Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Getting to know you and your profession!
...welcome Tiggs, long time CH here...meaning pre-nerf. Give us back some power by upping our CL cap,and perhaps even allow us to call 4 pets at a time--that might work.
Another thing you could do to help us out is to see to it that the combat revamp actually happens in a timely manner.
Also, give us some feedback from time to time about where you see our profession heading...participating in threads started by our community members would be a plus.
again...good luck
Message Edited by ScoutMastr on 10-11-2004 10:22 PM
Message Edited by ScoutMastr on 10-11-2004 10:23 PM
Seiryuu wrote:
The most pressing issue is that Creature Handler was "balanced" due to the Creature Balance, yet the rest of the balance never occurred.
Nothing has been done to compensate handlers in the 11 months since that happened and it will be at least half a year before the Combat Update does get pushed through. It has killed the profession and driven myself and many long-time handlers to quit in disappointment. Moral around here is abysmal because of all these things.
Have to agree here, was a Master Ranger and Master Creature Handler. My only weapons of note were my Creatures, when the balance hit there was no longer any need for CHers since TKM were now the FOTM and started the solo-group thing.All of the unarmed professions, except pikemen perhaps, were now not in need of groups. Especially withbuffs, food, and armor. Instead of reverting things back when thebalance was delayed to a full revamp. Newsuper MOBS -- Droid invasion -- were created and the weakened Creature Handlers were left out in the cold.
A Creature Handler, with three pets in a group should be there to pull agro from another PC and/or assist that PC in combat. I remember as a Ranger, and growing CH, being able to pull agro off of another PC, rescue, when a tame went bad and allow them to try again.Again, a number of players have left NOT for lack space, I am sure JTL will do nicely, but for lack of the ground game that once was. What started and was halted with the Creature Handler changes should NOT have taken place till everything was tested and read to be implemented.
3. Profession no longer has a niche in which it is particularly valuable. Melee players provide better tanking and damage-dealing, while Bio-Engineers sell better pets. CH needs to be more valuable in both PvE and PvP.
4. More pet storage. Either an increase to the number of pets that can be kept in the datapad, or the ability to drop stored pets off either in a regular house or a specialized 'stable' structure.
5. The special attacks "Poison," "Disease," and "Knockdown" do not work with the specialattack1 and specialattack2 training commands. The useranged training command switches pets to Ranged Attack mode, but cannot switch them back to melee.
6. Mounts need to be valuable when compared to vehicles. Current mount advantages are not enough. Suggestions include improved mounted combat, improved mount speed/gallop, improved mount selection. "Flying" (hovering – not true atmospheric flight) mounts.
7. Creature Handler "Epic Quest" (similar to RIS armor) with a valuable reward (i.e. unique pet, one-time use "tame adult" ability, etc).
8. Pet-calling delay of any length is not needed outside of combat, as specific examples of 'exploit' behavior haven't been produced. Particularly given the fact that creatures are the only "weapon" that cannot be "equipped" while already in combat.
9. Pets need more variety in desired properties besides just Light Armor and Kinetic Resist. Varied damage types, armor piercing, and creature-unique "droid module" type functionality.
10. Multiple wild pets are not nearly as effective as one big one (reverse seems to be the case for BE pets). Perhaps implement something similar to the Ultima Online "pack instincts" system.
AFK entertaining is something that is so gamebraking that it has ruined the proffession almost (but not quite yet) to a point of no recovery. It has more effect on us than most non-entertainers tend to realise.
Back before the holocron era when afk entertaining was not that common (and even shunned quite often) people came in, chatted a bit, tipped and thanked us for the healing, it was generally a done thing, not an exception.
When the hoolocron era hit around christmas and all the grinders just wanted to get through entertainer fast, it changed the atmosphere completely, there was loads of these afk entertainers. This had a twofold effect, First it taught new entertainers that AFK was ok, and also existing dancers became bored, as the cantina's were suddenly no longer the lively places they once was. So they began to either afk alsoor leave the cantina's as a result.
As a result of this the cantina's fast became known as a place of afk grinders, not a place to socialise, do you tip afk grinders? no, and all entertainers got generalised as this catagory, live or not, it was simply not a common practice anymore to tip entertainers, live or not.
Then buffbots emerged. Macroed so they can give out buffs while not even at the keyboard. the same happened, over time people just got used to being able to get buffs for free, simply because the buffbot doesnt know if they are afk. Why ask a live entertainer for a buff when you can get it afk from one of these automated drones?
As it stands it gets worse by the month. Entertainers who are still playing live are waiting eagerly for this issue to be fixed, and the game is less fun for us all till it is fixed. and as a result many of us are still leaving the proffession all the time. If it is left long enough when the afk issue is fixed there may be no live entertainers left, or so few that it will impact the game in a very big way. Currently the entertainers will recover. There is enough live entertainers, and ex-entertainers who would return if this is fixed. So im just praying it is 
As far as i am concerned AFK entertaining is our single biggest issue, nothing else matters untill this is fixed. And if you need to know there is currently 2+ ways to loop a macro.
First is /macro <name> and second is the'/ui action toolbarSlot00' commands, for afk macroing to be fixed, all possible loop commands must be removed.
picklesSW wrote:
Remove the ability to entertain while AFK, especially the ability to provide entertainer buffs while AFK. This is the single biggest issue facing the entertainer professions, it's been the single biggest issue for over a year, and hey, you've already promised to remove it. All I'm asking is for you to follow through on that promise and to do it before everyone here quits out of disgust. In other words, soon. Not next year.
Thanks.
I am not a dancer but, you may want to take a look at the crafting system for EQ2. Why? They have a very innovative way to prevent afk crafting which could be applied to the entertainment professions.
A short synopse:
1) Certain events occur at random intervals that cause a player to rect to them. aka daydreaming -- with out a proper responce the item fails.
2) Entertainers could in the course of healing or buffing be require to respond to certain problems that occur. To not do so would stop the buffing process completely. The same could be done for Doc buffs (only different action before a buff is applied and randomly chosen). This would not stop AFK entertaining to heal BF but if you weren't AFK the additional, randomlly chosenflourishes (?), could decrease the timeit would take in half.
1) Not nearly enough pet storage. Pets that are rare, or just cool, may not necessariy be good for combat. Other combatants can use houses and the bank to store an insane number of weapons. We have to release pets that may be cool-looking or interesting in favor of ones that will actually be of help in a fight. Remember the data module bug? If nothing else, re-introducing as a "feature" would be nice (and make data module droids worth owning).
2) Pets are underpowered. A TKA can solo mobs in seconds what would take me several minutes (and a lot of pet stims). Granted, my fights may require more strategy and ultimately be more rewarding, and it's probably unintended that anyone should be able to walk up to a couple of ancient graul and solo them. But the bottom line is, other combat clases can and we can't.
3) CL cap is too low. We can have 3 pets at master. Whoop-de-doo. Good luck at finding a mix of 3 pets that can fit under that limit and are worth using. On the assumption that none of the other combat professions will get nerfed to our level any time soon, at least raise the CL limit so that we can pull three pets that aren't going to keel over after 3 hits. Even 5 more points so that we can use 3 level 25 pets would be nice.
4) Sick of getting robbed of XP. I've already reached master and the XP payout still pisses me off. I can AFK a lair with a CDEF pistol for 2000 XP. Not only do lairs not yield CH XP, but a 10-minute, down to the wire, battle with pets yields a few hundred XP unless you use a Teeny Tiny Pet vs. Big Bad Mob. In which case the pet gets incapped 5 times and most of your effort is spent on reviving and keeping him alive. Pull out more than one pet, you get hosed further on XP as you receive fractions of the full amount. And that's assuming that your mob doesn't warp 100m away and die from a DOT while your pets are out of range, robbing you of XP altogether. Or sometimes the creature dies 10m away and you still get no CH XP for no readilly apparent reason. By the time you hit tier 4, combat is a waste of time as far as XP goes, as it's more effecient to train and release baby kreetles for half a day. The final insult: FS conversion ratio for CH XP is a joke (not to mention it should be able to convert to combat FS XP). I feel bad for those just starting the grind.
5) Ability to see pet details (special attacks, etc.)in the datapad.