For those of us on the Imperial side that have quested on Dromand Kaas we have seen how this can work. You know the storyline about those soldiers that were caught by Lord Grathan? You know that guy that invented a self repairing metal? There you go right there and it even includes a storyline for the droids. *note that I didn't include spoilers*

 

I'm all for playing a droid. It could be cool if it unlocked as part of the Legacy system. Depending on what you did in the above storyline (alts included) depends if it unlocks for you. Then have it interchangeable in that what role you want to play (tank, dps, healer) depends on how you outfit it along with a droid skill tree.

Yeah, something like that

 

lol

 

What's stopping people who do that from killing people and selling their organs on the black market?

What's stopping people who do that from killing people and selling their organs on the black market?

 

Actually, there's a gang on Coruscant known for doing just that.

 

But the people known for scooping up droids and selling them are more well known...

 

We call them Jawas =)

Actually, there's a gang on Coruscant known for doing just that.

 

But the people known for scooping up droids and selling them are more well known...

 

We call them Jawas =)

 

They wouldn't do that in plain sight of a droid's perceived owner though.(In this case, it could be their companion. Which, even if the companion is dismissed, in canon it would be that their companion is present with them.)

 

I had a whole plotline outlined of how their tutorial zone would work. It could be like the Pandaren in WoW where you start neutral but can choose an allegiance afterwards.

 

You could either join the Imperial Military or the Republic SIS. Of which, NOBODY would want to step on their toes except their opposing governments and maybe the gangs.

 

And of course, in true Bioware writing fashion, you'd have the option to kill the person who created you.

Edited January 8, 2012 by VioletZero

I like this idea. I was talking abt it somewhere around here. Glad it got its own thread. Great discussion so far.

 

The only thing I have to add unfortunately or fortunatly is the ability of one of your companions to be a tiny slicer droid that fits in a hidden panel somewhere on you. It either comes with you or stays on the ship. Like Flirt or Blue Max.

I like the idea, but creating new class with new class storyline will be difficult, maybe just add new race for non force users, and little change some dialogues removing old male/female romance quest lines, and maybe adding some new one with other companions, Scorpio as example or with Blizz... it can become a beginning of a good friendship

 

BH, or smuggler free droid is really lore friendly option, for agent and trooper is possible to, in times of old republic both sides use droids intensively for combat, recon and assassination purposes.

 

And I like idea that cyborgs can use some droid parts instead armour, this is not game breaking, but really interesting option, especially if this will change your appearance.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Urukkhan

For the voiced lines, this isn't -that- big of a deal. Voice actors are really good at hammering out lines like crazy. And they aren't millionaires.

 

Making a whole new class quest isn't a huge deal either since they don't make up a very big portion of the quests. Since I was waaay overleveled at the time, I decided to skip Aldaraan by just doing the class quest and that only took about an hour at most.

 

The only issue I see is balancing. Rebalancing every class to fit around it would be a problem.

Playing as this cyborg/droid would be baddass

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuqc5-MjSAA

I don't understand why you have to be the leader. If you were a droid, you could be exposed to the intel because of your master, and regardless of whether or not they were with you, they could use you to communicate with people you interact with. How about the idea that if you pick your class to be a smuggler, you're a smuggler's property, and recieve your commands from them. It'd be similar to having a jedi master constantly telling you what to do, and their exploits would back you as a diplomat or a fierce fighter. People wouldn't say "It's that droid" they'd say "It's his/her droid" and fear you because of who you belong to! And as a legacy feature, you could be a droid of your own character! That's how you could implement this feature in a less drastic way. That way you don't change the property lore, but you do change the playability. It'd be a more inticing plot if you were playing the unnoticed star instead of the obvious star. I mean, of course the jedi gets famous. Duh. But you would be the key to that jedi's success! You'd be the one who went on a diplomatic mission securing them or who stopped an invasion in their name. I hope this makes sense. I like the idea.

Droids please

Too much work for too little return. Too few people would play the class to make it worthwhile.

Too much work for too little return. Too few people would play the class to make it worthwhile.

 

Not if the class is made right.

I don't understand why you have to be the leader. If you were a droid, you could be exposed to the intel because of your master, and regardless of whether or not they were with you, they could use you to communicate with people you interact with. How about the idea that if you pick your class to be a smuggler, you're a smuggler's property, and recieve your commands from them. It'd be similar to having a jedi master constantly telling you what to do, and their exploits would back you as a diplomat or a fierce fighter. People wouldn't say "It's that droid" they'd say "It's his/her droid" and fear you because of who you belong to! And as a legacy feature, you could be a droid of your own character!

 

That's how you could implement this feature in a less drastic way. That way you don't change the property lore, but you do change the playability. It'd be a more inticing plot if you were playing the unnoticed star instead of the obvious star. I mean, of course the jedi gets famous. Duh. But you would be the key to that jedi's success! You'd be the one who went on a diplomatic mission securing them or who stopped an invasion in their name. I hope this makes sense. I like the idea.

 

Thanks. This is what I agree with. I will do my best to expand.

 

Similar to how C3P0 and R2D2 enjoy near autonomy by being 'owned' by someone so powerful, and being so independent. Likewise Bollux snuck around simply by doing enough work wherever he was at (usually offloading cargo) to become unnoticed, then just walked around as needed with a box, or whatever. Proxy got around by being owned by Galen / Juno and being able to turn into whoever he wanted.

 

So there is tons of material to draw from, for droids sneaking around to help their masters. The fact that they DON'T enjoy autonomy is actually why they're able to do so much.

 

Then as an amusing story arc, once in a while, they can get in trouble, some jam they couldn't get out of, or not be able to get into a cantina or whatever, and their master can come bail them out.

 

They'd have like their master's credit card obviously.

 

Their master would just be like the trooper general, or jedi master, or sith master. The person that issues you orders. They do this in the main and extended universe all the time. You get to do all of the grunt work that they don't have time for, but that doesn't mean there isn't adventure in between that the master doesn't have to know about.

 

Also if your master gets captured, you can go save them, which could be another obvious story arc.

 

The opportunities are really, nearly endless, getting sent to do all of the dangerous stuff.

 

You could also get sent on missions that humanoids could never get sent on. I.e. outside of ships or any other area with low/no oxygen, sand storms, freezing temperatures... then of course the droid whining all the time about whatever doing damage to his whatever.

 

You could be a translator, and translate things right or wrong. Light / dark side. That'd be wildly amusing... They could also go into detail more about 'the maker' etc. and the ethics behind droids. They could also be having you work toward your own freedom possibly. Work in some way for droids to actually be free under rare circumstances.

 

I know I complain a lot that my Smuggler doesn't have a good droid, and he still wants a good droid, but this could be a major, major expansion on my initial ideas.

 

Heh, I could write ideas for this all day. My Smuggler REALLY wants a droid, and I'm sure there's a droid out there somewhere that really wants a Smuggler.

Crypto Garn is an old engineer. He lives on an old asteroid complex deep in the Unknown Regions, a secluded place where he finds peace and solitude. Garn escaped the Republic when he realized that certain policies and experiments he intended to perform were going to be made public.

 

Garn is a droid aficionado. He fixes them, modifies them, even builds them. The asteroid complex is swarming with droids, all with different roles. Protocol droids, probe droids, engineering droids, astromechs. They work to keep the complex running and give Garn some company.

 

Garn, since his exile, has been working on a new kind of droid, something he called the Synthetic Sentience Analog or SSA. Exactly what makes these droids so special is unknown, but it appears to be the reason for his exile. You are activated at the beginning of the game and given the model designation of SSA-09, or just Zero-Nine for short.

 

From the get-go you are confused. You're not sure what's going on, and your thoughts are cloudy. Garn, excited, treats you kindly and almost like a child. You are given your own quarters and sent forth to interact with the other droids. This is where most of your quests for the first 5 or 6 levels would come from; helping other droids with a certain air of innocence with things around the complex. Some of them like you, some of them don't much care for you ("Oh, look, it's the Creator's favorite datapad."), some of them are more autonomous and have no opinion of you. And then some droids are actually not under Garn's control, and so you have to fight them as you would any other enemies for the other classes. There is also the threat of mynocks and other space-traveling denizens to contend with. Maybe one quest has you use magnetic feet to travel up the side and top of the outside of the complex to kill mynocks trying to eat through the hull. You also befriend your first companion, a probe droid healer.

 

All of this is compounded with a few choice conversations with Garn, who spends a lot of time proclaiming how RIGHT he was and that you, the droid, are SO beautiful simply because you EXIST.

 

Around lvl 5 or 6 you start finding some weird things. Notes left over in old data terminals, bits and pieces of the outside world; maybe you successfully turn on the Holonet one day. You find out that, recently, a small freighter housing a family of nomads/workers had gone missing in the Unknown Regions. Soon you find a room with a few dead bodies in it, one of which is a teenager with the tag "#09" on him/her.

 

Eventually you approach Garn and confront him, and the truth is made horrifyingly clear. The SSA Program was meant to remove the weaknesses of biological life by implanting the minds of people into droid bodies. Originally the idea was for people who were dieing or otherwise needed to continue to live, but Garn's superiors deemed it inhuman and tried to shut him down. He fled to continue his work, capturing the crew of any ship that happened to wander through the area to experiment on. You are the only success he had, the only time when the mind was successfully transferred without the person/droid going insane or losing its free will. He is clearly beginning to lose his faculties, and decides that you have to be destroyed for being so smart (after all, he knows the process works now that you exist; he doesn't need you anymore). He flees the room as you fight the other SSA droids he summoned.

 

After destroying them all you rush to reach Garn, who in his crazed state set a self-destruct sequence for the entire complex, figuring if nothing else he can destroy you along with himself. You now get a Light Side option and two Dark Side options.

 

Light Side: Grab Garn and drag him to an escape pod/emergency shuttle and escape the facility with him. (150 pts)

Dark Side: Flee the facility and allow Garn to die in the explosion (only 50 pts)

Dark Side: Kill Garn before fleeing the facility (150 pts)

 

You now have a choice; travel to Coruscant or Dromund Kas, which will decide whether you join the Empire or the Republic. If you choose the Republic you are treated with pity by most of the populace, and if you saved Garn he is arrested. If you choose the Empire you are seen as a monster by most, though you will have your uses, and if you saved Garn he is put to work in a lab by a Sith Lord.

 

From here you help to fight against the opposing faction, but all the while deal with knowing what you are. Perhaps you start getting intermittent flashes of your old life which, in turn, give you quest points (like "Omg, I just remembered that time we saw a bunch of Sith heading for (insert random planet here) with a giant doom weapon.")

A thousand times YES.

 

It would have to be a class I think because droids are wiewed differently by denizens of the Star Wars universe and would therefore need a different story.

 

The classic open world quests could easily be resolved by making our droid use a Holocom to make a member of his crew (most likely his creator) interact in his stead to avoid the need of recording more lines of dialogue for existing quest givers.

 

As for races, we could have different brands of droids (like Czerka for instance).

 

And companions, we could have : other droids obviously, a crazy engineer and/or our creator and a "droid lover" (we meet one in a Republic Quest on Nar Shaddaa and it sounds like it's not an extremely rare condition). There's also some crazy guy in Coruscant which worships the machinery keeping the planet alive, this could be stretched a bit for the purpose of giving us another companion. Might be able to slip in a wookie too because of their life debt (don't know if it applies when they're saved by a droid but who knows...).

 

The light/dark side options would be really easy since most NPC in the game would assume that a droid si going to do what it's ordered to do and since we would probably play a sentient droid, we could "surprise" them in so many ways.

 

This would make a really cool addition in a future expansion.

Edited January 9, 2012 by drchocapic

I like this idea, a droid as a class. "Races" could simply be models, I think, with possibly an overall humanoid looking body, such as HK, or even C2 .

 

I was thinking the basic class could have Techblades for main hand and blasters for offhand. Advanced classes could be: Battle Droid with Tanking tree (with off-hand shielding) and melee DPS (with an off-hand blaster) while the other tree could be Support Droid with Ranged DPS Damage (main hand blasters with off-hand vibroknife or techsword maybe) and a healing tree with main hand blasters and off-hand power generator.

 

I also like the idea of the class being unlocked by the Legacy system. By the time the class comes out, almost everybody will have unlocked the Legacy system, minus the new players, and those can wait.

 

Also, main stat could be Aim, since all current Droid companions have that as main stat I think, sou there would be no need to do much tweaking to the whole thing.

 

Finally, it would be interesting if at first the droid could only communicate in beeps and other sounds, and at the end of the starting planet/quest you would acquire a voice box with an actual voice. And your master would die during the early story quest, therefore "freeing yourself".

 

As for companions, I think it would be awesome to have a free-wheeling smuggler type, who doesn't care about the boss as long as the credits are good. And a Jawa healer of course xD.

if i can be a C-06X model then yes

Wouldn't that be more of a race than a class?

Wouldn't that be more of a race than a class?

 

It is more of a class I think. Since droids arent a species. I guess how you could do it is. Do you want to be a Jedi's droid, a Smuggler's droid. etc.. That woukd be your race choice. Then class would just be one choice.

 

From that choice above, you choose to be a pilot, war, slicer, astromech, loader. With something breaking those into the two sub class divisions. That would also determine weapons. Also aim should always be main stat.

 

I do not want to be a human brain. A councious downloaded I do not mind, but no human parts whatsoever. I would most prefer a droid that just hasnt been wiped in ages. That seems to be the reoccuring theme and it opens them up to massive knowledge and history.

Wouldn't that be more of a race than a class?

 

It's both really.

 

It wouldn't really work as a race for any other class but as its own class with its own story, it would be really cool.

Yes!

 

Assassin droid class, NOW!!

 

I mean, if every Trooper is a part of the elite Havoc squad, every Jedi a Master and the "chosen one", every Sith a Darth, every BH the winner of the Great Hunt, and ever Smuggler the most wanted criminal in the galaxy, why can't every droid class player be sentient like IG-88 or 4-L0M? With BW writing, it would make for an amazing story experience.

Hero race for the expansion.

I would play a droid race in a heartbeat. I've mentioned this exact idea to friends and I get met with strange looks, but I think it's awesome and creative.

Yes!

 

Assassin droid class, NOW!!

 

I mean, if every Trooper is a part of the elite Havoc squad, every Jedi a Master and the "chosen one", every Sith a Darth, every BH the winner of the Great Hunt, and ever Smuggler the most wanted criminal in the galaxy, why can't every droid class player be sentient like IG-88 or 4-L0M? With BW writing, it would make for an amazing story experience.

 

That's precisely the logic I employed.

 

The only reason why this would work is BECAUSE of the story element involved.

Crypto Garn is an old engineer. He lives on an old asteroid complex deep in the Unknown Regions, a secluded place where he finds peace and solitude. Garn escaped the Republic when he realized that certain policies and experiments he intended to perform were going to be made public.

 

Garn is a droid aficionado. He fixes them, modifies them, even builds them. The asteroid complex is swarming with droids, all with different roles. Protocol droids, probe droids, engineering droids, astromechs. They work to keep the complex running and give Garn some company.

 

Garn, since his exile, has been working on a new kind of droid, something he called the Synthetic Sentience Analog or SSA. Exactly what makes these droids so special is unknown, but it appears to be the reason for his exile. You are activated at the beginning of the game and given the model designation of SSA-09, or just Zero-Nine for short.

 

From the get-go you are confused. You're not sure what's going on, and your thoughts are cloudy. Garn, excited, treats you kindly and almost like a child. You are given your own quarters and sent forth to interact with the other droids. This is where most of your quests for the first 5 or 6 levels would come from; helping other droids with a certain air of innocence with things around the complex. Some of them like you, some of them don't much care for you ("Oh, look, it's the Creator's favorite datapad."), some of them are more autonomous and have no opinion of you. And then some droids are actually not under Garn's control, and so you have to fight them as you would any other enemies for the other classes. There is also the threat of mynocks and other space-traveling denizens to contend with. Maybe one quest has you use magnetic feet to travel up the side and top of the outside of the complex to kill mynocks trying to eat through the hull. You also befriend your first companion, a probe droid healer.

 

All of this is compounded with a few choice conversations with Garn, who spends a lot of time proclaiming how RIGHT he was and that you, the droid, are SO beautiful simply because you EXIST.

 

Around lvl 5 or 6 you start finding some weird things. Notes left over in old data terminals, bits and pieces of the outside world; maybe you successfully turn on the Holonet one day. You find out that, recently, a small freighter housing a family of nomads/workers had gone missing in the Unknown Regions. Soon you find a room with a few dead bodies in it, one of which is a teenager with the tag "#09" on him/her.

 

Eventually you approach Garn and confront him, and the truth is made horrifyingly clear. The SSA Program was meant to remove the weaknesses of biological life by implanting the minds of people into droid bodies. Originally the idea was for people who were dieing or otherwise needed to continue to live, but Garn's superiors deemed it inhuman and tried to shut him down. He fled to continue his work, capturing the crew of any ship that happened to wander through the area to experiment on. You are the only success he had, the only time when the mind was successfully transferred without the person/droid going insane or losing its free will. He is clearly beginning to lose his faculties, and decides that you have to be destroyed for being so smart (after all, he knows the process works now that you exist; he doesn't need you anymore). He flees the room as you fight the other SSA droids he summoned.

 

After destroying them all you rush to reach Garn, who in his crazed state set a self-destruct sequence for the entire complex, figuring if nothing else he can destroy you along with himself. You now get a Light Side option and two Dark Side options.

 

Light Side: Grab Garn and drag him to an escape pod/emergency shuttle and escape the facility with him. (150 pts)

Dark Side: Flee the facility and allow Garn to die in the explosion (only 50 pts)

Dark Side: Kill Garn before fleeing the facility (150 pts)

 

You now have a choice; travel to Coruscant or Dromund Kas, which will decide whether you join the Empire or the Republic. If you choose the Republic you are treated with pity by most of the populace, and if you saved Garn he is arrested. If you choose the Empire you are seen as a monster by most, though you will have your uses, and if you saved Garn he is put to work in a lab by a Sith Lord.

 

From here you help to fight against the opposing faction, but all the while deal with knowing what you are. Perhaps you start getting intermittent flashes of your old life which, in turn, give you quest points (like "Omg, I just remembered that time we saw a bunch of Sith heading for (insert random planet here) with a giant doom weapon.")

I'm guessing since my post was longer than 2 lines everyone ignored it. Shame, really.