CUEmu - Thread Posts

TheRealTK421

Sat Jan 24, 2004 12:38 pm

BlueMorgoth wrote:

Drashk wrote:

Blue, post the entire thing here. It makes it much easier on me to look it over if I don't have to follow the links first.

/sigh

Ok. If you really want me to post a 7-page treatise here, I will (pst, for once I've managed to make a post longer that TheRealTK )

Not if you count my DE Focus Threads.

/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."

Razor99

Sat Jan 24, 2004 2:23 pm

#28

How bout this, I pay to play a game not to help design one. DH is a load of cr@p. Nearly all of the DEs dont want it.

Go with that and find a solution.

Hopefully city of Heros wont be a Horizons.

Nell2ThaIzzay

Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:49 pm

#29

Here's my idea (I'll post the link in the next post):

1. (Probably in essence a cert system, but one that I could handle): ALL droids usable by ALL players, even the high end combat droids. But make the high end combat droids maybe justmetal shields who can't dish out a lot of damage really, used by normal people. But give some skills to the combat classes in which you could give special "tactics" to your droid, which these "tactics" would make the combat droid more than just a basic meatshield who won't dish a lot of damage. With what I had envisioned, if a 133t d00d starting today somehow got enough credits to get a super combat droid, sure, he could have it, but it really wouldn't do much for him, seeing as though he doesn't have the high enough combat points to be able to know how to effecively use it, so in essence, it might deal a little bit of damage, but having no real combat training to program his droid with, his droid pretty much just sits there taking hits, maybe dealing some damage, but nowhere near what the droid is really capable of. Enter Master Commando, who has a lot of combat experience, can train his droid with different tactics according to his own skills, and the droid could then be used to it's full potential. And to make droids be unique, maybe implement some way that different classes could program their droids in different tactics, so that a Master Rifleman's droid might have a different fighting style than a Master Swordsman, so to speak, based on the player's knowledge. I guess as far as droid terminology goes... the owner can "upload" these tactics into the droid's database / brain. Or even a combat module, that the Droid Engineers can make, i.e.; Commando combat module, Pistoleer combat module, TKA combat module, etc..., and then when combat players go droid shopping, they can browse for the appropriate droid to their profession.

This could over balance PvE, and I suppose that's correct, because people with droids would have a much easier time than those without, and you can't raise the difficulty of the mobs, hence forcing everyone to buy a droid, even if they don't want to. So as somebody else also suggested in another thread (sorry, I forget who, and what thread), but how about if a droid in combat would take some mind points away from the player periodically, as suggested, by showing that the player is "paying attention" to their droid. So a Rifleman, who uses a lot of mind with their attacks, might not be able to do as much damage because they are losing mind on paying attention to their droid. For the different professions that require different part of the HAM, maybe droids could have different effects, so that it becomes universally balanced among all combat types... and maybe having a droid would give them an edge in fire power, but at the same time limits them by making them, in essence, weaker, therefore not unbalancing PvE.

Marr'Taan LeBeau
Imperial Mercenary - Professional Contract Killer

"Death is my business, and business is good"

Bounty Hunter, Creature Trainer, Droid Engineer, Rifleman
Former Musician and band member of the Tyrenian 3 (Marr'Taan LeBeau, Cale Amossoo, Bari)

Nell2ThaIzzay

Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:50 pm

#30

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=55806

I am also with the idea that was quoted above mine, as a money sink for repairs and stuff. I have -always- been all about that.

Marr'Taan LeBeau
Imperial Mercenary - Professional Contract Killer

"Death is my business, and business is good"

Bounty Hunter, Creature Trainer, Droid Engineer, Rifleman
Former Musician and band member of the Tyrenian 3 (Marr'Taan LeBeau, Cale Amossoo, Bari)

Lochar

Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:11 pm

#31

Drashk,

I love your threads and such but be honest with us, is this effort to post ideas even going to be looked at? I mean just seeing what the idea of the devs came up with to 'fix' DE is mindboggling in itself , espescially when you consider that THEIR ideas never came from the DE community. I am not even sure where they have been getting feedback to think we wanted uber combat droids and a new profession. Plus their replies to utility droids being better was its going to take time.

Chef got a whole new revamping , and DE got some bugfixes and part of the listed bugfixes were fixed last patch I thought. I am sorry for being bitter but it just makes ya weary posting your thought and seeing others posting along the same lines somewhat and then watching a response thats a full 180 degree turn from what we posted.

droidecka

Sat Jan 24, 2004 10:39 pm

#32

For starters, let me just echo the comments of some others: If giving us combat droids meanscreating a new profession that will have to be tweaked and adjusted in future publish(es), don't bother. That will simply take DEV time away from addressing the many DE bugs and wishes. I don't believe having combat droids was at the top of most DE's wishlists anyway.

Having said that, I most like the cert system proposed in "A Droid Cert System that Works":

Lodacai wrote:

Droid Certs will work, and here is how ...

Combat Droids:

Assume there are 4 levels of Combat Droids... Light, Medium, Heavy and Jugernaut.

For every existing Elite Profession, place the Certs for each Combat Droid type in the existing skill tree.

However, the Cert is NOT automatic. When you complete a skillbox that includes a Combat Droid Cert, it provides the OPTION to gain the Cert. If you excersize that option, it costs skill points. You can't excersize an option for a higher level Combat Droid unless you've exercised the options for the lower level ones first.

Again, exercising the option to gain the Combat Droid cert costs skill points significant enough that a player could not become a Master Pistoleer, Master Combat Medic, AND Jugernaut Droid Certified.

Such options should have no bearing on the mastering of the profession as it exists, so that if no Combat Droid Certs are exercised, the player can still master the profession without penalty.

... snip ...

Lodacai

If you simply must create a new profession (which I suspect is already the case,making thisall moot), I like IndieTech's suggestion of a Combat Engineer that can use different weapon platforms and technologies. Combat Droids would be only one such platform; it would also provide bonuses while in group andaccess toother specializedweapon types(demolition/artillery/whatever). This would bea new combat support profession similar to Squad Leader but complimentary to it rather than competitive. It would be a hybrid requiring at least Ranged Supp and Engineering as pre-reqs. Alternatively, as a smaller version of this, give the Combat certs to Squad Leader as it makes sense that SL would have the leadership and controll ability.

Gau Galapagos, MA/MDE, Ahazi

GnomeAd

Sun Jan 25, 2004 12:26 am

#33

Drashk, I know this idea makes your skin crawl, but here it is:

Now that the other shoe has fallen...

And we see what the devs are not going to let everyone use high level combat droids, how many of us are willing to reconsider the whole "crafter only" issue? I'd like to propose the following plan for your consideration. It's loosley based upon the idea that Woody put forth after the whole DH thing, but I've added some other things and placed in some balance justification.

The devs are (rightfully so) concerned about balance in the combat area of this game. This is due to the fact that, no matter how much we might not want it to be so, this is a combat oriented game. The weekly story arcs are all combat related, the mission system is combat centered, the devs response and understanding of combat related issues are all much quicker that of crafting issues, and all the content in this game is centered around combat. The majority of the crafters that I know fall into two categories. They either complain about the lack of content or they start an alt who is a combat character. Lets face it, the life of a crafter/merchant in this game gets old real quick. I chose option 2 and started a CH/Pistoleer on another server. If any of you haven't tried CH, I highly recommend it. It's a blast. Now I know why the devs have kept it around even though it's the most "un-starwarsy" thing in the game.

The balancing device the devs have chosen to use in this game is skill points. For every skill or ability you get, there is a skill point cost. Want to be able to heal yourself or others, 15 points for novice medic. Want to be able to harvest resources from your kills and place camps, 15 points for novice scout. Want to be able to call CL 70 pets, spend 106 points and you can. Want to be able to make droids, 92 points it is. Right or wrong, this is the system we have to work with.

The other balancing factor is the player combat capability vs. the MOB combat capability. If it's too easy to kill things, the economy gets out of whack from too much money and people get bored. How exciting is it to know that you can wipe out anything in the game solo? This is the issue that led to the great CH nurf. People were dabbling in CH to get access to high level pets, but the skill point investment wasn't great enough to make them also lose their other combat skills.

OK, enough with the justification and on with the proposal. Make Master Artisan a requirement for DE and give us combat droids up to CL60 at Master DE.

Currently DEs have one major skill. We can make and sell droids. This is a 92 point skill at master. CHs can train and use pets up to CL 70. This is a 106 point skill. To just give us CL70 droids at master is unbalancing and would lead to the ever-present nerf bat. Not only would we have spent less skill points, we would have the other skill of making and selling droids. This would cause the influx of "template chasers" that we are all afraid of and would kill the DE profession. So we offset it with the Master Artisan requirement. This brings us up to 140 skill points. The additional 34 skill points, combined with the CL60 cap will prevent the unbalance caused by us making our own droids. Keeping out dabblers is accomplished by spreading out the CL gains evenly through the tree just like they did with the new CH tree.

Let's face it, there just isn't enough content in handling a droid to justify another profession. You can't tame wild droids currently, and I hope that they never try to implement this kludge just to add content to the profession. You don't get the training XP like you get from CH because everyone can tame droids. Again, I REALLY hope they don't change this. Imagine having to take your R3 to a DH to get it named. Droids also don't start out in (baby) form like a pet, so you don't have the content of witching the little fellas grow. What you're left with is a profession that consists of buying droids from a DE, taming them and fighting with them. Yaaawwwnnnnn!

Sorry, this got a little long, so I'll recap. DE would now require Master Artisan (let's face it, we really almost already do) , Master DE would be able to call a combat droid up to CL60.

Link: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=56671

TheRealTK421

Sun Jan 25, 2004 12:30 am

#34

Lochar wrote:

Drashk,

I love your threads and such but be honest with us, is this effort to post ideas even going to be looked at? I mean just seeing what the idea of the devs came up with to 'fix' DE is mindboggling in itself , espescially when you consider that THEIR ideas never came from the DE community. I am not even sure where they have been getting feedback to think we wanted uber combat droids and a new profession. Plus their replies to utility droids being better was its going to take time.

Chef got a whole new revamping , and DE got some bugfixes and part of the listed bugfixes were fixed last patch I thought. I am sorry for being bitter but it just makes ya weary posting your thought and seeing others posting along the same lines somewhat and then watching a response thats a full 180 degree turn from what we posted.

Lochar,

If it helps to answer your question, I've seen most of the debates, issues and ideas that had 'legs' for about the last 3-4 months (if not more) on the DE threads.

What's being posted now isn't terribly different than what's been there in the past. Similar sentiments, ideas, module suggestions, etc.

Even some very well thought out implementation on combat droids, one by Drashk himself.

That being said...and considering your post...

Do YOU really think that posting more on your ideas will have an impact?

I even ran a poll a while back on restarting the DE Focus Threads. The great majority of the response was...."It'd be super cool and usefull, but probably a waste of time". Take that as you will...

/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."

Leadhead101

Sun Jan 25, 2004 1:32 am

#35

Dang, this is not a bad idea either, infact even better would just be a "Maintanence Fee" like harvestors have. Like if your droid is out, you have to pay 100cr an hour or something like that! I think the devs would go for that since they are hard core onthe money sink thing. Just look at the new rebel quest. Fly to endor, get it wrong, fly to Yavin, get it wrong, fly to yavin again!

DarthChuckles wrote:

all this talk of having to "earn" high-level combat droids makes my head hurt. There are plenty of ways to balance "powerful" droids without requiring certification systems or ridiculous, convoluted, overblown solutions like skill trees or, God forbid, a Droid Handler profession.

Off the top of my head?

Make owning a combat droid a money sink.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario.

Loke Groundrunner, SWG newbie,is given a Christmas present by a long-time player; a brand-new droideka deed (assuming for this example that a droideka is the most powerful combat droid available. no assumptions as to how powerful that is are needed). Loke squeals like a little girl and creates his new droid, then goes out to spank kimogilas, or whatever.

Some time later, his droideka makes an unhealthy sound and falls inactive, out of power. Loke must now buy droid batteries to power his new friend. Oops. Loke's a newbie, and doesn't have a ton of credits to his name, but batteries are cheap so he gets a few.

Eventually, Loke realizes his droid is getting pretty battered, and will need repairs. Let's assume only a droid engineer can make droid repairs using a droid repair kit. Naturally, they will charge for this service. Loke's still broke from buying the batteries, so he forgoes repairs.

Finally, the droideka has taken too much damage because Loke thought it could solo a rancor. The droid's now incapacitated and requires a DE to get working again. Again, Loke's still broke... so it's back to soloing lesser womp rats until he can get enough money to effect repairs.

Sound familiar? It's what we do with vehicles. Vehicles don't require a Driver professor or certifications to use. Everyone can have one, whether they're given to you or bought at a high price (as they are). They degrade, and can only be repaired under certain circumstances. Droids can be a money sink in the same fashion, and they'll degrade much faster since they'll be used in combat, using up both energy (they should drain batteries much faster than regular non-combat droids) and taking a beating.

So you've either got to have a decent amount of cash to maintain your "combat advantage", which is the same as buying sliced weapons/crates full of spices/full composite armor, or even if it's given to you to overcome the initial "startup cost" of buying the droid, you can only use it for so long before your lack of richness catches up to you and your advantage fades away.

More "powerful" droids can cost more to repair (more complicated systems in the droid). For example, instead of a single droid repair kit, you may need a class IV droid repair kit to repair that droideka, and it's a costly kit to make that may only have one charge, so a droid engineer will charge more for you to use it. Different classes of droids, different repair kits. Also, repeat business to DEs. always a good thing. They can also burn up batteries faster than, say, a crafting-station'd R2 since they're doing more strenuous activity.

I also don't think giving a player added combat advantage is too big a deal... it's already pretty tough to solo past a certain point anyway (I'm a Brawler with Unarmed IV and 3/4's of the non-blue cons on Tatooine are red to me anyway), so what difference does it make if the group is six players and six droids or 12 players? you'd want the players instead because they can use skills. the droids... shoot.

in short... no certs. no droid handler profession. just low/decent-powered combat droids that require maintenance as a money sink to prevent "free" combat advantage. more business for droid engineers results as well, everybody can have a droid, no one is letting droidekas solo krayts or nightsisters, and a money sink for "rich" players who don't mind paying for yet another choice of combat edge.

"Nothing would be what it is, Because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise -what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

Servalac

Sun Jan 25, 2004 8:47 am

#36

Ok since i really don't want to see anyone but a DE make and control high droids i better put in some kind of idea here goes

they say a cert system can't work but i can't see why and here goes one medic droids are of no use to anyone real beside medic's or doc's which i think is a good idea but i think they should keep thing along this line Medic droids could be used in this way allow medic's and doc the ablity to place them in a player run hospital or house and let them place stim and wound packs in them you then click on the radia menu to buy the kind of healing you need.

Another one is Merchant allow them to have a higher lvl instead of 10 let merchants in there skill tree work there way up to 20 or 25 i mean i think of rich merchants run around with body guards that could add to the feel of it, i think you could put Politicians in the same boat.

Smuggler i think they should be able to buy R2 unit with mods that help in there slicing i mean i've seen R2D2 do slicing in the moives alot and with that allow them to have an R2 unit with combat mod because R2 was able to defend himself some what.

Artisans if they could have some kind of droid to help with surveying as well as protection let say lvl 15 instead of 10,infact i could see why most crafting professions couldn't have a droid lvl of 15 instead of 10 i mean how could this even hurt the balancing in combat they are talking about.

yes i want to see combat droids come in but i'll like to see more uses for droids than anything else like a repair droid which anyone can own which repairs at-st and swoop bikes and such.

Entertainers they could get a droid which they could place in player run cantina's which when watched heals you BF and mind wounds abut at a slower rate.

Anyway it's 1.50am and it's getting harder to think straight so i'll leave it at that but for the life of me i can not understand why a simple cert system can't work i mean those kinds of droids don't work unless you have the skills needed to work them like 50 in entertainer or in merchant it would seem simple to change the droids instead of making a new profession and balancing everything for combat classes but things aren't always simple i guess.

Lochar

Sun Jan 25, 2004 7:58 pm

#37

Well RTK421,

As you can see by Runesabres posts, its pretty much a go no matter what we have posted and it still feels like day 1 when they started correspondents and asked us what we wanted to see. Its like publish 7 is already slated no matter what we decide but they may tweak it here and there, but the basis is set.

What also is happenening is a chunk of their responses come from the general populace which is no way represent what the DE's want.

Adding DH/DC will just give a target group for DE's to sell to similiar to BE only it still doesnt alleviate selling droids to every tom,**edit** or harry. Sure they can have crafting stations but since they have crafting station effectiveness counting towards crafting alot want to use stations they KNOW are good stats, with droids, no one ever knows.

To be honest the DH part doesnt really bother me so much as the fact that its being born rather than just work with whats there and sprucing that up.

DuckMaestro

Sun Jan 25, 2004 8:01 pm

#38

Duck's Droid Proposal (v1.2)
=====================
Please read this with an open mind. Dont let the first 7 words scar your thoughts

hehe.

1. Redesign Droid Engineer to be a hybrid profession of combat droid controlling/driod crafting. Reshift the trees so that there is a tree for combat droid control, that requires combat xp to gain skillboxes in. This allows for dabbles who just want to have some basic droid knowledge, as well as expertise in handling combat driods. This would open up the combat droid economy because of dabblers, just like the medic profession dabblers who only gain boxes in Medicine Use but not Medicine crafting. These dabblers would not make their own driods, but instead would buy combat droids from the full-time DE's. Also note that the combat tree of DE would consist mostly of DriodLevel+ mods and perhaps a certification or two on some very special combat driods (read: not powerful driods, i mean special driods... special purpose, has vulns)

2. In addition to the DroidLevel+ mods in the combat tree of DE, there should also be a small DroidLevel+ mod given at the master box of all the elite combat professions. This would further open the combat droid market because of this small DroidLevel+ mod. Because of the small mod, people would be buying not just the CL10 combat droids but slightly better and varied combat droids. Additional, just as there are Pistoleer + CH templates (just for example), there could also be Pistoleer + DE templates. The pistoleer would get a small bonus of the DroidLevel+ mod at the master pistoleer box, and the player could choose to further specilize in combat droid handling buy taking up the combat tree in droid engineer. Balance is of course a concern, but balance is always a concern regardless of what plan is chosen.

3. Notes on the economy of DE's. DE's are concerned about selling more droids. I understand that concern, right now droids dont do much. This sytem that i have presented will allow for a larger droid economy because of A) the DroidLevel+ mods at each master elite combat profession box and B) the people who wish to specilize in droids further by dabbling in the combat tree of DE.

4. This solves the problem of DE's not being able to use the droid they make. With the combat tree of DE, a full-time droid engineer would have full access to controlling the droid's it makes.

5. This allows for "special" combat droids that a master DE could *not* call on their own. At a later date, certificates could be granted to some of the elite combat professions which allow for special droids that only that profession could use, but not the DE itself. The dev's could strike a balance between how many droids require certs (read: how many profession-unique combat droids) vs. how many droids depend on only DroidLevel+ (read: how many droids will be craftable *and* usable by the DE).

6. In order to make DE feel like a true hybrid combat/crafting profession, and to keep at least a little something out of reach of the dabblers, i also propose that at master DE box, the DE would get a fairly nice DroidLevel+ mod: a mod greater than that of the DroidLevel+ mod given to the master elite profession skillboxes.

7. note that this entire plan is based on the assumption that combat droids will, in general, be weaker than creatures. There should not be a combat droid powerfull enough to kill a rancor or any other large creature. Combat droids should be a little more fragile than creatures.

8. A side-bar issue: Continuity. We all know that heavy combat droids are illegal by rule of the empire during this timeline. We all know that people break the law. So what needs to be done, regardless of whether or not the above issues and my plan is implimented, is that heavy combat droids need to fall under the new Contraband system.

Please comment on this. Why it wont work, why it makes sense, whatever.

-duck

- Duck

I give up.

Swillholder

Sun Jan 25, 2004 8:05 pm

#39

Maybe to extrapolate off of the individual droid skill tree... The droid can have a skill tree but it costs the Player skill points to add skills. So, If I had some combat skills added, at middle type attack power, it might cost say 5 skill points for the player.

Light combat = 2

Med combat =5

heavy = 7

whatever, and additional attack types (beyond energy) or additional levels of armor piercing might cost additional skill points (for the player)

The point is, the droid costs YOU the player skill points, thus balancing out some of the issues ( i think)

additional modules beyond those already offered in the game, that are more powerful than those available would cost the user skill points.

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