s drop rate on the economy. We are going to take a look at it and make changes accordingly.

-eric

 

The concern from the price gougers crying that they can't adapt to a changing market?

 

The drop rates are fine as is and allow a much larger part of the wider community as a whole participate in other areas of this game that have been stagnating for a long time.

 

Seriously, just leave the rates as they are now. I'm not crying that x y z item that I craft and sell on the GTN has nose dived in price as I'm still making a profit. It's nice to have some competition and that players get things a little cheaper and a little faster now.

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So... At the end of the new Xpac. I was in a set of 186 gear... it's my understanding that once the xpac goes out to all players they will most likely get the same stuff. Then allow them to go on to get the 192/198 gear. So that would make the bottom fall out of the 186 gear market as every one will get a semi decent set to roll onward.

 

So is it about the profit from those players whom have to buy that level gear in order to play on the same level as those with the Xpac? With the flood of mat's/item's price will go down allowing them easier access to that gear.

 

:rak_02:

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So this thing is ridiculous lol. I decided to run a test over the past two days. I bought ten stacks of the coins for a total of 990 coins and 495k credits.

 

In return, just in terms of items, I received 688 items.

That included:

114 green rep tokens

98 blue rep tokens

61 purple rep tokens

130 green jawa junk

118 blue jawa junk

133 purple jawa junk

34 cartel market certificates

 

So in just rep tokens I got 307.5k credits back of what I spent, leaving only 187.5k credits to be covered by selling items bought with the remaining rewards. That means in order to break even, the items traded for with the Jawa junk and certificates need to return at 452 credits for me to merely break even. Even if everything sells for an average of 2k credits after gtn fee, you still make a profit of 642.4k credits. That average price of items sold is probably somewhat low considering green mats can still be sold for conquests even if the new mats(grade 11) have dropped in price as a result of jawa junk hoarders. As long as whoever amassed items with these rewards spent them wisely they could gain a very nice profit for little to no work. And you know people are going to macro the heck out of this.

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Hey folks,

 

We know that there have been many questions about the Contraband Slot Machine and its intent. Here are a few notes on it:

  • The Contraband Slot Machine is not bugged.
  • It is 100% not an exploit to use the Slot Machine.
  • If you feel the desire to sell access to your Stronghold, that’s totally up to you. As a reminder, do not scam people as that is against ToS.
  • We added the Slot Machine as a fun idea based on the positive feedback from the Nightlife event, so spend those credits to your heart’s content!

With that being said, we do hear the concern from many of you around the effects of the Jawa Junk’s drop rate on the economy. We are going to take a look at it and make changes accordingly. I will let you know once I know more. In the meantime, have fun! :rak_03:

 

-eric

 

Eric, my concern is you added a piece of game mechanic that someone can take a 3rd party software and basically clicks for them hours at a time. That to me is more dangerous then any bug currently in the game or previous because the game play is ruined not for a few but the entire player base on servers that are trying to make money legitmately or participate in the conquest system. I know when I played those machines trying to get all the achievements and having them wiped away after a patch pissed me off and a lot of other people that lost those achievements to read in another forum that it might be tough luck that you lost them do to database issues.

 

You basically are telling people that have more real life money to spend on a game can do what they want. I know two weeks ago we fought a guild in conquest that dropped almost 1100-1500 cash on hyper crates over two days to get the jawa junk so they could purchase materials to craft there way into 1st place. That's pay to win technically but lucky we had more reserves and members to hold them off, but in no way should we have had to play that hard because someone has more disposable income to play.

 

Adding this device in with the pay out that it has is going to change how conquest is played from now on. Allowing third party software to play for them is just going to compound the issue.

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Looking forward, I expect the smart people to stock pile on stacks of coins. With the next patch, I fully expect it to either raise the price of coins or lower the success rate by half (if not more). Consequently, I have half a cargo bay full (or did until this morning ;D) full of coin stacks. Woot
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So let me get this straight.

 

Bioware is going to nerf the intended drop rates on the slot machines because a vocal MINORITY are crying about how they cannot make as much money now that people who have the machines have become self sustained in obtaining mats without the need to pay the bull$hit prices many of these people put mats up for or if they so choose, can undercut and threaten their death grip on mat selling via the gtn with the most hyper overreaction ever seen regarding the swtor economy saying the slot machines are breaking it??

 

REALLY???

 

Bioware/Eric, what about the rest of us? What about those of us who use the machines for our own use or our own guild and quietly build up resources for it?

 

I wonder if these same QQ'ers complaining about the slot machines ever complain about the behavior of big businesses or EA themselves. Funny how when it is their in game earning potential being threatened, now they want things their way and have their market be protected just like the big businesses in the real world smashing any small threatening competitor.

 

Taste the irony......... :jawa_frown:

 

This ALL DAY LONG.

The drop rates are NOT that bad on the Jawa Junk. On average I get about 3-4 the of them per 49500cr spend on token.

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Its amazing that cartel market items get such a fast response when concerns are raised and yet there are pages of threads in the operations forum and many bugs issues being reported at it just gets outright ignored.

 

 

yeah it's almost like Erich was on holidays that week!

 

 

hey Eric, I think it might be benfical to make a post explaining what an exploit IS. I thought it obvious but apparently not

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oh for the love of. jawa junk drop rate is not that bad. this is a first week updated vendors are out. and many MANY of us had jawa junk stockpiled from

 

1. months of conquests (you get 10 per character as a reward for getting into top10. per week. per character. with many people running multiple characters)

 

2. opening packs. lots and lots of packs. for months. heck - longer then conquests even, since it was added to the game before conquests were.

 

sure some people spent it here and there, but becasue until this week, jawa vendors were pretty limited.. i guarantee you that people ended up with stacks and stacks of jawa junk sitting in their holds. before gambling machine was even released.

 

give it another week and you will see that the flooding of materials will start to normalize, once people burn through their stockpiles and are now left with more steady influx.

 

now - certificates are a slightly different story. but.. given that from my experience at least - you get about 2 per 100 chips... that's actualy lower rate than what I at least got from smugglers gambit machines during casino event.

 

honestly, I think people who used to hold the market hostage are just frosty that they don't have as much of a monopoly anymore, prices are dropping, but I say - let them drop. let people afford to buy better upgrades and perform better in groups.

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Imo crafting is a side show and runs counter to ea's goal of making the game simple for casuals and generating a profit so killing crafting mini game (or at least diluting it to purely crafing augments and kits) isnt out of the realm of possibilities.

 

You can already see that the major crafting items such as armor, weapons, color crystals, mounts, and dyes are all "produced" by CM pack buyers. What were seeing with the slot machine is just an evolution of the direction EA is going with respect to crafting.

 

Its always been maintained that EA wants a larger causual gamer base. And what better way to increase their revenue by making everything available via the cartel market. Because as we know crafters are killing the bottom line.

 

Casuals can now play the crafting game too. They no longer have to level their comps, and log in every 30 minutes to check in on their missions. They can just roll dice for 30 minutes and be done for the day. The catch is you need to spend real money getting the magic crafting machine.

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Casuals can now play the crafting game too. They no longer have to level their comps, and log in every 30 minutes to check in on their missions. They can just roll dice for 30 minutes and be done for the day. The catch is you need to spend real money getting the magic crafting machine.

 

or make friends with someone who has one already, gain acess to their stronghold and do it that way.

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The problem with the drop rate is not because of "jawa junk barons" or anything like that, it's that it makes mission skills completely irrelevant. It is currently both faster and cheaper to get purple mats from the slot machine than it is to run the mission skills.

 

Mission skills are not a "1% of the players will control the market thing", it's something everyone has access to. With the current drop rate of jawa junk, they are useless. With the upcoming nerf, it will make mission skills viable again.

 

Obviously if you don't have mission skills then you wouldn't like the update, but I would consider crew skills to be an important part of SWTOR gameplay, so it should be important to keep them relevant.

Edited by Exastify
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The problem with the drop rate is not because of "jawa junk barons" or anything like that, it's that it makes mission skills completely irrelevant. It is currently both faster and cheaper to get purple mats from the slot machine than it is to run the mission skills.

 

Mission skills are not a "1% of the players will control the market thing", it's something everyone has access to. With the current drop rate of jawa junk, they are useless. With the upcoming nerf, it will make mission skills viable again.

 

Obviously if you don't have mission skills then you wouldn't like the update, but I would consider crew skills to be an important part of SWTOR gameplay, so it should be important to keep them relevant.

 

I have missions skills. unless they BOOST the drop-rate from mission skills? I'd rather they didn't nerf the machine OR conquests. as an altoholic, I was stuck using blue augments almost exclusively, BECAUSE THE DAMN PURPLES WOULDN'T DROP. even with multiple characters increasing my chances. I was swimming in blue mats though, way more than I could ever use even with augmenting every alt's multiple spec sets.

 

the issue isn't the machine. the issue is - mission skills always sucked. but you were forced to use them, especially slicing, becasue there was no other way.

 

now, thanks to jawa vendors being updated? we have options. and GTN gaugers, can go to hell.

 

so maybe, just maybe, what they should be fixing is NOT the slot machine, what they SHOULD be fixing is mission skills

Edited by Jeweledleah
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Hey folks,

 

With that being said, we do hear the concern from many of you around the effects of the Jawa Junk’s drop rate on the economy. We are going to take a look at it and make changes accordingly. I will let you know once I know more. In the meantime, have fun! :rak_03:

 

-eric

 

Please do not nerf the slots. You spend credits to gain tokens and spend tokens to hopefully gain jawa junk. The slot is completely RNG and there is no guarantee that you will get jawa stuff. I feel that the people complaining are only doing it because they are no longer the go to for mats on the GTN. The slot is great for people who have a great RNG rate and do not want to pay the somewhat ridiculous prices for mats on the GTN. Rather than nerfing the current slot machine, just add a new one with different RNG rate and possibly different rewards. Instead of nerfing the slots, another option could be changing the cost at the jawa vendors.

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I was stuck using blue augments almost exclusively, BECAUSE THE DAMN PURPLES WOULDN'T DROP. even with multiple characters increasing my chances. I was swimming in blue mats though, way more than I could ever use even with augmenting every alt's multiple spec sets.

Ouch, that sucks.

 

Just to double-check: Were you running any other Slicing missions besides "Disassembly Required" and "Forsaken Handshake"? Those are the only two missions capable of returning Adaptive Circuitry.

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MAN I CANNOT WAIT FOR 25K PURPLE AUGS AND MODS AND BARRELS WOO HOO! WHO ELSE IS EXCITED THAT EQUIPPING A COMPANION JUST GOT 50% CHEAPER :) !?11?11?

 

Ok that might have been a little mean to the GTN czars ... :p

 

Do the Weekly on Yavin IV and tricking out a companion costs ~1.5 hours of your time, maybe less.

Edited by DarthTHC
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I have missions skills. unless they BOOST the drop-rate from mission skills? I'd rather they didn't nerf the machine OR conquests. as an altoholic, I was stuck using blue augments almost exclusively, BECAUSE THE DAMN PURPLES WOULDN'T DROP. even with multiple characters increasing my chances. I was swimming in blue mats though, way more than I could ever use even with augmenting every alt's multiple spec sets.

 

the issue isn't the machine. the issue is - mission skills always sucked. but you were forced to use them, especially slicing, becasue there was no other way.

 

now, thanks to jawa vendors being updated? we have options. and GTN gaugers, can go to hell.

 

Players are not the problem.

 

The problem is just as you outlined above with respect to mission skills taking lots of time and credits for little return, all of which are controlled by Bioware, not players.

 

Maybe if you stayed focused on that aspect and not losing all your credibility with your childish outburst, you'd see many of those concerned about the slot payouts are just wanting to see a balancing between the two.

 

I think the slots are a nice potentially fun for some addition that could be an effective credit sink and an alternative way to acquire everything form rare items to reputation to materials.

 

What they shouldn't be is a means to bypass mission skills entirely and render them useless, which is what will happen if changes are not made to either / or / both slots and mission skills.

 

The crew skills forms have been filled with posts and suggestions just about weekly since launch concerning the low returns for purple items along with the long time frames and high cost to run missions.

 

If this is their solution, so be it - but the least they can do is come out and state their intent and what they expect to change or not change with respect to crew skills.

 

But I imagine you, just like Bioware, know that the drop and conversion rates for materials versus the cost and time spent to obtain through the slots is out of whack, and if I were you, I'd enjoy it while you can because I don't see it lasting as is for very long.

Edited by DawnAskham
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Ouch, that sucks.

 

Just to double-check: Were you running any other Slicing missions besides "Disassembly Required" and "Forsaken Handshake"? Those are the only two missions capable of returning Adaptive Circuitry.

 

nope, just those (I'm assuming its rich and bountiful right? bad with names), on multiple characters. I literally leveled slicing on several alts, because my original sole slicer was not enough. well, no I lie. I also run rich and bountiful lockbox missions in van hope of maybe getting a guaranteed crit slicing mission. and this is considering that both my high level operatives are slicers, with maxed affection for SCORPIO

 

I have horrible rng. always had. and maybe its also the reason why I might not be getting as much purple junk as some people claim they do - but certainly more than what i get from running missions. at least conquest rewards are a guarantee, as long as your guild bothers to get into top 10.

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Players are not the problem.

 

The problem is just as you outlined above right with respect to mission skills taking lots of time and credits for little return, all of which are controlled by Bioware, not players.

 

Maybe if you stayed focused on that aspect and not losing all your credibility with your childish outburst, you'd see many of those concerned about the slot payouts are just wanting to see a balancing between the two.

 

I think the slots are a nice potentially fun for some addition that could be an effective credit sink and an alternative way to acquire everything form rare items to reputation to materials.

 

What they shouldn't be is a means to bypass mission skills entirely and render them useless.

 

The crew skills forms have been filled with posts and suggestions just about weekly since launch concerning the low returns for purple items along with the long time frames and high cost to run missions.

 

If this is their solution, so be it - but the least they can do is come out and state their intent and what they expect to change or not change with respect to crew skills.

 

But I imagine you, just like Bioware, know that the drop and conversion rates for materials versus the cost and time spent to obtain through the slots is out of whack, and if I were you, I'd enjoy it while you can because I don't see it lasting as is for very long.

 

what childish outburst. stating that people selling mats on GTN price them high due to supply used to being low and demand from raiders being high? I can call them gougers if I want to.

 

and again, like I said - machine is not the issue here. yes, drop rate is better then mission skills, but solution is NOT to nerf the machine - solution is to BUFF the crew skills.

 

and you still are ignoring the fact that people have stockpiled jawa junk from conquests and opening cartel packs. it will level out once stockpiles are gone.

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what childish outburst. stating that people selling mats on GTN price them high due to supply used to being low and demand from raiders being high? I can call them gougers if I want to.

 

and again, like I said - machine is not the issue here. yes, drop rate is better then mission skills, but solution is NOT to nerf the machine - solution is to BUFF the crew skills.

 

and you still are ignoring the fact that people have stockpiled jawa junk from conquests and opening cartel packs. it will level out once stockpiles are gone.

 

Someone posted somewhere in all the rants about these slot machines that the actual cost of artifact grade 11 mission mats with the machines was between 1k and 3k, depending on which material. Plus it's an immediate return. In an hour, it seems like you can get a whole lot of materials.

 

From mission running, cost of artifact grade 11 mission mats is between 3k and 6k. Also, when you run missions, you get to wait 30-60 minutes for the return and you have at best around a 20% chance to get those mats after the wait. You have to keep running the missions to get the mats. In an hour... maybe you get nothing, maybe you get a few.

 

The machines have absolutely, completely, perfectly killed mission running for artifact level materials.

Edited by DarthTHC
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