I've glanced over other slot machine threads, and didn't come across this idea, but I think a reasonable fix for the slot machines would be to add a "sliced" slot machine coin that could be included with the reward for completing the daily/weekly missions. This could include 1x coin for each random flashpoint daily, 2x coin for each pvp daily, and 4x coin for the gsf daily. Then a few more coins for each weekly.

 

I think that these coins would add value back to the slot machines without creating an environment where player's can farm materials from the machines faster than players that are using crew missions to acquire materials.

 

I haven't done the math, and am certainly open to others' feedback but I think if the coin should give players a guaranteed chance to win one of the following materials at significantly higher rates:

50 contraband cartel slot machine coins

20 scavenged scrap

10 assorted droid parts

1 jawa junk

1 cartel certificate

1 faction specific mount

 

Anyway, just an idea, hopefully it's a new one!

While I personally don't have any issues with the slotmachine, I actually think that this is a really good idea. It's an extra incentive for just doing daily missions.

I think this is probably the first post to actually have a suggested implementation for the suggestion that pops up in a few places in the slot machine threads to "limit numbers of uses on the machine". (They usually phrase it as something more like "max of 200 pulls per day, legacy-wide restriction", which just seems completely and totally unenforceable every time they say it.)

 

If I'm reading this right though, you're suggesting that this new type of gambling token would be accepted by the current slot machine as an alternative to the regular vendor-purchased tokens, yes? I get the impression that that's not possible with the way they made these things work so it might turn into a suggestion for a brand new machine. I suspect that the machine can only scan your inventory for the one type of token. Otherwise, the Nightlife event wouldn't have really needed to have two different machines. They could have just coded it to prioritize using kingpin tokens before smuggler tokens and to roll on the two completely different sets of odds depending on which type of token was consumed.

 

So with that in mind, what we would be looking at would be a model where...

1) regular cartel chips are actually removed from being available for direct purchase

2) these new tokens are added as rewards to most heroics over a certain level and to all dailies and weeklies (and they're only available from those sources, no direct purchase)

3) new tokens are fed into the new machine for your chance to win one of the prizes you listed (I'm not sure that the cartel token payout on a single win would be quite that high though... Even with the number of attempts limited so strictly by number of dailies and weeklies that a player can find the time to run, that would add up to a ton of cartel tokens pretty quickly.)

4) any cartel tokens that you win can then be fed into the rep-dispenser slot machine (and any others like it that they add later)

 

It would still be advisable that the cartel machine should be altered to feature a ton of random items from the associated packs so that there is something besides rep tokens (something with some perceived value) available as prizes that fit within the intended theme of the machine. This would also act as a distraction from the overnerfed Jawa scrap and cartel certificate drops on that machine.

 

Wait... So now where is the cost to us in this whole thing? There's a cost in time to complete the dailies to acquire the slicer tokens, but there's no cost in credits and that means that vendoring the rep tokens and selling off mats/crafts/whatever will all be profit. So... Backpedal on that "no direct purchase" thing I said? Perhaps...

 

Perhaps the purchase requirement for a cartel chip is changed to require one of these slicer tokens in addition to the credits cost. Then forget what I said about adding in a new machine to accept the new tokens, and change the cartel machine's drop rates to a middle ground that will offer up plenty of Jawa scrap and cartel certificate drops again. People won't be able to spam slots all day to build up scrap stockpiles as quickly as they were, because they'd need to run their dailies and weeklies to build up a supply of slicer tokens first.

 

edit: I suppose with that approach I ended up describing, the slicer tokens wouldn't necessarily have to be banned from direct purchase either. They would just need to be like the overpriced option in the Nightlife event where it was possible to purchase kingpin tokens directly for 50k each even though it was far more cost effective to buy 50k worth of 1k chips and build up a supply of multiple kingpin tokens by rolling for them. So the slicer tokens would be available at a ridiculous price for the impatient people (plus you still have to pay the fee to convert them to cartel tokens on top of that) and it would be considerably more expensive to acquire scrap and certificates that way than it would be if you took the time to acquire the slicer tokens from dailies and only paid the fee to convert the slicer tokens into cartel tokens... Or they could just make a credits only purchase of cartel tokens that's the ridiculous price and then have a separate purchase option that's a direct trade of 1 slicer token for 1 cartel token.

 

edit2: It's a completely separate subject but I also think that there's a neglected flipside to this whole fiasco in the scrap trade-in rates on the Jawa vendors. It's silly that every single unit of Jawa scrap is a magic super-material that can be transformed into almost ANY material you want. With only a few exceptions, everything is a 1:1 trade. One green scrap can become one unit of desh (grade 1) just as easily as it can become one unit of farium (grade 11). It seems like there ought to be some sort of tiered pricing so that Jawa scrap comes across as a currency instead of a universal super-material. If such a pricing scheme had already been in place when the slot machine became available, it would have created a speed bump on the inflation of purple grade 11 materials entering circulation. The problem might have still been there because the drop rates were indeed high, but it would not have escalated as quickly as it did.

 

I've thrown around some ideas for that pricing scheme elsewhere, but to throw another quick version out there it might look something like:

1 green scrap per unit of 1st tier green materials, add 1 to price for each tier past that

2 blue scrap per unit of 1st tier blue materials, add 2 to price for each tier past that

3 purple scrap per unit of 1st tier purple materials, add 3 to price for each tier past that

(Yes, start purples at a higher price and escalate their cost more quickly, on top of also making sure that methods to obtain Jawa scrap pay out more green than blue and more blue than purple.)

 

So we could be looking at something like 9 purple scrap per unit of top level purple materials. (Four grades per tier.) Instead of having a win of one unit of purple scrap valued at whatever you can sell one unit of grade 11 purple (excluding the Diplomacy and Tech Parts mats since they were the exceptions at 2 per unit and 3 per unit) for on the GTN, it would only be 1/9 of the way towards being able to afford that material. With that controlling factor in place, they would have more wiggle room to bring the drop rates up without technically making them that much more generous, yet we see a higher number of non-rep prizes dropping and we perceive that as a win for us.

 

That whole slicer token thing would be an additional controlling factor. It would take considerable time in actual in-game activities to build up a supply of tokens to use. There would be technical limitations (max number of slicer tokens attainable per character per day if you ran ALL dailies) and practical limitations (max number of dailies that a player actually feels like running or has time to run) to consider. And these could win us even more wiggle room in what they can set the non-rep win rates at. They can tune it for an expected amount of output for "2 hours of dailies plus half an hour at the slots" or something like that instead of having to be wary of the "buy 50 stacks of tokens and click away for 8 hours while binge-watching a series on Netflix (or just setting up a macro so they can leave it alone completely)" type of user.

Edited January 27, 2015 by Muljo_Stpho