Simple question post here; no troll. I'm at work and I see in the RN's that they say they've fixed the Slicing Lockbox Missions.

 

Any Slicers try them yet? Did they actually come through for us?

 

Thanks.

Simple question post here; no troll. I'm at work and I see in the RN's that they say they've fixed the Slicing Lockbox Missions.

 

Any Slicers try them yet? Did they actually come through for us?

 

Thanks.

 

Whats wrong with lockbox missions?I only have a low level slicer but I haven't noticed a problem with lockbox missions?I could be missing something though since i haven't had a slicer since before the nerfs in beta.

1.2 introduced a bug in which certain lockboxes (essentially anything better than white quality) had their returns severely diminished. BioWare (eventually) acknowledged this bug and the patch notes for today say it's fixed.

 

Based on past experiences, I trust the community's feedback far, far more than I trust anything BioWare says (isn't that sad?) so I'm asking those I trust for confirmation.

I did a Rich Lockbox mission this morning, cost me 2200(ish) creds and the lockbox yielded around 1200(ish) credits. I'm not willing to do another one to confirm, but with that kind of result I would speculate that it's not fully fixed.

the premium (green) lockboxes were returning far less money than they probably should have. (regardless of how procured) IIRC even considerably less than white ones.

Apparently not, i still get fewer credits out of the lockbox than i spend on the mission.

I just ran a rich lvl 5 and got back even money. I will run some more to see if it is the same.

I've only done a few so far.

 

Update:

Out of 12 missions of various levels that were rich or bountiful and have returned a green lockbox, 11 have returned losses ranging from 1-43% and one returned a profit of 13%.

 

The losses seem as though they may not be as significant based on this small sample, but lockboxes certainly don't seem (to me) to be changed back to pre 1.2 level returns either. It may be that a nerf was intended in 1.2, but the lockboxes were also broken. Now they may just be nerfed. Clarification would once again be nice.

Edited May 1, 2012 by lull

Been running some tests. It seems its mostly fixed, but green (premium) lockboxes still regularly give less money than the mission cost. Others seem fixed though (white, blue)

Definitely fixed. Level 50 green boxes were returning 500-1000, now they're at 1600-2500

It's fixed to how it was after the slicing nerf.

Been running some tests. It seems its mostly fixed, but green (premium) lockboxes still regularly give less money than the mission cost. Others seem fixed though (white, blue)

 

White and blue weren't broken. Only the green ones were.

yes tested this morning with some green ones I was saving. They are back to normal.

In my opinion this level (which is the level after the nerf) is perfect. White gives small returns, green slightly more, blues much more. This is balanced. Edited May 1, 2012 by Niddles

In my opinion this level (which is the level after the nerf) is perfect. White gives small returns, green slightly more, blues much more. This is balanced.

 

I've been running grade 4 rich and grade 5 abundant lockbox missions all day. I am sitting at the same amount of money as when I started.

 

I guess it's balanced in that I'm not losing money.

Still not having much profit from rich grade missions, but maybe I'm just unlucky. Using T7 for slicing missions too, of course.

I've been running grade 4 rich and grade 5 abundant lockbox missions all day. I am sitting at the same amount of money as when I started.

 

I guess it's balanced in that I'm not losing money.

 

Have you been selling your mission discoveries?

Here are my findings from my slicing today, focused on the Rich and Bountifuls

 

Tier

rich/bountiful Cost - return

 

t5

r2025 - 2008

r1903 - 1735

r1930 - 2044

r2025 - Crit 3990

r1930 - 1874

r2025 - 2152

 

t4

b1175 - 863

b1175 - 855

b1250 - 980

b1175 - 1391

b1250 - 1234

 

t3

b780 - 958

b780 - 752

 

t1

r295 - 114

 

Tier 4 doesn't seem to be doing too well thus far and tier 5 is hit and miss.

the lowest i got was 300 credits above what i spent and since the fix today i've been getting 340 missions like they are lockboxes. its perfectly fine.

I think it's fine. While the Rich and Abundant missions do return less than particularly Underworld Trading missions of the same level (when considering the GTN value of 4-8 ciridium and occasional mandalorian iron), UT doesn't get to slice 50-60k (or more) worth of credits from durasteel footlockers and cybernetic brains while doing dailies.

I just tested 5 level 2 and 5 level 5 rich missions. On all five lvl2 (no crits), I lost between 100-120 creds. Lost between 200-250 on the lvl 5s.

 

 

I haven't been systemically testing level 4 and 6 yet, but I'm pretty sure I've been losing more often than not on those too.

 

I've put in a bug report. I'll post again when i get a response

I have max affection but no crit skills. For me, rich is broken.

 

Level 6 Abundant cost 1485 yield 1347 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 2025 yield 1500 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 1930 yield 1826 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 2025 yield 1880 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 2025 yield 8254 (gain)

...

The rest were losses.

 

These results are not bugged, the results have been scaled back to dry up money in the economy.

I have max affection but no crit skills. For me, rich is broken.

 

Level 6 Abundant cost 1485 yield 1347 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 2025 yield 1500 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 1930 yield 1826 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 2025 yield 1880 (loss)

Level 5 Rich cost 2025 yield 8254 (gain)

...

The rest were losses.

 

These results are not bugged, the results have been scaled back to dry up money in the economy.

A likely hypothesis. Perhaps we're only supposed to get money from this gathering skill from non-lockbox sources (or from gathering boxes out in the game world). In other words, Bioware would like us to start gathering "tech parts" for the other professions, and this is their way of pushing us towards it.

 

Still, in your above examples, you spent a total of 9,490 and made 14,807. Making 56% more than you spent is still a decent source of income. Now, granted, it's not a massive sample size, but if that's the way it works (i.e., most missions are a slight loss with the occasional big haul that ultimately translates into a net profit), I guess that's not too bad.

A likely hypothesis. Perhaps we're only supposed to get money from this gathering skill from non-lockbox sources (or from gathering boxes out in the game world). In other words, Bioware would like us to start gathering "tech parts" for the other professions, and this is their way of pushing us towards it.

 

Still, in your above examples, you spent a total of 9,490 and made 14,807. Making 56% more than you spent is still a decent source of income. Now, granted, it's not a massive sample size, but if that's the way it works (i.e., most missions are a slight loss with the occasional big haul that ultimately translates into a net profit), I guess that's not too bad.

 

I had a full page of results. I only showed the first set where one of them made a profit. Trust me, its a money sink. The only way to make money with it now is to get lucky and get a mission discovery to sell on the AH. Even then the AH gets a cut.

 

Also, my understanding is that tech parts are only usable by someone who had done RE of their augments. If that is true, one toon farms tech parts to get schematics. Another toon uses the schematics to make augments, this same toon does repeatable crew skills to gather mats, make augments, re augments and then goes back to the slicer to get tech parts. Both toons spend gobs of money to get an augment. Then each time this augment is reused, it costs money when it is removed and put in an upgraded piece of gear.

 

Really augments have become a major money sink.

Edited May 2, 2012 by netskink

I guess the real question is, how does slicing compare to other possible crew skills? It's possible to look at it as both a gathering skill (since there are plenty of "nodes" out there to be "gathered," though more of them seem to be defended than those for, say, archaeology) or a mission skill.

 

For gathering skills, missions seem to exist only to compensate for "laziness." If you need some scavenged metals but don't feel like going out and looking for them, Scavenging missions allow you to trade your money instead of your time for those scavenged parts.

 

Slicing fits this model decently except for one major problem: there's no incentive for it. We don't "need" lockboxes. Thus, the only thing the missions can provide that we'd want to trade money for under this view is skill. Is that Bioware's intent? Once you reach 400 skill, you're supposed to stop running Lockbox missions? Are the lockboxes, then, only there to ameliorate the costs of using missions to grind skill?

 

Now, we can also look at Slicing as a mission skill. For those, missions are the only use of the skill (and, in fact, the only source of their rewards in the game). Our "Sliced Tech Parts" missions seem to fit this model—sliced tech parts are unavailable from any other source. Our Lockbox missions don't fit this view of it because a.) the Lockboxes can be gathered and b.) credits come from plenty of other sources—Slicing isn't the only source of them like it is for things like blue-quality gemstones.

 

So, how do we interpret our crew skill now? Before, it seemed like it was rather unlike all the other crew skills: it was flat-out a direct source of money. While other gathering skills could provide money, they were dependent upon the GTN for it. Ideally, one would hope that Slicing would just be an easier way of making less money and that the other gathering skills would ultimately be more profitable. (IOW, choose Slicing if you want small but consistent profits, choose the other gathering skills if you want larger but more unpredictable profits and don't mind using the GTN.) Otherwise, no one would bother with them, unless they were using them specifically to support a crafting skill (and plenty of people choose gathering skills only as a source of profit). If indeed it was the case that Slicing's profits were too high and driving people away from the other gathering skills, then a nerf (or series of nerfs, as it were) seems understandable.

 

If Bioware wants to push slicing into becoming more like the regular mission skills at max level, the recent changes would be one way of doing it. By disincentivizing the lockbox missions, it forces slicers into choosing one of three options: a.) dropping the skill entirely, b.) only using Slicing as a gathering skill, allowing us to pick up credits in the game world or c.) pushing us to start running the "Sliced Tech Parts" missions. I would argue that Bioware is likely going for the last point as their goal, given that they seem to have set it up specifically so that we could become better intertwined with the rest of the game's economy (beyond the monetary/inflationary role we served before). If people want augments, they need to reply on crafters to get them, and crafters need to rely on us to provide the materials for them.

 

I'd love to hear some official response from Bioware about the raison d'etre of Slicing—how they see it in the game. Without that, we're left to speculate, and I think a lot of people are simply looking at this crew skill from an entirely different perspective than Bioware is and becoming frustrated because of it (namely, they expect it to function as a credit gathering skill, as it did before, while Bioware doesn't seem to intend it to function that way going forward).

 

TL;DR: It doesn't look like Bioware intends Slicing to do what most people used to use it for: making money via Lockbox missions.