Droid Engineer Archive

SAY NO TO DH!!! SAY NO TO REDUNDANCY!!!

I may be repeatingan idea, and if so I apologize.

The developers are looking for a system to make players 'earn' their combat droids, while making them available to all, yet at the same time preventing a possible 'uber' combination of skills that would nerf the whole system. Ok..how about this:

1) Give level 10 and below droids to everyone (already stated by Devs)

2) Give an increase to 'max droid levels' in Master boxes of all professions.

combat droids will come first cause they can be implemented 10times faster and than the devs will work on utility droids, simply.

all droids are useable by everyone, only combatdroids above lv10 are restricted. giving combat abilitys to strong players for free is not possible.

so we need DH or a smaller tree which will be imbalanced as it will be the only half profession. making DH will be the only thing we will get i say take it instead of nothing.

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Kitsunetsuki wrote:

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Look at it this way: Rather than an entire DH Profession, have only one branch, four boxes, something like this (darn it, I had made up a nice little table, but it won't let me post it):

Droid Warrior
Cert: Juggernaut Droids, Droid Tactics +25, Cmd: /droidcharge
Prereqs -- Droid Strategist, Cert: Droid Warrior Option, 15 SP

Droid Strategist
Cert: Heavy Combat Droids, Droid Tactics +20, Cmd: /droidmelee
Prereqs -- Droid Fighter, Cert: Droid Strategist Option, 10 SP

Droid Fighter
Cert: Medium Combat Droids, Droid Tactics +15, Cmd: /droidrange
Prereqs -- Droid Handler, Cert: Droid Fighter Option, 6 SP

Droid Handler
Cert: Light Combat Droids, Droid Tactics +25, Cmd: /droidguard
Prereqs -- Cert: Droid Handler Option, 3 SP

34 skill points is not a trivial investment. It's half a profession.
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I think this is a fantastic system! As long as the capabilities of the various tiers of droids were comparable to what a player could get by spending an equal amount of skillpoints "dabbling" in CH, I cannot see how this would drastically upset the balance of things. Keeping Droid Handler a mini-profession would make it accessible, but keep it distinct from Creature Handlers (who would still be able to have multiple creature pets, and more potent pets as a result of having a full profession).

I think that a system like this would get combat droids in the game without throwing everything out of balance, add to the market of DE's (although adding diverse utility and functionality to existing droid models is necessary too), and avoid duplicating or stepping on the toes of the existing CH class.

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Droid_Engineer_Rho wrote:
TH,

Someone else posted something I thought was a rather nice fix for this:

If controlling powerful droids necessitated that the user was wielding not a weapon, but a droid control device of some sort, this problem would be VASTLY reduced.

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Thunderheart wrote:

When the majority of players aquire these droids (because they will - - most everyone wants to do better in combat),all player ability will rise, which means the entire creature and NPC system has to be dramtically increased to account for all of the extra player power.

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Well, this is not entirely true though. It would depend on the skill point cost. If it cost 150 skill points to get the ability to call a high end droid, very very few players would elect to do this. If it cost 10 skill points, 100% of people would do it. Probably somewhere in between, there is a point where an intelligent tradeoff could be made where there is no net gain in a players combat ability, only a new option.

While we're talking about skill point costs and combat abilities though, there is still such huge imbalances it's not even funny. Even after the big nerf I've found that by putting a very small amount of skill points into CH still increases my ability to complete missions 2x-3x easy. Putting the same number of skill points into carbineer has maybe increased my abilities 50%, and putting double that amount of skill points into ranger has increased my ability to hunt by maybe 5%. So with such huge imbalances existing already, in a sense it's a bit difficult to argue that a droid handler/cert system would throw the existing system out of whack because it is already so far out of whack.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Lodacai wrote:

Droid Certs will work, and here is how ...

Combat Droids:

Assume there are 4 levels of Combat Droids... Light, Medium, Heavy and Jugernaut.

For every existing Elite Profession, place the Certs for each Combat Droid type in the existing skill tree.

However, the Cert is NOT automatic. When you complete a skillbox that includes a Combat Droid Cert, it provides the OPTION to gain the Cert. If you excersize that option, it costs skill points. You can't excersize an option for a higher level Combat Droid unless you've exercised the options for the lower level ones first.

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Its a really well presented proposal, but it doesnt address basic player behaviors and the overall combat balance.

If you give players the option to have powerful combat droids, most players will take them becausemost players want to have an advantage in combat.

When the majority of players aquire these droids (because they will - - most everyone wants to do better in combat),all player ability will rise, which means the entire creature and NPC system has to be dramtically increased to account for all of the extra player power.

What would ensue is a month or two of all players walking through all missions and mobs with little or no resistance (because of the advantage and making the game world a "battle bots" place) followed by a big nerf (which we know everyone loves) and then we are back to having what should be powerful combat droids nerfed into submission orthe game would have to be completely re-balanced withhigher MOB combat numbers, which makes the game world extremely hostile.

Whenever you consider adding this much power to a game world, you have to consider how the whole environment will be effected.

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In my opinion, combat droids should be a part of the game and on par with CH pets but ONLY Droid Engineers should be able to use and control combat oriented droids. Other droids types should be expanded such as using a repair droid to repair that malfuntioning factory or mineral extractor or your speeder, etc.

No CLASS should be able to useANY pet in*combat* except for CH or DE, this is the heart of whats wrong with pet classes in SWG.

I've seen this suggested a number of times, and have yet to see a good response as to why it won't work. I figure I'll add my voice to the volume:

1. Exactly as proposed here. Cert's that unlock as you move through elite professions and you spend skill points to optionally allow you to control droids. This is EXACTLY the same as the proposed DH profession, but a million times less gay (**edit**, crap, crapola <-- just in case the filter gets it)

2. A mini-profession of DH. This would be about 1/2 the cost of a real profession, and no-one should really consider themselves a "droid handler". The idea is to utilise SWGs dabbling skill system, so that if you want droids, you just pick up some droid handling skills.

I forgot 3:

3. Put this development time into utility droids instead of combat droids. Although, in all honesty, so long as I can see/have a battle droid and/or droideka, you'll keep me amused for a while.