Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Certs? NO! Make a Pet Skill Tree Never Seen before, something new.
What this game may need is more like a 'default' profession. In that default profession is a droid tree for controling droids, a vehicles tree, for driving basic vehicles, etc
This profession comes free with every template. You then can just spend your 30 points and control droids etc.
Kollos wrote:
Barfalomue wrote:
Exactly. That would keep DE in their profession, a good DE economy, plus add to allowing everyone able to use any droid they want, but keeping the droid's ability to only how much it is used.
Problem: I time and experience to train a droid, then hand it to a new player. New player goes off and solos Rancors.
Solution?
Memory wipe.Becuase of the hugecomitment and conection required between acombat droid and it's owner a memory wipe would be required for the droid to be able to accept a new owner.
Thunderheart wrote:
This might be a possibility.
Assuming you want the removal of the DH profession idea and Droid Certifications is a big combat imbalance, adding a Droid Tree to the DE profession might be an option. It would probably work more like a "sprinkling" of Droid/Pet possibilities throughout the profession though. Otherwise you get a lopsided skill advancement.
How do you guys feel about something like this?
Thunderheart, with all due respect, you seem to have completely misunderstood the intent of this post. He is talking about the droid levelling itself, NOT placing these skills in the DE tree, which would take things back to square one. If I read your post correctly, you are thinking about making DEs the default DH class again. Please clarify before things are misrepresented to the Devs again
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marsx wrote:
How is this involved in the 'skill points' argument the devs have proposed? Im just trying to see how this will help. My droid gaining experience seems more like how the CH profession should be handled then how my killbot 2000 should be.
You fail to realize...When a creature learns how to bite, claw, swing its arm, kick...there is not much left for it to learn. It is a basic-instinct creature which performs the easiest and quickest actions to complete a task. Droids are able to be modified through programming and physical aspects to change this fact. Perhaps you don't want your droid to shoot a laser at someone. Perhaps you would rather your droid send a harpoon through their chest. But, before your droidshoots a harpoon at them, the droid must learn how first.
You can't really teach a rancor or something to shoot a blaster. If it has sharp teeth, it bites. If it has big claws, it scratches. If it has a lot of weight, it stomps. If it has big hands, it bashes. Animals run off of instict, not our wishes.
Thunderheart wrote:
This might be a possibility.
Assuming you want the removal of the DH profession idea and Droid Certifications is a big combat imbalance, adding a Droid Tree to the DE profession might be an option. It would probably work more like a "sprinkling" of Droid/Pet possibilities throughout the profession though. Otherwise you get a lopsided skill advancement.
How do you guys feel about something like this?
Talk to Drashk about this... This is the real debate DEs have been having for the last 2 -3 months.
SomeDEs say they want a CH arm of the profession, some say they want to be crafters and want no such thing.
The bottom line result we came to is this: DEs want NEW combat droids to sell (not R2's with duct taped laser beams). We wouldn't mind a DE droid advantage of some type, but NEED new droids to sell as well. If you put in new droids and make them DE-only, you are doing us no favors...we are getting no more sales.
However, if you give the droids to everyone, that causes balance issues. After MONTHS of discussions, the compromise we finally came to is that it doesn't make sense for a novice entertainer to get a 5k HAM droideka, but that a Master TKA/Master Pistoleer/Master Smuggler combination would be aided (but NOT unbalanced) by a 5k droideka. THAT is the reason for the cert. system...it reserves the more powerful droids for character setups where the power doesn't make as much of a difference.
loomis001 wrote:
how many times does thunderhearthave to say " Droid Certifications is a big combat imbalance" to get through peoples heads to tell them cert wont happen
Well yeah if your an idiot and don't impliment droids correctly. But we arn't talking like big ub3r droids that can just mow down everyone like the CH with 3 rancors could. There are several things that could be done to make is so combat isn't completely imbalan..... uh I mean more imbalanced than it is now.
Such as... Speed I never once saw a combat droid rushing full steam into battle like a TKM or a Rebel fighting on Hoth for his life. Combat droids in the movies were quite slow, it could be implimented so that if your taking a combat droid into battle the your going to be moving a heck of a lot slower than you would without one. Even Droidika were slow in combat mode, sure they were fast in their travel mode but once in combat mode they were slow, and you didn't see them change back, so give them something like a TEF or Temporary combat flag so that they have to stay out of combat for 3 to 5 minutes to be able to switch back to be able to travel fast.
Knock down, in the movies knocking down a droid would incapasitate it, the droid wouldn't be distroyed but just incapsitated untill the owner could come along and fix it. Also Droids couldn'tswitch to melee combat, they were ranged only, well except for a few practice droids that were melee only but combat droids were ranged only, so you could make them very weak against melee attacks.
And other stuff like that, nothing ingame is imbalanced unless you put it in the game imbalanced. But there are always things that can be done to keep anything you put ingame from being imbalanced.
This idea is interesting but itbrings upa few questions.
Im guessing your gonna have to spend skill points to get skills in your droids skil tree, or is it free?
How many can you own? Whats the CL Limit going to be?
Squidd wrote:
Kav wrote:
NO. this is the same thing as a DH. it would be taking droids from everyone in the game and giving them to one class. Droids should permate every aspect of the game. They should be as plentiful as Vehicles, blasters, and Aliens.
I think that's an over reaction Kav. I don't think TH is suggesting that all droids would be limited to DE, only some advanced, primarily advanced combat, droids. Droids would still be plentiful, especially if the improvements that are to come are to other capabilities of droids in addition to combat.
CH isn't a pure combat class, sure it leans that way, but they tame and train pets, they produce mounts for other players, they produce pets for other players, and they use more powerful versions of these petsthan other classes can. It's a hybrid profession encompassing more than combat. I see DE as being a similar beast, leaning towards the crafting side, we build and program droids, we produce profession enhancing droids for BHs and Medics, we produce general use droids for everyone (crafting stations, etc), and we use more powerful versions of these droids than other classes can.
I didn't think he would be taking my R2 or anything. but it sounds to me that all the cool new droids that all professions have been waiting for will be taken away and given to one.
I am a master weaponsmith and completely understand the inner workings of every weapon i make, but i cannot throw a grenade. I would resent giving DE's this aspect while every other crafting class does not have it. I imagine alot of folks would.
What i am saying is: no one needed to be a new class to get vehicles, even though they made us all more powerfull, i can run missions faster, i can run from danger. and i can still even kite with them. But we all got them because it IS Star Wars. Because anything less would of been wrong to the spirit of the game.
I belive limiting droid use to any specific class would be as wrong. BUT i am not talking about some CL50 tank-droid either. It is my belife that Comabt droids need be no bigger than cl15. which changes thier "balance" completely...
Odysseusa wrote:
Kollos wrote:
Barfalomue wrote:
Exactly. That would keep DE in their profession, a good DE economy, plus add to allowing everyone able to use any droid they want, but keeping the droid's ability to only how much it is used.
Problem: I time and experience to train a droid, then hand it to a new player. New player goes off and solos Rancors.
Solution?
Don't make droids be able to solo a rancor. Why do people always have to assume extremes? Currently we have a droid that isn't worth throwing at meatlumps. TH, the devs, and apparently you assume we want a droid that can "solo rancors." Don't you think there is a CL somewhere in between?
I very much do believe that. Unfortunately, Thunderheart and the Devs seem to equate "new combat droids" with "combat droids that can solo a rancor". Until we can get Thunderheart to stop assuming extremes, we need to make our ideas conform to what he seems likely to assume (given past examples).
Regardless, the point is valid. Having the droid level up with experience does not prevent twinking, which is one of the goals of having a cert system. A newbie doesn't need to be able to afford to buy a fully trained combat droid, they just need to have a friend willing to give them one. A cert system prevents this.
I am not DE but have been watching todays developments.
I like the original posters idea of having a droid essentially have a skill tree like a character and requiring maintenance and upgrades and training from Droid engineers. Players would be more attatched to their droid companions, they would be more customized, and they would take a long time to progress their skills similar to the players advancement, it would be cool to even give them skill points so that the droid could not do every skill possible. If needed for balancing you could just put a flat skill point cost of maybe 25 points or so to allow a player to use one of these droids.
TH seems to be somewhat offtopic and going back to a DE/DH class with the catch phrase of sprinkling the skills through out the DE skill tree. I am not sure what he is really trying to say....
Niklut wrote:
Kollos wrote:
Barfalomue wrote:
Exactly. That would keep DE in their profession, a good DE economy, plus add to allowing everyone able to use any droid they want, but keeping the droid's ability to only how much it is used.
Problem: I time and experience to train a droid, then hand it to a new player. New player goes off and solos Rancors.
Solution?
Memory wipe.Becuase of the hugecomitment and conection required between acombat droid and it's owner a memory wipe would be required for the droid to be able to accept a new owner.
Nice... clean, simple, effective. It doesn't prevent you from selling your droid, but it does prevent you from selling its training.
GamerProX wrote:
This idea is interesting but itbrings upa few questions.
Im guessing your gonna have to spend skill points to get skills in your droids skil tree, or is it free?
How many can you own? Whats the CL Limit going to be?
I would hope they would be free skills to the droid. Available only by the xp it has gained. Perhaps give the droid Skill Points at some time in the future if this idea is ever implemented. Perhaps give it its own set of skill trees...but...we have to start somewhere. A free, basic skill tree would be best at this point. I would want to see something more complex following the space release...as that will open opportunity for droids to become much moreuseful. After all, a Creature can not survive in space, right? LOL.