Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Have our goals been clouded?
I did not become a DE for the money; I make plenty of it by being a MWC. I became a MDE for the entertainment of making functional assistants for any need. What I don't understand is why it seems so difficult to give we DE the ability to build formidable combat droids. This would mean that Droids have the HAM and damage ability’s of the CH pet class.
In all honesty a Droideka or my true favorite IG-88 should dominate any CH pet. And that is the problem, CH are use to being the dominant pet class, change those rules and the players of Ch would mount a revolt sending our profession into the center of nurfville.
Somehow I feel the CH would balk at the idea there is another class with better pets, but is it not time for we DE to truly take our place as the dominate pet class? In the fiction world of Star Wars IG-88 with his arsenal of weapons was the Terminator of Star Wars. Please notice the "Fiction" part of that sentence as from what I can tell the CH class was born from the 15 minutes in jabbas palace.
I think what we DE really want to know is Why? Why is it that Droidekas as a NPC are formidable and tough but cannot be built by DE. Why? The model is in the game, what’s the issue here. There are so many examples of droids in the star wars database. Why can't our Droids be as equal to CH pets HAM, Why?
I've heard of the "Module’s" they are thinking about. I respectfully laugh at that idea.
Forget the Modules, Give us what we should have, Droidekas, a version of the IG-88 (If you know the history of the 88 you understand why I say version or type.)
And for the love of the stars DO NOT restrict these droid's to being operated by DE only. Allow anyone and everyone to be able to operate one; it's the Star Wars way.
Arkkyle
Master Droid Engy
I signed up to play a DE becuase 1) I wanted to be a geeky support-type character that crafted really cool droids and 2) I wanted my droids to kick serious @ss on my behalf while I hid behind a sand dune on Tatooine. I'm getting pretty tired of people suggesting to me that DEs do not belong in category #2. Making cash is incidental to goals #1 and #2, but it really helps accimplish both.
If you want to be a non-combat city-rat DE, then roleplay your character as such. Don't try to ruin it for the rest of us by making it out to seem that all DEs belong exclusively in cateogry #1. **edit** is wrong with awesome combat droids, anyway? DEs need some MAJOR respect and everyone knows it, judging by the number of "poor DE" posts I see from Non-DEs.
We've all seen the major butt-ckicking that droids dish out in Ep. 1 and 2. We've all seen droidekas respond to simple voice commands. Let's not kid ourselves. If bumbling trade federation putzes can order droidekas to scare off Obi-wan Kenobi AND his master, DEs should be able to use them as well (with appropriate game balancing systems). And who knows, perhaps un-seen DEs did the actually ordering in the movies: DE-only droids, perish the thought.
Seriously: Instead of in-fighting we need to focus on getting maxiumum improvements to our profession from the devs. I am for inclusiveness. Let people play DEs the way they want to play DEs; In other words, quit trying to make DEs out to be stay-at-home crafters only.
There are two points that are overlooked when making such a claim.
First, right now we are neither very profitable nor significantly combat capable. Claims that crafters are trying to maintain some nonexistent advantage just aren't true. If pure crafter DEs wanted to be rich, they would've become weaponsmiths, or even combat classes, who can make far more money doing missions on advanced planets than the typical DE will ever see as things are now.
Second, no matter which direction we go, the devs will not intentionally push us to the very top of either category. The truly greedy on either side will necessarily be disappointed.
What we're going to get, one way or the other, is an attempted balance between the two, and the important goal for us to focus upon is just that they give us the ability to do something useful within the game. I'm at the point that I don't particularly care if they go more one way or more the other, as long as something is done to make us a passably effective profession. Adopting one extreme and slapping unsavory labels on people on the other end does cloud the issue.
Kitsunetsuki wrote:
What we're going to get, one way or the other, is an attempted balance between the two, and the important goal for us to focus upon is just that they give us the ability to do something useful within the game. I'm at the point that I don't particularly care if they go more one way or more the other, as long as something is done to make us a passably effective profession. Adopting one extreme and slapping unsavory labels on people on the other end does cloud the issue.
That's what I want, a balance. A hybrid of combat and crafting. Good in each, but not great in either.I do not want to be some great combat class ( Im not looking to solo nightsisters here) and I do not want to sit around all day making medical modules and crafting stations for the "happiness" of my customers. It's just depressing, uninvolving, and insignificant.
EricTheGreat wrote:
That's what I want, a balance. A hybrid of combat and crafting. Good in each, but not great in either.I do not want to be some great combat class ( Im not looking to solo nightsisters here)
/agree
and I do not want to sit around all day making medical modules and crafting stations for the "happiness" of my customers. It's just depressing, uninvolving, and insignificant.
It's fine if others do. But they should not trump our desire to want to be a good hybrid class. the great thing is that being a good hybrid class does not prevent others from being pure crafters
Well said Kit. I still do believe that if we as DE's push for droids that can be an asset to us in a battle, then I think the dev's will be more responsive. Those who believe that making droids should bring us fortune I think is why dev's gave the CH's priority on the tweaking list. I mean lets face it, what did our droid fixers give us on this last patch...the ability to store automatically after being incapped, when there was a long list of things fixed for the CH. My intention of the post also was not to have our droids at the top of the food chain, only to be equal to the best pets that the CH's now control.
Ewyv Aupap
Master Artisan
Droid Designer
EricTheGreat wrote:
I never equated combat droids with fixing our profession. I want the droids added as the way to fully realize the DE potential beyond med modules and crafting stations ( There are better combat droids out there than the nearly insignificant probot ). I want all the bugs in our profession fixed; I want droids that can fight and can do other tasks. The ulility of our droids is related to the bug ridden state of our profession now. I seeno reason why they can't work on both combat droids and more utilitarian droids. I do not understand why you think they have to choose one or the other. It's not like the devs have a limited number of, say, experimentation points to use on DEs to improve us!
And combat is a part of the total utility of droids. Why do you separate the two? Why do you want to keep that part of the utility of droids at the suppressed level that it is?
I want to see the full potential of the DE played out. I see combat as a significant part of our droid's potential, that has yet to be realized.
I am just going by what I have seen in terms of time/resources spent on fixing and improving on various professions. Given everything they've done since release regarding various professions, it appearsthey have a small amount of time/resources to devote to a single profession. I can't see them doing the crafting area of this profession (which currently IS the profession) justice and still implementing new combat systems. I'm not referring to combat droids in general, as that is a utility to use droids for, I'm talking about wasting time on DE only droids. It would require a complete rewrite of portions of the DE skilltree and massive additions to the profession. Plus they'd have to take into account all the balance issues that are associated with giving a non-combat class combat skills. I hardly think they'd even look at any of our broken modules or any of the ones we wanted added if they started working on all that. Look how long its taken for us to get.... well, where we are.
Combat being a significan portion of our droids potential, while I may not aggree with that, I can understand it, just not how that leads to those droids being only for DE's.
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
I signed up to play a DE becuase 1) I wanted to be a geeky support-type character that crafted really cool droids and 2) I wanted my droids to kick serious @ss on my behalf while I hid behind a sand dune on Tatooine. I'm getting pretty tired of people suggesting to me that DEs do not belong in category #2. Making cash is incidental to goals #1 and #2, but it really helps accimplish both.
If you want to be a non-combat city-rat DE, then roleplay your character as such. Don't try to ruin it for the rest of us by making it out to seem that all DEs belong exclusively in cateogry #1. **edit** is wrong with awesome combat droids, anyway? DEs need some MAJOR respect and everyone knows it, judging by the number of "poor DE" posts I see from Non-DEs.
We've all seen the major butt-ckicking that droids dish out in Ep. 1 and 2. We've all seen droidekas respond to simple voice commands. Let's not kid ourselves. If bumbling trade federation putzes can order droidekas to scare off Obi-wan Kenobi AND his master, DEs should be able to use them as well (with appropriate game balancing systems). And who knows, perhaps un-seen DEs did the actually ordering in the movies: DE-only droids, perish the thought.
Seriously: Instead of in-fighting we need to focus on getting maxiumum improvements to our profession from the devs. I am for inclusiveness. Let people play DEs the way they want to play DEs; In other words, quit trying to make DEs out to be stay-at-home crafters only.
You keep saying to let people play the way they want to play, and the way I want to play is to sell my droids, all of them. Thats fine, we can have combat droids that can kick some serious ass for you, as long as they can kick some ass for someone else too.
I agree that we need to focus on getting maximum improvements done to our profession, but if you think they'll get combat droids (especially DE only combat droids) right the first try, or the second, or maybe even the third, I think we're playing different games here. And if you haven't noticed, the nerf bat swings mighty hard. Most likely we'll end up with less than we started with, at the very least back to square one.
EricTheGreat wrote:
That's what I want, a balance. A hybrid of combat and crafting. Good in each, but not great in either.I do not want to be some great combat class ( Im not looking to solo nightsisters here) and I do not want to sit around all day making medical modules and crafting stations for the "happiness" of my customers. It's just depressing, uninvolving, and insignificant.
But thats the beauty of the profession system. Lets say DE's were raised up to great status as crafters, if you just wanted to be good in crafting AND good in combat, take some of the DE tree and some of your combat tree of choice. You get the same effect, but you also allow those who want to be great DE's be great DE's.
Jenden wrote:
You keep saying to let people play the way they want to play, and the way I want to play is to sell my droids, all of them. Thats fine, we can have combat droids that can kick some serious ass for you, as long as they can kick some ass for someone else too.
As long as DEs get some special perk (additional # of combat droids, better stats for droids, droid chassis, or whatever), I can agree with this. All professions have cool things they can do. Heck, BHs have BH-only droids!
I agree that we need to focus on getting maximum improvements done to our profession, but if you think they'll get combat droids (especially DE only combat droids) right the first try, or the second, or maybe even the third, I think we're playing different games here. And if you haven't noticed, the nerf bat swings mighty hard. Most likely we'll end up with less than we started with, at the very least back to square one.
This is speculation, though well-founded given the history of screw-ups. Its still no grounds to block the over all improvement of DE as a hybrid class by virtue of excellent combat droids. There will be many fixes need in tweaking thechanges, and if they really screw up they may need to nerf some things. But why stop something on that basis?
The devs have already added a new profession to the game, and there is going to be a complete reworking of the CH class soon enough. Asking for just one thing from the devs doesn't mean that we will get it any faster. And I do not see a DE only droid taking a "complete rewrite of portions of the DE skilltree." Adding a schematic for MDE and having a check to make sure a person has skill box #### to see if they can have it/tame it ( im being simplistic here). And if you would read my pasts posts again, a DE only (MDE only) droid so we can get something DECENT ourselves, and not for everyone because that would just change the pet wars to droid wars.I do not see how giving us a decent combat droid is going to upset the balace as great as you think it will. We already have combat capabilities (probot), something decent isn't going to change much (other than the fact we might be somewhat useful in higher level combat parties).
Jenden wrote:
I am just going by what I have seen in terms of time/resources spent on fixing and improving on various professions. Given everything they've done since release regarding various professions, it appearsthey have a small amount of time/resources to devote to a single profession. I can't see them doing the crafting area of this profession (which currently IS the profession) justice and still implementing new combat systems. I'm not referring to combat droids in general, as that is a utility to use droids for, I'm talking about wasting time on DE only droids. It would require a complete rewrite of portions of the DE skilltree and massive additions to the profession. Plus they'd have to take into account all the balance issues that are associated with giving a non-combat class combat skills. I hardly think they'd even look at any of our broken modules or any of the ones we wanted added if they started working on all that. Look how long its taken for us to get.... well, where we are.
Combat being a significan portion of our droids potential, while I may not aggree with that, I can understand it, just not how that leads to those droids being only for DE's.
Jenden wrote:
But thats the beauty of the profession system. Lets say DE's were raised up to great status as crafters, if you just wanted to be good in crafting AND good in combat, take some of the DE tree and some of your combat tree of choice. You get the same effect, but you also allow those who want to be great DE's be great DE's.
I AM good (well decent) in combat. But I am not seeing this as a relevant issue. It's about droids and their potential. Droids have a wide variety of uses. Why do you want to stop us from getting a function that seems to be a significant part of droids inthe SW universe? Getting decent combat droids won't stop you from being a "great DE" (which means what? making medical modules and crafting stations all day? Then taking an hour every day to explain to customers how to use it? Oh wait, it's about the "happiness") There are better combat droids than the self-destructing probot. We should be able to build and use them.
Jenden wrote:
But thats the beauty of the profession system. Lets say DE's were raised up to great status as crafters, if you just wanted to be good in crafting AND good in combat, take some of the DE tree and some of your combat tree of choice. You get the same effect, but you also allow those who want to be great DE's be great DE's.
How can you be a great DE without great combat droids?
I already do this: In addition to Master DE and Artisan, I am a Novice Pistoleer, Guardsman, Field Responder, and Explorer. The only thing lacking is the kick @ass combat droids from the movies.
BTW, I resent the implication that combat DEs are not great DEs, though I realize it was probably an off-hand comment. My character is every bit as good of a DE as yours is, except mine is stealthier, faster, self-sufficient in healing, and holds his own when traveling with a decent pet. Swap my gurreck with a droideka and I'm set.
(ps Not sure what you mean by "Lets say DE's were raised up to great status as crafters". I'll reinterpret if your eleborations is different than what I understand it to be)