Droid Engineer Archive

Instead of fixing a class that is already broken they deliver TWO debilitating nerfs in the matter of a couple weeks. Now not only are people not going to want to buy half the worthless bots we already have but they're going to expect to only pay a couple thousand for the "Pinacle" of our proffession. These people are unbelievably incompetent... Not only do they release a game that was only half done, but they also think that the answer to their OWN MISTAKES are sweeping changes to the game (and not for the better). You should be ashamed of putting your name to these policys HOLO.

People, people....you know that no one Dev could possibly keep reading if every other post is a wild rant. If you're going to respond, yes, be honest, but be clear about why. Throw out an arguement, not a tantrum, so that Holo can keep reading and won't have to think "They're just angry because they're being nerfed." Explain how crippling this is. Explain that a nerf like this, while necessary, must come WITH the enhancements, so that we aren't totally broken. Right now, we're mostly broken, with only one good droid that the market desires. Now, we'll have none. How many Droid Engineers can wait until the profession is fixed? How many can grind and advance knowing how worthless their products are?

I understand the need to lower down the Probot UNTIL the certs are in, then raise it back up again. But in the meantime, do realize that we *will* be worthless, our allready weak market will be nonexistant, and we'll simply be waiting around to be fixed.

I have essentially shut down my shop on Tatooine - Lowca galaxy. There is a readme note in the vendor. I will continue my business after these changes take effect.

I will not sell Probots until these changes are in effect and may not after either depending on how severe they are. I feel for everyone who paid dearly for a Probot.

When I took my one friend and my Probot to Lok (an "advanced planet") and cleaned house last weekend, I understood that the Probot needed to be nerfed. It should have taken ten people to do what we accomplished there with two of us and one bot. So even as a DE, I understand and accept the immediate need to do what's been done. The big picture balance implications for leaving things as-is are horrible.

What's happened is frustrating. I don't think it's all bad though. Perma-death and decay are things we needed to make our economy function in the long-haul. Perma-death doesn't work well with a 3200 hit point bot. Where I sold 1 Probot for 20K before, now I can sell 3 Probot deeds (sure, for less), and when the owner gets them blown up, I can sell them more. I may not make as much per transaction, but I will make more over the months and years.

I see some possible additional short-term solutions you may be able to provide to help Droid Engineers weather this, while you work the class out in the back room (mind locking the programmers in the back room with bread, water and complilers again?):

• Allow skill boxes to be re-allocated. Whatever becomes of this in the long run will be a serious change in the class. For characters significantly below master (192,000 DCXP invested or lower? Just an idea...), remove all the character's DE skills (retaining Novice) and refund the invested DCXP. Temporarily set DE NPC training costs to 0 credits. This would allow a re-allocation of a DE's invested effort to suit the changes that will occur in the market as a result of the Probot nerf.


• Allow an all-out retreat. For those who are totally unsatisfied with the DE profession and simply cannot weather the storm any longer, allow them to surrender their Novice DE (and of course any boxes above) for 28,800 GCXP, one time only. This could help change the minds of those wanting to jump ship of the game entirely.


• Keep us in the loop about your proposed plans for our professional skill tree. Give us a little foreknowledge of things such as what bots you plan to add what abilities to, how the certs will work... preferably before they're rolled to production. This will help us plan our advancement.


• Work overtime on getting the new functionality and fixes into our droids and class. I know, there are server issues, there are 32 other professional classes, and it all needs work still. But please help us. All of us here (even those who are so vehement) want to be part of a successful DE class.

Thanks for taking the first step (aren't the first steps the most painful) toward fixing the class, and good luck moving forward.

Mendel

Holo said:

1.Nerf the probot. We'll work on developing a more robust combat droid system (most likely centering around certifications for combat droid use), but in the interim, the probot needs to come way way down so that it isn't abused.

enhancing systems is a great idea, but some of the posts i've read are right, this may not be the best thing. Here's an idea, don't make them so that only DE's can use the combat pets, maybe instead DE's can "write" manuals, that essentially teach the character how to program and command droids, so in order to use a probot, the DE sells the player the droid, and also the manual. The manual has a "read" function, when read it gives the certification for that droid, and only that droid but in exchange he loses skill points, and the stronger the droid the more skill points, so that if someone really wants to use it, make sure it counts.

Perma death and depletion will help, yes. The bot has to be worth something though! Who is going to buy a droid that has the fighting capabilities of a lesser womp rat?

The probe droid would be fine if

A) It perma-died.

b) Damage needed to be repaired by a DE.

That way, more business for DEs and no exploits in combat.

I am in favor of reducing the power of the probots. I can make them pretty powerful, now, and many players have commented that they were able to solo incredible monsters using them. Considering that a DE needs only three levels (albeit it, hellish) to produce them, I don't mind getting them reduced.

On the other hand, that pretty much means that DEs are completely useless. Yeah yeah, the crafting stations are nice but why would someone want a R3 with a crafting station when they can get a mouse unit that does the same thing for, oh, about 72k less (or 12k, if you are pricing correctly).

Now, let's add to the this the fact that Droid Engineers are, to my knowledge, the ONLY profession that does not get experience when someone uses our items .. yeah, that make sense.

So, let's all continue to grind away. In about four months everyone will have a craftion station droid anyways so it's not like people will buy our goods.

I know I have done quite well as a droid engineer but, in retrospect, I would be completely poor if I did not have the probots to make. We're useless, in general.

I like the starwars universe it is consistant within its self. That is why I have always liked it. It is a grungy wornout used up world in one seen a spottlessly clean space station in another seen. For this online game to immerse people in the starwars universe it must first reflect the starwars universe. Stay on track.

GRRR,

You take away our best droid and give us a paper tank, What is the point of beng a MASTER DROID ENGINEER that can make DEADLY DROIDS if you go and do what you are doing. You have ruined my goals for my droid engineer, You make no **edit** sense making these changes, You want to lower something why is it the armor? That is crap. I already sent countless hours becomming one of the top Droid Engineers on Syclla server. To get on and get 50 tells telling me about this nerf.

We have no working droids as it is with functions. 90% of them are buged. So you go and nerf them before fixing the major issues? What about Swoop Leaders that can fire while swimming? What about mobs shooting through Buildings but we get Can't see target error. What about sharing Houses with friends and Admin being buged? What about my Darn Vednor that I Traded to a player to drop in there house and he can not delete it and Support still has not responsed to my CS letter and made no attemtp to fix it. So I have a wasted skill and can not use the DARN Vendor while it is stuck on my friends Character and he can not upload to my vendor or drop or destroy becasuse of these MAJOR Bugs! What about the Darn HArvester Disconnects when ever you click on them. What about droids that stop following you for no reason? Or Droids that you click on that are your pet and it only says Examine and you have to reprogram it to continue?Come on I Can go on and on.

Instead you want to make sure we suffer more by giving us the most stupid Nerf I ever seen. You realize what it takes in material costs to make these. You have just made it as valuable as a MSE mouse droid. Where I will either dump all my points now and go a different route or Just say SCREW SOE And neve r buya **edit** product again from you all and get my 30day REfund and cancel my subspction. I am so tired of you peeple with your lame headed ideas and not fixing stuff first before you really look at the problems at hand. I mean come on you give resource changes every other day and PEople have lives and work, They can not run a harvester and come back to it not knowing when a darn resource change is. That is just pretty stupid. Work on them issues, allowing people who can not play all the time a chance to gather some resources and have some fun. Instead of loging in for there couple hours a night chasing down new viens because of there limited play time.

I personally hope that the MEDIA Eats you alive in this section. Your beta testers sucked and your coders were slacking to release this many bugs, I Am a professional Game Designer by trade. I do not see how you could of misses so darn much with the budget you all had for making this come to life. I spent 3 years in bugs with EQ. I refuseto do super nerf NUMBER 2 again.

Either way- You all better find a better fix then this. This nerf is totaly uncalled for.

Well, after playing a few hours tonight, I had to turn down about 3 probot sales. They were unaware of the impending doom of the probot, and I cant take advantage of that. I simply had to tell them that due to the nerf comming, my probot sales are on hold for the time being.

As I said in my previous post, the change doesnt even have to go live. The market for probots is already ruined simply because of the announcement of the changes.At this point, the ONLY way to restore the marketvalue of the probots is for Holocron to publicly announce that they changed their minds andthe probot changes will never happen. Until he does that, and I bethe wont,we are screwed.

Oh, I have lots of suggestions on how to improve the droid engineer profession. But I feel there is no point to talking about it now, as the devs are not in profession-improvement mode, andI do not expect them to be until maybe next month.

With the vendor problems I'm having in my house and the hours worth of droids stuck in that system right now, is there a point to playing this game right now? I'm seriously frustrated... I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I hit a brick wall on something 2-3 times and I can't go there no more... I tried multipart quests but they bugged out and could never finish em, so I don't do those no more... Now I'm making droids and puttin em in my vendor just to have em disappear more or less and I can't get em out... I've been busting my keaster to get blueprints to make Probot but they're gonna be worthlessbefore I ever make it there... are we gonna have anything to make worth over $10K?

I can guarantee one thing my friendly DEVs... get enough people feeling like their wasting their time while they're wasting their time playing a game they should be having NOT these problems playing and not even the STARWARS name will save it. Now get on the ball and save this game before it's completely lost, you all should be ashamed for releasing this... I've played only 2 other MMORPGs from release and both Planetside and DAOC had less bugs than this... Just admit it, SOE prematurely ejaculated this game on us.

Again, it wouldn't be so bad but us droid engineers get ZERO experience when someone uses our droids. This means, in general, that the only way to level is to grind out advanced frames. Sure, you COULD make, uhm, 1000 advanced probot droids to get to master but that's a bit too much, especially considering that there were master architects three weeks ago.

I am not a grinder, though, and neither are most casual players. So, this really hurts up and coming droid engineers because there will be no market for their goods. Again, why bother getting an R3 when you can get a mouse bot to do the same thing?

hi all, i postes my following seent about pets in general and well specific more for sure on CH pets, but i think i got some points which are prolly interesting also for droid users.

i posted that on all the pet nerf threads from holo so to be sure he can read it and hopefully respond

quote:

ok holocron,

i saw all that and its hard to read all what is posted already but i worked me through all.

first of all i was beta tester and i must admid thats its very funny to see now such major changes, i mean you set up a nice game and we beta testers posted alot issues, which got ignored first. you bring the game life and we have to live with every day patches and alot bugs still.

but anyways its obviously sure CH needed adjustments and i can agree or at least tolerate most of your changes and i am sure many will be good for the game, but i have to say soem things to you please and hope you will listen.

i played like 8 to 9 hrs a day and worked hard (without maskscent exploids or such) and became finally a CH.

i startet the game and wanted to make faction points and get faction pets, cuase i loved them in beta, but i need to say one big issue on that. this goes together with the changes to DB the CH pets.

after you nerfed faction pets with permadeath, faction was destroyed totally. now you holocron want to say i bet "no its not dead all is trhere and fine and we tune all down with FP prices", but let me pls tell you the truth which i see as a very active player. i see in game things which clearly show how destroyed pvp is after that change. rebel players sitting single and alone without pets right beside an imperial mission terminal (without guarding pets or such) they go afk and dont even worry about getting killed. in kadaara an imperial city i see ourside even houses factory and harvesters from rebels, means they run around freely without worries, i dont also see any fights between faction members anymore.

i canceled my faction membership after i lost my hard earned 2 pets right on same day u nerfed them. i didnt lost them to an uber enemy i wanted to fight, no. i lost them cause i got jumped by some agressive spineflaps near theed while running to town. i got really angry and dissapointed and after that i saw very less ppl with factioj tags and the GCW died.

now instead of rechanging this in my opinion silly change, you want to nerf all pets like this.

pets permadeath has nothing to do with balance, it is a bad bad nerf and only takes us pet users, nm what kind to waste our time to get new ones, which isnt fun at all.

let me pls give you an other conclusion which is pretty fine and works for balance issues.

as it is now, u cant call or store pets any time which is verya fine, you cant store to safe them while in combat, which is also very fine. but, if a pet goes incapped u can heal it up and use it more in same fight, if it would get a DB like a player it should pop to datapad and u cant use it in that battle anymore.

all that would be more then fine and it takes care of the balance. because we talk here about battles where u use pets and not that u can use them more then once in a fight again.

but a permadeath deals no more advantage for that battle then let them pop to datapad.

its just a punishment for the owner to work again to get a new pet. faction pets take long mission runs to get them, droids take mission to earn money tobuy one and CH pets take alot skills to learn and 5 real life days to grow them. so with a permadeath you just steal our time and turn this game, which should make fun to another job. i have a real life job and want to enjoy this nice game, but i dont want a new job.

there is imo no sense for a permadeath beside making us work more to get a new one. if u do so then let weapons also vanish after a player dies? is that a balance then? no it would be silly.

if a player dies he get recloned, let pets get same treatment, like they die and go to datapad and prolly are 30 mins not callable. this helps and dont punish all pet users like a permadeath do. a casual player for example has for sure not fun to run around after long weeks playing finally gethis skill, looses a pet and then have to travel around to get new pet.

so to state it clear for balance in fights, where all it is about, there would be still a difference between incap pet, which u can heal and use more in same fight and a pet which got DB to the datapad. but you wont steal the owner his/hers playtime for just get new ones.

again, we talk with all this changes about whiners and about balance issues which were needed for sure, but we CHs need alot skill points to be master and use our pets, we need 5 real life days to grow them. so if thes die we get a problem, or simply u destroy our fun. when a pistoleer dies he gets cloned and can go fight instantly again, if pets go permadeath and u depend on pets, you simply cant. thats is not balance then, its bad punishment. you said in other posts that a CH must not be normaly a fighter class also, so his pets are his offensive side.

pls mr. koster, rethink about permadeath and do that also for faction pets, your customers work hard to earn them, and wont be happy to loose them (as i stated above, u can loose them on accident even).

a permadeath has really nothing to do with balance issues, pls tell me why you intend to give pets permadeath and pls enlihght in what way that has anything to do with balancing? i am looking forward to that clearup, cause i see not even 1 point how a permadeath balances classes.

PS: pets get stuck, warp to call point and all such, if i loose a pet to permadeath because it warps to call point and then goes attackable by all players (what is fact atm also) then i wuld get really angry.