Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Rountdable Discussion (Week Ending 1-25-04)
Aside from my first agreeing with every negative reaction by the rest of the DE communityto your post, I have one more question:
Who will be able to enter this new Droid Handler profession? Will it be anyone, or will they have to first have Mastered the Droid Engineer profession, in order to be able to issue commands to these somehow-different-from-any-ohter-droid-or-robot-ever-made-type Droids that apparently will have the AI of a crazed durni pet and turn on you if they get Low on Power?
What Elite class Professions will have to give up part of their templates in order to pick up who-knows-how-many skillboxes in the new DH profession in order to control one of the Uber pets? Will it be worth it to them to do so? Will having this Uber Combat Droid take the place of a Master Commando dropping the Pistoleer trees s/he added to make his/her MC even more uber? Will a Master Combat Medic have to drop the Pistols IV (in the Marksman (basic) subclass) that s/he has held on to in order to halfway defend himself/herself while healing everyone else and throwing half-useless, more-than-half-the-time resisted Poisons and/or Diseases at the enemy, whether animal or player? etc, etc, ad nauseum.
I think you and/or the Devs have created a nightmare with this new profession that you have quietly decided upon implimenting yourselves WITHOUT listening to the Player Community, which, after all, are the people you expect to give up their hard-worked-for "extra" skills to try to get a few boxes filled.
Bottom line: BOO to your way of handling this, and BOO to your lying to the rest of the community in your weekly roundtable discussion about DE's even REMOTELY wanting a separate Droid Handler profession.
Your arrogance, your lack of insight, your whole attitude toward the DE community shows that you care nothing about them, and you surely don't understand them or listen to them, with the fact that you were PRESENT at their latest DEA meeting this Sunday.
I will not quit DE because of this; I worked too hard for it, borrowed too many components from family and friends to be able to grind it, and enjoy and love it far too much to quit. But I may join those who say they'll NOT make droids that are usable only by the DH profession, and urge all my other DE friends to do likewise. You think you are nerfing us? Who else is going to make your uber droids if we can't use them?
Clearly there are a lot of angles to the DE problem, as you point out. And the most vocal aspect tends to be the one that opposes the changes you're proposing. Droids have so many, many possibilities that they mean a lot of different things to different people.
I think the heart of the matter, however, is this combat vs. crafting profession question, and I think there's a fundamental flaw in the argument; that is, that a class has to be one or the other.
Take the CH profession as an example; its predominant use is combat, however there's a lot of non-combat stuff in the class. They tame and train pets, the produce pets for other players to use, they produce mounts for other players to use, and they use more powerful versions of these same pets themselves.
There is, of course, the association with BE, but it's not a dependent association; a CH can get along just fine without a BE. They enhance the CH profession and its products.
DE doesn't have to be a combat OR crafting class. Why not make it a similar hybrid, leaning towards the crafting side? DEs produce droids that enhance other professions, they produce droids that are useful to the general populace regardless of profession, they fix, repair, and customize other people's droids, AND they can use more powerful versions of their own droids. This won't result in an either or situation.
As for the analogy to the BE/CH association, how about the existing DE/MA association. Unlike the former, DEs are dependent on Master Artisans for several key components.
I think the proposed concept of sprinkling the DE tree with the ability to use more and more powerful droids (al la CH) is a good one, assuming that non-combat droids and combat droids under level 10 are still available for anyone to use.
Hello,
Well, I don't post a lot. But as a DE I don't want any DH profession or mini-profession. Droids MUST be usable by everybody. Period !
If devs want to put caps on quantity orcreate certificates depending on profession skills or whatever they could think of, why not ? But everybody must be able to use all the droids built by DEs
Sorry if this post don't make the things easy, but I have to give my opinion. 
Thunderheart wrote:
I read it. The math breaks down the same.
Droid levels are experience points/skill points. In any situation, there has to be an equitable amount of XP and skill points spent for ability. The ability here is the ability of the droid level. That will equate to a creature level.
As far as the droid progressing, its not a bad idea, but it would mean a lot of code and it would mean that either you get zip this time around (which is not an option) or you guys choose one of the existing paths with the hope of having that added somewhere down the lines.
For the droid to progress the even that moved it up a level would have to be skill and experience points spent by the player. With any droid-level-progression, you'd be asking for something brand new which doesnt exist and that means it goes to the end of the development line.
I will bring it up tomorrow though.
The idea has a lot of merit. Thanks for bringing this to the table. A couple of things to add (there are more verbose additions in the actual thread):
I don't think the math is the same. One of the things we are discussing in that thread is that a SINGLE droid would take as many experience points to "master" as an elite combat profession. Wouldn't this alleviate the need for a skill points expenditure? The droid has skill points to spend, but the player has to earn levels PER DROID. A Creature Handler skills up one time and has an unlimited supply of powerful creatures. With this proposal, you skill up one time and you get one droid. We are talking about over a million points of experience spent on an investment, an NPC, not an ability.
It brings levity to droids, in my opinion. It isn't "An Assasin Droid", it is "AD-58: My Assasin Droid".
This is actually very simple
Lots of players (several of which are DEs) want combat droids
Combat droids would have to be over CL10
The devs wont give everyone and there brother better than CL10 pets without the player having to 'pay' for it in some way (because its taken them this long to get creatures sorted)
The majoritory of DEs want to be crafter class
So the devs end up trying to find a way to give the players combat droids greater than CL10 - what I dont think the devs thought about was that the players were/are expecting to just be able to buy these droids and use them without having to obtain any skills (because the whole point of droids is that anyone can/should be able to use them)
Since combat droids running all over the place isnt appropriate for this time period I would rather never see combat droids than a CH profession (for me, jury rigged stock models with concealed weapons is much more fitting with the time period - and yes, these droids arent going to be uber by the fact they arent specificially designed combat models)
Dont get me wrong, theres plenty of scope for adding the battle droid chassis, but they would be decomissioned ex military droids with all the tasty hardware removed (but still able to have the CL10 weapon modules added)
Bothans are still bugged when dismounting from mounts/vehicles, they move very slowly right after dismounting, sitting and then standing up fixes this, and so does going into combat. This can't be that hard to fix, can it?
Thunderheart wrote:
....
For instance, if a grouping of professions gets "Droid Certifications", then you instantly get a migration of people to that profession to get the combat advantages. The advantage is simply doubling your combat balance. For instance, If Im a Carbineer and I have a droid, I've essentially doubled my combat abilities. So If I group with someone else who has access to high level droids, 2 players = 4, 4 players = 8 and so on.
Combat becomes out of balance and too easy. If that were the case all combat would have to be increased in difficulty. If 4 players suddenly have the same combat ability as 8, you can see how things would spin out of control.
The alternative is to stick put a "droid handling tree" in with Droid engineers. The confusion came in because over the past few weeks, DE's have stated they would prefer to be a crafting profession. In the shakeout, it seems the issue has many angles.
We're going to try and get to the bottom of it this week.
So, what I'm hearing here, Thunderheart is that adding combat droids to "groupings of professions" will lead to an unbalancing because the combat droid will make one fighter like two fighters, and this would cause migration to those classes.
However, adding combat droids to the DE profession doesn't have this problem? That makes sense because DEs are not fighters in any way (no combat skills) so adding a combat droid gives a net of one fighter. On the other hand, a DE which is also, for example, a Pistoleer (and roughly equal to one fighter) would now be equal to two fighters. Thus, there would be a migration to pick up DE to have the combat droids.
Adding a Droid Handler profession would mean that a Droid Handler with a combat droid would be equivalent to one fighter, but if that player also has another combat class, the player would then be equivalent to two fighters. Thus, there would be a migration to DH to pick up combat droids.
It seems to me that the balance issues are present no matter which of these approaches is taken. The issue does have many angles, but it seems that they all lead to the same destination - adding combat droids will affect game balance. Period. It doesn't matter if anyone can use them, DEs can use them, or DHs can use them.
I know that many people, including me, would like to see more combat droids. However, what I think the addition of more utility droids and functions would be a more helpful addition. Right now, since there are creatures (as combat pets) in the game and two professions centered around them (BE and CH) adding combat droids will rob those professions of some of their purpose and members. Adding more utility droids and functions will give DEs something that make them special and needed without detracting from existing professions.
I saw posts by TH saying how uber droids (over CL 10) would need experience invested in them for them to be effective. Fair enough. But, I don't think a doird handler skill tree, or even a droid handle skill mod, would work well...
But here's my idea. Something simaliar to a recent update that helped out combat, and could be spread across different elite professions for different types of combat droids.
Droid Knowledge. Make a skill, with multiple levels, 3-5, that pretty much mirrors DAMAGE MITIGATION.
Then, all you have to do is group several "droid certs" into different levels. Droid Knowlegde 1 could grant you CL 20 for driods. DK 2 - 30, DK 3 - 40, etc. Then, as done with Damage mitigation, spread these "certs" out between the various elite professions, with the highest certs being in the master boxes. You could even give non-combat professions the level 1 cert high up in a skill tree (or even master), which means people have to spend the skill to get the certs, and it prevents dabbling.
You could go further, and seperate those certs into groups, such as:
Assasin Droid Knowledge. (Droids with long range, high damage, and low speed/armor)
Assault Droid Knowledge. (Droids with medium range, damage, speed, and armor.)
Support Droid Knowledge (Droids with short range, low damage, high speed and armor.)
And then put them in the professions which would make the most sense. (assasins in Rifleman/pikeman, etc) Viola. Balance. XP spent. Only droids that flesh out a profession allowed...
Except one: Droid Engineers. Since they built them, they can get ALL the certs, and use droids primarily as their combat sorce. You can even give them extra droids out in high skill levels.
Plus, this give the DE's distinction, and gives the combat classes a more personalized touch. It's flesh out the usage and "nessicity" droids were meant to have in Star Wars all along.
I just hope somebody reads this idea... =P
SinjenRandall wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
I read it. The math breaks down the same.
Droid levels are experience points/skill points. In any situation, there has to be an equitable amount of XP and skill points spent for ability. The ability here is the ability of the droid level. That will equate to a creature level.
As far as the droid progressing, its not a bad idea, but it would mean a lot of code and it would mean that either you get zip this time around (which is not an option) or you guys choose one of the existing paths with the hope of having that added somewhere down the lines.
For the droid to progress the even that moved it up a level would have to be skill and experience points spent by the player. With any droid-level-progression, you'd be asking for something brand new which doesnt exist and that means it goes to the end of the development line.
I will bring it up tomorrow though.
The idea has a lot of merit. Thanks for bringing this to the table. A couple of things to add (there are more verbose additions in the actual thread):
I don't think the math is the same. One of the things we are discussing in that thread is that a SINGLE droid would take as many experience points to "master" as an elite combat profession. Wouldn't this alleviate the need for a skill points expenditure? The droid has skill points to spend, but the player has to earn levels PER DROID. A Creature Handler skills up one time and has an unlimited supply of powerful creatures. With this proposal, you skill up one time and you get one droid. We are talking about over a million points of experience spent on an investment, an NPC, not an ability.
It brings levity to droids, in my opinion. It isn't "An Assasin Droid", it is "AD-58: My Assasin Droid".
I really like this Idea, at the very least it wouldn't prevent players from still choosing to take on the CH profession - This is important to me as I am a BE and CH's are my clientele and therefore main source of income. Adding the ability to 'train' a droid overtime to an elite combat status without having to sacrifice your own skill points means that everyone can still have access to these droids without neccessarily choosing them (droids) over creature pets.
Regarding DH profession VS Droid certificate system (using combat exp):
The only thing that concerns me about using a droid certificate system over a DH profession is... if CH's with elite combat skills have access to Combat droids, mybusiness as a BE providing elite creature pets to CH's will be reduced dramatically (unless there is some kind of heavy cost, in the form of experience gains as stated above). If everyone can have access to these droids, then why spend precious skill points to obtain CH skills for use with petswhen they can just get a droid instead.