Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Wake up and smell the clone poodoo
Graeme wrote:
I just do not see any of these changes cutting back on the number of CHs. Sure the profession is going to be weakened, but even with the weaker pets, a decent pet will still be a good or better than grouping with one other player. That is the whole reason that many took up CH in the first place, to have a permanent playing partner, who is available when ever you want to play -- one who plays the same style game you do, and isn't going to do something stupid, and hang you out to dry. I don't see any of the proposed changes spoiling this.
If the pets defenses are lowered, you will need to heal them more, which is good for BEs.
If the BE can make a pet with a comination of specials and or stats that is not readily available in the wild, that also is good for BEs. I have two characters who have at least some CH. I would NEVER buy a creature from another CH, but if a BE could make something special, I would have no problem buying from them.
hehe - as much as sometimes pets go all over the place, gotta admit they are still smarter than some players I've met 
On the number of CH thing - I am sure we will see a reduction in numbers, especially among commandos that picked up 3/2/0/0 (who I can see easily switching to TKA - blast the heck outta mobs until they close, then kick 'em to death to finish them) and others that 'dabbled' up to that skill level. These people are generally achiever types and will switch off to more powerful templates. Guessing at numbers is extremely difficult, but a drop of 25% across all levels of CH skill wouldn't surprise me.
However, as MissileToad said above, that is basically irrelevent when compared to the huge increase of sales BE absolutely will get as a result of the clone line changes (especially if there is a bit less "antagonise the CH" going on, and a bit more constructive information provided). I just wish we had a clue about dna samples transfering over from pre-patch to post-patch, because any BE with any kind of half-way decent rep is going to get swamped with orders pretty rapidly.
According to one of THs posts we will be able to make creatures with Lower CL then their wild counter parts. I find this a great advantage when we can make CL 10 GSPs (Well maybe not GSP,but you get the point) for non-CHs. 
This could definitely go both ways. I wouldn't say the original post is knee jerk, just a bit short sighted possibly. First you have to define the issue;
"Real" creature handlers by nature aren't combat professionals. They are scouts who hunt wild animals. The "fun" aspect of creature handler is finding that wild uber critter and taming it.I can see purchasing a BE animal taking that fun aspect out of the game. These real creature handlers aren't our target market for animals and haven't been since the beginning. They buy pet meds for the most part with the occassional rancor.
The creature handler "dabbler" has an uber pet so they can hunt for holos or scales. They don't hunt wild animals for the thrill of taming them. They blam the crap out of them for the value they can realize from the harvest. These are the people who buy our grauls and our pet stims and vita packs. Animals are tanks necessary for them to achieve their goals.
Now along comes the nerf bat. *swing* Now the dabblers have to makea choice. Take more creature handler skills or choose a different path. Because creature handler was never their passion I would say a fair percentage will drop creature handler and take up something that will allow them to do what they do, solo high level mobs for profit. No more grauls. They will own a mount or a speeder or both and possibly buya few pet stims and vita packs.
Will the "real" creature handler buy our animals because we can make a gnort or an eopie out of rancor DNA? We might have an uber gnort but that doesn't mean it will sell. This is 50 million credit question right here. Just because we can make an uber critter doesn't mean a creature handler is going to change their tactics from hunt and tame to purchase and tame. Where's the fun in that?
Does the new Cl standards mean more damage to pets? Yes so petstims will be more needed. Does less CHs means less customers for clones? Yes, however given how the current clone market is nearly non-existant we're going to see an increase in sales despite the smaller CH population. The demand will go up as the population goes down. Once people settle into the CH changes the population will rise again.
CHs aren't going anywhere. The reason is simple, there are no other tanks in the game. The current tanks are going to be nerfed and will suck, but they are not being replaced by anything else. You still need a tank, period. I expect a lot of people picking up novice CH just so they can have a CH15 pet that can do some form of tanking. You won't see the 3/3/0/0 anymore and the game will get more challenging. Because of that master CHs will become very popular in hunting groups as they have the only good tanks for the big game creatures.
The nerfs suck, but the profession isn't going anywhere, it is just changing. Now a CL50 kima or jax sounds like a lot of fun to me. I currently have 0 BE pet in my datapad, but many in my home. After this I will have many more to buy for my home and I'll end up getting mainly BE pets for my datapad.
Actually, I was going to post pretty much exactly what Sanpa had said, he beat me to it. Tal, your post could be called just as much a knee jerk reaction as his, and is certainly no better thought out.
I can't see any way that the creature mount market will be viable after vehicles come out. Availability and convenience of getting/making a speeder is just too great. I'd guestimate over half the crafters in SWG will be able to make their own, and if there are maintenence issues they'll just sell them by the crate. no fuss. No training, no waiting for them to grow, just pull em out of the box and use them. Also, since they are reportedly much faster than mounts, there will simply blow mounts away. no question. May as well not even have mounts, they will be reduced to a curiositywithin a month or two.
Ok, now about the other points. Less CH's mean less pet stim sales. Don't see how you can argue with that simple fact and conclusion.
Less non-CH pets? no, I do disagree with this. People will still buy the best pet they can get. The difference is that they are going to die a lot more, and are no longer "tanks". I got in my first fight with my carrion spat last night. He was down in two hits. I barely got off a shot before he was dead and there was certainly no opportunity to heal him. Maybe we'll sell more vitality packs, lol, but a lot fewer pet stims, and weaker pet stims, to non-CHs.
As far as the droid vs pet thing, we'll see. Once droids become more viable in combat I predict this will further reduce the number of CH's, but I'm sure ultimately everyone will still want at least some pet and some droid so long as we can use both simultaneously.
I'm actually considering dropping BE in favor of DE. Since the ultimate pets may very well be coming from droid engineers a month from now, and they won't have to worry about taking them to a "droid handler" for training and selling.
Nah, disagree. Think about how you actually use pet stims. You use them two ways. To heal a pet after a battle and to heal them during a battle. When you have a pathetic 700 HAM pet, it's gonna die in any significant battle. At which point, you're probably done healing that pet for that battle. Then as far as the after battle healing, of course you're going to use less pet stims there obviously, becuase you have less HAM to heal. So my guess is: less in-battle healing, and far far less after battle healing = far fewer pet stims used.
Tal-N wrote:
Does the new Cl standards mean more damage to pets? Yes so petstims will be more needed.
Nice forum and interesting posts to read =)
I'm a TKM / MCH have been since July and was a TKM andCH in beta, so not a fotm nor a holo grinder, that out of the way .Was a novice BE once too, for a day or so.
I've never bought pet stims since I have some medic skills, never bought a BE pet. Iprefer to search out new pets while exploring planets, just fun to me. I don't fight creatures/npc's that would surely kill my pets, actually I rather sacrifice my character in battle thenmypets vitality.Don't expect to have my pets kill anything,just use them to hold the creatures/npc's attention for a few seconds,20-30 is enough
I even understand why they are changing all the creatures and npc's armor and resists, along with the pets.
Even though they are boosting the BE's abilities( which is a great thing I feel and long overdue), I don't personally expect to bebeating a path down to the local BE pet-o-rama =) Just not my style, thoughif you are going to be the only game intown foroverpoweredpets, I believe alot of other ch's will be standing in line with deep pockets.
I do wearBE engineered clothes though, like them. But other thenone vitality stim thing that has goneunused, I've never bought anything from a BE.
Doubt that I'll buy anything from aBE unless I have no other choice, rather hunt it down myself.
When you have a pathetic 700 HAM pet, it's gonna die in any significant battle. At which point, you're probably done healing that pet for that battle.
Even a CL10 critter has around 1000 points of HAM under the new system, not much actually hits for around 500+ damage per second unless it's got around 10k HAM in which case your in over your head anyway. If you considering anything below CL50 to be less than significant then your asking too much from a solo experience... get in a group if you want to take on the big nasties, that is what this whole change is all about.
The point i make about the petstims is that resistances are down but damage output from the enemies is the same, thus your gonna see the pets taking more damage alot faster meaning that people will be buying more stims.
Another reason people might end up buying more stims is that the patch will make them spend more skill credits to control the same level of critter they were controlling before the patch.
In order to scrounge up those skill credits, they might give up medic and start relying on pet stims instead of general stim-B/C's.
--Insomnia
I don't see the same hit you are seeing. FIrst of all.. I can not see that the MCH will be hit at all.. He will have to do some pet adjustments as will all CH's.
For the mid level CH and most are, it sounds like they will force them to spread their exp to include empathy. Most cut corners there.
When I was hunting in Yavin with 2 Kusaks, I often got 1000 CH per kill. I got double exp for running 2 pets, that will be cut to exp only on one pet. But I also got additional exp because the Kusak is CL 16. It sounds like they will nerf exp totally.
Yes, Tal was right about the healing. Back in the days when I used a razor cat.. sheesh. **edit** they takea lot of damage. Lots of stims. But now I use a Graul Mauler, hehe, I can tell him to attack a spine flap, go in the house and start crafting, come back out and the mauler is standing there, fully healed and bodies everywhere. Many of them are also over CL 20. Mauler is only CL 34. I can go to Dath for an evening an may only use 2 stims killing Gaping Spider Hunters that hit for 500. Back in the Days of the Razor Cat, I would use 2 stims taking out a Spine Flap nest.
Since CH's dont use our pets anyway, if there were half as many CH's, but they used our pets, we would sell more pets than we do now. How the Stim sales will change... I dont know. It really all depends on what dev has in their coffee the day before this goes live. Since they have no clear vision, they shoot from the hip on the fly. There is no overall perspective.