Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: we seems to have our answer......
It was a long and hard decision and the team was divided.
No Droid Commander at this time. We are going to focus on utility modules and Droid Engineer Issues.
Combat Droids will be added at some later date.
At least they made the right choice by not pursuing Droid Commander. I thank 'em for that much. DE issues definitely need to be addressed first, I think we can all agree on that. Combat droids "at some later date" probably means "not in the first quarter of 2004."
I really don't care about combat droids at this point. I just want something that's useful and NEEDED by the rest of the community. Right now my biggest sales are coming from Droid Batteries, Vehicles (bigtime), and Bounty Hunter droids. With all their attention being focused on skill buffs lately, I HOPE that they will give DEs some of that love as well, but I remain skeptical about it because of what TH said about "unbalancing" with droid skill mods.
"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 11/25/03
Hillslayer wrote:
Just me or did TH sound disappointed in his post?
Exasperated, I'm guessing. Remember, he hears conflicting points from the community and then additional points from the developers' side of things. He probably feels like he's been on the rack, being pulled in various directions.
He knows the issue isn't put to bed... It's just been postponed a bit longer. I doubt he's looking forward to the next round of debate on the issue.
Despite all of these factors, I applaud TH and the Dev team for delaying this highly-controversial decision. Once a profession gets added, it would be impossible for them to remove it (imagine the outcries from those whoLIKE it if they get it and then lose it). So it is ultimately a wise choice to focus on the less controversial aspects of DEs and take a long hard look at the solution to the combat issues.
We should be glad they listened to us! It may mean that we don't get the additions we'd hoped for as soon, but I'd rather have them do it RIGHT than do it FAST.
Thank you, TH, for hearing us and letting the dev team know that we didn't like the direction things were headed. I wish I could promise that we won't be as hard on you the next time this issue surfaces, but I'm afraid it will be just as hard the next time.
Aye, he did seem dissappointed. What's more, it looks like that is the effective end of the droid invasion right there. No new droid models, just bug fixes and a few low down things. Andunless they add someamazing utility module that no one can live without (haven't come up with one yet that'd qualify) it means the DE profession will probably be relegated till after space expansion. It's a weird meloncholy, where by winning we effectively got nothing. Strange, that.
Not that I regret the decision to defend the opinion of the DEs, I should say. This has become far too much of a travesty to let them continue, and I feel it would have only gotten worse if they had done so.Just makes one sick to the stomach to see middle-management and business politics get in the way of making a game fun.
TheWoody wrote:
Aye, he did seem dissappointed. What's more, it looks like that is the effective end of the droid invasion right there. No new droid models, just bug fixes and a few low down things. Andunless they add someamazing utility module that no one can live without (haven't come up with one yet that'd qualify) it means the DE profession will probably be relegated till after space expansion. It's a weird meloncholy, where by winning we effectively got nothing. Strange, that.
Not that I regret the decision to defend the opinion of the DEs, I should say. This has become far too much of a travesty to let them continue, and I feel it would have only gotten worse if they had done so.Just makes one sick to the stomach to see middle-management and business politics get in the way of making a game fun.
Now I'm just left with this desire of hatred towards this game. First step will be taking the disks, burning them, then sprinkling the charred debris over various voodoo dolls fashioned in the shape of ThunderHeart. Then after that trying to come up with various methods of inflicting pointless violence towards those voodoo dolls to relieve my stress.
It's absolutely horrible that I actually pay these people to do this. Not for much longer, anyway.
Exactly. All the "modules" do is make something we can do already be done conveniently with a droid. It's just a convenience, and for a convenience we lose an entire new angle of interest for the game. Combat Droids. Better yet they had it all done too, instead since theres like 0 time for utility module development we'll just be getting.......nothing really. Combat Droids were done. ..I can't believe this nonsense.
Hillslayer wrote:
Just me or did TH sound disappointed in his post?
No you are correct. I think he is disappointed. Why? Because he was the one who decided to ask the devs for CL70 droids and came up with the droid handler idea (despite the fact that it wasn't what the community wanted).
He just told the devs to spend a couple of months developing something that, if hehad asked and listened , should have been shot down months ago. The devs just wasted a bunch of time on nothing because of misinformation.
I would be dissapointed if I just got put in my place as well... I just hope he learns his lesson...he is only on the team to be our voice, he is not himself a game-content directing developer.
Nikolai_Xavierov wrote:
TheWoody wrote:
Aye, he did seem dissappointed. What's more, it looks like that is the effective end of the droid invasion right there. No new droid models, just bug fixes and a few low down things. Andunless they add someamazing utility module that no one can live without (haven't come up with one yet that'd qualify) it means the DE profession will probably be relegated till after space expansion. It's a weird meloncholy, where by winning we effectively got nothing. Strange, that.
Not that I regret the decision to defend the opinion of the DEs, I should say. This has become far too much of a travesty to let them continue, and I feel it would have only gotten worse if they had done so.Just makes one sick to the stomach to see middle-management and business politics get in the way of making a game fun.
Now I'm just left with this desire of hatred towards this game. First step will be taking the disks, burning them, then sprinkling the charred debris over various voodoo dolls fashioned in the shape of ThunderHeart. Then after that trying to come up with various methods of inflicting pointless violence towards those voodoo dolls to relieve my stress.
It's absolutely horrible that I actually pay these people to do this. Not for much longer, anyway.
Exactly. All the "modules" do is make something we can do already be done conveniently with a droid. It's just a convenience, and for a convenience we lose an entire new angle of interest for the game. Combat Droids. Better yet they had it all done too, instead since theres like 0 time for utility module development we'll just be getting.......nothing really. Combat Droids were done. ..I can't believe this nonsense.
Whoa, woah, woah..........woah!
Don't you DARE blame us! We stated the general (perfectly correct) principle: The way devs were going to implement combat droids was sick, wrong, and VERY unstarwarsy.
Is it OUR fault that the devs couldn't figure out ANY other way to implement combat droids (even though players proposed hundreds of alternative solutions and compromises)? Heck NO!!!
This is purely a dev bumble. If DH is the only way we are getting combat droids, screw them. There are hundreds of perfectly logical ways to balance combat droids for existing classes, and if devs can't agree on one, it THEIR fault, NOT ours.
Saying "changes abound" and slapping a smiley on the end of the sentence is not an answer.
Nikolai_Xavierov wrote:
Exactly. All the "modules" do is make something we can do already be done conveniently with a droid. It's just a convenience, and for a convenience we lose an entire new angle of interest for the game. Combat Droids. Better yet they had it all done too, instead since theres like 0 time for utility module development we'll just be getting.......nothing really. Combat Droids were done. ..I can't believe this nonsense.
You think combat droids were done? Maybe some basic design and artwork, but that's it. This game is not like a normal piece of software, they finish coding the day before it hits TC. All that changed is what they are working on THIS month.