Droid Engineer Archive

Oh, if I hear about one more "olive branch" I'm going to throw up.

I swear, some people are so wishy-washy around here lately - "We love the Devs!" "We hate the Devs!" "We LOVE the Devs!".

It's like we're at a meeting for manics who's opinion changes everytime they hit "submit".

The bottom line is this (andconsider mymemory"wiped", this is all from today: we can talk about community and get a half-dozen dev posts about positive attitudes from Devs, while at the same time a) they blame us because they didn't properly balance how a fix was going to happen, and wanted the outcry to continue against us, and b) THERE IS A HUGE STEALTH NERF/BUG/FIX with Probots, and that thread remains unanswered by not only TH, but our Corrispondent as well.

Oh, I forgot - I am the one who scared Drashk away with my negativity, right? Well if we had positive actions by our leadership and those in charge perhaps I, and others, wouldn't feel so slighted all the time which leads to that "negativity", which I simply see as action-reaction.

It's very telling that we have gotten no response to the thread about this HUGE change to how we make Probots, not knowing if it is a BUG, a FIX, or a NERF - because no one will tell us - yet we get replies all over the DE forum from TH, and even Drashk decided to stop lurking long enough to post.

But not for the ISSUE AT HAND, for happy-touchy-feely community stuff.

And you wonder why people get upset? If you aren't upset, you aren't paying close enough attention to what is going on.

Audio, who promises to take each day on it's own because the same things happen constantly making consistent prediction of the outcome painfully easy

---

TheRealTK421 wrote:

Absolutely. You seem to understand where things are 'at' right now.

But most of us don't. All we've got are the aforementioned promises and now your esoteric little hinting.

Thanks. It's the guilty veterans that I hope will take the lead for the up-and-coming guys and girls to follow.

You know what, fine. I'll cave. If TH comes through, as he's stated, tomorrow with some good information that doesn't look like someone hasn't been listening again, then I'll start being positive again. But again I state that I am not holding my breath.

It's pretty unfortunate that it affected the Archs but....what do ya do?!? Tear your hair out?

Well no, see, that's the thing. We're not just tearing our hair out, we're trying to get somewhere but sick of the runaround. Sitting complacently and doing nothing gets nothing accomplished, but even negativity is an attempt to get somewhere. Even if it's not the ideal direction.

---

/flips the bird

Disrespectfully,

---

Sketh wrote:

Just becuase we offered the olive branch doesn't mean that TH should come in here being condecending. TH does NOT understand crafting. He may have played an arch for a few days - that is a far cry from playing a crafter / merchant for a month or six.

I still have hope. But like I said in TK's thread, give us a solid foundation to work with the devs on - not fluff, or anti-player rants. Give us some substance, and we will be the most constructive community on the boards.

---

It seems there is a disconnect between what the community requests, and what the gamers receive.

We ask that DSCs use droid experimentation, since they're in the DE tree, and we get a massive side-effect, the change in material requirements. Then the architects are informed that it was those DEs who asked for the change... Ummm, ok.

Earlier: We were told that DEs had clearly requested a Droid Handler profession. We were loud enough (and, dare I say it, negative enough) that we got this particular poorly-considered idea dropped, though once again, it seems to be a side-effect of what we really are asking for, that we be able to make better droids.

What frightens me is what sorts of other unanticipated side-effects may crop up. Will introducing new droid modules inevitably require that droids go perma-death again? Will the community at large then be informed that the DES had requested permadeath? Will the new combat modules, in the interests of balance, require that the droid owner be allowed to use no specials? Will the fighters be told "I"m sorry, but that's what the DEs wanted"?

There's too much information that is just plain missing from all this, and I for one don't think it's quite right that the players and profession advocates then take heat for decisions we did not know about.

---

AudioOrgana wrote:

Exactly.

This is why I feel people have been so wishy-washy. One day they are posting rants "breaking down" the Devs statements, the next day they are calling other people "ranty" and espouse to have had some cosmic change in perception that has seemingly totally erased their memories. I'm sorry, I don't jump on bandwagons since they usually just crash when everyone else is looking for the next-big-wagon.



Look...if you want to take 'shots' at me, that's fine. I can take it. I doesn't change my attitude about wanting to stay upbeat so that these DE boards get positive again.

Don't you want that?!!?

I know that you have been waiting forever for us to get attention, communication, whatever.

Don't you think I have too?

Honestly, I don't know where all the animosity comes from here. I get the impression there would be more people happy if I busted out a nasty break-down on every TH or Dev post. Well....I sorta tried that for awhile.

Where'd it lead us? Did it make things better?

---

/bow

Respectfully,

After a good night's sleep, I guess this is my followup thought on the matter.

When talking about the change to the DSC, TH responded with (paraphrase) "Blame the DE community and rant at them, not me". And in fact, he didn't address the real issue - that the pertinent stats changed. The experimentation was not the point - we didn't ask for the relevant stats to change.

What he should have said was, "We wanted to make droid experimentation more important. We have a long ways to go on this - but this was a step in that direction. This was not intended to nerf architects - but to make an entire tree on the path to Master DE mean something. As far as the stats change went, we felt that having conductivity be one of the relevant stats was appropiate for this item, as it is a droid engineering item, and they are electronic components."

See the difference in tone?

If TH wants us to be constructive and positive, he must also do the same. Encouraging one group of players to rant at another will not do any good.

---

Sketh wrote:

Encouraging one group of players to rant at another will not do any good.

---

---

TheRealTK421 wrote:

Did we "ask: for it? Not explicitly, no. The fact that this change was a byproduct of fixing one of our bugs is...unfortunate.

---

But, to imply that we asked for it is just insulting to the DE community.

I can't blame TH for not liking us at this point - we are problematic for the devs, and as TH is their spokesman, we have taken a lot of our frustration out on him.

Still, his response was unprofessional.

Furthermore, I will still maintain that if the change in which stats matter for the components was indeed unavoidable that the software must be a true mess.

In any case, this is not the type of post that will make a foundation for us to be constructive on. As I have said many times, it is up to the devs to give us a foundation upon which to be positive and constructive. Coming to the DE forum and making us look bad to architects ain't a good start.

TK421 -

I think the perception "The Squeeky Wheel Gets The Grease" is mostly the reason people (including myself) attack the Devs and those that tell us to"Be Happy" . Before the big Nov uprising, they would barely talk to us. But the professions that werebitching the most, got the attention. We sat back and watched everyone get attention, all the while remaining broken beyond belief. So in reality, they brought it on themselves. Even now, DEs get more attention than before, even if it's just putting down insurrections and re-promising something new.

I apoligize for any personal attack I've directed at you. In my enthusiasm, I forgot that it was the bigger picture I was upset with, not any individuals.

I'm not going to reopen my accounts at SWG. I dont feel you've (DE's) really won anything yet. Maybe at a later date, but I'll probably be too involved witha new MMORPG. I've suffered through growing pains of other MMORPGs but our profession was a real poor excuse for a game that is nolonger beta.

Guess I'll go back to making real droids (hobby robots) and let you guys and gals fight the good fight.

Good Luck to all you Droid Engineers

/salute

---

TheRealTK421 wrote:

---

Kollos wrote:

A little more clarity in the response to Architects and this might not have ever blown out of proportion like it did.

---

Okay...I really agree with this.



Kollos, thanks for being something of a voice of reason here.

---

---

Droid_Engineer_Rho wrote:
It seems there is a disconnect between what the community requests, and what the gamers receive.

We ask that DSCs use droid experimentation, since they're in the DE tree, and we get a massive side-effect, the change in material requirements. Then the architects are informed that it was those DEs who asked for the change... Ummm, ok.

Earlier: We were told that DEs had clearly requested a Droid Handler profession. We were loud enough (and, dare I say it, negative enough) that we got this particular poorly-considered idea dropped, though once again, it seems to be a side-effect of what we really are asking for, that we be able to make better droids.

What frightens me is what sorts of other unanticipated side-effects may crop up. Will introducing new droid modules inevitably require that droids go perma-death again? Will the community at large then be informed that the DES had requested permadeath? Will the new combat modules, in the interests of balance, require that the droid owner be allowed to use no specials? Will the fighters be told "I"m sorry, but that's what the DEs wanted"?

There's too much information that is just plain missing from all this, and I for one don't think it's quite right that the players and profession advocates then take heat for decisions we did not know about.

---

I don't think the devs were trying to blame the architect nerf on us. I think it was just poorly spoken.

However, I think we should get used to the fact that the things we are asking for are going to cause reprocussions throughout the game and its professions. In a complex game like this the butterfly effect runs rampant. A droid bleeps on Tatooine and on Corellia you get rain instead of sun.

The devs have stated numerous times that part of the problem with working on droids is that they touch so many other systems in the game. I think the DSC issue is just the tip of the iceberg. I can only hope the devs can be more forthright in the future when these kind of side effects pop up.

That being said, how come this wasn't caught on TC long before it came to live? I've got a character on TCbut he's a newb so there's no way I could have run these experiments, but it seems like someone would have figured this out...

In closing, I just want to add that we shouldn't let this diminish the positive attitude that several members of this community are trying to rebuild. I've been saying for a month that we need to let by-gones be by-gones and start being constructive rather than destructive, and I'm glad that TK421 has been able to use his influence to get the community to do just that. We'll get a lot more done if we work with the development team instead of against them. We're probably never going to get all the information that we feel we should have, but let's work with what we've got and give feedback instead of rants.

---

Sketh wrote:

---

TheRealTK421 wrote:

Did we "ask: for it? Not explicitly, no. The fact that this change was a byproduct of fixing one of our bugs is...unfortunate.

---

But, to imply that we asked for it is just insulting to the DE community.


Obviously, it wasn't meant to be insulting. He simply didn't use the best words possible to explain what really happened. We put the DSC fix (for where the XP should go) on Gorantoth's list.

They saw it on the list and said..."Yea, we can make that happen." So, they fixed it.

Is it unfortunate that the side-effect of this requested bug fix came up? Yes.

From a certain point of view, we DID ask for this change. We just didn't know that what were asking to get fixed was going to lead to this change. There's a big difference there.

I can't blame TH for not liking us at this point - we are problematic for the devs, and as TH is their spokesman, we have taken a lot of our frustration out on him.


I don't think that TH dislikes us, per se. I think that he does believe that we're overly negative and have a pretty short hair-trigger. I understand where that comes from, everyone. You all know me to have the shortest of hair-triggers around (or...I used to, anyway).

I'm starting to feel a lot like TH must these days.

I put out the call for us to try to stay upbeat and positive and, from many DE vets, I'm getting lambasted over it. I think I am starting to see how the Devs feel (and why they don't want to post in negative boards).

You wouldn't want to post too much either if the great majority of responses were rants, flames, gripes and 'break-downs'.

---

/bow

Respectfully,

TK -

Reguardless of whether or not he meant to blame the DE's, it came out that way.

His job is communication.

If he didn't understand the issue, he should have taken time to learn.

No, I wouldn't want to post on such negative forums, either. However it is their job to do so.

As we both know, this forum didn't used to be so negative. And we both know why it got to be that way.

How can this change? By getting some real posts from devs, not blame, not their version of a flame on players (e.g., you guys changed your mind, you are too negative so we won't do our job and communicate with you). We need substantail posts, like "we can do X and Y, but not Z and this is why",

Thunderheart has already stated that the droid changes won't be "sexy" - and that combat droids were. His mindset as a PvP uber killer are often apparant, and Ihave no doubt that they color his opinions when expressing the DE wishes to the devs.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The ball is in the dev's court to, as the phrase goes "show us the money". Then they will see the positive changes from their paying customers here.