Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Losing looped macros will hurt droid sales.
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Straker_Atrella
Mon Aug 02, 2004 5:43 pm
#1
One of my biggest selling points for Harvesting droids is that by using a looped macro, it can effectivly harvest what you kill as you kill it. Plus wont run nearly as much.
Stimpack droids are the same way, with a loop macro you can keep getting healed.
So droids sales may be hurt as well.
Just another small factor that is being overlooked when they nerf these.
I understand the problem with the Entertainer profession and Spambots, I just think there is a better way to fix it.
TheRealTK421
Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:43 pm
#2
Maybe...
But couldn't we just as likely see sales of Merchant droids go up (as AFK spammers get the ax)?
We still don't know the exact manner or form this change will take so it's too early to say how bad this will hurt us.
But couldn't we just as likely see sales of Merchant droids go up (as AFK spammers get the ax)?
We still don't know the exact manner or form this change will take so it's too early to say how bad this will hurt us.
/bow
Respectfully,
Gron_DM
Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:46 pm
#3
dont know about droid sales but itll be harder on up and coming crafters.
TheRealTK421
Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:48 pm
#4
Well, if nothing else, the end of the hologrind will make it easier to swallow.
It's not like people will feel as much of a need to powergrind macro-style.
It's not like people will feel as much of a need to powergrind macro-style.
Remember that you'll only be unable to have a macro calling itself or another macro. It's not as if you won't still be able to macro some of the crafting screens.
/bow
Respectfully,
Jenden
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:40 pm
#5
I've been looking at this change a lot and talkign to quite a few people about it since I've recently picked up musician. While it may hurt some droid sales like the harvester droid or the stimpack droid, you'll also start seeing a lot more real entertainers come back. This means you'll start selling more entertainer effects and music droids. As was mentioned before, without as many afk spammers we may see more advertiser droid sales. Its hard to judge the effect this will have on the economy, but its a change that needed to happen sooner or later.
As far as the crafting macros go... all this change does is adds 2 quick/simple keypresses to your system. f1 then shift f1, f2 then shift f2, etc.... doing the linking part yourself. Is it quite as efficient? Nope. Will you lose any time over it? Maybe a couple minutes when you add it all up, nothing worth crying about.
Straker_Atrella
Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:04 pm
#6
I just don't understand why they feel to the need to go so extreme.
Remove the /join command. Remove the ability for speech to be macroed. No more buff bots, no more spambots and no negative impact on anybody.
Yea maybe we will see barker droids go up. I'm not holding my breath on a ton of Entertainers coming though. On Scylla, buffbots only became common AFTER people got sick and tired of trying to find a mind buff. I know that is why I made my DE a musician.
mordeth1
Tue Aug 03, 2004 5:12 am
#7
Just my 2 cents but u have to have advertis 4 for barker droid dont u? How many still have that lol.
Stravros
Tue Aug 03, 2004 6:50 am
#8
wont effect harv droids times ive used mine never found it hardship to type one word for the droid to do his thing. merchant barker units on other hand i can see going up after all thats whole point of having them, timed repeat of a message without the lame spamming you can get on current system, even if you dont like spamming least with droids you know its not every 2secs plus with power issue they cant be left for hours in same spot either without some attention from a person. things only get taken out of games when abused people dont abuse systems wouldnt be need to remove it in first place. crafting macro wont be to badly effected since they have stated you can still write a long macro, just means you will have to activate it yourself which again isnt that great a hardship if they stoped macro totaly then maybe more reason for people to complain.
Straker_Atrella
Tue Aug 03, 2004 8:24 am
#9
The problem is that Harvest droids were designed poorly in the first place. You need to select the corpse, give the command then wait for him to harvest. Because of this many people find them troublesome. Yet when I tell them to use a loop macro telling the droid to harvest over and over again, they LOVE it. This makes the droid harvest what you kill as you kill it. Which is how the dang thing should have been designed in the first place. If you didn't want it to harvest, you wouldn't have it out.
Stimpack Droid design is poor as well, the heals are so low, that making it heal you ever few seconds with a macro is simply the most effective way to use them.
People use the macro system to work around poor game designs such as this. By changing the macro system, they will make this less possible. So care should be taken.
Jenden
Tue Aug 03, 2004 9:19 am
#10
So fix the problem instead of throwing a bad patch on it... you say the macros help work around poor designs, well without the macros that puts more pressure on them to fix the designs. Its something that needs to be taken out, no matter what all you specifically try to kill, players shouldn't be able to run commands for very long without being at the keyboard.
Straker_Atrella
Tue Aug 03, 2004 9:32 am
#11
I agree fix the problem. Design the droids better. Do you honestly think though that after they remove looped macros, the Devs will come back and fix everything? In our case, Harvest and Stimpack droids? I don't. If we lobbied hard enough maybe, yet what other feature or bug would we need to give up to get that fixed?
ResourceMonkey
Tue Aug 03, 2004 9:38 am
#12
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Well, if nothing else, the end of the hologrind will make it easier to swallow.
It's not like people will feel as much of a need to powergrind macro-style.
Remember that you'll only be unable to have a macro calling itself or another macro. It's not as if you won't still be able to macro some of the crafting screens.
/bow
Respectfully,
How will you call the crafting tool? A macro for the remaining screens is useless as you can get through them with just hitting the Enter Key 4 times.
Just that I dropped DE for the hologrind (I was bored) and was hoping to come back to the profession. But if I have to 'hand grind' all those MSE's and Advanced Frames - well I guess I'll just haveta stick with whatever prof I have when I unlock. 
As for hurting droid sales - yeah, I suppose the Merchant droids might come in handy - if anyone is willing to pay the extra 30+ Skill points in Merchant to use one.
Message Edited by ResourceMonkey on 08-03-2004 09:39 AM
Straker_Atrella
Tue Aug 03, 2004 9:51 am
#13
Here is how you will still be able to use a crafting macro.
Just cut and paste your current 5 tool or higher macro over and over again in itself. Let's say the whole thing will go 4 times. Then after the 4th time it stops. All you need to do then is hit the macro start button again. So it will be an extra key click every few minutes.
Right now the 2 main uses for afk are Entertainer buff bots and AFK spammers. 90% of people afk fighting and stuff will go away next publish so who cares.
All they need to do is remove the /join command and buffbots are fixed. Make it so "chat" can't be macroed and AFK spambots are fixed. What annoys me is that instead of taking the coding time to do that, they do this big huge change. Then for the next year, coding time will be spent trying to fix things this fix broke. Our droids for example, assuming that ever got fixed.
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