Discussion: Slicing

Hia Torhead users,

there is quite a fuzz (more like alot of whine) going over slicing crew skill (proffesion that "crafts" boxes with credits) and its nerf these days. Being someone who did not roll Slicing in a first place, I'd like to know your oppinion regarding this crew skill. Is it really that of a issue? I saw at least 6 whine topics on official forum each dealing with serious nerf. IMO its just another proffesion, players just like the "no work-big reward" factor (and like to whine about stuff they dont like). Hit me

/Rave

I have slicing on one character and I'm fine with it either way. I like it a little more as it is now, I keep telling myself I'd rather have it more in the middleground between the two versions, but I don't actually believe that myself. In a way, it was the same as any other profession in that time = results, but it was unclear if the cash available from slicing would ever have had a significant impact on the economy. If you've put any decent time in the game you'll notice that everything is a credit sink, and time spent playing is a way to get credits to fuel that sink.

Overall I think the rewards from slicing may have been just a little bit high, but probably not too much so considering that cash is the primary reward for having the skill. Now if I was to make the skill from scratch I'd probably make augments the primary mission type, and schematics the longer more expensive mission type, with cash boxes as rewards from criticals rather than vice-versa.

Previously slicing made solid money every time you sent a companion out on a slicing mission (assuming you picked rich or bountiful cash boxes). Slicing still makes some money, just not as much as it used to, in fact it barely breaks even until you crit and get a nice payout. The primary benefit to the lowered rewards is that I don't feel beholden to log over to that character on every 30 minutes because I have to have slicing missions queued up or else I'm losing money. Another nice bonus is that slicing still directly rewards you with cash while you are out adventuring and come across a slicing node, now you are rewarded for playing the game rather than logging in and queueing missions.

The Slicing nerf came in the form of missions, not the dropboxes and stuff we slice as we mission. So, for me (level 15), it hasn't made any difference at all. In fact I think they've upped the number of dropboxes (or whatever they're called). I see the stars on my map all the time and hightail it over to Slice it. I currently have 23K and have spent 5K on upping my storage space. So, at level 15, I've made 28K with missions and Slicing.

Cheers.

The real earner has always been gathering rather than missions as it's 100% profit.

Nerfing the missions effects leveling the skill more than the profitability.

And I think it was too easy to level.

I haven't actually done the math, but the way I see it is if (slicing credits earned - cost of mission < another profession's average GTN value of items gained - cost of mission) there's a problem. The value of items on the GTN will increase as more people get to higher levels and the market is flooded with more and more credits. If they're striving for equality at this point slicing will be entirely pointless as this game ages (unless they constantly update it).

I feel like I've been doing very good with slicing, but I suspect if I had a different gather profession on that character instead and sold everything I've gotten I would do similarly well.

Faux: Or get an alt to get the raw materials for you. That's what I'm planning on doing. I tool Armstech and Slicing on my first toon. I'm planning on Armortech and Scavenging on my 2nd one. He will provide the Mats for both.

Cheers.

it seems to be at a proper lvl right now. As it was before, I had 30k creds by lvl 20 and was spending willy nilly on whatever i saw, if I wanted advanced lvl crafting mats, I just shouted out to the poor shlub who was spending 1000 credits per mission in underworld trading payed him pocket change, and he was glad for it.

before it wasn't really a choice, you skipped mission skills, took slicing, and bought what you wanted. Now hopefully the bonus gather mission drops will be the real value of slicing.

@Mazurati

the easier it is to get Credits, the more you encourage gold farmers, as they spend even less time and effort gathering their wares. The easier it is to make money, the more money it takes to buy anything, the more money you need to make, the larger market the farmers have.

The only way to combat gold farmers is aggressive bans against not the sellers themselves but the accounts they do business with.

I don't really understand all the whining about this either. Slicing isn't the only mission crew skill that gives lockboxes (or should I say credit boxes) and the main things about it (at least for me) are the augments and mission discoveries/tech schematics.

That being said, I didn't have Slicing before the nerf so I'm not swimming in sliced credits... =P

Picked up Slicing on my first alt though, other crew skills on him being Cybertech and Scavenging. On main I took Biochem+Bioanalysis+Diplomacy and been struggling with Diplomacy as it seems pretty much the opposite of pre-nerf Slicing: spending way too much credits on the missions with not much in return. But eventually I plan on sticking with these skills on the two chars and buy the blue/purple materials needed for the better Cybertech crafts from GTN (or make another alt for Underworld trading hehe)

Or have scavenging on both characters and have even more mats!

No matter how you look at it slicing will always have to be compared against other gathering professions on the basis of what the items are worth on the auction house.

Iam still getting much Creds out of slicing...the crewmissions that require +300 skill , i sell these for 10-15k

Now lets say i send out 3 companions for 4.000 - 5.000 creds, i'd still get out +6000 out of this... those who say Slicing is useless can pretty much go *"!§ themself.

Besides, it was way too "op" ...Having +200k credits at lvl 20 is just wrong, atleast if its your first char.

The thing is, that will be entirely possible for all the other professions to do once the economy gets going. Just like in WoW where you could farm low level mats and sell them on the AH to 60s/70s/80s/85s who were willing to pay a disproportionate amount of gold for them, here you can do the same and probably even more efficiently because you can do it all from the safety of the Fleet.

Except there is risk involved in selling things on the AH versus simply opening a box for credits. "entirely possible" is not "Guaranteed", which is what pre-nerf slicing was.

Slicing is still the sole source of augments. Why does this keep getting glossed over? It's still profitable with world spawned lockboxes which involves actual gameplay instead of credits per hour per companion while you pvp or afk

Since the nerf, i lose credits, unless it crits and i tend to get 1 crit slicing every 10 or so missions, if its a standard success, if i spent 1400cr on the mission, i tend to get between 1000-1200cr, so it really isn't worthwhile getting now unless its for those recipes.......for the cybertech skill which no one is taking, since there is absolutely no droid parts or ship parts or anything on the GTN.

taking scavenging, archeology and bio-analysis is not worthwhile either, players just do not want to pay anything more then nothing for materials....players can be cheapskates sometimes.

Eitherway, since the slicing, my 400k has gone down to 250k due to upgrading my modules and companion gear, if the slicing nerf isn't reversed, i see myself going broke real soon, or unless bioware severely lower the skill prices, cause 10k per skill is over the top for my liking.

lol..going broke...like every non-slicer had to deal with already? I couldn't afford my speeder at 25 and I had to stop training skills I didn't use much in the 40's due to the expense of a regular crafting profession

cue the dealwithit.gif

I thought i'd do a little trial of it and record the missions i sent my droid on. I did 12 missions in a row, recording the amount it costs with the amount rewarded. One of the missions came back a failure, but i counted that because it's important. (these were all for lockboxes)

mission cost>reward=net profit/loss
220>284=64
230>342=12
285>444=159
220>0=-220
220>236=16
285>242=-43
230>211=-19
220>365=45
230>310=80
230>239=9
285>348=63
535>432=-103

In the end the total profit came to 63 credits.

I guess it's still worth it because as I'm playing i find the boxes everywhere (at least on Taris) and those give straight credits without any cost.

Just hope you break even like i did doing the missions at least and hope you get a few crits.

hmmm, ok.

I will stop upgrading my gear.

Since it was THAT, that was causing me to lose money, but i guess my level 33 JEdi Guardian can try to hold out with level 27 gear......yep, my repairs are going to be a biatch.

Every mission box for me is a loss in profit, i would be happy with 50cr per box, but its always atleast -50 and at most -250 credits.....i guess no crew skills, since they are now a waste of time and inventory space, since no crafters want to pay for materials, it seems they can charge stupidly high prices for their stuff, yet we have sell low......yeah, thats fair.

I took slicing on my character the day the "nerf" happened. I took it mainly due to all the lockboxes I saw lying around when I was questing on my first toon, so when I rerolled on my the server my friends were playing on I thought why not. That being said I find that the skill is on par with all the others. Missions give out maybe a few more credits than what you paid to send them on, but more often than not I have noticed that I get back just under what I paid for the mission. But, this is where all the lockboxes on the planets come into play.

On Balmorra (the last planet I was on) I was getting anywhere from 100 to 250 a lockbox that I would get from just walking around. This would cover the loss I just recieved from my mission or just add money to what ever I made. I haven't sold anything that I have gotten from my crits yet, but just from running around and opening up these boxes I am sitting on 50k+ and I am lvl 23 almost 24.

If people are spending credits on buying gear, I am puzzled as to why. Running flashpoints gets gear that you can mod, so while it might look old you can give it better mods when you progress planet wise using comendation badges on mods from the planet vendors. When I got done clearing all the missions (regular/heroic/bonus) on Balmorra I was sitting on 60+ badges. More than enough to upgrade any gear that didn't get replaced while questing, for both me and my companion.

Slicing as a gathering profession was broken (I think it still is).

All the other gathering professions at the moment you would NEVER send your companions on a mission to get materials or level the skill, as the return/cost ratio is just absurd and totally not worth it, it's there for times when you're missing 2-3 pieces of a given material and don't want to go in the world finding them, but as soon as people start selling materials on the GTN even that isn't going to be viable because the prices there are most likely going to be lower.

Slicing on the other hand, you can send your companions on a mission, get your skill and profit from that the majority of the time AND you're still gathering the lockboxes scattered around in the world. It's just badly designed.

Absolutely not true. By far the majority of bioanalysis materials I gathered I did so via missions.

Here's some empirical data (I wish I could tell you the source but it's a second-hand link. However, my gratitude goes to the person that put this together).

My feeling on slicing is that missions are a decent way to level up and break even (or a little better) but they''re not really a good source of cash after that. I think slicing will still feel like a good choice for people who still spend a lot of their time "out and about" maybe doing lots of Ilum dailies or other quests. For people who will mostly stay on fleet at 50 and run FPs or Ops it may start to feel like a wasted opportunity.

If that spread sheet is correct, it's really not that bad off. Each mission is still averaging above the cost of the mission. Having 5 companions running out and making 400-500 credits every 20 minutes (even 200-300 every 15) or so is pretty good coin.
Also it appears as though the some of the lower level ones have a better credit per minute amount.

I think slicing is still good!

Same goes for every other gathering profession, doesn't it? Slicing is still a gathering profession. The main income comes from gathering the stuff in the world, which doesn't cost you anything.

Actually my impression of those numbers were that Slicing is pretty much pointless as a mission skill now. It's good that it breaks even (or makes a very small profit) while levelling the skill but, personally, now I'm at 400 I get so little benefit from sending companions on Slicing missions that I simply won't do it. I'm doing Ilum dailies and still spending time running around the world so it's a decent gathering skill for turning time into money and that's all.

I'm really thinking of dropping it for a mission skill that benefits my main craft.

I will just add another 2 credits to the Slicing discussion.

On my Smuggler, I have Slicing. I'm level 23 and have 103K credits. 'nuf said.

Cheers.

I'm not asking to be convinced of anything, just discussing the issues that the change has brought up - for me at least.
200-300 is not an interesting amount when you have over a million credits and can get a couple of hundred by killing a few mobs. As I said, that's probably okay and the way it needs to be so that people consider taking the appropriate skills but it does take the shine off it somewhat.

(as an aside, I'm actually a little disappointed with Cybertech too (no summons on live! >.<) and seriously considering dropping all three skills in favour of more useful ones.)

In essence, the whine and cry about the reduction in slicing rewards proves a point to analogy very much like the following:

I think the idea behind it is that when you give something to someone that exceeds their expectations only to find out that it has been taken away to make it fair, that's when you start seeing the outcry of the community.

Slicing helped me very much with my vehicle and at 400/400 I am about to drop it to grab Biochem. Slicing has served its purpose and my alts are soon to follow the footsteps.