Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Did we ever get a coherent answer re: Droid Armor?
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
But after the patch no droids will have armor? Doesn't that seem odd? Mounting armor plates on a droid chasis seems a lot more believable than on creatures. What, is it tough hide?
Droids with armor -- ok
Creatures with armor -- wha?
Back in the middle ages, I understand they would put armor plating on horses. But this is a sci-fi setting, not a fantasy setting.
There is a buff system in place for BE'd pets, chefs make new foods that bufs pets, pets can be healed the same stims as players use, pets never run out of batteries, pets have special attacks that their masters can use, there are a HUGE variety of pets, pets can be tamed without costing anything, and, lastly, I hear word of BE'd 10k HAM CL 10 pets. In this context, its a HUGE nerf and it puts droids out of balance.
Drashk wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
LOL.
Nobody ever really noticed the decay in the first place.
The damage "soaking" doesn't matter if the armor is absolute crap, the bot won't last long enough to even test.
I know you have to put a shiny happy face on things, but this is a great big NERF, any way you cut it.
This is a big NERF, however it is one of those things that had to be done to bring Droids in line with other aspects of the game. I don't agree with the degree of what was done, but I do agree that Medium 40% armor was over powering before the changes in Publish 7 and would only become more prevalent had it remained with the HAM changes. I believe that if the Community pulls together, under TK's guidence, the DEVs would be willing to increase the resistances at some later point. One of the last posts that I made on the Correspondents forum was a request that the DEVs look into the balance issue and think about how much of a huge change this is. Something else that I wanted to point out to the DEVs was that BE pets are still more attractive due to not having the dependency on a Battery every 40-60 minutes of use and not having a buff system for droids.
Drashk wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
LOL.
Nobody ever really noticed the decay in the first place.
The damage "soaking" doesn't matter if the armor is absolute crap, the bot won't last long enough to even test.
I know you have to put a shiny happy face on things, but this is a great big NERF, any way you cut it.
This is a big NERF, however it is one of those things that had to be done to bring Droids in line with other aspects of the game. I don't agree with the degree of what was done, but I do agree that Medium 40% armor was over powering before the changes in Publish 7 and would only become more prevalent had it remained with the HAM changes. I believe that if the Community pulls together, under TK's guidence, the DEVs would be willing to increase the resistances at some later point. One of the last posts that I made on the Correspondents forum was a request that the DEVs look into the balance issue and think about how much of a huge change this is. Something else that I wanted to point out to the DEVs was that BE pets are still more attractive due to not having the dependency on a Battery every 40-60 minutes of use and not having a buff system for droids.
I think that if the Community stands together on suggesting an increase in the resistances, the DEVs would be willing to take into consideration the above mentioned aspects of Droids vs Pets. I think that allowing an AR is a bit overpowering, for the current droids, but could be increased in higher level droids some months down the line.
So really the droid invasion is a nerf to teh probot? Is that what i am getting? And thats love? And how is that needed?
So we have totally useless probots now and even more usless after 7?
ROFL sounds awsome
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
There is a buff system in place for BE'd pets, chefs make new foods that bufs pets, pets can be healed the same stims as players use, pets never run out of batteries, pets have special attacks that their masters can use, there are a HUGE variety of pets, pets can be tamed without costing anything, and, lastly, I hear word of BE'd 10k HAM CL 10 pets. In this context, its a HUGE nerf and it puts droids out of balance.
Need to do some extra research here Sodan rather than just spouting rumours. Those 10K CL-10 pets were bugged ones introduced just after the BE patch and can no-longer be made. Since then the devs have corrected this situation by forcing the CL higher on first tame or by drastically chopping the stats. Thus idiots you see offering to sell CL 1 Rancors are just ripping people off because the pet can't be tamed by a non-CH.
As of this patch, almost all your points are moot. Taking them one by one:
- Ability to be mounts is offset by our ability to have modules (item storage, crafting stations, med etc).
- Variety of availablepets is heavily restricted to the CH levels of the player. Sure a master has access to probably 80+ creature types/sub types but that required a specific profession and skill point cost to have access to those. Access to non-CH pets is extremely reduced. There's only one mount (Kaadu), and everything else is almost useless. Droids would have been somewhat close to this had the DC profession been introduced. (Though think about the EU where you see lots of droids, but little variety in the types of droid chassis: evolution on multiple separate eco-systems vs corporate-driven mass production).
- Pets run out of batteries now - they need feeding. If they don't get fed, they don't like to fight, run etc.
- The new droids have a limited range of special attacks - ranged and melee on the R2 and probots. Sure we don't have dizzy, poison etc, but again, I feel this would have been given to us had we had a full set of combat droids coming. On a personal opinion, I feel it is wrong for droids to have various state attacks like pets, but should have various damage type attacks. ie we swap poison/dizzy/kd attacks for energy/blast/cold etc.
- Stims, we'll we're getting half that now. Using human stims on pets seems a bit of a non-issue to me from the perspective that the costs are about the same for the same heal levels (on Bria at least). I don't know anyone that I've sold my meds to for pet usage. They buy pet stims for pets and normal stims for PCs. The reason is that a PC Stim B barely does any heal on a pet, yet anyone can use a petstim C or D and get huge heals for no skill point cost.
- Pets being tamed for no cost. Ya, we're not all Jawa's here
AudioOrgana wrote:
That's great, and I hope you are right.
However, that still leaves us with a Droid Invasion dropping very soon - and unless they change this nerf it before they announce the Invasion in the launchpads of every single subscriber to SWG, they are going to a) upset the thousands and thousands of droid owners who's datapad droids are getting a very unexpected nerf, and b) get us laughed at when we show people what we have to offer.
I disagree as to "it had to be done" - I understand the concept, but tomarginalize droids into creature pets isn't the answer. As anyone that has used a Probot knows, yes, that armor increased it's tanking ability enough to make them attractive to low-level combat people - mainly rifleman. However, they were inno way "overpowered" - their better armor compensated for their crappy damage and crappy HAM, but as a side effect made them a mini-tank that could be used for short periods of time. They weren't even THAT good at it - but good enough that we had a small customer base for them.
I've keep looking at this "Invasion" from a customers perspective. To the person who logs in post-invasion, I feel like they are going to mourn the loss of the old benefit more than they will see the advantages of being able to heal droids that are going to take damage MUCH faster.
There are some good things, mind you. The fixing of the repair module in various chassi is welcome, butis more a score for us personally. I'll be beside myself in glee if they fix talking droids to be named as well, and the battery duration is nice too. However, the fact remains that at least for Publish 7, most non-DE's are going to see very little in terms of an "Invasion".
Audio
Message Edited by Arnwald on 03-12-2004 04:36 PM