Droid Engineer Archive

Well, you would think that they could get the actual profession designers to post their own notes to the Profession Boards without having to go through Holo or Q-3PO, but that's their problem. I don't think a week is too much to ask for. 6 weeks? Over half the people playing this game would leave the game before 4 weeks were up. It's less that it's only been 7 days, but that we have had no response at all while other professions have had multiple posts and threads.

I also think that it wouldn't take that much time to have a write up of intended fixes and changes that's updated weekly. And I mean one for each profession, that's stickied to the top of page one. It should take all of 15 minutes a week to gather that info by the people that are making the change, and have it to someone to be posted.

And I know Holo's stnace on not posting ETA's because of the possibility of not having it ready by then, but we need something.

Slytheone, I'm glad your customers can go a month or more without feedback, but from a tech support angle, the customers that I've supported have demanded updates hourly, and even every 15 minutes. So, to me, 7 days is a very long time indeed.

No, I'm not demanding changes right this minute.
Yes, I understand that they are busy.
However, I still think communications to Professions should be at least a weekly thing.

i think you're doing a great job... you've held up a lot better than i would have

I have sympathies for the developers. I don't envy the DE designer at all right now. The difference between DE and other professions is that other professions have specific bugs that can be fixed and their profession will be fine. With DE, even if everything in our current tree worked perfectly as advertised, we'd still be a class bordering on uselessness. They're not telling us anything because they don't know what to tell us. DE as a profession needs to be taken back to the drawing board. It didn't receive adequate playtesting in Beta, and honestly, the profession falls flat.

Look at how easy it would be to completely eliminate our profession: Already Probots could be eliminated, because there's no reason to choose one over a creature pet. Re-enabling bounty hunter droid terminals is easy enough. Let architects craft their own storage modules for crafting stations. Let doctors create various levels of "trauma kits" that function like medical modules without the droid. Let Artisans create crafting "field experimentation kits" that function as limited-use mobile crafting stations.

These are all tiny, trivial changes which would completely remove any need for DEs as a profession, and in many cases would solve the same problems in much more sensible ways than having a droid sitting around that passively enhances your skills just by virtue of the fact it's sitting there. All these applications have been put into droids just in an attempt (imo fairly weak) to justify droids' existence, and it shows.

The thing is, it's Star Wars, and you can't have Star Wars without droids. But it's also an MMO, and you can't have a game system that needs to contrive ways to justify itself to players. If something doesn't stand on its own merits, making up ways to force players to use it doesn't make it any better.

I really think the way to approach the problems with droid engineers is to start by pretending it's not Star Wars. Pretend it's just some arbitrary science fiction game where you'd like some players to be able to make robots, and every player to be able to use and interact with those robots in some fashion. Rather than taking droids as a given, pretend you're going to have to sell somebody on this idea. What would these robots do for players? What little touches would make players say, "COOL. I need one of those." What could you do to make these robots a novel game system that would distinguish this MMO from other sci-fi MMOs out there? Then, after you design an earth-shatteringly awesome profession, one which would by itself sell the game, THEN you start swinging the nerf bat at the design, to make sure it balances with other professions, doesn't violate EU continuity and whatnot.

Droid engineers (and their users) could be designed to be a veritable god class, and I agree from a gameplay standpoint that that shouldn't ultimately be allowed to happen, but I think the key to designing the class is for early drafts of the design to go wild with the possibilities and then whittle down to something reasonable. I present this in contrast to what we actually have, which seems to have been built from a completely opposite approach.

I agree they could make droids do a whole lot of things, making DEs very powerful -- and that such design work takes time. However, why not start with a couple of basic things that, to me, seem obvious, and that we know they are capable of doing quickly:

1) Allow people to have more than 1 droid deployed. Why NOT make it the same as a Creature Handler? What's the logic in the restriction? If it's to prevent people from deploying droids in battle, (and somehow they don't want droids deployed in battle, though they don't mind people deploying lots of creatures), then limit the droids people can deploy to 1 battle droid and 2 other service droids. However, there should be no MORE restrictions than those found on a creature handler. I want lots of droids running around my house, acting busy.

3) Take away perma-death. What's the point when creatures don't permanently die? This is a start, and can be implemented quickly. Later, they can make them die, but allow them to be repaired, which is the logical conclusion.

4) Restore Probots to their former strength. Again, what's the point of the nerf, IF they allow creatures to become so much MORE powerful? I just don't follow their line of thinking: "droids should be weak and destructable, while animals should be strong and immortal."

With these simple changes, (which have previously been implemented), then DEs can have an important role in the SWG economy, WHILE additional functions are designed for droids. This is Star Wars. Droids do just about everything that people do.

I work in the support side of the field as well. I can tell you. If my system went down, and I didn't have an answer in 15 min as to why I wouldn't be working here any more. Thats my end.

Now, Once i have a reason to the problem (Usually some broken code.) I contact the programers (or their help desk), and expect them to give me some comunication asap. If not I light a fire under their butt and contact the next person in line. I do this untill I have a fix or answer to when a fix might be available. Remember my boss wants an answer in 15 mins. If my system goes down my customers are unable to use the services I provide. Which in turn cost my company money. So, They better know something quickly even if its we are working on it and think we haveisolated the issue. (Even if itsnot the truth,they said it, and I can take it to my boss and save my job.)

They can easily undo the things they did in the last month in regards to Probots and Perma death. It shouldn't take much time at all to reverse nerfs that were in place to begin with. They said the reason they nerfed Probots was because a newbie could obtain one of these and be unstoppable. What happens when a CH trains up a creature that is tame 15 and has the same ham the pre nerf Probot had. The same imbalance. Thediffrence is thatit took longer for the CH to get to that point, where the Probot was out within days of release. Other then that there is no diffrence,and I don't have to be a creature handler to enjoythatcreature. So, you can not say that the probot was Urber. It had 3k ham when it was released to the comunitiyin beta and no one said anythingprobably becuase they were all running around with Ranacors.

So, yes the devs owe ussomething even if you don't think they do Sly. We are the customers, and where I come from your customer not just some of your customers but all your customers deserve the same treatemeant. Therefore if they are not going to tell us what we should expect or what they are working on currently then none of the other professions should recieve this information. Especially, since they have CH devs, and BH devs, and DE devs (You get the picture here, If there is teams of devs for each profession I would like to know who is leading the DE devs and why are they allowing this profession down?)

As for what they posted last week (7 Days ago) was basicly.We don't know how to fix your class maybe you should give us better ideas = Not only are you paying our wages but you shoulddoing our planing as well.

Granit its better for them to listen to the comunity then continue with their lame ideas like perma-death. This is the problem Sly. They are not fixing our class for us. They are fixing our class to aid otherclasses. The priority they have shown us is well disturbing to say the least. What was the rational thought processes behind Prema Death?

Slythesteve,

Sorry but you are so ill-informed. As I have been saying from the beginning anything that spews forth from Holocron or Q3PO regarding anything beneficial to DEs is a utter lie. Yes I am saying that, it's true, read any of the past threads. Hell, check out on the main page, regarding the radio show. They said on the air, Droids from Ep 1 and 2!, Yet why are they asking us what we want? Its a plain and simple stall tactic. Everything stated is vague and 1 liners. Basically what I am saying is,pure bait and switch, total BS, with a fly on top lie.

If you notice the other professions get detailed, totally laid out information, stats, you name it, they got it. Us? Nerfs and broke crap, took them 5 friggin days last time for all modules to work, for christ sake a entire profession rendered useless for 5 days! Thats plain sick, morbid in the head wacked out thinking for a entire team to let a profession to have NOTHING. Its just frustrating as hell that for almost 2 months and we haven't gotten 1 real answer to what the hell is going on.

Sintrosi, you rock bro, stick with it man, keep telling the man we will not accept his oppression. DE 4 LifE

Thanks Sintrosi for all your efforts.

I had a CSR respond in game to a ticket that had beenfixed weeks earlier, (timeliness? close their own tickets maybe?) he asked if he could do anything else while I had his ear. I told him to have the DE Dev read our boards. He actually stopped and asked what I meant. So I explained how we had One visitation where Holo asked questions that the community had alreadyanswered previouslyandwith great detail many times, indicating no oneActually reads our boardbut us. He said he would relay my request to his supervisor. Reading now how they lock threads, I'm surprised I wasn't locked up in game too. =P

I don't expect fixes yet, I don't expect posts on When things will be fixed, but I expect some reply, some communication, something to say, they READour correspondents reports and they have some concern for the DE community. Silence will ALWAYS lead to suspicion, mistrust, and disconnect, the answer ... communication, doesn't have to be detailed, volumes, in depth explanation, just Honest attempts to communicate.

Slythetove -

Hey, guess what? I write software for a living too.

Course, where I work, we have an SEI level 5 rating, track our bugs, and communicate with our customers. When customers ask what a ship date will be, we tell them. If we are going to slip, we tell them as soon as we know!

SOE's customers may not be a single million-dollar client, but rather, many little clients. However, they still owe us professional courtesy.

Sketh,

My whole point is that they have already been professionally curteous. It's been 7 days guy. Be serious. 7 Days. People are stomping their feet like children. It's silly.

7 days. If my client sent me e-mails every day saying, "when are you gonna ? When when when!!?! I've waited!" after I asked them for major feedback I'd laugh at them. I hope your clients are more reasonable than the people up in arms after waiting a week for more info. If not, your boss is terrible at his job of managing expectations.

/Agree Sly 100%.

Sintrosi you are doing a very good job, we need you, please stay !

Since his promotion, Holocron begins to communicate more (on SWG Discussion forum though).

Remember the enchanter,rogue and wizard at the beginning of EQ;we will become a very fun,complex and powerful profession.Devs are also looking in giving us the ability to gain DE xp by taming our droids as CH gain CH xp by taming their critters as our grind is terrible.

Be confidents.

I gave up even trying to make any type of droid now for almost a month.

I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS TIME TO THANK ALL THE DEV'S THAT THINK THEY GAVE US SO MUCH ATTENTION TO THE LAST PATCH!......YOU SUCK.

For one of the most valuable things in the galaxy that we always associate with the films (droids) they sure pass it off as nothing at all.

Droids suck now, and the only way to make them even usefull is get rid of crafting stations how important is crafting in the field? POINTLESS

How about a droid that could actually do something for you maybe actually craft! not just act as a crafting station on wheels.

MORE COMBAT DROIDS. any at all i dont care what they are or what they look like just make them.

I am extremely mad that this profession has been just over passed as oh they can wait, but they don't even have the guts to post or even email the **edit** correspondent to make her break the news to us. That is just sad!!!!!!!!!

If i wouldn't have payed for my year already i would have put this game back on the shelves until creature mounts at least. But since i was so willing to stick up for the DEV's and say they will fix things in a matter of time they have sure proven me wrong.

And one week later Holocron has posted even more info. I told you guys it would come. Please meter your reactions a bit more with reasonable expectations. It does no good to yell and scream at an overworked developer about how they suck. Yes I'm working on Saturday...


http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=394421

Give them a little bit of credit. 7 days... and more info came.