Droid Engineer Archive

Ok, some of the feedback I got was positive, so I think this idea could use its own thread. The original post and some of the responses to it are at http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=51558#M51558, but I'll restate it for those of you too lazy to copy and paste (and for easier refrence).

As we've been debating on the boards lately, many believe that some form of balance system needs to be in place if we are to receive high end combat droids (NOTE: THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT COMBAT DROIDS AND THEIR RELATION TO DE). The obvious and current idea that is being thrown back and forth is a certification system. The only problem is, many believe that droids should be more common than they currently are, or some do not wish to narrow their market to one or two professions. Furthermore, due to the problem of deciding which professions the certs belong to, there is the idea of just giving them to everyone at certain novice/master levels of their chosen profession.

Now, here's another alternative. Instead of a certifications system, an encumberance system could be created. The precedents of armor encumberance (along with large quantity or rare resources to keep the price at a high level for top of the line products) has worked well in keeping armor available to anyone yet primarily used by advanced players. A similar system could be created with droids. In order to control any combat droid more capable than the probot, it would cause a mind encumberance on the player. I choose mind due to its importance and difficulty to buff, as well as the fact that constantly being aware of your droid in battle would be more mentally taxing than physically. Any other attribute could be used, this is just the one I felt most appropriate. This should have the effect of balancing combat droids out (in terms of cost/benefit of using them), making them desirable due to their tanking abilities (with this system I believe higher armor/HAM lower damage droids would be balanced best), yet still come at a cost (the players focus and willpower stats).

Another benefit of this system is an ease of adjustment. If certs are introduced they will be very difficult to adjust if needed, this does not make for a good system in a game as fluid as an MMORPG. WIth this encumberance system, just modify the values slightly as needed and you've got instant rebalance, something that could be done easily in a hotfix.

Probably the most analogous system to this (if you want to compare it to other ideas we've come up with) is a seperate droid use tree that costs skill points. In the same way, anyone can use the droid, but like the seperate skill that costs skill points, it comes at a cost.

Please add any comments/feedback/suggestions. Positive, negative, anything is useful as long as it is constructive. If you don't think anything will ever change and I'm wasting my breath thats fine, its mine to waste.

another point I forgot to add to this is this would also create a good deal of diversity among what droids you see. As it is, if we get new combat droids that everyone can use or a fairly simple cert system, you can bet that the only one you'll ever see is the strongest. With an encumberance system, you would see different droids, depending on weather the person was more interested in their mind or the strength of their droid. Furthermore, it provides a great base for experimentation (assuming that is working). This would be a whole new area of the droid to experiment on, bringing forth different lines of combat droids dependent on what experimental value was stressed.

Yeah I read your post on the other thread and think it is a very good idea. I think if we asked for this, we could push to have the heavy/medium droids do more damage and tank better than a regular level 10 pet.

yea, thats basically what I was trying to come up with. Some system that would keep the balance and yet still allow everyone to use droids.

I came up with something similar back in october

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=34265&highlight=#M34265

I liked it then and I like it now, but I think certifications will probably be the way to go.

heh, yea, I guess there have been enough ideas tossed around on this board, so hard to find a new one. I'm just curious why you think a cert system over an encumberance system would be better at this point?

I think there's too much of a pet-wars problem to occur again, not for the higher level players, but among the lower level ones. They could max out their mind and do missions way too hard for them, allowing the droid to do all the work, and creature AI just doesn't attack the owner as often as it should.

Factional guilds could recruit a bunch of low level players and just give them a droid to do extra damage on base runs, city killing sprees and the like, allowing the younger players to just stay in the back.

I think certs are the best way to prevent a massive pet wars to occur again.

people can just buff up though..................

An interesting idea... Remember though, they've talked about giving the whole HAM system a long overdue enema soon: rebalancing specials, their costs, regeneration of HAM used for specials, etc... this will probably throw the HAM system as we know it (including doctor buffs, food, and entertainer buffs) out the window and radically change their dynamic.

Having droid use tied to mind is an interesting and promising idea. When CH's make their pets do tricks, I think they get a mind hit, so this isn't without a parallel inthe current system. *Sigh* Once again, trying to provide feedback and form a constructive discussion on this subjectis stopped dead in it's tracks because SOE isn't sharing any info with us on their proposed changes (be it the Droid Invasion or these HAM changes).

Bleah!