With yesterdays patch, you stealth-buffed slicing back up to near the pre-nerf levels. With this patch, you stealth-nerfed it back down into uselessness.

Why?

I'm hardly strapped for cash, I make a fortune selling bioanalysis mats, but I'm a little annoyed by the stealth-buff then stealth-nerf see-saw.

Do you want slicing to be useful, or not? I was about to drop it for another profit skill before you buffed it, now I'm a bit unsure what to do.

Let me correct you.

Slicing was awesome.

Then it got nerfed to acceptable, mildly profitable levels.

It got ninja-returned to pre-nerf levels.

Now today, it is nerfed to an UNPROFITABLE level.

I lost money 5/6 times today. It's completely pointless now. Devs, please return it to a mildly profitable level or just remove it from game.

With yesterdays patch, you stealth-buffed slicing back up to near the pre-nerf levels. With this patch, you stealth-nerfed it back down into uselessness.

 

Why?

 

I'm hardly strapped for cash, I make a fortune selling bioanalysis mats, but I'm a little annoyed by the stealth-buff then stealth-nerf see-saw.

 

Do you want slicing to be useful, or not? I was about to drop it for another profit skill before you buffed it, now I'm a bit unsure what to do.

My guess?

The buff was purely accidental in that it was an accident that brought slicing reward levels back up. They just fixed it silently.

And my thoughts on slicing: replace lockboxes with missions. Add green missions. Problem solved.

Slicing is for getting augments and finding nodes.

There are spots on alderaan that earn you 7,5k in less then 5 minutes.

Don't do lockbox missions, that is rule one.

With yesterdays patch, you stealth-buffed slicing back up to near the pre-nerf levels. With this patch, you stealth-nerfed it back down into uselessness.

 

Why?

 

I'm hardly strapped for cash, I make a fortune selling bioanalysis mats, but I'm a little annoyed by the stealth-buff then stealth-nerf see-saw.

 

Do you want slicing to be useful, or not? I was about to drop it for another profit skill before you buffed it, now I'm a bit unsure what to do.

Knowing a little about large-scale software development...

What you likely saw was an "unintended rollback" where the 1.1 build accidentally didn't include the change made to Slicing, and they simply corrected that in the patch this morning to what it was immediately before 1.1 went live.

That's why there were no comments about it, nothing in the 1.1 Patch Notes about an adjustment, just an unintended change that was corrected.

Or maybe it was just that random results are random, and they didn't stealth-anything.

No, they most definitely rebuffed it. I kept careful track of results after the nerf, and over hundreds of missions, I never had a T5 box return over 3k, or a T3 box over 1.5k. I was seeing 4-6k and 1.5-2.5k last night.

Not every facet of this game is up for deliberation with the community. The dev team has control of the game, not you, not me. They have no reason to justify any actions to us, and I like it that way. Community control of the game would end up being a very schizophrenic game.

I'm not asking for community control. I'm asking for a statement of intent.

Is slicing meant to be worthwhile, or no? As it stands, even with the buff last night, I could make two orders of magnitude more money running a T5 bioanalysis mission than a T5 slicing mission.

I've kept slicing because it was already at 400, instance shortcuts are nice, and the nerf was so ridiculous I figured it'd be fixed. Frankly, slicing needed a buff at high levels before the nerf. T5 bioanalysis mats sell for 3k a pop, and the prices will likely continue to rise as inflation continues. T5 diplomacy mats sell for 10k+ a pop.

I can make 50k+ on a single diplomacy or bioanalysis mission. Slicing at .5k seems kinda worthless by comparison.

If it's intended to be this worthless, no biggie, I'll just drop it.

I'm not asking to be given creative control, I'm just used to devs directly or indirectly interacting with the community and making known their intentions in other MMOs, and I'm not prepared to hold Bioware to a lower standard.

ALL I want is a statement of intent from the devs. Is Slicing meant to be two orders of magnitude less profitable per mission than other gathering skills?

That happens; it's a code thing. It just means that they were tinkering with Slicing and the wrong code got put in.

On the plus side, it does mean that they were tinkering with Slicing. Though if I were one of you, I'd just drop it at this point.

It's simple.

1) Slicing was making a ton of money.

--Developers realize "Oh crap, that's not right!"

2) Slicing makes much less money, but can pay out in the long run if you run certain missions.

3) Patch comes out, moving Slicing from 2 and back to 1. The plebeians rejoice.

--Developers realize "Oh crap, that's not right!"

4) Who knows now. We could be back to 2, we could be at a new balanced level. Time will tell.

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised to see mission discoveries actually showing up again after running about 50 slicing missions without seeing a single one.

It's a bummer that they do so much tinkering with it without explaining anything in the patch notes, but communication isn't this company's strong point.

It's simple.

 

1) Slicing was making a ton of money.

Slicing was not making a ton of money. Level 20s just thought a hundred thousand credits was a lot of money. I contend that slicing was yielding too little money before the nerf for it to be worth it for high level players, though it may have been a bit much for lowbies.

I'm not asking for community control. I'm asking for a statement of intent.

 

Is slicing meant to be worthwhile, or no? As it stands, even with the buff last night, I could make two orders of magnitude more money running a T5 bioanalysis mission than a T5 slicing mission.

 

I've kept slicing because it was already at 400, instance shortcuts are nice, and the nerf was so ridiculous I figured it'd be fixed. Frankly, slicing needed a buff at high levels before the nerf. T5 bioanalysis mats sell for 3k a pop, and the prices will likely continue to rise as inflation continues. T5 diplomacy mats sell for 10k+ a pop.

 

I can make 50k+ on a single diplomacy or bioanalysis mission. Slicing at .5k seems kinda worthless by comparison.

 

If it's intended to be this worthless, no biggie, I'll just drop it.

 

I'm not asking to be given creative control, I'm just used to devs directly or indirectly interacting with the community and making known their intentions in other MMOs, and I'm not prepared to hold Bioware to a lower standard.

 

ALL I want is a statement of intent from the devs. Is Slicing meant to be two orders of magnitude less profitable per mission than other gathering skills?

If you stop thinking of Slicing as a Mission skill, you may start thinking of it as worthwhile.

You're making bank on Diplomacy and Bioanalysis missions now because Biochem is the FOTM crew skill. Everyone wants to level it because it is (perceived as) overpowered and the rest of the crew skills are (perceived as) junk.

When BioWare finishes nerfing BioChem and buffs some of the other crew skills, people will start making money on the supplies that drive the buffed skills. That's how MMOs work.

The devs have already stated their intent and implemented that into the game via the slicing "adjustment" patch. They intend for slicing missions to be slightly profitable. Because it's a gathering skill.

Treat the one-day "buff" we saw as a mistake on BioWare's part. Erroneous rollbacks like that happen all the time in development shops new to build processes and though building software certainly isn't new to BioWare, managing MMO roll-outs is. It was not intentional.

Slicing today is as they envision it, or close to it. If you would be happier with another skill, you should switch.

Slicing was not making a ton of money. Level 20s just thought a hundred thousand credits was a lot of money. I contend that slicing was yielding too little money before the nerf for it to be worth it for high level players, though it may have been a bit much for lowbies.

It was making a ton compared to the 'fix' or 'nerf'.

No, they most definitely rebuffed it. I kept careful track of results after the nerf, and over hundreds of missions, I never had a T5 box return over 3k, or a T3 box over 1.5k. I was seeing 4-6k and 1.5-2.5k last night.

You obviously didn't keep careful track I would regularly get 4/5/6k crits on T5 Rich missions after the nerf. I'll admit yesterday morning it seemed like a stealth buff/prenerf state had returned but as the day went on things evened out. After looking at my profits from the 80 missions I ran yesterday it was on par with what I've been seeing for the last few weeks.

I've ran about 30 missions so far today and it seems no different than before.

If you stop thinking of Slicing as a Mission skill, you may start thinking of it as worthwhile.

 

You're making bank on Diplomacy and Bioanalysis missions now because Biochem is the FOTM crew skill. Everyone wants to level it because it is (perceived as) overpowered and the rest of the crew skills are (perceived as) junk.

 

When BioWare finishes nerfing BioChem and buffs some of the other crew skills, people will start making money on the supplies that drive the buffed skills. That's how MMOs work.

 

The devs have already stated their intent and implemented that into the game via the slicing "adjustment" patch. They intend for slicing missions to be slightly profitable. Because it's a gathering skill.

 

Treat the one-day "buff" we saw as a mistake on BioWare's part. Erroneous rollbacks like that happen all the time in development shops new to build processes and though building software certainly isn't new to BioWare, managing MMO roll-outs is. It was not intentional.

 

Slicing today is as they envision it, or close to it. If you would be happier with another skill, you should switch.

Almost every other gathering skill also makes significantly more than slicing, I just used bioanalysis as an example because it's my biggest moneymaker at the moment.

Their intent wasn't very clear, because what they did was very disjointed from it. Slicing is not even close to the level of other gathering skills, and was a bit behind pre-nerf. There's a disconnect between their statements and their actions, which is why I'm looking for greater clarification. T3-T6 GIFT mission will turn a greater profit than slicing by a large amount.

As it stands, it is very close to worthless, and I only want to know if that's the intent, or if it will be balanced to be in line with other gathering skills, or at least a tenth of other gathering skills.

Frankly, I believe the skill is fundamentally impossible to balance given the credit price of gathering mats will almost always trend upwards over time, and the value of a single credit trend downwards. It would take almost constant balancing to keep in line.

At the moment, the only thing slicing is remotely useful for is shortcuts in some instances. I'm not sure if shorcuts in some instances are worth the 500k to 1 mil a real gathering/mission skill brings in per day.

You obviously didn't keep careful track I would regularly get 4/5/6k crits on T5 Rich missions after the nerf. I'll admit yesterday morning it seemed like a stealth buff/prenerf state had returned but as the day went on things evened out. After looking at my profits from the 80 missions I ran yesterday it was on par with what I've been seeing for the last few weeks.

 

I've ran about 30 missions so far today and it seems no different than before.

I'm talking about green boxes, not blue ones. Not once since the nerf did I get 4.5k+ from a green box before yesterday.

Kinda bummed out this got reverted. Was so happy this morning before servers came down for 1.1 fix.

I for one think slcing is still ok but a bit of a buff would be nice. Personal opinion of mine that they did overnerf it the first time.

Not every facet of this game is up for deliberation with the community. The dev team has control of the game, not you, not me. They have no reason to justify any actions to us, and I like it that way. Community control of the game would end up being a very schizophrenic game.

While this is true, it does not create customer confidence in the game when each week there is a different economic plan. Hmm one week missions make credits, then they lose credits, then back to making credits, then back to missions losing credits.

Two thirds of the missions I ran today were for losses on credits, the two augment missions I ran I got some worthless green items.

I guess it's back to selling materials with jacked up prices for biochem people.

While this is true, it does not create customer confidence in the game when each week there is a different economic plan. Hmm one week missions make credits, then they lose credits, then back to making credits, then back to missions losing credits.

 

Two thirds of the missions I ran today were for losses on credits, the two augment missions I ran I got some worthless green items.

 

I guess it's back to selling materials with jacked up prices for biochem people.

I'm actually hesitant to comment on how much money I make selling biochem mats, given how hard slicing got nerfed for making a tiny fraction of the money.

Yesterday's patch made me want to play again because the restoration of slicing made it so I did not have to play this game at the expense of work, school, or starving a baby/pet to death.

The renerfing of slicing today makes me want to cancel... and I still have 1 day before the billing cycle.

This new nerf has made slicing missions completely unprofitable. We're just asking for a modest profit, we don't want to make 10k each mission.

They went from 4000c profit to -90c per mission. This doesn't make sense. It's called BALANCE.

Make each mission profitable by 100c-3000c and I think everyone will be happy.

Yesterday's patch made me want to play again because the restoration of slicing made it so I did not have to play this game at the expense of work, school, or starving a baby/pet to death.

 

The renerfing of slicing today makes me want to cancel... and I still have 1 day before the billing cycle.

Pick up a different gathering skill. You can make enough to buy a level 50 mount on a single bioanalysis mission, and easily enough to buy the most expensive mounts in the game over the course of a day or two, if you rush to sell and undercut people by a good amount.

Pick up a different gathering skill. You can make enough to buy a level 50 mount on a single bioanalysis mission, and easily enough to buy the most expensive mounts in the game over the course of a day or two, if you rush to sell and undercut people by a good amount.

So if I just log in and pick up bioanalysis, I can do the max missions for free?