Development Cycle Archive

NO DROID HANDLERS PLEASE.

make something different, like combat modules or something...

Well, there is ONE dissenting voice so far in that thread.

Interestingly, the poster has a signature talking about a shop where you can buy a number of things, but it does not mention droids... Take that for what it is worth.

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Droid_Engineer_Rho wrote:

Well, there is ONE dissenting voice so far in that thread.

Interestingly, the poster has a signature talking about a shop where you can buy a number of things, but it does not mention droids... Take that for what it is worth.

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As of about the first page (and one post), I make the vote:

23 - No

1 - Yes


/bow

Respectfully,

Hello ThunderHeart,

First off, thank you for your frank and open communications with us. (same goes to all dev's) Since i've been in other game dev community forums, where the dev's were rating a D- for over a years time.

Second, my question is have the SOE dev's figured into SWG a "player to player targeting" system. Right now using the "Tab" key we can only cycle though npc mob targets. In a group i need to use "Control + 1-9" just to get a lock on a fellow group member. (btw i'm a master doctor)

So if there was a way to include targeting other players in-game via the tab key or some other keybroad key. That would greatly be appreciated, probably also by those in Pvp combat likewise.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?

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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.

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TH, I am not sure what kind of undemocratic, top-secret PM campaign you have fallen victim to, but I just want to state that of all the different ideas the DE community has put forward for droid balance issues NONE has been more resoundingly rejected than the one you just pur forward.

No, no, no. This would be a terrible idea and there is zero community support for it.

>The cycle is going to end with a battlefield revamp.

Ack...

We need GCW content now. This game should change its name to "Hunting and Grinding Online". It's not Star Wars...

The battlefields were at least fun, with large groups of people like we had on Rori every week. You took those away, promising revamp and relaunch in 60-90 days... now it's the last part of the GCW revamp, which you hint will take all year to implement.

Not good.

Top issues in my daily gameplay:

-- Lack of fun
-- Disappearing/floating players/buildings/NPCs
-- Rubberbanding/vehicle dismount/store annoyances
-- Monotony. Create some new mission templates and content.
-- PvP. When it actually does happen, it's terribly unbalanced.
-- Ranger class is now useless. Please examine the huge amounts of feedback on all the professions (and record it accurately.... for example DE feedback). Then actually set some time tables to assess/fix/tweak/redefine these things...not just "it'll take a while". So... sick... of hearing that.
-- Faction. What's the point? Rank means nothing. Controlling faction pets is tied to animal handling (CH). Pets are permadeath and extremely costly, so are never used in PvP (which would INSTANTLY heighten the star wars feel of the game).

Aaaah, this is rich.

Instead of having an inordinate amount of Creature Handlers running about, we'll have an inordinate amount of Droid Handlers (if the Droid Engineers don't strike; I wouldn't blame them if they did). Nice solve SOE.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?

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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.

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TH, I am not sure what kind of undemocratic, top-secret PM campaign you have fallen victim to, but I just want to state that of all the different ideas the DE community has put forward for droid balance issues NONE has been more resoundingly rejected than the one you just pur forward.

No, no, no. This would be a terrible idea and there is zero community support for it.

See this poll:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=52116

Some great things coming along there

I think a lot of the problems with crashes are the hardware you're using.People are always getting crashes in games. I had a very bad experience a few months ago with WC3. I got crashes every 20 minutes and it was very annoying. I managed to fix it by updating my Sound/Graphics and motherbooard drivers but when i told my mate (who was also getting crashes) he tried it out and it didn't fix his crashes. Lag is lag, crashes are crashes and computers are computers.. If you have tried everything there is not much to do but with live with it im afraid

A VAST majority of DE's want nothing of a droid handler class, of either having DE's made into one or a whole new profession, and we are adamantly against such a change being made.

Whatever happened to a cert system for more powerful droids? Basic probots for everyone, a stronger droid at a novice elite profession and an even stronger one at master elite profession.

A droid handler class goes against every reason why I became a DE.

It's fascinating that Last night all the droid engineers from across all the servers gathered together in-game on Ahazi for one big meeting. During that meeting this idea was universally rejected by an overwealming majority of them. Combine that with the fact that the DEs have been saying for weeks not to do this, the correspondent has been telling him for weeks not to do this, and we also nowhave a running poll that is saying that the community is against this. How much more clear do we have to be?

How about an entirely new profession that doesn't cost any skill points. We could call it the Character Profession or something similar. Here's just a rough idea:

Novice Citizen
languages +1
lots +2
droids +1
pets +1
pet levels +2
stored pet +1
stored droids +1

tree 1 droids and pets
lvl 1 = stored droids +1, droid levls +10
lvl 2 = combat droid levels +10, pet levels +2
lvl 3 = combat droid levels +10, pet levels +2, stored droids +1
lvl 4 = combat droid levels +10, pet levels +2

tree 2 lots
lvl 1 = lots +2
lvl 2 = lots +2
lvl 3 = lots +2
lvl 4 = lots +2

tree 3 harvesting
lvl 1 = personal havestors, small housing
lvl 2 = medium harvestors, medium housing
lvl 3 = large harvestors, large housing
lvl 4 = transfer structure command

tree 4 communications
lvl 1 = +1 language spoken and understanding
lvl 2 = +1 language spoken and understanding
lvl 3 = +1 language spoken and understanding
lvl 4 = +1 language spoken and understanding

Galaxie Resident (mastery)
+ languages spoken and understanding to current levels
+ guild hall cert
+2 lots
+10 droids levels
+2 pet levels
+1 stored droids
+1 stored pets


Now with the above system its basically taking all of the basics of a character we have now. If something like this were implimented ALL current characters should instantly become masters. So that we do not mess up the current system. Any future players or alts created on different servers would have to progress through this tree. This tree would also use a new type of experience to progress. We could call it 'general experience'. This would be attained by running missions and completing quests as well as travel. Here's my thought on experience:

shuttle = 100 xp
mission from terminal = 100 xp
quest from npc = 250 xp

Experience requirements would run as such:
lvl 1 trees = 1000 xp
lvl 2 trees = 2000 xp
lvl 3 trees = 5000 xp
lvl 4 trees = 10000 xp

This system would prevent people from doing cross server lot swaps in the future, it would also be fairly easy to gain the xp and help remove some of the noobish factor to new players. This would also impliment the droid cert system as well. Its not a fully fleshed out idea yet. Remember everything would cost 0 skill points and all current characters would be masters upon implimentation. They could also branch the pilot profession on top of this come the space expansion as everyone is going to want to fly a ship of some sort.

When is the bug with the human secondary stat cap going to be fixed? Currently they can take all secondary stats to 1100 and as a result makes all the non-human races much less effective by comparison.