Bio Engineer Archive

Right, lets put emotion aside here a second and look at the REAL state of the profession. Lets ignore for a moment the state of other professions and argue that they are just as broken as us, this is about one person here and what we can say is their commitment and competance to our profession. Since release what have we seen as the major issues for our profession which do NOT involve balancing things like exp, amounts of resources or power curves for the products. I'm talking about fundamental things here.

• utterly broken clones


• utterly broken tissues


• broken experimentation


• all unwanted products


• unmakable products

Now this was the main problems at release. Now 6 months down the line what do we have.

• utterly broken clones (1 fixed)


• half broken tissues (stacking and susspicision of still broken bonuses)


• broken experimentation


• unmarkable products

So out of 5 key issues where cut down to around 3 and a half. But for the sake of being fair the stacking issueis related to balancing really. So lets say Keldarin has fixed tissues. That still means in the space of 6 months he has repaired very little indeed. Does this imply incompetance? Lack of care? Lack of time? Frankly i dunno and I don't care. It could be many things but the bottom line is that things are moving at a snails pace.

But the fact things are coming along slowly isn't enough to ask for him to be replaced in my opinion, it's alot but there is still something which really clinches it. Our designer has expressed very little motivation or commitment to communicating with the bio-engineers or the correspondants. He has even gone to the point of making statements saying (i'd say promising is a strong word so I'll avoid it) that certain things would be fixed in the next patch. He didn't say it 'would' but he says it 'should' be ready.

And then he goes and shatters peoples hopes by not delivering on that statement. I dunno about the rest of you but we've tried everything up to now. We've been patient. We've been cooperative. We've screamed and shouted and we're still bearly any further than we were at the start of this. In the end I think the problem lies with our designer. Maybe they are unable to focus on their work, maybe they're just so sick of it that the motivation to progress is hampered. But in any case we're not going anywhere and I can only think of one possibile course of action.

Replace the Bio-engineer designer. Give us someone fresh, give us something new who we can have renewed hope in. Someone who hasn't messed us around for 6 months. As long as the players have hope and a good relationships with our designer then we can tolerate alot. But it's reached a point where we utterly hate Keldarin and thats not something I see on other profession boards.

So i put it to the rest of you.

Should we ask for a new bio-engineer designer in the hopes that it'll help things move forwards or at least restore faith that we're gonna be fixed?

Hmm, I feel your frustration, and as a softwar developer myself I am a bit frustrated by the bugginess of the stuff we seem to get (some of it seems inconcievable that it could be missed by anyone bothering to try it out even superficially) but this thread is probably not really appropriate. It assumes for one thing that what you are proposing is even possible and that we'd somehow have some influence over this, but the fact is that we don't. Plus, since the workload and priorities of such a development position are not dependent on the developer, even if you replaced him all your are assuring yourslef is that the next guy will be less familiar with the domain and would need a longer ramp-up time.

Ranting isn't going to help. All replacingthe dev that's been working to fix us with someone who has no clue what is going on with the coding is going to do is make it take even longer to get things done. If that's truly what you want, by all means, go right ahead. BTW, the work on professions started 3 months ago not 6 months ago. The prior time was spent on things like making sure people could play the game. And no matter how many times you say it, there was no "statement" made about when cloning fixes would be in.

I'm not going to say any more. TH and the devs are excited about the work so far and what's coming up. Contributing to this thread does little to moving the game forward.

Yes, even if it were an option, replacing the dev would actually slow down the process. Someone else coming in on the project would take some time, at least a month, just to catch up.

I still don't understand why we can't get more communication on what is going on. Why are they so paranoid about telling us anything? Afraid that we will start a riot if they can't deliver at the time they said it might be ready? Well, we've got that already. And this way, those who would normally defend the system are left with no means to do so.

Bad idea.

The reason they say nothing is quite obvious.

Each Developer working on a specific proffession is also working on other proffessions at the same time, while co-ordinating with people working on entirely different proffessions and things that might somehow relate to what their own projects are.

Our Developer for the Bio-Engineer has been making some changes....although to the casual observer they are not noticable and very seamingly small.

If I am not mistaken the Developer for the Bio-Engineer is the same one Working onthe Chef stuff and some of the Creatuyre Handler stuff as well as helping with the Tailor stuff.

Why I believe this is the actual changes that have been happening....mounts being introduced...one creature fixed for it...also Elphent creatures now faster(implying Elephant creatures being made mounts) New creatures created and implemented(Ie. new pallets and artwork, which means the coloring thing is going a steady course)...some Tisue Item Fixes so that items can stack(obvious preparation for experimentation being fixed and therefore items from the tissue lines being made in large quantities)

I could go on with my observations but i will not bore people anymore.

So anywise...it looks to me like alot of things have been done from a coding stand point....

But one major one most everyone on this board has failed to notice is the warping, get lost, teleporting and snapping effects being fixed.

Gee I wonder who has been helping fix that stuff.


So anywise...I feel the pain and frustration of still having some problems and many things being told will come and not seeing it.....but I am not going to cry too much.

So many things have been fixed and are now working that many of the original complaints I have had are gone.

I still have a few, and some ideas, and I still get requests in game of things I saddly cannot do.

But over all most of the changes are not too bad.

I'm with Tal-n on this one. From a design perspective this is very wrong.No word, no nothing, the devs avoid us.

Maybe he's overworked and maybe he isn't. (I'm sure he is :smileyvery-happy. I work in the entertainment design industry and I understand that in most cases the simple fact is that the endproductdesigner isn't the impetus of design changes, he mearly implements the ideas of others. These Ideas get bounced around in meetings and phonecalls,over lunches and even in the car. They are usually, discused and re-discused, worked and re-worked and changed midstream. It is a very organic process and doesn't conform well to timetables. Our Dev then gets the glorious job of implementation which with a project that is so ambitious it has to be difficult to say the least.

We also have to remember that a long time is very relative. A long time in some industries could mean 6 months or longer, for us it should mean a few weeks. I'm not asking for a countdown clock but estimated timetable every other week would be nice.(don'tsay a date or time, but give us something, a progress report or the like)We're left in a holding pattern wondering when our class change will be implemented.

It's horrible to be told three months ago of an impending change only to have a class like the Droid Engineer get an update proposal as well much laterand have a DEV sign an petition to expedite their update.

Somebody's head should have rolled for the state of BEs at launch. Chiagra, for God's sake? Milk? Eggs? No factories? We don't know enough to put the blame on someone, we know that there isn't one dev per profession and it could be that Keldarin was specifically instructed to work on other things and let BE's suffer. You may remember that two days after CHs started complaining that BE products couldn't be made in factories they got a personal response from Holo saying that he was assigning someone to fix the problem (after ignoring our cries for 2 months). It is pretty obvious that they didn't have enough people on staff to fix enough of their problems at launch, so who knows where the blame on this lies.

I do know one thing, their state at launch and delays in making professions even playable is starting to cost them money.

And ranting often helps. We can trace quite a number of the fixes that we have gotten so far to specific rants and vitriolic PMs. In a case like this, you have to keep the pressure up on two fronts.

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Talthazar wrote:

Ranting isn't going to help. All replacingthe dev that's been working to fix us with someone who has no clue what is going on with the coding is going to do is make it take even longer to get things done.

I'm not going to say any more. TH and the devs are excited about the work so far and what's coming up. Contributing to this thread does little to moving the game forward.

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I do agree that this thread won't help, and more than likely, neither would replaing the dev. However, I would like to know what exactly they are excited about. Are they excited about what they have done with BE thus far? If so, there are some mighty underachievers at SOE. I'm no longer excited about what is coming up because talk is cheap. Like you said, they never gave us a date on cloning, so why get excited about somethingcomparable to vaporware.

Oh Yea! I can feel it now.

Imagine my suprise the other day on Dantooine when I came across a bol lair. But these were not ordinary bol, these were some odd species called plains bol or something. Had a HAM of something like 950 and there was like two adults and three babies next to the lair.

/sarcasm on

this game just keeps getting better and better with every patch!

/sarcasm off

If I am not mistaken the Developer for the Bio-Engineer is the same one Working onthe Chef stuff and some of the Creatuyre Handler stuff as well as helping with the Tailor stuff.


Hmm.....lets take a stroll over to the chef boards and see how happy they are with the state of their profession. I'm not sure if you're trying to throw him under the bus here Plageron or trying to defend him.


Why I believe this is the actual changes that have been happening....mounts being introduced...one creature fixed for it


Ok, we get one creature unbugged for CH use and you are sying that is a BE fix? Or how about CL10 mounts of every mountable creature, where's the BE version of those? Yeah, mounts that we can create for the majority of the people were introduced and placed at novice and clone II. You know, I'm just seeing BE as a side effect of these changes, not one of them was implemented with us in mind and thats a REAL problem


also Elphent creatures now faster(implying Elephant creatures being made mounts)

This has everything to do with combat balancing and nothing to do with BE and mounts


New creatures created and implemented(Ie. new pallets and artwork, which means the coloring thing is going a steady course)


Havent been able to log in since the patch, could you enlighten me on which new pets we are now able to make.


some Tisue Item Fixes so that items can stack(obvious preparation for experimentation being fixed and therefore items from the tissue lines being made in large quantities)


Which fixes are those exactly. The fact that chef tissues are currently pointless to make. Or what about the fact that we still can not get ingrediants for 3 of our tissues. Thats right, you are talking about that conclusive evidence that all of our tissues work....where was that again? Ahhh....I remember, you are talking about the fact that we can make 2 really good tissues and have the customer waste points to get to the 25 cap or the sneeze and come out with 12-13 tissue so people dont pay for points they dont need. Cause we all know that system makes sense. So exactly what fixes are you referring too?

Listen, we all want to believe that things are getting better and that someone is working on our stuff. But the fact remains, the only things that we have been able to get fixed are things that are directly related to other professions (well, we did get the sampling animation fixed). As much as I want to believe that Keldarin is working on things, there isnt alot of evidence pointing that way. I see the scenario working like this:

CH dev: DAMNIT Keldarin, I got mounts going live in 3 FREAKING DAYS......how much longer am I going to have to wait till CH is gonna be able to get have available all their mounts from BE?

or

Tailor dev: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KELDARIN, its been 4 god **edit** months and my tailors still dont have BE'd clothes to sell. Are you planning on getting this done anytime soon?

I'm starting to think alot of our fixes are going down this way. Either other people are making things fix things while they stand over his shoulder to get things done, or other devs are taking it upon their selves to fix things that Keldarin should of fixed in the first place. Think about it, how many BE fixes have their really been?

Sigh, that came out all wrong without the brackets. For any interested Plageron wrote paragraphs 1,3,5,7,9. I'll fix it when I get home. Sorry

Tilen
Scylla