Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IT 7-1: Droid & Droid Engineer Enhancements
vonbloodworth wrote:
didnt they say that the combat mod stack? so dosnt that mean that one slot holds 6 mods.....and you can still use the rest for somthing elese?
no. that is not what stack means. saying the stack means if you put the same module in multiple slots the effect of the modules adds together. it does not mean you can put multiple modules in one slot.
duncje wrote:
On Test, a Probot has 5 total module slots, that won't even add up to a CL10 pet, according to how TH posted combat modules should work. So even if it's maxxed out with combat modules, it will not get up to CL10 levels. To max out its combat capabilities, NO utility modules will fit in a probot.
Basically, what it comes down to, is you're making it harder to make less useful droids. Explain this to me?
You are right, but there is another side effect of the probot having 5 module slots: it means that there is no reason to ever make an Advanced R2 unit again. If you want a good utility droid, you can take the five modules that you would ordinarily put into the R2 and put them into the probot instead. The resultant droid will be cheaper to make, and will have more ham than the wimply R2.
If this publish goes live as is, we can toss the Advanced R2 into the trash bin of useless droids that have no meaningful gameplay function. The surgical, le repair, protocol, and bll droids are already in that bin. Now the developers are planning to toss the R2 unit into that bin as well.
What I don't understand is why the developers are wasting any time thinking about how many combat modules to put in the surgical, le repair, and protocol droids. don't they realize that these droids are absolutely useless from a gameplay perspective nowand still will be after publish 7 is pushed out!? No. They don't appear to know this. And because they don't know this they are instead pushing out a publish that pushes the Advanced R2 into the "has no meaningful gameplay purpose" category.
/sigh
duncje wrote:
Runesabre-
I ask of you one thing. Take some time and actually play a DE character on live. Ask your developers (at least the ones working on droids) to do the same thing. I am utterly convinced that your Dev team has no idea of the plight of the Droid Engineer. I don't mean this as a rant or as a flame, but as an observation. Take that knowledge with you to Test and see why the DE community is up in arms over this whole Publish.
DE's have been misunderstood every step of the way. This publish is really lacking in "Enhancements". If you knew what you were up against, ie. actually play a DE for a bit, you would see why.
I truly hope the Dev team is listening.
Every hour or so a new MDE posts to the DE forum announcing their retirement.
Since Drashk has said there are aproximately 3000 DEs (many of whom are undoubtedly hologrinders), I don't think you can afford to loose many more of us.
At the very least, don't call this the "Droid Invasion", unless you want to have an awful lot of upset people - that majority of players who doesn't read the boards, logs in and sees "DROID INVASION" on the launchpad, and expects the patch to mean more than they can now stim their droids.
Audio
Ok I'm really confused.
Droid Engineers asked for no seperate droid combat technician profession.
They wanted combat droids useable by anyone.
I also read a lot of posts in the same threads saying that we should not have combat specific droids, least of all droideka, since they were illegal at the time period the game is set in.
People seemed mixed about whether or not they wanted combat ability added to already existing droids.
Some thought it would be neat to have weapons jurry rigged onty R2 units, since this would reflect the illegality of combat droids during the period. Some thought that was the worst idea ever and they never wanted to see R2s firing weapons.
Many thought that no seriously lethal combat droids should make it into the game, and some thought that everyone should be able to have devistating droids.
I think the devs don't know what we want and they are trying to listen.
There is no way they can make everyone happy.
As for me, I like the jurry rigged R2 idea. Any droid with combat modules could be considered contraband and get the owner in trouble if they are caught. No one should have droideka legally, although maybe some could have them if they have some sort of skill or certification or something, and droideka would be considered the worst contraband of all, besides lightsabers. I'd really dislike seeing millions of combat droids around, particularly droideka, but also battle droids from Episode I and II. Those droids are about 60 years old and were banned by the Empire. Maybe R2 units should be more combat capable than the devs have made them so far, and I like the idea of humanoid droids getting some sort of combat programming and being equipped with guns.
But mostly, as I said, we are making it really hard for the devs to figure out what we want, because when some of us see something we don't like at all, we post about it vehemently and exaustively. When the devs come up with something different, a new set of people who might have been happy with the original dev idea are the ones who post angry messages and the people who like the changes often don't speak up. Many are afraid to say anything contrary to what is the current flow of a discussion is. And many of those who agree with the way things seem to be headed choose not to speak up.
Ok, aside from the Combat Droids (I'm going to reserve judgement on them until we get confirmed figures about working module stacking and chassis limits) There are two droid IssuesI'd like to find out about
1: Will we be getting a trickle of utility modules as other professions are fixed (The main one I'm refering to here is the Slicing module that Thunderheart refered to. Will we be seeing it when the Smuggler profession is revamped, or at another time?)
2: Are there any plans on allowing people (DEs at minimum) to have an extra Utility Droid out at one time. As it is a MDE with a droid with a repair module (Not a repair droid as those currently cannot repair even with a repair module) can repair any droid but their own, and likewise a MDE with a power droid can recharge any droids but their own. There would be no combat advantage to adding this ability during publish 8, and with the way crafting stations on droids work, there would be no crafting advantage either. I also beleve that medical mods from multiple droids do not stack, so this would not be a method for acquiring extra capabilities at all
DionDroids wrote:
I see in Publish 7 "Droid Invasion 1 of 2" no new content for droids or DE. Biggest thing we are getting is repair kits which is a bug fix from an pre-beta issue. The combat modules are yet another example of the DEV's ignoring the community and striping inherent function from specific droids and making all droids the same. The power droids and BH droids are the only droids with inherent abilities.
The player base not prevy to the discussions on these boards are going to be earnestly perplexed by the lack of new chassis, R2's with blasters, lower quality droids, and sky rocketing prices.
Couple of weeks ago some of the DE community leaders requested that we be positive, I apoligize, I try, but there are few nice things to say here. We still have publish 8 to hope for however history tells us that our voices will carry little weight as to the direction that it takes.
Someone just put it very elegantly in the DE forum...
It's the Droid Handler patch...without the Droid Handler.
If that's all it is, they should just put it in in spite of the communities desires - it's clear that it's coming anyway and that this patch has very little real droid content that non-DE's will see.
Audio
The devs did an 11th hour reversal of their plans due to the requests of the DE community. So instead of focusing purely on the Combat aspect of Droids, they had to basically cut that effort in half and work on the Utility stuff that you guys requested as well. The lack of new chassis, high level Combat droids, etc. is a direct result of that reversal. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Trayson_Antilles wrote:
The devs did an 11th hour reversal of their plans due to the requests of the DE community. So instead of focusing purely on the Combat aspect of Droids, they had to basically cut that effort in half and work on the Utility stuff that you guys requested as well. The lack of new chassis, high level Combat droids, etc. is a direct result of that reversal. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Don't kid yourself. Those discussions happened just a couple of weeks ago - these plans were in motion long before then. We didn't change anything for Publish 7.
And it wasn't simply the misrepresentation of what the DE community has said for the past six months, it was the lead designer of SWG who admitted that it simply was not time to add yet another profession to a game that already has so many with such strong issues (you can read that message here : http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=23530&highlight=#M23530 )
The issue is that all through this long and winding, frustrating road to answering the question "what do you want?" we were not given enough information to make informed decisions about what to support. Somehow "We want to be a crafting profession" translated to "We want Droid Handler" when the questions were asked as if they were mutually exclusive, not foregone conclusions; this was especially true since the former Creative Director (Koster) is the one who initially mentioned droid certifications, which the DE community pretty much universally supports in one form or another yet we are told this is no longer a possibility.
At this point, after the patch many of us will be leaving the profession because it is quite clear that they have simply delayed Droid Handler and are implementing all the tools for it with this patch (combat modules and stim packs, some of which are so powerful we simply don't have a droid they could heal) and not giving us ANY of the things we have asked for. All we did was delay the inevitable, since it's now clear what they intend. They took two of our main concerns (uniqueness of droid models and that we emphatically did NOT want R2's with blasters duct taped to them) and spat at them.
To top it all off the Droid Stimpacks that they have finally added (which we have desperately needed since beta) are going to more than a DOZEN new named resources, half of which I have never even heard of on my server, let alone have any access to. Non-crafters may not understand how difficult a situation that is - when some resources have yet to make it to some servers, and when they do it's for a few days every 4-5 months, you are going to find higher and higher prices - so high that people won't buy, and many won't even sell the stimpacks. Waiting months on end for the resources to make a consumableproductisn't doing anything but griefing the DE profession.
The proposed utility droids are largely not utility but novelty (blowing smoke for entertainers andexploding MSEs). This is not enough to keep those of us that have been waiting for real enhancements and fixes (our bug list is still the biggest of any profession) since the Galaxies virtually began.
I think we all learned a hard lesson from this - don't bother speaking out, even when you are misrepresented and told that you wanted something you didn't, because then you might not get much of anything at all.
Audio
BLL's are a super waste of time... the only thing they are good for is to walk around and annoy people with because they are so freaking big... you cant imagine how many requests for BLL i get just for that very reason... "i want to walk around and annoy people" ... please do something crazy with it like allowing it ot be hte only droid that can be moduled to support 50 Item storage capacity... thats really not too much to ask..... i mean for so much steel especially duralloy and duranium its fair.. heck even 20 items would make it more worth it.....
a big gift to DE's would be giving certain function droids the inherit ability to do their funciton.. surgical droids that dont heal... repair droids that dont repair.... power dorids that cant recharge your own droids... makes no sense... maybe if there was a way to differentiate combat droids from functional accessory droids making it possible for 2 droids to be called would be great... one combat droid and a medical droid that heals the owner in combat... even the faction missions spawn surgical droids that heal the other NPCs....
i still dont know how many times it needs to be re-iterated that R3's shouldnt be better combat droids then probots.... hopefully they are working on that and have a special droideka surprise for us.... heck.. turn the BLL schematic and change the skin so its a droideka and add 6 combat modules wham there you go... not too much code change and you can sneak in a surprise for the DE's that will have them falling in love with Devs
i have always had faith in Devs... DEs did make some money at release for a just a little bit.. but chefs never got any loving at all til pub 6... so good job on that... i only wish the DE love came in one big chunk like the chef publish.... or heck.. from now on give DE's a new droid chassis or two every publish.....or new modules and a chassis....
***************************************************
here is a random suggestion in regards to the Droid Commander debate:
Rather then having control units be a part of the schematic which i enver really understood.... have it be a functional part in the control of the droid....customers have to buy the control unit to control a droid deed they have....this can do a few things:
1) gives an avenue where DEs can experiment droids up to higher levels... its not totally unheard of to have an R3 tht was designed for combat... with PSGs from armorsmiths and different weapons or weapon components from weaponsmiths you can experiment up to a level 35...yes i know its high for no skills invested but the trade federation did not invest skill points for its army they just bought a computer
2) allows the usage of the droid to deteriorate with time as the control unit loses affectiveness and lose control of the droid needing to get a enw control unit attached to the droid
3) allow multiple droids as allowed via the control units... maybe giving a hard cap of level 35 total but allowing up to 3 droids would be nice... having a level 3 repair droid to help fix the combat dorid and a surgical dorid healing you in combat...
...Luke did nothing to control 2 droids nor did Leia or Captain Antilles..... the only one that did any work for a droid was Anakin... yet nowhere did it say they can only have one droid... its just a matter of beign rich enough to afford the dorids in SWG and in the lore....
I am willing to eat Crow now ! After seeing Drashk's probot he created on the Droid Engineer forum, I have had my faith restored in the Dev's commitment to making us a more viable crafting profession (and making more people interested in what we can make). I am almost positive that they will end up reducing this thing down a bit, but I can smile again that things are really being fixed instead of just making them all harder to make.
My apologies to the Development Team from jumping to conclusions over the first few days of the reports coming in. I just think we are all a bit on edge because we really do want the profession to be neat for everyone.