Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Top 5 Official Dev Response
Bioengineer Top 5.
1) Cloning - Not much more to say here, a clear top issue - the deatils of which were listed in the SOP.
The issues with cloning should be fixed in the December Publish.
2) Rare ingredients - Milk, Mollusks and Seafood are near impossible to get. Fish and eggs are still not obtainable in satisfactory quantities. Our best pet stims requires much larger quantities of fish to run in a factory than can normally be obtained.
Seafood is the generic category for fish, mollusks and crustation. Molusks, Crustaciansand Fish are all getting fixed and/or improved in the January Publish.
3) 3. DNA Storage and organtization - Since DNA does not stack, this becomes a real problem for BE's and it probably will become more so when the cloning fixes finally go in. BE's need a way to store more DNA than is possible now. The most common suggestions is a container that hold DNA Samples in a smaller volume. Organization is also a problem, clearer namiing or the ability to rename samples is requested.
Inventory restrictions are in place do to data storage limitations, if I increase the amount of DNA you can store in any way it would have to be done such that the total amount of storage for the increased amount of DNA is equal to or lower than the current numbers. DNA also happens to be a very data intensive item which make this a very tricky thing to do. I wouldn't say it's never going to happen but it is extremely low priority considering the difficulty and all of the other important issues we need to address.
4) Broken Experimentation - Success lowering stats and failures increasing stats. Also the final creature combine is bugged so that any line can only be experimented in once.
This is actually the case for all experimentation for all crafting. Every time you experiment on an experimental attribute, every stat that is attached to that attribute gets an experimentation roll. This means that when you experiment on the Physical attribute there are actually two checks, one for Hardiness and one for Fortitude. Because there are two checks it’s possible to get an Amazing Success on one and a Moderate Failure on the other. The message you are shown is an average of the two checks, so you might be told that it was a Moderate Success, but what you would see is a large increase in one and loss in the other. This explains why you very rarely see Amazing Success responses for experimentation because you would have to get that Amazing for both stats.The cloning changes will not be able to address fundamental issues with the crafting system, so for now this will still happen. There are plans to address this some how in the future, but I'mnot sure where it fits on the schedule at the moment.The experimentation on the final creature combine has been removed with the December Publish.The cloning changes will not be able to address fundamental issues with the crafting system, so for now this will still happen. There are plans to address this some how in the future, but I'mnot sure where it fits on the schedule at the moment.
5) The skill cost to be a BE is too high.
We disagree. Once Cloning is fixed, the value of Bio Engineers will increase dramatically. Its basically too early to comment on this and we should revisit it after the December Publish.
Unfortunately, the dna samples are not the same, so no, they shouldnt stack. Coding wise, items can be stacked because they are identical, all the same stats, so in the code, one instance of an items characteristics is recorded, and a value representing the ammount of that item is recorded. Since dna samples have 10 attributes which vary, however slightly, this method can not work.
dna storage is a bitch, no doubt about it. But it isnt something that cant be worked around. Get additional houses. Or, more simply, dont stockpile. I can easily survive with only 1 medium house worth of samples. I have 2 houses, one decorated with furniture (and pets, heh) and the other simply for dna storage. It works fine for me.
Saleb, MBE/MCH, Intrepid
I can finally feel pretty good about a response. This is a far cry beter than the responses most of the other classes received... in particular the experimentation response (which agrees with what my friends and I figured was going on with it). Thanks for giving us responses that say something 
But at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I'm going to ask for further clarification on some of these:
"The issues with cloning should be fixed in the December Publish."
We need documentation on this system. 
I don't like feeling like a monkey banging on atypewriter hoping Shakespeare pops out.
Seafood is the generic category for fish, mollusks and crustation. Molusks, Crustaciansand Fish are all getting fixed and/or improved in the January Publish.
What about milk? Was the ommission of milk and eggs an oversight? Both milk and eggs are demanded in MUCH higher quantities than can currently be harvested in game. Chefs and Bio Engineers need stacks bigger than 20.
No argument from me on the DNA storage. If it would take a ton of programming hours to implement, wait until you can devise a completely new DNA system. There are bigger fish to fry.
Experimentation: Thank you VERY much for stating how the system is supposed to work. Friends and I had conjectured that this was what was happening internally. I will be happy to wait for the new experimentation system rather than you bandaiding this one.
We disagree. Once Cloning is fixed, the value of Bio Engineers will increase dramatically. Its basically too early to comment on this and we should revisit it after the December Publish.
This is the one I take exception to. I would LOVE to see an explanation based on mission statements for how the Bio Engineer should require more skill points than a Weaponsmith or Armorsmitih (the two richest professions in SWG).
There has been talk of Medical professions getting the survey skill planted into their skill branches. If you would like to take some of the sting out of the extra points BE's have to spend, would you consider putting the Survey I - IV line into the Organic Chemistry branch of Medic? Please don't forget the Bio Engineer's requirement for survey'd materials when you make your decision.
Also keep in mind that Exploration IV is pseudo-requirement for any BE that wishes to make quality pets. Will you please look at the effectiveness of Mask Scent, you broke it in the last patch.
nice try to mask the problems, Tal and devs that put out these responses, but they're just not cutting it for me. for one, MILK was never addressed by them/you at all. a lot ofour stuff still carries a weight of milk requiring items and we can't make them. the fish issue will be addressed in january? I'll believe that when I see it. the dna can't stack? no damm reason why not. each catagory of an animal should stack. there's NO reason thatif I pull 15 very high qualities off a rancor that those shouldn't be identical and stack. why is it you're making this the hardest profession out there? difficulty in getting the items we need to do our product line is completely ridiculous!! from milk to fish to eggs to dna.. and storage is a major problem cause you refuse to allow us to carry anything in quantity due to the hard nature of obtaining/stacking them. I'd love to see a weaponsmith have to hunt for his metals 1 to 10 at a time and have 20 or 30 stacks of 400 or less due to the product going out before he could get more.. or how bout each piece of metal that he gets not stack? not to mention the hours of camping necessary to make this profession work. and put on top of that make it so them not knowing what to put where to get that special gun sotheyhave to scrap hours of work (literally) and pray the next one actually works.
one more shot to get this right. it's a shame.. I was thinking I finally found something in this gamethat would be neat to do.
angel.
barcop wrote:
How did #5 get there? That seems like a cop out from answering things like lack of variety in tissues...
#5 got there, because it got the most votes. I posted aTop 5 poll and tallied up theissues listed. As I mentioned in the original Top 5, this one barely beat out others.If you look at the Top 5 thread, you will see the complete info that went to the devs. The issues part of this post is just shortened for brevity.
Inventory restrictions are in place do to data storage limitations, if I increase the amount of DNA you can store in any way it would have to be done such that the total amount of storage for the increased amount of DNA is equal to or lower than the current numbers. DNA also happens to be a very data intensive item which make this a very tricky thing to do. I wouldn't say it's never going to happen but it is extremely low priority considering the difficulty and all of the other important issues we need to address.
That's not an answer, it's an excuse. One which is summerized into the simple words "it's too hard and I don't want to do it" Isn't it typical that they increase our need for dna but now that our #1 issue is lack of storage space (especially with the current frequency of critical failures) they shirk away from following through with their responsibilities.
I'm sorry this is not going to do, we have asked for dna storage almost since the release of the game. Is it reasonable to need a house to store enough dna to make 5 clones? No. Is it reasonable to make every clone order need require the bio-engineer to go sampling to fill the order rather than have a stockpile to work from? No. Do any other professions need to go out and hand sample their materials whenever they want to make something that instant? No.
So datastorage is a problem? Well how about that very popular blood sample solution, where basically a blood sample is taken and we extract dna from that as we would from a clone. That would perfecly solve the solution and allow for mass amounts of dna resources in the form of blood. Hell it could even stack into species types since they all share common stats now. The bottom line here is that we've been handed an excuse when they could have thought of a way around it. It's a low priority item? That's a downright insult when you consider that they're high priority issue for us is rare materials which effect a handful of our items at the most.
Similar items can't stack. A stack is basicly the stats of a single itemand a count value. The stats have to be identical to stack. We weren't really asking for these to stack, but a space saving containter and that's really the only part they've rejected outright is the space savings. Let's face it, everyone always wants more storage in any MMO I've played, but you just can't give people unlimited sotrage. It was along shot to ask for that part, but worj trying.As far as organization, there is no reason we can't continue to pursue this issue.
for one, MILK was never addressed by them/you at all.
Yes, indeed it was in our list to them. I believe this is just an oversight in this list and I can't believe I didn't notice it. I'll double-check on it.
On eggs - did you know you never have to get off your speeder or even slow down to get eggs from a lair? Target the lair, use the radial and you can get eggs as you drive by. Perhaps not intended, but it may aleviate our need for eggs.
Sigh... I sort of get the feeling that they think we should be so overwhelmingly happy about the cloning changes that our other issues are no big deals.
1) Thanks. Though I feel a little cheated out of an answer to a question considering the question is out of date .
2) Milk and eggs? I'm assuming the response was meant to encompass ALL rare ingredients, but the complete lack of mention of milk and eggs is unassuring.
3) Understandable. It's still gonna be on the Wish List though!
4) I'm more concerned with critical fail combines and expiriments, they happen way too much lately...
5) You've got to be kidding me.We were the one crafting class that did not have something to offer to everyone until now... now that we're up to par, how in the world is spending 29 more skill points to Master justified when we still have less to show? Two of our most needed skills - Survey and Mask Scent - are not even in the Bio-Engineer skill trees or it's prerequisites! So we spend Everyone can also use every other type of crafter's goods, does that make their skill expenditure too low? It's what,121 skill points to Master BE... and on top of that we cannot excell at anything Bio-Engineer unless we also pick up Artisan, high level Scout, Ranger, Doctor, or CH skills. Bah, I'm preaching to the choir. Devs badly need to understand this though.
That wasn't their high priority, it was ours, remember we voted on these and the list that I sent them was ordered on your votes. Granted these things have likely changed now and this is not a static process but meant to be a continuing process.