Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Why decay is not my number 1 issue
). Wishful thinking, I know.That's because they've been able to get byy on that one crafting or Med droid they bought, ohh....since like a few weeks into Live. Or some number of months ago.
Gron_DM wrote:
Decay is most certainly something which standing alone will not be taken as a positive addition from most of the non-DE's.
For those that think decay would hurt us...do you think people will stop using a Med droid cause it decays and they have to replace it over time? Or their crafting droids?
Of course people won't like that they have to replace a product/service that before they didn't. That's to be expected. However, I often find that many of these folks understand that our 'one-time-sale' situation isn't good for us either.
I would agree that getting more practical in-game 'output' from droids would be helpful...but that would be the case without decay. With decay, we can work out the balance of droid lifetime and dig into getting more needed features and system in place.
What's key is finding that fair/balanced break-point between decay that's too aggressive and decay that's effectively not on.
/bow
Respectfully,
Message Edited by TheRealTK421 on 02-01-2005 03:23 PM
RasalTheWise wrote:
But if we have to pick and choose, I choose bug fixes, simply because they should have been addressed a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
Bug fixes are beyond the scope of what the Top 5 Issues threads should be. It took me a while to realize this, but with the change in production time to fix old bugs, we need to look towards the future development time and not become fixated on the past. Bug fixes are finally being seen on a steady pace. It just takes time for some bugs to be fixed and tracked down, even though they may appear to be easy fix items from the players stand point, such as the ability to name Converse style droids.
Decay by itself is not the magic bullet fix that some think it may be. Droid Decay will only be effective if it goes hand in hand with some other addition to promote droid use. The problem is, that without Droid Decay, other additions won't help because we won't have the reoccuring market that we need. Droid Decay can only be an effective tool in the goal of creating a better Droid market, if it is a part of a complete package.
We are in a Catch 22 situation where the only way to produce the result ofa reoccuring market is through the addition of Decay and some other factor. We've already seen what happens when the other factor is added without a Decay system. (IE the Droid Publishes).
Drashk wrote:
We are in a Catch 22 situation where the only way to produce the result ofa reoccuring market is through the addition of Decay and some other factor. We've already seen what happens when the other factor is added without a Decay system. (IE the Droid Publishes).
JavelinCatcher wrote:
Drashk wrote:We are in a Catch 22 situation where the only way to produce the result of a reoccuring market is through the addition of Decay and some other factor. We've already seen what happens when the other factor is added without a Decay system. (IE the Droid Publishes).
As a side note, we've also seen what happens when simple decay is added without the addition of new features. However, I doubt many remember the 1 kill "droid perma-death period" anymore.
hehe, I remember it pretty well. That was a bad form of decay I think (too fast, droid would only last people one trip). Space it out so a droid lasts for a month or so and I don't think many people will complain.
Jenden wrote:
hehe, I remember it pretty well. That was a bad form of decay I think (too fast, droid would only last people one trip). Space it out so a droid lasts for a month or so and I don't think many people will complain.
I'd disagree with that. If we implement decay without giving droids a real "need" we're going to end up cutting our own throats. Currently, droids aren't much more than a novelty. They're nice to have but, except for med modules, players can get by without them just fine.
Let's look at it this way. If the devs were to implement real clothing decay (say your clothes would decay within a month) how many players do you think we'd see running around in their skivvies?
GnomeAd wrote:
Jenden wrote:
hehe, I remember it pretty well. That was a bad form of decay I think (too fast, droid would only last people one trip). Space it out so a droid lasts for a month or so and I don't think many people will complain.I'd disagree with that. If we implement decay without giving droids a real "need" we're going to end up cutting our own throats. Currently, droids aren't much more than a novelty. They're nice to have but, except for med modules, players can get by without them just fine.
Let's look at it this way. If the devs were to implement real clothing decay (say your clothes would decay within a month) how many players do you think we'd see running around in their skivvies?
I think we'd see a drop in sales of some of the "fluff" droids, but our core sales (harvesting, medical, storage, combat) would still be strong as these are things people really have grown to rely on. How many doctors do you honestly thing would go back to the med center? How many people would want to carry that extra suit of armor on them and have to worry about it decaying? How much more does the scout make with that droid when he's getting 100cpu+ for his resources... Yea, some of our droids are pretty much for show, but those are also the ones that don't see much use (and therefor wouldn't decay as fast). The droids that people use constanty would decay faster, but they'd almost definately replace them.
Given the activity that the Devs have been showing in the last few days we might just see some attention sooner than laster.