Droid Engineer Archive

State of the Profession – Droid Engineering. October 2003

Part of the new correspondent program is creating a monthly State of the profession thread to give a brief overview of where we sit. This is in addition to official enhancement and bug lists that will be provided as well. The following is my first official state of the profession thread. I tried to be political and balance the good and the bad but it makes me sad because .. well as you will see there is not much good.

Anyhow … here we go.

Since the release of SWG the Droid Engineering profession has gone through minor changes, most of which have not been positive from our (the community) perspective. Out of the gate our profession has contained some serious bugs which has stopped us from being a completely viable profession. Some of these bugs have been fixed, but a majority have been ignored and have been on Gorantoth’s Centralized Droid Issues thread since before release (it is a Beta originated list). In fact the list has only grown in size.

At first we had a viable combat droid to sell to the combat classes which make up a majority of SWG. This was promptly nerfed removing a huge factor in a DE’s money making opportunity. It was nerfed because “everyone can own a combat droid and it is unbalancing our system.” So what happens? Once the probot was nerfed SOE went and opened up CL15 pets to everyone which were in some cases MORE powerful than the pre-nerf probot. We never did get a good answer as to why this happened; why our business was given to Creature Handlers. Nor were any apoligies made.

A few other money making droids popped up. Soon people discovered that a data module could hold mission waypoints. No longer did you have to run back to town every two missions. For a brief few days we actually could sell data modules. Then, it was nerfed or fixed depending on your view. (In my opinion it should have been left in except maybe only allow the storage of two extra missions. It would have made the module still sell and not given that big of an advantage.)

Once that fiasco was done with, some enterprising Creature Handlers discovered that they could store more than their max number of pets if they stored them in the Data module. Ok great, we finally found the reason for the data module? No, this was promptly nerfed as well. Again, perhaps limit it to an extra pet or two and give us some more business?

So after a few months here we sat with worthless modules, broken modules, worthless chasis and two combat droids that only looked cool but do virtually nothing unless you make your living hunting Gnorts ... and even then you better tank them. Our voices went unanswered and even I had to resort to unpopular posts in the general forum to get even slight attention.

It was about this time a developer must have been assigned to Droids again because we received a few fixes, including Medical Modules doing what they were supposed to. To be truthful though the fixes led to actually some other major bugs and none of the changes helped us even recover slightly to where we were at release. And remember we were busted at release as well. Then we obviously lost our developer again.

So when you get Master Droid Engineer what do you get? Absolutely nothing you cant get at the lower tiers. Our experimentation? Broke. Upper end personality chips? Broke. Upper end droids? No use for them what-so-ever. Especially no market. Why would someone pay for a Surgical droid model when you can put a Level 6 medical module in a MSE?

Our profession is riddled with bugs and we do not have a role to be truthful. Our only claim to fame, so to speak, is making portable crafting stations which really is not enough to sustain us. We have been hurt nearly irreparably by not having a Developer assigned to us. Our Dev was re-assigned to other areas and before that was even officially known, it was obvious. No one was listening to us and only so often we would get a cursory glance. We have had to live with pity from other players, our main source of income inexplicably being given to Creature Handlers, and no response from a red name for literally months.

Now that creature mounts is on test it appears our Dev will be coming back to us soon. With the welcomed addition of Thunderheart we are starting to be listened to. But we have a long ways to go. Those of us that remain Master Droid Engineer or remain on course come from two breeds 1.) We hope to god that some day we will be a fun class to play or 2.) The Holocron made me do it.

The SOE Droid Engineering plan is a STEP in the right direction but after four + months of tasting bile in our mouths, feeling like the red-headed step children of Creature Handlers, and generally living with bugs that should not have existed at launch … we really would like more. Starting with an actual plan that includes estimated quarters if not months or dates. And we would also like to hear that we have a fulltime DEV, when we do. Actually I personally would like to hear we have an actual team working on us. But first things first.

The number one issue we have right now are all of our bugs. I personally want more combat droids, power droids that run harvesters ...etc. But I, as well as 99 if not 100% of all DEs want our bugs fixed first. Then we want a combat droid back that is BETTER than a CL10 or 15 pet that anyone can use. Then we can talk about changing the direction of DE. A few months back I was told that Fridays were being looked at for bug fixing days. Was this idea flushed?

The one positive I can think of for us DEs is our Developer, when he comes back. I spoke with him for several hours at the Correspondent meet and greet a month ago and I firmly believe he is very passionate about droids. Probably more so than I am. So give him back to us please.

So to sum it all up? The state of the DE profession is almost as low as it could be. In all honesty, the DE profession should have been left for Space Expansion or a later date. I am sorry -- as mush as I try and be politically correct, I cant. Our profession sucks. Most of us DEs have other choice words to use but the filter would catch them.

So in the next month I challenge SOE to give us some solid time frames for when we will get our dev back, when our bugs will be fixed, and then I challenge SOE to hold a DE only chat on stratics that goes for several hours so we can tell you what we think about this and that. Soon (tm) will not cut it anymore.

Sintrosi,

This IS exactly the reason why your our Correspondant!!! Great Job. This is such an Awesome report

/stand

/applaud

/salute Sintrosi.

Very well said. I know people are dropping this profession left and right because of not being heard. I, for one, appreciate the work you do. I would have lost my temper by now. . I am holding on to the profession, but it has become harder as noone is buying much. I opened a new store on Tatooine in hopes to get some business. If it doesn't pick oup soon, I won't have the cash to pay the harvs. I hope something happens before then. But back to you Sin. I do not envy your position, but thanks man for your work.

Thanks sintrosi you summed it up very good. I am a MDE and the only vendor emails I receive are the ones that you get one week after you placed items for sale for not selling.

But I think out of anything I really want, is a timeline of when bugs and new stuff are going to be arriving for DE. Having to pay a monthly fee gives us a right to ask for it. Even if its just a general ballpark figure.. I would really like to know when we will get fixed. Thunderheart said he was going to give feedback on our concerns, but I have no clue when.

                          .=+.             ------------------
                  \`--._,'.::.`._.--'/   _/ May the CU       \
Acktu - Sunrunner   .  ` __::__ '  .   _/ \ be with you      /
Beta 3, JTL,          -:.`'..`'.:-         ------------------
ROTW & TOW Beta tester  \ `--' /
                          `--'

/Agree fully....

I can't add anything more substantial to this post. For me, it takes extreme effort just to launch the program these days, knowing full well that nothing has been done to fix your profession. A plan may have been pitched and grandiose schemes hatched, but the same old bugs still abound...

Their new DE plan has succeeded in one thing... it has stayed my finger from the cancel button for just a short while longer. For exactly how long, I still can't say.

And time is still ticking.

Wow, BRAVO!

Sums it up perfectly

Kamayyk

Master Droid Engineer

Master Artisan

Well done, Sintrosi! I especially like the bile in the mouth part.

I was personally insulted that SOE's "plan" for DEs was to make them into a combat class that can craft. If we wanted an edge in fighting, none of us would be DEs! We want good droids to sell to a large market!

Its rare I actually respond to anything.

Excellent post, thank you for this. Hopefully this will shake them up.

Nice report but who is this directed at?