Droid Engineer Archive

This is a simple plea, please do not Copy/Paste us from the CH profession. Anyone and everyone should have the ablity to operate any droid. It's the true Star Wars way.

:Awaiting the day when IG series and Droidekas with equal (Or IMO) higher HAM that is on par with CH is buildable from my Data pad:

Arkkyle

Master Artisan

Master Weaponsmith

Master Droid Engy

Minor Archy 4/3/2/0

We know that isn't going to happen for combat droids.

What I think is a good way to apply certs is a system based off the number and level of the known skills. Hence, any master elite bubble would be worth more than any level 1 novice skill. How this would be scaled would depend on the level and power of the combat droids.

I do think that anyone should be able to use any non-combat droid (skills permitting - for example, a BH probably couldn't us a food crafting station.)

But I agree 100% -

Please don't make us CH's with the need to maintain hoppers!

You pretty much have to make a choice. No combat droids better than the present probot, and every one can use them, or new tougher combat droids with some kinds of restrictions on who uses them. With the pending drop of non-ch pets to CL 10 and lower, there is just no way they will ever allow anything better than that in droids for the general public either.

I disagree as well. If we want any combat droids worth anything, they will *have* to put a general Cert system to keep them out of Newbie hands. I'd be perfectly okay with that, as well.

There has to be a cert system. They won't allow the pre-nerf probot situation come back, and the only way to make sure is with certs.

And this topic has been done to death. Go read threads from 3-4 weeks ago. I don't recognize your names from those threads back then, so go back and look for them.

And we are not going to be CHs, Think of us more as a hybrid profession of a CH and Artisan.

If you would go back to earlier posts, you'd see that Sintrosi thinks that they are taking us to the "(CH+BE+DROID) - Organic Pets = New DE"

You're beating a dead horse here

Awol80 wrote:

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Why do u all want a cert system. All that a cert system will do is limit who we could sell droids to. Also if the cert system is to hard it will kill the de profession. I agree with Ryde droids are not animals they have a brain of their own why in the world would person need to cert to use a droid. If we need to be cert for droids then we should need to be cert for pets.

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The philosophical point about how droids should take orders from their master and do what they're told is well taken. It's been brought up many times before, and it has some validity. In general, I agree with it.

But only in general.

When it comes to implementation, we have to remember that this is still a game. As an MMO, the game must be balanced. Balance in an MMO means nothing more or less than forcing players to compromise. You can make yourself maximally powerful in one area, but that's going to necessarily entail being weaker in another area. Or you can choose to be very versatile, a "jack of all trades," but not be the absolute best in any one skill area.

Making a source of great power available to everyone equally is unbalanced. In the real world, when you raise the minimum wage, the people making minimum wage benefit briefly, but ultimately all it does is drive up the cost of living, and leaves minimum wage earners in the same relative position they were in before. Likewise, giving everybody in a MMO access to powerful combat abilities just leads to "MOB inflation." The game has to be made tougher, with the result that the people who take advantage of the combat abilities are no better off than they were before, and those who don't are just screwed. In the example at hand, everyone would have to obtain battle droids or be squished.

The only way a game system can be made powerful is to restrict who has access to it, and to force players to sacrifice some other ability to get access to that power.

The problem we see right now, with droids doing very little of anything that's useful, is a direct result of trying to follow an "everybody can use droids equally" philosophy. If we adhere to that rule strictly, then droids can have no abilities that could even potentially upset game balance. That's what we got -- a very tame, watered-down profession that avoids balance problems by not really letting droids do anything significant.

That's why I say, justify it in your imagination however you like, or resign yourself to the idea that it doesn't make sense, or whatever you prefer. We simply cannot have very powerful droids with no restrictions on who can use them. We can have power or we can have no restrictions. We won't get both.

^^^^ what he said

certs= powerful droids (decent ones)

no certs = craptacular droids.

They dont want the pet wars to become the droid wars. they wont allow the pre-nerf probot situation to come back. certs is the only way we can get something decent

Many people would like more powerful combat droids, and if we're going to get those then we're going to have to have some sort of system to limit who can use them. By far the best way to do that is a cert system.

Besides, if we don't have a cert system, then the most likely way for the Devs to add more combat droids is to make them DE-only, and I'm firmly against that option. THAT would turn us into CH-clones. A cert system does not, and is a good compromise.

There are many examples of droid cert systems already listed on this forum that would make more powerful combat droids open to a large number of people, yet at the same time keep them from being in every single characters possession. I'm using an excerpt from the thread, listed in my sig, to list one of the many examples of a cert system that could base higher level combat droids on what a person has done with their character.

A character would gain a droid cert rankingwhen they; gaina Novice Elite profession, Master a starting profession, gain a second Novice Elite profession, gain a third Novice Elite profession, or Master an Elite Profession. So, in order to callthe most powerful combat droid available, a character would need to have a) 2 Elite professions, Master a starting profession, and a Master Elite profession b) 3 Elite professions and a Master Elite profession, or c) 3 Elite professions and a Master starting profession. This system would allow anyone that has spent time leveling up their character the ability to call a stronger combat droid, instead of limiting such a droid to only combat professions.The following is a chart of what type of combat droids are gained at which level

Cert Rank Combat Droid Available
0Base Combat Droids (Current in game)
1Improved Combat Droid (Battle Droid)
2Mid-rangedCombatDroid (Advanced Battle Droid)
3Expert CombatDroid (Droideka)
4 Advanced Combat Droid (Advanced Droideka)

/disagree

Cert system=more powerful droids.

I want for customers to come back to me for a better fighting droid when they've advanced in their profession. Heck, I'd love it if I could take their old droid as a trade-in, and then offer it for resale! Unfortunately, there's no way to sell pre-tamed droids on a vendor. :-(

Indeed, I think certs make perfect sense. Combat droids are, in effect, deployable weapons. It just makes sense to limit the use of Powerful combat droids to those who are trained to control them. Anything higher than the Advanced Probot could require a cert. Perhaps a first one at Ranged Support4, and others specific to proffesions (like Commando)in their equivalent support4 boxes or even Master lvl.

I think the Adv.Surgical Droid could have a cert in the Medic tree (assuming this model heals autonomusly, while the base Surgical doesn't?)