Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Am I the only one?
JodoKai wrote:
I love CH. I like working with pets. I LOVE what the Devs have done with CH. I love the fact that a dabbler can no longer be as effective as a Master CH.
I'm also excited about the Combat Revamp. I think CH's will really be in high demand then. Buffs will be a lot lower, people won't be able solo everything in the game anymore with a good set of armor and a good buff. People will need tanks again, and everyone knows that a CH tank is a lot better than a droid tank (I'm a master Droid Engineer and I can tell you that).
Well, I'll say this- there used to be too d$m!ed many of us. I do not want to return to the days when everyone was running around with three rancors or gurrecks. I definitely do not want to return to the days when every moron with a faamba had to pull it out in the middle of the starport andmake it shake the groundas some sort of compensation for having asmall p3#!$. We were overpowered once, we're underpowered now, and we're hoping to be average in the near future. "Hoping to Be Average." It sounds like a very depressing Christmas song, but I think it'll be a hit!
I like being a semi-broken profession, though. I really do. I have four characters I play on four different galaxies: a master ranger (Starsider), a master pikewoman (Kettemoor), a master dancer (Tarquinas), and my primary character,a master creature handler (Sunrunner). Semi-broken professions are fantastic because there's a sense of community in them that exists solely due to the absence of tourists. If you've ever ridden in an old Jeep (my little brother has one), you'll know that people in old Jeeps wave to each other when they pass on the road. Not new Jeeps mind you, just old ones. They'll give each other a thumbs up, a peace sign, or some other gesture of greeting. Something similar exists with rangers in SWG. It exists to a lesser degree with creature handlers, but it's still there. It happens every once in awhile with polearm specialists. It used to happen all the time with dancers, but those days are gone. It's a nice thing, that gesture of greeting. It makes you feel like you belong to something.
Anyway,if you're in a broken profession, you're there because you like the concept, not because you want to be...(I can't believe I'm about to use this word)...uber. The second your profession becomes perceived as "the best," you'll suddenly find yourself surrounded by fairweather friends who do nothing but lower the property value in your neighborhood- people who speak in numbers and compare said numbers like they're krayt-tissue, pre-nerf phallic symbols. Very disheartening stuff.
I'm really hoping we don't become significantly more attractive as a profession with the combat rebalance. That rebalance is going to be a bitter pill to swallow regardless of who you are.Reduced income will be universal, affecting comabtants and crafters alike. Decayin weapons and armor will be increaseddue to the fact that fights will take longer (as a result of weaker weapons, worse armor,less effective buffs). The amount of content we'll have available to us will be less than it is now simply due to increased difficulty. It'll be that much worse if we have the "grass is always greener" crowd flocking to us with their "a," "a," "a," "t1," "t1," "g," "g," "g," spam. That stuff annoys the bajeezus out of me.
If it soundsto you like I'm an elitist, it sounds that way to me, too.Funny thing, I never used to be one. It's an attitude that's just sort of sprung up around me as I played online games. You see so much self-entitlement, so much "me me me!" behavior, soooo much laziness, and so much bold-faced bad behavior that it's hard not to emerge a cynic.I guess I am an elitist these days. I can't say I'm proud of the fact, but I can't say I'm ashamed of it either. I wish I were as much about community-building and encouragement as I used to be, but I seem to spend entirely too much time rolling my eyes these days to have muchtime for anything else. The thing is, at least when you roll your eyes in a broken profession, you get the feeling that you're preaching to the choir. You're all in it together, and you're there because you made the choice to be. When they fix us, they'll break us in the process; the wall will break, and the floodwaters will come rushing in.
Anyway, am I happy with the profession as it is now? Well, I'm not over-the-moon excited about it, but I am content. My only real issue is the autostoring problem, but that affects everyone who happens to own a droid or a speederbike, not just us. Certainly I'd like more creatures available to train, more mounts to ride, more commands to teach. Those would all just be fluffy additions, though welcome ones, not real improvements in mechanics. I'd absolutely love it if our mounts moved faster and we were able to sell pets on vendors/the bazaar, but I'm not really expecting that. We're living on borrowed time during the era of JTL. Anything we get at this point will just be an afterthought. I fully expect the first six months following the JTL launch to be nothing but JTL bug fixes. The six months after that will be spent working on the next expansion pack despite the fact that JTL is still buggy as all heck. I say that only because it's been the SOE business model thus far. I'd love to be wrong. Please let me be wrong.
*rolls her eyes* Yes, I'm a cynical elitist suffering from occasional bouts of bad posting judgement. Most of the decisions made by the developers just boggle the mind. I tell myself that any rational person would'vefled the gamelong ago. Why am I still here? The same reason that always comes up when that question is asked: the people. People are the very worst part of the game, and they're also the very best. I don't have fun in this game because of the skills or the numbers, I have fun because I've met good people who share my experiences with me. It's that simple.
Whether the profession gets better or worse, I'll keep it. Whether we're flooded with inane morons or enlightened Harvard graduates, I'll keep it. I'll keep riding my mountain dewback and referring to him by name. I'll keep dragging my poor, slow, tired chokus across Tatooine even though they'd rather beriding comfortably in the nice, cool datapad. I'll keep sending my prowling gurreck against each Great Plains Stalker spawn I manage to track down, despite the fact I can tell he really doesn't want any part of it (I can feel him rolling his eyes at me!). And I'll blab all of it over guildchat to the people I like so they can get a good laugh about it. At the end of the day, what else can you do?
AlestaEtouv wrote:Well, I've heard a lot about how the new CH is underpowered - but if you are playing this as a fun game, what's the harm? All characters can't be supermen - isn't the point that each class has it's strengths & weaknesses, and the fun is in how they all complement each other..?I certainly plan to join the ranks of Novice CH when I'v completed Scout, 'weak' or not.By the way, Nhari said "It'll be that much worse if we have the "grass is always greener" crowd flocking to us with their "a," "a," "a," "t1," "t1," "g," "g," "g," spam. That stuff annoys the bajeezus out of me." I've seen a lot of people doing this sort of thing (random single words or letters)around the starports -I didn't know it meantsomething, I just thought they had computer problems!
Would anyone care to enlightena newbieas to why people would do this deliberately & what it is supposed to achieve...? I'm intrigued now!
They're training their pets. "g" = group, "t1" = trick one, "a" = attack, etc.
