Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: The Real Truth about the new droids in Publish 8
kalmank wrote:
Hey all -
I see lots of praise, but no one seems to be thinking logically. Most of these modules are useless:
Merchant Barker module - spams every 30 seconds. wow. so more people will hate merchants, especially if we can't ignore the bots. My prediction? Before it's on live the devs will increase the time and allow them to be ignored. But the kicker is if we leave the server boundary it stops barking. First of all, how are we to know where exactly the server boundary is? I've never seen any signs "Now leaving Boundary 00385." Secondly, what's the point of having it if we have to babysit it? The only useful thing it does seems to be giving out waypoints. But to quote Judge Judy, "don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining." This is a Waypoint bot, not a merchant barker bot. Sigh.
I don't completely disagree with you on this one, but there are a few things to remember about droids that might mitigate the annoyance level:
1) Droids take batteries. If the droid stops barking when it runs out of batteries, the cost may outweigh the benefit for some customers. Others will find that the ability to include a waypoint outweighs the cost.
2) If you have a merchant droid out barking somewhere, you can't pull out another droid to use at the same time. Therefore people that use droids for other purposes will probably not be using barker droids very often.
3) I'm also waiting to see what the range of the spam on these droids is. If it's shorter than a /yell it might not be any worse than the current AFK spammer. If it's shorter than a /say then I think it may not be that big of an issue at all.
In short, I'm reserving judgement on these modules until I hear more from TC.
Surveying Bot - You've got to be kidding. If I am standing in the middle of nowhere, the time it would take me to call the bot (15 seconds) plus the time it would take to report back the NAMES of the resources on a different planet, I could go through swgcraft.com find resources on ALL planets, with their STATS, and how long they've been on. Another useless bot.
As others have pointed out, swgcraft.com isn't always 100% accurate. I am one of the few that will take time to update the site if I see incorrect information, but a lot of people don't. Plus, at least on Naritus, current information about resources on adventure planets like Endor or Yavin 4 is VERY hard to come by. Not only that, but using a droid in-game is more immersive than ALT-TABbing out to look it up on a website. I think these will sell pretty well, depending on cost.
Structure Maintenance Module - at most it can show 9 structures. Semi-useful. How about 50? or even 20? Sigh again.
You only have 10 lots anyway, and some structures take up more than 1 lot. Do the math. If you really need to keep track of more than 9 structures,get a second droid with a maintenance module.
Stimpack Dispenser Module - I think most players actually heal faster by themselves than with Stim A's. Obviously, the devs play too much in God Mode, and don't realize how useless this is.
Not everyone's a novice medic. This module will let those of us with no medic abilities get a quick heal while we're waiting for our friendly neighborhood doctor to make his rounds duringa battle. I think this is a great module, and will certainly cut down on my incap time.
Entertainer modules - these they spend all the development time on. lol lol lol. They're cute, but after watching each one for 5 seconds, you'll be bored.
These will get the most use from entertainers that actually like to entertain. People that like to put on concerts or plays will probably find many creative uses for droids with these effects in them. I'm looking forward to seeing some very creative displays. This may not be our next high-selling module, but I still forsee selling a handfull of them from time-to-time.
New Combat Droid HAM - now they have high creature level requirements. Apparently if I need to learn how to tame animals before I can learn how to push the "on" button on a droid. Sigh sigh sigh.
Where'd you get that idea? The new droids are CL17, but the old ones (post-Pub7) were CL13. If you're concerned about not being able to call it because it's >CL10, you're wrong.
I think the praise is only because DE's are finally getting some attention. We need to make NOISE if we want these new modules to have any usefulness. Remember the Experimentation changes? Many crafters complained and so it was taken off. If we actually say something, we can get things done. Otherwise, we'll have to wait 6 months until Space comes out for anything new, and that will be a pilot module for R2 units. Lets face it.
Using this logic wouldn't get us better modules, it would get us NO modules. You'd rather have that happen? I don't understand, I really don't.
/sign if you agree, and post your comments. Let's be heard!
-Isildur
No signage here. I don't understand why people always feel like they have to look at the bad side of things. These are GREAT additions, and while they may not be the show-stopping features that every DE's wet dreams are made of, they're going to give us a lot of what we asked for:
- Utility
- Diversity
- Droid-ish things for droids to do
- An increased presence of droids in the world.