As of right now, the hot debate going around ToR is the issue regarding the slicing nerf. For those of you who aren't familiar with the "Slicing Nerf", I'll go through some brief background information.

 

Following half a dozen months of beta testing, in late November BioWare added a new feature to the "Slicing" Crew Skill. This new feature meant that Slicers could now send their companions on Slicing missions to obtain Lockboxes, which would generate raw credits. The reason for the Slicing Nerf was because players could generate well over 2-3 times the amount that they spents (ex. You could spend 400 credits on a mission, 20 minutes later you would open your lockbox and gain 1500 credits) and BioWare thus lowered the credit yield for lockbox missions. However, they lowered the credit yield so much that you would now begin to lose money from missions (ex. You can now spend 400 credits on a mission, 20 minutes later you would open your lockbox and gain 300 credits).

 

The big debate regarding the Slicing Nerf has inspired me to create this thread, which will essentially be an analysis of the difference between Gathering Crew Skills and Mission Crew Skills, because a failure to realize this difference is what is creating such a huge debate regarding the Slicing Crew Skill.

 

NOTE: This thread was created for friendly discussion based upon individual viewpoints. I, nor any other standard player, claim to speak for BioWare or am an accurate representative of their views. Several things that I, and other people, will state are based upon personal opinion and speculation. Please, do not bash other players, or claim any information to be true without proof, whether via quotes from ToR databases, or links to articles and information posted by BioWare. Thanks you!

 

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The difference between Gathering Skills vs Mission Skills is quite a simple concept, which is easily identifiable by the name of the given skill. Gathering Skills, are designed so that a player can make profit off of gathering resources. Missions Skills are designed so that a player can make profit by sending their companions on missions. Now, let's look at these two concepts a little more in depth, with a few examples to go along.

 

Gathering Crew Skills:

 

As stated above a Gathering Crew Skill is designed so that a player can make money by gathering resources and other items, a fairly simple concept. There are three methods that Gathering may be used in order to make profit, Selling, Crafting, and Supplementing

 

Selling resources entails taking the raw resources or other items gained from the Gathering skill and selling them, whether to a vendor or on the Global Trading Network.

 

Crafting entails taking the resources gained and using a Crafting Crew Skill to create finished items, such as weapons, armor, modifications, and a range of other items, which would then be used by the player or sold.

 

Supplementing entails using Gather Skills to obtain non-resource items which are used to aid other Crew Skills, such as Missions Skills and Crafting Skills. Examples include extra Missions and Crafting Schematics.

 

"Simple enough, but how do we get the resources that we use to make money?" With Gathering Skills, there are two methods to obtaining resources, Nodes and Missions.

 

Nodes are objects throughout the game that generate Gathering items, whether resources or supplementary items. When a player encounters a node while adventuring, right-clicking on it will randomly yield different materials, depending on the type of node and the Gathering Skill that the player has. Nodes may be simply found on the ground, or may also be created from slain creatures, such as droids for Scavenging.

 

Missions are assignments given to companions which yield similar results to gathering from nodes. After paying a fee, the companion embarks on the mission for a set amount of time, and upon their return the player receives the materials (if the companion succeeded, that is).

 

"But wait, I thought Missions Crew Skills were completely different than Gathering Skills. So how come you can do Missions for Gather Skills?" Here lies the key difference between Gathering Skills and Mission Skills. When using a Gathering Skill, the primary source of income is from nodes, whereas Missions are used as supplementary methods and are not intended to make profit.

 

What do I mean by this? Nodes aren't always the easiest things to come by and require you to venture out into combat areas. However, sometimes a player needs only 1-2 more resources to craft their item or to have the max of 99 of a resource in order for it to sell better on the GTN, or maybe the player needs a specific type of resource and simply can't find the node for it. Whatever the reason, here is where the Missions portion of Gather Skills comes in handy. For a small fee , Gather Missions allows a player to save themselves the hassle of finding a node while still producing their materials.

 

"Oh I get it, so the point of a Gathering Skill is to go out exploring and find resources, but Missions are there for those few occasions when you're willing to spend credits in order to make the job faster." Exactly, with nodes you're spending time to save money and with missions you're spending money to save time, but remember that you can't put a price on time and since Gathering Skills are geared towards making profit from nodes you're not intended to make money from Missions.

 

Mission Crew Skills:

 

As stated near the top of the post, a Mission Crew Skill is intended so a player can make money off of Missions, just like the name suggests. But it's not like a player's companion can return with credits. Similarly to Gathering Skills, there are a few different ways that a player can make money from Mission Skills: Selling, Crafting, Supplementing, and Consuming.

 

Selling for Mission Skills is just like with Gathering Skills. It doesn't matter what it is that you receive from your mission, the simplest way to make money is to sell your rewards. However, since Missions Skills allow more of a choice than the nodes of a Gathering Skill, a smart Missioner plays the market, paying attention to what items are selling for higher than normal and gearing their Missions towards those items.

 

Crafting is exactly the same as it was with Gathering Skills, where a player uses the received resources to craft items. However, be careful not to relate the types of skills too much. When using Crafting Skills, certain items will require Mission Resources and certain items will require Gathering Resources. The two types of skills will never cross, so you will never get Gathered Resources from Missions or Missions Resources from Gathering.

 

Supplementing, again, is just like Gathering Skills. Missions can yield results such as Schematics, which a player may use to aid their Crafting Skills.

 

Consuming is very similar to Supplementing, in which a player uses an item obtained through Missions to aid the player. However, Supplementing aids Crew Skills whereas Consuming uses an item to aid the player in some other aspect of gameplay. Examples of Consumable Items obtained from Missions are Companion Gifts and Light/Dark Side Points.

 

One key aspect of Missions Skills that all players should note, is that Missions are the only way to use Missions Skills. Whereas Gathering Skills have nodes, Mission Skills have no other method of obtaining items, which means that until a player has more than one companion that player should be prepared to either do a lot of questing without their companion or do a lot of waiting for their companion to finish missions.

 

What Acutally Makes The Different?

 

"So far Mission Skills sound just like Gathering Missions, they just give you different items. So what's the real difference?"

 

On the surface, there is only one difference between Mission Skills and Gathering Missions, which is the items received. Gathering is geared entirely towards supporting Crafting, but Missions can be used for Crafting but serve other purposes as well. Also, the Missions from Missions Skills usually take a longer amount of time for companions to complete than there Gathering Skills equivalents, as well as costing more credits (in most cases, but not all).

 

"But you said that Gathering Missions aren't meant to make profit, but Missions skills are. How come? What's stopping me from doing Gathering Missions and selling my results for profit?"

 

The thing that BioWare knew from the start would govern Gathering Missions is the simple economic law of supply and demand. Gatherers have the option to explore and gather raw materials at zero cost, which helps to lower the cost of their items. However, Missioners HAVE to spend credits in order to gain their items, which will raise the cost of their items, especially since they have a chance of failure.

 

Here's a simple example using and in-game scenario (Please note that all of the base numbers are made up for the purposes of the example):

 

There are four friends that all play ToR together. They are called Gatherer A (GA), Gatherer B (GB), Missioner A (MA), and Missioner B (MB)

 

GA and GB both just started their new Gathering Skill, Archaeology. After walking around and gathering Orange Crystals from nodes, GA gets tired of gathering from nodes and decides that he's going to send his companion of Archaeology Missions while he does a quest, not wasting his time to go out of his way for nodes. After four missions, GA spent 100 credits per missions and received two Orange Crystals per mission, a total of 400 credits spent and 8 Orange Crystals. GA then decides that he's going to sell his Orange Crystals on the Global Trade Network for 500 credits, making 100 credits in profit. Pretty good for not doing any work.

 

Meanwhile GB has been questing. Here and there along the way he would spot a node on his map and spend a minute or two killing some extra NPCs in order to gather some Orange Crystals from the node. After finishing his quests and returning to [insert location here] with 8 Orange Crystals, he goes to the Global Trade Network to sell his Orange Crystals. Doing a quick check to see what other people are selling them for, GB sees that someone is selling the same number of Crystals for 500 credits (GA). Being a smart businessman and having done a bit of research on Archaeology Missions, GB sells his 8 Orange Crystals for a total of 400 credits, 100 less than his competitor who used Gathering Missions. GB knows fully well that people will always buy his Orange Crystals over GA's because GA will never be able to match his price and still make a profit. Once GB's crystals sell out, people will then begin to buy from GA, but that means it takes GA longer to sell his Crystals

 

The two gatherers spent the same amount of time playing the game, yet GB will make hundreds more in profit than GA, and will sell his Crystals faster than GA will. If demand for Orange Crystals begins to go up, the GB has a better ability to raise his price than GA, because he has a 100 credit buffer zone to raise his prices, plus GA can't raise his prices too much or people will stop buying. However, if demand for Orange Crystals goes down and people stop buying both GA's crystals, he will never be able to get his prices low enough for people to buy his Crystals (unless he wants to lose money), plus GB has as much room as he wants to lower his prices and still make a profit.

 

Thus, the law of supply and demand makes it very difficult for Gathering Missions to turn a profit.

 

Now, back to MA and MB. Both players picked up the Treasure Hunting Skill in order to sell Gemstones. Both players will send a companion on Missions while they quest or do other things. If a Treasure Hunting Mission for Gemstones costs 100 credits and produces a single Gemstone, both MA and MB will be on level playing ground, because there is only one way to obtain that Gemstone. After each player obtains 4 Gemstones, MA goes to the Global Trading Network and sells his 4 Gemstones for 550 credits, 160 credits of profit.

MB, in a similar manner to what GB did, will take his 4 Gemstones that he got and sell them for 540 (or 530 or 525, doesn't really matter) so that way his prices will beat those of MA and people will want his products more. The faster his products sell, the faster he can send his companions out on more Missions, and the faster he can begin selling more Gemstones.

 

The next day MA notices that his Gemstones didn't sell. After the two gather 4 more Gemstones each, MA will check other people's prices for Gemstones and see that MB is selling them for 490, so he decides to sell them for 480 so that his prices beat MB's. The day after, something similar will happen and MB will lower is prices to 510.

 

This will go back and forth until, eventually, the market stabilizes. Everyone's Gemstones are selling for around 500 credits, give or take 10 credits (depending on how long you're willing to wait for your Gemstones to sell) and everyone is making profit because everyone is on even playing ground.

 

 

That long, ridiculous, stupid example spells out the difference between Gathering Crew Skills and Missions Crew Skills in a nut shell. It all comes down to the primary source of income for the given type of skill.

 

"So what's stopping me from just spending all of my time doing Missions and making lots of money?" The answer is nothing. If someone wanted to, they could grab a Mission Skill such as Underworld Trading, spend all their time doing it, selling their loot, and making a lot of money. But again, supply and demand! If it were that easy to make money, everyone would do it, and if everyone's doing it then there are too many people selling and not enough people buying. Prices drop, and soon you're making just as much profit as before for even more work. The bottom line is: In the end, the market will even itself out. It may take a few days, it may take a few weeks, it might be a month or two, but eventually it will happen.

 

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Back to the top, how does all this relate to the Slicing Nerf?

 

The reason the whole issue with the Slicing Nerf made me think to write this post is because everyone's complaint about whether the Skill needed a nerf eventually boils down to the fundamentals that I've detailed above. People constantly argue thing like "Slicing pumped credits into the market," "Slicing brought in too many credits, everyone could afford the most expensive gear," "More money means you don't have to grind NPCs!" Everyone is arguing about what is the proper amount of profit that Slicers should make per Mission. The answer is 0.

 

Slicing, as it started before the November update, would only produce augments, missions, and schematics. Lockboxes were added because there wasn't high enough demand for the other Slicing items. The problem with slicing is that it is, as many players have complained, printing money. Slicing, before the nerf, meant that you could send your companions on missions while you watched a movie and, by the time the movie was done, the player now has 150k credits. There lies the problem with Slicing, either you're making lots of raw credits or you're not making enough money to make it worth it, there can NEVER be a happy medium.

 

 

First of all, Slicing is a GATHERING Skill and not a Mission Skill. If BioWare had intended it to be a Mission Skill then that's what they would have made it, so for the love of God please stop saying Slicing is designed to make huge profit off of missions. What BioWare needs to do is increase the spawn rate of slicing nodes, which will decrease the amount of people that are using Slicing as a Mission Skill.

 

Second, players are not meant to produce credits. NPCs produce credits, whether through drops or selling to vendors, and those credits are then pumped into the market when someone wants to buy something. I've heard the comment many times that "I play a game to play, not to work, and grinding is work, so I shouldn't have to grind NPCs to make money." Excellent deduction! You are absolutely right! And the truth of the game has always been (and still is, even after the nerf) that you don't have to grind to make money, that's what the Crew Skills were made for. Obviously you can't earn credits for doing nothing, which is what people were doing with Slicing pre-nerf, so you have to do SOMETHING (and sitting in a chair and watching a timer count down to zero is not something). If you're not willing to put in some effort to get your credits then you shouldn't be playing an MMO, you should be playing a 1 player game where you can type in a cheat code and get all the money you want.

 

Lastly, Slicing for Lockboxes, as a concept, is entirely stupid. I can understand understand getting them from nodes because it's basically the same thing as killing NPCs for money (you're just avoiding the NPCs instead of killing them) and it requires you to do some work for your money.

 

The dumbest argument I read on the forums for why you should be able to make lots of profit off of Lockbox Missions was this: "Slicing fueled the economy and kept it alive. It was the largest source of income in the game and BioWare removed it. Having lots of money in the game won't affect the economy anyways because then Slicers will spend more money per item and eventually prices will go up, so everything evens out."

 

This is a comment I need to address because, although it is the weakest argument, it's the one that I see the most. I can, off the top of my head, list 5 good reasons that everything in that comment is false.

 

1. There should be no single crew skill that fuels the entire in-game economy and is it's largest source of income. Income from Lockbox Missions should be equal to me doing Scavenging Missions and selling the items to a vendor (By the way, if I did that I wouldn't even make half the money I spent), which should be equal to the Missions of every other Gather Skill. When added up, the money pumped into the economy due to each Crew Skill should be roughly equal.

 

2. Having the prices of everything go up is a terrible thing called inflation. Albeit, inflation in small amounts is healthy for an economy, but at the rate slicing was going the GDP of ToR would have doubled at a minimum.

 

3. It's impossible for the prices of "everything" to go up because there will always be some services that cost the same, such as repair costs for equipment and training cost for abilities. Let's pretend that BioWare intended half of your money earned per level to go to abilities, then add billions of free credits to the economy, and now a player is spending less than a third of his credits on abilities. Inflation when certain services have fixed prices would ruin the game.

 

4. People can only spend so much money. As a slicer, if someone make 100k credits and for 50k credits can get the best equipment for his level, what happens to the other 50k credits? It gets locked away and goes to buying extra inventory space, or get's spent on purple mods Now you have all of the slicers with the absolute best technology, and extra money stashed away, and everyone else is left with what they were meant to have; mostly greens and blues, a couple oranges, maybe a purple or two.

 

5. If everyone has lots of money, then bad things begin to happen. Relating to numbers 2 and 3; a player has a certain Cost of Living which is equal to his repair costs plus his ability costs. Since that number will never change, if there is large-scale inflation then that means players will have more money left over to spend. Using the examples from number 3 and 4, if BioWare intended for a player to spend 50% of their money per level on the Cost of Living, that means they intended for a player to spend the other 50% on new items and upgrades. When inflation happens, now a player is spending 25% on the CoL, and the other 75% on new items and upgrades. The problem is, however, that no matter how much the price of an item goes up, it will always cost the same percentage of your money. If a Jacket42 costs 500 credits, which is 5% of you money per level, and inflation causes it to go up to 1500 credits, it doesn't make any difference because Jacket42 will still cost 5% of your money, the only difference is you have a larger percentage to spend until everyone has lots of money and everyone has the best of everything. And if everyone has the best items that they can get, what the hell is the point in playing the game? The point of an MMO is to work to be the best that you can be, which is useless if every level 50 has the absolute max.

 

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If you lasted all the way to the bottom of this post, I applaud you. I already know that when I go on rants I tend to ramble and repeat myself...a lot. I hope you found the big mess above useful and I hope if gave you a different perspective on how Crew Skills work.

 

Let the commenting begin.

I lift my hat to you, Sir. A perfect, well-constructed explanation of how it works and why slicing is where it is right now. Unfortunately your post will go swoosh over the heads of the whiners as they most likely lack the patience to read that much text at once

I'm impressed by how well thought out your post is laid out. I commend you on that. Now for the bad news. It's mostly opinion based at best. None of us work or were in BW's development meetings, so no one can truly infer the intentions of slicing. Nor can anyone speculate on an economy that's only been around for two weeks at the time of the nerf.

To make any such bold statements w/o actually monitoring the economy for trends over a proportional amount of time shows ignorance. I don't intend that to be offensive to you or anyone else but it takes facts, not guess work.

 

I could argue that BW put those lockboxes in slicing because they wanted people to make money and use it as a supplement to crafting. Thus rendering your entire post moot. Did they believe people would have abused it? My guess would be yes, but maybe not in the amount that has (or believed to have been) done. Again, I don't work for BW, so I can't really say. Like you (like it or not), I have no raw data to say either way. Which is why many are clammering for an official response from BW. If they actually came out and honestly (for better or worse) Explain slicing and there intentions behind all of this including the nerf, then all the arguments for both sides would simmer down except for the occasional troll.

I lift my hat to you, Sir. A perfect, well-constructed explanation of how it works and why slicing is where it is right now. Unfortunately your post will go swoosh over the heads of the whiners as they most likely lack the patience to read that much text at once

 

Thank you. Although, I do sympathize with people that don't want to read the post. Even I admit that it's a little too long.

 

I'm impressed by how well thought out your post is laid out. I commend you on that. Now for the bad news. It's mostly opinion based at best. None of us work or were in BW's development meetings, so no one can truly infer the intentions of slicing. Nor can anyone speculate on an economy that's only been around for two weeks at the time of the nerf.

To make any such bold statements w/o actually monitoring the economy for trends over a proportional amount of time shows ignorance. I don't intend that to be offensive to you or anyone else but it takes facts, not guess work.

 

I knew from the start that my post would me mostly opinion based (I even tagged a section stating so near the top of the post). And to answer some of your points. Yes, to some people the economy is "new", but to someone who has been beta testing the game for months has already seen a smaller scale of how the economy will operate (I may be wrong, I may be a little off, but I'm saying that with my experience I can at least make a ballpark estimate).

 

As to my speculation regarding how the skills operate, I'll let you into my through process: From the start of playing the game, I saw a single trend which was that most Mission Skills were basically the same, most Crafting Skills were basically the same, and most Gather Skills were basically the same. The only thing that distinguished the two was output. That theory was the basis for my entire post. Also, I knew that there HAD to be an intended difference between Missions Skills and Gathering Missions, otherwise BioWare wouldn't have made them separate categories.

 

 

While this post largely fits in with the current slicing debate, that wasn't its original intent. I've been meaning to write this post for weeks, simply to give people a general idea of [how I thought] Crew Skills should work, and how their operations were intended to be unilateral. In my opinion, the game creators would never intentionally make one skill superior to another because that creates a division of wealth. This also lead me to believe (in relevance to one of your comments) that they would never intend slicing as a money booster for the economy, they would simply increase gains across the board so that way everyone is gaining money instead of a select group.

 

The slicing debate simply sparked me to finally write the post, and then I applied my theories to the Slicing Nerf.

While I applaud you for a well thought out post/argument, I do take some exception to the following.

 

Everyone is arguing about what is the proper amount of profit that Slicers should make per Mission. The answer is 0.

 

If this is true, then slicing should not have missions at all (or at least none of the "lockbox"variety). The only return on a lockbox mission is credits. If the return is less than the cost of the mission, what is the point of having the missions at all? As long as the missions exist, they need a valid reason for being in the game, and given that they return credits they should have a positive net gain.

1. There should be no single crew skill that fuels the entire in-game economy and is it's largest source of income. Income from Lockbox Missions should be equal to me doing Scavenging Missions and selling the items to a vendor (By the way, if I did that I wouldn't even make half the money I spent), which should be equal to the Missions of every other Gather Skill. When added up, the money pumped into the economy due to each Crew Skill should be roughly equal.

 

Wait...what? How do gathering missions pump ACTUAL CREDITS into the economy? I know it has value in credits but if everyone just had gathering skills where are these credits coming from other than trash loot and mission rewards?

If this is true, then slicing should not have missions at all (or at least none of the "lockbox"variety). The only return on a lockbox mission is credits. If the return is less than the cost of the mission, what is the point of having the missions at all? As long as the missions exist, they need a valid reason for being in the game, and given that they return credits they should have a positive net gain.

 

You still gain skill points in slicing for doing these missions, right? Also, while you may lose credits on single lockbox missions, you will also gain credits on other lockbox missions. The question is, over a long period of time, do you gain more than you spend? If you do, then it is working as it should.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Blekael

A very long post masked with a great amount of information trying to hide a personal opinion.

 

All crew skills take up one of three spaces a single character can have and thus they all should be near equal in value.

 

No one skill should be nerfed to the point of being unprofitable in any aspect of it. There is not ONE SINGLE crew skill that cannot turn a profit from the TIME BEING SPENT on it with one exception...slicing.

 

There is not ONE single crew skill, gathering OR mission only that cannot make a PROFIT from doing a mission...you do remember that gathering skills have missions also right? Yeah, all of them can make a PROFIT from it. The idea that raw cash is somehow different is logical fallacy.

 

A 20 minute long slicing mission is 20 minutes spent waiting for the mission to end. Does not matter if im sitting on the thrown pitching a loaf, its 20 minutes, just like for any other crew skill.

 

The question IS, what does slicing do? What can it produce and what can come from it? THEN compare it to other skills.

 

Its SIMPLE.

 

You pick the crew skill, take ANY SINGLE grade 4 crew skill, take the items from it, sell them on the GTN for the going rate...then find out how much your profit is for the time spent on that mission.

 

Now do the same for a grade 4 lockbox and tell me if the profit for the time spent is near the same...it isnt thus the slicing nerf was too great. What Bioware SHOULD have done is INCREASE THE DROP RATE OF SCHEMATICS to offset the drop in raw credits.

 

Slicing is meant to make money, its what it DOES...if you reduce it WITHOUT replacing it with something else to take up the drop then you just made every single other skill more valuable.

 

And this is coming from someone who doesnt even have slicing.

@ Gregordunbar

 

You make it sound as if lockboxes are the only mission you can do with slicing. When I do treasure hunting, I can do a mission for a lockbox. Sometimes I get less credits than I spent. other times I get some credits as well as an item I can sell. In the end, I come out ahead, but it's your choice to send them on missions for lockboxes or for augments. Not to mention, there are still world nodes you can gather from via slicing. Slicing is currently on par with other gathering crew skills as far as I have seen (post "nerf").

Edited January 2, 2012 by Blekael

It doesn't really matter if there are nodes or not, and it doesn't really matter if there are other mission types for slicers or not. What matters is that there is a mission that is designed to return credits and that has a rather large chance for a 'successful' mission to be net negative credit gain. One of two things needs to be done.

 

Either:

 

1) Make all 'successful' lockbox missions have a net positive gain (don't care how large, just that it is guaranteed to be positive).

 

Or

 

2) Remove lockbox missions entirely and replace them with some other kind of mission. Say Recipe missions or something along those lines.

 

Additionally, lets not forget that the potential return on slicing (for lockbox missions) is the one of the, if not the only, crafting income potential in the game that is not tied to the economy. The return is static, no matter the cost of items on the GTN.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Phaedrynn

So my Treasure Hunting should also be buffed? When I send my crew out to find lockboxes via TH, sometimes when I get it back, I get less credits than I spent on the mission. No one is crying out on the forums because this is the case for TH, but it matters to everyone in the world that it happens in slicing now?

 

Edit:

 

Slicing also doesn't ALWAYS return less than you spend. I have still seen slicing missions return 1000 more credits than were spent on the mission in the first place, and that's not even at max level. EVERY mission doesn't have to have a net gain for the skill to have an overall net gain without touching a single node.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Blekael

@ Gregordunbar

 

You make it sound as if lockboxes are the only mission you can do with slicing. When I do treasure hunting, I can do a mission for a lockbox. Sometimes I get less credits than I spent. other times I get some credits as well as an item I can sell. In the end, I come out ahead, but it's your choice to send them on missions for lockboxes or for augments. Not to mention, there are still world nodes you can gather from via slicing. Slicing is currently on par with other gathering crew skills as far as I have seen (post "nerf").

 

There are no missions with slicing that produces anywhere NEAR the profit of missions from EVERY SINGLE OTHER crew skill past grade 2.

 

Not one.

 

None.

 

Nada.

 

Null.

 

Nill.

 

Zilch.

 

Start looking at the ENTIRE CREW SKILL and stop comparing a small portion of one like your example because that skill can produce vast amounts of money other ways with missions, which Slicing cannot.

 

As I said, Bioware should have INCREASED THE AMOUNT OF SCHEMATIC DROPS to offset the credit drop so slicing remains viable with missions. Derp.

Slicing is currently on par with other gathering skills. Slicing is NOT (as stated in the OP's post) a mission skill. it is a GATHERING skill. If you want to make profit in just missions alone, then you are doing it wrong. If I want to make profit in only missions for Treasure Hunting, then I am doing it wrong. This is the point of the entire thread, and one which you must have missed.

 

Whether you are looking at one part of slicing or you are looking at it as a whole, slicing is currently comparative to any other gathering skill.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Blekael

All crew skills take up one of three spaces a single character can have and thus they all should be near equal in value.

 

And yet the whining about Slicing far exceeds the complaints about, say, Scavenging and Bioanalysis.

 

You see, Scavenging and Bioanalysis can harvest from Nodes created by dead creatures. Archeology and Slicing cannot. Even without that, Scavenging and Bioanalysis nodes are far more common than Archeology and Slicing nodes. Scavenging nodes also have a chance to net more materials (technically more types of materials, because there's a chance of getting normal amounts of two, rather than only one, material) per node than Archeology. I'm not sure about Bioanalysis.

Archeology has three different types of nodes (and three different types of materials) versus only two types for Scavenging and one type for Slicing. Again, not sure about Bioanalysis. In addition, Scavenging can get both types of material (in normal amounts) from a single node regardless of type.

Scavenging supplies materials to three different Crafts, Bioanalysis supplies only to one. Archeology supplies to two and Slicing supplies to none.

Scavenging, in short, is better than Archeology. Bioanalysis is somewhere in the middle, if for no other reason than that Craft it supplies is currently the only one remotely useful in 'End Game'.

 

Underworld Trading and Treasure Hunting both have 'Companion Gift' missions. Underworld Trading produces more actual Gifts than Treasure Hunting.

Treasure hunting instead produces 'gift fragments' traded with the Curator for actual gifts. On the one hand Curator Gifts give more affection than 'regular' gifts. On the other, Fragments are useless until they're traded in for a gift and you need specific numbers of them for specific gifts.

It's possible to spend 20k on 'Gift' missions for Treasure Hunting and not end up with a single gift worth of Artifact Fragments (nor a single gift). It's also possible to spend only about 400 credits on 'Gift' missions and end up with enough Fragments for a Quality 5 Purple gift.

UT will get a gift on every success, but a Purple Quality 5 gift may require 20 3k missions to get.

 

Neither Synthweaving nor Armortech can stand up to Raid gear, but only two (max) out of five of the companions for each class has any use for Synthweaving produced gear, so Armortechs have more chances to sell to players wanting to kit out their companion for solo play. (Not that anyone bothers).

 

tl;dr:

Not all Crew Skills are made equal, yet only Slicing got whined to death.

Whether you are looking at one part of slicing or you are looking at it as a whole, slicing is currently comparative to any other gathering skill.

 

Which is ********, because the other Gathering skills aren't even remotely comparable to each other either.

 

Sorry, was I supposed to explain that in flowery words and longwinded arguments? I can't I'm too tired of the blatant tunnelvision Slicing whine is infected with.

 

That thing you said is ********.

 

And I'm not even a Slicer.

I'm not a slicer either. I have Artifice, Treasure hunting, and Archaeology. My girlfriend has Slicing though (She had it for one day pre-nerf), and she still had enough to buy both our piloting skills at level 25. I was too poor from sinking all my money into my own skills, and she was slicing away at every node she found as we leveled. Ended up with over 90k credits by the time we hit 25, and that was after spending money on some of my training because I had just sent my crew on too many missions instead of saving up that money. Edited January 2, 2012 by Blekael

I'm not a slicer either. I have Artifice, Treasure hunting, and Archaeology. My girlfriend has Slicing though (She had it for one day pre-nerf), and she still had enough to buy both our piloting skills at level 25. I was too poor from sinking all my money into my own skills, and she was slicing away at every node she found as we leveled. Ended up with over 90k credits by the time we hit 25, and that was after spending money on some of my training because I had just sent my crew on too many missions instead of saving up that money.

 

Yes, replace 'girlfriend' with 'brother' and that's me.

 

It also does not illustrate anything regarding your point. So... Grats on having a girlfriend... I guess?

Way to find the point in the post?

 

I'm not saying that slicing shouldn't be changed at all. people seem to think that lockboxes are the only way to use the skill though. Augments can be obtained through missions and can also be sold. More Schematics would definitely be nice, but in it's current form, slicing can do as well as any other gathering skill. That's the only point i am trying to make. People just whine now because it's not as easy to make the money they were making before, never mind that slicing is still easier to make money with than other gathering crew skills.

Way to find the point in the post?

 

I'm not saying that slicing shouldn't be changed at all. people seem to think that lockboxes are the only way to use the skill though. Augments can be obtained through missions and can also be sold. More Schematics would definitely be nice, but in it's current form, slicing can do as well as any other gathering skill. That's the only point i am trying to make. People just whine now because it's not as easy to make the money they were making before, never mind that slicing is still easier to make money with than other gathering crew skills.

 

Nothing in the above was evident from your previous post, but at least you clarified it.

 

But no, see, the problem is that it's f-ing hard, as you well know, to make money with Archeology and much less hard to make money with Scavenging. In fact Scavenging can easily make more money than Slicing, depending on the server economy.

 

So to say that 'Slicing is in line with the other Gathering skills' implies that the other gathering skills are all equal, they quite blatantly are not, but only slicing gets grief.

Well said post.

 

If slicing needs any buff, it would be to increase the rate of getting mission discoveries and schematics.

 

Sending companions out for gathering missions is a credit sink. It costs 1400 to send them out, get back 2 mat that sells for 200 - 400 credits each on the GTN.

Awesome post OP.

You are dead on.

 

 

kind regards, Melf

 

 

ps. My apologies for a reply that doesn't add much to the discussion, but I want to be able to find it again and by posting here I am subscribed to the thread.

Slicing is currently on par with other gathering skills.

 

No it is not.

 

1 grade 3 gathering node from any other crew skill will yeild upwards of 1000 credits worth of materials that can be sold on the GTN AND they can also be used to create an item.

 

1 grade 3 slicing node will yield 200-500 credits with a few crits 500-800 credits with NOTHING to make an item with. And it only gets worse the higher the grade node, grade 5 materials are going for upwards of 1k credits EACH. tap 1 node you get 3-6 items...no lockbox at that grade will come close to that.

 

Slicing does not stack up to gethering skills at either gathering or their missions.

 

I WILL SAY IT ONE MORE TIME TO PROVE YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO INTENTION OF FAIRNESS TOWARDS SLICING BECAUSE YOU WILL IGNORE IT YET AGAIN...the cut in credits to slicing should have been offset with a higher yield of schematics to keep it in line profit wise with other crew skills.

Edited January 2, 2012 by gregordunbar

double Edited January 2, 2012 by gregordunbar

Here is my two cents on the issue. I do understand the arguments that are being thrown around regarding the economy and the other crew skills, however this is just how I feel personally about the slicing change. I find the problem to be with slicing (as I believe was partially stated earlier) is that right now as a lvl 37 sage with Arch, Synth, and Slicing at 400, I feel as if I am now stuck in 'limbo' with slicing. To me, it really feels like this was a hasty decision to suddenly nerf slicing to the degree that they did, and then basically say nothing about it. This is the first MMO where I felt that I could really enjoy myself and have FUN playing the game, without having to grind or farm unless I WANT to. Now does that mean that I should be able to make over 100k a day with just clicking a few buttons? No. But I also think that by making it a gamble as to whether you will even get your money back for the mission is unacceptable. The fact that I didn't have to spend hours grinding or questing just to pay for my basic needs (such as repairs and class skills) was what made it so enjoyable for me. I didn't mind making my 3rd crew skills Slicing since I knew I could at least make credits with it. With the current state of Slicing, I don't even bother to run missions as it is just too much of a gamble. I'm not sure that people understand that (currently) Slicing is essentially a wasted Crew Skill that I have. The lockboxes return less than the missions cost, you only get other patterns or missions if you critical (which is the only thing that you can make money off of right on now the GTN), and augments might as well just not exist for how poorly they sell for the 1.5k+ mission costs for grade 6.

 

For those people who say "just farm nodes" I think they are somewhat missing the point of having the companion system in the first place. Having played WoW since Vanilla (both casually and "hard-core"), I was very accustomed to constantly grinding in my spare time. I have no problem if someone wants to spend hours traveling around to find slicing nodes to make money, but to say that I MUST do that to make money is absurd. To me, it really feels like that contradicts what BW was trying to do with ToR.

 

Anyway those are basically my thought.s Not really a QQ, just more frustration that I have no idea what is to happen in the future. Feel free to tell me how much of a ******* I am ;D.

Good to see that people were at least mostly reading my post through. Much of the criticism that I've gotten has already been addressed in my OP, and I'll comment on some of the criticism now.

 

For those people who say "just farm nodes" I think they are somewhat missing the point of having the companion system in the first place. Having played WoW since Vanilla (both casually and "hard-core"), I was very accustomed to constantly grinding in my spare time. I have no problem if someone wants to spend hours traveling around to find slicing nodes to make money, but to say that I MUST do that to make money is absurd. To me, it really feels like that contradicts what BW was trying to do with ToR.

 

Here is the grand distinction between Gathering Skills and Mission Skill. BioWare made a system set up to be the best of both worlds (damn it you stupid song, out of my head!). There are many players who prefer to grind, it's what they're used to and what they enjoy spending their time doing. Great! They can take a Gathering Skill and grind to their heart's content. But on the other hand, there are people who would prefer to take advantage of the companion system that has been set up because they hate grinding. Perfect! BioWare has a Skill for you too, it's called a Mission Skill.

 

My personal opinion: If you hate the concept of grinding, then maybe a gathering skill simply isn't for you. You said "I have no problem if someone wants to spend hours traveling around to find slicing nodes to make money, but to say that I MUST do that to make money is absurd." You're dealing with this as an obsolete: grind or don't make money. This may be the case with Slicing, but there are plenty of other skills that are quite the opposite.

 

I WILL SAY IT ONE MORE TIME TO PROVE YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO INTENTION OF FAIRNESS TOWARDS SLICING BECAUSE YOU WILL IGNORE IT YET AGAIN...the cut in credits to slicing should have been offset with a higher yield of schematics to keep it in line profit wise with other crew skills.

 

Perfect example of reading most of the OP. I don't blame you for skimming since it's quite long, so I'll reiterate.

 

In my OP I agreed with you on this 100%. No one denies that Slicing needed a nerf, but at the same time most people agree that the nerf was simply too much. As you said, what they needed to do was remove Lockboxes as a raw source of credits and replace it with some other commodity that can be sold for credits.

 

Now, to comment on your other posts: I disagree on your comments regarding Slicing's comparison to other skills. Every skill should be completely equal in income, whether it be from selling your mats or what have you. Where it was pre-nerf, Slicing made WAY more than any other Gathering Skill, hence the nerf. Where it is post-nerf, while it does make less from Missions than other Gathering Skills, it doesn't make THAT much less, simply enough that it required a tweak from BioWare.

 

When I send my companions on Scavenging Missions at Grade 2-3 (That's all the farther my current Scavenger is, but I had one at 400 on beta) and sell the mats on the GTN, I will usually lose money. If I use the mats, along with those from my UT Missions, to make a Cyber item and sell it, I will usually break even, sometimes making a profit. From what I've heard, the other Gathering Skills are similar (Haven't done any other than Slicing and Scavenging, so I can't speak from personal experience) in that missions usually lose you money. For Gathering Skills you should be gathering from nodes. If you want to make money off of Missions, drop Slicing and grab an extra Mission Skill.

 

And lastly, regarding your comment about Scavenging and Bio. Yes, they are the only two Gathering Skills that can harvest from dead creatures. However, this is offset by the economy. Again, I never had bio so I can't speak on it, but for Scavenging raw mats sell for very low prices. Why? Because there are a lot of scavengers, since it feeds 3 different crafting skills, and Scavenging yields are larger number of resources. However, just because they get more mats, doesn't mean that they're better. When you have too many people getting too many mats, the price goes down due to the laws of Supply and Demand. However, where slicing was before, since people were generating raw credits, any economic laws were removed. If you had too many people doing any of the other three Gathering Skills, their profit would lower because there were more people consuming nodes and more people selling the goods (too much supply), however if you had every single player doing Slicing, it wouldn't matter that there was 100% supply and 0% demand, because you weren't selling the results.

 

-----------------------------------------------------

 

In conclusion, the debate of Slicing boils down to two different topics, Gather vs Missions, and "printing money".

 

My personal belief is that if you are upset that Slicing Missions aren't making you money, then maybe you need to accept that Slicing isn't for you and change to a different Skill. If you want to make all of your credits from Missions, then get a Mission Skill rather than trying to change how Gathering Skills operate. Gathering Missions are there to supplement nodes, not to replace them.

 

 

As for "printing money". People keep stating things along the lines of "Slicers would only produce the amount of credits that they needed, its not like they were stockpiling them in their cargo holds." There is a reason the US Government doesn't hand me one of their printers for making US Currency and saying "Only print what you need," because that will never happen. If you have the ability to create money out of thin air, then the human brain will make money until they can buy the absolute BEST of everything possible, which was what was happening. Slicers had the ability to have purple mods, weapons, armor, earpieces, etc because they simply needed to do Missions until they had the money, which left Slicers better off than everyone else. Supply and Demand doesn't allow ANY other form of missions to do that.

 

Example: On Character A, I spend 24 hours straight doing only Slicing Lockbox Missions. Throughout the 24 hours I open the Boxes and make 1 Million credits. On Character B, I spend 24 hours straight doing only Underworld Trading Missions. Throughout the 24 hours I sell the mats on the GTN and post enough mats to make 1 million credits.

 

The difference is, although Character B technically made the same amount of money as Character A, it doesn't actually turn out that way. Due to the huge amount of UT mats flooding the GTN, a lot of those mats won't sell and too much supply will slowly cause other UTers to lower their prices, thus your profit goes WAY down. That is why "printing money" is bad, is because it can be done unregulated and infinitely without the return rate ever dropping. This is the exact reason why Lockbox missions should just be scrapped in General and replaced with some other brand new concept (One of my ideas was a consumable that lowers the time it takes to craft an item, which would create a high-demand use for Slicing while guaranteeing long-term purchasing because they're consumable).