Droid Engineer Archive

I agree. The root of the problem, of course, is that nobody really knows the purpose of droids in this game. They never were designed at the core of the game mechanic, so anything they do from this point forward will be critisized to the extreme by some vocal section of the community.

I also don't like the module progression. You only make them until you can make the next best module, or until you get to a module you can't find resources for. At any rate, nobody wants the weaker modules. Now if modules were more task specific, like the crafting modules or the repair module, then it makes more sense. What we need are more task-specific modules and droids.

That's the problem with anything that is certification based. People want the best weapons, the best armor, the best everything. But if the task was more varied, and the best changed for given situations, then you have a better distribution of goods. For instance, ifSwordsman weaponsall had different strengths, but in general there was no clear choice, as aSwordsman you wouldn't always want a Power Hammer.If they all did different damage types, then you would want one of each. Which to some extent is the case, because the Curved Sword and Cleaver do Kinetic damage, whereas the Power Hammer does Blast damage. If Droids all did something different, and you could use a variety of droids, you would want one for each occasion.

That is why I don't like the category certificationideas for droids. The ones that say medical droids are for the medical profession, entertainer droids are for the entertainment profession, etc. That limits DE choices, limits player choices, and only serves to make the game environment bland only for the sake of easy balancing. It is possible and plausible to make the game environment balanced and still have a great variety of droids and droid functions. Profession interdependency is one key, and can be done in every case where you have a Droid augmenting a player's skills.

I won't say that I would like Droids to replace players, because I don't want that. What I do want is Droids to be useful and fun. I don't like sitting in the Medical Center waiting for time to heal my wounds. I would like to enter a medical center, and finding it empty, call my Surgical Droid to use woundpacks that I bought from a Medic. The medic gets usage XP and credits, I get the immersion of having a functional droid, the DE gets a sale of a useful and functional droid, and I get to have my wounds healed without travelling off-planet to Coronet.

I hope it isn't too late for Droids to finally enter the game. As it is, I am so very tired of debating how and why they should be in the game. It is Star Wars Galaxies. That, to me, means Droids.

Message Edited by SinjenRandall on 02-05-2004 06:31 PM

1. The Experimentation branch is mostly wasted skill points because experimentation doesn't work. ( the dev's keep talking about how major bonuses to players have to cost skill points when they talk about additions to the profession. and I understand that. I wish they would acknowledge that as it stands DE's have to burn up skill points and get NOTHING in return for them).


2. With the exception of the R-series droids and the Probot, the blueprints branch is woefully unbalanced and unfair. Surgical, Repair, Protocol, and BLL droids are allno betterin functionality to what the R-series droids do at a point on level lower in the corresponding skill box. And this will still be true after the updates announced in Publish 6. It's like putting certifications for weapons that are worse in every way to weapons that you already learned to use in a lower skill box in a combat professions skill tree.


3. All skill points that go towards level 5 and level 6 armor modules are wasted, since two level 4's is all you need to get maximum armor and the Advanced probot takes two armor slots that can't be used for anything else. The higher level armor modules only add a benefit to the cheaper droids that only take one armor slot, but adding a high level armor slot to them makes them so expensive that there cost is not longer worth it (better to buy a better droid that has two level 4 modules at that point).

In truth, aside for the rare instances where you might wantsome of the more advanced crafting stations, there is no incentive in terms of the game mechanics to go beyone 3/3/0/4 in this profession. The marginally better droids you'll be able to craft if you go beyond that are not worth the skill points you will have to burn to get them.

Here are the things that I was expecting when I started down the road to being a DE:

1. Droids would be useful to all players, of all play styles.


2. There would be a variety of droids and functions at all levels of DE skill, as implied by the NDE skillbox text, which would allow even an NDE to be useful and fun to play as.


3. Droids with certain functions (repair, power, medical, etc...) would use those functions at the appropriate time without the need for player intervention to simulate the advanced intelligence droids are supposed to have.


4. Droids would not be a replacement for players in professions which the droids can emulate, but rather be an "emergency" use version, roughly equivalent to having an absolute novice around in that profession. (Medic, etc...)


5. Combat droids, regardless of their capacity for damage, would be roughly equivalent to a novice marksman in accuracy. They would also either need to be licensed or be regarded as contraband by the Empire.

Of these points, none of them are in the game. Being anything other than a high end DE means you have nothing of use to anyone, thus making the profession nothing more than a grind to get to that point, leaving anyone other than an achiever player out in the cold if they want to have fun.

Some might say that none of the other crafting professions are fun if viewed this way, but I would have to disagree. There is plenty of variety which can be made at all skill levels of Artisan, the root of almost all of the elite crafting professions. If that was not maintained into the other elite professions then someone made a mistake/poor design decision at SOE, plain and simple.

This should not be taken to mean that a Novice of a profession should have the same abilities as a Master. Quite the contrary. But there should be items available at all skill levels which are unique to that skill level and not rendered "obsolete" by higher end versions of them. History in all MMOG's and MU*'s shows that, given the option, nobody will use something that is inferior to the best available. They will wait until they can afford or aquire the best, rather than "wasting" their money/time with something less than the best.

In short, I view "scaled" modules (Medical 1-6, Item storage 1-6, etc...) in DE a failure. Why bother with a medical module 1 in an MSE 6 from this guy when you could get an advanced R3 with twin medical module 4's? Cost? Just wait a few more missions and you can afford the R3. The only modules in DE which are unique are the repair module and the crafting stations, none of which are available until you break past the "grind 300+ Mouse droids per skill box" stage of DE. Basically, NDE's have no viable product, save as a novelty. Which, by the way, that master over there can make with all these extras (and since he's just doing it to unlock his Jedi slot, he's practically giving them away.)

It is probably apparent that point 2 is the most important to me, and the one which will decide whether or not I return to playing the game.

Thank you for the time spent reading this post, and I hope that TH or a dev reads this and at least considers the points made, though I have serious doubts about either happening.