Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: What is balance
Balance is having a droid that is equall to not lesser then a creature pet........of any skill level...
There should be as many skill levels in droids as there are in Pets....
but I don't care, becuase I'm happy to just be a MDE...
Having the full benefits of a crafting profession and near-full benefits of a combat profession jammed into one profession.
Haruspex77 wrote:
I also know it isn't an easy definition: what is yours?
It's the reason why, in the end, the DE Hybrid wouldn't fly (despite a great attempt by both sides to make it happen).
/bow
Respectfully,
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Having the full benefits of a crafting profession and near-full benefits of a combat profession jammed into one profession.
Haruspex77 wrote:
I also know it isn't an easy definition: what is yours?
It's the reason why, in the end, the DE Hybrid wouldn't fly (despite a great attempt by both sides to make it happen).
This argument fails on both counts. DE is not a full-fledged crafting profession, and the hybrid proposal would have given us half the combat ability of a Master CH. Don't 2 halves make a whole?
It will be a long time coming before DE ever reaches full-fledged-crafting-profession status. Why force us to be gimped on every front?
/bow
duncje wrote:
This argument fails on both counts. DE is not a full-fledged crafting profession, and the hybrid proposal would have given us half the combat ability of a Master CH. Don't 2 halves make a whole?
You're making a supposition there that the Devs see it the same way that you do.
Whether we are a whole profession or not, or the impact of our combat ability in relation to DE Hybrid, is not the issue. The issue was what would have been combined. Unbalanced (too unbalanced for them, apparently). I suppose this is a case of both situations you describe about as being at 70%. So, we'd have been at 140% after it was all said and done.
It will be a long time coming before DE ever reaches full-fledged-crafting-profession status. Why force us to be gimped on every front?
Hmmm...I guess I'd want to know when you think we are "done". We can't see how far we have to go if we don't set a finish line.
Respectfully,
duncje wrote:
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Having the full benefits of a crafting profession and near-full benefits of a combat profession jammed into one profession.
Haruspex77 wrote:
I also know it isn't an easy definition: what is yours?
It's the reason why, in the end, the DE Hybrid wouldn't fly (despite a great attempt by both sides to make it happen).
This argument fails on both counts. DE is not a full-fledged crafting profession, and the hybrid proposal would have given us half the combat ability of a Master CH. Don't 2 halves make a whole?
It will be a long time coming before DE ever reaches full-fledged-crafting-profession status. Why force us to be gimped on every front?
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Hmmm...I guess I'd want to know when you think we are "done". We can't see how far we have to go if we don't set a finish line.
It's not our job to set the finish line. That's what game developers are for... to develop games. It's the Devs' job to tell us how far we have to go. We've tried setting that finish line, they've told us "no" on many occasions. Why don't they come in here and give us SOMETHING as to where we're going? We've gotten crap from them, except an armor nerf, exploding modules, and smoke and mirrors.
Balance.
Chefs can hand out some seriously big checkers in the form of food. They are making HUGE money doing this. They are selling a crate of +24% Bivoli (is that the right name?) to doctors who are thereby able to get +24% better buffs onto the combat types who then eat MORE Chef food to get even higher HAMS... oh yeah, their pets CL0-CL70 get this benefit too. A crate of +24% (that's the maximum) Bivoli goes for 275k. This +24% stacks atop the +10% that our Level 6 Medical Module affords them.
Don't get me wrong. I love chefs. I am constantly badgering my PAs chef to get more stock on his vendor.
So, there is some "magical" food that a doctor can eat that allows him to do more for a patient then the highest level of technology available in the galaxy? Weird. Well, it's weird until you realize that SWG is a fantasy game in "sci-fi" clothing.
So much for balance.
Mirrors? We got mirrors? I thought it was just smoke.
duncje wrote:
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Hmmm...I guess I'd want to know when you think we are "done". We can't see how far we have to go if we don't set a finish line.
It's not our job to set the finish line. That's what game developers are for... to develop games. It's the Devs' job to tell us how far we have to go. We've tried setting that finish line, they've told us "no" on many occasions. Why don't they come in here and give us SOMETHING as to where we're going? We've gotten crap from them, except an armor nerf, exploding modules, and smoke and mirrors.
And - Amen! Amen, my DE brother!
Balance is a mythical concept invented by developers to hide the fact that a) they haven't completed the foundation of the game and b) it gives them a really good excuse to nerf people and watch them squirm. At least that's what it FEELS like.
Remember, this is the game that was envisoned by the man that said it was, "...oddly satisfying to run a game people pay to hate."
The truth is, balance is what you make of it. Making a game truly balanced would be boring - which is WHY we aren't all playing checkers. When everything is exactly the same, the game gets stagnant.
To compensate for this, they try to make one group better at one thing, but worse than another, and attempt to make them appear "balanced". In reality, this can never, ever be achieved - one side will always have a leg up.
That's why balance is "mythical" - it is a quest where the end result is literally impossible to achieve, and if by some miracle of mathmatics it was, it would be a quite boring game indeed.
Now that the highly-touted combat balance has become vaporware, it will be very interesting to see which groups of players who were going to benefit from the fixes get told now; I wonder what the next future landmark will be used as the finish point of "balance" so we can all start playing the game.
AO
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Hmmm...I guess I'd want to know when you think we are "done". We can't see how far we have to go if we don't set a finish line.
I would say that a decent measure of a crafting profession being at an acceptable level is whether every PA/city feels a strong need to have that professional in their team because that profession is vital to the game.
One major problem with DE is that they really have nothing of valueto any high end characters. Medical and storage droids are neededat the high end, but are acquired much earlier and last forever. Other crafting professions, even smugglers,produce something that "money is no object" players want, though Architects see the eventualend of their market. DE's todayproduce products for newbs only.
The publish 8 discussed changes don't help much with that, though perhaps there will be a market among even high levelcrafters for some droid guards (if they can be called along with the, better, creatures). The entertainer and barker modules are kind of like medical modules (buy once, usually before mastering).
I don't like "done" because that implies no more changes, I would have prefered him to have said "made viable".