Droid Engineer Archive

CAPT. PANAKA: ...An extremely well put together little droid. Without a
doubt, it saved the ship, as well as our lives.

AMIDALA: It is to be commended... what is its number?

The LITTLE BLUE DROID lets out a series of bleeps. CAPTAIN PANAKA leans
over and scrapes some dirt off of the side of the DROID and reads the
number:

CAPT. PANAKA: R2-D2, Your Highness.

Lest we forget some of the long-standing concerns of the droid maker (and owner) community in favor of system overhauls, I’d like to bring back discussion on a topic near and dear to me: droid naming.

We have come a long way since the days before Publish 8 and the many enhancements to our profession that came with it. One thing, however, that has not changed is the ability to name droids with numbers, and easily. EVERY DROID IN STAR WARS USES NUMBERS IN THEIR NAMES, and all of the NPC droids in SWG are named according to that standard as well. It just kills immersion for me and many others to see probots named “Fluffy” and such, and the best we can do to try to retain the convention is use an awkward handle like “ArthreeDeefive”.

The current system of naming droids using command changes has already shown to be flawed, as droids that receive their commands by voice (surgical, LE repair, protocol) cannot be renamed from their default. Even those that can be renamed are subject to a lengthy and somewhat confusing process of including the desired name in commands until it figures it out. That system makes since for pets, as living things do learn that way, but droids are assigned a number, and “remember” it through programming.

I think that a very workable solution to this problem lies in architecture already found in the game. The ability already exists to easily change the name of a datapad component using the radial menu: starships. If a way can be found to use that system on droids it would fix the long-standing talking droids name bug, give owners a way to use Star Wars-appropriate names for their droids, and make the whole system for droid naming much easier and more realistic for how droids should be named.

What do you all think? Any other suggestions or comments?

Message Edited by DarthRoe on 01-26-2005 02:59 PM

Message Edited by TheRealTK421 on 01-26-2005 09:49 AM

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

For those that are new to these 'parts'....TH has stated in the past that altering the naming system would require something in the neighborhood of "weeks".

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Weeks would work for me. We've waited longer than that already. They were able to completely rewrite the code for programming astromechs/FCs in what seemed like just a few weeks, so I'm hopeful that once the new non-combat prof. programmers get the green light, we could see something like this in the not-too-distant future.

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Straker_Atrella wrote:

I agree.

We tend to talk in terms of big things like Decay and stuff, which probably wont happen for a while. We may have a decent chance of getting a bug like this fixed though.

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Exactly my thinking. Now is the time, carpe diem!

Any more feedback out there?

Message Edited by CommanderRyalis on 01-29-2005 09:04 PM

Message Edited by CommanderRyalis on 01-29-2005 09:04 PM

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

I think everyone can agree this would be a good change. I don't know if it would really affect droid sales or use all that much...but it can only do more good than harm.

Obviously, part of the caveat to this change is that 'canon' / famous droid names wouldn't be allowed, lest we end up with every R2 unit on every server being "R2-D2", etc.


For those that are new to these 'parts'....TH has stated in the past that altering the naming system would require something in the neighborhood of "weeks".

/bow

Respectfully,

Message Edited by TheRealTK421 on 01-26-2005 09:49 AM

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actually, all droids retain their generic craftedalpha-numeric names until they are given a name by their owners.

/sign for fixing droid name changes - love the idea of making it radial change identical to the ship naming system ... kutos

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

I think everyone can agree this would be a good change. I don't know if it would really affect droid sales or use all that much...but it can only do more good than harm.

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TitanTen wrote:

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

I think everyone can agree this would be a good change. I don't know if it would really affect droid sales or use all that much...but it can only do more good than harm.

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I for one would actually use a droid if I could name it better. I would love having a little counterpart, but the frustration that comes from naming it is far to much. I hate going through like 6 times to get 1 name to stick.

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I hear that all the time from customers, which is a big reason I want to push for it above many other things.

Still my #1 Issue!

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Feyrwarl wrote:

Yah... The second I realized that I couldn't name ANY of the droids that can carry personality chips, I nearly dropped the profession altogether. Also, if I see another droid named Sparky, I'm going to vomit everywhere.

Droid Naming = #1 issue for me

Feyrwarl Hesse

Master DE, Master Artisan

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Apparently, the "Sparky" phenomenon isn't limited to our server. LOL!