Bio Engineer Archive

Please read and provide feedback. Eventually the list at the end will be broken up as follows

• Outstanding Issues (Top 5 or Top 10 from any category)


• List of Bugs


• Gameplay issues - Fun and Interesting? Things that could be done better?


• List of exploits hurting your profession


• Balance Issues - Things that are too easy or too hard.


• Wish List items

I'll need your feed back getting the above together, for now the idea is to give your feedback on the SOP so the devs can get your feelings on it.

Bioengineer State of the Profession

Overview
The recent tissue fixes have been a boon to bioengineers both economically and in terms of game play. The ability to make pet stims in factories and sell tissues that work has given us a way to finally make money without spending the bulk of our time at a crafting station. While the current opinion seems to have been upgraded from us being one of the most broken classes in the game, most feel there is still a lot of work to make us a completely viable class.

Top Issue
The most important problem to BE’s right now is the brokenness of the clone line. The current selection of pets is extremely limited, giving us little that is desirable to either CH’s or non-CH’s. While the pets we can make that aren’t bugged and untamable are technically better than the exact animal in the wild, there is a better version for every CH cert level until a BE reaches master level and can make rancors. While we understand that the cloning fixes are in the works, it has been some time since we heard anything these changes and we consider this top priority in fixing the class.

Economic Status
This is improving but still prevented from reaching it’s full potential due to the bugs in the skill lines. The problems with the clone line limit the potential income from this line. Rarity on the components for many products in the tissue line also limits income here, but this is still our top earner right now.

Profession Interdependence
This one is a bit controversial it seems. Some feel that CH’s should be more dependant on BE’s. A few go so far as to say that CH’s should have to buy pets from BE’s. This is hardly a popular idea and most BE’s argue against it saying instead that we should be able to make pets that CH’s would want to buy over a wild pet. The tissue line is better. Pet stims are very popular, but the tissues are useful only to a few other professions. Medical healing tissues seem to be the most popular. The chef additions seem to be the least desired in the tissue line. This is in part due to the cost of making these. Most food supplements cost as much to make as the foods. Since the foods that take these seem to be the low end foods that are hard to sell anyway, the opinion is that they cost too much to be worth using them.

In reverse, BE’s are the most expensive crafting profession. Artisan based crafters require only Novice Artisan and one line in that class. This gives them basic surveying abilities and the ability to run a vendor with little additional skill point expenditure. BE’s on the other hand require Novice Medic with Organic Chemistry 4 and Novice Scout with Hunting 4. Exploration 4 is necessary if you wish to be able to sample from aggressive creatures, something that will likely be more necessary with the cloning fixes. The extensive fieldwork requires some form of defense ability. This leads to specialized BE’s. If you want to make the best pet stims you need Doctor skills for quality medical components. Selling pets to Non-CH’s requires CH skills to be able to train the pets. Tailor or Chef skills are required to actually use our tissues. In summary it seems we are more dependent on other classes than other classes are dependent on BE’s.

Issue List
Clone Engineering Issues

• This is currently our biggest issue. The clones we can make for CH's are not desirable compared to other pets at any given cert level, compared to what's available in the wild. For non-CH's, our best pets under cl 15 aren’t perceived to be as good as rock beetles, mountain krevol, or cowardly gurreck. Now with mounts being added, we will be missing out on the full potential of the mount market. There are reported to be non-ch versions of all the mounts spawning in the wild. BE's can only make two for non-CH's. We feel getting the cloning changes completed and pushed live should be the top priority for BE fixes.
  
• To be fixed with the upcoming cloning changes (gleaned from feedback we've been given so far. )
  
  
  
  • Diversity - currently there are very few creatures we can make. This was reported to be more than doubled with the new cloning changes. Some of these will not have tamable versions in the wild. While we understand CH's will get some unique creatures we can't make while we get creatures they can't normally tame, we do hope we will get something from every animal type. Currently, we have no snakes or flyers for example.
    
  • Bugged clones
    
  • Viability - We should be able to make pets of any given CL with the stats of a creature several CL higher.
    
  • Complete control over HAM, damage, armor, special attacks and CL - A concern is whether we will be able to lower stats during the process. If we are trying to make a CL 15 creature and it's coming out to be a CL 16 creature, can we lower the stats to fit the order? We have not been told whether or not we will be able to control resists. We would like to see the ability to do this if we can't already in the new system.
    
  • More information will be displayed, including Armor, special abilities, resist and CL.
    oFull-grown size will vary greatly depending on the final stats. One concern is whether we will have any control over this.
    
  • Coloring clones
  
  
• Other issues and bugs
  
  
  
  • Currently, once a clone is tamed, it no longer retains the creator's mark. A BE'd pet should display who made it as well as the owner.
    oDNA is not lost when creating a DNA template. I got a report that when this happens the DNA loses stats. I'll try to get hard data on this.
    
  • The resource formula for clones still has UT. UT is not found on creature food or flora food.
    
  • To date, no one has been able to affect the DPS of a creature, we can raise damage, but the speed goes up accordingly. While there is some variation of dps, it seems random. We would like to have some control over this.
    
  • Psychology appears to have no effect on the creature or its effect is unknown. We'd like an official explanation of this stat.
    
  • Many feel that cloning gives too little xp given the considerable time required to gather the samples needed to make a clone. We'd like you to look into upping the xp rate for clones to take this into account.
    
  • BE's get no UXP from clones. We'd like to see some UXP given from taming or combat.
    
  • Rapid-fire clicking DNA samples will insert the same sample multiple times into a DNA template without causing an invalid ingredient message making it possible to craft clones using a single DNA sample. I haven't been able to reproduce this myself, but others have. Information indicates it may be linked to lag.
    
  • Pet deeds still show under Misc/Item on vendors and the bazaar.

Good list.

The sheer number of CHs and the fact that so many BEs are also CHs negates the possibility of CHs having to get their pets from BEs. It makes complete sense, Pistoleers don't have the ability to make their own pistols; Swordsmen don't have the ability to make their own swords; why do CHs have the ability to make their own pets? They should have given BE the ability to tame wild animals in addition to cloning, and in lieu of the tissue line, and given CH the ability to train and use them. But they didn't and it is too late for that kind of beta level work now.

As far as what is going to be fixed in the upcoming Clone lists, we need to paraphrase a line from one of SOEs competitors: If it isn't in the game, it isn't in the game. Their previous statements about what they would do sounded very pie-in-the-sky to me and the fact that none have been implemented and we haven't even gotten any feedback since the "it won't be in this patch" message back in September make me very skeptical about how much of that is actually coming. Until it is here, assume it is not coming and keep yelling about it.

Add meat to the bioharvester list. It is our biggest need and fewer and fewer people even bother harvesting now because there are SO many much, much more lucrative ways for a CH to spend their time.

I am honestly not sure it is possible for our clones to actually be in high demand given the fact that CHs can get their own creatures for free and many, many times the selection that we have. Unless they set a team of programmers to give us every creature that CHs can get or severely limit the number of creatures in the wild that have babies, we will never have the selection. Yes, they could dramatically increase the abilities of our creatures, but they are finally beginning to understand that the biggest problem in the game is that creature pets' abilities are horribly overbalancing and therefore I cannot imagine that they will let us create even more powerful creatures. While they have dug themselves into a hole where the sheer number of CHs (i.e. paying customers) will not let them perform significant balancing, I cannot imagine that they are going to allow the problem to get even worse by allowing us to create super-pets for people to run around with.

Tal,

When you list all of the various talents we need to be successful, you didn't list needing artisan and at least merchant 3 to sell our goods.

Benechi

You don't NEED artisan nor marchant. Vendors are an option, you still have the bazaar. Artisan isn't needed as you can still use harvesters as long as someone else does the survaying. Plus resource suppliers are wide spread.

Talth,

great list, i agree 100%, and would be delighted if those changes could be implemented.

Tal-N,

agree with you precisely, picking up artisan is a choice, just like me picking up CH was a choice to use the creatures I create.

I hope they fix that wacky experimentation because it almost as bad as artisan experimenting in beta, when you failed stats went up and when you succeeded stats went down. That's just silly.

-sr

Well Tal,

By that same logic, you don't "need" CH, or Doctor or Exploration, but Talthazar lists them as well. The merchant skills depend on a certain playstyle just like those.

Stim BE - Doctor is helpful.

DNA BE - Exploration/Ranger is needed. (as well as some combat.)

Trained Creature seller - Requires at least novice CH.

BE shopkeeper - Needs the merch line.

He listed the first three, I just thought he might want to add in a fourth.

Benechi

It is a blunder in that it runs contrairy to the dev statement of not undermining the crafter and/or creating and NPC based economy. It is a blunder in that the only source of competitionis game based (NPC-like) not other players. I dont think it is too far to say it is similar to any duping bug, it is something for free. We will still have to compete with FREE as well as the play style of taming in the wild.

Here is a thought, CH's "purests" will never buy our animals.

CH purists will never by BE's animals? I don't know. Have a couple CH/BE's eat the lunches of a few CH purists in duels and that will change.

Excellent Thread. I would only add that it would be nice if we could have the opportunity to customize our creatures with different types of armor (perhaps at the expense of other stats for balacing issues if necessary). This could also be used to raise the level of creatures.

I also share the concern over the relatively poor amount of creatures we can make - CL 18-35. Bols and Snorbals are (at this time) bugged, and the lower level creatures (CL 18ish) that we can make cannot compete with the ones that you can normally find in the wild. This would help us reach out to a new or differentmarket of CH's. At the present time our best pet market are at the higher end master CH's with our Rancors and Gurrecks. I don't get much business at the lower end.

Finally, I believe that it would be nice to have our line of tissues expanded to include protection from certain types mind wounds, battle effects (ie, stun, dizziness, blindness), and specific battle types (ie, heat, kinetic, etc) that would add a sort of secondary armor layer. I am happy with the recent fixes to our game but I think that we still need additional content and fixes to our profession. Thanks.

Atilius, MBE

Coronet City, Starsider Server

Member of the Eternal-Flame Guild/PA (www.eternal-flame.org)

Lets compare the NPC competition for weaponsmith to the wild babies competition.

The best loot drop I've seen is a D18. I have heard of poison scouts as well as regular dropping and maybe some DL44s. Anything over a CDEF is a very rare drop. I dare say it is exponentialy easier to find any specificwild babyspawn than to find any of these specific drops.These are all begining professions weapons. CH is an Elite profession.

To bring our game based cometition in line with this, the only wild babies currentlywould have to be an adult CL15 or lower, CL 10 in the future.

As for purists, they are stubbern people by nature and would probably just stop dueling other CH's. Some would change, but not many. They are not a real concern as they are rare in any profession.A comperable purist would be any Master Elite combat profession taking up weaponsmith to make their own weapons. Only CH doesnt have to do this either.

Excellent post, Tal. Thanks. I would personally like to see the bug with experimentation fixed first - it is very annoying to see a success drop the line in half ot down to zero. I would also, along the same lines, like to see our creatures be more distinct than anything that can be found in the wild, like the critters we make being easier to train or have the potential for more commands, etc. (Not sure about that as I have never been a CH.)

I havent seen this mentioned before, but it is probably one of my biggest concerns. How is the new decay system going to effect us? I live by the Tal-N school of cloning which means get you a$$ out there and sample creatures. Well, aggro by alot of these creatures, especially since they are social is usually a recipe for a trip back to the cloning facility. Needless to say I think I die more (okay, I die ALOT) than most people I know and the BE class as a probably dies more than its fair share.

Is there any mention of this at all? Do the devs understand my (and others I imagine) concerns? I mean, I dont know about you, but I dont want to have to sample in my underwear just because Im going to eat 10-20 deaths out there sampling.

Tilen
Scylla

Great summary. I hope the fresh start on the Correspondent program allows for much of this to be heard by those with the power to make changes...