Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: SOE's wierd focus
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Kaldeth
Wed Mar 31, 2004 2:21 pm
#1
First of all.
I made a rather lenghty post just now and as I hit submit I am asked to sign in to the forums (which I was since I was writing a post) and that made my post vanish.
Secondly.
Sorry if this post comes of a bit harsh but I am upset and I need to vent.
So. Today there was a patch to live, which added Wookie ceremonial armor. Yay. wookies finally got some armor which they have been asking/screaming/begging for since some time back. SOE also changed/fixed some other issues that needed to be adressed for balance purpose/bug fixing.
I would like to know when we DE's get some attention? We are past build 7 which was the first of 2 patches focusing on DE's. SOE stated in the HOC chat that a few weeks after patch 7 hits live they will add more droids. A few new chassis which was being worked on at the time of the HOC chat.
Granted, SOE never said these new chassi's would be DE craftable, but c'mon. We are in the middle of a droid invasion. DE as a profession is broken. DE as a profesison have been broken a long time, and what do SOE focus on? Wookie armor.
I saw the concept art for the ceremonial armor and the combat/battle armor and have a hard time figuring out which I think is the ugliest. Reading the text I see they are working on a 3rd set of wookie only armor. What the...?
I've seen all 5 Star Wars movies. I never read a Star Wars book, and I doubt I will. But from the 5 movies I've seen, and from other posts on these boards I thought that wookies didnt use armor. That was a choice you made when creating a wookie. No armor available. They have stats to make up for it, but the wookie community wanted wookie only armor so SOE after some talking with Lucas added the armor. Fine. Wookies all over smile, laugh and be happy. You wanted something and you got it.
SOE? Why the freaking hell are you focusing on wookie armor all of a sudden? You gave wookies one set of armor that only they can wear. You are working on a second and third set of armor for wookies only. What about trandoshians? They can wear armor like most other races (not wookies) but they can't wear gloves or boots? When will you focus on that? Do you know how weak that makes the Trandoshians? Why not make 3 sets of Trandoshian only armor? And while you are at it. Add some for Twi'leks, Bothans, Zabraks and all the other playable races as well. Armor only that race can wear. You are constantly saying you want to balance out the game and if that is true then add some race specific armor.
Now. As for the DE's in the middle of the droid invasion (patch 7 and 8) what do we have? Well. nothing useful really. We can make droids that fight. Woop. Do they work? well. yeah I guess. Hard to tell since there is no market for them. Do they live up to our expectations? Well, I guess that depends on who you ask. If you ask the non DE's in SWG they would say "no. they are to weak." if you ask the DE's they will say "No, they are to weak" if you ask SOE they will say "Yeah. due to combat balance issues this is what we have come up with. Remember that there was a chance to get stronger and more powerful droids, but you didnt like the DC(Droid Commander) or the DH (Droid Handler) professions that we suggested, and you didn thave any ideas of your own. And we have been discussing this at great lengths with the DE community and this is what we agreed upon"
Hmm... Combat balance you say. How can the balance on a 2200 HAM droid (LE repair) be balanced with a 4000 HAM BE made non CH pet? Haven't been focusing to much on the BE profession but I am darn sure that they can, with some DNA generation sampling make a non CH pet that will hit faster, harder and have more ham then a 100% awesome success using nothing but topnotch resources DE made droid will ever get close to, seeing as 2200 HAM is the limit for how much HAM our droids can have. Is that balance? Nope it is not.
Shortly after patch 7 hit live, a large group of Battledroids invaded Theed on the Sunrunner server. Battledroids with 80k HAM. an invasion that ment the death to pretty much anyone in Theed at the time. The Corvette Dungeon is almost ready to hit live and what will we find in there? Well we will find battledroids, New droids with new stats, new skins, new animations all packed neatly in a new dungeon. Will DE's be able to make these droids? How about Droidekas? They've been around for a long time. They have HAM, Resists, Attack, Different skin compared to what we as DE's can make. Is it so hard to tweak these a little so that we as DE's can make them?
I am not asking for a schematic that would allow me to build a 80K HAM battledroid. but why not a 8K ham droid? or a 4k HAM droid?
This droid invasion is nothing short then a middle-digit-finger at all the DE's.
Droid invasion? More like Droid Evasion.
Jnath
Wed Mar 31, 2004 2:36 pm
#2
Kaldeth wrote:
Hmm... Combat balance you say. How can the balance on a 2200 HAM droid (LE repair) be balanced with a 4000 HAM BE made non CH pet? Haven't been focusing to much on the BE profession but I am darn sure that they can, with some DNA generation sampling make a non CH pet that will hit faster, harder and have more ham then a 100% awesome success using nothing but topnotch resources DE made droid will ever get close to, seeing as 2200 HAM is the limit for how much HAM our droids can have. Is that balance? Nope it is not.
Droid invasion? More like Droid Evasion.
One thing i would like to add, which is often overlooked, but of the greatest importants: What is the cost to make the BE pets. I dont mean some cpu value, i mean the COST. How much time did they spend gathering the resources, how difficult was it, what sort of rare resources are required for a BE pet, how long does it take in real time to put them together. I ask all this because i dont know, but i do know that to make a droid takes a lot of resources, a lot of harvesting, a lot of rare resources (if you want to be anywhere close to the best on the market), a lot of time, a lot.......no too many subcomponents, and a lot of effort.
I like that though, Droid Evasion. There was another post calling it the Droid Implosion. But in the end it felt more like a Droid Insertion.
slaier0702
Wed Mar 31, 2004 2:37 pm
#3
Kaldeth wrote:
SOE? Why the freaking hell are you focusing on wookie armor all of a sudden? You gave wookies one set of armor that only they can wear. You are working on a second and third set of armor for wookies only. What about trandoshians? They can wear armor like most other races (not wookies) but they can't wear gloves or boots? When will you focus on that? Do you know how weak that makes the Trandoshians? Why not make 3 sets of Trandoshian only armor? And while you are at it. Add some for Twi'leks, Bothans, Zabraks and all the other playable races as well. Armor only that race can wear. You are constantly saying you want to balance out the game and if that is true then add some race specific armor.
Armoursmithing isa noble profession and they need the income.
Transdoshians aren't cute and cuddly I guess ( not a personal perspective ).
... Shortly after patch 7 hit live, a large group of Battledroids invaded Theed on the Sunrunner server. Battledroids with 80k HAM. an invasion that ment the death to pretty much anyone in Theed at the time. The Corvette Dungeon is almost ready to hit live and what will we find in there? Well we will find battledroids, New droids with new stats, new skins, new animations all packed neatly in a new dungeon. Will DE's be able to make these droids? How about Droidekas? They've been around for a long time. They have HAM, Resists, Attack, Different skin compared to what we as DE's can make. Is it so hard to tweak these a little so that we as DE's can make them?
Maybe this is the long promised Droid Invasion. I bet the Corellian Corvette looks like the cover art relesed on day 1 of Patch 7.
botched
Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:23 pm
#4
the only reason armorsmiths require the income is because the components rely so heavily on the resources.... make droid engineer the same way and you see the same thing...
KzinKiller
Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:31 pm
#5
Remember how they used to tell us that different teams work on the 'live' content and the 'development' content?
Remember how in the last couple months they've acknowledged that the Space Expansion has been raiding the Live team's talent?
Surprised that desparately needed fixes to fundamentally broken systems are coming slower than ever?
You shouldn't be.
Malitevv
Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:17 pm
#6
I agree that it is sad that DE isn't being enhanced more than it is (not so far anyway, we can still hold hope for publish 8), but its probably not fair to compare that to the wookie armor changes. The changes made to enable wookie armore are likely mostly artwork effort and I seriously doubt there is any overlap between the artwork team and the code development team.
gametruth
Wed Mar 31, 2004 6:22 pm
#7
Right, so all the art guys are busy making Wookie Armor, instead of new droid chassis that would fit the exisiting code. Yep, no overlap of resources there. DOH!!!
Why do the wookies get their armor before we get our new chassis - easy they outnumber DE's by like 30 to 1. SOE doesn't care about DE's, infact they probably put the Holo's in just so people would play it.
Khadim - Officially Disgruntled Master Droid Engineer - Sunrunner
P.S. if you think the Theed Droid Invasion was laughable on Sunrunner, you should have seen the one on Coronet. Now that was the biggest joke i've seen in this game.
Malitevv
Wed Mar 31, 2004 6:33 pm
#8
Dude, we all know that the new droid chassis are already in the game as NPC's. The issue with adding new droid chassis to the game is clearly not an artwork issue.
gametruth wrote:
Right, so all the art guys are busy making Wookie Armor, instead of new droid chassis that would fit the exisiting code. Yep, no overlap of resources there. DOH!!!
Kaldeth
Thu Apr 01, 2004 3:05 am
#9
I dont deny the wookie their armor. I don't think that they took people away from the DE fixes/changes to work on the wookie armor. What I am a bit upset about is that they seem to focus heavily on the wookie armor in a time that can be described as the middle of a droid invasion.
I know wookies have been wanting armors for a long time, and SOE finally made some for them. But did they stop there? Did they settle for one set of armor at this time which would have been enough for the wookies to be pleased? No. they continue to focus on the wookie armor by making 2 more sets.
And it's true. There are new droids (Battledroids) as well as old droids (Droidekas) in the game with stats, hams, animations and skins. But are they something that can be made by a DE? No they are not. And why? That would be unbalancing. To me that is a loaf of crock. They can tweak the numbers on these droids so they are not overbalanced.
As for BE's having to spend dangerous times in aggro areas to grab some good DNA to make pets. I got a MBE on another account. I've tried to sample a rancor a few times on him. I was able to gete close enough to sample and I was also able to remain within sampling range for 3 failures before the Rancor noticed me. DId it kill me? No. It is a slow beast so I was able to get away easy.
What I was meaning in the original post when I mentioned BE's was that they can go out and sample DNA from creatures like Rancors, Bolle bols, Nuna's, And most other creartures out there. (Kimogila, Krayt and I belive Albatross) being a few they can't sample. ANd thus making it posible for them to make a poet with high defences, high attack or high HAM. They got this option for the creatures are always there, and their results are superior to that of what a CH can find in the wild.
A DE's life isn't safe. How many times have a DE or anyone else with harvs been attacked by some aggro mob that think the harvs are they home? I know it have happened to me many times. Also a DE as all other crafting professions are relying heavy on the resources that is spawned at that time. Or something they have stockpiled. It's been months since I saw Lidium extrusive ore. For those that are not DE's lidium Extrusive is used on the lvl 6 storage modules. Which is one of the most useful components asked for. Atleast around my parts.
SOE does nothing to fix the DE. They add new droids that are popping up in new dungeons (I am all for new content) But they mock us DE's by not making something for us that can compete with the other profession. Sure we got reconditioning kits, repair kits and combat modules. But the recon and repair kits only sell if we sell a combat droid. ANd we dont sell any combat droid since they can't compete to a NCH (Non Creature Handler) BE made pet when it comes to resists, hams attack and other factors. And for a BE to make a cl10 pet with good stats, they dont have to put them self in harms way. There are many creatures out there with good stats and hams that dont deathblow.
I hope SOE adds some more DE content besides modules and the exploding droid (which I doubt will do much to boost sales) I hope SOE gives us a chance to compete for the CL10 pet Market. I give them till patch 8. If it isn't there it wont come. and this DE will move along to other pastures.
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