Droid Engineer Archive

That was very well stated Sintrosi!

I think everything you said makes 100% sense. Alot of the reasons why Devs have difficulty monitoring these boards is because they can't sift through 1000s of posts and get to the good stuff. Keeping some things under wraps is also important from the perspective of not getting people's hopes up. My question is this: Do you think this will make the difference? Do you see good things in the future for all classes from the "secret" stuff that you have seen?

Make us proud!

_-AA-_

Thank you, Sintrosi.

I was very dismayed by the changes you mentioned, but certainly not because of you.

My issue is with the general atmosphere it is going to create, because not all corrispondents are as open and honest as you are.

While I am very concerned about what this is going to mean for the future of the game, I am pleased that as DE's we have you.

Audio

Here's my two cents. I think that now there is a private correspondant board, that we should make sure that the Droid issue is always at the top of the list. Post every day saying "Where are the droid fixes" or "When will we see these issues fixed?" Make it so that they can't ignore the problem. Let them see that there are quite a few people languishing and let them see often.

I'm sure there are more than a few here who would be willing to write up a dozen different generalized posts that could be copied and pasted to save you, Sintrosi, from continually having to come up with new ways to say the same things. But just keep hitting them again and again until they have no choice to respond.

Course this is my two cents. As such it's only worth that amount

To be honest, I am most concerned with the stacking of modules and module clusters, and they should not allow it. Sort of fits in with what you brought up, certain modules in certain droids.

I totally am with returning thre Probot back to its pre nerf stats. As always Sintrosi you are doing a great job

My number 1 hate is that the ENTIRE refinement branch is totally useless, experementation makes no difference whatsovere to the finished droid and coloured chassis don`t make a coloured droid.

Surely the coulouring can`t be that hard to fix?

Here here Ranx!

I like the post and would like a couple other things mentioned. Personally I dont really care that resource quality doesnt matter ... but I really would like experimentation and cusomization to work.

There is already pet decay with both droids and pets ... they just last a long time. When vitatlity drops to 75% so does pets / droids stats.

Personally I would like to see cl15 pets go away as an option and replace with droids of that abilty ... protobt of say 2200 ham hits for 150-160 with a .3 to hit attack speed of 2

Zanter 4424 Droid Engineer

S'Seth Master Creature Handler / Master Pistoleer

Great post Sintrosi.

I agree that not having a viable market is the number one concern, and that it is currently for a lack of good combat droids. For the immediate this should be the number one concern for DE.

But it's just a part of the larger problem, one facing all the crafting professions. Lack of resale. Once you have your heavy harvesters, your house (furnished), and your factory, do you need to buy anything ever again from the architect? Do you need to buy another droid, another gun from the weaponsmith once you've got your elite weapon? How about replacing that duster when it starts getting old and threadbare? There needs to be a system in place where eventually you will need to replace all things, this includes creatures. Pets do grow old and die, (and their not quite as easy to repair as a droid or a tank might be). The part of this problem that affects us is that unlike EQ, pets aren't disposable and free. Droids are obviously expensive, creatures require either money (to purchase) or time (to learn tame, find the creature, and tame/raise it). After the time and effort put into getting a pet you don't want it to go away too quickly. The only two obvious and balanced solutions that I can think of are either permadeath, or a balanced item degradation. Nothing else will satisfy both sides and still provide us with repeat business.

This touches on another problem, that is novice sales. There is nothing a novice can make that a master can't, which isn't the problem. The problem is that there is no reason to go to a novice if there is a master available. If I'm a medic, and want a droid so I can heal everywhere, why would I want to buy the droid from a novice, when I can run a few missions and have enough to buy a really good one from the master? The medical module will be better, I'll perform better, and the droid will perform better all around. The only consideration would be cost, between running a couple of missions and DE's lowering prices just to get sales, anyone can easily buy the better droid, and it makes sense to since you only have to buy it once. Novice sales will become viable only when there is a method of guaranteeing repeat business, on a fairly regular basis. (That's generic foods at the store, it's not always as good as the name brand, but it's a lot cheaper.)

The other problem, of course, is master artisan. I haven't noticed any weapon, armor, or food components in their necessary to become a weaponsmith, armorsmith, or chef. Just droid components. So to be effective a DE needs to get master artisan. So not only do we have to eat up extra skill points just to fully utilize our profession, but we need to come up with the apprenticeship exp. as well. Twice (counting master DE). I realize some people claim to have had no problem with getting app. exp., but I am forced to wonder how much of that is from training others in combat skills, as opposed to artisan related ones, and how many of the people who have maxxed out their app. exp. bars are "hardcore" players, as opposed to casual players. Personally I'm going for DE, architect, and a bit of merchant, so I'm hoping for an influx of crafters who can't make up their mind and keep surrendering skills and deciding to try it again, over and over.

After those, everything else is just details. For example, not experimentation doesn't mean much if there's no market, and no repeat market for what your experimenting on. If nobody's buying, who cares if what you make is better than what someone else is making. It only comes into play if they are buying, and coming back to buy again and again.

Thumbs up! There's a list a mile long but you nailed the big ones.

You've worked very hard as the DE correspondant, and for that many are grateful. I have complete confidence that despite some silliness from the Devs about keeping posts secret, that you'll keep doing what's best for the profession as a whole.

Not meaning to be a detractor but I personally have always saw as a non DE , DEs as the more Utilitarian pet maker side of the coin Being a BE having DE pets better than what I can make will screw our chances at a market overall since we can craft pets with modules in them . our pets only attack ....well and wig out or look stupid half the time LOL I think yes the DEs need better combat droids but not better than aBE can make. *sigh* why do the 2 pet crafting classes have to be the most messed up =/ Have fun you all and keep you chin up , us BEs are since we one day are expecting a fix LOl

Good work! However, I think droid color is very important. It needs to be mentioned. Of all the things they COULD do, this one is necessary, and partially implemented already.

Thanks!

Sintrosi, you've done a good job hitting the highlights.

I'd like to point out a couple things though. Of course, the long-term fix to the market problem is gradual decay followed by permadeath if not attended to (with attention that should require a DE or a tool made by a DE). In the short term, just un-nerfing probots would help. I don't know about everyone else, but I have a hard time keeping my harvesters running. I'm not strong enough to the 20k missions on endor, or even the 5k missions on yavin 4. The existing nerfed probots aren't nearly strong enough to help me complete them either. The missions I can do seldom top 1K credits, which isn't practical in terms of building and harvester maintainance. I can't sell my probots to save my life, and it's hard to sell any other kind of droid. So I don't have any cash flow (except when I can group with stronger players and get a cut of some mission rewards), meaning I can't keep sufficient stocks of resources that I need, meaning I log on, stare at the screen for 5 minutes, guildchat, and then log off because I don't have anything to do.

Even if the prenerf probots were back and I was able to have 2 of them out at a time, I'd be able to do the yavin 4 missions, and that would be a start.

A better, long-term fix would be to segragate droids into function-based classes. As several people have stated, make certain modules go into certain droids, and have very few modules that can go in a "general" socket. Medical modules go in medical droids, weapons could go in combat droids, crafting station modules could go into crafting/slicing droids, etc. All droids should have some function that makes them useful. **edit** good is an MSE toaster droid if it can't make toast?

Like I said, combat droids are the most important to me right now, because running missions can substitute for sales when the market is bad. There should be droids that are equivalent to CH animals and only controllable by DEs. Droidekas come to mind as a DL30 or so (and then I drool over the thought). As someone else mentioned, the stick-man droids from episode one would be welcome, as well as the assassin droid that now appears as an NPC.

This profession was foobar'd out of the gate, and the one good droid model (probots) was nerfed. A good short-term start on fixing this profession would be three things:
1) un-nerf the probots (or give us a stronger combat droid of some kind)
2a) let DEs have more than one droid out
2b) let DEs call/store droids anywhere, not just in residences or cities. CH can do it, why not us?

Colby Ribry, DE (droid designer)
Syn'Di'Cate City, Naboo (between Theed and Keren). Radiant Server.