Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Time to take the cuffs of the probot
Its time to take the cuffs off the probot and give them back some HAM. As of last week they are basically worthless now. For the time/effort involved in making them they are basically worthless now to sell on the market, since they still die way to easily even with the armor that has been finally turned back on. Right now the armor seems to be capped at 40% (level 4) wich is alot better than the 12% that was on there before, but the 820 HAM is lame. A creature handler can sell a wrix to a newbie that'll get 1.3k HAM, does 100+ points of damage and essentially never dies... I understood from the Dev's that the original nerf was temporary and that there was going to be some type of cert system initiated. I bought this til I started seeing newbies with 1.3-3.0k HAM creatures running around that require absolutely no cert. I am not asking for the probot to have a 3.5k ham or do 300 pts of damage, but I dont think its too much to ask for 2k Ham or have even 1.5k ham and say 75-125pts of damage instead of its pathetic 50pts that it does now. This needs attention! Please feel free anyone to add your two cents, maybe if we get enough cents in here, someone will put a little attention to this gross injustice. Thank you for your time.
Slater
Master Droid Engineer
Please stop asking for Probots to be better combat droids, instead keep the pressure on for Droidekas, Superbattle droids and Battle droids.
Probots are Probe droids. In their current design they make sense and are closer to what we saw in Episode V. They are tough and have little offense. What they are missing is an ability to 'probe' for anything. I suggest that they increase the range we can survey and/or generate a list of what's available on other planets. This ability could be innate or module based, and should open our market up by being an essential tool for all crafters.
Unfortunately, Devs are not listening, or do not care enough to even respond. There has been absolutely NO comment as to why ANYONE ANYWHERE ever thought that DROIDS of all things needed another nerf.
As far as I am concerned, they need to make droidmaker an NPC class and give everyone their points back to assign where they like.
I DO NOT BELIEVE there is any possible excuse for the entire lack of developer feedback to our issues considering the level of response given to CH or any other class I can think of.
The most basic functionality (which is gimp to begin with) IS ENTIRELY BROKEN. This would be fine if we could at least get this admission from the devs and an explanation that it will take X months to address even the most basic issues.
We do not even get "working as intended", or "looking into it". There simply may not be any hope for the class.
*shakes his head*
Why does everyone have such an obsession to quote doom and gloom over DE .. and then compare it to CH. PVE/PVP isn't the only use for a droid... in fact its not even the PRIME use for a droid. Yet its the ONLY use of a CH pet.
Who cares if droids can't attack? For god sake people, droids arn't just bought for fighting you know.
90% of people that play SWG want an R2 unit and a protocol droid. Not because they do anything... just because they want to be Luke Skywalker with his trusted droid friends.
90% of medics want and/or need a droid with a medical unit in order to use medical skills out in the wild, as well as improve their medical abilities.
60% of crafters want and/or need a droid with a crafting module in order to craft certain objects in the wild or in their house without the need of a static personal crafting station.
40% of people want and/or need a droid for extra storage space / extra data storage space
40% of people want a droid simply because they look cool
Thats a whole lot of people that potentialy want to buy a droid. Hell, I'm a DE andI still find myself browsing the bazaar regularly to see what droids are for sale... and guess what? There are praticaly never any.
DE is not a dead profession, even in it's current state ... it has the potential to be one of the highest money-making professions. All it takes is for you to best judge who to sell too. If you just want to make/sell combat droids then you are in the wrong line of work
(BTW, why not just add laser rifles to the loader droid? Kidding, because then it would have use.)
The probot is as powerful as a newbie with a CDEF blaster. 800 HAM and 50 damage. It was 3200 HAM and 200 damage, so the HAM and damage are both reduced to 1/4 of what they were. This is 16th the combat effectiveness of what they were.
The probot and the DZ70 are the only droids we can make that can attack. The DZ70 has 40 HAM so it is useless. The probot has 800 HAM, which isn't bad with armor, but its 50 damage makes the droid almost useless. A regular probot has no module slots, so its ONLY use at the moment is combat.
Many of use became droids engineers thinking we could build cool combat droids to help ourselves and others out in combat. We don't want to be able to replace creature handlers, but a master droid engineer should atleast be able to build a droid in the same ball park.
Droids have limited practical uses; surgical droids don't heal you, repair droids don't repair, power droids can't recharge your harvester, load lifters don't carry anything. A droid with a crafting station is probably the most usefull. Since you can't call a droid anywhere, its not as if you can happen upon a resource of some new copper, take a sample, then whip out your crafting droid and see how good of a gun barrel you can make out of it. You would have to have your droid follow you everywhere, and since they are all so fragile it wouldn't be long before it was attacked by a beetle and destroyed.
Yes,occasionally people buy a 3PO droid for the star wars feel, but we should bemaking droids that are USEFULL, not just a novelty. If we wanted to craft cosmetic items, we would have become tailors, not DEs.
Of course not. Yet, fighting does happen to be one of the designed uses for our product and in that respect they fall dismally short.
Vampiric_Hoshi wrote:
Who cares if droids can't attack? For god sake people, droids arn't just bought for fighting you know.
Now you're just making stuff up to support your own opinion.
90% of people that play SWG want an R2 unit and a protocol droid. Not because they do anything... just because they want to be Luke Skywalker with his trusted droid friends.
Except for the fact that when away from your home (declared residence) you can only call a droid in a city or campsite where they are already able to heal without the use of a droid.
90% of medics want and/or need a droid with a medical unit in order to use medical skills out in the wild, as well as improve their medical abilities.
That is the only compelling reason for someone to buy a droid, and they don't need anything more than an MSE droid for it. Why pay more for anything else?
60% of crafters want and/or need a droid with a crafting module in order to craft certain objects in the wild or in their house without the need of a static personal crafting station.
Might be nice, but come on. What would you charge for that droid? All for a few additional storage slots? How shocked will you be when/if the "additional" part of that benefit gets nerfed in the future?
40% of people want and/or need a droid for extra storage space / extra data storage space
Refer back to my response to your R2-D2 and C-3PO claim.
40% of people want a droid simply because they look cool
After further examination, no, it's not a whole lot of people as you claim. The reason you don't see many droids for sale is because the majority of the people don't want them right now. I am a DE. I don't see the demand there.
Thats a whole lot of people that potentialy want to buy a droid. Hell, I'm a DE andI still find myself browsing the bazaar regularly to see what droids are for sale... and guess what? There are praticaly never any.
I agree it is not a dead profession, but in it's current state it has been rendered highly ineffective, even ignoring combat potential or lack thereof.
DE is not a dead profession, even in it's current state ... it has the potential to be one of the highest money-making professions. All it takes is for you to best judge who to sell too. If you just want to make/sell combat droids then you are in the wrong line of work
"fighting does happen to be one of the designed uses for our product and in that respect they fall dismally short." - I agree 100% .. but the fact that there are only 2 combat droid types of over 10 types of droids suggests that the devs never intended droids to be a combat suppliment in the first place.
"Now you're just making stuff up to support your own opinion" - Am I? Tell me, when you first saw the Star Wars movies as a kid, did you not want to have your own R2 unit? Everyone I know IRL did, as did the majority of people I know over the net and, from what most Star Wars fans seem to suggest (even the devs) they did too. R2 and 3PO are two of the most memerable aspects of the Star Wars movies .. droids lightsabre's and X-Wings .. THOSE are the things running through people's heads when they leave the movies after seing A New Hope.
"when away from your home (declared residence) you can only call a droid in a city or campsite where they are already able to heal without the use of a droid" Yep thats true, but for 1) a medical droid should increase the effectiveness of a medic's heal outside of a hospital and 2) what's stopping that person from keeping the droid out after they've LEFT the camp city or home? Droids may notbe much of a match for anything on their own, but who says you can't keep your droid out and then call some faction pets or CH pets to help protect the droid? Who says a combat medic in a group can't keep his/her droid called, with the protection of the group, to help heal wherever needed? Almost every medic I know and have seen either want/have a surgical droid or another model with a medical module
"the only compelling reason for someone to buy a droid, and they don't need anything more than an MSE droid for it. Why pay more for anything else?" Why do people pay ludicrous amounts of money for a cool looking pair of pants in-game when, apart from cosmetics, they have no physical difference to the pair you start off in? They want useful things, and they won't those useful things to look as cool as possible ... an R2 unit is always going to be cooler than an MSE and you'll find a large amount of people are willing to pay that little bit extra just for that simple "cool" factor.
"Might be nice, but come on. What would you charge for that droid? All for a few additional storage slots? How shocked will you be when/if the "additional" part of that benefit gets nerfed in the future?" People continued to by the T21 rifle, even though they *KNEW* is going to get nurfed. If you went through life not doing things because of what *MIGHT* happen, you are in for one hell of a boring ride 
"40% of people want a droid simply because they look cool -- refer back to my response to your R2-D2 and C-3PO claim." As I said before, I still believe my figures stand.
"The reason you don't see many droids for sale is because the majority of the people don't want them right now. I am a DE. I don't see the demand there" I disagree. The demand isn't there for COMBAT droids because there are so many other things that outclass them and sadly thats all the majority of DE's seem to focus on.
Picture yourself as one of the developers. You got this massive game and you've gota bunch ofcategories such as combat, building construction, medical, entertainment, general crafting etc that need filling. Lets break the above categories down intosome of thethingsused for each:
Combat
- Weapons (i.e. knucklers, staffs,blasters)
- Armour
- Personal shield generator
- CH pet
- Faction pet
- Combat droid
Building Construction
- General crafting tool
- Specialisedcrafting tool
- Public crafting station
- Personal crafting station
- Droid with crafting station module
- Droid with storage module
- Harvesters (which have been built already by a user using these tools/items)
- Resources (which are likely to have been gained using a Harvester)
- Factory
Medical
- General crafting tool
- Stim packs
- Droid with medical module/surgical droid
- Droid with storage module
- Harvesters
- Resources (which are likely to have been gained using a Harvester)
Entertainment
- Musical instruments (not sure what else entertainers may use)
- Droid with storage module
General Crafting (i.e. weaponsmith, armoursmith, tailor)
- General crafting tool
- Specialised crafting tool
- Public crafting station
- Personal Crafting station
- Droid with crafting station module
- Droid with storage module
- Harvesters
- Resources (which are likely to have been gained using a Harvester)
- Factory
Now when you look at that, it appears that droids are useful for all forms of crafting (and there are LOTS of forms of crafting), and for medics .. the two main uses. Aside from personal crafting stations (which can only be placed in houses) there is nothing to compete with droids with a crafting module. Yet in combat, there are several other versions of combatthings(such as blaster, CH pets and faction pets)... items that do exactly what a combat droid does ... this is where the problem lies. From a developer's aspect, why create multiple versions of things that do exactly the same thing? Then, after already making an item (such as a droid) that already has a monopoly of other areas (such as crafting and medical modules) why should this item then be made to equal something that, in all respects, can only possibly master the combat in the game (the CH and faction pets).
My point here is that the devs have to create a game where every craftable (and tameable) item has a market ... however, droids hold the potential to monopolise EVERY market and therefore make things such as a CH pet pointless... which in-turn make the CH profession pointless.
So, as I've said in a previous post, *WHY* should there be a combat droid?
When the game was launched, wasn't there a quote for the Droid Engineers...something like "Or become a master droid engineer and make powerful (and destructive) droids."
There was also a quote that said "The best star wars saga ... yours"
It's all in the eye of the beholder. If your vission of droids is based around combat (and that doesn't appear to be the vision of the devs) then I guess you are in for a bumpy ride.
Combat is a seriously tough issue to comprehend. The majority of professions have some kind of input into it, which means the majority of pressions are competing ... that can only pose one hell of a problem for people trying to play professions that rely soley on combat.
Take a weaponsmith for example. His entire market is solely based on people wanting blasters and melee weapons to kill things. However, he has to contend with the fact that you can gain weapons via faction points. He also has to contend with people that are slicing lower-level weapons and making them better than higher-level weapons for a cheaper price. And then, the final insult, he is faced with CH pets ... why have a rocket launcher when you can have a simple T21 and 3 rancor's? As if that isn't bad enough, you can then through stormtroopers and AT-STs into the boil... and then finaly the combat droids. Suddenly, the market for the weaponsmith is in trouble. Blasters and melee weapons can't be sold for any other reason except combat ... if someone has a low-level weapon they started off the game with and 3 rancors (or 3 probots or an AT-ST) then the chances of the weaponsmith being able to sell that person a high-level weapon becomes greatly decreased.
The same can be said for a CH. If someone has an AT-ST, a squad of stormtroopers and a T21 rifle, the chances of them needing/wanting a pet is greatly reduced since there is no other pratical use for them
However, if someone has an AT-ST, a squad of stormtroopers, a T21 rifle and 3 rancors, there is still a good possibility they will need or want a droid.
DE's keep saying "there isn't a market" ... I dissagree. There IS a market.. you've just go out and find it.
The main issue that I have with the DE/CH debate is that the Devs added the ability for anyone to have a CH pet after the game went live, and after they already lowered the Probot's effectiveness. Had this been in the game when it started out I wouldn't have a problem with it, but to reduce the Probot to it's current status because it was too "overpowering" and then give another profession (and a NON-crafting profession at that) the ability to hand out even more powerful pets to anyone in need, and have those pets take virtually no resources to create, well that just burns my circuits.
I'm all for CH's having great pets, but I don't understand why they had to be able to give them to anyone that wanted one. And why they are more powerful than even the Probot was at release, let alone what it is now. It's obvious that the Devs made a conscious decision to shift the power toward the CH pet side of the pet equation as opposed to the Droid side. I just can't wrap my mind around why.
Then of course youinclude Droid Perma-Deathin the equation and all my marbles spill out onto the floor. We have seen the systematicdiminishing of our ability to add to the combat element of the game, watching our strength get siphoned off into the CH camp. I know our Droids can be effective in a utility role, and I have a strong business in that respect, but that doesn't mean Ican understand or even accept what they have done to the Combat Droids.
Look at it this way...The Probot was only overpowering because everyone could have one.But not for that reason all byitself. They were overpowering because they knew the direction they were taking CH andcould easily see that allowing everyone to have a CH pet AND a Probot in it's initial state would be completely unbalancing. So they reduce the Probot to what it is today and bring out the Ch pet situation. (and don't go saying this is a conspiracy theory, I find it very hard to believe that SOE doesn't do at least a little advanced planning with their programming. That code doesn't all get written overnight)
I firmly believe we will see better combat droids, but itwon't come until after they've completed the certification idea they are working on. Until then I will continue to serve my customers other droid needs, and sell the occassional Probot for the people who understand how to use one (as added DPS, not asa tank).
Ockale_MDE, I agree with you. But I also agree with some of the things others have said previously towards the probot... why was it even added as a combat droid in the first place when it clearly had no combat role in the movies... as apposed to two recent films that were filled with types of combat droids, as well as the original movies showing a combat droid (IG-88) ... THAT is what seems silly to me.
I'm also glad to see a fellow DE show that they are still making money EVEN THOUGH the profession is in such a state.
I've never claimed there is no market, I have no problem selling droids on my server.
My issue simply stems from the fact that the quote for Droid Engineers centered on powerful and deadly combat droids and then they neutered the only combat droid we had.
Yes, we have lots of items that we can sell to other players, from portable crafting stations to 10-slot backpacks, to 150-slot datapads, heck, I'm still selling the neutered probots. We have a good market, but we don't have the one thing that was used to sell a lot of people on the profession...we have no powerful or deadly combat droids.