Droid Engineer Archive

Ok first things first I am utterly against the idea of a DH profession, it flies in the face of everything droids are and stand for

However I do think we have ourselves to blame and heres why (and I dont think some people are going to like it)

The simple fact of the matter is that there is a % of the DE community (and also the playerbase as a whole) that wants battle droids (specifically Droideka) and since the CH nerf people have been looking at battle droids to replace their previously powerful pets

The problem is that people dont stop to ask a couple of simple questions.....

Why was the Probot nerfed in the first place?

Why were creatures (and specifically non-CH pets) nerfed?

It all comes down to balance, whether you like it or not the devs did these things to try and balance the game and to think they were just going to give everyone and there brother a droid more powerful than the current Probot without some kind of cert system (or in the DH case a bunch of skill points) they were deluded

This was partly why I opposed the implimentation of pure combat droids, with the rest of my opinion based on continuity

Personally I'd prefer that we _never_ see a droid more powerful that CL10 (but more customisable like the BE system) than _ever_ seeing a DH profession!

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ASHRID wrote:

Why was the Probot nerfed in the first place?

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Fraid not. Go back and read Holos posts on the subject

The Probot in it original form allowed any player (even one without any combat skills) to take on and defeat things way way way overtheir level

The Probot was too hard and it got nerfed - it really is that simple

(and then they nerfed it again down to CL10 from 16, even with the exploit fixed)

Why i think they will create DH ? because its a **edit** sight easier for them to use existing game mechanics than it is to fix broken ones and add new.

The DE community wanted new combat droids that would provide them some form of use on the battle field. but to do so would require the DEVS to restructure the DE profession as well as implement new droid models. By creating a new profession they remove the head ache of restructuring the DE profession and can concentraite solely on the new Droid models.

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ASHRID wrote:

Go back and read Holos posts on the subject

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I have it memorized. He said specifically any new character and a CAMP could effectively solo anything in the game.

Or in his words:

"The problem with probots currently is that a rank newbie with a camp can kill anything in the entire game."

The Camp. That's the important part. The insta-heal exploit was only useful while sitting in a camp, letting the Probot fight until it was almost dead, and storing it (this was before 60 second timer), then calling it and it was at full health.

I still have several Pre-Nerf Probots with 3k HAMs, and they are in no way overpowering. The exploit gave the illusion that the Probot was overpowered. If this was the case, then why did Raph allow players to get their hands on 3k HAM Cowardly Gurrecks?

Just a new version of that which he deemed worthy of a nerf, don't you think? The truth of the matter is, an exploit gave the Devs the wrong idea about Probots, and they were nerfed as a result.

and then they nerfed creatures

Parity (you may not consider the 3K HAM Probot overpowered in todays game but the devs obviously do)

New higher CL combat droids would destroy this parity, thus they either dont get implimented or some kind of control comes with them

and because all the leet d00ds want droideka we get the control, regardless of if its the best thing to do.

In many ways this is no different to the proposed bazaar changes, the majoritory will thing they are a good idea because they think there is an advantage to get had ("Hey I can use Droideka without having to do all that troublesome droid building") and thus the changes goes through while the portion of the playerbase it hits the hardest (in thius case DEs) stand impotently screaming in the corner

/agree completely. I made a similiar post yesterday:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=52227

I hate to say it, but I think that the devs will indeed make a DH class. So, DE will truely become a clone of either BE or CH, but with expensive hoppers to run.

This will allow for code re-use - it will be cheaper and easier for the devs to do.

So what if it isn't very Star Warsie, or not what the players want? If it is cheap and easy, and they are still getting subscribers, who cares? People adapt.

When I think of the hundreds - if not thousands - of hours that I personally have spent writing constructive posts on where the devs could take DE and droids, and look at the fact that every single post has obviously not been read by the devs - let alone anyone elses constructive posts - well, I'll just say that I am extremenly frustrated.

So JUST SAY NO! to battle droids

On a more serious note I think the devs should just give us decomissioned ex-military battle droid chassis into which we can put our existing (and the new low end combat) modules. Coupled with a system like the BEs currently have (but that incapable of exceeding CL10) and IMO that would be enough

Well, in the first place, the value per point of XP of combining an artisan profession (droid engineer) with a virtual combat skill (droid handling) would be way too high for the devs to allow. Everyone would become droid engineers almost instantly. I think for that reason alone, they won't allow us as droid engineers to gain exclusive abilities to control powerful combat droids. We know that, which is why a lot of droid engineers have been lobbying forhigh level combat droid certs to be carefully peppered amongst the elite combat professions, but even that threatens balance and the grouping imperative as you pointed out.

I think that ultimately some new,very powerful droids will be craftable, but I'm wondering if they will actually be allowed to be player controlled. They may be AI type droids used in militias, faction bases, bounty hunter tracking, space flight support, et cetera.