Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: State of the profession October 29th, 2003
TH wrote:
Iunderstand your feelings and concerns, but in reality, some of these changes are big. Some of them a re small. There are 33 other professions and I have to organize everything and get a handle on how it effects all the players.
TH - this is my very first post on the forums (will it ever be read I wonder?)...telling us some are big and some small is saying nothing at all...we KNOW and have time and again stated that certain changes/fixes/recommendations/crackpot ideas would require enourmous amounts of work. But it's the LITTLE things that count! Showing us that we're heard is one thing, and I believe we're on the right track with that between you and Sin...but ACTING, even if in incremental amounts, would go a VERY long way in appeasing the DE masses (small and loud though we be). Is fixing droid color customization REALLY a HUGE problem/fix? What about the cluster socket exploit (it IS an exploit)? Or the power droid issue? Yes, these would take SOME programming, but it's not like tweaks to the system aren't done quite often, sometimes daily. How nice it would be to see, after loading up the splash and while downloading the most recent patch, "Fixed problem with LE Repair Droids. LE Repair Droids will now repair other droids and will not require the input of a droid repair module." Just that ONE thing would get you /woot's and /cheer's aplenty!
Are we going to do the exact same thing next month? No.
What ARE you going to do then? How many times are we going to be asked for our input? Are target dates being set for various things?
But we will need to update it and change things - - this is a fluid process.
Isn't this what we've been saying all along? Are you going to TELL us something is one of your posts?
This is an MMO and not a static game. All variables are always changing and the first thing we need to do is understand where we are.
After four months of testing, do we NOT know where we are? Has the bug list changed at all, except to be added to over the months? Do we not have a correspondent who with ardoit ability just summed up our collective feelings for you (again)? What exactly is there to understand? Broken things need fixing.
This is where we are and where we are going.
Again, I'm sorry, but what?!? Where are we? Where ARE we going? WE, the players, have with heavy hearts, firey tempers, political correctness and doe-eyed tears given you instance after instance of tangible ways, again some small and some large, to help and re-gain our trust and hope. Tell us where YOU'RE going, you, being SOE and the powers that be.
As time goes by Ill report on changes and updates bi-weekly and put all key changes in my weekly update.
Bi-weekly change and update reports and weekly updates...eh? sorry? what does this mean exactly? where will it be?
Thunderheart - you have the worst job in the world - trying to make everyone happy. We ALL know this. We don't need the entire profession fixed in one fell swoop and would never expect such a miracle. Just throw us a bone! Alms for the disenchanted! MAKE US FEEL LIKE WE'RE HEARD. We don't want wordplay, obscure 'plans', and an occasional red entry to make us feel like we're all one happy family. We're crafters - we need to SEE andTOUCH to believe. Faith in you and the devs is wavering, and we BEG of you to hear us, make changes, and give concrete details as to larger issues.
Let's face it....this is just a GAME...we all know that...but we PAY SOE to play it! Shouldn't we get something for that? If YOU offer me a medium of entertainment, and I chose to be a Droid Engineer out of your grand scheme, YOU now have a DUTY to ME to afford me the best opportunity to be entertained. WE have our responsibilties too - and having read through these posts for months now - I believe we've held up our end of the bargain. I've never played DAoC, or EQ, or any other MMORG - SWG is my first. If it weren't for the friendships i've fostered on the Radiant server, I'd have left long ago. But I don't WANT to go - I WANT to enjoy the profession. Please...hear us and help us.
/GetOffSoapbox
--Salen Salin, Master Droid Engineer, Radiant Server, member of The Brethren
So now I am excited...I am one of "the Holocron made me do it" people.
I was well on the way to Master Commando, and gave it up to do the droid thing, so I hope that it is worth the effort. Many long hows are spent grinding away. And now trying to figure out the resources thing too.
All in all, this is a great experience in game play. I don't envy the Devs, but wonder why the changes and bugs are there.
See you in the game!
Datcat
Master CH
novice droid engineer
Takes them 2 days to nerf us and 2 years to fix us.
Give us the 3k ham back on probots! It took 2 days or less to take from us, Should be even less to give back.
THE REAL STATE OF THE PROFESSION
We all need to read between the lines:
If you go back to Beta 3 (I was a Beta 3 tester) and consider everything that has happened since then at a very high level, you will realize that the core developers have long since come to a design stalemate.
I'm not entirely sure what the stalemate is, but I would venture to say that it has something to do with vehicles and indirectly with the space expansion. They're in a Catch-22 with some aspect of the design and they don't have the ethical fortitude to be honest about it.
I'm a software developer and the one thing I really know about software projects is that when things start to get out of control the first thing you do is focus on fixing the parts of the code base that you're not going to have to go back and completely redesign for your next major revision. The rest of the code -- in our case the DE stuff -- you adopt the mantra "if it aint broke, don't fix it." While from our perspective things are broken, to the developers the DE system functions too well to go back and make changes that will introduce new bugs in a design that's going to be radically changed in the relative near future.
The product of their stalling tactics has resulted in 1% of the elite profession user base being Droid Engineer. They have skillfully shifted most of the DE’s to other professions or interests and will continue to obfuscate these issues to prevent significant customer base problems in the short term.
That, my friends, is the “State of the Profession”.
DarthMortus wrote:
I'm a software developer and the one thing I really know about software projects is that when things start to get out of control the first thing you do is focus on fixing the parts of the code base that you're not going to have to go back and completely redesign for your next major revision. The rest of the code -- in our case the DE stuff -- you adopt the mantra "if it aint broke, don't fix it." While from our perspective things are broken, to the developers the DE system functions too well to go back and make changes that will introduce new bugs in a design that's going to be radically changed in the relative near future.
The product of their stalling tactics has resulted in 1% of the elite profession user base being Droid Engineer. They have skillfully shifted most of the DE’s to other professions or interests and will continue to obfuscate these issues to prevent significant customer base problems in the short term.
That, my friends, is the “State of the Profession”.
BANG ON!
Excellent post DarthMortus, you hit the nail on the head.
I have cancelled my account. I may come on and finish my last final remaining box for Master DEone boring and rainy day before the clock runs out on my account. Not because it's fun, but at least I'll have finished what I started.
SOE - Call me when you have a game worth paying for (and throw in a few free months) and I'll think about coming back.
Sintrosi - Luv ya babe! Thanks for the hard work and fighting the good fight - keep that chin up.
- Emoud 'Oh
No fixed address and penniless, disheartened and angry. And oh yes, he was a DE.
Yeah, it's real easy to explore the game when you can't even afford the shuttle fare to travel around the galaxy. If I'm lucky, my guild leader sometimes feels sorry for me and gives me handouts for shuttle fare so I can tag along. And then when I join a raid or a mission, everyone else has these really cool creatures which open can after can of whoop-ass on the enemy. Then there's me, with my little useless probot droid that occasionally fires a weak blast and then falls to pieces after a few minutes of fighting.
We're paying customers, and we're getting totally screwed. Surely Lucasarts has the budget to hire one developer per profession, rather than doubling them up and/or giving them extra projects. To do anything cool in this game, our characters need to make money. As it stands, we cannot make money in the game right now. Therefore, the game time that we are paying for with real-world money is being spent running around completing little missions just to get by, while other professions can do half the work, stock their vendors, go out and have fun.
I think what is really frustrating many of us is that we're being told over and over to chill out and that our profession will soon be fixed. Most recently, way back on October 23rd, the following was posted on the SWG site:
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/content.jsp?page=Chat%20Log
Droid Engineer Plan to be released tomorrow
...
(Thunderheart_) Tomorrow, I will post the first first stage of our Droid Engineer plan
Did I miss this? Was it posted on October 24th as promised? Was the plan just about the auto-store option for broken droids?
I do appreciate that Thunderheart has a huge task ahead of him, and I'm confident that some positive changes will take place for us in the future. But we're all in the dark! We just need some sort of good news to keep us going. The fact that so many people are expressing this kind of discontent should indicate to Lucasarts that something is wrong. Blame should not be placed on us for being impatient. There is clearly a problem, it should be acknowledged and fixed, and we deserve an apology.
Lexx Muskoka
Coronet, Corellia, Sunrunner
First off...you nailed it. Good form!!
/bow
DarthMortus wrote:
THE REAL STATE OF THE PROFESSION
They're in a Catch-22 with some aspect of the design and they don't have the ethical fortitude to be honest about it.
With regard to "they"...
"That same purpose clanger, that sly devil, that broker that still breaks the pate of faith, that daily break vow..." - Shakespeare, "King John".
If they have any ethical fortitude, they better start to come clean and stop the "pate of faith" that I see waning on the DE forums (and in the game) on a near-daily basis.
They have skillfully shifted most of the DE’s to other professions or interests and will continue to obfuscate these issues to prevent significant customer base problems in the short term.
Yes...you're right. It's all about the money, it always has been, I suspect. To further describe their skill at game adjustment geared toward leading us poor, paying heathens, I submit another of the Master Bard's quotes, this time from "King Lear":
"False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey"
Respectfully,
Im one of the new players in the UK and the only real reason i want to play the game was to make droids.
Having spent a week trying to earn the points to become a novice DE I thought i'd actually get around to looking at the forums.
To say im disapointed in reading that the DE has been virtually ignored is an (typical british) understatement.
I will persist in becoming a DE on farstar for several reasons. 1. DROIDS ARE STAR WARS !!!! 2. NUMBERS WILL OUT.
I bet the development team has been working overtime on the Jedi classes and how many of them are there compared to DE's?
I was saddened that in all the bug fixes this week only one refered to DE's.
There is absolutely no way that SWG should have been released with the DE being so buggy. I for one dont remember any pets in Star Wars (except for Jabba's Rancorn and God forbid the trainers get them)
What will the Jawas do without us ???
I wish us all luck guys
Happy Building (maybe in the future)
Well said Nikev
Im also from the UK and wanted to be a DE and am so angry that the Profession is not working properly, i mean what r we meant to do, all you guys from the states have been playing for months pouring your heart n souls into being a DE and you cant even create anything half good what is the point in this Profession, I thought that this would be an important part to the game, and if you have watched the films SOE there are more droids than Pets. And all Important Characters in the film's were good with droids (Luke n Anakin).
Good Post Sintosi
But still confused what to do now!!!! how often do SOE Read these boards and do something about the bugs???
Fingers crossed will be up and running properlysoon.
Also good comments from the Software Engineer (Sorry Forgot Your Name)
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
In the age of technology, devs thought that they had to put all their effort on fixing/improving ANIMAL pets instead of TECHNOLOGICAL pets (droids).
When I bought this game, I never could imagine I was gonna play **edit** ONLINE 