Droid Engineer Archive

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Thunderheart wrote:

Well, I'd like to understand the change of heart.

Way back when, when I asked, DE's proclaimed that they were a "crafting professions" and not a "combat professions". Correspondent aside, this opinion was driven by post on this board. I see a big change of heart now.

What's your motivation?

This is an important thread. Off topic posts and rants will be deleted.

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There has been no change of heart. It sounds like a rather large assumption was made "way back when" and that no one ever bothered to check to see if the assumption was valid. This is one of the few topics on this forum that Droid Engineers as a whole have been reliably against for as long as I have been here (September).

We are a crafting profession and a significant number of us want to remain that way. That much is correct. However, that in no way should be read as an endorsement of a new Droid Handler profession! Every time the topic of a new Droid Handler profession has come up, it has been resoundly beaten down. (And I'm one of the more-or-less neutral people on the subject.)

As a whole, we want to remain crafters. We would like to see new utility droids that we can make, use,and sell to a wide range of people. (If you need suggestions there have been several exceptionally good threads on the subject here on this forum.) We also want new combat droids that we can make and sell to a wide variety of people AND ALSO USE OURSELVES. We would also like some kind of unique droid that only a Master Droid Engineer can use - a perk, as it were - though the exact design of this droid is left unspecified. (Some would like for it to be a utility droid, others would like for it to be a combat droid, and still others don't seem to care as long as the droid exists.)

If this is not possible, we would like to know why. Is there no otherway to add new combat droids than to create a new Droid Handler profession that very few of us actively want? Why can't a certification system be implemented? Can you not add new utility droids for some reason? Or is it just a lack of ideas?

We can help. The Droid Engineer community is full of good ideas (in addition to some really whacked ideas) and good people who just want to make the game better. We just need to know where our limits are and we'll come up with more ideas than you could possibly ever implement.

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loomis001 wrote:
whos we? i support the DH idea

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Mapai wrote:
One nice compromise would be to give Master DE the use of 1 DE specific Combat droid(could also be used as a DH). The DH proffesion could still have more types and more power droids so combat people would not flock to DE to gain the use of the DE combat droid, as those points would be better spent on DH. But the DE still have something Cool that we can use.

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I disagree. In poll after poll and discusion after discusion, the majority of DEs have stated that they want to be able to use all the droids they can build, except fro skill-based droids like BH droids or medic droids (unless they have those skills). Whether we get an extra, DE-onlydroid is another matter and not as important as beign able to use and sell ALL of our droids.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Sketh wrote:

This is not a change of heart.

Please see Drashak's cert system proposed here:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=52473

THAT is what we wanted, not a droid handler class.

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That is probably not possible, though I will find out.

Droid Certs wont work because there are so many combat class combinations that some one will inevitably find an uber-combo with a powerful droid.

Faction Droids are planned, but they are down the road a bit.

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Understood. So just work the numbers carefully. Take it one step at a time. Start with low total 'Droid Levels' allowed for Elite professions, and if that turns out to be a bit low after a month or two, prop it up a little.

Remember that most of usaren't even assuming that our best combat droids will be as powerful as a CH pet!

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Kollos wrote:

As a whole, we want to remain crafters. We would like to see new utility droids that we can make, use,and sell to a wide range of people. (If you need suggestions there have been several exceptionally good threads on the subject here on this forum.) We also want new combat droids that we can make and sell to a wide variety of people AND ALSO USE OURSELVES. We would also like some kind of unique droid that only a Master Droid Engineer can use - a perk, as it were - though the exact design of this droid is left unspecified. (Some would like for it to be a utility droid, others would like for it to be a combat droid, and still others don't seem to care as long as the droid exists.)

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Wow. Here we go ... /agree

lol!

If we can't have a cert system then I suggest we simply get several Lv10 droids and forget high-end combat droids. Give us other usefull roids instead. I think several suggestions have been made. Droids that can slice, droids that can hold more items than a back-pack, higher-end surgical droids, and so on and so on. No one wants a sure-to-be nerfed droid handler proffesion.

Oh and TH, you really hav not been paying much attention if you thought we wanted a DH profession.

just to keep ideas together, here is an idea i had that i posted earlier:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=53082

Thunderheart wrote:

Well, I'd like to understand the change of heart.

Way back when, when I asked, DE's proclaimed that they were a "crafting professions" and not a "combat professions". Correspondent aside, this opinion was driven by post on this board. I see a big change of heart now.

What's your motivation?

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I see no change of heart!!

We want to be able to use the droids we create. All of us, even the only-crafters want that ablility.We also as awhole wantdroids to be available to all players. Wefigured that a certification system would be a balanced way to do that. This have been an on going thread forover a month at least.

If this is the way you tell us, by posting on the Weekly Forum Discussion Thread, and not even here in our own forum, then that is another reason we as a community are angry. We feel just as if you slapped us in the face. Even other Professions, BH, and even CH have posted how sorry they feel for how this was handled.

Actually what the whole DE community wants more than combat droids is BUG FIXES. And it seems we won't even be getting more than a smattering of fixes that were minor and non-issues. The only one that may have importance is the Socket Cluster issue, and it isn't clear how that is being addressed. Now it even seems that there will be no "Droid Invasion" either.

I really don't think you or the Devs care one bit what we think. We represent a small fraction of the SWG universe and since this is a business for you and the devs, the decisions will be made looking at the bottom line, not what we want. Balancing play and combat is all well and good, but not if it impacts on getting new players and accounts, right?

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Thunderheart wrote:

That is probably not possible, though I will find out.

Droid Certs wont work because there are so many combat class combinations that some one will inevitably find an uber-combo with a powerful droid.

Faction Droids are planned, but they are down the road a bit.

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Ok, first off let me say that this is not a change of heart. As a few have already posted, I would say that it is accurate that a significant part of us claimed we are a crafting class. I would agree with that. I would also say that if we DEs want to do combat (whether it were droid-enabled or not), we would/could pick up a combat class as well. Does that infer that what we want is a DH class? No.

We have almost ALWAYS (and reasonably unanimously) have asked for a cert system. Now, while I can see why Drashk's system may not be possible to implement (crosses a lot of profession and skill boundaries, somewhat complex,and the system may just not be set up to handle that), the fact is that there already is a cert system in place for weapons. Take a look at the whole Marksman/Rifleman/Carbineer/Pistoleer tree. Certs are in, and they work. Sure anyone can use any weapon, but if you pick up one you are not certed to use, it is just not the same as using a certed weapon. Not even close. And that is how it should be.

Now, whether we use Drashk's well thought out system, or something more simple along the lines of the weapon cert system, the same premise should be true and could absolutely work: Sure you can, as a total noob, pick up a Droideka and wield it. But being that total noob, you stand a very good chance of it turning on you and attacking and incapping and deathblowing you. And the droid deletes itself from your datapad. Why can that not happen? Or you're mid-way through the skill tree and you pull out a droid that is certed for the next skill level but not the one you are currently at. So the droid comes out, you say attack, and goes "Yipe Yipe Yipe Yipe" all the way back to your datapad. Unlike weapons (which just work regardless of your cert level, but to a much lesser capacity), make non-certed droids either just not work, or have some x% chance of working anywhere from mildly to wildly incorrectly: not attacking when it should, retreating to your datapad, disappearing from your datapad, attacking the nearest group of mobs and handing the aggro to you, attacking YOU instead of the target, etc. It would give a newbie/un-certed typePLENTY of incentive NOT to purchase and use a Droideka if every time he calls it, it gives him a free ride on the Deathblow Express.

What I think I am hearing (and I hope this is not the case) is that the underlying game system is not capable of applying a cert system to anything other than weapon-class objects. I realize that the Droid system uses the same system as pets, but droids just aren't pets. Pets don't have crafting stations. Pets don't hold stuff for you. Pets don't repair other pets (when it works at all, that is). To the players running around in the game world, creature pets and droids are very different entities. While pets don't have a cert system per se, there is certainly code in place for preventing low level CHs from calling high level pets. Yes, that is all contained within the CH profession--but could it not be done where you just pick a tree and add the "DroidLevel +5" to it? For example:

• Marksman skill A, level I = droid level 10


• Marksman skill A, level II = droid level 15


• Marksman skill A, level III = droid level 20


• Marksman skill A, level IV = droid level 25


• Rifle/Carbine/Pistol skill A, level I = droid level 30


• Rifle/Carbine/Pistol skill A, level II = droid level 35


• Bounty Hunter/Commando/?? skill A, level I = droid level 30


• etc.

Not as well thought out or as articulated as Drashks system, but it's flat and I would think relatively straightforward to implement. Is this completely unreasonable and/or impossible? Are we, as a group, in the minds of you and the SOE devs, being partially or completely unreasonable? Is it not worth exploring? Has it been explored, or was this just an issue of "This is what SOE wants to do, so this is what we are going to do"? Tell us what YOU think. Please.

It seems to me that what happened was this: the DEVs, from one meeting to the next, discussed the possibility of higher-level combat droids. Eventually the concensus was formed that there were two ways to go: either make the new combat droids DE-only, or keep DE as a crafting only class and introduce a new class for handling droids. At this point it's choice A or choice B, so they bring it to the DE community andask, "Do you want to be a crafting class, or a combat/crafting class?" Our response was, as TH stated, that we mostly want to stay a crafting class. So, based on the DEVs previous discussions, they say, "I guess that means we're doing a DH class."

The problem here is that while we were discussing the problem, we were also discussing solutions to that problem, and that part seems to have been overlooked. Furthermore, I think that the above question was posed to us without fully communicating the ramifications.

Now obviously I'm making a lot of suppositions here, but I doubt I'm far off. FWIW I agree with TH that certs would be abused somehow by someone (and once ONE person does it, everyone will be doing it) but it's upsetting that so much discusssion was overlooked.

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Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:

Wow. Here we go ... /agree

lol!

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I've said it before... Satan's wearing ice skates.

Seriously though, Thunderheart, Droid Engineers as a whole agree on about 90% of what we want. There are a few odds and ends that spark disagreement - sometimes very loud disagreement - but as a whole we are pretty uniform in our desires.

You guys do deserve props, by the way - you have the order of progressionright. We want bugs fixed first and that's what you have scheduled. Don't let this little SNAFU mess that up - please keep plugging away at the bugs in the profession while this discussion on how to improve the profession once the bugs are fixed takes place.