Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: droid storage beating the imp crackdown?
Yes, please don't confuse what we're asking for here, DE's. We know you guys have gotten the short end of the stick for a real long time. We know what that's like. We have two. Except the dev's haven't names a "Smuggler's Invasion" for us (not even one that's been pushed back two months 
). This patch has opened the door for smuggling for us. It's not what happens this next publish. Or the next. It's what happens after our Revamp. After we get, finally, the abillity to smuggle illegal goods from point A to point B. Why would anyone need us to actually smuggle if they can buy some faction points and be a "high ranking Imperial" or buy a few droids? That's TWO loopholes around ever needing us to actually smuggle.
Sure, babysitting a group of rebels is a nice beginning. But it's not smuggling. Making spice and slicing weapons is a fun and lucrative business. But it's not smuggling. This isn't even our patch. This is a GCW patch. This isn't a DE patch, or a smuggler patch. And it's already opened up a beginning for smuggling for us. And two loopholes around us. And in both instances when we brought up those loopholes, we've been called "melodramatic" and accused of "nerfing" abilities no one has. So what happens four-six months from now when we DO get to smuggle, and no one needs us and the dev's realize we are right? What happens IF you guys are wrong? Are you going to sit back and just let us have smuggling back? Are you gonna just LET them make storage compartments scannable again once they've instituted a system that makes us more useful? I'm not gonna bet my profession that you are. Just like I'm not gonna bet Imperials will EVER give up their Immunity willingly.
We don't want to nerf you. We don't want to tear down your profession. But for all of your bugs and problems you guys DO what your title says. You make droids. We just want to do the same: smugglers want to smuggle. And this is a possible stumbling block for that.
Solo4114 wrote:
No one is saying that we should nerf storage. No one is trying to remove storage capabilities from droids. We're simply saying scan 'em if they're storing things.
I am pretty sure that houses aren't scanned by the imperials, so lets go to the architect boards and inform them of how they are exploiting. Lets also complain that the items in your bank's safety deposit box aren't being scanned by the imperials, and lets get that exploit fixed too.
What you need to admit is that you all are aggravated that the Devsare letting imperials be better smugglers than you. And since there are too many imperials with a voice on the forums to overrule, you come here picking on us.
No, I'm going to have to say that there should be no compromise.
Okay... Well, since you said it...
Yes, it's a pain to own five droids, but people could do it and put smugglers out of business.
We haven't managed to do this in the six months we have both been in the game.
Smugglers selling compartments means we put the profession itself in danger. We should, as electronicnomad has said, be the transporters, plain and simple.
If someone finds it overly difficult to havea stash of spice without being busted, they aren't going to be ordering more spice. Who exactly are you going to transport to?
There need to be consequences, advantages, and drawbacks in this game and players need to get over the notion that they can do whatever they want. It's SUPPOSED to be inconvenient and/or dangerous for you to wander around with your sliced goods or illegal drugs. They're ILLEGAL.
Yeah. That's what makes it fun. Doing whatever I want. I will get busted for using a sliced weapon, or taking a hit of Muon Gold, and I have droid storage. It doesn't matter if it gets scanned or not. You need to be proud every time I use your smuggler skills, instead of trying to make your stuff even less desirable.
If you wanted to move them without getting caught, you should've become a smuggler. Or you shouldn't have had them sliced in the first place. You make your choice, you live with the consequences. Simple as that.
All I have to say is that I don't recall ever owning a droid. I told that droid not to get into drugs, but he didn't listen. Or something to that effect. The droid is the one with the goods, not me. If I want to smuggle goods, I still have to become a smuggler.
But smugglers really are under attack here. The core of our profession is being carved up and handed out to other players who haven't invested skill point 1 into the smuggler profession.
Wow. I didn't realize that the core of your profession depended on random events that I couldn't even make happen even once. I was running around willy-nilly on a drug high, waving my sliced weapons around above my head in several Imperial controlled cities yesterday. I wasn't even scanned.
That's wrong.You want a compromise? I've got one for you. You guys can make items that let you de facto smuggle the day I can make items that let you de facto make droids. That's a compromise.
Its a deal! You can make all the droids you want, actually. They don't do anything.
Past that, though, we're trading away the abilities of professions. There's no manageable way to make smugglers the guys you go to to move contraband if we allow people to do it on their own. Smugglers become useless when that happens and I would imagine that droid engineers of all people could sympathize with feeling useless in this game.
You already said that you were the transporters. Moving contraband is your job.I want to buy a little bit of drugs for recreational purposes (I swear). See, you really need to look at it on a scale. You people are the drug dealers. You need a ship to transport your goods. The average crackhead just needs a place tostorehis crack pipe.
You guys are getting your dev love now. We have been waiting since launch and have had barely any posts on our forum from the devs. Personally, I'm glad that the DEs are getting attention, but don't start trying to take away other professions' abilities now that you are, please.
Oh, you mean the Droid Invasion? You might not have caught it, but that was cancelled. Yeah, turns out it was a really bad plan. They were going to put in a new CH profession and make us the pit crew.
No one is impairing DEs. This is an unintended problem of the datapad. It's not a feature of droids that was added and then nerfed, ok? You act like you're entitled to this. You're not. Did you invest skill points in smuggling? No? Then you don't get to smuggle, dig it? You're entitled to make droids. You're entitled to corner the market on making droids. You invested the skill points in that, so by all means, go ahead and make droids. But do not try to take away my ability to smuggle. You complain that we're impairing DEs by asking bringing up this issue. I'd counter that you're basically contributing to the nuking of a profession by permitting this problem to go unaddressed or treating it as some sort of function granted to DEs. Moving contraband undetected is the smuggler's job. Making droids is your job. Droids should not be moving contraband undetected.
What you really mean to say is that making decorations is our job. Make all the decorations we want. You invest a lot of weight in the word smuggle, but almost none in the word droid. No explaination necessary.
About the only reasonable comrpomise that I've seen so far is the one where we can slice droids but the effectiveness of the slice corresponds with a drop in storage capacity. Personally, I'd put a hard cap at between one and three items stored. Remember, this is NOT about removing storage capacity from droids. you can store whatever you want. It's about removing storage capacity in EXCHANGE for making the inventory in the droid unscannable. It's a tradeoff, not a nerf. Droids should be scannable, that's all we're asking for, not "Get rid of droid storage!!" This isn't about nerfing your profession, it's about protecting ours.
The tradeoff is already there. At Master Droid Engineer, we get to make droids with 10 slots of item storage in a single module . At Master DE, we can make an Advanced BLL, which costs us roughly 22k to build, and the only thing that droid can do is hold 10 items. This is after our "Dev love", by the way. Before, the Advanced BLL didn't do diddly squat. So if the 10 slots don't do anything beyond a backpack, which I can make at Domestic Arts IV, then what exactly is our professional abilities?
Your profession can still make droids which will still store plenty of items and, as of publishes 7 and 8 do a whole hell of a lot more. I hardly think we'll be gimping you by holding on to the meager shreds of our own professional abilities.
Our profession can still make droids that, in your estimation, store "plenty of items". Wow. Good thing I put those two advanced brains in there, eh? Listen. I feel for you guys and all, but no matter how dumb your underworld tree is, you can't preach gimp to the DE. There is absolutely no comparison.
Your profession can still smuggle and make spice and slice weapons. Yes, you guys aren't uber, and you deserve more. But "meager shreds of professional abilities" does not describe the smuggler profession.
We don't want to gimp you guys at all. The world will be no different for you. The problem for US is we still don't get to smuggle. This isn't about the Imperials. However, the fact is, we just took one step forward and two steps back. Two loopholes in a smuggling system not even realized.
And your arguements for housing and safety deposit boxes are null and void (all though the safety deposit box offers interesting possibillities). I can't carry my house. You can carry your droid.
And yes, the core of our profession DOES revolve around a random incident that happens once in a blue moon. Sad huh? Why do you think we're fighting every little loophole so hard? We can't even smuggle yet, and we're already gimped at it. There's already TWO ways to ALWAYS smuggle better than a smuggler.
We're not trying tonerf you guys one bit. We don't want to be rid of storage compartments. We don't want Droids to do anything one hair less than they could before this patch. We're just trying to make sure we can smuggle some day, like our name says we do. You guys got screwed because your namesake isn't as worthwhile as it should be. We're in the same danger. Should we be less vocal about it than you guys have been?
WOW.. this thread is more addictive than the game!
I'm sitting here wondering why Kollos and others are trying to argure that this is INTENDED and should be LEFT ALONE instead of working with us to find a solution that allows BOTH of our professions to rise in promenance and become the envy of the gaming community.
Smugglers should smuggle. Other's maybe can hide.. but we can move the merchandise. Arguements about the grouping effect MEAN NOTHING IF EVERY PLAYER CAN HAVE A DROID THAT SMUGGLES! I can't believe that you honestly think your arguements answer our call for fairness here. Especially when your own members have mentioned the ease of hot-keying droid storage items for easy use.
DE's should make devices that benefit and compliment EVERY profession. Droids should be helpers that help us to target mobs, craft items, and smuggle contraband.
Im not even going to get into how silly the "Houses arent scanned" arguement is. BRING YOUR HOUSE TO THE KOR VELLA CANTINA THEN!
I do, however, think it is a very fair to question why there has been no DEV comment on this yet. Is this even an exploit? Well, let me repost something I posted in the smugglers forum:
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It's true that this is all an assumption.. but one with a some pretty goodpieces of circumstantial evidence.
Exhibit 1: Droid storage evaded 1% decay. This is proven.
That alone smells like a big database issue. It seems like the datapad is a "pocket dimension".. it doesnt exist until you call something from it. I don't even know if they could "patch" it to work if it is true without totally rewriting the database surrounding the datapad.
JTGAlpha wrote:
Yes, please don't confuse what we're asking for here, DE's. We know you guys have gotten the short end of the stick for a real long time. We know what that's like. We have two. Except the dev's haven't names a "Smuggler's Invasion" for us (not even one that's been pushed back two months
The thing is, I completely agree with you here.Just as you are arguing for the future of smuggling, I am afraid that something like this will set the precedent for utility modules in the future. Every time a new utility is suggested, someone will be in here crying out that it nerfs their profession. Droid usefulness might very well need to overlap some professions, because there isn't currently a job for a droid to do. Players do everything in this game. And if they do a job that is supposed to be a time or money sink for the players, then the Devs don't like it.
Future development will have to incorporate droids into the game, and since it has taken them so long to actually design droids, everyone is used to them being borked. Suggest that they survey, and then there is someone who is going to complain that it makes them worthless as a surveyor. So everyone wants to limit droids to being buffs. I can't help not liking that.
Sure, babysitting a group of rebels is a nice beginning. But it's not smuggling. Making spice and slicing weapons is a fun and lucrative business. But it's not smuggling. This isn't even our patch. This is a GCW patch. This isn't a DE patch, or a smuggler patch. And it's already opened up a beginning for smuggling for us.
And until a smuggler brought it up, I thought it opened up an opportunity for a useful and desirable droid. The best argument against us is "since when has a droid done something useful?".
And two loopholes around us. And in both instances when we brought up those loopholes, we've been called "melodramatic" and accused of "nerfing" abilities no one has. So what happens four-six months from now when we DO get to smuggle, and no one needs us and the dev's realize we are right? What happens IF you guys are wrong? Are you going to sit back and just let us have smuggling back? Are you gonna just LET them make storage compartments scannable again once they've instituted a system that makes us more useful? I'm not gonna bet my profession that you are. Just like I'm not gonna bet Imperials will EVER give up their Immunity willingly.
So what is the difference? Droid capability will probably be changed. The smuggler profession has a larger population, and there aren't enough people with the conviction to argue. To be honest, even if the droid couldn't evade a scan, I don't need a smuggler to carry my stuff around for me. I either suffer the consequences or I don't use your stuff. I really don't care. It is just more fun if my R3 sneaks something by the Imps, and I can give him a pat on the back for doing something for once.
We don't want to nerf you. We don't want to tear down your profession. But for all of your bugs and problems you guys DO what your title says. You make droids. We just want to do the same: smugglers want to smuggle. And this is a possible stumbling block for that.
And until we can make droids, I am going to have to argue this point. In all my time in this game, I have never felt like I have made a droid. They look like droids, sure. They have noises sometimes that makes you think droid. But they are portable crafting stations, portable medical centers, and item storage. We also make a couple that are pretty explodey in a fight. That's it.
SinjenRandall wrote:
JTGAlpha wrote:
Yes, please don't confuse what we're asking for here, DE's. We know you guys have gotten the short end of the stick for a real long time. We know what that's like. We have two. Except the dev's haven't names a "Smuggler's Invasion" for us (not even one that's been pushed back two months
The thing is, I completely agree with you here.Just as you are arguing for the future of smuggling, I am afraid that something like this will set the precedent for utility modules in the future. Every time a new utility is suggested, someone will be in here crying out that it nerfs their profession.
New utility modules can add to professions or augment them. But the current storage compartment bug subtracts from Smugglers' abilities and serves them up on a platter to everyone in the game. If this were a discussion about adding some abilities, hey, no sweat. But you're talking about Droid Engineers taking and selling the ability to smuggle. That's a huge loophole that I will fight to close, because it's game breaking for Smugglers. There IS no smuggling, EVER, if everyone can do it by purchasing a droid.
Sure, babysitting a group of rebels is a nice beginning. But it's not smuggling. Making spice and slicing weapons is a fun and lucrative business. But it's not smuggling. This isn't even our patch. This is a GCW patch. This isn't a DE patch, or a smuggler patch. And it's already opened up a beginning for smuggling for us.
And until a smuggler brought it up, I thought it opened up an opportunity for a useful and desirable droid. The best argument against us is "since when has a droid done something useful?".
No, the best argument is that Smugglers smuggle, and so nobody else should. You may as well try to justify the ability to heal Battle Fatigueat the level of a Master Dancerbased on having a droid in your datapad, because that would be a similar hijack of a profession's core ability. Stealing is wrong. We only get so many skillpoints to invest. And when a bug like this nullifies invested skillpoints by bypassing a game mechanic designed to make use of those skillpoints, then it's wrong, and the loophole needs to be closed quickly.
And two loopholes around us. And in both instances when we brought up those loopholes, we've been called "melodramatic" and accused of "nerfing" abilities no one has. So what happens four-six months from now when we DO get to smuggle, and no one needs us and the dev's realize we are right? What happens IF you guys are wrong? Are you going to sit back and just let us have smuggling back? Are you gonna just LET them make storage compartments scannable again once they've instituted a system that makes us more useful? I'm not gonna bet my profession that you are. Just like I'm not gonna bet Imperials will EVER give up their Immunity willingly.
So what is the difference? Droid capability will probably be changed. The smuggler profession has a larger population, and there aren't enough people with the conviction to argue. To be honest, even if the droid couldn't evade a scan, I don't need a smuggler to carry my stuff around for me. I either suffer the consequences or I don't use your stuff. I really don't care.
That's wonderful, but you are not all players, and you're still enabling people to do so. Other player WILL use droids to move contrabandinstead of Smugglers, and you will sell droids to them knowing full well why they're buying them. You know the situation, and you will help other people take advantage of this loophole. So even if YOU don't circumvent Smuggler business personally, you're enabling others to do so.
We don't want to nerf you. We don't want to tear down your profession. But for all of your bugs and problems you guys DO what your title says. You make droids. We just want to do the same: smugglers want to smuggle. And this is a possible stumbling block for that.
And until we can make droids, I am going to have to argue this point. In all my time in this game, I have never felt like I have made a droid. They look like droids, sure. They have noises sometimes that makes you think droid. But they are portable crafting stations, portable medical centers, and item storage. We also make a couple that are pretty explodey in a fight. That's it.
Ask for new abilities, or ask to augment existing abilities. Please don't try to steal another profession's core value like this. This doesn't help anybody, because if Smugglers have their core chiseled out of them, any profession will be fair game.You're effectivelyattempting a hostile takeover of Smuggling abilities using a bug as your point of entry. That's poor ground to stand on for what is frankly a very poor argument.
And that's why I was happier to come over here and talk to you guys about this, because I knew you guys were better able to understand where we were coming from.
"Please recognize when a portion of one profession completely negates another's profession."
Wait a minute, storage droids completely negate slicing, spices, and the pistol specials? And you wonder why people accuse you of being melodramatic.
We all agree that this is bad design. But how can it completely destroy the smuggler profession? Was the smuggler profession completely destroyed up until two days ago?
"Exhibit 1: Droid storage evaded 1% decay. This is proven."
It seems that this would support the fact that it's intended, since there have been several threads on that, too, without a response.
RaiCella wrote:
I'm sitting here wondering why Kollos and others are trying to argure that this is INTENDED and should be LEFT ALONE instead of working with us to find a solution that allows BOTH of our professions to rise in promenance and become the envy of the gaming community.
I don't recall saying that I think it was intended. I'm saying that it just might not be considered a bug. Sometimes "features" aren't realized until after the software ships.
But anyway, what you're asking for would cause everyone, not just Droid Engineers, to have to change the way they play. Retroactively. What if someone purchased several crates of Muon Gold (from a Smuggler, mind you) so that they'd always have it available to use? What if someone had all of their weapons sliced so that they'd be a little safer while out tending harvesters? What if they now consider the risk of carrying these now-illegal items to be too great? How are you going to refund their money for theequipment and spicethey can no longer use? Remember, when they made the purchase there was no risk for doing so. You're attempting to add risk after the fact.
You're not just asking for a nerf, you're asking for a nerf that penalizes players for actions they took in the past. You need to find a way around that retroactive penalty.
Smugglers should smuggle. Other's maybe can hide.. but we can move the merchandise. Arguements about the grouping effect MEAN NOTHING IF EVERY PLAYER CAN HAVE A DROID THAT SMUGGLES! I can't believe that you honestly think your arguements answer our call for fairness here. Especially when your own members have mentioned the ease of hot-keying droid storage items for easy use.
As someone else has already mentioned, don't shoot yourself in the foot. Do you seriously don't understand that making contraband undesirable is going to cut into your market? I've never purchased spice before, but I was about to start trying it. Not now. I'm not a combatant and I'm a covert Rebel. If I get scanned, I'm dead. Think I'm going to buy any of your spice, or have you slice any of my weapons? Or are you going to be my personal lackey and follow me around all the time so I can be grouped with a Smuggler to avoid the scans?
(I'm being facetious. But the point is valid.)
Besides, what you're asking for is not the ability to smuggle, it's the ability to conceal contraband on your person. Smuggling implies that you're in the shipping business on the underworld side of things. THERE IS NO SHIPPING BUSINESS IN SWG. There's no encumbrance, thus there's no need to hire someone to carry things for you that you cannot carry yourself.
DE's should make devices that benefit and compliment EVERY profession. Droids should be helpers that help us to target mobs, craft items, and smuggle contraband.
I agree. And despite their name, Smugglers in SWG are mostly crafters. Sure, they have a few"dirty fighting"combat related abilities, but they primarilycreate and sell spice, and they slice weapons. I'd love to see Smugglers able to slice other things as well! Slice my Probot for me to give it a faster firing rate. Slice my harvesters for me to increase their extration rate. Make me a spice that "steadies my hands" so that I fail less often while crafting. Slice my PSG to alter the protections it provides.
There are a lot of ways that Smugglers could be improved that do not involve retroactive penalties for actions players took in the past.
Im not even going to get into how silly the "Houses arent scanned" arguement is. BRING YOUR HOUSE TO THE KOR VELLA CANTINA THEN!
It's not silly at all, it's completely valid. Even modern day smugglers are rarely caught while actually in transit. They're caught at their warehouses. If you're not going to scan houses, then why should you scan droids that aren't even present?
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
Wow Kollos does not cry exploit.