Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: My reply & questions to TH on Combat Balance
Well as long as theyre removing things that give players undue advantages, they should remove armor. I mean come on 80% kenetic resists for a few stat reductions. This is obvious unbalancing and gives players too much for too little.
They need to remove doctor buffs. I mean come on, increase all you physical stats by up to 3k? Whats the deal NPCs can get this kind of buff from their doctos. This should be removed too.
They need to remove slicing. I mean come on, up to a 35% increase in damage or speed? NPCs have no way to get this kind of improvement, This should definately be removed.
They need to remove med packs too. I mean come on, healing yourself for up to 300 points for a few mind points. This is obviously too much as NPCs cannont do this and should be removed. 15 skill points keeps you alive way to long in my opinion.
This is just a breif list of what is unbalancing in the game. All players should be required to walk around in regular clothes (don't even get me started on the tailor improvements to ABILITIES) and use thier fists as weapons.
Side 2 -DEs are a support class and should be able to give "Support" to others.
Smugglers can add "up to" 35% to peoples weapons damage. Why is it so out of line to give droid engineers a 10-20% boosts to other peoples damage with combat droids. Right now as it stands the only damage boost we give is to newbies if someone is kind enough to give them a probot. Even then it's kinda hit or miss.
Doctors can increase peoples stats by what 1.5-3k? My base in all is primary stats is 800. The secondaries range from 400-600. So please if you could tell me how this isnt a class directly adding to anothers "combat" effectiveness.They also cure status ailments.
Armorsmiths make armor everyone who has the stat pools can wear. If you do not, you can get some doctor buffs and drugs to raise your mind and your effectiveness is increased from 10-80% in nearly every resist. Now you can get beat on and ignore 80% of the monsters damage.
Tailors can increase your skills in terms of melee defense and skill effectiveness and put it in a shirt.
Combineall these things (docs buffs + armor + tailor + smuggler)and your now 4 times the player in terms of tanking with 15-35% damage increase. [(base + 200-400%) x .2 to .4 of the monsters damage]. Guess you could have the smuggler slice the armor too but thats kinda overkill and expensive.
-Basically when players come together and combine all thier skills they are able to be better than most monsters and able to group together to kill the big stuff. How is this wrong? This is what the game should be like. I see no problem with a droid adding 20% more damage and tanking ability. Whats wrong witha player buying a droid for 70k that does this? All you have to do is add some decay to the droids and bam, youre no more overpowering than any other support class.
Right now droids are mobile med centers for buffing and the occasional crafting station. Im disappointed how little I use my droids right now (think I used one for the first time to construct a probot in a city to be sold).
TH you have the devs ear. The game would be no more unbalancing with everyplayer having a droid than it is now. The big mobs will still be able to tear through them. Heavily armoed foes will ignore much of thier damage. Just make them worthwhile and worth buying...
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"I will tell you this, Droids (and DE's) are going to be the MAIN feature for the January publish. We will be fixing alot of things and adding combat droids.Yes, talk is cheap. -- JustG 11/25/2003
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I can give you an answer right now. All the factors you mentioned do affect combat balance. But they are already factored into the equation. This means that, yes they do give weight to player combat strength, but that weight has already been counterbalanced.
Adding combat droids would give players even more weight and create imbalance.
I am a M DE, and I want combat droids too. But I understand the difficulties involved and I know it will take time to work them in. If they can fix the existing bugs and give us some utiltiy droids, that will be a huge step in the right direction.
I know that even though you are told it is too complex by the people who wrote this program and trying to make the changes, some of you will still not believe it. So go ahead with your conspiracy theories, I suggest you start by connecting it with the Kennedy assassination.
Message Edited by Razor99 on 02-04-2004 06:50 PM
Yeah, I have to agree with most of your post Razor.
If it was really about fairness, they should add droids in across the board and rebalance for them.
It would make a better and more interesting game as well.
But this really isn't about fairness. It's about money and paychecks.
At this point I thinks it more about and individual decision on our part. Can we have fun in the game as it exists? Can we have fun in the game with the proposed changes?
This is a decision that we each will make and it is personal and different to each of us.
Life goes on.
IntoTheGarbage wrote:
I can give you an answer right now. All the factors you mentioned do affect combat balance. But they are already factored into the equation. This means that, yes they do give weight to player combat strength, but that weight has already been counterbalanced.
Adding combat droids would give players even more weight and create imbalance.
I am a M DE, and I want combat droids too. But I understand the difficulties involved and I know it will take time to work them in. If they can fix the existing bugs and give us some utiltiy droids, that will be a huge step in the right direction.
I know that even though you are told it is too complex by the people who wrote this program and trying to make the changes, some of you will still not believe it. So go ahead with your conspiracy theories, I suggest you start by connecting it with the Kennedy assassination.
Razor99 wrote:
"that weight has already been counterbalanced."
LOL, ifyou think combat is balanced right now you've been crafting droids a little too long. This "equation" as you call it is about as balanced as 2 + 2 = 600.
This class was broken from the beguinning. That excuse youre trying to play on is, "Well weve already got this huge mass we dont want to add anything more to it."
DE's are missing out on adding to player stregnth because they got added dead last. How fair and balanced is that Garbage?
No arguments there, it is not fair. But then neither are most things in life. You can respond by getting angry at the people trying to fix the problem, or you can listen to them and try to understand the problem.
IntoTheGarbage wrote:
You can respond by getting angry at the people trying to fix the problem, or you can listen to them and try to understand the problem.
Virtanis wrote:
IntoTheGarbage wrote:
You can respond by getting angry at the people trying to fix the problem, or you can listen to them and try to understand the problem.
Or you couldcheerfully wave theirbroken promises, empty gestures, unfulfilled goals, and vapid lip-service under their noses at every opportunity. Maybe shame and motivate them faster than compassion or care for their players?
OrionsByte wrote:
Virtanis wrote:
IntoTheGarbage wrote:
You can respond by getting angry at the people trying to fix the problem, or you can listen to them and try to understand the problem.
Or you couldcheerfully wave theirbroken promises, empty gestures, unfulfilled goals, and vapid lip-service under their noses at every opportunity. Maybe shame and motivate them faster than compassion or care for their players?
I won't sit here and disagree with you that we DEs have gotten the shaft on more than one occasion (anyone have a running tally? I'm sure it's at least 3 digits...). However, to chalk that up to blatent deception and greed is short-sighted. Really. Why the heck would they intentionally lie to their client base?
In the heat of a moment, one could say they're liars. Their track record certainly suggests deceit is in the air, but does anyone have proof that they intentionally lied? No, not that I know of. What they shovel towards us sure wafts of deceit, however.... and that's how it's being interpreted by a portion of the player base, and I can't completely blame them.
I'm tired of the conspiracy theories that try to convince me that the only reason the DEVs post here is to pacify us while they laugh at the money they're making.
I'm tired of this too... I wouldn't be here muckraking if I was a "happy" customer. An old phrase I like to bring up every so often is "the proof is in the pudding." Let's just take a look at one of Holocron's post, which I'm sure you're familiar with by now.
"To repeat: we are nerfing the probot in the interim until we come up with a cert system." - Holocron, 07/21/2003.
Notice the word "interim"? I didn't add emphasis on that word, he did if youcheck his original post. Now we could all debate semantics on what exactly "Interim" means, Clinton style... but I think we can all agree that when we read that back in July 2003, we weren't thinking it meant "8, 9, months or maybe a year from now, perhaps..."? This guy was the Creative Director and now he's the Chief Creative Officer of SOE; we put faith into this guy's words. The fact that this emphatic statement, his strong emphasis on "interim", and his exalted position within the creative team and SOE in general still don't amount to any results!!! And I hate to say it, but this is merely one small example out of a sea of examples which you can easily find littered about the forums.
Just one example of why I'm an "unhappy" customer.
I'm a programmer myself, by trade. I don't do it for the money. I enjoy it. I'm good at it. I do a lot of programming outside of work for friends or family who need something specific but either can't find software to do it or can't afford what they find. I don't charge them... my reward is when they come back to me and say, "Boy, that program works really well... thank you so much!"
If I were to make a game (which I have done, in the past) my attitude would be the same. My satisfaction would come from hearing that people enjoy the game, not from any money I would make from it.
Yeah, many of us have been waiting for this game for years... many of us wanted this game to shine and take it's place in the MMOG hall of fame. Many of us still do. I don't sit here smugly proclaiming "victory"; happy and content that this game fails on so many levels. I care about this game, sincerely and with the passion of a Star Wars fan. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here raising these issues, I simply would have quietly cancelled ages ago. The fact is that I do care, I do want this product to be better, I do want to congratulate the programmers and the company on a product that is well designed, well produced, and stable, but I just can't right now. And it's not because I'm devoid of want... it's because this game is so wanting. Period.
Now frankly, I think the DEVs have made a lot more player-requested changes than they are given credit for. A lot of those changes are having balance and gameplay ramifications that now need DEV intervention to put it all back in alignment. It's like the line from "Bruce Almighty:"
"Since when did people have a clue about what they want?"
Nice line... Now I'll again bring up just one example: Holocron's pledge about the Probot and the Cert system. He's not "among the people, who have no clue what they want"... again, he was the former Creative Director of the game. If he said he was going to do this, he said it with a clue. How can you blame the unwashed, clueless masses in this case? He said it... he proclaimed it... and we're still waiting for it; empty handed... Don't blame the players for SOE's utter failures. Inferring players are "clueless" and don't know what they want is exactly the kind of corporate mentality SOE has embraced... and some of us are bringing them to task for it.
I'm as frustrated with the state of Droid Engineers as every Droid Engineer out there. However, I have come to grips with the fact that our profession is just one facet of a huge, multi-facted, complex game. Changes can not come quickly and easily, nor can they come in the exact manner we'd like to see them. We have no way of knowing how the game mechanics work behind the scene;we can postulate, make educated guesses, but the fact is the only people who know how the code works is theteamthat wrote it. People ask for A, code is written for C, give the people B.
Well, what I said in my previous post is this: Developers emphatically promise "A", Months, and months, and months to pass without anyone delivering on "A", the playerbase gets angry and waves their promises of "A" in their face, Developers come back and say that "A" isn't possible at all or that project "R" took priority, and "A" will be delayed for untold months. The playerbase becomes exceedingly angry and agitated that the Developers have failed to do anything about "A" and constantly take them to task for their utter lack of attention on "A" until "A" gets into the game like they promised.
Basically it meansI'mprepared to continue to befrustrated for a while longer.
For me, it basically, it means I'm going to continue to shove this in their face until they fulfill their promises and learn to communicate and deliver effectively on the promises they make.