You are losing money running missions. You were never intended to make money running missions. You make money harvesting nodes.

 

HUH? You think Bioware just realized credits could be made running slicing missions?

I'm ok with that, but why not just take out slicing altogether than?

Even though I believed the whole time that I was running Slicing missions that it had to be nerfed, I also knew that there really wasn't much use for it at this time. However, I also feel that about my Cybertech and my Underworld. I am sure I might be able to make money, maybe, but if everyone with those skills was selling everything the crafted and received then the market would be flooded and most of it would not sell. So the reality is that most crew skills, at least at the moment, are credit sinks at best. Some give some use along the way. The mods I make and use for myself might be saving me money or something. The hope is that somewhere in the maturation of the game and the economy crafting has some use. Maybe somewhere along the way, those augments and other discoveries from Slicing have some value, but it is hard to know that yet, especially when all we have to base it on are a bunch of relatively low level characters with Slicing nearly maxed out when most other crew skills are more in line with their character levels.

 

In short, Slicing may well be useless now, but at worse if that is the case everyone can drop it and I don't think anyone took a loss on the venture.

the most pimple fact of the matter is there were more important issues than a crew skill that should have been addressed first and they have not been.

You are losing money running missions. You were never intended to make money running missions. You make money harvesting nodes.

 

Yes we were intended do to money. Thats why half the mission were LOCKBOXES mission WHICH ONLY GIVE CREDIT. And have a chance if you crit to give schems.

 

Other gathering always get something that they can sell to make profit. They don't because the nerf is too strong thats the point.

Edited December 28, 2011 by ImperiumAlpha

Very well said OP and I am glad Bioware fix'd it.

That sounds like how an MMO economy should work, as opposed to one where credits flood in at such a level that people can buy everything they want doing the bare minimum.

 

My thoughts too! The cries of the slicers are falling on my deaf ears.

Pretty much every Gathering Professions missions are net losses of money (on average) even though they return materials because the cost and time investments outweigh the value at which you could sell those materials for, but that still allows the mission rewards to offset the full cost of training the skill.

 

Slicing has now been brought in line with that effect, your missions now no longer guarantee free profit, but rather, offset the cost of earning the skill points with a small chance of profit.

 

 

You sir, are wrong. In every sense of the word.

 

I have gathering skills other than slicing and the mats they return, when not used by my crafting, are very profitable. Credits are the Mats of the Slicing profession. The risk of loss is too great now to warrant using that skill.

 

If I spend 1000 credits on a Scavenging mission, I will use the mats for crafting. I see that as paying for the mats. If I spend 1000 on a Slicing mission and only get 800 in return. It's a waste of my time and money. Therefore, not going to do it.

 

This means no Crafting missions on the GM, no schematics on the GM, and less buying of other peoples mats on the GM.

I'm looking at my slicing missions and I see half of them return credit boxes. Why would anyone send their companions out on those? Since the nerf, I've lost credits sending mine out on them.

 

I understand the point that slicing is meant to be a gathering skill and that pursuing slicing nodes is where the real profit lies.

 

But it would be nice to have a reason to send companions on slicing missions. I have reasons to send my companions on archeology missions: they bring back crafting materials that I can use or sell. Whats the point of slicing missions that return credit boxes? To throw credits away?

 

Other than to level slicing, whats the point of slicing missions that return credit boxes?

 

 

Boxes have chance to return schematics or mission recipes. Only slicers can have harvest them and they are actually better than other professions since I cannot sell my plants to anyone else as biochem players will already have bioanaylisis.

 

I have spent quite a bit on schematics and mission recipes, while I haven't sold a single plant from my bioanalysis. I use plants for myself, you sell to other players, all quite balanced out.

The fact of the matter was that slicing was and still is freely available to everyone, therefore there is no imbalance in the economy if someone can go and make the money they need to buy something and then, someone else can use the same system to do the same thing.

 

The economy would not be balanced if only certain individuals where allowed to take slicing as a crew skill and everyone else was not allowed to do this.

 

If everyone can go and pick up slicing then everyone can make money! Therefore completely eliminating the argument that (A) "Slicers make way more money then me" and (B) "Slicers are causing an imbalance in the economy" because © "Everyone can take slicing" fixes all this, everyone can generate credits at the same pace and therefore the economy is balanced.

 

Therefore those that refused to take slicing where just limiting their own growth and causing their own problems therefore I purpose a fix for this! Nerf those that want to nerf something that everyone can use, and leave the rest of us alone.

 

The only imbalance caused by slicing was caused by those individual who refused to take this crew skill and get their handmeouts from Bioware. Star Welfare rules! Well it did.

 

If this was how Bioware intended slicing to work, they would have given use four slots or only required two slots to get a complete "crafting ability". Or just made "slicing" a default skill for everyone. If a player is required to have slicing to "maximize their growth", aka enjoy the game to the fullest, it therefor becomes required instead of optional.

 

Like the OP said, its all about credit sources and sinks. All crew skills are designed to be both a sink and a source in this game. I don't have to be an orange post to state that, it is obvious. That is why all missions require credits, and all trained skills cost credits. If one particular crew skill was a source and the rest were a sink, then you would be a fool to not pick the source over the sink, which is what the case was before. NOW, before you go crazy, all crew skills are a potential source of income as well. You gather a node of metal, that metal came from nowhere into your possession, just like looting credits off a mob. You can turn that metal into credits through exchanging it with another player who received credits through some other source. Slicing could potentially be one of those sources, but it was way too lucrative of a source and needed to be reduced.

 

Should you actually make profit off of slicing missions? Maybe a little. Personally I think it would be more fun if you made a profit off of the schematics and augments, with the potential for credits being a bonus. It's up to Bioware to decide. And clearly they made a statement supporting the OP; you should not make profit off of missions alone. They intend the profit in slicing to be from the schematics, missions, and augments.

 

Also, slicing adds a ton of value in Flashpoints, etc. I think Bioware is making their point that it was never intended to be just a click-profit crew skill.

I have 400 scav and there is little to no point in doing the missions except for the flux's. I gather in the world and by doing that offset the 100k+ cost of getting scav to 400.

 

Gathering skills never should have been a money printer at 400, just a supplement to your crafting skill or a way to sell thing on the GTN

 

As for all the folks spouting off about their economics degrees and the like, Slicing enabled those doing it to purchase from VENDORS not players. At the one week mark Specialty Vendor gear is leaps and bounds beyond what a crafter can make currently. Money was LEAVING the economy not stimulating it...

The issue is not that it was broken or even that it needed needing. The trouble is that it made it to live broken then, within two weeks was made completely pointless. It is the fact that myself and many others wasted time getting the skill to 400. It is the fear that this is just the first sign of brute force "balance" fixes to come.

 

Slicing was broken. It should have been addressed in beta.

 

I think you have a point here. I played beta and I knew the situation with Slicing was completely unreasonable. I had also tried out other professions so I was aware how out of balance Slicing was. Other players didn't have the benefit of that, and are blindsided by this. That's why I wanted to make this post to try to explain how out of control it was and why it had to be changed. They just assumed it was normal to be able to make money off running missions. They had no idea other professions can't do that.

 

Perhaps slicing is less useful then other trade skills now. I don't think we'll know until things normalize. Right now there isn't much profit from nodes because there is so much competition and the market is flooded. So it might make sense for BW to wait a bit before making changes.

You sir, are wrong. In every sense of the word.

 

I have gathering skills other than slicing and the mats they return, when not used by my crafting, are very profitable. Credits are the Mats of the Slicing profession. The risk of loss is too great now to warrant using that skill.

 

If I spend 1000 credits on a Scavenging mission, I will use the mats for crafting. I see that as paying for the mats. If I spend 1000 on a Slicing mission and only get 800 in return. It's a waste of my time and money. Therefore, not going to do it.

 

This means no Crafting missions on the GM, no schematics on the GM, and less buying of other peoples mats on the GM.

 

What youre missing is, those 1000 credits you spent on that scavenging mission was a waste of money. You can gather those same mats in 60 seconds in the open world. And while youre at it, spend 5 more minutes gathering those mats, and you can sell those for pure profit or use them to craft and learn blues. Gathering missions should only be used when you cant make it out to the open world and you really need something fast, but then again if it takes 25 minutes for the mission, you may as well go out and farm for a few minutes.

I think the price of mission discoveries from slicing will now soar as no one will be bothering to run slicing missions any more due to lack of profit.

 

Why take slicing when you can just take a different gathering profession and sell the mats you take from running the missions to cover the cost of initiating the mission in the first place.

 

I'm going to hold on to slicing until the economy finds its feet... I won't be running any more slicing missions however. I will wait to see how much the mission discoveries sell for and see whether the small % drop of one is worth the loss in credits in the long term.

I do agree for most of the stuff said from TO but why do we need to nerf something if there are far more important things to be done instead of balancing...... for an example a friend of mine is still not able to speak in all chats

 

besides Slicing via missions is now a much more more sink than the other "gathering" skills becuase i cant even sell the items to compensate the mission price (i just get a box full of money wich is far less from what i paid to get it) only sometimes, wich means not always, ill get a schematic, and here it depends on what this schematic does because the market is flooded with various useless schematics almost everyone already has vice versa "i'll get another arrow into the knee" *cough* and slicing as a gathering skill ... well i was on tatooine and my slicing skill was already at 300 mostly trough gathering on taris and doing augmentation missions. But then theyre already greyed out and yield if im lucky 500 creds.... killing enemys is by far much more profitable than using slicing at all.

 

So the nerf aka the balancing of the skill slicing in my eyes went wrong.

 

btw did you noticed that a lot of missions not related to slicing also got a slight longer mission time?

You sir, are wrong. In every sense of the word.

 

I have gathering skills other than slicing and the mats they return, when not used by my crafting, are very profitable. Credits are the Mats of the Slicing profession. The risk of loss is too great now to warrant using that skill.

 

If I spend 1000 credits on a Scavenging mission, I will use the mats for crafting. I see that as paying for the mats. If I spend 1000 on a Slicing mission and only get 800 in return. It's a waste of my time and money. Therefore, not going to do it.

 

This means no Crafting missions on the GM, no schematics on the GM, and less buying of other peoples mats on the GM.

 

Exactly. The demand goes up for crafting missions and schematics, and like magic all of a sudden its worth slicing again because you can sell your returns once again.

 

Same thing will happen with augments too.

Boxes have chance to return schematics or mission recipes. Only slicers can have harvest them and they are actually better than other professions since I cannot sell my plants to anyone else as biochem players will already have bioanaylisis.

 

I have spent quite a bit on schematics and mission recipes, while I haven't sold a single plant from my bioanalysis. I use plants for myself, you sell to other players, all quite balanced out.

 

Uhm... you are using your plants for a product that you can sell eventually (at higher ranks).

 

Lockbox have a chance to yield a mission or a schematic, a small chance at that as every slicer can tell you.

 

I am sure you have a chance to earn rare materials on your missions as well. What would you say, if your missions only had that chance and were otherwise a complete money sink yielding no plants at all?

 

Also you can not compare a gathering skill that supports a crafting with a gathering skill thats sole purpose is to yield pure credits.

I do agree for most of the stuff said from TO but why do we need to nerf something if there are far more important things to be done instead of balancing...... for an example a friend of mine is still not able to speak in all chats

 

besides Slicing via missions is now a much more more sink than the other "gathering" skills becuase i cant even sell the items to compensate the mission price (i just get a box full of money wich is far less from what i paid to get it) only sometimes, wich means not always, ill get a schematic, and here it depends on what this schematic does because the market is flooded with various useless schematics almost everyone already has vice versa "i'll get another arrow into the knee" *cough* and slicing as a gathering skill ... well i was on tatooine and my slicing skill was already at 300 mostly trough gathering on taris and doing augmentation missions. But then theyre already greyed out and yield if im lucky 500 creds.... killing enemys is by far much more profitable than using slicing at all.

 

So the nerf aka the balancing of the skill slicing in my eyes went wrong.

 

btw did you noticed that a lot of missions not related to slicing also got a slight longer mission time?

 

 

In the long run, an MMO's economy is the sole greatest thing to focus on. If the economy is over or underinflated, it impacts the gameplay far more than not being able to chat. Don't get me wrong, the chat thing is crucial. It should have been fixed by now. But maybe it was a bigger problem they are still working on. This is several teams of developers. The chat interface team doesn't work on the mission skills. The mission skill team was able to implement a fix that could have potentially ruined the economy of the game and made it fail (read: Vanguard). Hopefully the chat interface team will be able to pull of a similar fix for the next patch.

You sir, are wrong. In every sense of the word.

 

I have gathering skills other than slicing and the mats they return, when not used by my crafting, are very profitable. Credits are the Mats of the Slicing profession. The risk of loss is too great now to warrant using that skill.

 

If I spend 1000 credits on a Scavenging mission, I will use the mats for crafting. I see that as paying for the mats. If I spend 1000 on a Slicing mission and only get 800 in return. It's a waste of my time and money. Therefore, not going to do it.

 

This means no Crafting missions on the GM, no schematics on the GM, and less buying of other peoples mats on the GM.

 

I'm not sure about your server, but rarely am I able to make significant profit off scavenging L4-L5 goods when considering the cost of the mission and the time spent on the mission.

 

A typical moderate yield mission for around ~1000-1100 creds will yield 3-5 pieces of a material that likely won't sell back for the 1000-1100 creds spent on it.

 

Though it could be that my high pop server has an abundance of scavengers relative to other servers where there may be an overabundance of Slicers and dearth of Scavengers.

 

Supply meets demand, but the cost of Gathering Missions is far less profitable than the return on gathering nodes, unless you manage to be the only Scavenger on a server full of Slicers I guess.

Uhm... you are using your plants for a product that you can sell eventually (at higher ranks).

 

Lockbox have a chance to yield a mission or a schematic, a small chance at that as every slicer can tell you.

 

I am sure you have a chance to earn rare materials on your missions as well. What would you say, if your missions only had that chance and were otherwise a complete money sink yielding no plants at all?

 

Also you can not compare a gathering skill that supports a crafting with a gathering skill thats sole purpose is to yield pure credits.

 

Like other posters have said, you make money gathering from a node. You use the mission skill for a chance at rares or to get mats in a pinch. Or to level your skill when you're doing other things.

 

I don't think its possible for any gathering skill to rely on missions and actually make money. Its a convenience thing, as well as a way to get rares. The only trick is for slicing, there is no "base" material. Just credits and rares. So the "base" reward of slicing missions is on par with the actual value of the base rewards from other gathering professions, which is to say a net loss.

 

*edit* obviously depending on the servers economy some times this isn't true, but the general concept, I believe, is valid. But that is the point of crafting. It's a crapshoot depending on how other people interact with the game. Slicing is just a lower risk, lower yielding option for people who don't like the volatile side of economics.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Osirous

Flawed statement. If it was never intended to make money by running missions, then why would they have made missions that return credit cases? They could have made it so that missions only reward augments and missions for other professions. But no, BW added possibility to send companion to get raw credits.

 

The mission reward isn't listed as "Credits" it's listed as "Lockbox." They give you a random box that is most often credits so you get something out of it, but it also has the possibility of giving something else. They did that because missions and schematics are supposed to be rare so they retain value.

Like other posters have said, you make money gathering from a node. You use the mission skill for a chance at rares or to get mats in a pinch. Or to level your skill when you're doing other things.

 

I don't think its possible for any gathering skill to rely on missions and actually make money. Its a convenience thing, as well as a way to get rares. The only trick is for slicing, there is no "base" material. Just credits and rares. So the "base" reward of slicing missions is on par with the actual value of the base rewards from other gathering professions, which is to say a net loss.

 

*edit* obviously depending on the servers economy some times this isn't true, but the general concept, I believe, is valid. But that is the point of crafting. It's a crapshoot depending on how other people interact with the game. Slicing is just a lower risk, lower yielding option for people who don't like the volatile side of economics.

 

Again... the other gathering skills make the money from the product, not from selling the raw materials.

 

For slicing there is no product.

 

And on the normal slicing missions you actually lose money with no return, as it currently is.

 

Also to the point of inflation... I just found a level 46 rare that sells for 8k on a vendor already. Slicing made 36k an hour (check spreadsheets in other threads).

 

Compared to endgame economy slicing was not that bad, that it needed to be hammered into complete uselessness. Ah well.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Twor

I'll reply this to as many threads as I have too.

 

The slicing skill worked perfectly for people using it the same way as any other skill, the problem lays with the no self control people who because they thought to had found a loophole turned their entire game about slicing. If someone had put as much effort into logging in every hour switching to alts to pick up dozens of nodes all over the place, causing them, and everyone doing the same to have much and much more resources available to them than "your average, not doing it" player, it would have gotten changed as well.

 

The only and only fix needed for slicing was removing the ability to run it offline, and therefor on multiple characters. And by that I mean is that while the slicing money is coming in, you need to be leveling, spending, and needing the money you're getting from it.

edit. actually better not post this, too tired to think straight Edited December 28, 2011 by kuunkulta

Dead horse. I spec'd into biochem. This same person will whine about that next. We'll get the same numberless, false comparisons. The original post will have to call for lockouts on trivial content next! People might inflate, the economy. Bogus, numberless non-sense.

 

Slicing gives people, especially new characters, more options to have fun! The original post wants people to fit their, old boring, time consuming way of playing the game. They want people to do work. Barf.

I'm a slicer at 250 skill level which means I'm one of those who were hit the hardest, having not made an absurd amount of money through slicing, but having invested a fairly large amount of time in it. I think you're absolutely right, your argument makes a lot of sense. It's just unfortunate BW didn't see this coming ahead of time...