Bioware.. Please release MORE slot machines

YES companion gifts are a great idea for payouts.

I'm going to throw some quick numbers around for demonstration purposes on what I was saying. (Obviously the devs would have their own ideas about how easy or hard certain things should be to come by. So I'm not trying to hit the right balance myself anyway.)

Let's say that the chances on each spin look something like this:
7.5% for green rep item (can sell for 500)
5.5% for blue rep item (can sell for 1000)
3.5% for purple rep item (can sell for 2500)
6.5% for small credit case (average contents = 1000)
4.5% for medium credit case (average contents = 2500)
2.5% for large credit case (average contents = 5000)
5.5% for gift lockbox mk-1 (grades 1 and 2)
3.5% for gift lockbox mk-2 (grades 3 and 4)
2% for gift lockbox mk-3 (grade 5)
5.5% for materials case mk-1 (grades 1 to 4)
3.5% for materials case mk-2 (grades 5 to 8)
2% for materials case mk-3 (grades 9 to 12)
1% for green Jawa scrap
0.6% for blue Jawa scrap
0.3% for purple Jawa scrap
5% for Contraband Prize Ticket
0.1% for Cartel Certificate
0.01% for exclusive rare prize 1
0.01% for exclusive rare prize 2
0.01% for exclusive rare prize 3
20% for token return
20.97% for loss

Apply that across 1000 tokens. About 210 spins are losses. About 200 spins are re-rolls, which I'm not going to get into this time but we know that it will mean higher returns than the given drop rates for all of the prizes (and more losses as well). 75 are green rep, 55 are blue rep, 35 are purple rep, 65 are small credits, 45 are medium credits, and 25 are large credits. Those would add up to about 482,500 credits, give or take. (Credit boxes are random, of course. But on average this should be about what it adds up to.) If they make tokens cost 1000 credits each, that's a 48.25% return. If instead they make tokens cost 2000 credits each, that's a 24.125% return. (Depending on how much they want the rest of the prizes to cost us, they can scale that token cost to whatever will hit the right sweet spot. If the target was for us to receive 40% of our investment back from rep item sales and credit boxes, a token cost of 1206 apiece would hit that mark (with the arbitrary drop rates I threw out there, and this is also before accounting for results from the rerolls)). Whatever our final cost ends up being, that's for about 55 of each mk-1 case, about 35 of each mk-2 case, about 20 of each mk-3 case, 10 green scraps, 6 blue scraps, 3 purple scraps, 50 tickets, and 1 certificate. (Or there's the off chance that one of the rare exclusive prizes could have dropped but it's very slim in that sample size.)

edit: I still wonder (haven't tested it yet) what would happen if you try to use the machine with a full inventory / nowhere for the prizes to go. If it pops up an error message and prevents you from using it, the lockbox drops in this idea might provide some hindrance for bots. I mean, these lockboxes would sure fill up a ton of space fast. (They don't stack.) The credit ones would be fine to just open on the spot but the gift and material boxes would create a different item to replace them, and when opening a ton of them you'd create lots of clutter to manage in cargo because of their very random and very wide selection of possibilities. So it would become very necessary to take breaks from the slots every so often so you can open your boxes and sort out their contents.

While I agree that the real source of trouble here was largely the crescendo of wailing and gnashing of teeth from a tiny minority who stood to loose their special little profit centers (often the same players who routinely dismiss any concern they don't share as "a meaningless minority whine")...

If I ever get my hands on a time machine, I'm going to go back to the day that someone first decided that deliberately misquoting under the guise of "fixed that for you" wasn't an act of abject intellectual dishonesty, and beat that person with a tire iron about the head until they develop amnesia.

I'll take that as a win.

Yay!

No, actually you didn't. The community certainly holds some of the blame. But they are not the ones that pushed Bioware to release it in it's initial state in the first place, nor are they the ones that pushed Bioware to nuke it, generally speaking of course, then meet the follow-up rage with silence.

That is all Bioware.

Considering the whole nearly immeasurable level of ineptia showed by BW Management from the Slot machine's launch to nuclear nerf to ostrichian head in sand syndrome and absolute mutism.

Please oh please,

Don't
Even
Think about it.

They will just F_ it up beyond measure again, "Fix it" and become deaf & mutes for the next few months.

If they were to add in a few more 'win' options for the payouts to 'make it more fun', would Mission Discovery items be a good option?

Sadly, I would probably buy one on the GTN just to get the rep, even though I don't buy rep items. However, I wouldn't spend and CC trying to get the machine. That's where BW marketing team is probably at right now. "How do I make it attractive enough to entice CC purchases, without making it 'gamebreaking'?"

I wouldn't. I'd go find someone that has one and farm the REP and be done.

The CERT Drop Rate would need to revert back to the original %% in order to get me to obtain another. I stated it before and I will again.. I will NOT BUY another CM Pack/Hypercrate with "Slot machine" in them.

Bioware screwed up and then screwed up even worse. (Jawa stuff change was overkill, but some was needed) The CERT change was a flat out LIE and not mentioned by Eric or patch notes. That wasn't called for at all (IMHO).

Agreed. I liked the Rep from them. If that's all they'll be good for in the future, so be it, I'd still like them.