Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Rountdable Discussion (Week Ending 1-25-04)
Going to rant a tiny bit here. Most of the planets have horrible spawn rates with Endor being the only one I think has good spawn distribution. I can run around for 20 mins and find one camp of NPCs on Lok and its only slightly better on Dantand thats about it, the only way to find things to hunt is to hang out around POI's or towns, which in my opinion defeats the point of 'adventuring'.... its not adventuring to hang out around town.
While annoying I can accept that this hasnt been fixed since beta and unlikely to be so,but when I do find something to kill while roaming around..... why oh why must they despawn mid way through the hunt? I recognize things should be on timers, but if I shoot the lair or a creature, why doesnt it reset the timer? I am there, I am hunting, having it disappear on me is just unnecessary frustration.
Cul
Rant on DH class:
We want to make droids EVERYONE CAN USE. They DO NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE UBER. Droids are programmed and will not bite a person's arm off if they anger them. Know why? Beacuse they CAN'T BECOME TRUELY ANGRY andTHEY MUST FOLLOW THE COMMANDS OF THIER MASTERS. Anyone can use any droid that they own, NO EXTRA SKILLS REQUIRED. Not only that but as the Droid Engineers WE PROGRAM THE THINGS! WE KNOW EVERY LAST COMMAND THEY CAN PREFORM AND THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF OUR CREATIONS! People keep bringing up the weapon/weaponsmith scenario but here's the thing, you gotta learn to steady your hand with a weapon, you gotta learn to comphensate for recoil and such. DROIDS DON'T NEED ANYTHING OF THE LIKE. Droids do exactally as thier masters say to the best of thier abilities BEACUSE THEY WERE MADE FOR IT.
TH -,
Well, my only response is this. Now that you have seen our responses here, in this thread, and the overwhelming threads on our boards, are you going to stick with yourpost that we want a DH profession? And are you going to push it through? I'm not gaonna bad talk you or call names, that's just immature and childish, but, somewhere along the line, your information got corrupted, caught a virus, something.
We, (the DE's), do not want a seperate DH profession by any stretch of the imagination. There are much better options, take the time to read our boards or listen to our CommunityCoordinator.
This is something we absolutley don't want.
Master Droid Engineer - Scylla
Jai-Qon wrote:
Makkari wrote:
Jai-Qon wrote:
Ummm... Like nice to meet you... Who are you? What do you do at SOE? What function do you play in the making of SWG? Why are you asking questions that if you looked a bit in the easily defined sticky threads in almost every profession you could answer them all yourself?
Uhm... personally, I thought his sig answered a lot of those questions:
Runesabre
Lead Designer
Star Wars Galaxies
I agree with you Makkari, I was asking rhetorical questions on most of it. Lead Designer is great... The gist of my post was if he is Lead Designer, why isn't he utilizing his assets that are already in place, namely TH.
I was just having a bad day I spose... Could be the fact that I chose to be a Squad Leader... stupid broken profession.... blah... we are useless... blah... why did I do this?.... what a waste of my time... Oh, wait... My internal monologue is broken... *slaps forhead*
A good answer to your questions can be found here:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=bounty_hunter&message.id=137142#M137142
Thunderheart wrote:
Lag is lag. Sorry about that but when then servers are full, there will always be a drag no matter how much we tweak it though the programming team is always working on ways to improve that.
Five words for you: Throw more hardware at it. When tweaking has gone as far as it can, you have no other option. And for server applications like this, making it scalable across multiple servers should be a given...
Vehicles have to autostore. Without vehicles autostoring, the game environment gets horribly polluted with vehicles.
Which is understandable. What isn't understandable is a vehicle autostoring when you're all of 32m away from it and shooting at gubburs. Can't you make it so that if you go 128m or so away from your vehicle, it autostores?
completely independent of whether one thinks DH is a good or bad idea is this simple fact:TH's claim thatthe DE communityclearly asked for a DH profession is simply not true.
I find TH's claim to the contrary insulting.
Bumbles wrote:
Thunderheart,
In regards to the following quote:
" . . .because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions."
Where did this come from? Due to the enormous difficulty and complexity of your job (Lord knows, no sane person would envy your task), I've always given you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to interpreting and communicating the concerns of the various professions. And I wish to do so in this case as well. But you MUSTprovide some basis for this statement. Post a link where the DE community discussed the notion of a DH class in a favorable way, or cut-and-paste some private communications (edited, of course, to keep the source anonymous), or something that can explain this statement. It doesn't even have to be a GOOD explanation, just something that could even be REMOTELY interpreted as "DEs want a DH class". Do so, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt again, and accept that this was an unfortunate miscommunication/misinterpretation. If not, I'm sorry to say, your credibility will drop to less than zero in my eyes (perhaps other eyesas well, but I only speak for myself)
Sincerely,
I went through the DE boards today, and either you are mistaken or just lying TH. There was almost ZERO support for a DH profession. Where are you getting this stuff?
Now for my issues...
The only "new" things that seem to happen for the game revolve around nothing but combat. Is this the best you guys can do? I like the game and all, but where is the imagination? Because I see very little. Combat combat combat. That's all you ever hear about. Just what we need, another EQ clone in Sci Fi dressing. It's very tiresome.
Now, for the CH concern. Seeing as how the devs probably already have the DH profession written up against the wishes of the community, tell me. Are you going to be making 9kHAM medium armor 30% resists droids now? I wouldn't doubt it. See what I am getting at here?...
And my biggest issue at the moment.
Why don't you explain to me why a Force Sensitive character slot is more common than a Bull Rancor Baby? I have been looking for oh, about a month now. 118 Bull Rancor lairs and not one baby yet. Given CH's "rare" tameables, their stats give no justification for them being so rare. How about a little word on this? Because between the DH comment you made and the incredibly ridiculous rarity of some tameables (not to mention the lack of new tameables) I am getting VERY VERY frustrated VERY VERY quickly...
Thunderheart wrote:
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?
Ill be doing it this week. I had to push it off until some of internal discussions were finished. The timetable was changed because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions.
Their argument makes a lot of sense too. A good balance is akin to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers; BE's make em and CH's use them. Its really two different playstyles. One is crafting and one is combat/exploration. Adding a class of combat droids to the game has to be similar. Combat droids themselves have to stay level 10 or under for the general population otherwise everyone would rush out and get the better pets. That leaves a wide range of powerful combat droids that needs to be in the game, but to get those droids, players have to spend the time and energy to earn them.
So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession. All players will have access to combat droids up to level 10 and DH's will get a wide range of heavy combat droids to handle.
I am going to sportingly assume that this is a joke on your part Thunderheart, if it isn't, may I recommend you look at this thread in the DE boards
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=52116
A Droid Handler is what Droid Engineers have specifically said we do NOT want. we want to be able to make Droids that EVERYONE can use.
Look at the DE boards if you don't believe me
Thunderheart wrote:
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?Ill be doing it this week. I had to push it off until some of internal discussions were finished. The timetable was changed because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions.
Their argument makes a lot of sense too. A good balance is akin to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers; BE's make em and CH's use them. Its really two different playstyles. One is crafting and one is combat/exploration. Adding a class of combat droids to the game has to be similar. Combat droids themselves have to stay level 10 or under for the general population otherwise everyone would rush out and get the better pets. That leaves a wide range of powerful combat droids that needs to be in the game, but to get those droids, players have to spend the time and energy to earn them.
So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession. All players will have access to combat droids up to level 10 and DH's will get a wide range of heavy combat droids to handle.
Ack NO!!!!!
TH, What the heck ARE you talking about? There is a HUGE majority of Droid Engineers who do NOT want a separate Droid Handler profession!
Where on Earth did you get that from? I've only seen a few folks EVER post a wish for that, and it's been strongly shouted down by the masses universally.
Please reconsider this... It in no way reflects my desires or the desires of the vast majority of the Droid Engineer profession.
You know, it's long been a standing joke, but now I am beginning to believe maybe it's true... Maybe the developers really DO hate us.
The second part of your argument must stand or fall on it's own merits, PLEASE do not try to justify it by claiming it's what we asked for. It isn't.
Thunderheart wrote:
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?
Ill be doing it this week. I had to push it off until some of internal discussions were finished. The timetable was changed because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions.
You better think again. This isn't so cut-and-dried as you make it sound.
For this, I've created a poll on the DE forums (link below, so you can keep track). The question was:
"Do we want to have droid use (of combat droids/modules) in a separate and new 'Droid Handler' profession?"
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=52116
Every answer (as of the time I write this) has been "No". It's like 20-0, so far. I think I can speak for many that believe that a new profession is VERY VERY bad idea.
A new profession brings:
- Bugs all its own
- Balance issues, all its own
- A entirely illogical situation, where DEs are unable to use the very droids that they make (how does THAT make sense?!?!)
The larger discussion on this topic is fairly complex and NOT easy. I will say that, in my knowledgable and experienced view of the profession and its players, it does not make sense that we'd not be able to use the droids we make.
Period. End of story.
There HAS to be another way (than creating an entirely new profession).
Their argument makes a lot of sense too. A good balance is akin to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers; BE's make em and CH's use them.
If you check the results of my poll, the DEs so far have stated that this is NOT what they want.
I repeat: NOT want they want.
Theviewpoint that I see so far is that it makes no sense that we'd be able to construct all of the partsneeded to build a droid but not be able to use any/all droids that we build.
We (as a profession) understand the 'pet/creature problem' very succinctly. We just happen to believe that creating a new DH profession is not the best answer. There must be some other way (such as Drashk's suggested 'certification' system) for this to be accomplished.
Its really two different playstyles. One is crafting and one is combat/exploration. Adding a class of combat droids to the game has to be similar. Combat droids themselves have to stay level 10 or under for the general population otherwise everyone would rush out and get the better pets.
....Not if there were a certification system in place that made sense.
That leaves a wide range of powerful combat droids that needs to be in the game, but to get those droids, players have to spend the time and energy to earn them.
Yes...and they can do this as part of building their combat-related professions, per a working and logical combat-droid certification system. Building a new DH profession means that DEs that build droids will (apparently) not be able to operate them. How does THAT make sense?!?!
So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession.
See...this right here says to me that the "strike team" has already decided on what is wants to do (and is GOING to do it, regardless of what the profession actually says it wants).
Is that the case or no?
Will we actually be able to convince you (since we're correct, as a profession) that this is NOT what we want and it is NOT the best solution?
/bow
Respectfully,