Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 7 Feedback: Droid & Droid Engineer Enhancements
Shislkah wrote:
This post is for players who want to know how the Droid Invasion publish ended up so weak where droids are concerned. The answer is, Forum Users. The Devs came to the DE forum in January with a plan involving REAL combat droids, including droideka. At that point I was a DE who was thinking of dropping it, and I was totally jazzed to see their plan. Then the most peculiarthing happened, DE's used the forums to collectively say "We are only interested in crafting, combat droids aren't part of the continuity." Overthe course of a week or two some very perplexed Devs (who had been hearing "Give me droideka!" for months prior) listened to the "DE community" (or that 10% of it that makes their voice heard) and decided that the customer is always right. This publish, as far as droids, is exactly what the DE's asked for: no meaningful combat, no new droids, and a couple slots on a the Adv. BLL.
Yet another disappointment in SOE/Lucas. (if true)
Something that impacts the Star Wars Galaxy, as we know it, in such ahuge fashion (Droids are an INTRIGAL part to the Star Wars Universe), should NOT ONLY be decided by the profession that it pertains to. Combat Droids should be a OPEN discussion, NOT relagated to JUST DE's. IF this is true....shame on Lucas/SOE. Something like that should be in the Concept/Development Forums for everyone to see and comment on.
AudioOrgana wrote:
Neehivi wrote:
Smurfwalker wrote:
Whilst I'm not weighing into the actual argument over what are good/bad changes (I don't have an opinion yet), these changes have been on the test center for quite some time, and it would not have taken a whole lot to read the release notes or hop onto the test center to discover these things for yourself while there was still time to be involved in the development process.
Complaining about things that have been known for some time (ie. no droidekas etc.) is counter-productive, and contributes to a whole lot of emotional wind that the developers have to sort through to actually find any bugs.
If the changes affect you so much, you should have read the notes and checked out the test center, and the test center forums before it went live.
/agree
/agree
/agree
WE DID.
The responses in this thread are pretty much what we said when it was on TC - however, they want feedback based on it in live play, and they are getting it.
Don't presume that we didn't see this coming - we did; being uninformed and accusing others of being uninformed is just bad form.
Audio
Yeppers. We tried very hard to be constructively, positively involved in the development process. Alas, SOE has made their own decisions about the direction they are taking the game.
Looks like the DE players are taking the brunt of the abuse, with all of those "You stole my Probot's armor!" /tells.
I'm interested to hear SOE's response to the customer feedback they are getting from the non-DE community.
Yet another disappointment in SOE/Lucas. (if true)
Something that impacts the Star Wars Galaxy, as we know it, in such ahuge fashion (Droids are an INTRIGAL part to the Star Wars Universe), should NOT ONLY be decided by the profession that it pertains to. Combat Droids should be a OPEN discussion, NOT relagated to JUST DE's. IF this is true....shame on Lucas/SOE. Something like that should be in the Concept/Development Forums for everyone to see and comment on.
Pardon, I did not mean to imply there was no oversight, most of the ideas I refer to were briefly on the In Concept and In Dev forums at one point or another. The major battle was waged in the DE forum though, where by a ratio of about 7:3 players mystifyingly said they would rather be bored than damage the continuity - Ilove the Star Wars continuity, butimo many fun things in game are only barely related to it, and fun is a higher priority. Also, when I said the Dev's had a neat plan, that made it sound like a single coherent topic, when it was actually a series of ideas that were batted around (Droid certifications and Droid Handler/Commander for instance.. try older DE forum posts if you're curious about that.)
Sho_Okami wrote:
Shislkah wrote:
This post is for players who want to know how the Droid Invasion publish ended up so weak where droids are concerned. The answer is, Forum Users. The Devs came to the DE forum in January with a plan involving REAL combat droids, including droideka. At that point I was a DE who was thinking of dropping it, and I was totally jazzed to see their plan. Then the most peculiarthing happened, DE's used the forums to collectively say "We are only interested in crafting, combat droids aren't part of the continuity." Overthe course of a week or two some very perplexed Devs (who had been hearing "Give me droideka!" for months prior) listened to the "DE community" (or that 10% of it that makes their voice heard) and decided that the customer is always right. This publish, as far as droids, is exactly what the DE's asked for: no meaningful combat, no new droids, and a couple slots on a the Adv. BLL.
Yet another disappointment in SOE/Lucas. (if true)
Something that impacts the Star Wars Galaxy, as we know it, in such ahuge fashion (Droids are an INTRIGAL part to the Star Wars Universe), should NOT ONLY be decided by the profession that it pertains to. Combat Droids should be a OPEN discussion, NOT relagated to JUST DE's. IF this is true....shame on Lucas/SOE. Something like that should be in the Concept/Development Forums for everyone to see and comment on.
I couldn't make myself stay logged in last night. I got on hoping to play with the new stuff we got (since there was so little of it compared to what would constitute a "Droid Invasion", I didn't think it would take long), and was bombarded by tells asking for new combat droids. Without an exception, these people wanted the droids shown on the wallpaper...which I had to inform them didn't exist and were not going to ever exist.
Shislkah wrote:
This post is for players who want to know how the Droid Invasion publish ended up so weak where droids are concerned. The answer is, Forum Users. The Devs came to the DE forum in January with a plan involving REAL combat droids, including droideka. At that point I was a DE who was thinking of dropping it, and I was totally jazzed to see their plan. Then the most peculiarthing happened, DE's used the forums to collectively say "We are only interested in crafting, combat droids aren't part of the continuity." Overthe course of a week or two some very perplexed Devs (who had been hearing "Give me droideka!" for months prior) listened to the "DE community" (or that 10% of it that makes their voice heard) and decided that the customer is always right. This publish, as far as droids, is exactly what the DE's asked for: no meaningful combat, no new droids, and a couple slots on a the Adv. BLL.
Go to the DE forum and read the neat stuff posted from January through early February by the Devs, and read how players ground it to a halt in mid-development, resulting in this publish.
Personal Note: No skill is worth being angry and bored, if it's not working for you, drop it and get a new skill that you enjoy - this will solve 90% of your in-game problems.
Yes, read the forums so you dont believe in this half-truth.
Devs did want to give high level droids. They wanted to clone BE/CH into DE/Droid Handler. It was a stupid idea, and while the complaints STARTED on the DE forum, there was a thread quite easily found in the Dev Tracker in one of the dev boards (concept? development?) which had participation from ALL professions with a 90% resounding "this is a stupid idea", at least 1500 messages in a span of 3 or 4 days. Runesabre eventually posted a very reasonable statement that canceled droid handler.
"It is my opinion that a new profession should be a unique, interesting addition to the game that is not merely a copy or derivative of an existing class. There are already too many professions in SWG that are similar with each other; I did not want to add to that problem. The Droid Commander profession would have needed a lot more development time than I had to spend in the schedule to ensure it was not simply a "metallic CH" profession. Finally, as mentioned before, it is my goal to ensure that all existing professions have their own unique, viable identity in SWG before thinking about adding new professions to the game." - SWG-Runesabre 2-3-04
The whole "DE crafter" argument is another issue, namely the Droid Hybrid profession (Only DE gets droids), and had nothing to do with the Droid Handler profession going away (though it did create the profession in the first place).
Look around, does your profession work? you want to add another profession? just to use a handful of droids? DE's argued in vain for weeks to try to get "Certifications" to every combat profession to be allowed to use a droid. Devs told us we cant give away free checkers, ie... power (in the form of combat droids) without spending skill points. Then the next week they gave Chef's a few dozen checkers to hand out.
So yes, DE's have known for weeks this patch was going to be a let down, and we've been trying to let people know that for weeks too.
Btw, you think this is disappointing, wait till you see Patch 8.
as a last note. if you keep saying that the abomination that is the R3 shouldnt be more powerful than a probot, the devs will interpret that as "nerf the R3". Why the probots HAM is so small I cant understand, it sure looks like a mistake, i think my DZ-70 came out with the same HAM.
However, I was NOT PLEASED that you stealth-nerfed my pre-nerf Probot.
I am also very fed up that you really didn't introduce anything really NEW. All you did is make the R3's and other common droids able to do combat like the previously useless probot. Their stats aren't much different, and since they have little armor, they can't tank just like the previous model.
Where are the actual combat droids that are NEW?
Well, there was one question that caught my eye, the one about if combat droids are helpful to new characters...
New characters cannot afford combat droids. By the time they can get their hands on a combat droid, they are no longer new characters. Same with non-CH pets. By the time you can get one, you really have no use for something that minor.
I've started over many times with many different types of characters, and I know how to play newbies really well. This is an exciting part of the game for me so I like doing it.
During this starting phase, I yearn for many things. A pet, a droid, a real weapon, transportation, stat modifying food, crafting and surveying kits (and resources to build them), and finally, to work on improving the skills to use all the previous items. Most of these you can get with credits, if you have them, and your noob days will be greatly cut short. If you get twinked, its all too easy. If not, you are in for a long road, but enjoyable for me.
You didn't design the droids and non-ch pets to compliment the twink gamer did you? Because that's sure what it looks like.
Wokka-wokka
I did as much as I could last night between work and sleep...
First thought: You're TORTURING us with all the specific new resources! When you have database issues with people storing too much junk, making people store a dozen new specialized resource statcks to make what amounts to 2 new items (repair kits and reconstruction kits) is asking for trouble. Adding in the non-rare petrochemical fuel requirements that DEs never had before, each of us is now scrambling to gather roughly 15 new things that we might never have kept before. And for each of those things, most people will buy/harvest (a) the first they can find, then (b) the best they can find -- which really means 30 stacks of resources to be a well-stocked DE.Then we turn those into 10 new sub-components, and turn those subcomponents into 8 new items. I think someone was getting a little enthusiastic with the schematics!
1. Where the hell is the armor, I put 2 Level 3 Armour things into a ADV R2 combat droid and it had no armour rating, the combat rating was 277 in the deed(5 modules) and its only level 13 difficulty and it only does about 80 - 197 damage, that is rubbish.
2. This next one might be me acting like some kind of slow noob but how do you exactly get 6 combat modules into a droid, i can't see any droid which accepts 6 combat mods