Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
Rock Beetleis CL 13.
There ARE no pets in the wild with stats like 5k 40%, same as there are nowild Kaadu withstats like we make. I'm pretty sure that was what the pointto the CH "nerf", it's so BE's can actually make replacements that are as good as the "old" stuff.
Using your "It doesn't happen in the wild" arguement, we shouldn't be able to armor 1 critters till they are level 40+. Do you think thats a bug? You can't have "strong XYZ" on critters under 30. Maybe thats a bug too?
Perhaps the Devs thought of it this way, there are 4 main "groups" for pets: <10 (non-ch), <23 (3 pet-CH), <35 (2 pet-CH, <70 (MCH). Maybe then pets are supposed to fit into that in 10k chuncks like 1-10k, 10-20k, 20-30k and 30k+ effective HAM.
I'm just playing Devils Advocate. It's good of you to warn people that there might be something "sus" about some pets, but until a Dev actually gets back to us, were only guessing either way.
P.S. I'm MCH so the effective HAM on my guys (the ones I actually fight stuff with at least) is 30-40k+ (pre nerf it was 55k) andsooner or later I'll runacross a Bull Rancor babythat hasan EH of 52500. I don't actually sell pets to the public much, except Kaadu and Bol through the baazar, so it wont really bother me too much if Non's get another "hit". It'll just be another reason to be a CH that can make your owninteresting creations 
Pasey wrote:
Tal - I was on the fence about this before in your earlier posts, but you have me convinced it's a bug now. I will not be selling or making any of these pets. In fact I doubt I'll be selling ANY non ch pets until this is fixed. My main market has been geared towards CH's, and I think that is enough for now. I can't compete with those making the bugged non ch pets anyway, they will take one look at my low level pets and think I make crappy pets, not realizing they are actually good, just not bugged.
I don't know if thats really the solution here Pasey. Even a first generation clone is breaking the rules when you experiment on the physique, prowess or mental pools because as it's become very clear these stats are not being taken into consideration as much as they should be for the CL calculations. Basically every clone we make and experiment on is exploiting this particular flaw in the system. You can't even just stop experimenting since you know dna in those slots isn't going to raise the CL as much as it should.
The only way to completely wash your hands of making unbalanced pets is to simply stop making clones and that is extreme as hell. Carry on making generationalized clones I say, its hard enough to get CL10 ones all the way from CL50 because of critical failures and losing the pet on resampling it's dna so it's not as if your using the nocious dna and simply getting those kinds of extreme results with the first generation clones which is clearly an exploit. As someone said, in the case of this particular means of getting overpowered clones it's the system itself that is flawed and you cannot be expected to simply not make clones to have a clear conscious. Remember too thats it's not just the CL10 ones, its every clone which you make thats unbalanced in some way.
My priomay concern was brought up here by Zen. The less scrupulous Bio-Engineers *are* going to make and sell as many of these unbalanced nonch pets as they can so this is going to warrant some sort of fix to the system and the more unbalanced nonCH pets are out there, the more likely the fix will include a nerf to pre-nerf pets. I never thought to try experimenting all on Physique and Prowess while leaving aggression alone so I tried it this moring with AMAZING results. I started with Vexed Voritor Lizard DNA in Physique and Aggression and Merek Harvester DNA in the other 3 slots. With a 2nd generation pet I got CL34 with 13k health, 12k action, 10k mind, AR1 and 54% kinetic resists. At CL34!! I immediately tamed it and will be using it to tank with but also to have in my datapad to see what will happen when the nerf comes. Now I am almost afraid to fill the orders for custom pets I have since I may sell thse people overpowered pets that get nerfed. But what am I to do? Intentionally make pets with less HAM then Iknow that I could? Where do I draw the line? What stats will be considered "reasonable" for CL35 pets? CL45 pets?I have orders from people with a wide range of CH skills they decided to keep so some need a CL31 or less poet, some need a CL45 or less pet, some need a CL25 pet. How will I determine what will be fair when the nerf comes? I also have quite a few orders for nonCH pets from people who said they would be quite pleased with 3k health and 20% resists but will this be safe? This is becoming very disconcerting to me. I am starting to build up a very good rep with CH's and nonCH's alike for making top quality custom pets and I don't want to ruin my expanding customer base by having all the pets I sold get totally nerfed.
Well the fact is that we can only use the wild mobs as a baseline. If you recall I managed to figure out some math before the patch which worked in almost all instances to determine the CL from the critters HAM and vice versa. All you do is take the CL rating and multiply it by 200. Then you add an additonal modifier for the CL rating. CL20 means you add an addtional 1000 to the max HAM. CL30 you add 2000.
That means if you take an arbitary value such as CL45 it works out like this:
3500+(45x200) = 12500 maxium HAM
If the critter has light armor then you simply don't add the bonus. Check this with any mob in the game, animal or npc which doesn't have medium armor. Naturally things like the Blurrg Raptor doesn't work. They're CL134 at the moment with 34k of HAM and medium armor. Do the math and you get 26800 which isn't even in the ball park.
This is naturally only one half of the calculations though, the HAM can be adjusted up and down because there's also a resistances quota to meet and very probably a damage one as well. The math was fully documented before the patch went live on this topic:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=bio-engineer&message.id=34914
Be warned this was an investigive topic which public developed the theory as it went along so it's quite heavy reading
Hey all,
For those of you who claim that makinguber non-CH clones is not exploiting, I'll post Holocron's definiiton of an exploit below.
"An exploit is a case where there is a game imbalance or bug that players discover and use to the extent that it starts having wider repercussions on the game as a whole.
For example--pistoleer being more or less powerful than carbineer might be an imbalance, but it's not an exploit. The HAM bar not updating is a bug, but it is not an exploit.
But an imbalance that lets you kill any creature in the game with little risk or a bug that lets you earn 100x the cash that you would normally be able to earn in one hour... those are exploits.
Now, I admit that this is a very fuzzy line. Sometime the word exploit gets tossed around a bit too liberally. It does NOT imply that those who use the tactic discovered are cheating, necessarily. Sometimes, the tactic is so egregiously out of whack that we can legitimately say, "Uh, come ON, you should have realized that was cheating." But often we cannot, as with the missions in droids--people thought that was completely legit. But then, people probably didn't see the wider implications of it and how much advantage it conferred on those who used the tactic."
-Raph Koster
Chief Creative Officer,
Sony Online Entertainment
There's nothing in that definition that claims that an exploit has to be declared as an exploit by the devs. In fact, another dev quote (Holo or Q, I can't remember which) indicated the opposite.
"We try to put everything in the patch notes, with one exception: exploits. And that's because the patch notes are often posted in advance, and we don't want people rushing off to do the exploits before they are fixed."
So, the question becomes, is this an imbalance that is is causing wider repercussions in the game as a whole? Obviously, there are no specific quotes to cite on this particular issue. However, we do know that the devs though that the pre-patch rock beetles were overpowered (for their level) enough to warrant a change, so it's not a stretch to believe that the devs would think that the uber non-CH clones are unbalanced to the point of being game damaging.
Benechi
Meroc,
Well then there aren't actually any bugs in this game since almost nothing is documented. Wohoo! **edit**, I should try that trick next time my company releases software, lol.
meroc wrote:
With all due respect guys (and gals), none of you can speak with any authority on what is or isn't bugged. There is no documentation for you to base anything on, so it is only your opinion until someone actually in authority (and documentation) actually tells us what is and isn't "working as intended".
Sure, some stuff looks like it may (possibly) be out of whack, but until the guy that designed the system lets somebodyelse (hopefully us :/) know how the system is actually supposed to work you're ALL sprouting opinion as fact.
Well a simple way to determine an exploit is when something can happen one way resulting in huge benefits but you don't see such huge benefits via another approach to it. In the case of the HAM bars not draining from specials you can't get around that aside from not using specials which simply isn't an option. However if you find that a certain special attack sin't draining the pool and you persistantly spam that then your exploiting a bug.
It's similar to stragies too, however many of you use Squalls, Vir Vur and simialr mobs for target pratice? We all know they move as slow as an tranquilized slug with arthritis carrying two suitcases filled with lead bricks, so we kite them for easy exp. That is indeed exploiting a bug however it's not something that effects the world in general since its only giving induviduals a benefit. In the case of these overpowered pets though your seeing people taking tougher missions, fighting each other with them and generally having an easy ride to high end content and major butt kicking when they didn't earn it. Even a CH can have 3 CL 25 pets with 11k of HAM and 49% to everything stats allowing them to take down something they shouldn't because normally something has to be CL50 to have 11k of HAM and resistances like that.
As far as the argument about whether or not our creatures should be more powerful than the creatures of the same CL that are found in the wild, consider this:
If there was some creature in the wild that had, say 5000/5000/5000 ham, and maybe 10% resists across the board, and maybe 300 damage, I think the whole point of our abilities is that we be able to make it so that it is say 8000/5000/2000 with say 50% kinetic resist and no other resists and maybe 400 damage but less chance to hit, or something like that. Clearly our "mutant" creature would be more useful than the other creature that technically has similar stats and identical CL, but our ability to manipulate it alone would make our critters very valuable and superior to those in the wild.
But arguing that instead we should be able to make 10000/10000/10000 50% resists across the board, and light armor, and specials, and ranged, and 500 damage, and the same CL is just silly. How can one justify such a thing other than to say it's a horrible mistake in the system?
Migrating.
Thats basically what bio-engineered pets should have done to them. Have their stats migrated through generations much like how we do at the moment but without the obvious flaws in the calculations. Even if you don't see bio-pets having superior stats they would still become more useful because they are focussed towards a fixed purpose. That might be the whole way in which pets will be superior to droids, since battle droids will simply have uniform resistances and HAM you'd find that they cannot be focussed towards certain roles. Thus under the right conditions a kinetic tank CL10 pet would be superior to a battledroid.
Tal-N,
I requested a linking in another thread over on the Creature Handler Forums. I can request it here. Personally, I have spent almost 100% of my time post-patch attempting to find a "formula" to this new BE creation scheme invented by SOE. I have spent countless hours logging data, experimenting my night away, and running from innumerable creatures across the SWG galaxy.
I have created level 9 creatures with amazing statistics, myself. It had nothing to do with the "bugged" dna hypothesized by others, it had nothing to do with attempting to create a god creature, it had nothing to dowith specifically attempting to find an economic niche for, lack of a better term, uber pets. It was simply what the current system produced through my experimentation and quest to find the "heads and tails" of this new system.
Basically, I have a pile of data on this new system and I can safely say that it is a mess. There are the shining hard-coded "AHA!"s but there are so many unfathomable randoms to this system that logic just gives up on, I gave up on the experimentation. I offer good luck to you out there who are still attempting to crack the code.
If what you state is true about the bugginess of some dna and the bugginess of resampling, then I can state that the whole system is a patchwork of bugs. These two "issues" (I only quote this because there has been no official word) are going to be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
As far as the morality of this system, as you state, I need to read something official. Something posted by a Developer stating what has been pointed out are issues. I can't take your moral movement as "the word". This doesn't, in anyway, mean that I am mass producing low level pets for non-ch's, but to absolutely no offense Tal-N, without the linking I requested to information specifically about this system and it's issues, I cannot take what you say as the starting point. This doesn't mean that you are incorrect, it only means that I need to hear it from a Developer as to how the system is supposed to work, as opposed to how you hypothesize it's supposed to work.
For all I know at this point, this is the system that was planned to be in the game. If you can point me to the official word, it would help me out some.