Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Extra! Extra! Droid Battery Technology Improved
Jjiaah wrote:
Porri_Sharo wrote:
RasalTheWise wrote:
Definitely nice. And it really shouldn't slow our battery sales down too much...
Uhmmm.....I respectfully disagree. 1 hour duration to 4 hours will result in 75% decreased battery use.We willsee a strong reduction in sales. It is possible that increased Combat droid sales and useagewill offset this loss. I would have prefered that SOE also changed the Droid crafting stations to require power to operate at the same time this increase took place.
How many Color kits do we sell now?
Don't forget about those people out there that don't bother with droids because they can't stand the short battery life. And there are many many of them out there. I've talked with several of them during a sales pitch. "Nah. Always having to keep a crate of batteries on me to recharge the thing every 15 minutes is a pain". We know it's not 15 mins, but that doesn't change their perception. It was far too frequent.
This doesn't decrease our battery sales.... this opens up a whole untapped portion of the market.
Another point to remember is that the 4hour period is without engaging any abilties that consume extra power. Running Effects, Medical work, Combat will shorten the battery duration, but now a person will get a respectable amount of "work" done between charges. Nothing bothers me more than having to stop playing in the middle of a set to recharge my effects droid (I play the Nalargon in my band).
As for the Paint Kit comment, the two cases are apples and oranges. We havebeen asking for improved Battery life, but unless I'm mistaken, after the kits were increased to 200 calls, we NEVER had an issue with them.A requested x4 increase is fine. A ninjax10 increase is not.
Imaladris wrote:
Barney I see where you are coming from. However, many have place their droids in perm hibernation because of the short time that batteries last. The barker droids come to mind. People gave up because every hour they had to come back and re-charge. I can only speculate that once this 4hr time per battery takes place, many will dust off those barker droids they bought. Just a guess....
Uh oh....
BarneyIX wrote:
P.S. Are you sure they only last for one hour? Seems like they last a lot longer for me...
As has been stated in a couple places in this thread, the battery life can vary greatly based on what you're doing with the droid.
Modules like Effects, Autorepair, Harvesting, and Combat can all kill a battery pretty quickly, while medical and crafting seem to last longer.
Straker_Atrella wrote:
We don't want this to be like when custom kits went up to 200 calls, hardly anybody knew there was a change. If this is going to be good for us, people need to know about it.
Drashk wrote:and send out a quick email note, if you keep track of sales.
Keeping track of my sales has definately proven to be one of the best choices I made early on in my DE career... Only problem I have now is that some of the servers security "features" get in my way... I've got approximately 750 names now on my customer list (granted a number of them no longer play, but sometimes they come back, and even if they didn't I'm not sorting through that trying to guess who still plays and who doesn't) and if I don't break it into 7-8 chunks the server disconnects me since it thinks I'm trying to flood it. It is kind of funny to watch my bandwidth go from 1kB/s to 70kB/s in a few short seconds though.
Jenden wrote:
Keeping track of my sales has definately proven to be one of the best choices I made early on in my DE career... Only problem I have now is that some of the servers security "features" get in my way... I've got approximately 750 names now on my customer list (granted a number of them no longer play, but sometimes they come back, and even if they didn't I'm not sorting through that trying to guess who still plays and who doesn't) and if I don't break it into 7-8 chunks the server disconnects me since it thinks I'm trying to flood it. It is kind of funny to watch my bandwidth go from 1kB/s to 70kB/s in a few short seconds though.
When my shop on Shadowfire was open, I kept a mailing list of past customers. I got disconnected a few times before it dawned on me as to why this was happening (well duh).
I also had a list going on Test Center, started by Doughbacca, up until TC was mothballed for JtL Beta. My mail was borked when I logged back on to TC and I lost all of my mailing list information. Its ok, since I spend my time in the /tcpa chat channel usually just drop a quick line or two when ever I add something 'special' to the vendor.
Which reminds me of a channel or two I forgot to mention above...
You can also spam the Auction and Planet channels periodically with a message requarding battery charge times. Added together with the above suggestions, we should be pretty well covered on information spread....
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Honestly....when I first read this, I thought, "Why?"
It's not as if batteries are needed all that much anyway. Sure, for the odd situation now and again but for the most part, I don't even need/use them.
I guess it's nice to see a change...I just wish it could be something that mattered more. /shrug
Warryyr wrote:
Do you folks seriously believe that because droid batteries last 4 hours that MORE people will like/use/buy droids? In all honesty, I feel like that's a bit too much of wishful thinking. More than likely, those who will use droids are already using droids. Those who do without will most likely buy storage droids and leave it at that.
Actually, I do seriously believe that people will use more droids now that the battery life has been increased to 4 hours.
One of the longest standing complaints about droid use has been that the Droid battery lifespan does not last long enough. This is one of the primary complaints from those that use Harvestor Droids, Combat Droids, Tank Droids, Medical Droids, Entertainer Droids, and even the Power Droid.
This single change has increased the effectiveness of a droid by 4 times what it currently is. Now instead of having to charge a droid 1-5 times in theaverage game play session, thecharge rate has been reduced to 0-2 items per session.
I have already seen an increase in Droid usage, on Test Center, from this change and Test Center has one of the smallest populations of any server.
It is going to take a little work on our part to get the information on this change out there, but once the information is out there, driod usage will increase.
This does not mean that any of the other issues with our profession have changed. It does however show that the DEVs are coming around to listening to a greater number of community based requests. Over the next few months, while the CU is being ironed out, we should see a number of long standing issues being addressed. It takes production time to track down bugs and squashing them. Additions such as the increase in battery life, increases the usefulness of our droids and was relatively easy to adjust. By itself, this change is small, but when added up with what we should see through out the game in the coming months, it is part of a larger scale project on the DEVs part to improve the game experience.
Drashk wrote:
Warryyr wrote:
Do you folks seriously believe that because droid batteries last 4 hours that MORE people will like/use/buy droids? In all honesty, I feel like that's a bit too much of wishful thinking. More than likely, those who will use droids are already using droids. Those who do without will most likely buy storage droids and leave it at that.
Actually, I do seriously believe that people will use more droids now that the battery life has been increased to 4 hours.
One of the longest standing complaints about droid use has been that the Droid battery lifespan does not last long enough. This is one of the primary complaints from those that use Harvestor Droids, Combat Droids, Tank Droids, Medical Droids, Entertainer Droids, and even the Power Droid.
That's cool, I mean you're entitled to your opinion about it.
I'm of the mindset that whoeverfound a complaint about droids before (droid batteries) will find another (complexity, cost, usefulness) to dissuade them from ever getting a droid or bothering. Give people one less thing to complain about, and they'll find something else to take it's place - I mean, I've been on the forums for awhile. I'm fully aware of this. I'm even one of the complainers 
All I see this as is another way to remove repeat customers from my business.
This is THREE hits I've taken for item I used to sell.Vehicle and Droid Customization kits, and Droid batteries. That's BS. I'm sorry, but it is.
We already have very little to encourage people to regularly visit our shops and buy stuff. With the droid battery changes we have one less thing to sell on a regular basis.
We're going to be hurting as it is with the mission payout nonsense.
Think about it - you now make less money. Your credits are precious. Are you going to buy something you never bothered with and got along fine without up until now?
Not like any of this matters, what's done is done. But, as I said before, I think this Dev team's priorities are seriously misguided. They may be trying to improve the gameplay experience FOR THE FUTURE, but I'm not paying for Star Wars Galaxies as it will be 5 months from now. I'm paying to play Star Wars Galaxies RIGHT NOW.
Message Edited by Warryyr on 11-15-2004 11:36 AM