Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Huge indirect benefits of the CU for Bio-engineers
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Tal-N
Fri Apr 15, 2005 9:17 am
#1
One of the things I noticed about the CU was that creature handlers will be flexible due to the fact that the creatures they use will define their role. Surely that must mean that the special attacks for all animals in the game will be defining their role within the structure of the game. If that is true I think this might be very promising for bio-engineers in general.
Diversity in sales over raw power
Since its no longer a case of wanting the highest level in the fastest travelling body then I think we can expect to see clone sales rise drastically, people will actually have multiple animals to cover the variety of roles within a group. Its hard to know if the bodies themselves will have an influence on the roles as tankers, crowd control or damage dealers however you can be that special attacks certainly will be critical. One of the reasons why the current DNA might be lacking special attacks is because they were removed in preperation for the new specials to be added and for each species to be given a defined role in combat.
Masters due to player skill not your skill boxes
Since specials will become critical in the role the animal players you'll find that a good bioengineer is not measured by what they charge, how fast they meet their orders or the simple fact that are a master bio-engineer but because they can do all this and produce specific combinations of special attacks. This rises BEs into an even highera role as a truely special crafting profession aside from the mass production and low intellect ones like weaponsmith where all you need is to find the materials.
New Revenue
One of the obvious benefits is that people will instantly start buying up new pets, thankfully with the move for us to the only medical crafting profession it allows us to no longer be forced to rely on the less than popular tissues and the low return patronage of pets. It would be nice to get away from making a living just on petstims. Plus with so many using the respec you might find alot of new CHs showing up.
However the real point I wanted to raise is that despite all of this we might finally have the cloning system fixed, if they're going to be changing CHs to be multipurpose through their pets then the wild animals themselves will be changing. That means the cloning system will be scrutinized to ensure its working properly so hopefully they'll remove the rather silly things like pets with stats that are uncharacteristic for their level. We might even see the whole concept of the combat levels for animals being re-evaluated to match what is happening with the combat professions. Overall I see the CU as just the kind of attention our profession has needed for over a year, thats part of the reason why I'm back for good now. 
Lets hope they don't rush the release and spend the next 6 months patching things up.
Inkanissen
Sat Apr 16, 2005 3:26 am
#2
My guess about cl and the cloning system is that a vulnerability is not just a vulnerability. The DNA stores the exact resistance (you can easily test that yourself by generational cloning), and that seems to affect cl a lot. A -99 resistance will lower cl by a lot, and a -1 only by a little bit. And both of them come out as the pet being vulnerable to that resistance.
Kivrin
Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:08 am
#5
I admire your optimism but I don't share it at the moment. I've seen your posts and it's great to have another BE back, on Ahazi nonetheless, but nothing's changed since you've been gone. There was 1 medium-sized announcement a while, that there's no longer critical failures causing crafters to lose their ingredients... and they forgot BE's. Yup. Still critically fail, still lose our ingredients, and not a word on it being addressed.
The part that bothers most me isn't that we're making CL150's from CL9 creatures or my 1100+ pet stim C's are turning into boffa treats. When the alpha team started Arthur did a great job with our issues. On this board we came up with all the problems, spoke up, and prioritized them all into our top ten issues. It was an active process that was more collabrative than any other boards I saw. They were:
And (drumroll...) nothing. Nada. The sad thing is aside from say #9 and #6 (since food is changing) and maybe #10 (since every CL is affected) all those issues still stand and could be corrected. At the least be mentioned somewhere by someone. This is why we recently lost a prominent member of the Bio-Engineer community BTW.
So given those two experiences I have a bad feeling no one there knows about us and how the system currently works, let alone how it should work.
All that said I am still sticking around and will give it a shot.
The part that bothers most me isn't that we're making CL150's from CL9 creatures or my 1100+ pet stim C's are turning into boffa treats. When the alpha team started Arthur did a great job with our issues. On this board we came up with all the problems, spoke up, and prioritized them all into our top ten issues. It was an active process that was more collabrative than any other boards I saw. They were:
1. dna storage (laboratory, blood, freezer, droid, etc.)
2. more variety in craftable creatures (new skins, colors, sizes)
3. more high level sampleable creatures added to game (also the apparent CL sampling cap)
4. some method for hitting target CLs more easily (CL displayed during experimentation, CL limits, experimenting status down, etc.)
5. creature donor's name listed on dna sample in inventory
6. tissue ingredients vs desirability balance
7. different damage types for BE pets
8. creature warping (including upwards) during sampling & milking
9. more tailor and chef tissues
10. The CL 10 problem
And (drumroll...) nothing. Nada. The sad thing is aside from say #9 and #6 (since food is changing) and maybe #10 (since every CL is affected) all those issues still stand and could be corrected. At the least be mentioned somewhere by someone. This is why we recently lost a prominent member of the Bio-Engineer community BTW.
So given those two experiences I have a bad feeling no one there knows about us and how the system currently works, let alone how it should work.
All that said I am still sticking around and will give it a shot.
Message Edited by Kivrin on 04-18-2005 08:09 AM
PlainWhiteSocks
Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:06 am
#6
I know I tend to look through rose colored glasses...
1. dna storage (laboratory, blood, freezer, droid, etc.)
Everyone got a bump in storage. Small houses gained 50 items, and inventory gained 30. Not alot, but the inventory one helps me quite a bit when sampling.
2. more variety in craftable creatures (new skins, colors, sizes)
Maybe with RoTW? Otherwise, none.
3. more high level sampleable creatures added to game (also the apparent CL sampling cap)
So far no-go on this one too. I've been looking for CL76 criters to sample from. No luck so far.
4. some method for hitting target CLs more easily (CL displayed during experimentation, CL limits, experimenting status down, etc.)
I hate this one. Part of the challenge and fun of being a BE is figuring out how to hit a specific CL. For the dabblers this would be great, for serious BE's it would ruin a great part of the game. That said, on TC I haven't yet figured out a stable CL calculation. Old recipes don't work cause most DNA on TC is broken badly. There are also some fairly big bugs in the experimentation process using fully converted DNA. Bottom line, we still don't know if it'll be any easier post CU to hit a specific CL.
5. creature donor's name listed on dna sample in inventory
Yeah, this would be nice. I still don't know why they haven't changed this one.
6. tissue ingredients vs desirability balance
At least it's easier to get more eggs and milk. Fish remains a problem.
7. different damage types for BE pets
This may be changed when they finish the BE changes in the CU. Don't know yet.
8. creature warping (including upwards) during sampling & milking
This problem has been worked on, and it's gotten tons better than it has been in the past. Creature still warp, but the upwards and far far away waprs are rare or outright non-existant.
9. more tailor and chef tissues
Ummmmm yeah.
10. The CL 10 problem
This is #10 on our list, but has probably generated more threads than any other issue. A fact that confuses me. At any rate with the CL being such a big part of damage calculations I think CL10 pets have been nerfed into oblivion.
It's not on our list, but tissues now display the correct weighting of 50-30-20. It's been an issue in the past, and it should help out all those people new to BE post CU.
Again, I know about my rose colored glasses, but with all the negetive stuff floating around about the CU, I just thought I'd paint some things in a more happy light.
Oh yeah, and welcome back again Tal-n
1. dna storage (laboratory, blood, freezer, droid, etc.)
Everyone got a bump in storage. Small houses gained 50 items, and inventory gained 30. Not alot, but the inventory one helps me quite a bit when sampling.
2. more variety in craftable creatures (new skins, colors, sizes)
Maybe with RoTW? Otherwise, none.
3. more high level sampleable creatures added to game (also the apparent CL sampling cap)
So far no-go on this one too. I've been looking for CL76 criters to sample from. No luck so far.
4. some method for hitting target CLs more easily (CL displayed during experimentation, CL limits, experimenting status down, etc.)
I hate this one. Part of the challenge and fun of being a BE is figuring out how to hit a specific CL. For the dabblers this would be great, for serious BE's it would ruin a great part of the game. That said, on TC I haven't yet figured out a stable CL calculation. Old recipes don't work cause most DNA on TC is broken badly. There are also some fairly big bugs in the experimentation process using fully converted DNA. Bottom line, we still don't know if it'll be any easier post CU to hit a specific CL.
5. creature donor's name listed on dna sample in inventory
Yeah, this would be nice. I still don't know why they haven't changed this one.
6. tissue ingredients vs desirability balance
At least it's easier to get more eggs and milk. Fish remains a problem.
7. different damage types for BE pets
This may be changed when they finish the BE changes in the CU. Don't know yet.
8. creature warping (including upwards) during sampling & milking
This problem has been worked on, and it's gotten tons better than it has been in the past. Creature still warp, but the upwards and far far away waprs are rare or outright non-existant.
9. more tailor and chef tissues
Ummmmm yeah.
10. The CL 10 problem
This is #10 on our list, but has probably generated more threads than any other issue. A fact that confuses me. At any rate with the CL being such a big part of damage calculations I think CL10 pets have been nerfed into oblivion.
It's not on our list, but tissues now display the correct weighting of 50-30-20. It's been an issue in the past, and it should help out all those people new to BE post CU.
Again, I know about my rose colored glasses, but with all the negetive stuff floating around about the CU, I just thought I'd paint some things in a more happy light.
Oh yeah, and welcome back again Tal-n
PlainWhiteSocks
Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:16 am
#7
Tal-N wrote:However the real point I wanted to raise is that despite all of this we might finally have the cloning system fixed, if they're going to be changing CHs to be multipurpose through their pets then the wild animals themselves will be changing. That means the cloning system will be scrutinized to ensure its working properly so hopefully they'll remove the rather silly things like pets with stats that are uncharacteristic for their level. We might even see the whole concept of the combat levels for animals being re-evaluated to match what is happening with the combat professions. Overall I see the CU as just the kind of attention our profession has needed for over a year, thats part of the reason why I'm back for good now.Lets hope they don't rush the release and spend the next 6 months patching things up.
Hmmmmm
Well, it looks like pets are getting a revamp. I think the stats that are uncharacteristic for their level thing is going to be fixed. So far it's hard to make a decent pet under CL100 on TC, but then again most (90%?) of the DNA is borked. Templates seem to be messed up too. They still list armor which is no longer used as far as I know.
Have you heard about the May 5 absolute deadline for the CU? That announcement was a blast. Unfortunately it'll be a miracle if the dev team can do everything they set out to do in the little time they have left. Don't get me worng, I think the dev team is working long hours trying to meet that deadline, but there's only so many hours in a day, and after working 30hrs straight you start to get to a point of diminishing returns staring at a monitor.
Kivrin
Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:41 am
#8
I do admire the optimism. I hope it works out. The process is what bothers me most, not that our issues haven't been addressed necessarily. They asked for our input, we happily obliged, and we may have well made it all up. Romulan Banthas come out CL15 when using Tribble DNA in the hair-color slot. Wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.
From Blair's blog:
"Finally, it is worth repeating that even when Combat Upgrade goes 'live' it is not finished - we will continue to refine and polish the experience for some months to come."
From Blair's blog:
"Finally, it is worth repeating that even when Combat Upgrade goes 'live' it is not finished - we will continue to refine and polish the experience for some months to come."
PlainWhiteSocks
Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:05 am
#9
Kivrin wrote:
I do admire the optimism. I hope it works out. The process is what bothers me most, not that our issues haven't been addressed necessarily. They asked for our input, we happily obliged, and we may have well made it all up. Romulan Banthas come out CL15 when using Tribble DNA in the hair-color slot. Wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.
From Blair's blog:
"Finally, it is worth repeating that even when Combat Upgrade goes 'live' it is not finished - we will continue to refine and polish the experience for some months to come."
Yeah the process is kinda screwy. We really don't get much feedback from the devs, and people who can give feedback seem to be locked under NDA. I think it's why the prominent BE community member left.
The romans ruled the world not by might in battle alone. They assimilated cultures into their own. I wonder what exactly would happen if the dev team used the same kind of tactic on us? Post everything here for everyone on the boards. It might take a little while to settle, but the end result could be less frustration for them and for us. I know that currently their plans change faster than they can post them so this idea would have to be implemented post CU. Food for thought I guess.
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