Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Our profession is in danger
Our profession is changing, not going away.
Creature Handlers will always be necessary. I don't really think the vision for the DE upgrade will end up producing combat droids that can tank a Krayt dragon like a group of well crafted BE pets can with 13k health, light armor, and 60% kinetic resists backed up by Creature Handlers and a Doctors feedingthem stims to stay alive.
With the new changes, creature handlers essentially require the services of BE's for pet stims and good pets. As long as there are Creature Handlers in the game we will be required.
Out tissue line still continues to offer extra income in clothing tissues. I sell 5-10 crates of Scent Neutralization tissues a week plus a few creates of the other tissues here and there.
In addition to the tissues made by BE's for tailors, they are also adding components for Chefs that we will be responsible for making.
I dont know if this will help or hinder, but they're doing something to add to our craft.
How about some BE components for weaponsmiths?!?!
I as a Master Weaponsmith would LOVE to be able to put an order down for +10 max dmg, -0.1spd (not as great as the low level krayts, but still an improvement ) tissues that can be added to the weapons.
Now would it be even better if BE's could make those tissues?
(sorry... I'm still pissed at the armorsmith... guild Krayt hunt yieldedmany armor enhancers and 0 weapon enhancers.. so I'm still a little grumpy from that)
Comments:
1. You can't heal droids with a stimpack. Huge difference between pets and droids in combat. I can use trick1, trick 2 or a pet stim to heal my pet as it's taking damage. Unless they allow droids to be healed in combat, pets will always be better tanks.
2. Pets don't blow up and become disabled. Even though I use my swoop bike for the most part, I'm never without a mountable pet. I've had creatures (or players) blow up my speeder too often.
3. Pets take CH skill to use. There is no corresponding droid skill. Unless the developers introduce a new profession like "Droid Handler" or assign the ability to some existing class, I can't foresee them unbalancing pets and allowing someone with no advanced training to have the same combat power as someone who trained two trees of scout and an advanced profession.
I'd personally like to see the Dev's accelerate the pet decay system. It would be very unpopular with the end users but would invigorate the economy. With careful use of pet vitality kits, you can currently keep a pet at it's maximum HAM (if not condition) for months of hard play. Everything should decay like weapons and armor.
Tal-N wrote:The reason why your ignored or told to look elsewhere is because custom orders aren't like slapping together some resources to get the result. There's a huge amount of effort needed to create custom orders and alot of the time I simply settle for blending two or three species together into a first gen clone and sell it off. Indeed droids will be alot easier to make and produce because they don't require nearly as much knowledge to produce or to gather the resources plus they can be mass produced.
It's people who continually pester us for custom orders which really p*ss me off, if they don't have the patience to allow a bio-engineer the time to work their magic and get exactly what the customer wanted then as far as I'm concerned they can go bother someone else.. i don't need the money or the headache from customers like that.
Ok - I have to respond to this. You're telling me that you get p*ssed off because people dare come to you for something THEY want instead of purchasing some vanilla creature that every BE vendor has? I don't even have to/want to respond to that. Remarks such as this do not belong in a goods-and-services type profession. Perhaps the reason BEs are being pestered is because there's a severe lack of communication. BEs in general are viewed as unhelpful at best.
I KNOW it's difficult to put together a custom order. Your customers may not be aware of this however. It's not about patience, it's about professionalism. Yes, pestering a BE is not going to get a customer good service, but ignoring them doesn't make the problem go away either. Your average customer will just take their same lack of information and ever mounting frustration to the next BE and repeat the cycle again. Providing feedback goes a long way to improving an already difficult situation.
The problem is, Berratus, non-creature handlers always ask for the same thing. High HAM, high resists, good damage,at anon-creature handler level, oh and please make is a spider. It gets very old having to repeat the same thing over and over again. "Not only is that an unrealistic order but the animal would be invalid and unusable." Then you have to explain why the non-CH critter can't be certain body types.
Some bio-engineers make custom critters. Some only make critters they want to make. That is the decision the crafter makes. Its up to the customer to decide if they want to wait for a special order to be filled or if something already in stock will fit the bill. To say BE's are unhelpful at best is pretty short sighted and unjust if I say so myself.
Besides, with this new clone system there is no such thing as a "vanilla creature" that every BE has for sale. Each BE animal has different stats and specials. They are all unique unto themselves. You'll be hard pressed to find two critters the same.
When I get a custom order I reply with what I have on hand. Usually I have something that will make the customer happy. If not, they get to wait.
I can't even keep up with the order for my friends and guildmates. I'm almost ready at this point to throw the pets out the window and go into the tissues business full time until I've harvested the resources to master weaponsmith.
Ok - I have to respond to this. You're telling me that you get p*ssed off because people dare come to you for something THEY want instead of purchasing some vanilla creature that every BE vendor has?
No, I'm saying that I'm a bio-engineer for fun. If I don't feel like taking an order than thats a valid excuse, however if I do take your orderI don't want someone pestering me day after day when they know it's not that straight forwards and my life does not revolve around making them something. Take this past week for example, I've been spending alot of time with my new g/f so she comes first and the game itself comes second.
If there is one thing that I hate more, it's when people get mad at me for telling them what they don't want to hear.. I will not make to a non-CH pet, It's not that I can't itis justnot worth my time, and it is not worth the money spent trying to make the creature.
As a finisher I'd like to add that there are a hundred things in SWG that are more agrivating than crafting non-ch pets, but are still more enjoyable than making non-ch pets (first example that comes to mind: fishing).
Pets will always be needed. And that is for the battle aspect.. Mounts are COMPLETLY useless now. They are purely a toy now.. No need when you can whip out your swoop and zip way quicker around.. But to think BE is in danger is a far leap from that.
Find a market.. People always want several things..
House Pets (Small costs but tons of buyers easy to make)
NON-CH Pets (Pain in the arse to make but sell for big mullah)
CH Pets Low-End (These sell alot for new up and comming CH's)
CH Pets Mid-Level (These dont sell to well)
High End CH Pets (These sell for MUCHO and every CH wants better then the next)
So just find a market.. And remember.. Pet-stims should always be your bread and butter.
The other thing to keep in mind about BE pets is that there's an inherent randomness to the pet creation. I've made pets with identical source DNA (i.e. from the same creatures, with little variance in the sample stats) and had very different results.
Now, it's not like a BE can say, "yes, I can make you a pet with exactly X HAM, Y resists and Z damage and it will be level D."
Many Non CH's seem to get fixated with a specific value for one (or more) of their creature's stats. So unless it has EXACTLY 1000 Health (and I mean it could have 999) then they're not interested. Now, this means that we, as BE can go out and sample what we THINK will give the sort of pet somebody's requested and assemble it. But we can't guarantee that it will have exactly the stats they want. It'll be close, but not spot-on. It's not like saying to a tailor "I want a shirt made using the blue that's 2nd from the right on the 4th row" or whatever.
Or the other scenario is that somebody says, "I want a good Non-CH pet." Define "good", please, because so far, no matter what I've manufactured in this situation has been "good" enough for them.
That's why many BEs don't like doing custom orders.
If anybody asks me for a pet, I'll direct them to my vendor, as it's much easier for both of us if they browse what I have in stock. If they want something different, I can then use my vendor-ed pets as a baseline and explain that the end creature will have similar stats, but I can't guarantee it will be identical. And so far, my customers have been very happy with that. However, there is a small minority who don't understand the CL 10 restriction means you can't have everything and they're the ones that you'll never please.
- Tyl
Spazzers wrote:The problem is, Berratus, non-creature handlers always ask for the same thing. High HAM, high resists, good damage, at a non-creature handler level, oh and please make is a spider. It gets very old having to repeat the same thing over and over again. "Not only is that an unrealistic order but the animal would be invalid and unusable." Then you have to explain why the non-CH critter can't be certain body types.
Some bio-engineers make custom critters. Some only make critters they want to make. That is the decision the crafter makes. Its up to the customer to decide if they want to wait for a special order to be filled or if something already in stock will fit the bill. To say BE's are unhelpful at best is pretty short sighted and unjust if I say so myself.
Besides, with this new clone system there is no such thing as a "vanilla creature" that every BE has for sale. Each BE animal has different stats and specials. They are all unique unto themselves. You'll be hard pressed to find two critters the same.
When I get a custom order I reply with what I have on hand. Usually I have something that will make the customer happy. If not, they get to wait.
Hey Spazzers -
I understand your frustration with creating non CH pets. This isn't the situation in my case. I'm a low level CH and have been trying to be reasonable with regard to what I'm looking for. All I'm asking is for a certain skin, clvl 20 max, with decent HAM. I'm not looking for uber resists or specials, just something fair-to-midling that I can use to tank.
The reason why I say BEs are unhelpful at best is because more times than many I get no response whatsoever from the one request I send them. If I do hear back from them, telling me that they can handle my particular request, that is usually the last time I hear from them. I am reticent to send further correspendence because I know how difficult, tedious, and time-consuming the crafting can be. I am not going to pelt a BE with incessant emails asking "hey man, how's it going. btw - where's my pet?". What recourse do I have then but to move on to the next BE? The cycle continues, hence my statement that BEs are "unhelpful at best". This statement comes from personal experience and observation, I'm sorry to say. A little communication on part of the BE would be a great start.
BE should be a great load of fun, for all parties involved (crafter / customer). BEs have at their disposal a great set of tools to make some very nice creatures, customers should be able to have some input as to what they want in their BE-crafted pet.
I was very excited to hear that your profession had finally been fixed, and looked forward to running around with a creature that fit my character's personality. The reality of the whole thing is just a vast disappointment.
Wish you were on my server. I've had a lot of luck making upper teen and lower 20's animals. I'm one of the few BE's that is happy making custom critters.
The problems you're experiencing are because of a number of factors. Animals can not be made in factories. They must be made one at a time by hand. This is probably the number one reason a lot of BE's won't make custom orders. It should also explain why there is a time lag for custom orders. You figure if a BE has 30 orders all for custom critters and they only play a couple hours in the evening it will take a number of days possibly weeks to finish them.
I take orders by email only. I disregard tells or I'll send a reply requesting an email. As I fill the order I delete the emails. Its the only way I can keep up. Have some patience anddon't be afraid to visit the BE in person. You might actually findastock itemthat fits your needs.