Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Delusions of Grandeur or is something bigger in store?
As I sit and build my armies of Probots, Protocol Droids, R2s, and scary looking Surgical Droids, I think about how I, if I were a DEV, would fix a class that is so complex. I don't want to step on any toes of any other profession, but DEs build something that honestly is much more complex, in the sense of its function, than any other class. What other class creates something that 1) follows you around (when its working properly) 2) obeys commands(see side note to 1) 3) can store items (Inventory storage and data storage -to a lesser degree) 4) allows healing to be used (Medical module) 5) is a mobile crafting station 6) act in a combat support role. This is not to say that DEs are more vital than any other profession, but how many out there take the use of their droids for granted (when things are working right). I also wish to make it perfectly clear, that what you are about to read is purely conjecture on my part, but makes complete sense, from a certain point of view. With this 'disclaimer' out of the way, let me begin what I have to say.
Ok, so in my 'real life' I'm a bit of a paranoid delusions and I tend to over analyze a lot of what I see and read. Naturally, this applies to my gaming world as well. So, when new little quirks started to develop in the Droid Engineering profession, my brain started working over time. Over the last month a number of items have been changed, or fixed, in regards to the Droid Engineer profession. I'm only going to list the fixes that really have stuck out to me, so I may not list them all.
The first, at least in my mind, was the fixing of the Item Storage module. Yes, you can only put 10 items into it now, but at least you can put 10 items into it and not have them disappear every time you store the droid. This was an incredible fix and has really made my job, as a DE much more useful, since I store a lot of my on demand build parts in 4 different Droids.
The next fix that I have witnessed is the ability for a Droid to travel with you on a trip on the Shuttle. I've tested this one over and over again and each time I can take the shuttle and call my droid without fear (ok very minor fear now) of it being lost and getting angry at the port that I just left.
After that came the great Droid purge, as I like to call it, or PermaDeath. How many countless droids were lost in this epic time of Medical droids getting killed due to TEF and Probots showing that they just can't cut it on their own? Yes this was a scary time for many DEs, but how much business did it stir up for some of the older servers, after PermaDeath was removed? I wasn't really affected too much by it, since Shadowfire is still 'relatively' young, but I did see a lot of return business during this time. Can we say, out with the old, in with the new?
Following Permadeath came the nerfing of Permadeath and the inclusion of vitality and gaping mind wounds. I don't know about anyone else, but I think this to be a great way, on the DEVs part, to add in Droid decay. Everyone knows that there is only a limited number of times that a gun or a piece of armor can be repaired, before it just can't take it anymore and you have a to buy a new one. Finally, this is also true for the Probot and any other droid that gets beat on in the course of action. I'm not aware of a way to fix the vitality lose at the moment, so it would appear that a droid currently has a limited shelf life.
Let us not forget the removal of nesting. Yes, this cuts down on the number of display models that a Droid Engineer can carry at the moment, but it also gets rid of a well known Creature Handler exploit as well as getting rid of the huge amounts of data tracking that each server would have to do, to keep up with the unlimited amount of storage space that could be created. Yes the servers are big, expensive, and should, in theory, be able to handle all of that extra data addressing, but let’s face the facts. This game is freakin huge, in comparison to detail and content. It also has quite a few people playing it, in only just a few months time. And lets not forget that its buggy as all heck, in case you didn't notice while playing. So to have droids within droids, within droids that carried goodness knows how many extra items per server, would have slowly killed the ability of the server to address these items and would eventually lead to items being lost on a regular basis.
This brings me to the newest 'fix'. Droid persistence. Over the course of the last week or so, I've noticed that a few randomly scattered Droids have been staying in the spot that they were left when the owner went (LD). Over the course of the last 2 days, I've had droids get 'stuck' in a spot and stay there until I would return for them, even after taking the shuttle or doing a quick relog. Sometimes the droid would just be stuck in the world and be completely out of my control, allowing me to call the same droid again from my datapad. After a few hours, this ghost droid, would end up disappearing and everything would be 'right' again. But, while the 'ghost droid' was present, I could use its crafting station, which I had installed. I got this obvious bug to repeat itself and ended up with 2 of the same 'ghost droids' hovering (since it was a Probot) near two separate factories, which made for a happy day of trying to clean out my factory storage unit. Well, today I log back on after server maintience and am shocked to find that my Power Droid, that I hadn't stored before I logged out, was happily and obediently standing on top of my character, in the exact spot that I had left it. I thought to myself "Well this is odd. The server just came back up, so there shouldn't be a ghost droid around anymore." So I started to run back to my shop, to re-advertise my vendors, when I heard the disincentive sound of the Power Droid following with its and mechanical stomping. I instantly froze in my tracks and attempted to store the droid. Low and behold, it worked. I tried completely shutting down my client a few times, while having a droid out when I logged off. Each time when I logged back on, there was my droid to greet me. At this point, I decided to take a break from the game (to sleep of course) and when I logged on, once again the droid came running up to me when I called it. I've read a few other accounts of this tale and now think that this is another item that might be added to the 'fixed' list, if its not just some odd bug that has occurred, which I doubt. It’s still hard to tell, since today’s patch notes are garbled, to say the least, and make no mention to this new 'fix'.
If you read any of the post on the Test Center board, you will also see that a Droid customization tools is in the works at the moment, and should have been released live, but ran into a bug. The colorization of a droid could be accomplished with this tool, but the color would not stick when it was stored in the datapad. So, this would be another on the list of items that we know are currently under development.
Well. From all of these minor, if not welcomed, changes I am starting to see a pattern emerge. The obvious pattern is that the DEVs are keeping us in the dark about a lot of what is going on, or is planned for the class. There have been a few vague, at best, mentions of fixing the Droid Engineer Profession or even adding in an entirely new handler profession, but no seemingly solid words have been uttered, with the exception of Q-3PO's interview a number of weeks back. We've not received many, if any, replies from a DEV regarding our concerns and hopes for the DE Professions future. And of course, we don't even have a 'real' Correspondent that will listen to our cries and wish lists. Other Classes seem to have taken precedence over the issues of the Droid Engineering Profession. And information is still not available for answering questions of the general SWG populace, while in game. So what is happening to a lot of DEs? They are giving up and starting over.
Here is the pattern that I've started to see emerge.
1) Some of the minor/major issues that need to be fixed are being addressed, before more droids and droid content is included. -- Don't know about you, but if I were a DEV, I'd start to fix some of the smaller known issues and make sure that they are working correctly, before I started to add the bigger fixes.
2) No information is sometimes the best information. Think about this one as I illerate. What do you think would happen when the official announcement comes out that DEs will be able to make Droideka or any other type of useful droid for that matter? Not only will all of the DEs on every server instantly go from a few droid orders a day, to more than can be filled in a week. Yes this is great for business, but ask an Armor or Weaponsmith about the /tell hell they received when they could suddenly start making that new set of armor or weapon after a resource shift. Let’s also not forget the sudden huge rush that will happen towards becoming a Droid Engineer, when such a patch was to go live. Let’s not forget the media blitz that SoE could push to gain even more people to join the game, due to the inclusion of new droid types. New Droids, Creature Mounts, and Player Vehicles would be a big one to throw out there with some of the other games that are coming out soon.
3) The DEVs are using the stall tactic approach on patching DEs so that there will be less DEs to provide those first new Droids. The reasoning behind this is, I've already seen 3 DEs on my server give up on the Profession. They simply quit, because they just didn't want to play the Profession anymore. One deleted their character and started over. One surrendered all of their DE skills. And one retired their character to play on a different server. I've also read similar tales from other people on this board, and other server boards. With less DEs and MDEs, you will end up with less Droidekas or what ever else is going to be introduced that end up having to charge higher prices to keep up with demand. That money in turn will end up going into the pockets of resource merchants, which will then go back into the harvesters (which by the way, I would like to predict that the maintence costs on medium and heavy harvesters will increase dramatically over the next few weeks to off set the vast amounts that resource dealers can make.). It would seem that the DEVs have really been trying to bring a bit of balance to the economic infrastructure throughout SWG. Less MDEs and DEs also will give the newer droids a bit of time to be balanced out through test play, because lets face it, there just aren't enough DEs on Test Center, which I have heard of, to thoroughly test everything before it would hit live.
4) The return of more balanced experimentation on Probots. I strongly believe that Durability was purposefully removed from all currently built droids, so that the DEVs could re-write the Experimentation system 1 step at a time, starting with experimentation of HAM properties. This would be where I would start, as well as a few others that I have spoken to. This would give the possibly to end up with a Probot that maybe still did the same 50 points of damage, but would be able to have twice as much HAM. I don't know about you, but an Advanced Probot with medium 40% resist armor and 1600 HAM sounds a great improvement to let us cut our teeth on, while waiting for other changes.
5) And of course my personal favorite. This will also start the introduction of the Force Slot. Why, because Anakin was a DE when he started out his path towards being a Jedi.......Ok, so this one I just threw in there for the fits and giggles.
So to cap it all off, this is what I see being done at the moment, that isn't really being talked about to us by the DEVs. Some you may agree with, some you will not, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on what I think the state of our wondrous profession is headed to. When all of this will come about is still unknown, but I don't think that is as far off as some believe. I'm going to state for the record though, I believe it Droidekas or some type of new droid will be included in the next two weeks, as of this post.
Thank you for your time
You may very well be correct, and lord knows i hope so. But you'll have to pardon me if i seem real leery of what the devs may have in store for us lol 
Definately great, well thought out post, and thanks for tossin it out there.
The biggest reason that I decided to put this down and share it was the thought of 'Why the heck would the DEVs make Droids persistent?' Whyadd something that has no real purpose to game play, or add any 'real' value (except as a great advertisement ploy) when energies could be forth to complete the finishing touches on Customization tools. This issue was so close to making it out of the Test Centerabout 2 weeks ago. Ya, sure there was the set back of not being able to make the colors stick on storing the droid, but there was an obvious step forward in the right direction.
The only other reason that I can see the DEVs throwing in this 'ninja stealth fix' of persitence is to give DEs a bit more business from those who log out without storing thier pets in aggro areas. Imagine what a Probot, that gets left out, would do whilst the owner is away, with a nest full of Bocatts sitting right next to it. I've yet to test what would happen yet, since I'm double checking on Partol points at the moment and whether or not the droid keeps on going, even though it would obviously have a low power status, but plan on trying it out later tonight, or tomorrow. If anyone else out there is doing similar tests, please either start a new thread on your results, or add them here. Obviously, if a Droid out in the wilds is left on its own for a long period of time near an Aggro-ed area, you could end up with one dead Droid when you logged back on. This might even apply to CH pets as well. /smile
Ya, I'm still leary of what and when fixes will happen, but they really are happening, maybe just not as fast or as significant as some/most DEs would like. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather that the DEVstake their time and add things little by little, then to just drop a big patch in our laps and watch the bugs crawl out of the metalworks.
One thing I was thinking it might lead to is maintenance droids. Droids that can fetch resources or fill the power on your harvestors and such .... persistent droids would be required for that.
Perhaps its a step in the right direction ...
-Kralis
Master DE Bloodfin
Ya, giving a droid a task to perform is exactly what I was thinking when I realized what was going on the other day. Its listed on a number of wish lists and would be one great way to give new life toall droids. I've been trying to think of anypossible ways to exploitthis new use, for play testing, but can't think of any except for thesheer annoyance factor.
A couple of items that need to be testedare whether or not the partol commands stay after server goes down, which was pointed out in another thread and whether or not the Droidwill stay where told when a shuttle is taken on the same planet. I just thought about this one, as I was writing this up. I've tried Going off world and had the droid return to my datapad, but I haven't tried staying on the same planetto test this out.
Ok......what I'm hearing from everyone so far it that they are seeing the same pattern emerging that I am. Well, for those of you who haven't been following up on what is going on on Test Center right, Correspondent Terminals are up and the Correspondents can now become Masters. The only real reason that I can see such a dreastic measure, on the DEVs part, being used would be to play test every area of each Profession/Class as it gains new features. Tie this information in with a few of the Droid fixes, over the last few weeks and we have the beginings of rekindled hope. But the question remains....why keep the DEs who have been hounding and pounding this forum for months now in silence.
I'm telling you, its becuase DEs unlock the Force Slot. /chuckle
Patience, determination, and the ability to make droids. These are the things that make Jedi, are they not?
I'm working toward Master DE because I like to build droids. I know they will fix us eventually. Droids are key to Star Wars"iness".
I hope all the fair weather DEs will quit, because that means more customers for me.