Droid Engineer Archive

Thread: Droid Gameplan Draft (Mine, NOT offical): A proposed DE roadmap...

Auladan
Wed Apr 07, 2004 6:53 am
#14

As I'm a Droid Engineer (not master, only 4/0/1/4; resources are painfully expensive on Lowca, and I'm the worst resource miner in the galaxy), I'm also a Master Smuggler. Since the Smuggler profession is a Hybrid, after I have both it and Droid Engineer mastered, I won't have enough points for anything other than Survey 4 (what's a crafter who can't even find resources?), Ranged support 4 (what's a smuggler who can't shoot anything?), and Business 3 (what's a crafter without a way to sell his products?). This being my choice, I'm not going to complain, though through this template I'm forced to kneel to the poor combat abilities of the Smuggler, and the inability to craft a painfully high number of the parts essential to Droid Engineering. I'm dependent on culminizing both of my professions to turn any sort of respectable profit and enjoy the game without facing the monotony of pure crafting, or pure combat. I, in exchange of excelling at one, get to suck at both.

So, what am I rambling on about?

As an un-pure Droid Engineer (it's not all I do), I'm not only looking out for what would benefit Droid Engineers, as I'm sure goes for many of you. I read through your proposal, TK, and liked most of what I saw, except for your brief mention of a Slicer droid. I've been up all night, and it's 6:36 in the morning, so I may be interpreting what you wrote incorrectly, but were you suggesting that Droid Engineers be able to build a droid that can slice doors and terminals and what not in the upcomming [i]adventures[/i]? If that's the case, I have to say I think it's a horrible, horrible idea. As of now, the Smugglers are in a desperate rut. We can't sell our spice because of all the Holo grinders dumping their left overs for quick cash, and all the multi-millionaire dabblers who're trying to soak up all the market by selling crates of Muon for under 2,000 credits a freakin' crate. Dirty Fighting has become a joke, Underworld was always and still is a Skill-Point Spongue, and the Master Box is completely devoid of anything but a sparkly description, and an unlisted 5% slicing percentage.

Ugh, anyway. I don't mean to rant, it's just that I don't think that the only saving grace the Smuggler has should be able to be crafted and sold by another profession. Now, a droid that enhances a Smugglers ability to slice, one that, say, raises the probability of higher percentage slices, or, dare I mention, one that even allows the Smuggler to choose which varient of enhancement his slice elicits would be, in my opinion, only positive to both professions. If such a droid were made to have only a limited number of uses or charges or what have you, both the entirely underappreciated slicing market (people take it for granted; they yell at me when I give them a 17% speed increase when they wanted, of course, a 35% damage increase instead of appreciating the fact that I just made their weapon 17% faster, forever) would benefit. It would make have every slicer in the galaxy chasing down Droid Engineers for crated Slicer Droids. Experimentation could determine the ammount of charges and or the bonus to hitting higher slice percentages more often.

The Smuggler Revamps a'commin'. We better think of something.
Bearalag
Wed Apr 07, 2004 10:17 am
#15

I wish TH would lay out whats happening with the game like this. Not officially, but a rough draft of what they expect to do and when it will be released.





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TheRealTK421
Wed Apr 07, 2004 6:10 pm
#16

Okay...well, I've heard a bit back on this.

The "Top issues" (Top 5 / top 20) is our official profession roadmap moving forward.


However, this outline may well be fodder for them to slip in a few other items for us prior to Space.

TH told me that he is considering a feature request list for everything (shorter than mine) that might well do the same thing. That is, sprinkling in changes that would make sense in terms of the other revamps coming.


So, the official answer on this one is that the outline is nice to have but we can't count on any portion of this every occurring (unless they see an idea that works as part of another revamp).

Right now, I'm doubting that we will see much (besides a few fixes and smaller items) prior to Space.


/bow

Respectfully,




TheRealTK421 a.k.a. "Doughbacca"
SWG DE Correspondent
Co-Founding member of Ahazi DENet & SWG DEA (Droid Engineer Association)
"I think all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. ...I'm certainly not. And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am."


JavelinCatcher
Wed Apr 07, 2004 6:15 pm
#17

I know I've put this on the table before, and I even saw it put into the "in-concept" discussion for SL. Instead ofa "Droid Commander" profession, give high level droids to the Squad Leaders.


Thoughts? Opinions? Will it "just not fly"?





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----Nolhta Fyoen----Master Droid Engineer----Gorath

CUAlpha: Team Droid Engineer
TheRealTK421
Wed Apr 07, 2004 6:25 pm
#18






JavelinCatcher wrote:

I know I've put this on the table before, and I even saw it put into the "in-concept" discussion for SL. Instead ofa "Droid Commander" profession, give high level droids to the Squad Leaders.


Thoughts? Opinions? Will it "just not fly"?








I'm checking now....I'll let you know all know if this is on the table or not (but I suspect not).


/bow

Respectfully,




TheRealTK421 a.k.a. "Doughbacca"
SWG DE Correspondent
Co-Founding member of Ahazi DENet & SWG DEA (Droid Engineer Association)
"I think all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. ...I'm certainly not. And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am."


Shian_Tavkin
Wed Apr 07, 2004 8:01 pm
#19






Tarne_Monter wrote:





Shian_Tavkin wrote:

The outline is good - given we have to accept that P7/P8 is over and a done deal..so well done TK


Though it might not be popular, I'd still like a definitive statement from a Red Developer on what 'balance' really means in droid terms. I'm still not happy that Sodans proposal was claimed to be imbalanced, but we were never told in detail why not. We also need clarification on TH statment on 'augmentation of player skills'.


Seems to me that us knowing what balance means to the devs would help productive idea generation no end.









From what I read in TK's post I believe that the balance issue that everyone is so confused about is the balance of combat vs. crafting. Yes I know that smuggler has both, but not very well. And despite that fact that we have a small market, we can craft alot more things than smugglers. They have spices that can an medium level job at buffing. And that's it. We have some amount of crafter droids, combat droids, and even parts needed by other crafters (Droid Storage Compartment). I think as far as crafting goes we're better of than smugglers. So if that's the template, or balancing point for making a hybrid of crafting and combat, then I can see why they say that a DE hybrid would be unbalanced.






Well I hear what you say Tarne.


However, where is it written that a crafter must always be a crafter? I believe there are a ton of Combat types who feed their habit for armour by mining, using others skills to get the surveting done. Our Smuggler friends are certainly Hybrid, and their goods sell for a premium (well good ones do), and of course we have the oft-misunderstood Creature handler, a hybrid if ever there was one, again not very good at it maybe..


Anyway, thought I respect your view, I still think a Red Developer needs to post what balance means. One combat profession always beating another is unbalanced, one crafting profession (WS for example) always beating another crafting profession DE (in earning power) is also unbalanced. We are already unbalanced and have always been (in crafting terms) and thats exactly why there is room to make us a hybrid.


Ahh well, it seems a worthwhile question to me..bearing in mind we live still in Creature Wars (tm)





Shian -- Master Droid Engineer/ Master Artisan
Carroll
Thu Apr 08, 2004 12:06 pm
#20

My suggestion for the future in helping the DE balance issues:


Perhaps we could be looking at varying up the damage types available in Combat modules/clusters?


Instead of trying to up damage drastically to 'create a market' for DE's (and thus offset the balance the Dev's are trying to preserve) we could, instead, have a variety of weapon typesavailable - i.e. Acid, Blaster, Kinetic, etc - chosen at the time of construction. Would make the droid more effective against one type of armor/creature, less effective against another type.


Perhaps the 'more powerful' damage types would be spread along the Construction tree, with the most powerful at Master.


Just a rough idea to play with, feel free to hash and bash as you see fit.



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In the end, there can be only one.
SkyeDarkangel
Thu Apr 08, 2004 12:16 pm
#21

I think the differences that make Smugglers not Crafters and CH's different is that their crafting/abilities don't really fit in with "crafting".


Spices have NO experimentation. Resources quality means purely nothing, and potentially never will unless they DO start adding combat/crafting hybridprofessions. They can take all resources with 1 in each stat and get the exact same Muon gold as someone with 1000 on each stat. The exception is, I think, their Clamps and Laser knives and Flow Nodes, but I'm pretty sure that the resources quality and stats also have no meaning there, like 2/3 of the Droid parts! Although ours are just broken supposedly.


CH's can only really "tame" creatures and train them to be mounts. This is like the Smugglers ability to Slice weapons/armor. It's a way for them to sell something, but it's not really a "market" or a "skilled trade" like DE, WS, AS, Chef, etc.



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