Droid Engineer Archive

OK, enough with the justification and on with the proposal. Make Master Artisan a requirement for DE and give us combat droids up to CL60 at Master DE.

Currently DEs have one major skill. We can make and sell droids. This is a 92 point skill at master. CHs can train and use pets up to CL 70. This is a 106 point skill. To just give us CL70 droids at master is unbalancing and would lead to the ever-present nerf bat. Not only would we have spent less skill points, we would have the other skill of making and selling droids. This would cause the influx of "template chasers" that we are all afraid of and would kill the DE profession. So we offset it with the Master Artisan requirement. This brings us up to 140 skill points. The additional 34 skill points, combined with the CL60 cap will prevent the unbalance caused by us making our own droids. Keeping out dabblers is accomplished by spreading out the CL gains evenly through the tree just like they did with the new CH tree.

Let's face it, there just isn't enough content in handling a droid to justify another profession. You can't tame wild droids currently, and I hope that they never try to implement this kludge just to add content to the profession. You don't get the training XP like you get from CH because everyone can tame droids. Again, I REALLY hope they don't change this. Imagine having to take your R3 to a DH to get it named. Droids also don't start out in (baby) form like a pet, so you don't have the content of witching the little fellas grow. What you're left with is a profession that consists of buying droids from a DE, taming them and fighting with them. Yaaawwwnnnnn!

Sorry, this got a little long, so I'll recap. DE would now require Master Artisan (let's face it, we really almost already do) , Master DE would be able to call a combat droid up to CL60.

With you on the Master Artisan thing. i'm hoping the porfession will become more useful when the space expansion arrives

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GnomeAd wrote:

And we see what the devs are not going to let everyone use high level combat droids, how many of us are willing to reconsider the whole "crafter only" issue? I'd like to propose the following plan for your consideration. It's loosley based upon the idea that Woody put forth after the whole DH thing, but I've added some other things and placed in some balance justification.

The devs are (rightfully so) concerned about balance in the combat area of this game. This is due to the fact that, no matter how much we might not want it to be so, this is a combat oriented game. The weekly story arcs are all combat related, the mission system is combat centered, the devs response and understanding of combat related issues are all much quicker that of crafting issues, and all the content in this game is centered around combat.


Boy...........................................................you said it.

This is kind of the an alternate flavor of the "Hey, Devs! Us crafters don't have a way to get Holocrons!" thing that happened. Crafters, in some respect, are left with little content options.


The majority of the crafters that I know fall into two categories. They either complain about the lack of content or they start an alt who is a combat character.


I've done both, sorta.


Lets face it, the life of a crafter/merchant in this game gets old real quick. I chose option 2 and started a CH/Pistoleer on another server. If any of you haven't tried CH, I highly recommend it.
It's a blast. Now I know why the devs have kept it around even though it's the most "un-starwarsy" thing in the game.

Too bad we can't have some other possible options other than just being a DE/DH. I'm feeling that might be the answer too. But...it must be done quite carefully.

I'd think that less focus on combat and some utility options are a good way to give someting to both of the major 'camps' in the DE profession. It moves the entire current profession closer to want everyone wants.

If someone wanted to be a DH or DC, they'd just take DE...and NOT be a pure, non-combat crafter.

This should NOT put either camp at a disadvantage in the marketplace, nor would it make him/her an "uber" combat character either. I still believe that CH's should be more powerful than ANY DH/DC/overhauled-DE profession change that's made. That will help with the vacuum noise as people woosh to the next 'template' choice.

The balancing device the devs have chosen to use in this game is skill points. For every skill or ability you get, there is a skill point cost. Want to be able to heal yourself or others, 15 points for novice medic. Want to be able to harvest resources from your kills and place camps, 15 points for novice scout. Want to be able to call CL 70 pets, spend 106 points and you can. Want to be able to make droids, 92 points it is. Right or wrong, this is the system we have to work with.

The other balancing factor is the player combat capability vs. the MOB combat capability. If it's too easy to kill things, the economy gets out of whack from too much money and people get bored. How exciting is it to know that you can wipe out anything in the game solo? This is the issue that led to the great CH nurf. People were dabbling in CH to get access to high level pets, but the skill point investment wasn't great enough to make them also lose their other combat skills.

I'm sure that they will not allow the CH debacle to occur again. They've learned that lesson. Any, it seems, may have lessened our chances to the get newer/better droids for all of us...at the same time.

I hope they figure out a way to adequately do that, and fix glaring bugs....

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/bow

Respectfully,