Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Bursting into Tears over Droids
If I might be so bold, I would like to nudge this thread back towards my original intent (which I really didn't make very clear in the orginal post).
Star Wars = droids. It's really that simple to me. I've been a DE for 35 of the 36 weeks that this game has been live, and I have yet to be fulfiled as a "maker of droids." How did droids end up as an afterthought in a game that is about a story that is about droids? Yes, those two well knowndroids are the central characters thru out the starwars saga. They are present in virtually every movie, publication and comic ever created around the Star Wars universe, and are among the most widely recognizable movie figures in the world.
Helstrum wrote:
...And a jump back to the arguement that a newbie could buy a probot with 2 hours of delivery missions. Well, I don't know if that is correct or not, but I do know that there are better ways for them to spend their creds then a probot. A probot will not help them level faster/get more xp. Plus, you currently cannot heal your probot, so it would be of very limited hunting use. Much better off to get a Bio pet if they did buy a pet. The newb would be better off to buy a better weapon/armor or a speeder then to buy a probot.
You can earn roughly 700cr for a delivery mission between Mos Eisley and Mos Entha, if memory serves me correctly. You can hold two missions in your pad at a time. A shuttle ticket runs a little over 100cr so you can earn 1300cr with each trip. You can do 2 trips every10 minutes with a little bit of luck. That's 7800cr an hour or 15,600cr for two hours. On my server I sell advanced probots for 16k and I know there are people who sell for less.
A probot absolutely will help them to level faster. They can send the probot after creatures well above their level, wait until the probot has the creatures attention and then attack the creature. While they will not get the full XP for killing the creature the creature will grant more XP than the lower level creatures so they will typically come out ahead of the game. This combined with the fact that they take far fewer wounds will allow them to go after more creatures in a shorter length of time further helping them to level faster.
Probots are better than pets in this regard. They take damage far better and do lower damage. Lower damage means that the new character will earn more of the experience for the fight.
Yes, eventually they will need to rest and let the probot heal, but it will actually heal faster than the character would (effectively) because of the armor. One point of health on a probot is worth considerably more than one point of health on a character unless that character has armor far heavier than what a newbie could buy for 16k.
Yes, better weapons and armor are necessary as well. Again, the probot can't do all the work for a newbie but it can make it considerably easier.
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.
You missed a couple of moves that only enhances your point. Not sure where they fit in time order.
Adv Probots start appearing with 40% armour for effectively 1400 ham.Soon afterNon-ch pets up to level 15 are introduced with 2k HAM and armour making the probots look sickly.
Non-ch pets get nerfed to LV10 like Probots (big suprise since they were better than the old Probots at introduction), but BE Non-ch pets soon appear with3k HAM, some resists, and special attacks. I don't even count the quickly nerfedearly BE Non-CH super-pets, since not many of those were around. The 3k ones are pretty common and fairly cheap.
Droids for utility use get nerfed in Pub 6 with correction of the cluster module stacking limiting max functionality. It's up to you whether you want to actually call it a nerf, or a desiredbug fix, but it sure lasted a long time, and the old ones still work better than any new one can.
Malitevv wrote:
Mathe, your concern is a wider one, that really isn't a direct DE issue at all. The fact is that no combat capable pet that is higher than CL10 will be allowed into the hands of a player who hasn't spent skill points specifically to get it. For better or worse, that is what the developers of this game have decided. That is not a DE issue. It is a general combat pet issue.
It is a DE issue. It is a DE issue because droids aren't considered different from any other combat pet. If they change the way combat droids work, then it doesn't have to be a clumsy rating methodology (pet CL, which isn't a very good system anyway. Read the BE boards for more info. The developers won't even tell them what a valid pet is supposed to look like, which leads them to believe that the devs don't even really know themselveswhat a CL10 pet is supposed to be). Quite frankly, the way pets and CL currently works is at the very least unsophisticated.
We all knew that none of the droids were going to be tougher than a CL10 creature with this patch, and there's no reason to expect otherwise. Argueing about whether the droids should be higher than CL10 or not is pointless. Greater than CL10 pets are not going to be allowed unless a system that assigns a skill point cost to owning them is in place, and we all know that isn't happenning with these two publishes.
You are right, they made a system that makes some sense when you are talking about creatures and handling those creatures. Creature Level describes a finite set of variables that determine how "tough" a pet is. The tougher a critter is, the more "wild" that creature probably is. In order to tame that creature and make it do the handler's will, the handler must have some skill. That same system, when superimposed on droids, loses all coherency. So that's fine. Lets change the way droids work, and make them different from creatures. That way, the droid doesn't replace the creature and the skillpoint cost remains justified for creature handlers and not required for everyone else.
A useful combat droid doesn't have to be a "tough" droid. Usefulness can be created through a form of combat utility. Using the meatshield paradigm, CL10 creatures and droids are not suitable for most combat situations. Using a different idea of how the droid contributes to the fight, you could very easily make "CL10" droids something that anyone would really want. There have been some good ideas out there already.
Droids don't require skill to operate them. They operate themselves. An owner simply needs to prevent the droid from doing what it wants to or running away. Butthat's what restraining bolts or control ships are for. It isn't enough to regurgitate game mechanics without consulting the game's namesake.
You are right that for the highest level groups, these droids are not particularly useful. But that is because no CL10 pet is useful to such groups. It has nothing to do with droids per se. It is a general pet issue. But the fact is that for those players that do use CL10 pets, these droids are very useful, and for those players, the only problem with combat droids up until now has been the inability to heal them efficiently.
For any melee profession that reaches the first elite box, the droidcannot and will not hold aggro. It is also difficult to get the droid to draw aggro for melee players if it is time to retreat. Honestly, for almost every elite combat profession, this still holds true.
As a master swordsman, I can tell you that they aren't worth the battery power it takes to run them for any enemy I can't utterly destroy by myself. I takelevel32 faction missions from my home town, and theseMOBS use specials and don't have much of a chance to miss against that probot. They don'tusually use weapons without any armor piercing. In three shots, that droid is in pieces. Sure, that is three shots that weren't fired at me, but keep in mind that I have much better defenses than my droid. I can use COB and counterattack, and I can also getbuffs, use spice, and eat food. I always always always outlast my droid in a battle unless they don't shoot at the droid until after I incap. That rarely gives me enough time to recover from incap before they do away with my droid and casually jog over to finish me off.
Droid repair kits might help, but I can't be too sure of that until I am able to try it for myself. The new factor in this equation is how well I can divide my time between babysitting my droid and keeping myself in the fight. I have a feeling that it will make them a lot more worthwhile.
The real point is that there are a minority of combat players that find the droid very useful. As a crafter, I don't like a situation that limits my market before I even start,especially at master level. As a master droid engineer, I should be making something for everyone. I should be creating master level droids. To me, that means I should be making something for the weakest of crafters up to the hardiest of combatants. Just about every other crafting profession does.
they are only good for nostalgia
I see the problem as two fold.
1. We have no hot product that brings in repeat customers. If a DE does a good job for someone, then that person does not need to buy again from that DE. And even before the person gets to buying a droid, why would they need one? What is our hot product? Which brings us to point 2.
2. There has been no give and take. Only take. As a profession, we have been broken from day one. The complexity of our trade and our products does not make this an easy thing to nail down. However, the only actions put forth by the Devs besides fixing bugs (I do not like giving a lot of credit for doing things that you should do anyhow), has been nerfs. When ever we would generate some sort of buzz about our droids, that droid was soon nerfed. Nothing was ever put in place to fill the voids left by the nerfs.
Where does that put us now? Item storage and crafting stations. That's it.Our combat droidsare a joke. Data storage is never used. Droids are not that useful. They are simply a luxury for those with extra cash.
Ar-Ulric
MDE/TKM Flurry
Why TKM/MDE? So that I can take my flustrations on on my droids.
Gribnitz wrote:
...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.
I'll agree that making it more difficult to produce the same (or even slightly inferior) droid doesn't fall into the concept of 'Love' unless you're into the leather scene, though I suppose that is countered by having easier to make R2 units that have more HAM (which is only an unintentional side effect and certainly not part of the Dev's plans).
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.
My real, original point was simply that with so many valid complaints we shouldn't be listing off things that really, with a bit of consideration, most people can agree needed to be fixed.
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.
Your right, it isn't useless, but it sure isn't a boon to us DE's either. As someone posted above, the people that really need one can't afford it. Once they can afford it, there is no use for it anymore and now the cost is going to go even higher for a droid that does even lessdamage.
Have you ever dueled a probot ? An armored 6 porobt took a total of5 hits from my FWG5 before it went down. It barely moved my HAM bar. Granted I used overcharged shot 1 on it, but I am only a Pistol 4 person. Once they hit the noivce range of an Elite combat profession, there really isn't any need for it anymore besides a temporary distraction. The servers sure aren't being crowded with newbies coming in either. The market gets smaller and smaller all the time.
Gribnitz wrote:
...Have you ever dueled a probot ? An armored 6 porobt took a total of5 hits from my FWG5 before it went down. It barely moved my HAM bar....
Probots are terrible for PvP. Worse than the fact that it went down so quickly is the fact that it's damage output is so low that if someone were to call one out you would ignore it and just blast the character.
On the other hand, you say that the people who can use one can't afford it. I'm not sure of your server or how much you sell them for but on Starsider I sell a fully armored Advanced Probot for 16k. That price is based directly off resources and subcomponents and is perfectly in line with the rest of my pricing. Newbies can get 16k in just around 2 hours of running delivery missions I believe, so it should be well within their price range if they really want one.
well I don't feel any better about the DE prof, but this thread confirms that more people GET IT than I thought. that is, DEs have not a single hot resellable item (ie repeat customers).....ie chefs brandy buff that even the highest lvl players buy crates of and always need replaced (thats just one of the chefs hot items).
so apparently the players get it, the dev dont'