Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Bursting into Tears over Droids
- Probots with 1500+ HAM and 150 damageare selling like hot cakes. No one can make advanced armor yet, so they haven't even realized their full potential. SOE nerfed them quick to 50 damage and 800 HAM. DEs have no product.
- Players discover that they can carry missions in their data pad! Sales of Data Pad equiped droids picks up, and DEs are actually making a little cash. SOE Nerfs it, and DEs are back to no product.
- CHs start to increas their skills, and a few are approaching master. They start tinking towards selling pets they capture, and the Droid Data Pad is the perfect vehicle for storing them. SOE Nerfs the Data Pad so that it can only carry schematics. DEs have no product.... again.
Message Edited by jemelby on 03-01-2004 08:48 AM
jemelby wrote:
...Let's look at a brief summary of the profession:
- Probots with 1500+ HAM and 150 damageare selling like hot cakes. No one can make advanced armor yet, so they haven't even realized their full potential. SOE nerfed them quick to 50 damage and 800 HAM. DEs have no product.
- Players discover that they can carry missions in their data pad! Sales of Data Pad equiped droids picks up, and DEs are actually making a little cash. SOE Nerfs it, and DEs are back to no product.
- CHs start to increas their skills, and a few are approaching master. They start tinking towards selling pets they capture, and the Droid Data Pad is the perfect vehicle for storing them. SOE Nerfs the Data Pad so that it can only carry schematics. DEs have no product.... again.
...
While I can sympathize with you two of those three points were more than the minor bugs you are making them out to be. People weren't just carrying an extra mission in their data pad. They were carrying dozens of extra missions and this was a big problem. A player could sit at the terminal in Mos Eisley and generate delivery missions for 15 minutes, picking missions that all ended in Mos Entha, hop in a shuttle and in another 5 minutes or so earn around 40,000 credits. 120,000cr per hour for someone with no skills who bought an MSE droid with a level 1 data module is pretty severely broken.
Likewise Creature Handlers were designed with the idea of a limit of around a dozen or so pets at Master level. Giving them the ability to store over 750 pets (not including recursive clustering of data modules) was incredibly broken.
Finally, the nerf of the probot was extremely necessary. Newbies were able to buy a probot and go out and tackle creatures way over their level.
Yes, being a DE is painful. We have tons of bugs that have been there forever that should have been fixed long ago. Expansion developement (new droids and modules) has been pretty much non-existent. It is simply that I think with so many valid things that are wrong we should not be complaining about being nerfed on things that were obviously very broken.
The balance problem is this:
How do we make the DE good enough to JUST be a 'mule' profession, that is necessary,so we will cause players to buy another CD and account, but not so good that DE has a real purpose.
If DE and other crafting only professions get a real purpose, then a second account will not be necessary for most of us. I was hoping that SOE would break the 'Mule' mold in this game, since they only allow one character per server, per account, but money does the talking.
Now you all see what this is really about.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Icarus-6 wrote:
While I can sympathize with you two of those three points were more than the minor bugs you are making them out to be. People weren't just carrying an extra mission in their data pad. They were carrying dozens of extra missions and this was a big problem. A player could sit at the terminal in Mos Eisley and generate delivery missions for 15 minutes, picking missions that all ended in Mos Entha, hop in a shuttle and in another 5 minutes or so earn around 40,000 credits. 120,000cr per hour for someone with no skills who bought an MSE droid with a level 1 data module is pretty severely broken.
Likewise Creature Handlers were designed with the idea of a limit of around a dozen or so pets at Master level. Giving them the ability to store over 750 pets (not including recursive clustering of data modules) was incredibly broken.
Finally, the nerf of the probot was extremely necessary. Newbies were able to buy a probot and go out and tackle creatures way over their level.
Yes, being a DE is painful. We have tons of bugs that have been there forever that should have been fixed long ago. Expansion developement (new droids and modules) has been pretty much non-existent. It is simply that I think with so many valid things that are wrong we should not be complaining about being nerfed on things that were obviously very broken.
You are right in some regard, but the root of the problem is that DE's have absolutely nothing that people beat our doors down to buy. They took away every last "good" thing that we had and replaced it with nothing at all. We are now even less than we were at the launch of the game. With the next publish we will again be even LESS than we were yet again. That is if this 'test publish' is the way things are supposed to work.
I stupidly gave the developers the benefit of the doubt that they would really fix us with these next two patches. I held my tongue and became the nice boy as suggested. I should have seen the signs from our past "love" and understood that they have no intention of doing anything of the sort. I give up.
Note that there hasn't been one RED name to confirm or deny that this stupid exercise in revamping the droid engineering profession was intended or a bug. The developers suggestion that we be nice and they would be more forth coming with information has been a joke as well. I haven't seen a single dev post since we played the nice DE game in a prior thread weeks ago.
Making our basic probot even harder to make, yet a c-rappier version is not "love" IMHO. The old probot was c-rap, the new experimentedcombat droidsare shaping up to be even bigger c-rap. All they need to do is tell us if the system is bugged and things are being fixed.
Icarus-6 wrote:
Helstrum wrote:
...As a profession, we have been broken from day one...
That's a really common rallying cry. However, at launch we were actually a bit overpowered in an indirect way. That's why probots got nerfed. I suppose it could be argued we were broken by being overpowered but you'll get less sympathy with that I think.
That said, we've been at least somewhat busted for a while, I agree.
Icarus-6 wrote:
I will respectfully disagree with your assessment of the strength of the probot. While it certainly isn't going to be used to solo Rancors it still can soak up some punishment, sparing characters from taking that damage. Its biggest limitation has been the lack of stimpacks for it and that is being fixed as well. Yeah, it's not a great droid but it's also not worthless. That said, I will repeat that having it made more difficult to produce the same droid is really frustrating. Sure, make it more difficult to keep the numbers a bit lower and the costs higher, but also bring up their power, at least a little bit.
I would respectfully disagree with your assessment of the combat usefullness of a Probot. With all due respect, how much time have you spent in combat? I spend a good portion of my time in combat, and have used my Adv. Probot - I've found it useful for nothing with the exception of maybe a decoy as I try to bug out from a high-level MOB in a really sticky situation. Now that's an expensive, complex decoy, and honestly there's better ways to retreat than that.
As I've said in other posts, the way I see it is that a CL10 Combat droid will be useful to an incredibly small percentage of players. The players to whom it would truly provide a benefit are brand new newbies trying to get some combat experience, however they can't afford it. The players who do have the cash to spend on such a frivolous, novelty item find it's capability laughable. As a crafter I know the feeling of wanting to think or products and offerings are useful and people like what we sell - but as a mid-level caribeener, I can tell you the combatants find them to be a complete joke - it's a mockery of the DE profession.
Any ability to "soak up some punishment" is negligible, and the money would be much better spent on buffs or armor than a Probot. The "punishment" it deals out is also equally laughable- the average player is carrying at least one or more weapons delivering between 200-500dmg normally, with specials 1000+. 80dmg from my Probot hardly even factors into the fight. I'd be better off buying some weapon powerups.
Helstrum wrote:
It was nerfed because it was broken. Overpowered is still broken, as you said. Also, somewhat busted...is that like sort of dead?
As to the usefulness of a probot, here is the problem with it. At level 10, it would be very useful to a low level player. However, due to the cost of making them, low level players cannot afford to spend that much cash on a droid. Once you reach a point combat wise where cash is easy enough to make to afford a probot, the droids usefulness is severly diminished. For the cost, our current combat droids are not worth the credits to players. That's not just my opinion, that's sales talking.
Yes, it was broken but the implication of the complaint is not that we were overpowered (or if that is the implication it is not clear). When people complain that they are 'Broken' that typically is used to refer to being underpowered. Usually if someone is actually worried that they are overpowered they will use that term. As an example you might have found some Creature Handlers back in the day when they could call out 3 rancors who would admit to being overpowered, but they most likely would not use the term 'broken'. I do deal with the issue of literal verses connotation since I admit that being overpowered is a form of being broken, simply not in the way people are meaning it.
As for Probots not being able to be purchased by the people who could actually use them, a newbie could earn enough to buy a probot in probably a little over 2 hours of delivery missions (or at least they use to be able to) so I would have to argue that you're wrong on that point.
Mathe wrote:
I would respectfully disagree with your assessment of the combat usefullness of a Probot. With all due respect, how much time have you spent in combat? I spend a good portion of my time in combat, and have used my Adv. Probot - I've found it useful for nothing with the exception of maybe a decoy as I try to bug out from a high-level MOB in a really sticky situation.
...
Mathe Sharn (Bloodfin)
Master Creature Handler
2/2/2/2 Carbineer
3/2/2/4 DE
Well, I pretty much soloed all of the Jabba missions (I did end up asking for help on killing the Bounty Hunter, but that was because I didn't think to use any buffs at the time), so I'd have to say I have at least enough experience in combat to know what I'm talking about. I am not an uber combat type by any stretch of the imagination, but then I also will quite happily admit that a probot is not too useful when battling krayt dragons and rancors.
One Advanced Probot can take on 3 scyk simultaneously and win. I've done it many times when I've been evaluating the Probot abilities. Granted it comes out pretty punished but it does come out the victor. This is purely by doing its own admittedly anemic damage and is without any assistance from me. When I assist in doing damage I was able to solo the Meat Beast in the Jabba missions completely unbuffed. I simply would allow the probot to attract the Meat Beast's attention then I would hit it. When it would start in on me I would back away and peace until it returned attention to the probot.
You have Master Creature Handler in your title. I think that may be skewing you a bit.