Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Getting to know you and your profession!
duncje
Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:42 pm
#820
The most pressing issue is necessity.
There is no current, absolute, NEED for droids, as there are needs for other crafted products. Yes, our droids provide some good services, but none of them are absolutely needed.
Every other crafting class has items that are neededby the community; armor, weapons, harvesters, butthere is not a need for droids. Everything our droids do is replicated in kind in some game system. You can heal wounds in camps and med centers,non-CH pets (esp. theuber ones thatare an obvious bug) areas good orbetter than combat droids, interplanetary survey droids will beyesterday's news with the no-wait, no-cost travel that JtL brings.
In order to have a saleable product, we need to provide something that is an integral part toeveryday life in this game. We don't have that currently.
(One exception tothe need idea are BH droids, butone product to one class does not a market make.)
Thanks Tiggs 
Bullhype
Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:44 pm
#821
I feel the most important issue of commando is that the vast arsenal they are alotted is ineffective to use given the points invested. Grenades that miss, rocket launchers that don't work, etc. You fix the weapons, fix the class.
TheRealTK421
Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:50 pm
#822
Micco30 wrote:
Let me know if you want me to remove my ramblings
I'd never recommend that you reign in your voice or opinions, man....you should know that.
It's true that many items carry similar weight with us. It will be hard to narrow down the major issues to just one or two.
/bow
Respectfully,
JavelinCatcher
Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:56 pm
#823
Oh gee, where to start....
We're a quirky little bunch. We've been through a lot in the last year. We have seen...
1) Our products available from Terminals (removed long ago)
2) Droids considered "overpowered" with 3k HAM (restored with publish 8)
3) Fear of droid perma-death...where everyone was afraid to use their droid for if it was incapped, they would loose their droid forever. This took months to overcome once it was removed.
4) A entire weekend where no droids were craftable.
We've been abused and pittied. However, things are somewhat better than they used to be...
We have a total of 5 consumable products:
1) Droid repair kits
2) Seeker Droids (Bounty Hunter Only)
3) Arakyd Probe Droids (Bounty Hunter Only)
4) Interplanetary Survey droids (Artisan only)
5) Droids that detonate themselves (Smuggler and Bounty Hunter only)
We've goten a lot more "functionality" added to droids with publish 8. One could say that we've got a droid to enhance every profession, butonly one profession requires a droid. The only instance where a droid is required is for the Bounty Hunter Investigation tree which up until recently, many Bounty Hunters avoided at all costs. We sell optional products that while in most cases are quite usefull, very few people know about.
When we do sell one of out wonderful droids to someone, we can rest assured they won't ever need another one like it because other than the ones listed above, a droid lasts forever. Your average joe combat person will never ever need a droid. It is entirely possible to play SWG for a entire year and never use a droid.
To sum up, at best we are a unique profession with lots of ins and outs that we have our ownmanual that could very easily be about the size of the regular SWG manual (see Drashk's DE 101 post) and at the worst we are a novelty profession that caters to a small minority of the entire SWG population.
Even with the inclusion of the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, we still sell at best a optional component for someone's SWG daily life that will never decay.
Message Edited by JavelinCatcher on 10-25-2004 01:01 AM
Stegoid
Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:58 pm
#824
Please just fix the known problems with current droids and modules!!!! Here' why...
As a Droid Engineer, Ihave to do an awful lot of educational work to support my sales.
Once I get a customer coming up to speed to understand droids,I often find that I have to disappoint them when they ordercustom droids thatwill be broken or willnotwork.
I am tired of having to say things like "I can install that module in that chassis - but it won't work". Or, "I can sell you a structure maintenace droid, but if you redeed a structure before taking it off the maintence list - it will never work again."
Please just address the "Gorantoth's Centralized Droid Issues" list and you'll make my crafting life much more enjoyable.
OrionsByte
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:12 pm
#825
I agree with Duncje. The usefulness, and the visibility of that usefullness,is the #1 item on my wishlist. Second to that is decay, and here's why:
Setting aside the word "need," which has caused dissention in the past, what other artisan professions have that we don't is products that sell themselves. More often than not, when people find out I'm a droid engineer, their first question is, "What can droids do?" Not all of these people are newbies, either - some of them have been around a good long time.
See, when someone sees a weaponsmith walking down the street, they instantly recognize that person's value as a resource; they know what products they can get from that person, they know how they could use those products, and they know under what circumstances they would want to buy those products from that person. They may not be privy to all the ins and outs of what goes in to weaponsmithing, but they know the end result well enough, because there are so many of their products out there.
However, it's rare to see a droid accompanying a player, and even when there is one, their function isn't alwaysapparent to passers-by. We have a pretty good variety of modules now, but most people either don't know about them, don't know enough about them, or decide it's not worth getting one based on what they know about them. Much of the time I spend with customers is educating them on what is available, and my customers usually end up with a droid they're very very happy with (typically an R3 'cause that's what we can pack the most features in to).
Part of the reason that the community knows so little about droids might be because there's so much to know (i.e. lots of various module and chassis combinations). However, it would be nice if the benefits of owning a droid were somehow more instinctive to the average customer, like owning a weapon is instinctive to the combatant. I think it's all about visibility - if someone sees what someone else's droid is doing, they may be more inclined to think of it for themselves later.
I said that droid decay was a secondary item, and the reason is that if what I stated above is true, and droids have little intrinsic value to many players, then knowing that they will decay and they'll have to pay to have them repaired or replaced would, in my opinion, cause a sharp drop in sales over time rather than an increase. I think it's more important to tip the economic scales in favor of demand rather than supply first, and then we can work on bringing them back for more.
[sorry for the long-windedness] <- seems to be a DE trait 
Message Edited by OrionsByte on 10-24-2004 10:17 PM
Drashk
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:21 pm
#826
I'm going to need to set down the old Correspondents hat for this one, since I want to make it absolutely clear that these are my personal views on the matter. I'm pretty sure that Tiggs knows this one, but I just wanted to clarify it to everyone else.
I think that the most important issue that needs to be addressed with the Droid Engineering profession is a market that can support dozens of active Master Droid Engineers per server, and not just 5 or 6.
The problem is that no single fix can take care of this issue. Basically,to fix this profession, 3rather broad steps need to be taken.
- The need to have a renewable market, through the implementation of a Decay system. Weapon and Armorsmiths have a great renewable market, since their products decay through use.
- A broader sales market, through the addition of usability and function. Each and every single droid and module needs to have some form of 'headline' that people 'can't go without'. Medical, Crating, and Storage Modulesare the only modules that currently fitinto this category. This needs to be extended to each individual Droid Type, as well as each droid module. Until Droids are just asintregral as to every profession as Armor and Weapons are to Combat professions, then droids will always be considered a nothing more then a novelty.
- Provide all of the Elite professions with some sort of user bonus. Droids should be found present in almost every single players datapad, just likeweaponsand/or armor are found in almost every players inventory.
There are many minor issues that could be address to 'patch up' our profession, but until the above three are addressed, Droid Engineers will always be the profession that provides some really nice novelty droids that are almost useful.
Message Edited by Drashk on 10-24-2004 10:28 PM
Gron_DM
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:27 pm
#827
I am excited about the potential with JTL but havign already been briefed about how droids are handles in iti am a little dissapointed. It is wonderful that we are going to be given a tool to sell ppl they will need droids and F/c's however the lack of any tangible quality on the Flight comps and the lack of vehicles that use a droid in space both are sad....i realize that they wanted to get the ppl using the ships asap but the flight comps stupid simplicity and lack of decay make them items that in the end will not help DEs as a market nor bring return customers....id suggest 3 things:1 make F/c's have decay 2: make more droids usable in crafts over F/c's....3 Make F/cs have a quality that means something, i hope they also decide to make droids do even more in space ill have my wookiee paws crossed that they may insitute some kind of droid repair options for ppls crafts....those are the issues that concern me outside the well known bugs.
I originally wrote this as some quick feedback but after reading Strikers response on why he was bummed about DE he reminded me what i was forgetting to say....
DE/droidsare not necessary to95%+ ofplayers for a well rounded, enjoyable and sucessfulSWG experience PERIOD. (5% being those BH that must use our products)
If there is some way we could make the dev team/SOE understand that we feel this need (we needtrue integration into how all the elite professions function!!)must be fixedwe wouldlike to know
OR
know why DE is effectively being left out of the game.
I wont quit DE as SWG is a young game but this is the heart of the problem here and i thank striker for reminding me about it as i had accepted that it was ok that DE be a second class citizen in the world of crafting in SWG.
/salute the striker all the correspondantsand the devs
SWG is an amazing game and i thinkhighly of the devs for it, but its still leaving some ppl at the back of the bus.
Message Edited by Gron_DM on 10-25-2004 01:00 PM
OrionsByte
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:29 pm
#828
The biggest problem I see with entertainers is that we lost a lot of respect as a side-effect of holo-grinding.
The holo-grind introduced a lot of "negative" elements in to the entertainer professions that I don't think we'd be seeing as much of otherwise. AFK-tainers and buffbots, to be precise. They were around before, of course, and I'm not saying that without the holo-grind we wouldn't be seeing them as problems, but I think they would have been much more rare.
After all, lots of people did the AFK macro-tainment thing because they were trying to unlock their FS slot. I think that buffbots became an issue largely because holo-grinders needed to get buffs so they could go out and grind, but all the entertainers were AFK because they themselves were hologrinding. Buffbots filled that hole.
Now I don't want to get carried away on that topic, because what's done is done. Sins of the past and all that. However, the scar that that time period left on the entertainer professions will not heal anytime soon. I've been entertaining since probably the third day I had the game, and it's one of my favorite things about SWG. I look back to the "good ol' days" right after launch, and you could go in to nearly any cantina and find a handful of at-the-keyboard entertainers kicking back and enjoying themselves.
I miss that. Doing something to clean up AFK-play is one possible way to restore it, but I also tend to think that that ship has sailed.
Aleyo
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:31 pm
#829
Tiggs, you're going to get the same reply from me here as in the Dancer forum, and you'll get the same one in the musician forum. It bears repeating.
My biggest issue is AFK play, which completely replaces the need for any live entertainer in terms of game mechanics. I'm sure you know from the dancer forum, this is a huge huge issue.
And my close second, once again, is the need for better communication from the devs. We got no replies as to whether feedback was even heard in the feedback thread for the new quests, and no word on the quests when they were put in the game. Just one of many shining examples of things gone wrong when a simple "hello, here's the status" post would've fixed things completely.
My biggest issue is AFK play, which completely replaces the need for any live entertainer in terms of game mechanics. I'm sure you know from the dancer forum, this is a huge huge issue.
And my close second, once again, is the need for better communication from the devs. We got no replies as to whether feedback was even heard in the feedback thread for the new quests, and no word on the quests when they were put in the game. Just one of many shining examples of things gone wrong when a simple "hello, here's the status" post would've fixed things completely.
KapowBzapp
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:32 pm
#830
I'm posting not as a DE but as one of their customers. After all, what's good for me should be good for them, and I'd really like to see...
1. Droid decay. Once I buy a good non-combat droid I can keep it forever. When I finally need a new droid it takes forever to find a DE because the last one gave up for lack of customers. Shopping for new armor, weapons, and chef foods is FUN because you eventually find something good or unusual, it should be the same shopping for droids.
2. Droid diversity. The R3 advanced chassis is the composite armor of droids; with 6 slots, why use anything else? OK, probot for combat. That's it. Droid construction should be like BE pets, where the DE's skill and materials determine the quality of the droid, and the chassis is for the most part just a skin.
3. Put a cost on language comprehension, and make a market for protocol droids. You'd think an accomplished Wookiee would travel with a protocol droid to translate for him, but somehow everyone already understands Sssrrriwook. Imagine if a multi-species party couldn't all understand each other without a protocol droid grouped in, one disposed to panic and run away from combat because the crafters used a second-rate motivator.
Droids CAN work. As a scout I have a harvester droid who is my constant companion in a very Star Warsy way. If only I could give the DE who made him more to do!
1. Droid decay. Once I buy a good non-combat droid I can keep it forever. When I finally need a new droid it takes forever to find a DE because the last one gave up for lack of customers. Shopping for new armor, weapons, and chef foods is FUN because you eventually find something good or unusual, it should be the same shopping for droids.
2. Droid diversity. The R3 advanced chassis is the composite armor of droids; with 6 slots, why use anything else? OK, probot for combat. That's it. Droid construction should be like BE pets, where the DE's skill and materials determine the quality of the droid, and the chassis is for the most part just a skin.
3. Put a cost on language comprehension, and make a market for protocol droids. You'd think an accomplished Wookiee would travel with a protocol droid to translate for him, but somehow everyone already understands Sssrrriwook. Imagine if a multi-species party couldn't all understand each other without a protocol droid grouped in, one disposed to panic and run away from combat because the crafters used a second-rate motivator.
Droids CAN work. As a scout I have a harvester droid who is my constant companion in a very Star Warsy way. If only I could give the DE who made him more to do!
OrionsByte
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:35 pm
#831
I dropped fencing a while back to pursue music instead, but I recently started back down the path 'cause I missed it so much. I think it's a great combat profession that suits my playstyle well.
So my #1 issue - The Raphayl Blade - any news?
:moment of silence: 
Aakhperkare
Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:37 pm
#832
Tiggs wrote:
Hello Ch'ers,
First I want to apologize for not posting back here sooner. I have been busy with my daily job duties and JtL and I know that you don't want excuses =P
I have read over all of your concerns and entered them into my excel sheet along with the other professions I have been to so far. I do have to say that CH does get my curiousity up since I have a few friends that play this class. They don't know I work for SOE and I rarely hear any complaints from them about their profession. Odd, huh. Anyway thank you all for the information and with helping me to learn what you feel is wrong with this class. I posted in another forum what is it they like or drew them to their profession and I think I will be doing that follow up post to the forums I have hit already. It may give me an even better insight into the professions.
Oh! To the trolls that posted, sorry I am all out of troll food today. Guess we will have to buck heads another day.
Thanks for responding, Tiggs. I know how busy the devs are with JTL. But I am curious. Because your friends do not complain about the CH profession, do you feel that we are complaining for no reason? I'd really like to know your intentions with that comment, because it didn't come off well. If you want to get into a debate on how poorly CH's have been treated by the devs (and playerbase), I'd be happy to accomodate. Though we are far from the only profession ignored and poorly treated, that doesn't mean we aren't justified...