Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: The Only Viable Alternate Future
Sorry Drashk. I know I said I'd support your decision, but only to a point of not giving up. There is one last option to be considered here. If the cert fight has indeed fallen then this is the last stand we have. All other hopes are out the window, and the line drawn here then.
There is no more time for discussion and personal preference. I am sorry. Either we put forward a clearcut proposal or we accept DH. Fighting for a thousand and one different solutions that won't work or will make others powerful with no additional penalty system for them won't work.
I for one am indifferent about DH, but I will not let a decision go by that over 90% of the community is against. So here it is, the alternate proposal.
The Alternate:
We have come to the stark realization that the cert system will not function. It will provide the player mass as a whole with more power than they would otherwise have access to, and a further rebalancing would be in order. That is an undertaking that would not be worth the effort as it would be too costly in both money and man-hours.
As such, Here is the Alternate proposal. Droid Engineers are to be the sole receipients of combat droids. This is to be implimented in the same fashion as Creature Handler pets are, with a point system based on how many trees a person has mastered across the profession. Furthermore, the droids are to only go up as high as the level 20-25 range, and no more than two out at any one time, so as to be less powerful than CHs.
Also, to limit the combat "Uber-combos" Droid engineer will gain the requirement of Master Artisan. This change, while drastic on paper, is fairly flimsy in practice. over 85% of the profession is master artisan anyway, so all that would be required would be a couple week 'grace period' before the main patch where all droid engineers would be required to either achieve master artisan or lose the ability to use their DE skills till they achieve this rank.
The reason for this is threefold. First, it requires Droid engineers to spend far more skill points than they would previously in order to gain the ability to use combat skills. Second, it gives no further combat ability. Lastly, it indeed limits the uber-combo ability as less points are there to dedicate into other professions.
A further limiting factor is the sheer complexity in which it takes to build droids to begin with. We require far more parts, materials, and cross-class dependancies than any other profession. Furthermore, this can even be increased with more armoursmith and weaponsmith parts required for the new combat droids.
The hologrinders have had no real effect on the DE profession, nor will they here. why? Because Droids are the most complex and customizable thing in the game. They take a myriad of subcomponents, which in turn require extremely rare materials to build. You'll also be adding on to this the fact that we'll get cross-dependency parts from WS and AS's. Grinders don't have the time for that and pass on before upsetting anything. Combat players won't dabble because they can't without getting MA, which would otherwise be suicide for their hardcore gaming. L33t D00dz are detracted from this profession because it takes a large amount of intelligence and patience to play. We have found a niche, and there is no reason it won't continue providing the droid engineer class continues as it has done.
Finally, this proposal will give us what is the underlying factor about droids both in SWG and in Star Wars: Droids are swiss army knives. They can do almost anything well, but they are not the best at any one field. We can build crafting stations, but they are not as good as architect ones. We can build medical units, but they are not as great as having a central med centre to go to. We can build inventory, but it's not as good as a backpack. We have product that we can sell to many more people than other focused crafting classes, but it's not as good or as expensive as the more specialized ones. Now finally, we can build combat droids, but they are not as good as professions focused solely on combat abilities. This would make our profession truly unique and what the DE populous is searching for.
Keeping the CL level low like that WILL keep out the l337 dewdz who are just looking for a good combo, since then CH will always have the best pets.
We will get an influx yes, but only those who already liked droids and were inclined to DE
I support this the whole way.
TheWoody wrote:
As such, Here is the Alternate proposal. Droid Engineers are to be the sole receipients of combat droids. This is to be implimented in the same fashion as Creature Handler pets are, with a point system based on how many trees a person has mastered across the profession. Furthermore, the droids are to only go up as high as the level 20-25 range, and no more than two out at any one time, so as to be less powerful than CHs.
Also, to limit the combat "Uber-combos" Droid engineer will gain the requirement of Master Artisan. This change, while drastic on paper, is fairly flimsy in practice. over 85% of the profession is master artisan anyway, so all that would be required would be a couple week 'grace period' before the main patch where all droid engineers would be required to either achieve master artisan or lose the ability to use their DE skills till they achieve this rank.
I don't completely agree with you about the cert system. I think, though, that part of the problem here is that DE's have been dealing with probots for so long that they figured that the highest droids that they would ever see would be CL15 or so.
However, with the limiting factors to keep DE from becoming the new Uber 1337 flavor of the month, there might be some merit in this idea 
Lol.. I just made a similar proposal on the help me understand thread...
I agree with everything you've posted here, except on the droid level cap.. I think it should be higher, like35 or so. With the Master Artisan req thrown in, DE would now use more skillpoints than CH, yet a MCH (who also have the ability to"create" (tame) their own pets) can have some much higher and powerfull pets.
This way also keeps the crafters happy (I consider myself a crafter.. I just want to make good combat droids as well), as we can still make all the utility droids for everyone to use, and hopefully get some of these ideas for new modules implemented as well.
This is a plan I like.. It's got my vote =).
I would support making master artisan a requirement for DE. It would make DE the skill pointequivalent of one of the other professions that have other master requirements like ranger, doctor, and all the others, and our added ability of those mid level combat droids would be a fair trade off for the extra skill points required.
And there'd be no more griping about our major dependency on MA....
I do like this proposal and would like to add two suggestions for us to chew on.
1) Make any droid higher than CL10 have permadeath
2) DEs can only use CL10+ droids that they themselves crafted (with the resources being rare)
That combined with Master Artisan being a requirement and the fact that Master CH pets are tougher will definatly cut down on dabblers.
-norax
This is the absolute worst thing I think you could do to the profession. You've taken into account how to balance the combat portion, but you've forgotten we're still a crafting profession. What will you take out, diminish, or in some other way remove from the profession to account for it becoming a hybrid profession? Remove the ability for everyone to have droids maybe? Take out the item storage and probot, anything that is general use? or maybe leave in the general use stuff and take out the crafting stations and medical modules. What about all the great ideas we've had for new modules and abilities, are those to be killed before they even get off the ground? There is always a give and take with balance, not just balance in the game as a whole but balance inside the profession as well. About the only way I could see this working without losing an important aspect of the profession is to require more skills (I'd say at least ranged support 4 since your adding combat capabilities).
Finally, what happens to those of us who could care less about combat? Are we getting screwed out of a profession because we don't want to waste extra skill points for something we don't want? will we lose all our DE skills if we don't already have master artisan? There's a lot of holes in this idea, and even without them I don't like the direction its heading in.
This sounds very familiar to me. You don't have to shoot anything if you don't like or even program the attack command. Under this proposal, you still get to sell droids to others.
Jenden wrote:
Finally, what happens to those of us who could care less about combat? Are we getting screwed out of a profession because we don't want to waste extra skill points for something we don't want? will we lose all our DE skills if we don't already have master artisan? There's a lot of holes in this idea, and even without them I don't like the direction its heading in.
Err.. Permadeath + Rare resources = someone with nothing to do while they wait for resources to appear on their server.. That's a bad idea.
The proposal as outlined by TheWoody is well below the power of a CH already... there isn't any need for permadeath.Permadeath is astupid gameplay mechanic to FORCE on people in a game based on collection and advancement while paying a monthly fee. An analogy for those who like it, use yourmonthly fee on buying a few playstation 2's every couple of months and leaving them around bus stops ifyou wanted to experience the immense joy of permadeath (of PS2's.. )
Permadeath of combat droids would severly limit the PVP participation of those droids (just like faction pets now).. as you are guarenteed to lose every pet you pull out during pvp...