Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: DE Plan CONCERN Thread
And one more thing: once again SOE, you're giving the CH all the love. We got a conceptual design document. The CH got an actual proposed new skill tree posted, complete with real numbers for what they'd be able to do and control. Even the non-CH CLs were posted.
Come on. Instead of keeping people in a class, develop the alternatives. "Star Wars: Creature Handler" is getting old.
- The suggested implementation of combat droids won't increase our sales one bit. Combat stuff is what sells in this game and the DE's need a part of that market!
- No new models even though droidekas and IG-88's are already in the game. 'Just' adding combat modules feels like the easy way out. In any case, combat droids will have to be on par with or better than than the best CH pets and be able to tank, otherwise this is a waste of time.
- Expendable items, take power and wound damage, need to be replaced, etc. While this is good and could keep sales of these items up it has to be done carefully. If droids come out being complicated to maintain and wear down too fast it will make them less attractive.
- We need another droid function targetted towards crafters. Increased survey range module would be a best seller if they wear down slowly. Should be easy to implement too.
Did I read it right? Combat modules that only DE's can use? Um, I could care less, I want more chassis/modules that are useful for other people, so I can continue to be a crafter and sell stuff.
I guess instead of getting killed once a month by critters while on a harvester run, it will now only be once every 2-3 months, because I will have an uber droid to protect me.
Anyone on sunrunner have a jedi holocron for sale? I could care less about keeping my master DE class, and may as well start a grind on another profession.
Shini
Sorry Sin, I know you asked for a shorter reply but I got on a rambling roll.
My inputs/arguements:
1a. Glad to see Medical Droids being considered to receive real Heal Ability. My opinion is this ability should be limited to the Surgical Droid. I don't want a MSE with a med module to stick me with anything, they pick up many germs that close th the ground. 
2a. In reguard to Combat Droids, long term-- nice to know something is being considered; short term-- a module that would speed up the current Probots regeneration rate (say by x10) would be a nice quick "fix." Doing this would make the 825-ish HAM, 53-57-ish damage more tolerable as the droid would be able to stay in the fight longer and there would be less time to wait for the droid to heal. I make this suggestion as it seems easier to make this happen than the DEVs coming up with a Droid Stimpak.
1b. I did read a few posts from Medical PC's about their concerns reguarding a Medical Droid being able to heal and they didn't think it was a good idea. This is understandable. On the surface I would almost agreetoo (Scout/Ranger camps have a healability too)but, in an effort to achieve some balance, I would say again, limit the INATE ability to Surgical Droids and to limit the INATE Heal Ability to wound pak A's and Stim pak A's. Also, allow the Surgical Droid to be manually loaded with Wound Pak B's, Stim Pak B and C's. The Manually loaded items would be bought from the Medicial Classes, of course, and maybe allow a double rate in UXP for Medical Crafting XP for Pak's used in a Medical Droid. Lastly, set the timer for droid heals to be 1.5 against a novice medics (0-0-0-0)'s heal time; this gives the medic profession time to get some more XP. I do agree it would be in bad taste for a PC to take away XP from a medic/non-Master ADV Med PC by keeping the droid out.
1c. I don't believe a PC would want to go into PvP with a Surgical Droid out due to the low HAM of the droid. I don't see the Stim-ing of Incapped PC's by a Surgical Droid being used alot. If it is used to much, then the DEVs would have to tweek Al creatures/mobs to target the droid too.
2b. The ever debated Combat Droid question...the new pun of Droid Handler...to cert or not to cert, THAT IS the Question. A "new profession" and "droid certifications"canbe avoided. Going on the assumption that 5-6 New Combat Droids will be added, my suggestion on how to limit who gets to use them and who doesn't would be for the DEVs to impliment a means of checking how many DE Profession Skill Points a PC has spent. Currently with the CH's, all players get up to level 15 creatures (which will change in near future). To get higher level creatures they have to advance in skills (CH 1-1-0-0, CH 2-2-0-0, etc..) and the skill tree is already in place for CH's. For possibile future Combat Droids and if it is based on Skill Point counting( the Novice DE (0-0-0-0) will have spent 6 Skill Points, Novice DE (1-1-0-0) has spent 16 Skill Points, Novice DE (1-1-1-1) has spent 26 Skill points, plus the 15 for Novice Artisian and 14 to get to Eng 4), surely this would allow all Artisians a fair oppertunity to join in PvE and PvP without having to spend the 43 Skill Points to obtain Novice Scout (4-0-4-0) and the 6 points for Novice CH. Granted, an Artisian PC with or without a Weapon Skill Master doesn't have to have pets but, it does limit theirability to participatein PvE and PvP.
Droid Customization- This needs to be revamped to allow customers to see either the color pallett we use or their droid changing colors before we click ok on our tool.
Binary Load Lifters- Allow these to have 100 Storage space. Was moving shop the last few days, and would have been nice to have one of these.
1. The Devs don't seem to be paying attention to what the DE community wants. The plan addresses very few of our main issues.
2. Just how does this plan acutally help DEs provide a marketable item? There are as many changes in this poorly written (half of the sentences are phrased in highly confusingways)plan that will hurt droid sales as will help them.
The Force be with you Sintrosi, you'll need it. 
* Add the Droideka Schematic. Don't dumb down its HAM or damage dealing ability. Make it the same as NPC Droidekas. Deed can only be tamed and controlled by Master Droid Engineers.
* Change the Power Droid schematic to require a Light Power Core instead of a Power Core.
Scratch my previous thread, early morning still half asleep.
Item 1: "Only DEs can usecombat type modules on droids. " My concern here, nice for our personael use, but nothing more. We cant sell these to non DEs is my concern.
Item 2: Again, nice for us, but not the rest of the community or customers. Yes now we will be able to take out more then one droid, but would also be nice if others could as well. Would be better for our sales, as more people would be willing to have more then 1 droid.
Item 3: I was hoping for this. Was pretty frustrated creature pets could be healed while out. But Droids needed to be stored.
Misc: Like the fact they are considering having power droids power up harvestors.
MSE droids as remote bombs.
Adding more droid commands would be great. Right now creature pets can do two tricks, droids can not.
- Theyre making us a combat hybrid class, allowing us more than one droid out at once (how many is more than one exactly?) but no mention of allowing us more stored droids? The 5 I can currently store is totally insufficient for my needs now, let alone when we are a combat class which will need to switch combat droids around.
- Can we clear up some vagueness? Could we also get some clarification on what you mean by 'Multiple combat modes for droids, Anti-droid reactions and Anti-creature reactions'?
- No mention of new droid types whatsoever. I know everyone else has mentioned it pretty much but the more voices, the louder the noise made.
- Medical droids using stims. Potentially replaces a medic in a group although you will (presumably) have to buy stims from medics to put in them.
- No clarification on the combat droid changes. It was a little vague at best, are these truely only usable by DEs? Not exactly increasing our market is it...
- Power droids can be used to power harvestors but they wear out over time. Well they'd better last a pretty **edit** long time! With radioactive power selling for as little as .6 cr/unit on the eclipse server, I'm hoping the cost of a Power Droid wont make it totally useless? Plus what is the point of an Advanced Power Droid in this situation? Lasts longer?
- Droids taking power and wound damage whilst being used. At the rate droids currently use power (1 battery every 20 minutes) I'm hoping you're going to tune it down if youre adding yet another penalty for using the droid, especially if the droid repair systems are now going to use consumable items whilst repairing. People complain about having to keep repeatedly buying batteries now, if their droids are constantly taking wound damage whilst being used and theyre gonna have to pay to get it repaired every day or so droids just arent going to be used. Period.
- Mouse droids exploding. While funny, its not exactly star wars. Plus if you only have 5 spaces in your datapad, people will just keep them in deed form and tame them as they need them, totally circumventing the restrictions on where youre allowed to call droids.
- Decoration mode and personalities. We're not that particularly interested in fluff... we want functionality.
- My main concern? That this pretty vague and flimsy plan is going to take 4-5 months to implement, and after that we will be 'Finished' and we will get no further attention for a year or so cause other professions need looking at (and I'm not disputing that). If we dont shout loud that this is insufficient now, it's gonna be a long long time before anything happens again. We need to make effective use of the Devs time while they are looking at us and not settle for border-line ok changes.
Sorry I've rambled enough. Hope this helps Sin
1: Combat modules...ok fine but if they are going to beable to be put in any droid, that is just compounding the current problem we have. Which is that you can get the same use out of a cheap mouse droid that you can out of a high level droid just by using the same modules. I want distinct differences between droids so ALL of them will sell for useage not just for looks. Example= make it so that only surgical droids can use level 3 and up med mods....make it so only reapair droids can actually repair....give people a reason to NEED the more resource expensive droids.
2: Non DE's must be allowed to use a droid and an animal at the sametime,or Combat droids must be on par with level 10 pets. Otherwisepeoplewill just stay with the animals and this will always be P-mon wars.
Only two things needed (trash the rest of dev post)
One or two combat droids(new Models)Exploding Mse's are Embarrasing.
The ability to have 2 droids out regardless of type.
Vaulnuu
NOONE WANTS EXPLODING MSEs or SHOOTING 3POs!!!
THATS NOT OUR STARWARS!
Concerns:
- Too much emphasis on combat droids, when many (most?) of us actually just wanted more types of useful droids.
- No timeframe, so, now they have a plan that will start being worked after mounts are live, and player cities, and maybe at the same time as the space expansion... will my grandchildren see these changes?