Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Who SHOULD handle combat droids, anyway? (warning, borders on a discussion of certification)
Can we get a comment from TH about Drashk's certification proposal?
Failing that, is it possible to get some details about the sort of thing that the Devs will accept? In particular, is it of critical importance that Skill Points used towards controlling droids must provide no other benefit at all, or no combat benefit, or what?
I think your forgetting about the other 90% of the profession. Combat droids are only a small part of our profession, we still make droids for everyone, we still have the product usable by the most number of professions (there is not a single character in the game that cannot benefit from droids). As long as they continue to develop that portion of the profession we will still be a seperate and distinct profession.
Odysseusa wrote:
So..... pretty much you're saying that soon, Droids = Creatures, Droid Engineers = Bio Engineers, and Droid Handlers = Creature Handlers.... And the only difference is going to be which graphics are used. Right....
That literally makes me sick to my stomach. Seriously...
I don't think there should be Certs...
But, if they do make Certs, they should stick to the novice/master combat class ability to use these droids. A Droid Handler profession will be useless if say BH or CH want to master it. Chances are none of them will have enough Skill Points to reach master Droid Handler.
If they do create a Droid Handler Profession...what will be the prerequisites? Should they be required to have at least 1 novice or mediocre combat class? Perhaps give the option to crafters and entertainers, to where if they are mediocre crafters/entertainers (2/3/3/2 or something) allow that class to be a prerequisite for Droid Handler. Sure, crafting and entertaining can be fun, but sometimesthat gets boring for them and they want togo kill stuff. SOE, make the game fun for them & they will stay on your customer list longer. 
In any case I don't think there should be Certs. They should add something never added in this game: "Pet Leveling." See my "Pet Skill Tree" thread for details.
Thunderheart wrote:
Castillo wrote:
A cert system for droids just wont work IMO.
The devs have spent six months constantly restructuring, balancing& tweaking the pet/CH/CL systems. A pet is a pet, regardless if it looks like a rock beetle or a droideka. The issue becomes one of game design & balance. The devs werent happy with people having 3k HAM armoured tanks for no skill point investment (a free passport to high level content they called it). They werent happy with players having 10k HAM AR1 75% tanks by taking just 5 skill boxes in CH. A non CH pet nowadays means something with 1-2k ham, 100 dmg and a few low resists if you are lucky.
Any combat droid system must be subject to the same CL scale as CH, easiest way to do this is the introduction of a DH class. Adding certs toexisting skills just powers everyone up, droids become a requirement.A true DH skillgives the potential for the introduction of high level combat droids. No DH class means no useful (higher than 10CL)combat droids.
This post is dead on.
There's a big difference between DE and CH. Namely, CH doesn't do crap but run around and pick freebies off the land. We 1) harvest or pay for our materials, 2) have to make crap laods of factory runs, 3) need lots of factory components from OTHER professions, 4) constantly need to feed our creations batteries, 5) have spent hours explaining our broken product to people.
If everyone else can use droids, the net gain is equal. If droids become a requirement -- welcome to STAR WARS.
Thunderheart wrote:
Castillo wrote:A cert system for droids just wont work IMO.
The devs have spent six months constantly restructuring, balancing& tweaking the pet/CH/CL systems. A pet is a pet, regardless if it looks like a rock beetle or a droideka. The issue becomes one of game design & balance. The devs werent happy with people having 3k HAM armoured tanks for no skill point investment (a free passport to high level content they called it). They werent happy with players having 10k HAM AR1 75% tanks by taking just 5 skill boxes in CH. A non CH pet nowadays means something with 1-2k ham, 100 dmg and a few low resists if you are lucky.
Any combat droid system must be subject to the same CL scale as CH, easiest way to do this is the introduction of a DH class. Adding certs toexisting skills just powers everyone up, droids become a requirement.A true DH skillgives the potential for the introduction of high level combat droids. No DH class means no useful (higher than 10CL)combat droids.
This post is dead on.
Ok so I see that the Devs don't want to give certs to anyone without a corresponding skill point expenditure. Fine. I spent almost as many points as a CH to master my profession (MORE in fact since I need MA to be viable) so why not certify me and my fellow masters with the same number of pets with say, half the pet levels of a Master CH. Sound fair to you?
Jenden wrote:
The only solution, if you want combat droids, is a droid handler profession.No one is forcing people in to this, this is the result of a general consensus that people want to see more combat droids.
No offense, man, but this is over the top. TH said his whole reason for proposing a DH profession was that way back when there was an alleged outcry from DEs who just wanted to be crafters -- basically, you and a handful of others achieving with volume of posts in discussions what you could not get in the polls.
Well, man, you got your wish. (Sadly, it may involve a far more limited market than you had hoped) Please, don't twist it otherwise. People in the combat droid camp also want more utility droids, but DH is your making.
I always said that the few people proposing pure crafter would ruin it for those of us who wanted a chance to explore different DE playstyles. Poll after poll has shown that DEs want to be able to use all their droids (except droids like BH droids), yet every discusion we ever had made it seem like there was a real divide. Today I feel vindicated by the result. The volume of your postings has distorted the reality of consensus on this board.
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
I always said that the few people proposing pure crafter would ruin it for those of us who wanted a chance to explore different DE playstyles. Poll after poll has shown that DEs want to be able to use all their droids (except droids like BH droids), yet every discusion we ever had made it seem like there was a real divide. Today I feel vindicated by the result. The volume of your postings has distorted the reality of consensus on this board.
The problem, Sodan, is that we assumed that the devs were listening to the other ideas, like the cert systems and such that would allow for both DE's and non-DE's to use droids.
Many of us, myself included, that the devs would have come up with a far better solution than a droid handler.
Instead, it is obvious that they plan on using the CH code - either by merging it into the DE tree, or using it to make an entirely new class.
So, you might have been right - but the thing is, you are right because the devs appear to be taking the easy way out, and not spending the time to truely read through the many constructive ideas that have been made here.
It certainly is an unfortunate turn of events.I agree that the devs didn't catch the nuances even when they asked for them.
Sketh wrote:
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
I always said that the few people proposing pure crafter would ruin it for those of us who wanted a chance to explore different DE playstyles. Poll after poll has shown that DEs want to be able to use all their droids (except droids like BH droids), yet every discusion we ever had made it seem like there was a real divide. Today I feel vindicated by the result. The volume of your postings has distorted the reality of consensus on this board.
The problem, Sodan, is that we assumed that the devs were listening to the other ideas, like the cert systems and such that would allow for both DE's and non-DE's to use droids.
Many of us, myself included, that the devs would have come up with a far better solution than a droid handler.
Instead, it is obvious that they plan on using the CH code - either by merging it into the DE tree, or using it to make an entirely new class.
So, you might have been right - but the thing is, you are right because the devs appear to be taking the easy way out, and not spending the time to truely read through the many constructive ideas that have been made here.
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
No offense, man, but this is over the top. TH said his whole reason for proposing a DH profession was that way back when there was an alleged outcry from DEs who just wanted to be crafters -- basically, you and a handful of others achieving with volume of posts in discussions what you could not get in the polls.
None taken, though I do believe most of those polls were very close. Also, as given the stance they seem to be taking on balance, my guess is the other alternative (had they not opted to go with the crafter group) would be to strip out much of the non-combat content. They have already shown that they don't want to given current professions more combat capabilities without a corresponding skill point cost, so I can only assume this would include Droid Engineers. The only difference is instead of getting a new DH profession, DE would have become the DH profession and DE itself would be gone.
Well, man, you got your wish. (Sadly, it may involve a far more limited market than you had hoped) Please, don't twist it otherwise. People in the combat droid camp also want more utility droids, but DH is your making.
I could care less about the base of my market, profit does not motivate my posts. Every post I've made has been from the standpoint of keeping some semblance of balance, as a more balanced game is, in my opinion, a more enjoyable game. My wish, if you would like to know, was that they never bring out any combat droids stronger than the probot. I can't stand the idea of combat pets, and I think that creating combat droids just takes away from what I see as the more enjoyable portion of the profession, utility droids.
I always said that the few people proposing pure crafter would ruin it for those of us who wanted a chance to explore different DE playstyles. Poll after poll has shown that DEs want to be able to use all their droids (except droids like BH droids), yet every discusion we ever had made it seem like there was a real divide. Today I feel vindicated by the result. The volume of your postings has distorted the reality of consensus on this board.
I'm still trying to figure out how we ruined it. I don't see any indication that they would have allowed us to be a full crafting and combat profession in one. As I stated before, everything the devs have said have pointed towards either turning DE into a CH clone, or turning DE into a BE clone and creating the CH clone counterpart.
Furthermore, this is not a democracy, quite honestly the masses do not always know whats best for them (and no, I am not saying I am better than anyone else, my vote in a poll matters as little as everyone elses). We can state our opinions, we can state our reasons, but at the end of the day it is not our decision, and a simple vote cannot decide an issue. I bet you could get just about every BH on the boards to agree that they should be invincible, but will it happen?
Dead on, only to the fact that DE's got utterly IGNORED, while P-okemon handlers got all the attention to the devs. If the devs had put half as much thought into the DE class, that they put into the CH/pet balancing, we would not be having this discussion today.
Thunderheart wrote:
Castillo wrote:
A cert system for droids just wont work IMO.
The devs have spent six months constantly restructuring, balancing& tweaking the pet/CH/CL systems. A pet is a pet, regardless if it looks like a rock beetle or a droideka. The issue becomes one of game design & balance. The devs werent happy with people having 3k HAM armoured tanks for no skill point investment (a free passport to high level content they called it). They werent happy with players having 10k HAM AR1 75% tanks by taking just 5 skill boxes in CH. A non CH pet nowadays means something with 1-2k ham, 100 dmg and a few low resists if you are lucky.
Any combat droid system must be subject to the same CL scale as CH, easiest way to do this is the introduction of a DH class. Adding certs toexisting skills just powers everyone up, droids become a requirement.A true DH skillgives the potential for the introduction of high level combat droids. No DH class means no useful (higher than 10CL)combat droids.
This post is dead on.
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
Jenden wrote:
The only solution, if you want combat droids, is a droid handler profession.No one is forcing people in to this, this is the result of a general consensus that people want to see more combat droids.
No offense, man, but this is over the top. TH said his whole reason for proposing a DH profession was that way back when there was an alleged outcry from DEs who just wanted to be crafters -- basically, you and a handful of others achieving with volume of posts in discussions what you could not get in the polls.
Well, man, you got your wish. (Sadly, it may involve a far more limited market than you had hoped) Please, don't twist it otherwise. People in the combat droid camp also want more utility droids, but DH is your making.
I always said that the few people proposing pure crafter would ruin it for those of us who wanted a chance to explore different DE playstyles. Poll after poll has shown that DEs want to be able to use all their droids (except droids like BH droids), yet every discusion we ever had made it seem like there was a real divide. Today I feel vindicated by the result. The volume of your postings has distorted the reality of consensus on this board.
You're out of line, Sodan. Lay off the cynicism and exaggeration and outright lies.
Remember the crafter vs combat poll? More than 60% of respondents said they wanted to be pure crafters. That's not a handful. YOU are the minority, not Jenden.
Turn your own arguments around. People in the pure crafter camp also want new combat droids. It was your camp's focus on powerful combat droids that forced DH into being.
I've seen this coming for a long time, which is why it doesn't really bother me. But get it straight - it was the fringe people pushing for more combat droids, and more powerful combat droids, that caused DH to be necessary. It wasn't the rational people on either side of the debate that forced the issue - it was the irrational group pushing for uber combat droids that made the Devs believe that Droid Engineers as a whole wanted uber combat droids.
Kollos wrote:
People in the pure crafter camp also want new combat droids. It was your camp's focus on powerful combat droids that forced DH into being.
I've seen this coming for a long time, which is why it doesn't really bother me. But get it straight - it was the fringe people pushing for more combat droids, and more powerful combat droids, that caused DH to be necessary.
Uh, no. FYI below in bold...
Quote from TH in the In Live Forum:
The alternative is to stick put a "droid handling tree" in with Droid engineers. The confusion came in because over the past few weeks, DE's have stated they would prefer to be a crafting profession. In the shakeout, it seems the issue has many angles.
'Nuff said.