Droid Engineer Archive

It was one of Drashk's last posts as correspondent. Here's the thread:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=70109

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Daker-Naritus wrote:

I can't figure it out, and TH's "well, droid armor has always decayed" dribble was, as you know, unhelpful.

TK?

Anyone?

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I've done some reading on this on the Corr. boardsand I understand much better what he was saying.

Basically, from what I can glean, Droid armor worked differently (pre-change)than all other armor. That's now be 'unified' into the current system, such that all armor is now the same.


I think what TH meant with 'always decayed' had more to do with the way damage was 'soaked up' (taken) in the longer term. With the older (current on Live) system, the armor would start taking a set amount of damage and eventually become useless.

With the new system will soak up the same level of damage basically forever, whereas (now) you get a finite amount that goes down and down and down until it's effectively not even running.


Does that make sense? I'll try to work up something that explains this better. The armor 'thing' makes sense to me much more now and, keep in mind, this will all be affected by ongoing HAM/combat balancing and changes.


/bow

Respectfully,

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TheRealTK421 wrote:


With the new system will soak up the same level of damage basically forever, whereas (now) you get a finite amount that goes down and down and down until it's effectively not even running.

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Kilarny wrote:

The explanation makes sense, but...

...I never noticed my Probot's armor becoming less effective over time. Has anybody noticed this?

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I had a conversation with Drask on TestCenter a couple nights ago about this very same concept. Basically, this is much more noticable with the "pre-nerf" probots and their symptoms of eventually "loosing their armor rating"which I've heard mentioned a couple times.Not many, but a few. What happened was that people who owned these actually used them a lot, and their armor eventually decayed over a long period of time. The reason we havn't heard or seen of this issuemuch isfor two reasons:

1) the Great Droid Perma-death: Many "pre-nerf"'s were lost and therefore made it difficult to see in the long run.

2) the "newer" 820 HAM probots had such a high armor rating...that it took a extremly long time to decay. It has been said that they were rated with the same armor as a CL 200 mob....however, some of us realize that medium armor +40% resists is only a fraction of that. What it had to do with is the amount of decay the armor would receive after each fight. The 820 HAM probots are also used much less now than back when "pre-nerf's" were used to help take on higher end content.

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JavelinCatcher wrote:

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Kilarny wrote:

The explanation makes sense, but...

...I never noticed my Probot's armor becoming less effective over time. Has anybody noticed this?

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I had a conversation with Drask on TestCenter a couple nights ago about this very same concept. Basically, this is much more noticable with the "pre-nerf" probots and their symptoms of eventually "loosing their armor rating"which I've heard mentioned a couple times.Not many, but a few. What happened was that people who owned these actually used them a lot, and their armor eventually decayed over a long period of time. The reason we havn't heard or seen of this issuemuch isfor two reasons:

1) the Great Droid Perma-death: Many "pre-nerf"'s were lost and therefore made it difficult to see in the long run.

2) the "newer" 820 HAM probots had such a high armor rating...that it took a extremly long time to decay. It has been said that they were rated with the same armor as a CL 200 mob....however, some of us realize that medium armor +40% resists is only a fraction of that. What it had to do with is the amount of decay the armor would receive after each fight. The 820 HAM probots are also used much less now than back when "pre-nerf's" were used to help take on higher end content.

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I agree.

I have a couple of Pre-nerfs and one of them indeed lost armor rating at some point - I remember posting about it and everyone saying, "nah, didn't happen to me" - I thought it was a system-wide thing, not based on some invisible decay as we know now.

I think it's a shame to make droids like "everything else" - instead of finishing the unique armor system they seemed to intend. We all lose this way.

Audio

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Virtanis wrote:

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TheRealTK421 wrote:


With the new system will soak up the same level of damage basically forever, whereas (now) you get a finite amount that goes down and down and down until it's effectively not even running.

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Okay, I understand that... what was the reason why Armor6 modules are getting nerfed to *no armor, 20% resists that can soak up damage forever* compared to *medium armor, 40% resists that can soak up damage forever*?

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The way I interpret this and Drashk's post is:

The Medium Armor, 40% resists was supposed to decay over time to become ineffective after taking so much damage. (This may even have been the reason behind the "shifting resists" we were seeing in droid armor.)

So basically, because the medium, 40% armor wasn't decaying and was basically permanent, it was too powerful and needed to be removed.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, because the math basically proves the probots were at least close to balance with CL 10 Biopets, if not underbalanced a bit.

I may be wrong here, I dunno.

/shrug

Um i dont think there would be decay on armor since there is no armor

WOOOHOOO go droid invasion

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Sinnare wrote:

Um i dont think there would be decay on armor since there is no armor

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There is armor...it's just different (with P7 and beyond).


/bow

Respectfully,

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

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duncje wrote:

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Daker-Naritus wrote:

Daker, you're backwards on this. The armor was supposed to wear out since beta. They apparently pulled the degradation of the armor (or it plain didn't work), and we basically had droid armor that was extremely more effective than it was supposed to be.


More effective than it was supposed to be for a period of time..but it reduced and reduced and so on over time. That won't be the case with armor after P7. The damage 'soaking' will basically be infinite. So, no decay on armor to fix.

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AudioOrgana wrote:

LOL.

Nobody ever really noticed the decay in the first place.

The damage "soaking" doesn't matter if the armor is absolute crap, the bot won't last long enough to even test.

I know you have to put a shiny happy face on things, but this is a great big NERF, any way you cut it.

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This is a big NERF, however it is one of those things that had to be done to bring Droids in line with other aspects of the game. I don't agree with the degree of what was done, but I do agree that Medium 40% armor was over powering before the changes in Publish 7 and would only become more prevalent had it remained with the HAM changes. I believe that if the Community pulls together, under TK's guidence, the DEVs would be willing to increase the resistances at some later point. One of the last posts that I made on the Correspondents forum was a request that the DEVs look into the balance issue and think about how much of a huge change this is. Something else that I wanted to point out to the DEVs was that BE pets are still more attractive due to not having the dependency on a Battery every 40-60 minutes of use and not having a buff system for droids.

I think that if the Community stands together on suggesting an increase in the resistances, the DEVs would be willing to take into consideration the above mentioned aspects of Droids vs Pets. I think that allowing an AR is a bit overpowering, for the current droids, but could be increased in higher level droids some months down the line.

Or better yet have no cap on them. If I choose to put 2 level 6 Armor Modules in a droid it should have twice as many resist %s as the level 6

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Drashk wrote:

I believe that if the Community pulls together, under TK's guidence, the DEVs would be willing to increase the resistances at some later point.

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Yup. This is one of the items that I have on my working list of things to keep an eye on.


Remember all, there is a lot of combat/HAM balance stuff in the mix right now, development-wise, so there may (again, I stress may) be some room for this to be adjusted. And, the Devs did not tell me this was the case. Don't take this as a "It's gonna happen" thing...just a hopeful item on my side that I'll be working to stay on top of...


/bow

Respectfully,

It's the "adjustment" that's bothering me the most: gutting the Armor6 module's Medium armor rating and 40% resists. If they're priming and tweaking droids to fit them into the "big scheme" of things, I'd really like to know the aspects of the "big scheme" that deal with >CL10 droids. That'sone of the reasons whyI posted that question thread yesterday for the Dev's.

• Are they just tweaking CL10 droids to fit into the mold that CL10 BE pets are?

• Will there ever be at least light armor ratings (like >CL10 BE pets have)?

• Will there ever be >20% resists (like BE pets have)?

• If "the big scheme" of >CL10 droids isn't the reason or motivation for these changes, then why nerf so overwhelmingly the Armor6 module (an MDE made item)?

• If "the big scheme" of >CL10 droids isn't the reason or motivation for these changes and >CL10 droids are not being considered at all, then why jam DE made CL10 probots into the same pet formula that the BE's usewhen they already have the ability to make highly useful >CL10 pets? Why risk angering every player who has ever bought an AR2, 40% resist probot just to fit it into a system that scales higher than what DE's will ever be able to make?

(edit: spelling)

Message Edited by Virtanis on 03-12-2004 12:00 PM