Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 8 Testing Feedback: Droid and Droid Engineer Changes
Unfortunately the Survey droids appear to be of limited use at the moment.
I know that there is Endorian deciduous wood on Endor.... its always there..... I want to send a droid to give me its stats so save me the trip. It appears that with current functionality I cannot do that. Would it be possible to add this at a future date please?
Atteke wrote:
* Droid Modules: Survey Droid - The Survey Droid can no longer be used indoors.
Added Musician Playback Module to the DE skill tree: This module allows an entertainer or a musician to record a musical track onto the droid. The droid will then be able to play back the music that was recorded as accompaniment in the player's band. Multiple modules of this type will stack and allow multiple musical tracks to be recorded, although only one track can be played at a time.
It seems the playback droid is only recording the instrument and song, but not the flourishes. I tried this a few times with a couple different instruments (on SW3), and when I played back the music, only the basic riff was played. It would then continue to play like this until I told it to stop. On a side note: is the droid supposed to keep playing? If so, how? Should it play the recorded track, then keep playing the basic riff until you tell it to stop, or is the recorded track supposed to loop?
Added Creature Harvester Module to the DE skill tree: This module will allow any character with the Novice Scout ability to program and control an equipped droid to advance on the look-at target of the player and harvest the resources on the creature. The player can preset the droid to harvest one of the three types: meat, hide or bone. Or the player can just let the droid pick a random resource type.
Tried one of these out last night and it works great. Programming works fine, and it takes the harvest command when the corpse is up to 65m away. It can take the command at any time, so can harvest even while i'm fighting (great for whilesoloinggroups of higher level MOBs). The droid I have has a harvester rating of 120 with 6 modules, and was in fact yielding 120% of what i would have harvested had i done it by hand. According to the DE i got it from, it seems that with perfect resources a 6 module harvester droid could get a harvesting mod of up to 150 with perfect resources.
A couple of points: because I'm grouped with the droid, it is vulnerable to attack by the creatures i'm attacking. It seemed that very often, when i would attack a creature, it would then turn on my droid. The droid then runs away and the creature follows and they just keep on running in whatever direction(which causes problems for melee combat; I had to /burstrun just to catch up and save the little guy). Also, the way it works, any droid with a harvesting rating of 100 or less is more of a liability than a help. Was it intended that the droid would have to be fully stocked on harvester modules to be any use? Right now, there's no logical justification for ever having a droid with even 3 or 4 harvester modules.
Arg0nus wrote:
Barker Droids:
I did not buy this game to get Auto Spammed. It's bad enough that people set a bloody macro to spam every 30 seconds....But to get auto spammed by a droid would really tick me off.
I will /report the merchant listed on the owner field on the droid for spamming me.
LMAO.
You are threatening to report people that use a feature of the game? Seriously....what is wrong with you that you think that is right or that it would mean anything, LOL.
"Ohh, I'm gonna report you for using your pistol because I'm too lazy to turn off my sound-and the blasts arebothering me!"
First, that's a big joke; second, it's hilarious that instead of just fixing the problem yourself you would take away from other people's CSR time who have ACTUAL problems and not just attitude problems, over something so ridiculous. "I'm being advertised to by a droid that is meant to do that - HELP!"
LOL I can see the CSR's eyes rolling back in their heads now, as soon as they stop laughing at you. You likely would never even get a response - what do you expect them to do anyway? Ban the person for using a game system as intended? LMAO.
Here is the soloution to ALL spam, guy : TURN OFF YOUR SPATIAL CHAT AT CORONET AND THEED STARPORTS. Click on that little button right above the box you type into.
It's really that easy. You act as if people are grabbing you, tying you down,and bashing you over the head with a hammer. Get some frickin' perspective.
I'm sure crybabies like you will have this nerfed and ignored before it even hits live, those who cannot take care of themselves in this game and expect SOE to hand hold them and treat them like helpless children, and it will fall into the long line of great ideas that some people just don't have the capacity to handle so it gets taken out of the game.
What I wouldn't pay to play on a server where people just minded their own business, took their own power and used it, and didn't expect mommy, er, SOE to play the game for them.
All because when you go to two specific locations in the game you cannot click one single button while you go there - a place that NO ONE ever forces you to go, that you go by choice. Don't like Spam? Try lesser used Starports, like Doaba Guarfel and Kaddara/Keren.
Complaining about the advertising in Coronet and Theed is a bit like complaining that they serve liqour at a bar you willingly go to...well, what is there to say but : duh!
AO
I just wanted to chime-in with my opinion of the Merchant Barker droid module. In three words..."Very, very, very, very bad idea".
I ran a little test here on TestCenter and found that a handful of people find my little Spam-Bot following me around doing his spam thing funny (or just ignored the whole thing). On the other hand, the majority of the people asked me to turn of the droid because the spam was bothering them. A few even became hostile about it.
I have Merchant characters (both on TestCenter and live servers) and think the idea of a barker droid is good, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. Isn't there enough spam in the Starports already?
I would like to make a few suggestions:
1. Allow characters to ignore the barker droids (and vendors in general for that matter) if they so desire.
2. Make a special channel (or filter) for Barker Droid (and vendor messages). This would allow us to filter out or create separate windows for this type of spam. [This is my favorite option]
3. Trash the whole Barker Droid concept and do not implement them.
I've said my piece...anyone else have any opinions on this topic?
Thanks,
WizardTB
AudioOrgana wrote:
Arg0nus wrote:
Barker Droids:
I did not buy this game to get Auto Spammed. It's bad enough that people set a bloody macro to spam every 30 seconds....But to get auto spammed by a droid would really tick me off.
I will /report the merchant listed on the owner field on the droid for spamming me.
LMAO.
You are threatening to report people that use a feature of the game? Seriously....what is wrong with you that you think that is right or that it would mean anything, LOL.
"Ohh, I'm gonna report you for using your pistol because I'm too lazy to turn off my sound-and the blasts arebothering me!"
First, that's a big joke; second, it's hilarious that instead of just fixing the problem yourself you would take away from other people's CSR time who have ACTUAL problems and not just attitude problems, over something so ridiculous. "I'm being advertised to by a droid that is meant to do that - HELP!"
LOL I can see the CSR's eyes rolling back in their heads now, as soon as they stop laughing at you. You likely would never even get a response - what do you expect them to do anyway? Ban the person for using a game system as intended? LMAO.
Here is the soloution to ALL spam, guy : TURN OFF YOUR SPATIAL CHAT AT CORONET AND THEED STARPORTS. Click on that little button right above the box you type into.
It's really that easy. You act as if people are grabbing you, tying you down,and bashing you over the head with a hammer. Get some frickin' perspective.
I'm sure crybabies like you will have this nerfed and ignored before it even hits live, those who cannot take care of themselves in this game and expect SOE to hand hold them and treat them like helpless children, and it will fall into the long line of great ideas that some people just don't have the capacity to handle so it gets taken out of the game.
What I wouldn't pay to play on a server where people just minded their own business, took their own power and used it, and didn't expect mommy, er, SOE to play the game for them.
All because when you go to two specific locations in the game you cannot click one single button while you go there - a place that NO ONE ever forces you to go, that you go by choice. Don't like Spam? Try lesser used Starports, like Doaba Guarfel and Kaddara/Keren.
Complaining about the advertising in Coronet and Theed is a bit like complaining that they serve liqour at a bar you willingly go to...well, what is there to say but : duh!
AO
AO...That part of it was meant to be a joke. Apparantly youfound it funny for a different reason then my intention...but at least you found it funny.
The point of that comment was to say that I think the Auto Barking droids are stupid, so I am going to respond with something equally stupid (I would NOT actually /report the owner of the droid)
I guess I should have noted something more in there to let people know it was a joke....Some people don't understand my humor, and that's ok.
I still hate the Auto Barking Droid idea...and neither you, nor SOE will make me change my mind. I have a Master Merchant, and I choose not to use that option.
In conclusion, I am sorry that you didn't see that what I said was meant to be a joke.
In short, let me summarize the opinions of most of the posts I've seen on private boards and these forums, across galaxy forums and in professions concerning a couple of these modules:
1. Merchant Barking modules are overwhelmingly viewed with distaste. I've noted that nearly EVERY opinion on these droids has included the caveat "We Need To Be Able To IGNORE These". Furthermore, the majority opinion is that the times be able to be set from 60 seconds to 5 minutes (control of delay is crucial.)
There have been some EXCELLENT refinements suggested throughout the forums and here. A modified NAME display taking the place of the droid spamming would be SUPERB. (visual wouldn't punch scrolling in spatial) Furthermore, an email on request with the waypoint SHOULD be able to be implemented, so that a customer can hit the radial waypoint request and receive an email with the waypoint attached and a pre-defined body of the email where a merchant can fill in info such as price lists, hints on using items (I'd love to send a Droid Use & Renaming faq to my prospective customers) and other info. With that functionality, these droids would be invaluable in events, in GCW raid planning, in hunts, the list goes on.
2. Interplanetary Survey Droids: These are not giving stats. The charges idea is great, don't get me wrong, and the response to the charges addition has been incredibly positive. This droid is highly anticipated IF the email returned had some value indications on the resources. Nearly every comment on these droids has indicated that SOME sort of info in addition to the resource name list MUST be returned, else the market/usefulness of these droids shrinks from a majority of crafters (who are begging for some stats) to justthe tiny population of resource specialists.
Without SOME info outside the list, this droid is viewed by the majority as not being worth it. This is the overwhelming opinion of the crafters and even most of the resource moguls as well. Even if the email on this particular droid just gave a *** star rating like SWGcraft, this would be saleable. The most repeated suggestion is that the email (IF the devs think that giving full stats is bad) should give ROUGH info, such as the 100 level ratings, IE, if the resource had DR 550 HR 343 OQ 993 etc, the email would have DR 5 HR 3 OQ 9.
In short, the survey droid simply must provide some further informational incentive to be worth it to crafters, not just to resource specialists.
JediGohan wrote:
Barker module?
As if we needed more spam in the major cities.
we better be able to ignore these
/agree
All its gonna do is allow a player to spam at one starport while his droid spams at another, thus doubling the amount of spam.
I like the idea of being able to choose to listen to these droids, if we want to. As was previously said the best option IMO is to all conversing as with npc's, and then the droid tell you what the player is wanting it to say. It should also have small text over its head symbolising the basic item that its advertising. So it could have the words Armor vendor location, or something above its head. This would help players find information they want rather than being forced to see it.
I also agree that the survey droids should send back a more detailed report of the resources available, and think if implemented correctly will be a great asset.
I've not tested the droids cos I only have a basic character on TC and can't afford anything lol
, so I don't have first on experience. I'm going on what the majority of people are writing.
