Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: The Only Viable Alternate Future
CapnSteve wrote:
I'd also like to point out that they'll never change the prerequisites for a profession. What would you do about the people that have the profession but don't meet the prerequisites? Do they give all DEs 2 weeks to master artisan before they lose their skills? I don't think so.
Then allow the combat droid capabilities to have two checks in them - master artisan and the DE skill level. That way, you could be a pure crafting DE, or you could be a DE with the combat skills. This way, you don't have to move the prerequisite skill from engineering IV to MA.
I support this plan wholeheartedly. I've never been a crafting only DE, and at this point, I think if we try to hold that line, we're going to end up with the DH. An across the board cert system, while what we probably all agree would be best, is going to be too difficult for the devs to implement in a reasonable amount of time. It would involve too much "cross dev" development and would push combat droids back too far and would not happen until after the space expansion. I can't wait that long.
*Crumples up Correspondents hat.*
Wood, as I stated in my PMs, the idea that using Master Artisan as a gate will not work. There are a lot more DEs out there that do not have Master Artisan. Changing the prereqs of an existing profession will not work because there are just too many factors involved. It can not happen without either a) automatically awarding everyone Master Artisan status, that currently is a DE - which could result in many people gaining more than the 250 skill points or b) DE that do not have Master Artisan will lose all of their DE skills - which could result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of DE XP. It won't work.
No matter how you try to limit the Droid levels and how many can be used, people will still pick up DE just for the combat advantage. Making DE appear to be less powerful than CH will only make it so that there are more DE/CH combos floating around than any other profession combo. As I stated before, there isn't a viable way to gate this since there isn't a way to change the prereqs of an existing profession. The 20-25 DL limit is what what has been suggested all along, as I recall.
Crafting droids is not as complex as may be thought. I find Armorsmith to be a much more difficult system to work with, due to the large number of varied resources needed. Bio-Engineers have a much more complex system then the DE and their numbers have increased quite a bit since their system changed.
Comparing Hologrinders to the Combat DE that will flock to the profession is a flawed concept. The Hologrinder is there to grind and move on, while the Combat DE will be there until the next flavor of the patch hits. Many of the Combat DE flockers will slowly drive Droid prices down and at the same time will increase the new of droids in circulation. Even if the DE numbers are only doubled, this will effectively kill the Droid sales market. Doubling the DE numbers would actually increase the number of acitve DE beyond the number of Weaponsmiths. I see the actual number of Combat Droid Engineers raising to well beyond the combined numbers that BEs, WSs, and ASs have. Even if less than half of those people actually offer droids for sale, the Droid sales market will be ruined. This goes against everything that the DEA has been in favor of.
I appoligize, but from my point of view, what you propose is not an alternative at all, but rather a death warrant to the future of the Droid Engineer profession that I wanted to be a part of.
I respect you very much, Drashk, but I disagree. Woody's "alternative" is how it should have been all along.
Drashk wrote:
I appoligize, but from my point of view, what you propose is not an alternative at all, but rather a death warrant to the future of the Droid Engineer profession that I wanted to be a part of.
I like this idea, but I'm going to step in to my role as devil's advocate.
Under this system, we'd end up with two types of DE's (not counting hologrinders). Type I would be the person that wants to build and sell droids. Type II would be the person interested in becoming a DE for the combat bonus. There's a lot of gray area here that I'm going to throw out for the purpose of discussion; I'm just going to look at the extremes.
So, Type I grinds up to DE and finds that they can't sell the best droid they can make, because they are the only ones certified to use it. Therefore a tremendous amount of their potential sales are going unrealized.
Type II wants to fight. They want to fight with droids. So they craft. They craft and craft and grind and grind and finally get to DE and their combat droids.
My fear here is that this will kill the profession. Type I people won't stick around because theyhave a bunch of really great schematics that they can't do anything with because they can't sell the final product. Type II people would get tired of grinding through MA and DE just to get the combat bonus. Plus, the enormous amount of skill points one would have to invest to get to DE for either reason wouldn't be worth it to either type. People would abandon the profession in droves.
This would be different if the OTHER droids that we could make were actually valuable enough to be highly sought after, but the fact is, right now they're not.
What it should have been and what it are now are two different things.
The big blancing item that Woody's entire idea hinge around is changing the prereqs to Master Artisan. If you can figure out a way to make it so that those that don't have Master Artian will not get reamed, then this might be a viable option.
"Second, it gives no further combat ability"
I hate to break it to you Woody but I'm MA and was MDE I also had enough points for Master Swordsman. An elet combat profession. I couldn't even begin to tell you how powerful I would be with MDE, MA,MS and two high level combat droids at my side.
Sorry Dev's aren't going to allow that.
Your proposel is nice and I'd rather have combat droids in DE buteven withMDEand MA rquired there are still to many points left over for an elet combat class.
They could still sell probots, medic droids, BH droid, crafting, item storage and utility droids.
Nelus wrote:
any futur please, but DH seams to be needed as many of the remaining DEs seam to be so fixed on crafting only, that they would stop playing just because there is a ability in their tree that gives them the posibility to kill a durni or something. so they have to be isolated from droids and remain just crafters, as they dont want to use droids. so we need another profession to use droids cause otherwise the pure crafting DEs would have a hard time with a product noone buys.
There is another issue here.
Right now, we are saying, limit the CL of the droid pets to 20-25.
But think - what is gonna happen in a few months? People are going to start saying, hey, this isn't fair, either nerf the CH pets, or bring the DE pets up to spec with them.
Then, we are right back to having the power-killers picking up MDE to have their uber droid pets...
I am not advocating right now - I want to think a bit on both Dashk and TheWoodies proposals - more, just thinking out loud.
Drashk wrote:What it should have been and what it are now are two different things.
The big blancing item that Woody's entire idea hinge around is changing the prereqs to Master Artisan. If you can figure out a way to make it so that those that don't have Master Artian will not get reamed, then this might be a viable option.
There is an alternative.
Make a Droid Handler profession to control our two or three new combat droids. However, have it be 1 single box that requires Master Droid Engineer and Master Artisan as a requirement.
-norax
Not if the DE numbers swell to triple of what they are now, which is a pretty good estimate, if you compare it to the number of people that have drifted around CH. Asking to turn DE into a combat profession will have a negative effect of allowing anyone to sell droids and at the same time have combat abilities.
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
They could still sell probots, medic droids, BH droid, crafting, item storage and utility droids.
Debunking the myths:
There is no combat advantage of having to take master artisan so there are no dabblers
After the grace period, the DE profession is simply locked off till they aquire master artisan. they can drop it or leave it till they achieve the right pre-requisites. No damage, no losses, no problem
We get to use our droids, we get to sell droids.
There will still be CL 10 combat droids for sale
The DEA is due to be dismantled anyway when whatever changes occur. I have already spoken about this. One must realise that the DEA was not created to be an overwealming power, but to consolidate what little we already had. It was formed out of necessity because there are so few of us that the voice wasn't being heard, and the very few DEs out there were lost and without guidance. It was built to give the poor downtrodden DEs a chance to hold each other up in unity. When we are viable enough a profession to stand shoulder to shoulder with others (say, AS, Smuggler, Pistoleer, or whathaveyou) then the DEA would naturally fade into memory.
Even if weincreased the amount of masterDEs on Ahazi by a factor of five, we'd still have 200 clients per DE.We could multiply it by a magnitude of ten and still have 100 clients per DE. There are far less DEs than can meet the demand, and the market should be the balancing factor, not nerfing.
The choice is clear. With this we master two professions and get what we want, or the other way we master 3 professions to get what 90% of us don't want.
And if it isn't powerful enough, they can always experiment with raising the CL of droids. best to start cautious and move our way up.