Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: DE Plan CONCERN Thread
- ZERO adressing of CURRENT issues. We want things addressed now, not a 'pipe dream' plan. Contrast this to the excellently written and detailed CH post.
Well, i read it, i re read it, and i dont think after months of our input there needs to be this thread.
Sin thanks a ton for your work, they obviously didnt listen to any of it.
Yeh these are neat little tweeks, But DE needs fixed not a little candy.
Thunder, only thing i can say to your statement of us being totally excited, you obviously havent read a single thread on our profession. Maybe go try and and see if this new plan excites you.
CH is still with all the changes unless you give me death star canons in my mse the most powerful, and yes i have tame train 4 on my other char with mast doc so i KNOW.
Here is what my biggest issue is:
I call a lvl 34 pet, I call my advanced probot, i dont even have attack programmed into the probot because it gets wasted within seconds while my lvl 34 pet tanks away all the live long day. Fight ends i heal pet move on.
Ow and to heal my pet i feed it hehe, see somthing wrong with this picture.
My two big concerns...
1) These seem to be way-out-there type plans, not very evolved with no timeline for implementation. Glancing over this I'm thinking 2004 for most it. This is not a plan so much as a bunch of ideas collected from the DE forum or hashed out in a brainstorming session. Sure, we want a peek at where droids might be headed, but this leads us to...
2) Current bugs and issues are not addressed. We need to see a shorter term plan of action to address the myriad ways in which the DE profession has been broken since the game went live. These would be much easier to implement and would make a lot of people happy. We have a list a mile long stickied at the top of the forum, check it out. I'd rather see the broken stuff fixed before we get MSE droid bombs.
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I think most of us are rather put off by the well thought out and detailed treatment CH got in a two-part post complete withlots of informationand explanations. And then DE gets a laundry list of "out there" ideas with lots of conditionals about their feasibility. Devs, I try to remain positive, but if you really do want this game to be more Star Warsy, act like it. It's within your power. =)
Sintrosi, thanks again for the work you do for us, and I hope you don't feel the backlash against this plan is directed at you. I think the reason most people are upset is that because this is such a "high level" plan, it tells us that the devs haven't done anything with droids and won't in the near future and that's depressing...
I think if a lot of the items in the post could get implemented, I would be fairly happy. That being said, it's not how I would build my ideal wishlist. Here are some things I thought were missing or needed changing:
-More combat droid chassis needed. Like that bounty hunter droid seen in Episode V. I don't even think the probot classifies as a real combat droid considering its use in the movie. We need all new droid types with thousands of HAM and high armour. There should be at least one per level of schematics.
-The combat modules is great, but I don't think you should be able to put them on Astrodroids or the other non-combat classes. Make a specific combat module for combat droids. Only letting DEs make and customize them is fine, but let non-DE classes use the droid after its done.
-Droids that can heal you when incapped is a GREAT idea. However, I think only surgical droids should have the ability to use stims. Let the normal medical module provide bonuses to all medical skills and crafting, but the surgical droid should be the only "doctor" pet.If necessary, makeit a surgical module (like the repair module).
-We need to know how our droid's power level is doing, and the charges on batteries must last longer!
-The amount of storage each storage module provides should be scaled with droid complexity and size.
-Data storageshould scale with brain complexity. Data also needs real uses too.
I think that should be enough from me. I hope that some of these items mentioned in the plan can get done in a month.
Lancer
My 2 concerns are echoed all over these boards:
- Nothing on our current issues. Would like to see a point-by-point answer to Gorantoth's issues thread.
- No specifics as to how The Plan(tm) is to be implemented, or even a rough estimate as to how long we wait for these changes.
Sintrosi, you've done a wonderful job, and have been a great go-between between us and the devs. However, it seems that our biggest bugs/issues have gone unnoticed or unheard.
I have read and re-read the plan so many times ..
I am convinced there really is NO PLAN AT ALL.
1) If there was a PLAN - then why did it take all freaking day to post it?
2) If there was a PLAN - Why were all the current issues left out?
Seems to me that SWG Dev team scrammbled to put something together last minute ... and when you do things like this - you always forget the details and important issues are left out.
So, the biggest concern for me is: WHY is the DE Profession being neglected so much? A Master DE cannot even craft at the Master Level (skill level are at 55/65/55% ... not 100) amoung so many other problems - why the neglect?
SWG is making good $$$ ... 300K peoplex$15/month ... do the math.
What in the world is holding these guys up?
We dont need another "List the issues" list or another plan ... we need to get the current bugs fixed.
My major concern with the "plan": Adding the combat module could be nice... But if we can't keep a probot alive, how are we supposed to keep an R(x) alive? For the love of god, give us "droid" stims!
Au-Ru Blasterkin - Master Droid Engineer of Intrepid
1) I feel that the proposed PLAN was not thought out very well. We as Droid Engineers have spend a considerable amount of time talking about the changes we would like to see in our Droids. One of these was the ability to create combat droids.
It does look like you have done this but it sounds like you want to do this to ONLY our existing droid models? I mean comon you wants to buy a mouse droid that blows up? Also, nobody is going to buy a R model droid that has only 240 HAM even with armor.
I am very disappointed by the lack of vision so far with the combat side of this Plan.
2) Another concern is that there is no mention what so ever on the current bugs and their fixes to our profession. I can't see how we can move one when we can't even experiment on the droids we do have. Also, the bugs that plague us on a daily basis like the power drain.
Overall I felt that this Plan although great to see was a disappointment to me. I really wanted to see some vision and what I got was half baked idea's. Why can't we have the Creature Handeler Dev? =) That team seems to have great ideas on balance and power.
* We need more creative uses/functions for droids like the new use for power droids they mentioned. Suggestion: They work off our many ideas for functionality for Protocols, BLLs, etc. to make droids useful. Just the power droid feature is not enough to make droids viable. I think this is the number one issue for us as DE's. We want to make USEFUL droids.
* No one wants to see R2-D2 shooting a CDEF. Suggestion: Scrap the "combat module" idea. Let us craft a powerful combat droid, like the(drumroll) *Droideka*. If balance is a concern, it should not be. This combat droid could be balanced in many ways.
* The Plan is kind of weird because it doesn't really seem to have been drawn or derived from our ideas over the past 4 months at all. Suggestion: Review the origins of these ideas. The Devs think they are solving our problems, but with this Plan they are not. We ask for combat droids, Holo or Q posts that "huge numbers" are coming (you all remember that), but instead the Plan talks about "combat modules" to make your Treadwell shoot a carbine or something. Huh?
Sintrosi, I don't have a lot of hope for this profession if this is what they have come up with after this long. We have had many great ideas for profession-enhancing droids (smuggler slicing, entertainers, etc.), things that would not be hard to implement because _these droids would just give boosts to the percentage success or power of the user_ and not actually have to do anything. But none of this shows up; just one idea about a use for power droids.
I hope AmbassadorFrito keeps making droids on Naritus, because I sure ain't for the next 3 months, and then my subscription runs out. Peace friends. Perhaps there is still hope yet...
I hate to say this, as I do not mean to belittle anyone, but the more I think about this 'plan', the most I realize it is an utter joke.
Morphing an elite artisan class into a quasi-combat one, exploding MSE's, R2's with guns, power droids turned into harvester leeches, humandiod droids still not namable, and BLL's will still be useless. This is insane.
The only good this about this 'plan' is that is has shed a tiny bit more light on the complexities of coding for the droid profession. Taking these challenges into account, as well as other limitations vs. community wants for this game, perhaps new alternative plans can be written. Yes, yes, many proposals have been written here previously, but thoughts now need to be given as to what's truly realistic for this profession in light of this new revalation. I am thinking of a plan myself, if only to make myself feel better.
As an example of what I'm trying to say, it's pretty much a given that any new, real combat droids will not happen. So, how should droids be better integrated into combat? There are only two droids that have combat potential, so a proper alternative plan would most likely consider reasonable, measurable solutions to get these two more involved in combat (and we all know that bumping up their HAM would be a nice first step). Much of the work for any alternative plan would probably involve a cut & paste of previous board material, concisely summerized.
Alternative plans from the community wouldn't stand a chance of ever being implemented, but they would certainly be more thought provoking than exploding MSE's.
Mse's aren't bombs. If they were that one in the death star wouldn't have run from Chewy.
>> it was a rebel reprogrammed droid and it exploded later in the reactor core of the death star... Luke missed his shot. Now you know the truth
Note : Chewy yell activated the timer on the droid 
No new droids, no new combat droids, and also that we won't have the ability to use our power/repair droids to fix our own stuff. It's pretty much worthless when you have to put a battery in your own gonk droid and you can't even charge your own stuff.